The brains
were stormed and some great ideas were shared at our first podstorming
session. The session covered the why’s and what if’s but time cut short our discussion of the how to’s. So the output from this session covers the
audience, benefits and blockers but only skims over the format and structure of
the podcast.
I'll summarise the output in two posts - this post, which is little more than a soft intro and some links for those not that au fait with podcasting and a post which I'll submit later today/ tomorrow with more details from the podstorming session.
The session
kicked off with a brief introduction to Podcasting. I won’t repeat these ramblings as you just
need to google ‘podcasting’ to find hundreds of sites offering explanations of what podcasting is?
A good
place to start is Wikipedia,
then follow the external links at the bottom of the page.
Some
participants requested clarification of what differentiates a podcast from a
regular downloadable audio file so we brainstormed the features of a
podcast:
-
- Audio file/ MP3
- Publish-Subscription model
- Listener subscribes to a feed
(RSS)
- Episodes automatically download
- Podshow is not a live broadcast
but recorded
- Podshow has a structured
format, often in the style of a talkshow
- Listener requires aggregator
software, known as a podcatcher
- Playback is on a computer or digital
music player
After the
basics had been wrapped-up I intended to play some snippets of podcasts for
those that weren’t overly familiar with podcasts but some technical glitches put
a stop to this. So below is a handful of
podcasts that I’m currently listening to which should give podcast virgins an introduction
to the wonderful world of podshows.
To listen
to the Podcasts below you need to enter the feed in to your podcatcher. For example, if you’re using iTunes go to Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast and
paste in the feed. That’s it.
Diggnation
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/diggnation
Diggnation
is a weekly tech/web culture show based on the top digg.com social bookmarking
news stories.
The Web 2.0
Show
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/web20show
The Web 2.0 Show podcast discusses
Web 2.0 technologies, business and ideas with industry leaders.
Business
Week – Innovation of the Week
Feed: http://www.businessweek.com/search/podcasts/innovation.rss
Each week,
BusinessWeek’s innovation and design writers venture out into the world of
cutting-edge design and innovation.
MarketingMonger
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/marketmongerpodcast
Eric
Mattson interviews leaders from marketing, social media and more.
Channel
Frederator (Vodcast)
Feed: http://www.channelfrederator.com/rss
Cartoons.
UXPod (User Experience Podcast)
Feed: http://uxpod.libsyn.com/rss
A free-ranging set of discussions on
matters of interest to people involved in user experience design, website
design, and usability in general.
Photoshop
TV (Vodcast)
Feed: http://www.photoshopguys.com/wp-rss2.php
Members
from the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) share the
hottest Adobe Photoshop tutorials, the latest insider tricks, and the coolest
timesaving, job-saving shortcuts to make your time in Photoshop more
productive, more efficient, and more fun.
Podcast 411
Feed: http://www.podcast411.com/feed.xml
A show
about interviewing other Podcasters, similar to Inside the Actors Studio except
for Podcasting.
Ricky
Gervais & Karl Pilkington
Feed: http://podcast.rickygervais.com/podcast.xml
A new, free
and irregular foray into video podcasting by Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant and
Karl Pilkington.
DJ Battle
TV
Feed: http://www.djbattle.net/djbtv.xml
DJ Battle
TV focusing on the DJ, Scratch and Turntablist culture with interviews, live
performances, gear previews and more.
After you’ve
listened to these podcasts you can appreciate what makes an effective &
engaging podcast, whether you agree with my recommendations or not: - interesting
topic, information that can’t be found elsewhere, style & personality, focus,
production quality…
Where can
you find podcasts? Again, I recommend you
‘google’ this as there are an abundance of podcast directories. A good starting place is the iTunes store, Yahoo directory or Pluggd
For earlier posts in this series read: -
Is Anybody Listening pt I
Is Anybody Listening pt II