ALL TOGETHER NOW
I had the pleasure on being a co-guest with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch yesterday, on an "interactive podcast" hosted by the founder and CEO of Waxxi.us, Tracy Sheridan.
What's an interactive podcast, you ask? Well, as Waxxi's site describes it:
"An interactive, participatory, podcast is one in which you, the audience (or ‘podience’) member, can participate in the conversation – or the podcast – and have an opportunity to ask questions of the podcast guests..."
An additional enhancement is the ability to have all the participants involved in a real-time IM (instant messaging) chat window. The ability to see real-time reactions, comments and questions by the audience as we were speaking, was an added plus.
Members of the audience were readers, listeners, and active participants in the event, all at the same time.
Having done countless conference calls over the years, this experience was a memorable one because of the interactive features.
As the technologies evolve, one can see a whole host of additional features (real-time audience surveys, immediately shareable transcripts/audio/video clips etc.) morphing group conference calls to a much more participative experience for all parties.
More info on yesterday's podcast is available here.
I also had fun listening to Michael Arrington's thoughts on the current Web 2.0 environment, with the on-going examples of the on-going array of new companies that are introducing new products and services.
He was particularly jazzed about a company called Zlango yesterday, a company he posted on a couple of days ago. It's an Israeli company that is introducing a cool, user-expandable pictorial language that can be used in SMS chats on cell phones around the world.
Anecdotally, in the year that TechCrunch has been introducing and reviewing the latest and greatest from the Web 2.0 world, I count 622 companies and product announcements so far, as of yesterday. That's almost 2 per day. And these are the filtered ones from the far greater number that Michael sees coming through every day.
I don't know how Michael and his team keep up with them all. But I'm glad they do.
My thanks also to Tracy and her team for making the whole experience smooth, fun, and informative.
Nice talking with you, the podcast was a lot of fun.
Posted by: David | Friday, June 30, 2006 at 08:14 PM