My first podcasting client?

I don't want to say too much at this stage, but over the last couple of days I've been having a VERY interesting conversation with a senior manager from a tier one US company who is interested in engaging my services to help produce an internal podcast for a certain segment of their staff around the world.

The idea is something like this:

This company has thousands of people around the world all doing the same job. It's a difficult job and one not really appreciated by other members of the team. So this person has been appointed to bring these staff from around the world into a community. Get them talking, listening, sharing, debating.

Here's a segment of a proposal I sent to map out my ideas at a high level. Names have been removed to protect the innocent until I can talk about this publicly.

.........

Podcasting emerged in July 2004 and is rapidly becoming the successor phenomenon to blogging. According to Wikipedia: "Podcasting involves the recording of internet radio or similar internet audio programs. These recordings are then made available for download to portable digital audio device. You can listen to the podcast internet radio program while you are away from your computer or at a different time than the original program was broadcast."

From July to December 2004, over 600 podcasts emerged around the world. Some of these were merely re-purposed versions of existing radio shows, while the majority were independently-produced, totally new shows. A new range of talent attracting global audiences has emerged and more appear every day.

Conventional radio shows are designed to appeal to a wide audience in order to attract maximum advertising dollars. Shows are expensive to produce, because of the cost of talent, studios, support personnel and transmission licenses. There is also a limited amount of bandwidth and a limited audience that any one station can broadcast to.

In comparison, podcasts can be designed to appeal to a niche audience. Due to the comparatively low cost of production and distribution, podcasts can affordably be produced for a range of niche subject domains. They can be distributed within minutes to every corner of the globe, making them an ideal way to disseminate new ideas. in an audio format.

Let's say we produced a twice-weekly show on being a <xxxx>. This show could be an hour in length and co-hosted by myself in Melbourne and yourself in <xxxx>. We could discuss programs being initiated for <xxxx>, communicate new initiatives, as well as interview <xxxx> from around on the world best practices and the general experience of being a <xxxx>. We could also get customers on the show, as well as business partners, company execs etc.

With Skype I can now conference in a number of people from around the world with them either on Skype or a regular telephone. With a small bit of post-production, the quality is good enough for this format.

One good thing about having someone from outside your company to co-host it (like me) is that I can act both as the outsider asking the hard questions as well as be the funny guy. Having someone from outside the company means I can cut through political bullshit and acronyms. If you listen to the shows on “G’Day World”, you’ll notice that our interviewing technique is fairly irreverent and we have a good time. We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do try to keep the information flowing.

Another good reason to have the show hosted by Aussies is that our accent is accepted around the world, whereas most other accents grate on certain demographics. The Aussie accent seems to go over pretty well in most places (except NZ!). That’s one reason why we believe the G’Day World show has had a good run.Of course, the content also needs to be of a very high standard, and we manage that by getting great guests to come on the show.

Your blog should be the companion piece to the podcast. On your blog you can talk about upcoming shows, link to the show archives, do surveys on what people would like to see in future show (see the survey I’m doing at the moment for G’Day World).

The reason to have something for people to listen to, rather than read, is that when we are sitting in front of our PC there is usually 200 things we have to get done, and reading internal emails / blogs isn’t always going to get peoples attention. However when they are driving in their car or sitting on a plane / train etc, listening to a show on their iPod / PocketPC is ideal.

Comments

[CD]

Podcast as the next-generation of knowledge management tools - wow...that's interesting!

[Nicole Simon (useful sounds)]

Oh that is really interesting. I think that podcasting in business has it's place.

Technical side: The wikipedia definition puts too much weight on the mobile aspect and reduces it to mobile players. I would always expand this definition with the note, that this does not exclude listen to at work at your computer plus that handy is a mobile player too.

To have a mobile device is great but for a company this has to fit into their systems on more sides which includes the enevitable 'global it':
It needs to fit into the system plus no additional seperaten sync.

As far as the ipod shuffle seems to be so gorgious (small, cheap, ipod) i would see the existing pdas to be much more flexible in handling corporate audio as channel.

a) they already have a docking station and are easy to sync - i imagine a company thinking of having them a podast will have pda/smart phone as well

b) they are widely accepted and not only toys (i would consider the shuffle to be one except for special mac loving companies)

c) mp3 players are available for different kind of pda

d) syncing from an application like outlook is easy for all the steps.

This is for downstreaming. For answering and sharing, there should be a company telephone number where one could get into touch with each other (like the openpodcast).

"Please click one to answer on the newest podcast about x, 2 for ...."

That is only for the technical side, the implication from communication / psychological side ("i hate my voice - others will think i am stupid when talking" etc) will follow.

CD: I would be glad if most of the companies would even start with simple basic knowledgemanagement :(.

I could tell some stories but that would fall under releasing internal company information for some companies.

This is exciting. Will only take 100 years to come to germany also.

[William Luu]

Awesome Cameron!

Goodluck with this venture mate.

[Gerald Buckley]

Hey mate! Gerald from the states here. Wish you lots of success with your prospect.

I don't pretend to know how you're going to change the behaiour such that this co's workforce will sit down and listen to a one hour format. Entertainment value aside... One hour sitting/listening is one hour they're not selling/etc.

Happy to swap notes with you anytime or a Skype on G'Day would be fun too. I'm GeraldB28

[Darren Rowse]

Cameron Reilly - Pod Consultant....hehe

[Michael Specht]

Cameron, great to see companies looking into using the technology. I have been speculating over the last couple of months how the use of RSS internally to deliver both learning and knowledge objects directly to an employee's desktop. For example I might subscribe to a feed on "Acme Sales Strategy" and then on an ad-hoc basis as content is created it would be delivered to me via the RSS feed. The content could be not just blog posts and podcasts but anything that is created online. By using the enclosure tags powerpoint (ahhhh), spreadsheets, reports could all be delivered directly to employees. With many of the newsreaders now supporting authentication even semi-confidential content can be pushed out to the desktop. When I get settled I want to try and track down an RSS reader that supports LDAP to tie the authentication into the corporate network.

Essentially knowledge workers need fast clear and consistent information available to them when they need it. But I am probably telling you how to suck eggs ;-)

[Cameron]

thanks for the feedback folks. It is pretty exciting, but might go nowhere. That said, I'm confident SOMETHING like this will happen somewhere in the next couple of months.

Gerald - there's lots of time spent in cars, trains, planes, gyms, etc. That's when I listen to podcasts. Not at the desk.

Michael - you're spot on. RSS can deliver it all.

CD - hmmmm. Is this KM? Maybe. Really what we're doing isnt anything different in practice to sending cds out to the team with info... except now the means of distribution is cheaper and real-time (well the time it takes to download a file) and the format is much more flexible (you can listen to it on your PC, portable media player, or burn it on a cd. You can copy it for friends. You can make copies for yourself.) and hopefully we can make the shows more interesting than anything produced by your atypical corporate department.

Anyway, I'll keep you in the loop folks.

[Nicole Simon (useful sounds)]

Cam, it is not 'like sending out cds' That is complicated work on both sides, efforts you won't take.

Podcasting describes a hassle-free, fun subscription process.