| Presenting on Podcasting to a Macintosh User Group - new ideas and uses. | | Date Created: 20 Dec, 2004, 09:48 PM |
 Last night (Monday Dec 20) at the Macintosh User group here in Melbourne, Charles Wright and I held forth on Blogging and Podcasting.
It attracted a larger than usual crowd, probably more because of Charles' media profile (he writes a newspaper tech column, has a radio spot, and his own blog) than the subjects, but only a brief survey would tell for sure.
We managed to interact quite well, adding to the other's presentation and sharing the audience's questions. Feedback suggested it went down well.
After introducing some of the history of podcasting, including Chris Lydon's mp3 coverage of an earlier Bloggercon, I showed an mp4 (DiVX) of the BBC "Culture" show segment on Podcasting (Zina Saro-Wiwa's report entitled "The Next big i-thing").
I had located it and then downloaded it using Bit Torrent client, Azureus. Now, the combination of tshowing it on a big screen projector, the terrific production quality of the segment, and the interviews with the Podcasting A-list, media experts, and listeners, really brought home the phenomenon of Podcasting, as well as all the visuals of Apple products.
It also enabled me to discuss Bit Torrent, "swarming" and the paradoxical nature of this form of peer to peer sharing, such that unlike earlier models, like Hotline and Napster, the more online users downloading a file, the faster each downloader's speed turns out to be, since they become an almost instant "seeder" as well, despite not yet having the complete file.
Letting the iMUG members know that the BBC will be adopting this kind of technology to share its content for a week after it has been broadcast seemed to blow them away. All agreed that mainstream media will surely have something to worry about in 2005. Always good to leave your audience with mouths agape.
I also used Apple's Keynote for my slide show, but couldn't use the BBC Culture mp4 since it didn't quite work embedded in a Keynote slide - it was a little jerky. So I had to drop out of Keynote and use Quicktime alone to get a better quality. Nonetheless, it definitely delivered the intended message.
My last slide was kinda lost in the free-moving discussion, but it relied on Amy Gahran's initial podcasting observations (October 29), which she called: "What is Podcasting and why should you care", here.
In addition to her observation of the name, Podcasting, being rather unfortunate - she believes the iPod is overpriced and overhyped, in utter denial of its popularity - she makes some excellent observations of interesting uses for your iPod, by means of downloading audiofiles in the podcasting style.
Informed by her being a journalist, here's a section of her blog entry:
"Off the top of my head I can imagine lots of ways to put podcasts to good use. Here are a few:
- Backgrounders or interviews to supplement news coverage or commentary
- Audio recap of the top stories on a news site (as a way to draw traffic to the news site or provide an additional advertising channel)
- Bands, musicians, comedians, and other vocal/music performers can release their latest songs or clips, or provide spoken concert notes.
- Issue updates from advocacy organizations or their PR firms
- Specialized industry news from professional or trade groups (NAM, AIA, etc.), or from foundations or educational/research institutions.
- Investor news (such as EarningsCast)
- Language lessons or other educational materials that benefit from audio
- Recipes or other how-to instructions for hands-on tasks
- Self-guided walking tours
- Hiking trail guides
- Yoga, meditation, visualization, or self-hypnosis instructions
- Sermons, speeches, or debates
- Audio from conference sessions (plenaries, panel discussions, etc.)
- Informational content (word of the day, business tip of the day, weekly birdwatching tips, etc.)
- Storytelling for children or adults (maybe even the return of the audio soap opera)
- In-house news or updates for a company or organization (delivered via intranet)
- Training enhancement or reinforcement
- Expanded access to online content for the blind
- Sportscasts for niche sports
- Quick highlights from newly academic or scientific research papers (abstracts translated into plain language)"
Now, some of these are already occurring. And the last one I have already been practising and will get into daily very soon. After all, I have been doing this for years with friends but using text.
I also expect to podcast my fear of flying blog for clients and others who can take me on board with them and hear my explanations of aircraft events, as well as some reassuring thoughts. I usually encourage fearful flyers to take with them their favourite music and now podcasts to keep them both entertained and distracted, if and when needed. I know it helps me pass the 24 hours to NYC!
After the iMug podcast presentation I had some further thoughts to augment and enhance Amy's list.
First the high end, culturally-aware stuff: You'll probably be aware that museums and art galleries are lending, for a fee, iPods and other audio devices to allow audio-guided tours of their current shows.
Here in Melbourne, our National Gallery of Victoria holds many concurrent free exhibiitons, with occasional special displays of imported loans from other leading galleries.
The NGV has educational pdfs you can download and take with you to help you enjoy the exhibits. The current main one features the works of Edvard Munch, whose "The Scream" picture (above) is perhaps his most famous work.
How about this? Rather than walk around with the pdf printout in your hand, why not have a curator read the copy, as well as discuss how the NGV obtained the loaned paintings, putting some human element behind the workings of the NGV staff. That way, after you'd downloaded the mp3s to your iPod or whatever, you could view the paintings while listening to really interesting story-telling. Each picture would appear as a short mp3 in a Playlist, and you select which to listen to depending where you are in the gallery.
Apply the same thinking to your home town. My Melbourne has a very rich history - culturally, politically, architecturally and so on. I could imagine those with a passion for their hometown and its history recording a walking tour of locations, which visitors could download before they arrive. Perhaps listening in first on the long plane trip might even cue them in as to what to visit.
Indeed, on my visits to the US on United Airlines, one of my favourite reads early in the flight is its Hemisphere inflight magazine, and its "Three perfect days in ..... (a Star Alliance-served) destination. Focussing on a city's attractions, the article invites you on a tourist trail over three days. Why not have a famous and knowledgable resident be your audioguide, and include some local phrases (in the local language or idiom) to help you out: "Where is the restroom? Where can I get a great coffee? Do you have change?" could all be worked into the talk or just included on a "help" playlist that accompanies the main tour.
I imagine local civic councils could do the same, inviting tourists to visit and hear about interesting local places, and if we must get commercial, why not include - but making it overt and not clandestine - a series of promotional recordings of local bar owners, art galleries, restaurateurs, booksellers plying their wares as part of the downloadable content.
What about exhibitors at fairs? Why couldn't the fair organisers invite the exhibitors to record some promotional material for downloading so people can walk around and, at their choosing - especially at busy stands - listen in to some information about the products. Include some testimonials from happy clients as well.
Or how about making your own "Directors' Commentary" about a favourite film?
Record in real time your ideas about a film, share your knowledge of it, including when goofs happen! Use the iMBD to locate these, and sources of interesting movie trivia, then sit and watch the film or documentary and record your thoughts. In fact, get a few of you together and totally roast the show - include your own lines and turn it into a real spoof. Wasn't this done with Mystery Science Theater 3000 or some such thing? Here in Melbourne, we used to have a troupe of actors in a theatre venue do it with the old Italian Muscle flicks starring Steve Reeves, with the live voiceover really hamming it up. Heck, is there a business model there? Would people pay to be entertained this way?
Melbourne, Montreal and Edinburgh have world-wide reputations for hosting Comedy Festivals. Why not make available enticing snippets of previous festivals to give intending audiences a chance to preview what they might hear and see live? Just enough of the best bits to bring an potential audience in to see shows they might others ignore. And if you are a freelance reviewer of such shows, why not make a homepage (since such festivals are on for two weeks), interview the performers, and this is your new blog/podcast.
Go back up the list from Amy and see for yourself if their is any podcast that might apply to you. Break out of the soliliquied-DJ model pioneered by Adam Curry and Dave Slusher or the - dare I say it - almost "jumping the shark" Dawn and Drew show (is Dawn sounding jaded of late?) and think about a community of listeners in a niche product kind of way.
Even if you have only 100 daily listeners, consider who they might be and if your podcast is meaningful to them. Could your podcast cause actions to occur on their part and to your advantage? Nobody's making serious money from podcasting - yet - and it tooks years for bloggers to get any kind of decent model going, and then just for some.
Which means at this very early evolving stage it's not about the money. But about being part of a community exploring new ways to share and obtain useful content from trusted sources - a very unmainstream acitivity.
It may well have financial payoffs down the track. Who knows? |
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