Holy Moly! This coming Friday is PodCampNYC 2. I’m doing a session called “OpenID for Newbies” and I have to get cracking on getting the PowerPoint together. Fortunately, I have much of the source material already in the form of an OpenID preso I did at PodCampBoston2 last fall.

I’m really looking forward to this PodCamp because I’ve met so many people online since the first PodCampNYC about a year ago, and I want to meet them in person. In particular, I can’t wait to “virtureal” (meet in person someone one knows only online) my co-podcasters on PushMyFollow, Annie Boccio (@banannie), Christine Cavalier (@purplecar) and Michael Gaines (@istarman), all of whom live in the Jersey, Philly area.

Two more virtureals I’ve been wanting to make for a long time are video editor extraordinaire Bill Cammack (@billcammack) and video podcast goddess Roxanne Darling (@roxannedarling). I’ve gotten to know Bill through mutual friends online. If it works out time-wise, I’d love to meet up with Bill at the beer mecca Burp Castle in the East Village, where I’ve seen him in so many Flickr photos.

I’ve known Roxanne in the online sense for well over a year. Her Beachwalks with Rox is one of the longest running videoblogs/podcasts on the net. I have to say, Beachwalks was one of my inspirations to get into vlogging and social media. We’ve been promising each other for months that one day we’d meet up and I’ve even gotten a proxy-hug from Rox through Laura Fitton (@pistachio), but now it’s finally going to happen! Yay!

I’m also looking forward to renewing in-person friendships with NYC peeps like Kathryn Jones, Jesse Chenard, Grace Piper and Charles Hope that I haven’t seen in a while. A special ex-Boston-now-NYC friend I haven’t seen since her farewell party last November is Julia Roy (@juliaroy).

One technically oriented meetup I want to make is with David Recordon, the young distributed applications guru and OpenID advocate. I have a lot of the same interests in trying to break down the walled gardens of social media and social networking, and David is a leader in that movement.

But yeah, although there is plenty of cool content to consume in the sessions, it’s pretty obvious that the real reason I go to podcamps is for the friendships. I’m thankful that I don’t have to justify the “business value” of going to podcamp to some finance department troll in Corporate America. I’m the CEO of me, and I say it’s worth it.