June, 2008 | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Podcasting 107: Posting Your Podcast Episode

Here is a slidecast with audio showing and telling the steps involved in posting an audio file to a wordpress.com blog. Please check out the prerequisites in the Podcasting curriculum to prepare you for creating your first podcast episode.

Now that you’ve seen how it’s done, it’s time for you to join the fun.

Assignments:

Create and prepare an audio file using Audacity and iTunes (See Podcasting 103 and 104 for instructions.)
Get your own wordpress.com blog if you haven’t started one already, or at least get a username so I can add you as an author for the SMUG Podcast Blog.
Ask to be added as an author, and tell me the title you would like to use for your podcast.
Create a new post that includes your audio file.
Post the link to your post in the comments below.
Get ready for Podcasting 108, 109 and 110 which will tell you how to subscribe to your podcast, enhance your feeds and promote your podcast’s existence.

Updated: The file type Toby had sent me was a .m4a, which I could play in iTunes but which doesn’t appear to be a type recognized for podcasts. I will try to get this as an mp3 so we can move to the next stage.

Still Later: I converted Toby’s file to an mp3 using iTunes, and now it works. In Podcasting 108 I will show you how to subscribe to your podcast (or Toby’s), and where the information you put in the blog post appears in iTunes.

Podcasting 106: Creating an RSS Feed

We have a volunteer to be the class podcasting example. Toby Palmer has done the narration of his children’s book Lilly and the Russet Gigantus, and wants to make a podcast of the narration.

So we will start by creating a category in the SMUG Podcast blog, which I have to do for him as an administrator. I can do this quickly and easily because Toby has used WordPress.com to host his blog.

Once I hit the Add User button, we see that Toby is now added as an Author on the SMUG Podcast Blog. He remains an Administrator on his own blog. By being part of the WordPress.com community, you can have some blogs on which you are the Administrator or an Editor, and you can be an Author or Contributor on others. This graphic shows Toby as an Author:

Continue reading “Podcasting 106: Creating an RSS Feed”

Over the Rainbow and A Wonderful (Digital) World

This morning before we started a big department-wide meeting at work, this song was being played, and it drove me nuts. I love this version of “Over the Rainbow” and I knew I had heard it in a film or on a TV show, but I couldn’t remember where.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A2Jt4WOxN8]

Thankfully, searches in iTunes and through Google reminded me fairly quickly that this had been used in LOST. I remembered how much I liked it, and listened to it again a couple of times.

So it was kind of eerie to read in the YouTube comments on this video tonight that it had been played at the end of the memorial service for Tim Russert earlier today. I hadn’t thought of this song for several months.

It’s also sad to discover a musician I really like and find out his name, only to realize he died 11 years ago at the age of 38. His name was unpronounceable: Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. I guess that’s why his nickname was IZ. So while I can explore some of his music, but unfortunately there won’t be any more of it.

My, how things have changed in a generation…or actually just since about 2002. Formerly if you thought of a song you didn’t own and wanted to hear it, you called in a request on your local radio station, or had to drive to a music store and buy a full CD.

Now we can buy a single track for 99 cents on iTunes and hear it immediately…and some songs are available for free on YouTube.

So I think to myself: what a wonderful (digital) world.

Michael Davis’ General Mills Presentation

Michael Davis from General Mills is giving a presentation this morning to our Mayo Clinic Public Affairs meeting. General Mills is the only other Minnesota-based company (besides Mayo Clinic) that is in the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For. Michael is the Senior Vice President for Global Human Resources.

Michael talked about how General Mills tries to strike the balance between a high-performance culture and a family-friendly environment. The company also has a legacy of community involvement, with 80 percent of its employees volunteering in the community, and the company gave over $80 million charitably last year.

The company mission is Nourishing Lives. They want to both nourish the communities they are in, as well as the people.

Located on the banks of the Mississippi, General Mills had a significant disaster in 1878 when its mill exploded. Mayo Clinic also had a disaster in its origins, with the Rochester tornado of 1883.

General Mills is working sustainability, having set goals of reducing energy usage, greenhouse gas, solid wast and water usage by 5 percent to 15 percent between 2005 and 2010.

For employee amenities, they have put an auto service station on their parking lot. They have a summer hours program that lets people work 45 minutes longer M-F and then quit 3 hours early on Fridays.

Mike says Commitment has been the only factor proven to correlate with high performance, so they have reverse engineered the factors involved in creating commitment.

Forbes just named General Mills to its list of World’s Most Respected Companies. This led to a highly favorable story on WCCO TV. The story also mentions Terri Gruca’s reporter blog, which has a post on other highly ranked Minnesota employers, including…Mayo Clinic.