Podcasters from throughout North America gathered in Kingston, Ontario, last weekend for the third annual Podcasters Across Borders conference.

Here is a quick rundown of some of the coverage of the event by participants and presenters at PAB08:

Financial Aid Podcast and social media superhero Chris Penn talks a little bit about the “battle” (heated discussion) between himself and Chris Brogan. The spirited but amicable argument pitted conversation against monetization, community vs. marketing. I’m not sure the outcome of the dispute has to be an all-or-nothing solution, but I do know that such discussions are not usually resolved with light saber battles (brilliant!) as was the case here.

Speaking of whom, Chris Brogan’s short “jolt” presentation at PAB08, “Making Money Isn’t Evil,” was filmed by worthy adversary Chris Penn. The upshot of the presentation, says Brogan, is that while “it’s not evil to want to make money, [you must] be very wary how you try to do this off your community.”

Here’s a highlight – Chris Brogan and Chris Penn’s “epic fight over conversation vs. monetization, over community vs. marketing”:

Brogan also had an insightful blog post about FlackLife public relations man Bob LeDrew. In addition to being a PR guy, Bob puts on small house concerts, and he bravely got up and sang in front of PAB attendees. His alternate take on his performance was dramatically different from Brogan’s, but had a takeaway message: “that few things are as bad as they seem.”

PAB Conference co-organizer Bob Goyetche gives a nice overview of his experiences at the conference here. He says:

“Our hope this year was to help people “Bring it to the next level”.. The speakers sure did. These people brought their “A” game to the event, and we all benefited from it. It was very hard to remind ourselves that these people weren’t professional speakers, but passionate content creators. If you boil down the weekend to it’s essence, that’s really what it was all about- creating compelling content and reaching your community.”

If you went to Podcasters Across Borders last weekend, and want to share your insights about the gathering, or share your blog or podcast links, please leave a message in the comments, below.