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She told me I was cute in the exhibition hall, which also makes her a horrible liar. But sweet lies are always appreciated – unlike Jason Calacanis’ blunt and tactless honesty, as reported by Valleywag. “You’re podcasting?” he asked her. “Let me give you some good advice: no one wants to hear you talk.”

Maybe he’s right, nobody likes a sexy Russian accent, do they? Maybe it just sounded better by the Marriot pool when I was talking to her.

But no more pleasant distractions, back to the subject at hand: Curt Brandao’s presentation on podcasting for print publications. The overall focus of the session, which also featured presenters from the San Francisco Chronicle and The Daily Journal, was on the steady stream of lost subscribers to newspapers and how podcasting can, as a supplement to content, reinvigorate the industry.

Brandao’s Honolulu Star Bulletin column, syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate, his unsyndicated cartoon, and his podcast, DigitalSlobPod, take a humorous slant on the impact of technology on our culture.

“I don’t just talk about digital cameras or PDAs in IT-speak binary code,” he comments on the Expo website. “I talk about my grandmother, the Oscars, loose change, wisdom teeth, time travel, handwriting and ketchup, and how it all relates to how we live now in the Digital Age. ‘Technology behavior’ has now become pervasive enough to mock.”

Curt didn’t hold back the humor during his presentation, which added a nice break to the technical business of the session.

“Hello, my name is Curt, and I’m a podcaster. It’s been six days since my last podcast.” Brandao produced a chart on the screen to show where he stood in importance amongst other personalities in the Web 2.0 world. Dave Winer and Leo Laporte, for example, are important, which puts Brandao at “kind of important.” He even has a t-shirt that says so.

Beginning as a copyboy as a teenager, Brandao related how skills used for print could also be used for podcasting. “Copyediting skills equals audio editing skills,” he said. “All the skill used to take extraneous information out of stories, the same skill is used for editing audio.”

Plus, he says, you need “an ego the size of your average gas giant.”

As for the equipment, Brandao uses “a hot naked model” to promote his podcast, an iMac G5, Garage Band software, a USB microphone, a box of twinkies, and a Logitech headset.

His advice for publicity tools can also be used outside of podcasts and print, applied to any type of content publishing on the Web.

“Make every effort to publicize your content,” he said. For this, use tags, PR Web, and one-sheets (a combination of resume and sales pitch with samples, contact information, biography and testimonials).

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