OiRc 0000.9 Intro into the pod/vodcasts

OiRc 0000.9

My name is Charles-A. Rovira and I'll be your host through this series of audio and video essays, though this feature is not strictly speaking an essay. Thesis, synthesis and conclusion are attempted here, but not strictly adhered to.

Since I am still learning this I am still not able to get podcast to you. This line of text will be replaced by the appropriate XML to RSS a pod/vod-cast to your machines as soon as I figure out how.

On this cast we're going to cover:

• What is a vodcast?

Its a video that is narrow cast to an iPod or to any computer that can download the files and play them. It relies on the internet to transfer content that you want, when you want. It also relies on sites, such as this one, to aggregate the information about the vodcasts so that it can be googled by those interested without you being inconvenienced by irrelevancies.

• Why vodcasting?

That's actually a fair question. In my case its because I have things to show people so it needs the video. Some episodes, like this one, won't need more than an honest face and a smile. Some episodes will need to highlight some techniques in topology.

I'd like to cover some technical matters like

1. cost, ($500 to $5,000 to $xxxx)
2. equipment – the equipment is starting from the barest bones, an iMac, an iSight web cam, and a host where I am putting up the content to an audio and video rig and some special effects software like a green screen, so I can merge virtual backgrounds (saving me the expense of building some real ones,)
3. software - most of it is free or extremely affordable, it lets me record, resequence, segment, tag upload, prepare and deliver my content to my website and to the aggregator.
4. time – it does take some time, some research, some training.
5. skill - I have none, so that's no longer a barrier to entry.

• What does this mean to my courses at MCNY?

It is after all an opportunity for me to advance my education as much as anything else.

We could look at Media studies; I'm a Canadian and a creature of the age of MacLuhan after all. I wonder what he would have made of the internet and its influence on media.

It breaks the synchronous nature of broad casting, where the broadcasters are selling access to 1,440 minutes in the day over a very limited number of channels and the audience, me and thee, is not in control of anything. It supplants it with near total control over the content you download and the content you upload.

The uploading of content means that you, the audience, is a participant in the media. You can contribute something. You are not prevented from having your say because of the traditional high barier to entry.

Here is a new point of view that is:

• anti-Leibnitz or at least Leibnitz's intent. An Apple computer ad said it best back in 1985 when they were creating desk top publishing: The power of the press belongs to those who own one. The concept was that now anybody could own one; even you, the lowly computer user, who had about five or ten or fifteen thousand bucks to spend on Apple equipment. The economics of publishing were such that even those atrocious sums gave rise to desktop publishing as a viable concept. Since my father was a printer, I can attest to the truth of the economics.
• anti-corporate. ClearChannel, Infinity Broadcasting, News Corporation & the other remaining members of the shrinking media cabal don't control this phenomenon; it is in fact a response to the abuses by the corporatists that are taking over more and more of our media and taking more and more time from any remaining content,
• democratic. As people take control of the content, instead of merely being subjected to whatever is approved for consumption, the number of voices out there (out here?) is growing.
  

Podcasts are, or can be, indexable, searchable and they can persist, just as books did, do and will continue to. We're not going to be rid of the broadcasters but we will be able to make our voices hear and our vision seen.

I am also pleased that content is available without advertising, or at least it can be, since the producers can recoup their costs without having to pay ungodly amounts for media distribution.

The cost component is becoming a bigger and bigger piece of the production of the content, because the content is delivered asynchronously, so you don't have to sit there while the clock is ticking, on the 1,440 minutes per day.

This frees the content provider from the tyranny of the clock because a one hour program could become a one hour and twenty minute program. You can make the format fit the content instead of trying to flesh out or shoehorn the content into a time slot.

That makes a consirable diference to the concept of what content is, what it can be, who pays for it, how it is paid for, how it is found, distributed, sought and delivered. (And I'd rather pay for content and get just content.)

That shift will put the traditional distribution network under severe stress since they have made their fortunes by selling something they have no real control over, your time, by controlling everything and anything you could watch and/or hear.

What is liberating content is the influence of the internet when combined with the empowering influence of the personal computer to producecontent.

We will explore one aspect of this with respect to my own obsession: the objects, instances, relationships and connections of the title and which make up the elements of my model of the world.

Lets take the focus of this semester: Managing Financial Resources which is the subject of my next piece.