The Conversations Network Announcements
The audio version of The Conversations Network Newsletter. Topics include help wanted (website editors), descriptions on iPods and iPhones (a new feature), "did you know?" about Personal Playlists and the SmartPlaylist Manager and following us on Facebook and Twitter.
The audio version of The Conversations Network Newsletter. Topics include our quarterly conference call, help wanted (website editors), SpokenWord.org (APIs and strategy discussion groups), RSS feeds for individual series and following us on Twitter.
The first SpokenWord.org town-hall meeting conference call was held on August 27, 2009. Included in the discussion: a review of the most-requested new features, a discussion of the new APIs and new strategic directions for the site.
Lots of big news in this podcast: IT Conversations (our flagship channel) celebrates its fifth birthday; Google Grants supports The Conversations Network; ;08 Conversations, our latest channel, covers the 2008 U.S. Presidential election; Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood bring their StackOverflow podcast to IT Conversations; and we give you a sneak preview of The Conversations Network - Phase 2 strategy.
We've been busy for the past two months! In this update, learn about the new web sites for each of our channels along with some new features such as Share With a Friend and Badges for your website or blog. Learn who's now on our Board of Directors after last month's meeting. And for those of you who subscribe via RSS, check your subscriptions. We've made some changes/
Doug announces a major new feature: the SmartPlaylist Manager. Now you can customize your Personal Playlist to receive and hear only the programs you select by keyword, series or channel. If you're a paid member, your Personal Playlist will automatically include the Premium Edition versions of our programs, and you can even subscribe to your Personal Playlist via RSS. Doug also delivers an audio version of his Algebra of Quality essay and announces new editorial policies guaranteed to improve the quality of our programs.
Lots of news: premium versions of our programs (for paid members) without the music, intros and other promotional messages and the return of comments and the Excerpt feature to our detail pages.
2007 was a great year for The Conversations Network. 396 new programs. (!,557 total in the archives.) More than 250,000 unique listeners. 405 paid members since we started that option two years ago. But less than 0.2% of our listeners donate or pay for membership. Also: our Facebook Cause, a new Skype for Interviews video and Help Wanted: Audio Engineers.
Doug Kaye, Executive Director, announces Media Conversations an all-new channel on The Conversations Network. The first series on the channel is Future Talks, an interview-format program with futurists Gerd Leonhard and Glen Hiemstra. Future Talks is the first series on The Conversations Network produced in video as well as audio. It will run for the next ten weeks, with a new episode released every Tuesday.
This brief program is an update from The Conversations Network's Executive Director, Doug Kaye. Topics include the status of the re-integration of IT Conversations into The Conversations Network, a pitch for new volunteers, a new version of The Levelator, and The Conversations Network's plans for the Podcast and New Media Expo.