Below are the minutes from the 11/08/05 RMIUG meeting
on Podcasting.

A podcast of the meeting will be made available
shortly. I will send a follow up with a link to it.

Have a nice holiday!

JZ

>>>>>>>>>>
Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group
Minutes of the 08 November 2005 meeting, "Podcasting:
The Future of Broadcasting"

About 50 people attended tonight's meeting. Josh Zapin
facilitated and Jeremy Kohler recorded the minutes.


----------
Meeting Sponsors

Microstaff (www.microstaff.com) provides refreshments
Copy Diva (www.copydiva.com) provides the audio-visual
equipment
NCAR (www.ncar.ucar.edu) provides the facility
ONEWARE (www.oneware.com) sponsors these minutes

----------
Announcements
The RMIUG meetings for next year (2006) will continue
to be on the second Tuesday every other month starting
January 10. The meeting dates are as follows:
1/10/06, 3/14/06, 5/9/06, 7/11/06, 9/12/06, 11/14/06

Boulder Digital Arts will be offering a Podcasting 101
class on December 12th. For more information go to:
http://boulderdigitalarts.com/training/details.asp?offering=101


-------------
About the Speakers

Joe Pezzillo (jpezzillo@...) has worked at the
vanguard of media convergence for nearly twenty years.
In 1987 he started doing radio at KGNU in Boulder,
worked in broadcast television and digital publishing
for several years, and then served as creative
director at Apple Computer's Electronic Media Lab in
the mid 1990s. Joe founded one of the first
internet-only radio stations (GoGaGa.com) in 1996,
grew the station's audience to national prominence,
patented the company's pioneering streaming management
and personalization technology, and then passed the
reins to leading radio and internet investors three
years later. Joe discusses his most recent work
producing a biweekly segment on citizen journalism,
remix culture for KGNU, and being a podcast
personality.

Neal McBurnett (mcburnett.org/neal) chairs the
Information Technology team at KGNU, an independent
noncommercial community radio station in Boulder. Neal
has been involved with virtual communities since he
got hooked on Usenet at Berkeley in 1979. He was a
Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs
until 2001, and currently consults with Internet2. He
cofounded the Boulder Community Network in 1993. Neal
talks about KGNU's effort to expand its podcasting in
light of podcasting standards and support in free
Content Management Systems. He also discusses
collaborative markup of audio content.

Gil Asakawa (GKAsakawa@...) is Executive
Producer for DenverPost.com, the website of one of
Colorado's largest newspapers. Gil is a writer,
editor, and online content consultant with more than
20 years of experience working for new media companies
such as Digital City Denver (a new media subsidiary of
America Online), Trip.com, and ServiceMagic. In 2003
came to DenverPost.com, which has been providing daily
podcasts since May 2005. Gil discusses his experience
launching the Denver Post's podcasts, the reception by
its audience, and its effect on a traditional print
company.

----------------------

----------------------
Links
Wikipedia on Podcasting:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting
Denver Post Podcasts: DenverPost.com
KGNU Podcasts: kgnu.org/ht/listencomp.html
Joe Pezzillo's "On the Internets" podcast:
kgnu.org/front
Slides from Neal and Joe:
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/talks/collaborative_podcasting.html


-----------
INTRODUCTION (Josh Zapin)

Podcasting is exploding. Podcasting involves audio and
video feeds via internet. People estimate that there
will be 12 million podcast subscribers by 2010. All
the major media companies are into podcasting, and
venture capitalists are starting to get in to it too.
And so are we: a podcast of this meeting will be
available.


--------------
Joe Pezzillo

Part of the reason for the proliferation of podcasting
is the gadgets that make it possible. Now we've got
iPods, iSight, etc. Lately I've been involved with
KGNU, doing a program called On the Internets.
Podcasting really stems from the blog. With blogs,
it's about the relationships and interconnections
among blog authors and how we remix information and
share it. Podcasting is essentially just blogs in
audio and video format. Newer browsers like Apple's
Safari have built in RSS capability to get at this
stuff. The underlying technology for podcasting is RSS
(Really Simple Syndication), which is based on XML. If
you want to do a podcast, you still have to know some
programming and a few tags, but that will go away as
tools get developed. I think we'll have
Dreamweaver-like apps for podcasting pretty soon.

There are some good local podcasting sites:

Coverville.com: They put out cover songs.

www.hoshimotors.net/podcast.html: A Boulder Honda
repair shop wanted to make their website more
interesting, so they podcast car-related topics called
Fifteen Minutes at Hoshi Motors. This brings more
traffic to their site and raises their Google
rankings.

w3w3.com: This is an internet talk radio site. Mostly
they post interesting interviews for listening.

Future of Podcasting

Ease of Use
Podcasting is getting easier thanks to sites that
cater to podcasters. ClickCaster.com helps people to
create and distribute podcasts through their site.
PodShow.com and Odeo.com help people create, find, and
enjoy podcasting.

Mobility (not tied to your iPod)
Smartfeed.org makes a podcatching application that
runs on your cell phone or other device. Multiplatform
compatibility helps break barriers, like the iPod
which is (at least for the moment) essentially a
tethered device.

Video
The new video iPod sold a million videos at $2 each in
the first 20 days. Clearly, we're ready for video.
Ourmedia.org and YouTube.com can help you out with
video. This is all part of a trend to completely
bypass traditional media channels in creating and
distributing media.

Citizen Journalism
Citizen journalism is when people have a direct
channel to their audience through the Internet.
Increased bandwidth makes this more possible today. I
think now you have a different type of choice on who
gives you information. With citizen journalism you can
get information directly from experts rather than from
online newspapers. I think this will be the ultimate
expression of what the Internet is all about. Check
out I, Reporter (ireporter.org).


-------------------
Neal McBurnett

Collaborative Podcasting

KGNU is independent, noncommercial, and worldwide
(streaming and podcasting since 1995). It's one of the
top radio stations for citizen journalism, and a great
place to learn.

How did people share information ten years ago? You
had to do a phone call during business hours. Then a
bunch of geeks got together and said
"interoperability" and "open standards". Other stuff
pushed by the big guys (ITU, OSI) died of its own
weight. Companies that try to own the business just
get in the way. So you can stick with lightweight
standards-based stuff for broad compatibility, like
RSS. With this philosophy we're able to glue the world
together. iPod and mp3 stuff is still patent-based,
which slows us down--but encoders and decoders are in
use. We're stuck with dealing with some
allegedly-patent-encumbered stuff for now, but better,
open formats are gaining ground.

On standards, I think meta data is key. It's important
to always tag your data with authors, keywords, title,
etc, is what enables it to index well for users, makes
it searchable. This of course is a challenge for
audio-video content. If you want to podcast, the
hardest part is getting your process up set up to
produce content, get it tagged, and find labor (like
volunteers) to get it all done.

A Creative Commons "share and share alike" copyright
strategy helps the network effect work for you, helps
you collaborate with the collective. Be careful what
you put on your podcast--music is often copyrighted.

Consider using Linux. It has an infinitely
configurable audio subsystem that provides some very
interesting features.

You may want a content management system to replace
manual tasks and even simple tools. You need a CMS
that that understands your content and does what you
need. Plone is good: it holds together in some
exciting ways and there are good plugins to assemble
and produce podcasts. That's where we want to get to,
where (like with blogs) people just plug their stuff
in and you don't have to do any work to publish.

Wikipedia - the encyclopedia anyone can edit - gives
me faith in the human race. It demonstrates that
people can collaborate with volunteer management and
create some of the most compelling content on the
planet. Is it accurate? It pretty accurately
reflects what people think - both the experts and the
minority viewpoints: back to citizen
journalism. We always we have to critically judge all
our sources of information. But it ensures that you
get people's opinions about stuff and you have the
chance to fix it.

What some people are calling Web 2.0 is where the wiki
philosophy meets the rest of the web. We're just
beginning to see the standards needed to do wiki-like
links between bits of multimedia content like audio
and video, like tagging mp3s with URLs, and linking to
specific clips inside movies. SMIL, XSPF, Annodex,
CMML are good standards. Once everyone starts
following some standards, it will make things better
for everyone.

I envision a call-in show with PBX asterix that knows
what time a call came in and helps tag the content as
it comes in, so you can search for sound bites.
Imagine if we posted meetings of the Colorado
Legislature and let people comment on it.


------------------
Gil Asakawa

I will not use the word "markup" even once.

I'm recording this presentation on my little $200
digital camera.

Newspaper companies are not the most "agile". It is
are very slow moving creature, a wonder it has not
gone extinct. Newspaper websites appeared in mid 90's.
They really didn't know what to with their websites,
and so they used them as marketing wings and based
them in marketing departments: they were not newsroom
operations. But in last few years, websites have
become legitimate avenues for newspaper companies to
disseminate the news. Journalists don't work for
newspapers any more, they work for "news media
companies" that publish in a variety of ways including
web.

My personal opinion is that newspapers are boring and
out of touch which is why readership is down. But web
lets you do stuff that just text can't -- add video,
sound, slideshows, etc. Helps you get the whole story.
It's all evolving now how this is done. Even a year
and half ago, podcast wasn't even buzzword. Today we
have blogs at the Denver Post.

If you have audio files on your website, then you have
the ability to podcast. So it's nothing new. But the
RSS distribution platform IS new. A year ago we were
talking about finally getting RSS feeds. And once you
have that, it's easy to do podcasting. Over half the
market has broadband now, so video and audio content
is easy for our users to accept.

We looked at some different approaches: Streaming
radio programs. Little talkshows with reporters.
Present our headline news in a way that is portable.
But we had no budget. So...I got some savvy journalism
students to set up podcasting of our major stories.
They would have to get up at 4 am to do this. Pulled
stories off the website, rewrote them as a broadcast
script appropriate for audio. Then posted for people
to listen to in 10 minutes. Some ads were mixed in.

We are refining what it is to be podcasting. We use
some of the podcast audio for slide shows. You could
just download and listen to them on your iPod, or
listen to them with the photos. We have a
regular-guy-movie-reviewer who comes on on Fridays.

The beauty of podcasting is that a lot of people don't
like to write--talking comes easier, lets people roll
with their thoughts, conveys voice, inflection, etc.

Many are volunteering to do this stuff--they are
passionate about it, see it as fun and interesting. I
really appreciate the level of commitment that young
people just out of school have, and they realize there
are no limits on what is possible with podcasting.
Feature stories like NPR could be done by newspapers.
Audio is fresh, conveys the excitement of being
somewhere. Newspapers are on extremely tight budgets,
so it's a real test for us as we move into this stuff.



-------------------
Panel Discussion


How do the students get the stuff uploaded?

Gil: mp3 files get FTP'd up and assembled. I use
feedforall.com software to generate XML for
podcasting. Takes me five minutes to upload all the
RSS feeds.


Can't you send this out by subscription email so you
can make money?

Gil: It takes too long to send big files by email.
Tools like iTunes are remarkably fast at taking files
off an RSS feed. We have a Newshound RSS reader that
gets stuff for you from hundreds of sources so you get
just the news you care about.

Joe: itunes and others can schedule downloads so you
don't really see that you're on the web. iTunes will
act just like email.

Neal: Email also converts everything to awful ASCII
formats. That's the difference between a podcast and a
website. Website is manually getting stuff. Podcasting
enables your software agent to automatically get what
you want without having to visit any websites.


Instead of searching on Google for podcast feeds on a
topic, how do I get all what I want added to my RSS?
Is it all streaming?

Joe: Google and Yahoo offer specific blog-searching
capability. A search engine called Blinks does
speech-to-text of audio so you can search for audio
content only. iTunes can synchronize the latest
content on your iPod, but most people listen to
podcasts on their computer. Streaming content will be
more important for cell phones. Maybe a wireless iPod
will do streaming.


Can you recommend a good mobile wave or mp3 recorder?

Joe: iRiver device records to flash memory, it's tiny,
with extensive time recording capabilities. DV video
cameras are very good, but expensive. You can even
record a podcast by calling a phone number.

Gil: A mike plugged into an iPod works quite well. I
also got a good $400 recorder that's about the size of
a cell phone. And yes, you can post a podcast by
phoning it in (if you don't care about fidelity).

Neal: I can't wait to see the answering
machine-slash-podcaster!

Audience Comment: Marantz makes a good one.


What's your opinion on the advertising business model
in podcasting, and will the Denver Post advertise
their podcast on TV?

Gil: We only advertised it in the newspaper.

Joe: The ads are coming, and I think they will be
public-radio-style announcements. Podcasters are
pitching to advertisers. Long tail model: how do we
advertise with deep vertical content? So
context-sensitive advertising is popular. It's only a
matter of time before we see context-sensitive
advertising on podcasts. Podcasts are very targeted to
audiences, with niche content. Google AdWords proves
that this model works.


Where are we on licensing of music?

Joe: Copyrights are very complicated. It comes back to
the streaming question. Radio stations that broadcast
get public performance licenses. But making mechanical
digital copies are a different animal. Perhaps
licenses will be created for use of incidental music
in podcasts.

Neal: You can either pay the lawyers and middlemen, or
work directly with the artists who want to get their
stuff out there. Artists are doing their own thing now
more and more. But every technological advance has
changed the copyright laws, so things will change to
allow what we want to happen to happen.


What about Myspace.com?

Neal: Yes - lots more bands get a piece of the action
with some free content and social networking. And
there are places that will serve your
liberally-licensed audio and video for free like
ourmedia.org.

Joe: Even a great band that has signed up with BMI and
ASCAP may find that at some point it becomes effective
to sign up for all the licensing to get access to
everyone.


How are newspapers going to stay in business?

Gil: We're all losing money. Print ad revenue has been
flat, but online ad revenue has increased
significantly. I think in a few years, the web will be
more primary. Banner ads and online classifieds are
big.


Can you track podcasting traffic?

Gil: Yes. You can track a little TOO accurately...it's
certainly better than just seeing how many newspapers
you sell because who knows what part of them people
are reading? With podcasting you can track how many
people listened to a particular story.


A lot of companies aren't selling online
subscriptions.

Joe: But now the Wall Street Journal and New York
Times are putting some of their stuff behind a
paywall. On the other hand, people don't like it.


Are you threatened by Citizen Journalism?

Gil: I love newspapers! (joke). We have a hundred
years of brand building, so people trust the Denver
Post. News photos are also hard to come by. I think
online divisions at news organizations will find ways
to bring citizen journalism to the plate, have
interaction with our readership. Invite user videos,
photos, citizen podcasts at the Denver Post. These are
just my opinions. We can get fresh perspectives and
still be true to the values of the Denver post.

Neal: Wikipedia is more popular than Britannica, but
wikinews is not catching on as quickly.

Joe: On the other hand, a lot of breaking news appears
on blogs first. "You want the news, write it yourself"
is the message we get from some news organizations
that don't want to cover certain stuff like high tech
issues.

Gil: The Denver Post does not have a technology
section in print. I can say with certainty that we are
not afraid of bloggers--we maintain a list of local
blogs on our blog house. We're very happy to support
the local blog community.