Wow, an Austin Powers reference? Really? And I thought I was above that…

Anyhow, next week I’ll be at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas, primarily to give a workshop with my esteemed colleague Tom Merritt (of Buzz Out Loud, Real Deal, East Meets West, The Sword and Laser, and CNET TV fame). Holy crap, Tom, you’re on a lot of stuff! Our workshop is entitled “Developing an Engaged Community (a.k.a. Don’t Feed the Trolls)”:

You want an engaged community. You want your audience to interact with your show and help spread the word. Then you get flamed. Then your feedback is filled with trolls. What do you do? Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt have dealt with the best and worst of the online community and share their experiences and specific tips and tricks for dealing with a passionate audience. They’ll tell you how to reward the good convert the bad and avoid the purely evil. You’ll come away from this workshop armed with knowledge on how to make your community a better place for you and your listeners to grow your show.

If you’re going to be there, the workshop is at 10:30AM on Thursday. But that’s not the only reason I’m heading to Vegas! There are a few great parties on Friday night that you should check out, like the Revision3 Meet-Up at the Double Down Saloon from 6-8PM (with me, Zadi Diaz and other Rev3 peeps), and then the Coverville 500 party at Bally’s at 7PM (presumably until whenever we feel like it).

I’m really excited to meet some of the podcasters that I’ve always admired, like Brian Ibbot from Coverville and Scott Johnson from The Instance and Extralife Radio (is Randy Deluxe going to be there? I don’t even know!). Should be a great time, hope to see some of you there!

For some reason I ended up on a plethora of podcasts this week! Here’s the rundown for your listening and viewing enjoyment:

Sunday: This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte, Steve Gillmore, John C. Dvorak and Patrick Norton. We talked about all sorts of news, including SXSW (and Twitter, natch) as well as some unfounded rumors involving Revision3. Which leads us to…

Tuesday: Tekzilla! I love guest hosting this show, mostly because it means I get to hang out with Patrick and Roger all afternoon.

Thursday: The Instance Episode #100! I was honored and delighted to be on the 100th episode of my favorite podcast. Scott and Randy had folks on air that have made appearances or recorded special pieces for the show over the last 100 episodes, so it was like a big homecoming.

Friday: I went down to CNET for an in-studio recording of Buzz Out Loud. It was nice to be back in the BOL chair, even if I let Tom run the production side of things (it’s been a while, I’d probably break it). They live stream on ustream.tv now too, so I was able to record it. Not too exciting to watch us talk, I bet, but you get to see me chug some coffee.

And on Monday and Wednesday I recorded upcoming episodes of Mahalo Daily, so it was quite a full week.

In case you missed it, Tom Merritt and I have started doing a Sword and Laser podcast every week. It’s just a quick rundown of some of the things that have happened in the latest book (Neuromancer) plus whatever other sci-fi/fantasy related stuff we’ve been checking out recently!

It’s pretty low-tech right now, but we hope to bring more audience discussion into it soon, by either using a TalkShoe talkcast or by using Yahoo! Live (which may have been the cause of the strange audio hissing from this week’s episode…). We even have some swag to give away on the next episode! If it sounds like something you’d enjoy, you can subscribe here.

Last night I was on the Typical Mac User Podcast with Victor Cajiao, and it was great to be able to have a chat about some of the apps we love, and our predictions for this year’s Macworld. I’m hoping for a ultraportable laptop, and Victor has a crazy prediction that has to do with AppleTV (you’ll need to listen to get the full scoop!).

But the best part about the show was taking live calls from listeners via Talkshoe. This was my first time using their interface, and I think they’re definitely on the right track. It reminds me a lot of Stickam and Ustream, except without all the pesky video. Yes, sometimes it’s nice to not have to deal with video, it’s true. Users interact with the host over chat, phone, VoIP or not at all (just listening). The host can queue up questions and bring them into the discussion at will.

The chat interface could use a little improvement, but I heard from someone over Twitter that they’re planning on implementing an IRC-based chat interface sometime in the future. Despite that (and it’s a small issue — I got used to it after a couple of minutes) I really enjoyed the experience. I didn’t even mind downloading their small app, which usually drives me crazy.

I love that there are new services enabling podcasters to really engage with their audience. My favorite part of podcasting is interacting with users, whether it be via forums, emails, social networks, etc. Now we have to figure out how to do a live Mahalo Daily, and we’ll be all set!