I think Tracy Sheridan’s Waxxi is a great idea: a scheduled podcast where people can call in and participate (Frank Gruber has more). The kickoff podcast is with Naked Converstions authors Shel Israel and Robert Scoble, on May 20, 2006 at 10:30 AM PST. If you would like to participate, register on the Waxxi homepage and you will receive a toll free number to call and a participation code. I do not know if there is a limit on the number of participants.
I have some unanswered questions about how the podcast will be handled. With a large number of participants anyone’s chance to actually talk much will be extremely limited. And I hope they will have some form of moderation to allow the host to keep control of the conversation (this is how public company earnings calls are handled – you press a button if you would like to ask a question and the host chooses you at the right time). A party line with dozens or hundreds of people would just be a mess. Also, Waxxi will have a simultaneous chat/im session running with the podcast. This is a great idea – and I hope that the transcript will be available along with the podcast (what we really need is a way to listen to the podcast with the IM archive rolling along at real time as well, but that would require the buidling of specific client software, something I don’t see suggested from the Waxxi site.
There are other experiments in this area as well. Skype just released a new product called Skypecasts, which allows moderated Skype calls with up to 100 participants. Although Skype does not have a record call feature, there are third party services that allow this (minus the simultaneous chat IM, though).
And Podserve has taken a different approach – allowing people to create feeds that a group of people, or anyone, can contribute to. They call it social podcasting.
I plan on participating in the first Waxxi podcast, although I’ll be calling in from Europe and there may be time difference difficulties. It’ll be interesting to see if this catches on.
Hmmmmmmmmmm………. I am not sure if mass podcasts are the way to go. It might end up like a public chat room with masses of people butting in with totally random stuff.
Might be ok if the number of people are limited and some kind of order is imposed on turn taking.
But sykpecast’s 100 participants? Gives me a headache just thinking about it!
Doing anything interesting over here in Europe?
This is really interesting. Ilm looking forward for cool interviews done using this.
Pedantic point:
waxxilogo.gif href linking to http://www.waxi.us/ and not http://www.waxxi.us/.
Hey this is a good article. I like it. I hope this goes forward.
Isn’t this a webcast, of the sort that has existed for seemingly time eternal? There are countless call in shows, immediately streamable.
I don’t get what’s new, or innovative, about this, apart from calling it a Web 2.0-esque podcast.
Just giving you a heads up.. The first logo\image for the site listed in your article links to waxi.us rather than waxxi.us. Its just one of those typosquatter websites, i hate them! (Dont we all)
Winner takes all.
A certain form of modification should be used to handle the number of participants, otherwise the whole discussion will trun into chaos. But this new kind of collective podcasting is very interesting and I think it will get popluar in near future.
Mike,
Thanks for the review of waxxi! To answer some questions posed in the comments and in your post:
* the limit for waxxi’s first event is 800 participants, however this may be increased to 5,000+ for future interactive podcasts
* the podcast will be moderated so that control is maintained, however the idea is to give the floor to the people (the participants). Everyone will have the chance to “raise their hand” and ask a question
* with hundreds (or thousands) of people participating the opportunity to speak will be limited, just as it is after a keynote speech at an industry conference. However *after* the event everyone will have a chance to be heard, collaborate, and push the conversation to the next level (for example, with integrated Skypecasts within the waxxi community)
* While we don’t yet have real-time transcripting via IM in place, we will have “hallway chats” available during the event, via IM, on the waxxi site.
* People from China, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, Lebanon, the UK, and across the US have signed up so far. We will also be initiating some of the events from Europe.
Waxxi will also launch as a business-focused global social network. The groups will be formed around the interactive podcast topics (e.g., business blogging, today’s web, +) and by the demand, or suggestions, of members. More to come on that.
Tracy
PS: now we know what it’s like to be (Tech)Crunched.
Thanks for the PodServe mention. Brian has changed the name from social podcasts to group podcasts (to be reflected in our GUI redesign next month). Read more here:
http://biginjap...swork.com/?p=55
A custom client is no longer needed. You need to start following the Jabber community. All that’s needed is a Jabber client like Google Talk, some custom conferencing code on a server, and a mob.
With a Jingle enabeled client you should be able to listen to the “pod”cast while also participating in the chat. No special client needed!
I’m all for more innovations for podcasting, and I’ll be interested to hear the results of this tweak. For some perspective the best of the call-in talk shows on public radio relentlessly screen, nurture, and fret about the calls that come in – trying to balance the goal of getting genuine public voices in the mix with creating something listenable, interesting, informative, credible, etc. It ain’t easy, and you can hear lots of efforts that fall short.
As we celebrate and promote and explore the democratic promise of this technology we shouldn’t lose track of the things that make effective media.
From what I’ve heard Skypecasts isn’t very good at the moment. If you listen to the beginning of the last episode of ITT (In The Trenches – a very good IT podcast) you will hear theri opinion aswell a small recording of a show which they tried to record with Skypecast.
How is this different than Microsoft’s webcasts?
How is this different then Webinars (or Web Seminars)? Seems like a old wine in new bottle!
Apologies for the blatent advertising – for those looking for individual phone blogging have a look at http://www.phoneblogz.com. We offer direct phone blogging to your blog site on your server.
Waxxi is something that will work in practise way better than regular podcasts. We’ve been doing the same thing over at our xuqa podcasts (having users call into a scheduled podcast, but pre-screening them) and people really love being “in” the show. simulates the feeling of being on Oprah
I’m doing a Skypecast tomorrow (details at my blog) on business blogging as sort of an experiment. I look forward to testing out Waxxi as well. I think the real value in tools like these is in bringing people together in new ways. I’m excited to hear some voices for the first time – I mean actually HEAR them, instead of reading their output!
Quite simply, the audio quality from recorded phone messages will never be as good as something recorded client-side on a computer.
MyChingo Audio Comment System (http://www.mychingo.com) is the answer for you.
It uses a client-side java applet for the recorder, and flash-based for a publically available audio player.
You control whether or not the messages are automatically made public.
Download or delete MP3 messages from your membership control panel.
If the big deal is to wrap up all of the MP3 messages into an RSS Feed, well, then it’s not a big deal at all. Since I developed feedthenetwork.com, I’ve learned more than I wanted to know about RSS feeds. So feeds could be done from mychingo.com as well, but you should think twice about non-coherent messages in a feed, and if that is really what people want to listen to.
It makes much more sense for the podcaster to insert the relevent MP3 audio feedback into the next episode of their podcast.
Michael Bailey
MyChingo Audio Comment System
http://www.mychingo.com
Well, Waxxi has the chat box set up for the conversation tomorrow morning, but it looks like it’s simply built into the page and you’re in the chat by simply being on the page. It seems to me that these IM “hallway chats” are very likely going to be more crowded than some large auditoriums I’ve been in.
Timothy,
Yes, you could bery well be correct.
We’ve taken a look at scenarios such as that, and have built into MyChingo, the ability to “lock” the conference – so, once all the people have entered, locking the conference room door, and take care of business.
Michael
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