The first PodCamp on the West coast will be held in San Francisco on November 18-19, 2006 at the historic Swedish American Hall. PodCampWest is free to attend for the community and is inspired by PodCamp Boston.

Event organizer Vic Podcaster reports that PodCampWest aims to “bring together the movers and shakers of New Media, giving you free access to ideas, thoughts, best practices, and the true ‘understanding of New Media scene’.”

Vic is expecting upwards of 300 “plugged-in Podcasters and Vloggers” at PodCampWest.

PodCampWest is an unconference, for podcasters & listeners, video bloggers, hobbyists and people interested in new media. The event organizers stress that one need not be a podcaster in order to attend and/or enjoy the weekend. The sessions are held in the Open Space format: the attendees at the two-day conference jointly set the agenda, lead the breakout sessions, and take an active role in moving each session along, “igniting” group conversations.

Session topics will be decided upon by the participants gathered at PodCamp, but are expected to run the gamut from A to Z: planning for content, content creation, content publishing and subscription models, production quality, tools, recording techniques, video composition, editing skills, audio & video post production techniques. Also anticipated are sessions with buzzword titles like Monetization of New Media formats, Podcasting and Video Blogging and impact of new media on business, Directly communicating with customers in Web 2.0 world, New Media marketing and public relations.