Waxxi’s Debut Interactive Podcast
May 25th, 2006
Our first interactive podcast with Robert Scoble and Shel Israel was not only fun and insightful, but historical. People were able to communicate, comment, share and ask questions to Robert and Shel directly, whether via chat/IM or via phone. The content is smart, interesting and the energy level is high.
Since the event ran over an hour and a half, we’ve split it into two parts. There are a few ways to listen:
1) Click on either Interactive Podcast or Naked Conversations on Waxxi’s home page. You may download parts one and two, or play it within the page. There, you may also subscribe to the podcast’s RSS feed.
2) Listen live here to Part One and here for Part Two
A few things to note:
Fuzzy Wuzzy was a Cordless Phone. What you’ll notice in the beginning of Part One is a bit of fuzziness, especially on Robert’s line. That’s something we learned not to do in the future: have guests call in on cordless phones. Landlines with a quality headset a must, everything else (cordless, VoIP, cell phones) a no-no.
Radio Quality, Digital Sound. My voice will sound different, in terms of recording quality, than the others. That’s because I did my part from a studio. And I worked with folks with more than four decades of broadcasting experience. The goal, as Shel mentioned, was to help move podcasting forward.
To Edit or Not to Edit? Should the interactive podcasts be completely, well, Naked? In the aforementioned ‘forward’ thinking process, we felt it would only improve the listening experience to edit out some of the “uhs” “ums”, seconds of dead air here or there, and to record an intro and a close.
Chat is as Important as Voice. We implemented a chat client very close to the launch, and were not able to alert everyone to that fact until the day of the event (next time, plenty of notice so that international callers don’t have to worry about staying on a direct phone line to the US just to have their questions answered). The chat/IM was equally as important to the interactive experience as having people call in. It also allowed for commenting, and facilitated the flow of the conversation quite nicely.
We’ll detail each part in future posts, but in the meantime nobody does it better than Jeremiah Owyang. Thanks again to everyone who signed up, participated, and interacted, and to our incredible guests.
Enjoy the listen.
update: We gave Jeremiah a sneak peek (he’s good at pulling those eStrings). 
His announcement of Waxxi going live is here.
May 26th, 2006 at 8:39 am
Tracy, I can’t wait to try Waxxi out. I’ve done a Skypecast and now I want to see how Waxxicasting compares
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May 26th, 2006 at 10:49 am
Easton, Thanks! We can’t wait for you to join us on future Waxxi casts. I enjoy your writing and still reference a blog comment of yours regarding Skypecasts: “it was a step in the Waxxi directions of better interactivity between people.” We like the way you think.
May 26th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Tracy, I think that you’re losing something with the slick editing. I see the value of it for general distribution, but I’d love to be able to link to a raw version. I’m recommending this technology to television station programmers and producers, and I want them to get some idea of the kind of direct interaction that went on in and around the actual “event” itself. You can’t get that from the edited version, and Skypecasting, besides requiring outside software, just fails to achieve the same level of direct conversation.
BTW, I agree with you about the importance of the chat aspect which is why I posted the entire chat (http://www.ptvguy.com/uploads/participatory-podcast-chat.html) as a separate link on my site. It’s a very important part of what went on.
The usefullness of this technology goes far beyond this kind of open conference. It extends the reach of local classrooms. It opens public debate and public discussion to a whole new level. In fact, it opens up whole new possiblities for global conversation.
At some point in the future, this will all be accepted as just the normal way to do things, but it isn’t right now. That’s why I see this as something of historical interest. It still is. You’ve done something important here. Like it or not, it will be noticed.
May 26th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
I think that my thoughts are being echoed with the statement ” I think that you’re losing something with the slick editing. I see the value of it for general distribution, but I’d love to be able to link to a raw version.”
What will really be interesting in a chat instance(whatever platform, would be a direct translation model–( sic google translate) kinda thing. The gabber chooses a handle and a language of prefrence and the the display txt for that user will default into their chosen prefrence.
yeah, an On Demand systems “interupator”
May 31st, 2006 at 3:56 am
[…] I did the same thing to Tracy Sheridan after I had problems participating in her initial Waxxi interactive podcast with Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. I had her email address as well but I blogged. Should I have emailed her? Possibly but blogging has become my natural response to events like this. […]
June 12th, 2006 at 5:46 am
Looks like Robert Scoble is making a move from Microsoft. Here’s a link to an article on Yahoo:
“Famed Microsoft blogger leaves for start-up”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060612/wr_nm/blogs_scoble_dc_3