Thursday, May 12, 2005

The podcast of today's talk in Pisa, Italy; unconferences, blogging, RSS, podcasting, making money on the Internet, and an end to monoculture. This is probably the podcast I'll give to KYOU for their inaugural broadcast, and it's the speech I would have given at the Syndicate conference. It's a pretty good explanation of the ideas that are making a difference in the blog, pod, syndo-spheres. Web services are in there too, but aren't really part of the user story. If you want to understand where I think we're going, please listen to this cast. It's only 25 minutes, and it's packed with ideas. 

Does podcasting make you a better writer? 

ReadWriteWeb: "Is there a Web-based RSS aggregator out there that will be a Bloglines killer?" 

Here's what the Pisa conference looked like from my point of view. 

Robert Cox, the host and organizer of BlogNashville, on the Respectful Disagreement discussion. 

Some people who were critical of BlogNashville probably weren't familiar with the unconference format, which was borrowed from BloggerCon. "The discussion leader is the editor, so if he or she feels that a point has been made they must move on to the next point quickly. No droning, no filibusters, no repeating an idea over and over." Notice the word "must" in that sentence. The obligation of the discussion leader is to the discussion, not to people who repeat themselves, or take the discussion off-topic. The leader is a reporter, the session is a weblog. For better or worse, the judgment of the discussion leader is what forms the session, as the judgment of the reporter forms the story. "The leader's job is to keep it moving. Sometimes this means cutting people off." 

New header graphic: Storm building outside Sacramento. 

Let's see, Jason Calacanis calling you a jerk, is that like the Pope saying you're pious?  

Art Mobs: "If a painting could speak, what would it say?" 

Broadcasting a podcast 

This week, while deflecting flames from Tennessee, I've also been talking with people about the podcast I'm going to do this weekend, the one that will be broadcast on KYOU-AM in San Francisco early on Monday morning (midnight) and again at noon on Monday. If you don't live in the Bay Area, the program will also be webcast.

I've gotten a lot of feedback already, and that's cool. Now I have to figure out what I want to do with the time. It's a bit tricky -- should I assume that most of the people listening will have heard about it on the web? I remember how hard people were on us when we blogged the DNC, they expected, somehow, that we would turn into amateur Wolf Blitzers or Dan Rathers, maybe Ted Koppel or Judy Woodruff.

Nahhh, we're still bloggers, and the style guide for blogging, imho, is "Come as you are, we're just folks." There's no James Earl Jones voiceover saying "This is CNN."

The reason you send bloggers to a place like the DNC is so they can tell you what they see. If you read the blog regularly, you now have some data you didn't have before. That's all we can do. But if you get enough known views of an event, you can figure out what happened. The problem with the mainstream media approach is that they strive for an inhuman sameness, after all, they're pleasing the same commercial sponsors, fighting for the same ad dollar, so how different could their programming be? But human reporters are different, we bring color, we make mistakes, we wear glasses, all different tints. That's why we want lots of bloggers and lots of podcasters. What we lack in polish we make up in numbers.

So what should a broadcast of a podcast be? How does the broadcasting shape the podcasting? I have some thoughts about that.

The broadcast nails the podcast down in two dimensions: 1. Time and 2. Geography. So it seems that the broadcasted podcast should reflect the specifics of the time and geography. This says that the KYOU broadcasted podcasts should somehow reflect the culture of the Bay Area, something I know about, luckily, having lived there for 22 years. Even better, I like the culture of the Bay Area, when compared to that of say, Nashville, which I am coming to detest. With a passion.

It seems the first Bay Area podcasts should include the figureheads of the Bay Area, those with large personalities who, for better or worse, shape the area's personality, make it seem an approachable place, defying its unapproachableness, the traffic, the cost of living, the inevitable Big One.

Scoop Nisker, Carlos Santana, George Coates, Huey Lewis, Willie Brown, Jerry Brown, George Lucas, Diane Feinstein, Louis Rosetto, Marc Canter, John Doerr, Phil Lesh, Steve Jobs, Jonathan Schwartz, Barry Bonds.

It seems The Gillmor Gang and IT Coversations were made for Bay Area broadcast. Give KQED a run for its money? Yes, a good Bay Area podcast broadcaster would put some heat on public radio, in a good way of course.

Sylvia Paull says it's time for me to head west. She might be right. Maybe Nashville is the clue. Or maybe, as Steve Gillmor says I could do the Bay Area scene from Florida or New York. Or maybe Nashville is really saying "Come home Dave." Maybe that would be the punishment they are asking for, the penalty they deserve? Heh.