2006.11.30

Asynchronous intimacy

I reconnected with a good friend, Stephen Hardiman, today. It’s fun to talk to Stephen because I always get juiced about something new and he has a way of taking my ideas and putting a new spin to them. Today was no exception. He summarized my description of the relationship between Podcast producers and Podcast consumers from my recent posts, Podcasting as a channel for two-way communication and Size matters, using the phrase “asynchronous intimacy”.

What a perfect and concise statement.

To me, the key points of asynchronous intimacy in Podcasting are:

  • Podcasting is an asynchronous channel for communication
  • Podcasters who extend themselves create an environment that facilitates and encourages two-way communication over the asynchronous channel
  • Listeners value the power of permission-based media and the ability to have their voice heard
  • A small and engaged community that is committed to its own success is stronger than a community based on numbers alone

Stephen will be my guest on Electric Sky this weekend. I am going to interview him about storytelling as a business tool.

2006.11.29

FireStats for WordPress

FireStats screen captureAbout a month ago, Anders Holte Nielsen announced that he has discontinued development of his popular Counterize WordPress plugin, a plugin that summarizes and presents statistical information about a WordPress blog. Fortunately, he offered a solid alternative, the relatively young FireStats plugin by Omry Yadan.

I installed FireStats on two of my WordPress sites today. The installation was typically easy and the interface is slick with a collection of important statistical information. Even so, one of my FireStats installations came up with nice tabbed navigation interface, the other did not. I posted a comment on the FireStats Blog to report the problem. Omry was right on top of the post – he replied within fifteen minutes. The issue appears to be with the way the Sociable plugin applies javascript to the WordPress administrative interface, and Omry is tracking the problem as issue 51 in his ticket system.

If Omry can add a graphs tab that provides graphical representations of hits and visits by hour, day of week, day of month and month of year (current, average and running totals for these graphs would also be great) I would have no reason to operate any other statistical plugins. For icing on the cake, I would love it if FireStats had full featured statistical gathering for the PodPress plugin since PodPress has some unresolved bugs and development efforts seem to be stagnating.

2006.11.29

Pacing yourself and avoiding Podcast Burnout

This week, Bob Goyetche and I will be unveiling a new monthly segment on the Canadian Podcast Buffet – a round table discussion (tip of the hat to Ajay from All Axis Radio for the idea).

Our first round table is on pacing oneself and avoiding “Podcast Burnout”. Our guests will be Scarborough Dude (DicksnJanes) who took an extended period of Podcast relaxation this past summer, and Isabelle Michaud who has co-cancelled Broca’s Area, a Podcast that she felt was becoming more demanding and less fun to produce.

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