February 2005

I take pride in my visionary skills and open-mindedness, but I must admit that I did not see podcasts coming. There are many possible explanations why this one got past me; the importance of which continues to befuddle my imagination.

Possible explanations:

1. I’m not as mentally agile as I used to be; three grandkids remind of this on a regular basis.
2. Burying knowledge in a binary file that cannot be easily searched is a bad idea.
3. The word “pod” creeps me out (see Aliens).
4. If it doesn’t start with “Law and Order” or have “nizzle” in it, I just don’t pay any attention.
5. It’s a flash in the pan - only Trump could rescue this idea.

I have a feeling there is something of great value and usefulness about podcasting, but I think I need a cerebral reboot to get the right perspective. In a sense, this is the opposite of a blog post; you provide the insights.

Assertions:

• Capturing digital audio and producing interviews is easier, but not a frictionless process.
• Audio files are difficult to search and require lots of meta-data to be a source of knowledge discovery.
• It’s difficult to quote something that was said in a podcast.
• While a podcast may have a discrete URL, a point within the podcast cannot.
• People read much faster than other people talk; this is slow knowledge distribution model.
• It’s difficult for a team of people to use a podcast or discuss it.
• It’s almost impossible for a podcast to provide links to anything.

Questions:

• Is podcasting an important new idea that public relations can benefit from?
• Isn’t this idea something that scares PR people?
• Is podcasting useful to enterprises (e.g., km)?
• Do you listen to podcasts?
• Is RSS a requirement for a collection of audio snippets to be labeled as a “podcast”?
• Is there a market for a podcast search engine?

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You’ve probably all seen the three proverbial wise monkeys: see no, hear no, speak no. I like this, in fact so much that we adopted the mantra with a twist as a tagline on our own internal blog: see know…, hear know…, speak know…. And why?

Well four years ago, I sat in a ballroom at the PRSA World Congress event in Chicago in what was being billed as their first ever half-day seminar devoted to high tech PR. It was an informative meeting, but I kept getting the sense that the field of tech PR was still trying to discover itself, or better yet, make its mark. There was a lot of interaction, with everyone sharing best practices, but the one theme that permeated the meeting, was the need for practicioners to “be in the know.”

I keyed in on that phrase and have made good use of it in trainings, presentations, regular interaction, etc. ever since. The reason is because it couldn’t be more right. In PR, as in life, knowledge is king. Ask any journalist what their PR pet peeves are and the odds are very good that there will be a common thread traced back to a lack of knowledge, a lack of understanding of a publication, a lack of understanding of a beat, a lack of understanding of a client and their technology, and a lack of understanding of the industry.

Several years ago, I was on a teleconference with Ned Desmond, president and publisher of the former eCompany Now and Business 2.0, when he pointed out this pet peeve. What stood out to me from that conversation was that Desmond said he would actually spend 30 minutes on the phone with a PR rep, regardless of whether they were junior or not, if they could demonstrate a sound knowledge and engage him in a conversation–”being in the know.”

I believed that was true for Ned then and I believe it is true for many media today. It’s true for me. Engage me with knowledge, where I can see the value in the conversation, and I’ll more than listen. That’s the power of this new sphere, of “relations”–the sharing of knowledge and contributing to “being in the know.” See it, hear it, speak it.

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