It’s been just one week since I posted the IT Conversations, and already I’ve received donations from approximately 1% of regular listeners. Here are my math and logic:
- 3,005 registered listeners
- 3,392 unique IP addresses for RSS requests (24 hrs)
- 3,231 active mailing list recipients
- 51 donations to date
Assuming some overlap between those who use the web site and those who use RSS, there are probably about 5,000 regular IT Conversations listeners, so 51 represents roughly 1%. FYI, the most popular shows are dowloaded or streamed to as many as 14,000 unique IP addresses, suggesting that one-third of those are regular listeners and two-thirds are ad-hoc listeners.
As regular IT Conversations listeners know, I work hard to get permission to offer audio from the premiere events in the IT world and beyond. Well, when it rains, it pours. In just the past three days I’ve received the original recordings from three of the very best conferences of 2004. Over the next few months — yes, it will take that long to release them all at the rate of 4-5 presentations each week — IT Conversations listeners will be treated to the following:
To make sure you don’t miss a single program you can subscribe to the podcast/RSS feeds on the pages linked to above or to the site-wide IT Conversations feeds. Or if you’re very 20th century, you can still get announcements via email. 
I’ve just posted two prototype HTML pages for some forthcoming IT Conversations features and I’m looking for feedback. (Add a comment here or send email to doug@rds.com.)
The first is a Personal Profile editing page. It should be self explanatory.
The second page is to manage a Personal Podcast/RSS Feed. This one should be self explanatory, but that’s where I need your help. In case it’s not obvious, the idea is that each registered IT Conversations member will have the ability to manage his/her own RSS feed by selecting which programs should be included based on a variety of criteria. The motivation for this feature is that new listeners in particular are put off by the quantity and variety of programs and need help sifting through the archives. Likewise, podcatchers want a way to control what gets automatically downloaded into their MP3 players.
Remember, these are just prototype pages. They don’t do anything, the links are bogus and the supporting JavaScript automation hasn’t been coded.
As we’re still discussing on the wiki, it’s possible that these new features may only be available to members who pay an annual fee. But it’s my hope that there will be no tollgate impeding access to the programs themselves.