Citizen Media Watch

If you’re a Swede and interested in what’s happening on the web and in new media, I’m sure you can’t have missed the podcast What’s Next. With a background in radio journalism, hosts Tomas Wennström and Kristin Heinonen are doing a great job keeping us updated about news in this field. They are also very creative in other ways. For instance check out this presentation of their suggestion as to how Swedish paper Sydsvenska Dagbladet could improve their website.

During SIME, the What’s Next duo did several recordings, and Citizen Media Watch filmed this clip from a session last Wednesday. Apart from Tomas and Kristin, the panel consists of Björn Falkevik, Anton Johansson and Fredrik Wass.

For those of you who don’t understand Swedish, you can see this as an example of how you can make a great podcast production with very simple means.

Karin Høgh’s focus in her presentation on Podcamp was usability, and by giving a multitude of examples she showed that this is not something that podcasters have given much thought. Starting out, she gave her definition of a podcast, which you can see above. She also pointed out that this excludes streaming radio or sites that simply publish a download link to an audio file.
Thomas Plessis objected, saying there’s not necessarily a need for an RSS feed.
- Most people want to listen on the website, he said.
- The definition is something we have to talk about, Karin Høgh replied. For me the feed is important, that you can subscribe and bring it with you automatically.
Among the difficulties possible podcast subscribers encounter are:

• Confusing buttons and instructions for subscriptions
• Language barriers – for instance, which gender is the word podcast in languages where this is relevant?
• definitions – is video also a podcast, and if not, what do you call it?
• People wonder: Do you need an iPod to listen?
• People wonder: What’s an RSS feed?
• People wonder: Aggregator – strange word
• People wonder: Syndication -”something with unions?”
• People wonder: Subscribe? – I don’t want to give them my credit card!
• People wonder: Synchronization – what is that?

…and get no answers.
Richard Gatarski commented:
– Most publishers don’t care about usability because it costs money and it’s an experiment. They think people who want to listen will figure it out.
Karin Høgh mentioned a number of important factors in usability for podcasters: Keep it simple, don’t use the word “subscribe”, keep it accessible for all – non savvies, stupid people, the blind, colour blind, old people etc.
- Do we need standards?, she asked.
– I think we do, so as less advanced people can start doing this.
Her solution is a service called PodHandle, which is supposed to do all of this for you in easy steps. It looked simple enough, but I am also quite sure there are a number of similar services already available.

To check out all my photos from Podcamp, check out to my Podcamp Flickr set.

The Swedish Podcast Awards were won by Finns. The overall award went to X3M Radio Pleppo. Congratulations!

The price ceremony, which was held at Podcamp Europe, was quite small, with just one of the winners present. Nevertheless it’s a really good initiative, putting focus on podcasting and the development we’re seeing in this field.

This year, two new categories were added. Best original podcast and Best amateur podcast. This is a way to balance the domination from mainstream media. Both categories were won by Disco Belle.

The other winners are:
Best music: Disco Belle
Best technology/science: The Nerd Herd
Best humor: X3M Radio Pleppo
Best culture/entertainment: DN på Stan (de enda(!) som var där för att hämta priset)
Best news, economy, society: P3 Dokumentär
Best pod tv: SVT Rapport
Best foreign podcast: Keith and the Girl

To check out all my photos from Podcamp, check out to my Podcamp Flickr set.

Thomas Plessis, CEO of Play 6, and associate dir. of radiopodcast.com, is talking about media convergence and the importance of great content. He’s naming all the aspects of podcasting, like production, tools, jingles, subject…

You have to make different products for different media though, Plessis says.
- You can’t put the same thing on podcast as on mobile phone. The phone has a limit of 2-3 minutes.
But at radiopodcast.com most podcasts are that short on the web too. There are some 20 shows.
Sometimes they do podcasts in both audio and video at the same time.

To check out all my photos from Podcamp, check out to my Podcamp Flickr set.

Btw, Anton and Gitta are also live blogging from Podcamp.

After some pretty bad network problems everything seems to be up and running at Podcamp Europe. I spent the greater part of Christopher Penn’s talk on marketing aspects of podcasting working out these network problems, but here’s what I snapped up.

He talked a lot about evangelists, the people who really like your podcast and so they market it for free. And so you have to give something back to them, to make them want to keep doing it. He mentioned live videos from your podcasts, free cds that bands might send you, have competions where the first people who mail in might get some freebies etc.
Also it’s a good idea to make places for them to hang out.

He had a bunch of useful advice on important features on the podcast’s website.

• You need text to accompany your media.
• It might be a good idea to have mailing lists or send lists with show notes, news etc.
• Have your first episde available for people who are new to your podcast.
• Give your visitors things to do on your site, obvious calls to action.
• Subscription has to be one click, or you’ll lose listeners.
• Offer both download and direct play options.

More advice form Christopher Penn:
It’s important how you name your show – the name needs to be easy to share by word of mouth.
Add your subscription buttons to your social media profiles on for instance Facebook or MySpace.
Use the analytics – see who’s visiting your site, who is linking to you, and go to their site and connect.

A couple of services mentioned:
Reactee.com – you print t-shirts, they set up an sms gateway, and people can text message it and get your url in return
crazyegg.com – shows where on my web page ppl are clicking
feedburner.com – offers good statistics

To check out all my photos from Podcamp, check out to my Podcamp Flickr set.

PodCamp Europe is coming up in ten days (June 12-13, in Stockholm, Sweden), and by the looks of it it will be a cool event. But there are still slots to fill in the presentation schedule. If you have something to say about podcasting, blogging or social media in general, don’t miss out on this opportunity.

What is PodCamp Europe? It’s an UnConference of podcasters, bloggers, and new media professionals & amateurs for two days to share, explore, challenge, and grow our abilities in new media. Learn about audio and video podcasting, blogging, photography, Second Life, Twitter, and all kinds of other new and social media tools. Whether you’re a veteran or interested in getting started, PodCamp is for YOU.

My personal requests/wishes for speakers/topics:

• it would be nice to get a presentation from the guys from Twingly (who are coming to PodCamp anyway)
• something on vlogging and how it’s developed
• community management and trolls
• creativity at the core – why all this tech stuff is just different tools of expression. I’d like to hear this from someone who expresses herself/himself creatively, an inspiring pep-talk with an artist’s perspective on the web, with examples of creative projects to join or steal ideas from ; )
• gadgets – what are the best options for blogging and podcasting today
• someone from trig.com – how’s it going?

What would you like to hear?

If you don’t want to make a presentation, make sure to sign up as a participant for PodCamp Europe anyway. If Hey2007 was cool in the way interaction and blogging in different ways was encouraged, I am hoping an unconference will be even more so. And as far as I know this will be the first unconference to be held in Sweden.

Anyone who can make it to Stockholm on June 12-13 should check out PodCamp Europe. I’m quite excited to hear about what is most likely Sweden’s first unconference. The concept is that the knowledge stems from the audience, so everyone is a potential speaker. And yeah, the event is free!
I’ve registered and really hope to make it.

What is PodCamp Europe? It’s an UnConference of podcasters, bloggers, and new media professionals & amateurs for two days to share, explore, challenge, and grow our abilities in new media. Learn about audio and video podcasting, blogging, photography, Second Life, Twitter, and all kinds of other new and social media tools. Whether you’re a veteran or interested in getting started, PodCamp is for YOU.

(via Media Culpa)

A survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project (The report states: “The Pew Internet Project is a non-partisan, non-profit research center that examines the social impact of the internet. It is part of the Pew Research Center and is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.”) states that podcast usage in the States is up from 7 percent in January/February this year to 12 percent today. But those numbers are based on the percentage that has downloaded a podcast at any point, ever. In both surveys, just 1 percent download a podcast on any one typical day. Note the low response rate though: 28 percent.
More results:

Men are more likely than women to report podcast downloading; 15% of online men say they have downloaded a podcast, compared with just 8% of online women. And those who have used the internet for six or more years are twice as likely as those who have been online three years or less to have downloaded a podcast (13% vs. 6%).

While podcasting audience is growing, it is still marginal. Mark Glaser at MediaShift has made an intersting observation when it comes to how the survey’s been covered by traditional media and blogs, listing some of the headlines about it. It’s quite a big difference between “34 million ears perked for podcasts” (eMarketer) and “Podcasting falls on deaf ears” (PC Authority).
Yes, how indeed do you interpret the result? The main problem, Glaser writes, is that the survey is too shallow.

OK, millions of people are downloading podcasts, but do they eventually listen to or watch them? How often? And do they listen to podcasts online with streaming audio instead of downloading them? And do they listen to the whole thing or just bits and pieces? It seems like every piece of data we get about podcast usage spawns more questions.

More research in this field is indeed needed. I’d like to see some numbers for Sweden too. My guess is that the numbers are even lower in Sweden, but that’s just a guess.