Kindergarten Podcasting

So, I read this post over at Roland's blog and got suckered into listening to a Dave Winer podcast. Not a mistake I'll make again in a hurry. To summarize - and save you the bother of listening to Dave ramble for 18 whole minutes, people don't criticize kindergarten kid's drawings because they don't want to discourage them from being creative. And so likewise, early podcasters should not be criticized on the basis of production values because we want to see a thousand flowers bloom etc etc*.

This is stupid, as I pointed out in my comments to Roland, an amateur podcaster is not completely innocent - in the way that children so obviously are - regarding the competitive landscape in which their efforts have to be seen. In the case of podcasting I mean the competition to be taken seriously as a voice, not a competition in commercial terms.

Anyway, I was chatting to DJ about this, and he suggested that podcasts should be forced to follow the rules of BBC Radio 4's "Just A Minute" - in other words, "talk on a subject for sixty seconds without hesitation, repetition or deviation". This is such a brilliant idea that it really deserves recognition. DJ also has invented a term for this - JAMCasting. I for one welcome our new JAMCasting overlords.

(* if Dave is reading, and objects to my summary - well, maybe if you'd written a blog post instead of a rambling 18-minute podcast I wouldn't have had to summarize it myself and there would be less room for misinterpretation. Writing is quite handy for that sort of thing, so my attorney tells me. )

(Updated at the insistence of Mr. Walker-Morgan's trademark attorneys: it's JAMCasting, not JamCasting.)

Comments

[Roland Tanglao]

i didn't mean to s*cker you in or anybody else! in the future, i will be more descriptive of the podcasts i link to it! my apologies for any wasted time!

[Mark Allerton]

Well, I suppose I could have stopped listening before the 18 minutes were up. I just kept hoping he would get to the point sometime soon - I guess I am just gullible.

[Dennis Pilarinos]

Mark: This is one of my favorite blog entries I've read in a long time. Your point is (as usual) eloquently stated...