Last week while hosting one of my Coffee with Cole sessions I shared a few items that I am working on and I got a somewhat surprising reaction. One of the people there said something to the effective of, “wow, I had no idea we were doing all of that!” I know I shouldn’t be surprised by that because I have so little time or opportunity to share all of what we are working on … it did, however, strike me as an opportunity to go back to doing something I really love doing — making podcasts to share with my team.
I remember back in 2005 when I became the director of Education Technology Services at Penn State I was using podcasts internally to help share the work of our team with both the outside world and internally. There was a method to the madness — we were launching our institutional podcasting service so I was also trying to promote the use of the technology in an interesting way. I remember getting good feedback from members of my team — they said things like, “wow, I had no idea we were doing all of that!” Sounds pretty familiar. Podcasting some thoughts and updates served to bring my team into a larger conversation at the organizational level, while still letting them focus on their specific work. That was a good idea then and I hope it is a good idea now.
The notion of sharing information is a tricky one. Quite a bit of what I am doing isn’t really all that shareable … a lot of it is either in-process thinking or stuff still in the negotiation process. That shouldn’t stop me from trying to connect some dots across DoIT though and so with that in mind, I am going to work to release a short audio update on a regular basis. This past week I released the first one using our private Yammer space and got a decent reaction from members of the DoIT team. I did have a couple people say that there are folks outside DoIT who might be interested in listening and since this first one doesn’t have an super secret stuff in it, I am including it below.
If you listen and have any thoughts about this notion, please share them in the comments.
Sometimes its nice to put on some headphones instead of reading something. If you have time to record them, I will listen. The length was just right and the content was informative. Generally if a podcast is more than 5 minutes long, I won’t subscribe. 🙂
That’s the thing with podcasts that I love — I get to listen in my headphones. That changes the whole experience for me. Thanks for the feedback.
Cole – as I told you last week, I believe the podcasts will be a big hit. Another communications channel to highlight the fine work being done by our team.
I really wanted to comment on the new theme your using here on your blog – fantastic! I think it’s the best one yet! Love the cityscape, color scheme and layout.
Way to keep experimenting!
Thanks, Kerrin … on both fronts. I like the new theme as well, although the fonts are a little big and I much prefer san serif … it works for now. I might do a little work to it. As for the podcast, thank you and I agree — another channel. We shall see how they shape up going forward. It would be interesting if people would request updates on certain topics for the podcast … maybe we could talk about how to encourage that?
Cole, the production of the podcast is definitely top-notch, and I really like the inclusion of other recorded voices (Shady’s, in this case). It adds a nice extra element that you don’t quite get with reading materials. I agree with Matt, the length is perfect. However, would there be a way to subscribe or does one need to revisit the site in order to listen to the podcast each time? The beauty of a podcast is the ability to subscribe to it and have it downloaded automatically through your software program of choice–and then you know that new content is available to listen. Or even better, perhaps, feeding the podcast into the DoIT YouTube channel to get the content.
Hi Mark … I am testing out the podcast plugin here at SBU to see how it manages the feed. It looks like taking the RSS feed and using the subscribe to podcast option in iTunes will retrieve the enclosed file automatically. My RSS feed is on the right under the “Meta” heading. Check this image for reference.