Ramblin’ Prose

This is a short note about Duke’s two-day podcasting symposium at the new, state-of-the-art Fitzpatrick science building.

They so get it.

Maybe the iPods have something to do with it, but what I took away from the conference was a sense that this thing called podcasting is not going away. Most people still don’t know what it is, but they will. Soon.

Duke did a live Webcast for people on campus, and they’re going to post the audio files soon. It’ll be a great repository for posterity.

The cast of characters was impressive and I had a chance to hear and see (and meet) some of the big names in podcasting, including Doug Kaye (IT Conversations) and Michael Geoghegan (Reel Reviews and Grape Radio). For a list of the participants, click here.

Big props to Casey Alt and his folks at the Information Science and Information Studies department at Duke for pulling it together in just four months.

I think public radio’s Tony Kahn summed it up best for me:

Podcasting is not a market, but a movement. Small listenership is appreciated because of the intimacy. It’s a social interaction - a kind of game being played with relatively simple equipment and simple rules.”

More to come soon.