In my day to day conversations with UK podcast producers and talent – at least those who are already producing within the space – the question I most frequently get asked goes along the lines of: “If I sign an agreement, does Podshow own my podcast?”.

Podshow has a policy of not discussing the finer points of agreements and relationships outside of those individual relationships – a professional attitude, I think. But I’m still coming across this misconception almost on a daily basis, not only in actual discussions, but on blogs, in emails, and on forums, despite there being relatively very few people who have actually, physically, seen the text of such an agreement.

As usual please read first before you go on reading this. ;)

Later in the article he refers to one incident where the contract with Podshow was talked about in several podcasts and about the harsh conditions in it. Now, while Neil is talking about the UK version of Podshow and the other incident actually might have lead to some changes in the T&C I am not sure if those comments and questions are not valid – for a very basic reason.

If you head over to podshow.com you will find a standard portal which would have the best chances of being the myspace of podcasting. Several functions which are available make it the perfect place to go there – except for one thing: I cannot recommend at all that you list your own podcast there as the rules are a bit fuzzy.

Quote from the T&C for becoming a normal member for the service (which is needed to actually do anything):

[...]Unless you specify otherwise, any and all works of authorship copyrightable by you and posted by you to your member pages (“Member Works”) are submitted with the understanding that you permit anyone to copy, distribute, display and perform your Member Works, royalty-free, on the condition that they credit your authorship each time they do so. You also permit others to distribute derivative works of your Member Works, provided that they give you proper attribution as described below.

[...]
By posting your Member Works on the Member Pages, you are granting PodShow a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, and worldwide license to use your Member Works in connection with the operation of the PodShow Websites, including, without limitation, the license rights to copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate and reformat your Blog Works, and/or to incorporate it into a collective work.

One reason I do NOT list my show in Podshow is very simple – the terms for _listing_ my podcast in the directory are so broad and giving so many rights to Podshow that I do not see how I can trust this. As usual I do not need to list myself there which is what I have chosen to do. You may have a different view on that.

And while I agree that a service like Podshow needs some rights if this is supposed to be working for all sides, there is a limit. Given the contract which has been out before, the T&C on this website i find it highly unlikely that suddenly the contract should be less aggressive.

But let me say this as well: This is business and not handholding romance, nobody is forcing anybody to do something. If I enter a contract I should read it first and wage whatever I think I can get out of it against what I expect I will ‘loose’. If this feels positive, I will go forward with it and if not, I just leave it. But if I sign whatever document it is, don’t come running later and complain about what you signed up for …

[btw, anyone can confirm that the T&C on the US side has changed? I remember different wording in there, which was even more annoying]

Technorati Tags: podcast, podshow, term and condition

I will be attending the Office 2.0 conference but thanks to some cold as well as travel stress (as well as ‘overwhelming responses’ from the audience ;)) the planned preconf podcast falls flat. Thanks to Ben I now do have a nice mobile phone number +1 415 671 5346 while in the states which I will keep. (It is actually a T-Mobile number as all other options are not feasable to work with – and none of the prepaids seem to have data available. ).

Ben provided a good reason for using social software systems – he needed a car ride for the TV he won from Yahoo into town and mailed me: “I noticed from your comment on UpComing that you were driving down, and I notice from your Plazes that you’re staying at the Hol Inn Express. ” perfect. :)

After this I will travel in November to Podcastcon UK where you can find me on the business panel as well as Oct 20/22nd online at the Internation Podcasting Expo with an updated presentation on “how and why to foster an international audience”.

If you have not done such an online conference, I encourage you to test it out. It is quite affordable and a very interesting experience. :)

Robert’s question “Will podtech be next?” can be answered by “no” so far. Not the big ones of course, because they have the money to defend themselves and the clout to do PR.

In a former entry called “Stolpersteine: How we remember through discovering” I gave a hint to one of my favorite quotes “First they came” and why it is important to remember history and learn from it.

In adaption we can say “first they came for the *podder software and I did not speak up because I do not program a podcatcher. Then they came for the *pod* websites and I did not care because I don’t run a website. When they came for me, nobody was left to speak up for me.”

So far, I am not ‘directly’ involved, but I do absolutly not like where this is going and I think it is time again to show a company that the net is nothing to mess with – even if you think you only have customers out there who will forgive you everything and still buy your stuff.

So how can we speak up? I have no idea how to go against Apple’s trys specifically regarding the U.S. trademark, but I know we have to react and show Apple that they are a company producing hardware and not gods. As we know, a company like Apple only listens to one single thing: Money and bad PR.

Wired says

Coincidentally, Apple’s letter arrived the day before Podcast Ready unveiled a new version of its software — one that works with the iPod.

That may be true but it is quite stupid to start these kinds of letters just one week before America’s biggest event in Podcasting ever with over 3000 attendees: The Portable Media Expo in Ontario, CA.

Todd Cochrane suggested “It makes me so mad that I might have to demonstrate my displeasure with Apple at Podcast Expo by smashing my iPod. ” This will not really hurt Apple, but may be good for a media stunt.

Christmas is coming and it is supposed to be one of Apple’s big seasons for selling hardware. Put your money where your mouth is: Don’t buy at Apple’s. And let’s face it: If it does not hurt sales or stock, nobody at apple will care!

So, how to get stickers / badges printed in time for the Expo stating “say no to apple” or “don’t buy ipods”? “Everytime you buy an ipod god kills a litte podcast website?” What other suggestion can we do with this amount of people (and press) coming next week? What kind of logo would draw the most attention on blogs and make people aware of what is going on?

Will it be possible to have a joint statement by participating individuals and companies on the expo? Something to sign, photograph and then send off to every stock analysist you know?

How about a sound clip which you can run in your podcast? (Somebody make me some jingle, I’ll record it).

First small steps:

• blog about it and link to other blogs reporting about it (to enhance visibility) and use tags like I suggested below
• and search for related stories and digg them
• if you use netscape for this, go do it there too

Tag(s): savepodcasting, saynotoapple, dontbuyipods, apple, podcasting

What will you present / hold a discussion on at Barcamp London

I am posting this message to gauge interest of the participants, the topics which come to my mind are
“Fostering q&a discussion about topics European steps in Web 2.0, Second Life or Podcasting”

Podcasting is a natural to me – I have done this for nearly two years now and still a lot of people are new to it or want to learn about it. I am more than happy to do this, if there is interest.

Second Life – I would be more on the marketing / business side of it than just the programming one like for example Kosso. I would like to discuss ways, possibilities, best practise on how to use this on not only the business side but to enrich life. Or find reasons why this is a bad idea.

European steps in Web2.0 is of course a bullshit bingo term, but I would find this especially interesting in regard of European continent versus just the UK. Where are we going, what would we like to see, how could we benefit from one another. Germany for example is ‘famous’ for not catching up, but on the flip side there is a huge web 1.0 business which I find puzzling. A lot of us are also self employed or with smaller companies – perhaps we can find and share examples of what works or not for business reasons.

And yes, European. You do live on that island but you are in reach!

Usage of openc
I do work with openbc as a tool quite a lot as well as moderate forums, for example Global Business Women. I find it crucial to be aware of such services and decide which ones to use or not. I can present differences to linked in (which I only use as a backup if at all) and how to make best use of all of them. openbc does not only have nearly 1.5 million users, it is also the primary European networking tool. You know that continent thing again. ;) (Disclaimer: I do work with openbc on a project).

Feedback / testing
I am known to love betatesting and giving feedback on application and webpages. If you have such, try to fetch me. I should not be so hard to spot as one of the few females. ;)

Project / Work
My main reason to come to Barcamp is to get to know a lot of new people like on Barcamp L.A. and meet some familiar faces.
Very important to me as well is to learn and get inspired.

Which not at all excludes the fact that I am looking for projects in the english speaking sphere in my different fields of expertise. Which for example would be advisory on how to built and use blogs, podcast or classical online communities. More about myself would be here and if you share some of those ideas, please feel free to get us together at barcamp.

But main thing is to meet and learn. Oh and have fun. :)

As I am not sure if I will have net access tomorow, I might not respond until Saturday morning on site or Friday evening at the Geek dinner.

Tag(s): barcamp, barcamplondon, europe, podcasting, openbc

I am astonished to see so many postings about him leaving, but only so few about what he will be able to start with Podtech? And as if it means that once Robert leaves, nothing will happen any more at MS? Robert surely has been a key to how MS has evolved over the last year, but at the end of the day he is just part of a whole group of people. As he said – there are now more than 3000 MS bloggers talking about what they are interested in and I would like to know how much even more on the inside. That *is* change. And if somebody thinks that only because he leaves the company he will be out of contacts for knowledge – well, think again.

I agree with Chris Pirillo on this:

One would have to be insane to believe that you’d stop supporting Microsoft, personally or professionally, from this point forward. You were helping Microsoft long before you were working there. You continue: “I just made this decision and it got out before I was completely ready to talk about it.” Once the first pin dropped, there was nothing you could do to stop it (few people had heard of Beet.tv until tonight). Remember when you were first offered a job at Microsoft? Were you ready back then? I told you that you’d be crazy if you didn’t accept the position, and nothing could have prepared you for what was to come. And so, again, I say… congratulations.

Yes! Go for it! (It probably also helped that Patrick is living in California).

When speaking about how MS has not changed, I think people tend to forget (or not know about) how much strength, will and energy is needed to move a giant company like MS just a bit around. This is not done like in your favorite startup where you say “yoh guys, moving?” or alike. There is a reason why your first reaction to many things are “what will legal say to this?”, why you do not throw away your business plan every 6 months, why things move slower than in a start up, and and and – the list could go on forever. Is this an excuse for bigger corporations? Not at all.

Take a look at this:

VirtualTechEd.com launched late last week. It’s designed to highlight the best of TechEd including news commentary and on the ground interviews. We’ll be updating the site with video blogs now through TechEd about three times a day.

(Thanks to Steven Fielding for sending me the link!)

Well, that may not be so new and cute, but take a look at what it says at the moment:

Watch the keynote live from virtualteched.com Sunday at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, 4:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. The says World Cup games will be long over, so no excuses.

Pulling it together: 125,000 bottles of water…700 different learning experiences…13,000 mouths to feed

That is not corporate speech as we are used to. That is from my point of view an honest attemp to make my life easier, be of service. Need more? From the Teched Site:

Order the DVD Set
Because Tech·Ed 2006 sold out so early, we have reduced the DVD set price from $495US to $195US. The DVD set will include streaming media files of the Tech·Ed 2006 breakout sessions, strategic briefings, and keynote address. You will find additional bonus content, including hands-on lab manuals and related breakout session material.

It has started. People do get it – some more, some less, and things change. Now. If you are one of the guys helping seeding stuff for the first time and breaking ice and suddenly your work life revolves around harvesting, and doing the same stuff over and over again, what would you do? Exactly. Find new ground, new people, new chances.

I am excited to see a person like Robert draw even more attention to Podcasting and Videocasting in general. I am sure it will help Podtech tremendously to attract new clients because of his contacts. And I hope they offered Robert things he wanted out of his (work) life. I am curious to see if for example this will mean expanding their business into things like Second Life or others.

But let me tell you what I am most thrilled about: I like SFO and am likely to visit it more often. And the fact that he is moving there means she is too. And I love spending time with Maryam! :)

Tag(s): robertscoble, podtech, chances

But as I am finishing my article for the new printed podcast magazine called ID3mag (first edition to be launched in May), I would like to gather some of my dear readers comments on this question. I came about this topic when I talked to a what I call “just podcaster” about all those little things a blogger does automatically when they enter the podcasting space.

It is my take that even a basic blogger often knows more about how to market / present his blog in the Net to attract visitors far better than a ‘just podcasting’ podcaster. Later tends to care more about the audio than the surrounding ways and possibilities to enhance his visibility / findabilty.

Which is of course far better than a lousy blogger and podcaster, but in general the first will have more success through this. In the long run (or even the short) this will be a big problem for just podcasters, because when so many podcasts are available, listeners do what they are doing with websites and blogs now: Go to a search engine and type in some words they would like to see. Perhaps podcast + name of my hobby. Podcast directories, tags, and so on.

The blogging podcaster on the other side is somebody who sees podcasting as part of his personal publishing empire and likes to connect both ways, and perhaps even with other media as for example a picture stream, a frappr map etc. It is more natural for them to reach out for all those more text oriented possibilities and therefor they are – from my point of view – more successful with less effort.

Just some examples (and please remember that I am speaking in general):
Blogging podcasters are more sophisticated in the world of metadata: In blogging this is tags and categories, in podcasting this is proper ID3 tags. The search engines will soon start to pick up indexing and searching them and if you leave them out of the equation, you will have a disadvantage.

They are also more likely to write decent shownotes. Yes, they are a pain in the ass, but they know about the value of them for listeners, occasional listeners and especially search engines – the more audio driven just podcasters often don’t like to write. And if you link to other bloggers, they are very likely to follow the links back to you – marketing again.

Blogging podcasters are also most of the times trained in writing – they are bloggers after all. As it takes time to get into the blogging flow, a new, more audio driven podcaster might be overwhelmed by the audio / video already and does not see much sense in additional text.

The bloggers are also more trained in getting people to subscribe to their blog. Now that they want people to subscribe to their podcast they do have an headstart in this technology over newbies from the just podcasting arena.

If you read my examples you may get the feeling as if I would like to make a simple equation as in “blogging podcasters clever – just podcasters stupid” – which I am definitely not. Think of it more as that I think, that somebody drawn to both podcasting and blogging will have a much easier learning curve for the blogging part as somebody just interested into audio.

To bring this away from the most technical level: Somebody drawn to both sides of the publishing is also more likely to engage in comments on his / other peoples blog and tools like flickr, frappr and co. Engaging in conversations brings more active readers and listeners, which are then more likely to link to that person as well.

Networking and connecting through conversation are much more natural and help him and her get more successful in less time. Does this mean a just podcaster is lost and will have no success? Not at all. But it is more work for them and they have to bring themselves to doing all this stuff.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you have examples where it works as I describe it, or counter examples?

I would like to hear them and possible also integrate them into my article if they give me that time ;o)

Tag(s): podcasting, blogger, marketing, id3mag

But: I don’t see any feed. Til then, it is just another downloadable audio file, but not a podcast.

Would it make sense for MS to expend into podcasting? Hell it would, and video as well. There are so many ununsed channels to get in contact with the audience, and I don’t mean just buying customers, but the people helping MS sell software and hardware. But I am actually astonished that they call it a podcast – not because of the so called implying pod in podcasting, but because there is no feed!

Yes I know, slowly slowly and something about a big tanker …

Tag(s): microsoft podcast

Longer version:
I just updated my openbc page a bit when it struck me that I have posted on my German blog about it, said something in my last podcast about it, but did never actually tell you, the reader of this blog, about it. :)

As most people have a problem in understanding how somebody can have a day job and be a consultant, I did separate those two parts of my life in the past quite a lot. Which was no problem – my day job as being technical reporting backbone in controlling in a larger corporate environment does not at all mingle with my interest in helping people understand the digital world we are living in.

To help you understand this better: I do own a tshirt saying “caution – A-list blogger”. I got it from Toby when I guest moderated on the AMA marketing mailing list about the topic Podcasting last may and I like it a lot. I just could not wear it in “the real world” as I would be laughed at once. But I can wear it in the company, because most of them only know that blog is something funny Nicole does.

In the past it was also possible to have the job and the freelancing, but both sides got very time consuming and demanding in the last year – and a decision had to be made. So, why not keep the safe day job?

A look at the corporate life
Let me take a look at my corporate life: I do manage my (not so little) reporting empire with Excel, awk+grep and an OLAP database. I don’t have the talent for numbers which you need to have as a controller, but more for data and structures. Always painful having to check reports every time instead of just knowing or having a feel for it.

Also, we are heading more and more into the processes of SAP and our own world wide template. As I do have a good abstract thinking, I could do SAP – but this somehow feels like perl to me. I could learn it, but I don’t really want to. The spare moments which are really enjoyable are when I can help people, like for example understand Excel. And I love to streamline powerpoint presentations and give feedback on concepts.

My colleagues are nice and the job is not unpleasant, but somehow, something was missing. Which is why I started back in 98 to do trainings and later coaching with a friend of mine, who runs a consultancy here in Lübeck.

The second life
I spent a lot of time with entrepreneurs and developed some skills in confusing them. Also known as “giving them different ideas about how to make money”. Mainly oriented in getting them informed why they needed to be online, I also did coaching and consulting on topics like marketing, usability and how to sell. It all blends together if you are a creative, idea giving person with a special interest in some of those areas.

Being online.
First web sites but also Usenet, mailing lists, now blogs and podcasts. Not only consuming, but engaging and producing. This resonated so much more with me. Especially everything happening around podcasting.

I am blogging since 2003, but podcasting took me to the point where I started to go international. For some reasons, I did not like so much reading english for a long time and around me in my daily life, I have no chance in speaking or writing english. I started Useful Sounds to speak english. Writing in english and engaging with the international community also meant getting in contact with more like minded people than just through my german blog.

Going internationally also meant starting to visit conferences. Reboot does have a very special place in my heart for several things; one reason being that it was a test. I wanted to see if I would feel welcomed into this kind of community. It felt like home. Home, where you not have to explain what the things are you deal with every day and be ahead of the curve, but are challenged by the people around you.

At the end of Reboot, Thomas smiled and said to me when talking about next year “I bet you will be doing something very different next year”. Deep in my heart I already knew back then, that he was right.

Meeting the people I have met in the last months, be it online or offline, made me aware that I am part of this movement and I want to be an active one in this. I want to be challenging to people, I want to bring the topics further, especially in Europe, and see where we can get this whole thing. And it feels as if there is a change at the moment and the time is right to be available.

It is therefor not by accident that I am trying to end my job for the end of April (so it hopefully is done til end of May) so I can go to Reboot 8 and say “it is different now”. From what it looks like now I may be still doing for some months work in my old company for a day or two a week – I am kind of not replaceable in some parts – but the goal is to be ‘free’ for new stuff and be able to be rebooted in Copenhagen.

Of course my boss was not very thrilled, but given my past and what he also sees more as my talents, he somehow expected this to happen – well at least in 2008 or so. ;)

But, what will I be doing and what is my business idea? Glad you asked. I don’t have the short version, but Alex Bellinger made a very nice ~130 words summary for me.

Nicole in roughly 130 words:

Nicole is a European blogger and podcast pioneer with a passion for digital rights, social media and the way technology is revolutionising how we live and interact with each other. She has an eagle eye for detail and a talent for (beta) testing your products, ideas, business plans, and other things related to social media and the impact you can have.

Never shy of ‘expressing difficult truths’ or offering up stingingly constructive criticism, she is certainly cruel to be kind (http://crueltobekind.org), but leaves you feeling glad you asked for her help. As the queen of the pre-conference podcast, Nicole is a familiar face at major tech and social media events in Europe.

When she’s not extending her own personal blogging empire, Nicole enjoys consulting, teaching and speaking on how the online world can benefit business.

So when you ask me what I am going to do after leaving the company, my answer at the moment is “I think, vacation?”.

But to be honest, I have a rough idea what I can do to earn my living, but I really will need some time for myself to focus on what exactly it is I want to do. Be it to blog more, differently, for money, do more podcast, more training, coaching, evangelizing, a professional feedback person or in the end just end up with another day job, I don’t know what will come. But I am sure that my talents will make it possible for me to earn money. Yes, I do have savings, I am not that naive. ;)

Of course this is frightening, but it feels like the right step to do. I was bound by my job in the past, but I will be free soon. There are different venues where it can go from here and I want to be able to travel those roads. They will be rocky, there will be downsides, but I think that in the end, I will be much happier with it.

So, just to let you know what will be coming. And one advantage of having more time to write? It also means more time to edit and have shorter posts. ;o)

While at the Web 2.0 Conference, I asked a number of entrepreneurs what they thought “Web 2.0″ was. While I didn’t get a whole lot of substantive answers, I did get a bunch of fun ones. Listen to what Caterina Fake, Toni Schneider, Ross Mayfield, Stewart Butterfield, Joshua Schachter, Anil Dash, James Joaquin, Evan Williams, and many more had to say.

This would not work as text, but it works perfectly as a audio.