When A Podcast Isn’t Just A Podcast
April 10, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
I had a great IM conversation last night with a podcast author regarding my post from a few days ago about the death of podcasting. He seemed to agree on many levels and was hoping for some advice because he’s feeling trapped in his current podcast network and not sure how to venture out on his own.
One thing that struck me in this conversation was that I didn’t mean to declare podcasts dead in the sense of being useless, they have a an excellent use as being a form of on-the-go media. What I don’t think is effective is having a podcast just for the purpose of having a podcast. A podcast on its own is lonely, and people want, and need context with their content.
In the semantic web context and conversation is even more important than it was 3 years ago when everyone decided that podcasts were the big thing. One newsroom that I work with has had a pod/vod cast in the works for 4 or 5 years and what I’m telling them now is that it’s probably not worth their time to try to play catchup and release them now, let’s just move on and work on something much more current like accepting public opinion and thoughts in an open forum on their web properties.
What spurred my post the other day was the abundance of “podcasting” sessions planned for NAB next week, if these news executives are just now learning about and thinking about implementing podcasts, then the public is going to suffer because the larger Internet world has moved on already.
If pod/vodcasting is an easy thing to implement within your existing organization and workflow by all means, start ‘casting! But if that process is going to be a long one and expend a lot of resources that could otherwise be directed toward more 2-way conversations with your community, then I think you should concentrate on doing that.
If you’ve made it all the way down here in the post you probably don’t need it, but here’s a summary: Podcasting is dead as a sole medium, it’s a one-way conversation and everything I’m seeing says that the public wants and needs 2-way communication with their news agencies to build trust and understanding. Pod/Vod casting makes a great complement to other tools but I don’t think it should be used on its own.
Are Podcasts Dead?
April 7, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
In case you didn’t know, I’ll be in Las Vegas Sunday-Wednesday for the NAB conference (National Association of Broadcasters). The Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism is sponsoring my trip so that I can present Contributr to the masses. (Let’s hope Contributr is ready, more on that tomorrow!)
As I was looking through the available sessions trying to schedule myself into some I noticed a recurring theme, podcasting. Now I hate to rain on anybody’s parade but aren’t podcasts dead? Haven’t they been deemed not conversational enough?
I mean sure, we all are subscribed to a few in iTunes, but how often do you actually listen to one? Let alone actively look for more? I know I don’t. I’ve moved on, I’ve moved on to try to create and examine the semantic web. And podcasts just don’t fit into that strategy very well. They may not be static in location but they are certainly static in content. One you publish an episode to a podcast it just sits there… and people listen to it… but what else? What’s the extra step? … Well I just can’t seem to find it.
So you might imagine my disappointment when I am going through the NAB sessions schedule and see multiple sessions on podcasting each day, and only 2 or 3 sessions on ‘blogging’ total for the entire conference.
Is this where journalism is? Is this what the journalism folks think is hot? Haven’t they found Twitter, haven’t they found Facebook, haven’t they found that conversations are the latest and greatest things to hit the web?
Apparently not, and in my conversations with Jen Reeves it seems that the ‘industry’ is doomed to be 5-years behind as she puts it. Here I am creating wikis, blogging daily, coming up with user generated content solutions, enhancing new-media workflows, and creating conversations around my own life and here is the Journalism Industry just now trying to figure out podcasting.
There’s disconnect somewhere. That disconnect is what is holding back journalism and the news media in general, they’re not in touch with what consumers are using technology for.
As all of my recent blog posts do, I’ll link this one to my current job-search. There are quite a few journalism web content editor and producer jobs out there. Frankly, they’re almost a dime a dozen, news organizations realize they need to staff “the web” so staff “the web” they do. But where is the innovation? Where is the commitment?
Part of the struggle I have faced in my job search is that there’s plenty of work to be had out there, but very few newsrooms and very few news people “get it”. It takes more than just repurposing content from your printed newspaper or broadcast TV show onto the web anymore, that’s just not enough. People want to have conversations, they want to change, edit, manipulate, share, and copy your precious content. Are you willing to see what your public can do for you?
That’s the future of journalism. Don’t just talk to the public, let the public talk to you. If you “get it” email, call, IM, or @jdcoffman me. I’m listening, are you?
My Ideal Job
April 4, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
By way of looking introspectively at my self and my ambitions I have a pretty good idea of my ideal job is at this point. I’ve known for quite some time that being in the service of the public and working toward a greater good is in my blood. My mother was a teacher and my dad is a businessman. Between the two of them I acquired a passion for serving the public, and a business savvy entrepreneurial drive.
I’ve been on the path of working in the field of journalism for about 8 years now. Journalism attracted me in part because of the immense power of the press and how good journalism can be a cause for change. In addition, there are all kinds of cool toys that people in the news and information business can play with!
So that brings me to the ultimate point of this post, my ideal job:
- Serves the public interest, educating and informing them.
- Is collaborative with other smart people.
- Allows for the intelligent expression and discussion of ideas and suggestions.
- Brings people (both internally and externally) to have better, more efficient communication.
- Allows people to discuss and achieve.
Taking Advantage of Your Strengths
February 14, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
In the time since I last reformatted my portfolio a lot has changed in the way I see my personal brand. My strengths hadn’t necessarily changed so much as improved. One big improvement was in the way that I used my strengths to enhance my own online portfolio.
In essence, my portfolio is my brand, it highlights recent and not-so-recent work, this blog, and links to other places where you can find my work online.
My strengths are varied, ranging from news judgement, video, audio, and text editing, field production of mobile and web content, a keen eye for organization and workflows, and translating geek-speak into everyday language.
So that brings me to my next point, taking advantage of your strengths. I think that you’ll find my portfolio pretty well organized, that really reflects on my ability to organize and process information. I do a lot of thinking on workflows and pieces of information fit together and work together.
So use your own strengths to improve your own personal brand, let your star qualities shine through!
Jonathan’s Twitter Updates for 2008-02-12
February 12, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
- Just upgraded my site to fix the WP security hole, 5 minutes down isn’t too bad is it? #
- I can’t get my iTunes to purchase a ringtone I want
# - The interwebs are broken again #
- The Interwebs are still down, talk about a productivity killer! #
- I’m on a blogging roll, at least two posts launching today folks. #
- Think I got bumped from the newspaper side of the Gannett job fair tomorrow, Jschool folk don’t understand that newspaper/TV doesn’t matter. #
- @avionne how do you do that? running Windows? #
- bah, half my Tweets are being eaten with the broken Interwebs monster #
- @acafourek your workplace is Twitter friendly? #
- I need to revamp my RSS reading workflow, giving NetNewsWire another try #
- If you had to pay for Twitter would you? #
- If I shared more links via Twitter would you prefer that, or should I just post to Delicious? #
- Just off the phone with Adobe Marketing, I’ll be featured on Adobe.com in March!
# - @acafourek thanks! It’s pretty exciting, now to write my article… and find a job! #
- @deanpence let us know, it’s pretty exciting, I can just about justify an AppleTV now. #
- @acomputerpro, I’ve encountered that and realized that it’s lazy coding, since it ‘could’ be interfering with their DB coding/variables. #
- @computerpro @deanpence Dean beat me to it. #
- @dsilverman the only times I’ve used Pownce was when Twitter was down for extended time periods. #
- Reading My ongoing challenge with Firefox jacking my CPU to near 100% at http://tinyurl.com/3yev82 #
Solving Problems and Creating New ones
February 12, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
This post was inspired by Chris Brogan’s post Problems.
I consider myself not only a problem solver in the traditional sense, but I think I do a good job of taking those problems, and solutions, and making something more out of them. I don’t think that just solving problems is the answer, you have to take those problems, realize what the upsides and downsides of them are, them contemplate and implement a plan of attack.
That flow works well for problem solvers I think, however that model is threatened by the problem solving workflow of today that includes social networking and (im)personal communication using technology as a tool.
That’s not to say that by using technology to your advantage you’re going to solve more problems but I think that by using those new tools like mind-mapping and syndication, and microblogs you open yourself up to new ways of solving problems.
And that’s where I consider myself, at a point where a single problem isn’t just a single problem but a collection of thoughts and ideas and the real solution is finding the best way to disrupt that problem while maintaining innovation in the solution.
So yes, I consider myself a problem solver, but the problems that I solve aren’t always the most pressing, or the most immediate problems, but they do provide a means to solve bigger and greater problems leading us to a solution to the Big Picture.
Whether it be at work, at school, or at home Chris had it right, we’re a big group of problem solvers. The ways in which we solve and handle those problems is the big difference between different types of people and their problem solving ability.
Very interesting post this morning by Chris and I thought I’d add a little to the discourse!
How I Want To Use Twitter
February 8, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
I’ve been on Twitter for a while now, and my usage just keeps climbing, I really feel like a part of the community and want to share not only my knowledge with Twitter, but others as well. Twitter works for me in several ways, it provides a way for me to share my thoughts and ideas, a way to communicate and share with others, and a way to keep abreast on information no matter the topic.
I make generous use of the ‘Track’ command on Twitter for my cell phone. Although I sometimes get carried away and Track too many, or too hot a topic. During the Macworld 2008 Keynote a few short weeks ago, I tracked ‘MacWorld’ and ‘Steve jobs’ so yes, I’m partially responsible for the crash of Twitter during the keynote.
The information that I gained from hearing what others has to say about the product launches and the Reality Distortion Field was very interesting and useful. Getting that kind of insight into public opinion and thinking should prove extremely useful for the modern marketer.
Granted, I got over 1,100 text messages that morning alone, basically 1 every second, as fast as my iPhone could process them and print them on screen.
It’s times like that when Twitter really shines, it truly is an aggregator of infinite knowledge. I now have almost 200 followers on Twitter and I’m very proud for getting to that point, but the thing is this, I’m not doing enough to engage the minds of those who follow me. That’s the problem I’m currently working through, how do I motivate them to interact and ask and answer questions.
Some people like Chris Brogan and Jim Long have been on Twitter much longer than I have, but they have that special mix of followers (listeners) and true audience (interacters).
I’ll cut this particular post off at this point, but I think that I continue to use Twitter, that’s my goal, to interact more without loosing more time to using the web/txt interfaces, I need more interaction and networking within Twitter that I can integrate into my existing workflows.
My Social Networking Workflow
February 7, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while now. I hadn’t largely because it takes time, and time is something I haven’t had in quite some time! But I have renewed my commitment to blog early and often. Believe me, I love to write and this blog is perfect for that.
So I thought I’d take you through my typical social-networking workflow. To be honest, there are plenty of people out there who do much more than I do. I am however active in quite a few social networking sites and communities, I think the difference between me and some of the ‘rockstars’ out there is that I do as much as possible in as short a time as possible. And I don’t just mean working harder, no I like to think of it as smarter.
Here’s my strategy:
- Subscribe to as many RSS feeds from ‘friends’ lists as possible, this includes mostly blogs, but also Facebook and Twitter. I currently wake up to around 300 RSS entries each morning, and gain another couple hundred through the day.
- I only login to Facebook when absolutely necessary, I get a limited number of messages and friend requests weekly, so I take advantage of text messaging to approve people, and email to read messages. If you send me ‘zombie bites’ or whatever other crazy application you’ve got running in your profile, I’ll probably ignore it. (This is one workflow that I wish there was a solution for, ignoring all the bacn and spam that Facebook apps send).
- Twitter, wow Twitter can get overwhelming really quickly, but it’s largely worth it. I’ve got a fair amount of followers, and I’ve had the Twitter folk set up my account with ‘auto-follow’ so anyone who follows me, I automatically follow them back… Not to be confused with auto-notification, there’s no way I could keep up if I got text messages every time someone I follow updated.
- Trick 3, I generously use Twitter Mobile and Twitter txt to keep tabs on Twitter, when I’m at my computer I usually have Adium open and get my tweets that way.
- Other social-networking sites I only visit when I absolutely have to, but I do make generous use of MoodBlast to allow me to update multiple services with status messages and information at once, it’s always a keystroke away.
So there you have it, that’s my daily social media workflow, wasn’t very exciting was it? But most of the time it works just fine for me!
Have a wonderful day and be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up to date!
The Future of Contributr
February 6, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
Contributr is a project that is near and dear to my heart, it’s an idea that I had several months ago and me and a team of 3 developers have been working on it since then.
Monday we presented our final product to a panel of journalism industry professionals, Adobe AIR specialists, and the good people at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. And I now have some bad new to report, Contributr didn’t win the big prize. So that presents us with some options and some ideas. I’m also interested in hearing what you have to say, so comment away.
Basically Contributr is this, it’s a solution to a problem that countless news organizations have, how to accept and process citizen journalism, otherwise known as user generated content. The workflows are complex, the technology is advanced, but with Contributr, those problems are minimized.
We created what I think is a great, and effective application. The company is setup as a Software as a service/ service as a service model which is gaining steam each day.
Furthermore, there have been multiple inquiries into the availability of Contributr for use in the ‘real world’ by large and small news organizations, something that I’m very excited about.
Here’s the issue now, we’re fairly confident that the Reynolds Institute is going to want to retain us to maintain and work on Contributr (they gave us a $5,000 development fund to work with over the last few months). But, here’s the kicker, since we didn’t win the contest, do they actually own Contributr?
From my knowledge of the law, I think it’s pretty clear-cut, despite their gift of $5,000 to further the development of Contributr, since we didn’t win the ‘contest’ I don’t think they have a claim to ownership.
Now of course, if their funding and support of Contributr is generous, we’d be happy to continue working with them, and would love the backing of such great people.
On the other hand, we’ve got a great product and one that we know for a fact there is demand for, so we could also probably do some tweaking, some redesign work and continue development on our own.
It’s a pretty complex situation but one I hope to resolve fairly quickly, we’ll be meeting with the Reynolds Institute to talk about further development and consulting opportunities in the next couple of weeks.
Coda for Coding
February 1, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
We’ve decided to all use Panic software’s Coda to do a lot of the hand work that will go into design and code for the foundation of Contributr. It’s a very cool application that has the power of Transmit (the best Mac FTP program out there!) with code finishing, error checking, and lots of other cool features.It’s changed my code workflow in last month or so that I’ve had it on my machine and now the whole development team
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