This was the third annual Expo produced by the Bourquin brothers.

There were bands this year – and more parties (but not as many party goers) and the Association for Downloadable Media held its first meeting.

Lee Gibbons attended on behalf of the 100 or so people who filled out our association survey. He got to speak his piece and it looks like there is a chance that someone other than Susan Bratton will end up controlling the ADM. That’s a good thing in my opinion and means that we might have a shot at making just one association represent us all. I’ll have more on that later.

As for the main business of the show…

I was wearing several hats at the Expo. Our company (Podango) had a large booth at the Expo. From that perspective, the show was a success. We saw lots of people in the booth, acquired new content partners, technology and opportunities to build business. We also established our leadership position in the industry.

We did the same thing we did last year, i.e., we produced an unconference where we had an alternate set of speakers appearing in our booth for three days giving talks about podcasting and new media.

The PNME regular conference track was good, but there were several comments from people visiting our booth that our sessions were better than the ones offered to paying attendees. I’ll leave that for others to decide.

The show floor featured about the same number of booths as last year and about the same number of people seemed to visit the booths. This is a telling fact.

It tells me that the industry has hit a plateau and/or that the Bourquins decision to move the show to Vegas next year was a very good one.

There were very few major announcements at the show compared to last year, and to me, the overall vibe was somewhat diminished. The Libsyn guys were made to wear feathers in their caps and had an odd booth that looked like they were trying to do a Lord of the Rings movie in it. My favorite part of the show was seeing Rob Walsh wearing that getup. http://www.podcast411.com/

I do think we saw an increase in mature podcasters this year. Not old podcasters, but podcasters who had been doing their show for a longer period and who were serious. There were people there making money at this.

Tim Street of the French Maids put it best. He said the people who attended this year were more down to business than out for a party like last year.

Also, everyone seemed to discover the theme that podcasting is dead. (Thanks Michael Geoghegan) I found this very interesting since my pal Leo Laporte talked about this last year at the show in Australia where we played pokies online together for quit e a while, and his remarks were somewhat controversial then. I guess everyone else is seeing the light. The Bourquins have removed the word podcasting from the name of next year’s event. They’re now calling it the “New Media Expo.”

This mirrors my own thinking. Even Paul Colligan (who made fun of me for changing the name of this blog from Podcasting Tricks to Online Media Tips) seems to have jumped on the bandwagon. Of course Paul is a bit slow on the uptake. He was the only one joining us at the Steak 2.0 dinner hosted by Cachefly without an iPhone. And he’s one of nine people in America who seems to be rooting for the Zune!

In all seriousness, I do think that we’re at a turning point. In my opinion, people who call themselves podcasters, need to start thinking of their podcasts as “shows.” And shows are what is important. Distribution models will change. Period. But the shows live on. Create good shows, without regard for how or where they are distributed. Focus on building an audience, no matter where you are. Serve that audience. Tell good stories. Be open and transparent. And everything will work out.

It was a good show, not a great one. We’ll see what happens in November at the first annual Blogworld and New Media Expo.