Blogarithms

(Hear the MP3 version with additional commentary in beautiful monophonic audio.)

News and Housekeeping

• Gone Fishing? Not quite, but I did miss publishing an Update last week, as I spent the weekend at FOO Camp (Friends of O’Reilly) in Sebastopol, California. IT was a great opportunity to meet with some very smart people. Our plans for the new non-profit IT Conversations were discussed and very well received. I’m back, but that means we’ve got twice the usual number of things to talk about.
• Tips! One problem with missing a week is that I’m not in your ear, reminding you about contributing to our tip jar. As the end of August approaches, I notice that the tip jar isn’t as full as usual, even though the members of Team ITC are working harder than ever. So if you like IT Conversations, put your money where your ears are and contribute. Remember that 100% of your donation will go to those members of Team ITC who produce all of our programs in their spare time.
• Conferences. You may have noticed that we’re hot and heavy into the middle of the conference season, and for the next few months we’ll be publishing 10-12 programs every week in order to keep up. And speaking of conferences here are two terrific ones that you may want to attend face-to-face to get that elbow-rubbing experience:
• European OSCON 17-20 October in Amsterdam, with a terrific lineup of speakers. You can save €400 if you register by 29 August (tomorrow)!
• Accelerating Change 2005 will be September 16-18 at Stanford University, and as in 2004, this looks like one of the top events of the year.
• Stringers Needed! And speaking of Accelerating Change 2005, we need some help recording the conference. We’ll have all the equipment, but if you have some skill with audio, mixers, etc., we can get you a free registration in exchange for your help capturing this event for later publication on IT Conversations.
• iTunes Tips. Remember, if you’re using iTunes to subscribe to our RSS feeds, you may be missing many of our programs. By default, iTunes only grabs one show per day, which means that you’ll miss nearly half of our 10-12 programs each week. The solutions are to change the options so that you download all programs, not only the most recent.
• Web-Site Update. I’ve spent a little time this past week on the long-neglected website.
• Downloads. One change you might have noticed immediately is that you can now download audio files directly from the show detail pages. Previously, you had to click through to a separate download page. It’s now much easier.
• M4B Files. The reason I could do this is that I’ve finally completed the de-commissioning of the M4B/AAC files. In other words, everything is now MP3 only. I received a few complaints from people who miss their bookmarks on iPods, but when I explained how much overhead it has been to produce M4Bs, they understood.
• Lists. And you know those lists on the left-hand side of our pages? The ones labeled Highest Rated and Most Listened To? You may have thought those were maintained though some fancy software, but no — I have to maintain them by hand. And like everything else, they had been ignored for too long. I finally brought them up-to-date, so check there. You may find some great programs you hadn’t heard before.

New Programs This Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating.

• Mark Carges – InfoWorld SOA Forum (rated 3.0 by IT Conversations listeners) Are your organization’s data and processes locked into isolated silos? Do you need to bridge the gaps between enterprise software application and home-grown solutions? Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is one part of the toolkit that can help enterprises overcome these difficulties, and yet in a study done by InfoWorld and BEA, only 28% of respondents have a current SOA project, while more than 50% have no current SOA plans. BEA Systems CTO Mark Carges discusses the results of this study and the needs for an SOA infrastructure.
• Gary Cornell – Apress (3.2) Gary Cornell decided to ditch academia and become a technical book publisher in 1998, just in time to face a huge downturn in tech book publishing as the dot com bubble burst. Today, Cornell’s Apress is proof of life after the bubble in a competitive market, producing bestsellers from authors such as Joel Spolsky and Dan Appleman. Scott Mace spoke with Gary, the CEO/publisher/co-founder of Apress, about topics ranging from outsourcing to Wikipedia.
• Kris Lichter – The Genographic Project (3.3) Humans are found everywhere on Earth. Yet how did we get here and why do we look the way we do? IBM and National Geographic are mounting the Genographic Project, an ambitious attempt to answer these fundamental questions. Kris Lichter talks about the how a worldwide, decentralized group of scientists collaborates on the largest DNA sample database ever assembled to understand the story of the human race.
• Robert "The Scobleizer" Scoble (3.4) Robert Scoble is a Microsoft technical evangelist, but is most know as the world famous "Scobleizer" blogger. He discusses his early days of blogging and how his blogging at Microsoft was often risky. He also explains how blogging is proving to be a valuable corporate communications tool. Robert discusses other important issues such as Windows Vista, podcasting, weblog search, opml and attention.xml.
• Dr. Hilary Koprowski (3.4) On Biotech Nation, Moira spoke with Dr. Hilary Koprowski, a Professor of Immunology at Thomas Jefferson University. You may not know his name, but half a century ago, he created the live polio vaccine.
• Daniel Charles (3.5) Moira also spoke with former NPR tech reporter Daniel Charles about a German scientist, who changed the course of World War I. That would be Fritz Haber, who won a Nobel Prize for technology which launched both modern agriculture and chemical warfare. Charles is the author of "Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare."
• Justin Chapweske – The Swarming Web (3.5) How do you distribute large files, quickly and securely, to a large network audience without requiring expensive hardware or content based networks? Justin Chapweske, CTO and founder of Onion Networks, presents swarming as a combination of extended HTTP, commodity bandwidth, cheap hardware and software intelligence that addresses modern large file and data integrity problems without requiring expensive infrastructural services or commercial content networks.
• Dr. Darwin Prockop (3.6) On another Biotech Nation, Moira spoke with Dr. Darwin Prockop, the Director of Tulane’s Gene Therapy Center who tells us why he’s been working with adult stem cells for over a decade, and the mystery of how they work.
• How to Get Naked – BlogHer 2005 (3.6) Some bloggers bare all on their weblogs. What are the costs and benefits of getting naked before the whole world and how do bloggers balance their responsibilities to their readers and their families? A panel of women bloggers discuss these issues in this Q & A session.
• Dennis Bakke (3.6) Moira Gunn also spoke with Dennis Bakke, the co-Founder and former CEO of energy producer AES. With 40,000 employees and $8 billion in revenue, he believes everyone can still have fun at work. Dennis is also the author of "Joy at Work — A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job."
• Jerry Weissman (3.7) And Moira interviewed author and media and presentation coach, Jerry Weissman, about answering tough questions. In these high-tech days, when everything is permanently on the record, this former producer for Mike Wallace tells us what does and doesn’t work.
• Vint Cerf – Father of the Internet (3.8) "I wish I could’ve predicted more," says the father of the Internet, Vint Cerf. He didn’t think about the worries parents would face ten or fifteen years later of their children seeing pornography, or becoming prey to Internet predators. He didn’t think of the thousands of companies who would try to make money by sending unwanted e-mails, or the hackers who would illegally share movies, music and software. Larry Magid speaks to Vint Cerf about these issues and new developments in the Internet Protocol, IPv6.
• Mark Cotta Vaz (3.9) Moira Gunn spoke with Mark Cotta Vaz, the author of "Living Dangerously — The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper, Creator of King Kong. He relates the daring exploits of Cooper, the World War I flying ace, who went on the create "King Kong," the 1933 movie which was so far ahead of its time.
• Chris Anderson – Economics of the Long Tail (4.0) The Long Tail is a phrase coined by Chris Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine, for the statistical distribution of sales observed by online businesses. In this talk he explores the economics of the long tail and shares his insight on the effects it might have on future business models. He discusses how distribution networks like Amazon, iTunes and Netflix have shown that the right side of the curve which forms millions of niches can be as big a market as the chart toppers.
• John Markoff at the SDForum (4.1) John Markoff discusses his new book, "What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer." This is a terrific two-part evening. Part 1 is John’s solo presentation. Part 2 is a follow-up panel discussion with Bill Duvall, Lee Felsenstein, Dennis Allison and Larry Tessler.
• John Seely Brown at Supernova 2005 (4.2) JSB is known for his work on business ecosystems. In this short but focused talk from Supernova 2005 he covers the emotive topic of off-shoring and highlights the advantages that can be gained from understanding that it is never only a simple question of wage arbitration. The examples of innovative business practices he discusses leads to a picture of a global change in business discourse and a re-evaluation of the current definition of ‘the firm.’

The O’Reilly Pick of the Week:

This week’s IT Conversations/O’Reilly Pick of the Week is a great experiment from last year:

• Lawrence Lessig – Free Culture, Chapter 1 (3.9) AKMA asked, "Anyone feel like recording a chapter of Lawrence Lessig’s new book?" Joi Ito then said, "What a great idea!" And in less than 24 hours, this idea mushroomed into a significant collaboration by a team of bloggers and others to record and publish all of Larry’s book. Here is our contribution, Chapter One: Creators, recorded by IT Conversations host Doug Kaye.

Interesting discussion of Feedburner and confidentiality on Leo Laporte’s blog. Make sure you read the comments in addition to Leo’s post. In short, Leo’s pulling his feeds off because Feedburner went public with some of Leo’s stats. But Eric Lunt, Feedburner’s CTO, wrote that Leo had selected an option that makes the data public. My guess is that Leo didn’t realize what he was approving — fine print and all that — but that he already wished he’d never used Feedburner anyway.

IT Conversations primary feed — the “Everything” feed — is redirected to Feedburner. So far, so good, but I haven’t yet moved over the other 40+ feeds we have.

Wendy Boswell wrote:

What this is is an incredible array of speakers from all facets of the technology universe, from blogging to hacking to anything else you can think of. Lots of movers and shakers here and you can listen to them all; whether you wish to download the files to your iPod or save them as MP3’s to your hard drive, or you can just click “Play” and they magically start playing. At least they did on my computer. I just listened to Wil Wheaton from Gnomedex, who I also keep track of through his blog, Wil Wheaton Dot Net. For me, the reason I love IT Conversations is because it’s refreshing to actually hear the voices that I so often read.

BusinessWeek Online is running their Best of the Web survey. This year they’ve included podcasts in the @Home and Toolbox categories. You’ll find IT Conversations in the former slot.

Mark Ramsey has posted a response to my comments last month. Good debate here. Mark writes:

Mr. Kaye, what you don’t understand is that everything is driven by hits and stars. Everything. You are free to reach any niche audience you want, but the definition of a “revolution” is something that sweeps away the status quo. Making niches happy doesn’t qualify.

Mark’s idea of a revolution is apparently one in which mass can only be built by the combination of a small number of large players. But the same mass can be built by combining a large number of small players. There will be 50,000 podcasters by the end of 2006, and together — not individually — they will be significant. In Monday’s New York Times, “Ted Schadler of Forrester Research predicted that 12.3 million households — about 30 million people — would use podcasts by 2010.” The Diffusion group predicted nearly double that number. According to an article in the July 25 issue of Business Week by Jon Fine, only 31 million households in the US tuned into broadcast TV networks during primetime during the 2003-04 season. You don’t need to use the word “revolution,” but that’s a significant market for so-called niche content.

I’m not denying that there’s a market, however small, for every podcast, however insignificant. Of course there is. But ask your local movie theater how much they care to show a movie only a few people see, ask the local bookseller how much they want to stock a book only a few folks buy.

That’s precisely why network television viewing and ad revenues have declined 19% in the past ten years, while Netflix has grown by offering the obscure and otherwise hard-to-find movies that are filling those flat-panel home-television screens. A primary example in Chris Anderson’s original article in Wired about the long tail pointed out that Amazon generates a significant percentage of its income precisely from selling books that only a few people want to buy. Mark is correct, that a physical bookstore can’t afford to stock those books in the same way that a “broad” caster can’t afford to create and distribute programs that appeal to small numbers of people. But without broadcasting’s overhead, podcasters can create and distribute that content, and in the same was as Amazon meets the needs of millions of customers in this way, so will podcasters. Perhaps most importantly, listeners (like readers) are more passionate about what Mark calls niche content than they are about mass-media generic content, and their money will ultimately follow their passions.

I have nothing against broadcast radio. It’s terrific for news, weather, sports, call-in (anything that’s realtime) and it’s also an ideal distribution mechanism for any content that serves a geographic community (i.e., within the range of a transmitter). Here in San Francisco, for example, KQED-FM produces some excellent local programming such as Forum with Michael Krasny. I listened to it on the way home from the dentist this morning, in fact. It’s a perfect fit for realtime radio because half the show is based on call-ins.

I don’t hate radio, broadcasters or broadcasting. I don’t think radio is “evil.” I just know that podcasting has the potential of delivering the unique content that many listeners value more than they value content produced for the masses, and the money will ultimately follow that value.

Feedster just released their Top 500 “most interesting and important blogs” and IT Conversations is rated #26 — higher than any other podcast. Cool!

Update: Dave Slusher is right, however. Lists like this, iTunes, Podcast Alley, etc., suggest that what’s important is volume: that the goal is the largest possible audience. This is the fat-head (as opposed to the long-tail) position. It’s all about hits and stars, and follows the lead of broadcasting and the traditional music biz. But the best blogs and podcasts aren’t those that appeal to the largest and most generic audiences, but rather those that deliver the greatest value to an audience, regardless of the size of that audience. One might have a blog or podcast about organ transplants, for example. Wouldn’t make the Top Anything list, but for the intended readers/listeners, it would be #1. Old media can’t do that. New media can and should. Change lives in as profound a way as possible.

(Hear the MP3 version with additional commentary in beautiful monophonic audio.)

New Programs This Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating.

• The Software 2005 Pundit Panel (rated 2.8 by IT Conversations listeners) How is the IT Budget of companies going to be spent? What’s hot and what’s not right now among IT companies? Are there too many IT vendors? How many of them will survive for the next five years? How is opensource software affecting IT vendors? The pundit panel with experts from some of the top market research organisations answer these questions and take a look at where the IT industry is heading in the next few years.
• "Only Connect" from Supernova 2005 (2.9) As broadband and wireless access become more widely available, the fabric of the telecommunications industry is unraveling. How do the emergence of wireless and broadband access and voice over IP (VoIP) solutions affect the telecom marketplace, and how will these new technologies fit into the overall suite of choices available to users?
• Michael Weiss – Morpheus and P2P (2.9) "It looks a lot larger on the outside than it is on the inside," describes Michael Weiss, CEO of StreamCast, parent company of Morpheus. He’s talking about the US Supreme Court. Morpheus is just looking to make money through engaging in the new medium called "File Sharing/P2P". So why has he locked horns with the entertainment industry? Larry Magid speaks to him about file-sharing, piracy, and the distribution mechanisms of P2P.
• The Folksomony Panel – ETech 2005 (3.4) The notion of folksonomy suggests that users can develop patterns of organization and classification that function without the need for rigid guidelines or top-down taxonomies. The founders of three outstanding folksonomy- based services come together to discuss the idea in this session from ETech 2005.
• Brian Dear – EVDB.com (3.5) First came the blogosphere, then the podosphere, and now, the eventsphere is here! Brian Dear is building it at EVDB, the Events and Venues Database. The founder and CEO of EVDB, Brian sat down during Always On 2005: The Innovation Summit at Stanford, to speak with Scott Mace. Learn how to publish events on the EVDB service, how to subscribe to EVDB searches, and more about "simple event sharing."
• Lisa See (3.6) On Tech Nation, Dr. Moira Gunn interviews Lisa See, a journalist, culturalist. They discuss a language, known only to women in a remote Chinese province and kept secret for 1,000 years, and explore how she went in search of this language, and how it and the ancient practice of binding women’s feet figure into her latest novel: "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan."
• Noshir Contractor – Co-Evolution of Knowledge Networks (3.7) Recent technological advances have created an environment where we can connect with anyone, anytime, anywhere almost effortlessly. But how do we decide with whom we want to connect? From MeshForum 2005, Dr. Contractor explains that the answers can be found by studying the underlying socio-technological motivations for the creation, maintenance, destruction, and reconstitution of knowledge and social networks.
• Joel Spolsky – Software Writing (3.7) What’s the difference between an okay programmer and a great one? Would you believe it’s their writing skills? According to often-controversial Joel Spolsky, most technical writing is abysmal and there is a clear correlation between well-written documentation and successful programs. Joel talks with Phil Windley about examples of great writing and how anyone can learn to write better.
• Alan Zelicoff and Michael Bellomo (3.8) On a special long-format BioTech Nation segment, Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Alan Zelicoff and Michael Bellomo, co-authors of "Microbe — Are We Ready fo the Next Plague?" about a new public-health data base designed can fight outbreaks such as SARS, as well as defend against bioterrorism.

The O’Reilly Pick of the Week:

• Stewart Copeland – The Think-Different Drummer (3.9) Since his early days with the rock band Police, drummer Stewart Copeland has been heavily involved with technology. Today he’s a Mac-based composer for film, TV, and opera, having scored more than 60 soundtracks including Wall Street, Talk Radio, and Dead Like Me. In this live fireside chat with David Battino, co- author of The Art of Digital Music, Copeland reveals his innovative recording techniques, lays out his dreams for the ideal music software, and even recalls his skin-piercing sampler shootout with Sting. [From the Mac OS X Conference 2004]

I think we’ve finally straightened out all the problems with the IT Conversations feeds in the iTunes Podcast directory. Butif you’re subscribing to IT Conversations using iTunes, there’s one problem you should be aware of: We publish more than one program per day, and by default, iTunes only checks each feed once per day and will only download one new show each day. For example, we publish two or three Tech Nation interviews every Thursday.

Here’s what you need to do:

• Subscribe to an IT Conversations feed.
• Highlight that feed in your list of subscribed-to podcasts.
• Click on “Settings” in the lower-right corner of iTunes.
• Change “When new episodes are available:” to “Download all.”
• Optionally, change “Check for new episodes:” to something other than “Every day.”
• Click on OK.

This way you’ll be sure not to miss any of our programs.

As I move closer to commiting to Drupal for the new project, it’s time to start finding some help. If you’re an experienced Drupal developer (at any level of expertise) and you’d like to develop anything from site customization to custom modules and nodetypes to support IT Conversations, please get in touch at doug@itconversations.com. Everything we do will go back into GPL open source.

The big news in the podcasting world today is that Adam Curry and Ron Bloom have secured $8.85 million in venture investment for Podshow, and Odeo has received an unnanounced amount as well. But the most significant observation may be who it is that is making these investments. In particular, both John Doerr and Ray Lane will take seats on the Podshow board of directors.

As individuals, VCs can only sit on a limited number of boards. It’s a time-consuming activity, trying to nurse along a suite of startups. The fact that Doerr and Lane have not only decided to invest but to commit their time, means they believe there’s something very big here. What is that thing? I think they see that tiny Podshow has the potential to disrupt the entertainment industry in the same way as Amazon and eBay have disrupted commerce. Take this very seriously! With the guidance of KPCB, Sequoia and others, they’ve got to be planning to replace the NBCs, ABCs, Viacoms and major record labels of the world. Trust me. John Doerr isn’t going to waste his time on the board of some nascent startup unless they’re aiming their sights on something this big. John and Ray must believe it’s possible, and the rest of us would be foolish to think it’s not.

As for Odeo, I think Ev and Noah will have no trouble doing for podcasting what they did for blogging. They won’t displace the NBCs of the world, but they will build a business with real value that will be a healthy acquisition target. It’s almost a no-brainer for them, although I know they and the Odeo team are working their butts off to make it happen.

Podcasting is now on the radar.

That title sounds a bit too authoritative, so let me begin by saying that although I’m by no means an expert on public radio, I was involved with radio in the ’60s, I worked in television news in the ’70s, and I’ve been talking to many people in commercial and public radio over the past few months. I was initially reluctant to express my opinions on the topic because I thought they might be hurtful to people I care about. But as I’ve been stewing over this for the past few weeks, I’ve come to realize that what I think and what I’ve written here isn’t going to “make it so.” I’m merely describing what I see as an inevitable transformation. [I've also given given everyone mentioned in this article a chance to comment on it.]

Unfortunately, I see Chris Lydon’s new PRI show, Open Source, as the poster child for this transformation. Now don’t get me wrong. I love the show, and I listen to almost every edition on my iPod. But Chris and his team have launched what may be the last of the old-time public-radio programs, and they’ve aimed it right at the middle of the black hole that will swallow them and the rest of public radio: the Internet and podcasting. I think Open Source may be a catalyst for its own defeat.

This started for me when I blogged about Doc’s suggestion that we all call our local public radio stations and request they carry the new show. It took me no time at all to realize how little sense that made. There’s no doubt that if KQED-FM were to broadcast the show at all, it would be at some obscure time of day when I wasn’t likely to listen. No, that’s not even correct. There’s no time of day that would be good for me. I don’t plan my days around a radio or TV schedule because, quite frankly, I don’t need to. I have an iPod and I can listen to what I want, where I want and when I want. And given that there’s already more good programming than I have time for, anyone who doesn’t make it easy for me by providing an RSS feed with enclosures simply won’t make the cut. Even in my car, unless it’s just a trip to the grocery store, I no longer tune in a broadcast station.

[In response to my earlier post on the subject, Brendan Greely, one of Chris' producers, pointed out that "there are a lot of people who would enjoy the conversation who wouldn't otherwise hear it; these are people who might be convinced in the future to listen to a podcast, of this or any show." His point was well taken, and I did ultimately let KQED-FM know that this was an important show which they certainly should carry.]

Two events then really drove this home for me. The first was a trip to Boston/Cambridge a few weeks ago to discuss plans for a future venture with some very smart people. Among them were Jake Shapiro of PRX and Robert Lyons and Eli Ingraham of the WGBH Forum Network. At WGBH I got a full tour of the facilities of this bastion of public broadcasting, and I was struck by two divergent observations. First, this is a very large and expensive operation. Second, it’s essentially the same as radio was in the 1960s. Robert and Eli understand this. Robert has been at WGBH for (I think) more than 20 years, and if anything, his Forum Network is one of the few really new projects in public radio that is trying to bring the community into the picture.

But they are up against the Innovator’s Dilemma. If you haven’t read that book by Clay Christensen, you really should. As it applies in this instance, the dilemma is that the established organizations can only approach innovation on the basis of protecting their current way of operating. The future of public radio may not be podcasting, but it will certainly be based on much lower-cost methods of producing and distributing most programs, and as incumbents in the industry, the WGBHs of the world are unable to cannibalize their own operations to the extent they must to survive. To do so would mean walking away from all the buildings and studios and firing 80% of the staff. Just as 3.5″ disk drives replaced the 5″ drives at a far lower price/performance ratio, so will the new public radio produce and distribute programs at a far lower cost. And it won’t be done by the same organizations.

The second event was a recent article in The New York Times about Chris’ show, Open Source. From listening to the on-air credits, I already knew that the show had a staff of perhaps 7-9 people even if not all of them are paid (much) and don’t work full time. But The Times reported that the show has a $1 million budget, and I said, “Sheesh! That’s a lot of money.” Now I’ve worked on $100+ million dollar films, and in TV news, and I know how easy it is to spend that kind of money. But I’ve also produced 600 programs and distributed them as podcasts and spent next to nothing. Even if I paid the team and myself decent salaries, my costs would be a mere fraction of Chris’ budget.

Radio and TV are going to have to adjust to a new economy: the economy in which the long tail plays a major role. The music industry is painfully making this transformation now. The movie business is fighting the change in classic innovators-dilemma style. TV doesn’t know what to do. Its viewers are leaving in droves, and the three major networks’ reaction so far is to reduce not only the cost but also the quality of programs through the reality-TV and tabloid formulas. Those are just that industry’s way of denying the inevitable trap it’s in.

In commercial radio we see the migration to the two models of talk and formulaic music. As others have said, there’s no humanity left. Commercial stations will die the same way some of the telecoms bit the dust: They’re competing for a limited base of customers with undifferentiated commodity products. It’s ironic that the broadcast spectrum is a scarce resource yet those with license to use it are writing their own death warrants by using it so inefficiently.

Public radio is on the same path. Sure, it’s made worse by the facts that the Bush administration wants to rip the guts out of it, and that NPR and the local stations are always fighting over money and control. But the real problem is coming from the fact that listeners want long-tail time-shifted content. They want to hear programs that are more meaningful to them, and they want to listen at their convenience. The entire broadcast-radio system, with its distribution, simply can’t provide what the customers want. It’s not a flaw of management. There are very good people doing the best that can be done. The problem is inherent and systemic.

Podcasting is to public radio what Garage Band and Pro Tools are to the music industry. Large recording studios are closing left and right because musicians — good ones — can produce great music in small project studios or even in their apartments. Moby is just one of the better-known examples. But more important than the stars are all the lesser-known artists. Because of iTunes and GarageBand.com, a significant portion of the market is shifting towards the long tail. The traditional music industry can only survive to the extent that it can support these new forms of production and distribution, and the same is true for public radio.

If there was one bright light on the public-radio portion of my Boston/Cambridge trip, it was my visit with Jake Shapiro at PRX. Although their short-term function is to operate a marketplace where producers and stations can sell and buy programming, my sense is that Jake and his team are acutely aware of the larger changes needed in public radio, and I think they’re worth watching to see how they might play the role of the newcomer that replaces the incumbents. They match Clay Christensen’s scenario perfectly.

As conference season ramps up, IT Conversations will be producing and publishing up to 12 programs each week, and to do this we need your help. If you would like to join Team ITC, our volunteers who produce IT Conversations progams for you in their spare time, now is your chance. We need:

• Editors who write our descriptions and process the photos, and
• Engineers who do the post-production audio editing and mixing

You’ll find more details here.

Current and upcoming series in production include:

• OSCON
• Where 2.0
• BlogHer
• Pop!Tech 2005
• Accelerating Change 2005

And many more. To volunteer, please email me at doug@itconversations.com.

(Hear the MP3 version with additional commentary in beautiful monophonic audio.)

New Programs This Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating.

• John Lupton (rated 3.2 by IT Conversations listeners) On last week’s Biotech Nation segment, Dr. Moira Gunn spoke with John Lupton, the CEO of MedCare Systems, Sydney, Australia, who tells us about technology which keep us healthier and out of the hospital.
• Scott Kriens – In Search of Intelligence (3.3) The Chairman and CEO of Juniper Networks talks about the challenges and opportunities surrounding networking today. How can we improve the user experience by optimizing the infrastructure between applications and users? Can we reduce the latency and increase the throughput of the network while ensuring high availability? Scott argues that the network should act as a resource and a source of intelligence to optimize the behavior and the performance of applications.
• Applications for a Mobile, Connected World (3.4) Everyday people are participating in media and it’s the Internet that has made it all happen. From the early days of amazon.com encouraging readers to post reviews to today’s world of podcasts and blogs, personal publishing has become mainstream. This panel discussion from Supernova 2005 features the folks behind the applications that let us all create our own media.
• Buzz Aldrin on Larry’s World (3.5) "I’m not interested in bungy jumping off a bridge," states one of the world’s greatest astronauts, Buzz Aldrin. At age 75, Buzz now runs a rocket design company, SCUBA dives the world’s oceans, skis, and shares his passion for space exploration, lecturing around the world. IOW, Buzz still lives life to the fullest. In this timely edition of Larry’s World, Buzz talks to host Larry Magid about everything from hearing aids to the latest technology in aeronautics.
• Adam Curry on Podcasting (3.7) He’s the Podfather: one of the creators and the leading evangelist of podcasting. Behind the scenes, he is now pulling together and commercializing many podcast-related services, websites, podcasts and directories. In this interview with host Rob Greenlee, Adam discusses his early days in radio and at MTV in the ’80s. He talks about leaving the broadcast world to pursue his true passions. Adam goes into detail about his early work with the websites webcasting, blogging and audioblogging.
• Anna Nagurney at MeshForum 2005 (3.7) What is common between web traffic and transportation? If a path always has heavy traffic, will building a bypass or an alternative path help, or will it worsen it? How do you use network theory to solve transportation and water supply problems? How is the study of networks helpful in solving complex problems in finance and economics? Anna Nagurney answers these questions in her presentation at MeshForum 2005.
• John Valliant (3.7) Dr. Moira Gunn spoke with John Valliant, a freelance writer and serial adventurer, who told her the tale of a single genetic exception: The Golden Spruce, and its encounter with man and technology.
• Susan Casey (3.8) Moira also speaks with Time editor Susan Casey about the Farallones, the islands barely visible from San Francisco, and the surprising science they’re now telling us about the great white shark. Susan is the author of "Devil’s Teeth — A True Story of Obsession and Survival among America’s Great White Sharks."
• Tim O’Reilly – MySQL Users Conference (3.9) We are moving into a new world where everything is interconnected, where the Internet is the platform and where software is a service. Welcome to the new paradigm that is Web 2.0. Tim O’Reilly uses the MySQL User Conference to present another verse of his popular O’Reilly’s Radar talk. Find out what the alpha geeks have been up to and why the future belongs to data.
• Andrew Morton – The Linux Kernel (3.9) Andrew Morton described the Linux kernel development process, how the Linux kernel actually comes to be, how features are chosen, and how the development, test and release cycle is managed. He explains how commercial Linux distributions such as Red Hat and SuSE fit into this process. Andrew also explains the motivations of kernel developers and why the Linux kernel development process (and open source development model in general) are better than most commercial software development processes.

The O’Reilly Pick of the Week:

This week’s IT Conversations/O’Reilly Pick of the Week is a terrific session from the SDForum’s Distinguished Speaker Series:

• Kent Beck – Developer Testing (3.8) Developer testing is rapidly catching on as an extremely effective way to improve software quality and productivity. Kent, the father of eXtreme Programming (XP) delivered this keynote presentation at the Developer Testing Forum.

Two weeks ago I asked for your feedback regarding the audio version of the weekly IT Conversations Updates. After receiving only one comment, I decided to ask again, and this time I received nearly one hundred email messages. Of course, I didn’t expect many people who didn’t care for the audio postings would bother to send me email, but the fact that so many people did go to the trouble makes it clear that enough listeners value the audio version to make it worthwhile to continue producing it.

There was also a fair degree of consistancy of the opinions. The segment most valued by listeners is the Houskeeping and News content. Many people listen to that section only and then skip the reviews of the previous week’s shows. And of those who do listen to the reviews, many said they don’t care much about the listener ratings, because their interests may be different from those of others’.

People wrote time and time again that what they really appreciated was the personalized voice that the updates gave to IT Conversations. There’s a lesson in that for all podcasters.