FAP479: How to network at conferences, podcasting changing governments, dance scholarship, Jonathan Coulton

Student Financial Aid News
+ From NASFAA - hey, we changed the FAFSA!
+ And yes, WE did it. I may have done the recording, but without every single one of you listening, sending in comments, feedback, etc. I would have given up this show long ago. The community of the Financial Aid Podcast did this together.
+ Speaking of which, TODAY is the deadline for a lot of states - file your FAFSA online
+ The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation Tuesday that would end a federal rule that limits that size of Pell Grant awards for students at low-cost colleges. The practice, known as tuition sensitivity, has particularly affected students at community colleges, especially those, like in California, that charge very low tuitions. The House legislation, which was co-sponsored by Rep. George Miller and Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon, the chairman and senior Republican, respectively, on the House Education and Labor Committee, would repeal the rule for the 2007-8 fiscal year, increasing Pell awards by an average of $108 for the 96,000 students affected by the current restriction.

Scholarship Update
+ American Harlequin Dance Scholarship
+ Deadline November 1, 2007
+ In an effort to provide better opportunities for young people pursuing performing arts careers, American Harlequin established an annual “Dance Scholarship Program.” Our first annual program in 1999 resulted in $10,000 in scholarship monies being awarded. Now we award $25,000 each year to twenty lucky individuals. Just as we did in previous years, since we are not in a position to judge the artistic merits or financial situation of the applicants, we will have a random drawing to select the winners. We leave the nominations to you, the teachers, to make a judgment about the students you support. Our hope is to offer a little financial help to some lucky young people who wish to continue in whatever form of dance helps fulfill their lives. All the applicant information must be filled in. The certification is then to be completed by the dance instructor.
+ Details at our free college student scholarship search site

News You Can Use
+ How to network
+ Business cards - bookmarks for First Life
+ Get 250 free
+ Conversational hooks give people things to latch onto
+ Not just conversation starters, but also in conversation materials
+ Give to get
+ Make sure the backend is ready
+ Social media resume example
+ After the conference, 6 tips from community developer Chris Brogan
1. Handle your business cards.
2. Send a few emails.
3. Fulfill any promises.
4. Connect via my social software accounts.
5. Search blogs and add comments.
6. Post your media.

Podsafe Music
+ Jonathan Coulton, Sky Mall
+ Music via the Podsafe Music Network
+ Stop by our MySpace page!

Reminders
+ Bum Rush The Charts 3.22.07 - I’m in, are you?
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208. AIM: FinAidPodcast Add me to your iTunes by visiting http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com/itunes/

Direct MP3 file download: MP3 file

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I was checking news and mail this morning, catching up after PodCamp Toronto, when I saw this article on the NASFAA web site.

Someone at the Department of Education actually changed the FAFSA after hearing about issues on the podcast.

Wow. Quite a way to start the workday. And to Theresa Shaw, COO of the office of Federal Student Aid - thanks for listening. You made my day brighter, but you’ve made a lot of families’ FAFSA experiences a great deal easier.

A few things I learned sitting next to a high school senior named Amanda.

Amanda doesn’t use email. Why? MySpace provides her with everything she needs to stay in touch with friends and family. On top of that, she navigates visually - why remember an email address when you can click on someone’s face? Her profile on MySpace is super-private as well - she doesn’t accept friend requests from people she doesn’t know.

Amanda understands the basic strategy of doing a couple of years at a community college and transferring into a four year college later, a great way to save some money. One thing that was glaringly lacking was that no one had educated her on the difference between federal student loans and private student loans, and when to use each.

Podcasting was non-existent in Amanda’s world until I demo’ed Garageband and the Financial Aid Podcast. Now she wants to have her own show.

Lessons - at the Student Loan Network, we have to get increasingly smarter about having conversations with our customer base on their terms. We’ve been sending out a Financial Aid newsletter for a few years now, and puzzling over why open rates are increasingly lower. I had thought it was spam filters, and that may indeed be part of it, but part of it may also be that our audience simply doesn’t read any kind of email any more.

To do today: put my newsletter up on MySpace.

FAP478: Secret meetings, Pizza Hut scholarship, mail bag on FAFSA and UGMA, PodCamp Toronto, Uncle Seth

Student Financial Aid News
+ LSU did a call in night
+ If I did one, would you call in?
+ Let’s do one! Only maybe not at night.
+ The U.S. Education Department is looking for the next big ideas in student aid — with a strong emphasis on promoting simplicity of programs and reaching students in their pre-college years.
+ Senior department officials invited about 20 experts on student aid — campus aid administrators and researchers on financial aid — for a private day of meetings Wednesday. Participants said that the department appears to be thinking ambitiously about changing student aid programs, suggesting that the experts not focus on tinkers, but on how aid programs would be restructured if starting from scratch.
+ Those in attendance who agreed to talk about the meeting did so only anonymously, saying that they had been told in strong language by the department that it didn’t want the meeting to become public knowledge. Department officials confirmed that the meeting took place, but declined to release names of attendees, saying that it wanted to protect the aid experts from appearing to have endorsed any idea that eventually may emerge from the session. Attendees were generally from outside the Beltway — higher ed association types were excluded— although Congressional officials were invited to listen to a 45-minute wrap-up at the end of the day.
+ From NASFAA: A group of eight people learned a harsh lesson about student loans when they pleaded no contest in connection with a scam to falsify applications for federal student funds,” reports CBS News. “The defendants, who were not students, were accused of conspiring with a former financial aid director at the University of West Los Angeles to apply for $18,500 in student loans.”
+ A few PodCamp Toronto thoughts

Scholarship Update
+ Pizza Hut Vice President of Pizza Contest
+ Shoot a video about why you love Pizza Hut’s particular version of pizza
+ $25,000 first prize
+ Deadline March 18, 2007
+ Similar to the Network2.tv video contest as well
+ Details at our free scholarship web site

Mail Bag
+ Barry Caplin writes in: I’ve been listening for about a year. I know you don’t like to give out finance advice, but… I’m confused about an issue. I understand that the contribution rate for assets in the students name is much higher than that in the parents’ name. But is this different for 529 funds? Would it make sense to transfer UGMA/UTMA investments to the 529 for this reason? I have 2 kids in high school with UGMA/UTMA investments and 529s. Should this be done before filling out the FAFSA?
+ Paul writes in: I was trying to follow the directions for the bum rush scholarship, but when I entered the code it said I earned zero points.
+ Fernando writes in: Hey Chris! A friend of mine lives in New York and wants to attend graduate school here in Georgia. I know she will not qualify for the residency requirements, but for how long? Is there a national state residency requirement or does it vary by state?
+ It definitely varies state by state - Georgia is 12 months with a whole slew of requirements - check out UGA’s web site

Podsafe Music
+ Uncle Seth, To Be An Angel
+ Music via the Podsafe Music Network
+ Stop by our MySpace page!

Reminders
+ Bum Rush The Charts 3.22.07 - I’m in, are you?
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208. AIM: FinAidPodcast Add me to your iTunes by visiting http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com/itunes/

Direct MP3 file download: MP3 file

Technorati Tags: financial aid financialaidpodcast

Here’s a common situation in my life - I go to shoot some video, and all I’ve got is my camera. No external mic, no hotshoe mic, no nothing except the onboard mic, which tends to be mediocre. Video guru David Tames often says that the best way to create good video is to have good audio, but what do you do when all you’ve got isn’t all that? What do you do? Levelate!

The Levelator is a piece of software developed by the hive mind at Gigavox Media - a free audio tool that levels, cleans, and brightens up audio. It’s not a panacea, but it will save you a lot of time vs. manually doing stuff like enveloping, RMS normalization, and compression.

The gotcha with the Levelator, inasmuch as there is one, is that it only works on uncompressed audio files, like AIFF or WAV files. MP3s, other audio, and video is straight out.

Here’s a tutorial on how to get around that.

Requirements: Mac with a G4 processor or better, Quicktime Pro. Click on individual images to see bigger versions.

Step 1. Open your movie in Quicktime Pro. Select Export…

Step 2. Save Sound to AIFF.

Step 3. Take the output AIFF file and drop it into the Levelator.

Step 4. Take the levelated AIFF file and video file and open them both in Quicktime.

Step 5. In your video file, open the Movie Properties, highlight the audio track, and delete it.

Step 6. In your levelated audio, select all, and copy.

Step 7. Make sure your video time cue is set to the very beginning of your video file. Select Edit - Add to Movie.

Step 8. Save your work. You’re done!

Hopefully this tutorial was helpful! Please leave comments, suggestions, etc. below!

Updated: Steve Garfield pointed out that you can export AIFF straight out of Quicktime. Thanks, Steve!

Lots of things to review, lots of thoughts to process. PodCamp Toronto’s theme, if I could boil it down to one, was community. Community, trust, relationships, and understanding why people do what they do, capped off by a fascinating discussion with a high school senior on the flight home.

I’ve been talking a lot the past few weeks about the incompatibility of an economy of abundance with an economy of scarcity, and how they’re fundamentally incompatible, a discussion happening with folks like Whitney Hoffman, Chris Brogan, and Julien Smith. Initially, my premise was that new media content was abundant, links were abundant, and money was scarce; therefore, any abundant commodity in a scarcity environment would suffer from hyperinflationary pressures. What’s the value of a text link when you can create them all over the place for free?

PodCamp Toronto helped to reconcile a lot of this. Two things: first, money isn’t scarce. It’s actually quite abundant. Since the United States went off the gold standard for its currency, we’ve had what is called a fiat currency, which means that the government can arbitrarily decide how much money there is, simply by adding more money to the money supply. What makes money scarce is our perception of it, that it’s somewhere else, and that we can’t get at it. Second, while the content of new media - shows, links, web pages, etc. are abundant, the underlying human factors are not abundant - time and trust. Both are scarce, in some cases exceptionally scarce.

Money is scarce only insomuch as we believe it to be so. Remember, basic economics teaches us three things about money - it’s a unit of account, a medium of exchange, and a store of value. The latter two are most important. We exchange things for money, but even those things aren’t what makes money work. I have no need to trade money for an XYZ widget if I don’t need an XYZ widget, and marketing has been spending years trying to figure out how to convince a customer that they need an XYZ widget when they don’t.

The most important thing about money after PodCamp Toronto is that money is a store of value. It can be abundant for you if you have value to trade for it. As Julien said, stop trying to monetize your stupid podcast and build relationships instead. The podcast - the delivery of content - is not what is of value. What is of value is the value you provide to someone else. That’s why companies like the Student Loan Network stay in business. Yes, price is important - remaining competitive in pricing on loans (remember that the price of a loan is the interest rate and benefits) helps make our products more appealing if you need them, but the value we provide on top of what is essentially a commodity is educated service. We provide value and ask you to trade money with us based on the fact that we spend so much time learning, teaching, and sharing our knowledge. Our customer service team is one of the best educated I’ve ever met, and they’re universally polite and helpful.

Money is plentiful and abundant if you have something of value to trade for it and trading partners who trust you. For me, PodCamp Toronto was entirely about sharing what I’ve learned since PodCamp Boston with my community, the podcasting community, and learning new stuff from my peers and seniors, building new relationships and strengthening existing ones. Trying, in essence, to be of value to everyone who attended and met up with me. In return, I gained a lot of knowledge from others, knowledge I can use to bring value back to the Student Loan Network and in turn, trade that value with our customers for money.

More to think about trust coming soon.

FAP477: Student Loan Radio PlaneCast

Today, I’m out of the office, trying to recover from being sick after a long trip to PodCamp Toronto. However, in my stead is an episode of Student Loan Radio with a high school student from Buffalo, New York. Our conversation extended beyond the recording, but an interesting perspective on why MySpace is important.

Podsafe Music
+ Matthew Ebel, Drive Away
+ Munk, I Am
+ Rayko/KRB, Up Chuk Skat
+ Rayko/KRB, Simple Love Song
+ Becca Loebe, There Tonight

Reminders
+ Bum Rush The Charts 3.22.07 - I’m in, are you?
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ FAFSA form online filing at FAFSAonline.com
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208. AIM: FinAidPodcast Add me to your iTunes by visiting http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com/itunes/

Direct MP3 file download: MP3 file

Technorati Tags: financial aid financialaidpodcast

I’m back in the States again after a three day journey to Toronto, Ontario, Canada and PodCamp Toronto. What an absolutely amazing event this was - PodCamp Toronto (PCT) raised the bar in so many ways for what a PodCamp can be.

• The energy of the crowd was eager and excited to learn
• The sessions and presenters were fantastic, top notch quality
• The lightning talks were equally amazing
• Lots of great conversations deep into the night
• Ryerson University stepped up and made it a venue to remember
• And last but not least, the organizers did a fantastic job!

A few highlights that stuck out in my mind:

• Mitch Joel’s talk about building your personal brand
• Timbits and coffee!
• John Wall is a vastly underestimated guy - he’s wicked smart on all things business
• Julien Smith is one of podcasting’s visionaries
• Chris Brogan is community. Not just a community developer, he is community.
• Uncle Seth rocks
• Great to see so many old friends from PodCamp Boston - Bryan Person, Mark and Bob, Leesa, Casey and Rudy and more
• Lots of new friends - Sonya Buyting, Michael Seaton, Donna Papacosta, Peter O’Connell, and so many more

Major props go out to the organizers who made this PodCamp one for the record books:

• Leesa Barnes of Podonomics - Organizer, Media Liaison.
• Jay Moonah of Uncle Seth and Online Music Marketing - Organizer, Event Logistics.
• Brent Morris of The Closet Geek Show - Organizer, Volunteer Liaison.
• Julien of the In Over Your Head hip hop podcast - Organizer, Tech Guru.
• Mitch Joel of Twist Image - Organizer, Publicity/Promotions.

Finally, I have say this - if I were a college student in Canada (a uni student to them), I couldn’t imagine why you’d want to go anywhere else except Ryerson University. What a fantastic school.

I’ve gotten more than a few emails from folks asking about the subscribe icons on the Financial Aid Podcast web site. Well, they’re now available as a free download, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. Be sure to read the README file included with the icon pack as a condition of use (including the attribution HTML), but if you’d like to use them and your podcast is non-commercial (no revenues or advertising supported revenues, or a publication of a qualified IRS 501(c)(3)), then please use them with our blessings.

Downloand the Financial Aid Podcast Icon Pack!

Something completely different: an interview with John Buckley of PodCamp UK. Off to PodCamp Toronto today.

Reminders
+ Bum Rush The Charts 3.22.07 - I’m in, are you?
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ FAFSA form online filing at FAFSAonline.com
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208. AIM: FinAidPodcast Add me to your iTunes by visiting http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com/itunes/

Direct MP3 file download: MP3 file

Technorati Tags: financial aid financialaidpodcast