Revision 3 and the Pixel Corps

This morning's keynote was given by Revision 3 boss Jim Louderback. He mainly spoke about Revision 3's business end and how they've developed their content, such as Diggnation, around identifiable hosts with ties to the community (and not dumb blondes, to paraphrase him). Of course, Diggnation is a pretty strong example of community, as readers submit and vote on stories at Digg, which in turn leads to them being highlighted on the front page and in the subsequent podcast. Hence a built-in community around the site and a show that helps people feel "empowered," to use Louderback's word.

He also talked a bit about advertising (down with pre-roll!) and also about how new media is affecting old media. So of course I flagged him down after the presentation and asked him for thoughts on how newspapers can better use new media techniques. Funnily enough, he asked me if I had ever seen or heard of The 1Up Show, which happens to be one of my favorites (Jen is forced to listen to me singing the theme all the time). He suggested a similar format for a paper podcast, with a mix of different departments and a "what's happening in the newsroom" sort of vibe. (He seems to think big-name writers and columnists still write from their desks as opposed to filing remotely.) Still, you can't argue with it - The 1Up Show really is extremely well done.

Following that, I met up with Davina and we headed up to Alex Lindsay (of Pixel Corps and MacBreak Weekly fame), and he gave a great lecture on how the MacBreak video podcast is done, along with some other projects, including Food Science with Kirsten Sanford, aka Dr. Kiki, who was in the audience and sat there looking embarrassed (and also cute). I liked what he had to say about podcast length and frequency, basically 30-90 minutes for audio, 3-8 minutes for video.

Any more, especially with video, and people start to tune out. Also, once a week is perfect for both. More than once a week, people feel overwhelmed; less than once a week, they forget about it.

He also showed a video podcast that would make an awesome model for something to put together on our own site, if we can work out the (numerous) kinks.