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Why @podcaststockton will win

@podcastStockton is a pillar of the tech community in Stockton, and San Joaquin County for that matter. I have been marginally entertained with the caliber of guests that @pghMatt has been able to secure for the podcasting faithful to listen to. I say marginally, because truthfully I really don’t care much for the human interest story unless it involves tech in some manner. Whether I like all the features or not, I must commend @podcastStockton for their contribution to this dichotomy we refer to as Stockton, as I sit here and pound out criticism of a positive thing. Reason #666 that blogging is evil.

My use of the adjective “marginally” might sound to some as a diss to a homey. Well it’s not, it’s my viewpoint. I must say though that since episode 17 has come out, @podcastStockton has moved from a sometimes listen bench warmer to the sixth man. Why? There are many reasons. So many in fact that I was relegated to boil them down to the four listed below, or force you to suffer through 1000+ words essentially flattering my humble compadre @pghmatt. You can thank me by telling your friends to listen to @podcaststockton.

Without further adieu here is why the format change and move in relevance to the listenership is going to ensure that @podcastStockton will win.

1. The entrance of co-host @rjvillagomez

At first I was skeptical of @pghmatt and his choice to include @rjvillagomez on the show. Up until this point, @rjvillagomez is only known to me through his VSN (of which I had never heard of until @pghmatt enlightened me) and my voyeuristic encounter with his critically acclaimed 24-hour Rantathon on justin.tv. So to say the least my expectations were pretty low. After a listen to his inaugural performance I was pleasantly surprised. The show will benefit from the outlook of another passionate and charismatic voice. Not that @pghmatt is boring, but it is nice to have the back and forth of two different points of view. Most great heroes have sidekicks, Batman and Robin, Lilo and Stitch, Bert and Ernie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto. Now the world has @pghmatt and @rjvillagomez that make the dynamic production @podcastStockton.

2. The features were tech centric

I listen to podcasts because most peeps that make podcasts are tech nerds just like me. Sure there are probably some rose gardeners, or pogo stick enthusiasts that produce a podcast, but at the base of the issue, the production requires some tech savvy. Most podcasts are at least mildly related to tech. This is where episode 17 was a huge win. First we have the interview with local blogger @slickDiaz. Dude is an active member that peeps in the tech community are rather intrigued by. Also the dynamic duo took a bite out of @googleWave. Now this is a post in itself, but it brought this new and largely mysterious tech to the table. We had the Tweet-Up story, that was pretty felatious, but a tech story none the less. @CVBWes and his report of local happenings is hugely appreciated, not to mention it is great platform to pump his site in which he attempts to bridge our digital divide. (seriously props to @CVBWes and his team) Kudos to @podcaststockton for the tech theme. I suggest you do more tech, or at least include a tech feature that addresses something tech that is relevant to our little community.

3. Bumpers with local tech peeps

Enough said, love the production value.

4. More features, with the new team of reporters.

With the addition of @rjvillagomez the show stands to cover more ground and benefit the listeners with rich content, more often. Maybe @pghmatt is sitting on a little bureau of community media. Let’s see if he can take the #stir concept that was hatched on Twitter and run with it. @podcaststockton could turn into the 60 minutes of hyper-local media coverage. I smell a little conglomerate in the future.

Bottom line, props to the @podcaststockton team. Look forward to the evolution of the show. So far, I give you thumbs up.

Drinking beer with a purpose, a civic purpose that is

Lot’s of talk regarding this little issue of the public servant sector moving forward with utilizing a more social web. Where I think we lose ground is by attaching the proprietary names of Twitter and Facebook. Try to think concepts and not solutions just yet. I hate when peeps try to force the square block through the circle hole. Just getting on Facebook is not the answer. In fact I don’t even think that Facebook has any real relevance within politics or public service.

The social web movement is a much deeper concept than it seems on the surface.

Here is a little video that will give you some sort of idea of just how intense this whole dissemination of information really is. That is if you aren’t one of the 10 million nerds that have already watched it.

While we talk a lot about our ideas of how we would do it better, and how they don’t utilize the power of the tools put before them, we don’t really act. So here is my challenge. All three of you that have read this post, head on over to the Stocktoberfest on the Miracle Mile. I will be attending, God willing, and we should meet, drink a beer (or a hundred) and put a face to this little digital revolution. Without practicing the art of conversation we will not succeed. Our dribble will be reduced to that of the trolls that lurk on the web espousing their genius solutions to the world’s problems while never taking that walk up the steps that lead out of their parent’s basement and into the real world.

Doesn’t it suck that just because I happen to be able to use a computer good, that I am socially deemed a basement dweller? Well stereotypes will always plague us. It doesn’t bother me, because I get mine.

Hope to see all of my fellow basement dwellers at the Stocktoberfest this Thursday October 1, 2009, if you want to change the world that is.

I will be the guy in the red Polo shirt with a beer in my hand.

Innovate and stay fresh.

~andy

The City is my new favorite search engine

I just got done (well I have about 40 more pages to go) with the futuristic sci-fi novel by Vernor Vinge Rainbows End. I was prompted to read this novel when I posted my intrigue regarding the augmented reality feature of the Yelp iPhone application, by my buddy Greg Bahr. I don’t usually read the sci-fi genre of books, but I was pleasantly surprised with the tight plot structure and swift pace that the book adhered to. Why am I telling you this? Well, throughout this book the future people access a wealth of information that is intelligently disseminated. In other words the producers of content were able coordinate their submissions to the virtual “fire hose” of information.

This brings me to the current little fire that was sparked with the mention of government and social media. Apparently there is interest, at least with the little group my Tweetdeck so lovingly refers to Stockton Tweeple. Think of the possibilities of aggregating information on a civic level in a uniform fashion. It is this very thing that the get-rich-quick community has been trying to with their busted ass search engines that scour the internet, producing lackluster results. Think if we could get all of, or even most of, the content producers within a community to buy into a best practices standard for a community.

Our band of brothers here in Stockton is on the trail that we think leads to the dissemination of the civically relevant content. We are lucky enough to have a City that is willing to listen (scroll to the comments). Now rather than wait for the City to roll out a brand new hunk of junk website that doesn’t work symbiotically with the content providers within our community, we must form an alliance to ensure the usability we crave. I like the idea of a City portal that I am able to go and view the logically tagged events. Now this will not happen all on one side or the other. It will be an effort of the team nature. And with that effort no person will have the ability to be taken advantage of, we hope.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, let’s take a look at a governmental institution that through teamwork has successfully organized a seemingly unrelated mountain of information. A public library. To the untrained eye the library seems like a menagerie of books stacked to the ceiling with no true order. However, as I have done in the name of expediency, if you ask a library attendant to find a book, they proceed to use the best practice standard that has been implemented, and find the book with ease and efficiency. Now this is not to say that the untrained individual that is in search of the book would have never found the book, but it does say that with order, the retrieval of the information is both beneficial to the producer and the consumer. The producer is better served to accommodate the request of the consumer with ease and the consumer receives the information requested in a matter of time that would not have been possible without a logical best practice standard.

The best practice standard has evolved over time to accommodate the advent of more efficient technology, within the library. So much that a library patron has access to the library inventory through the web in these “high tech” times. This is beneficial to the consumer in the interest of making efficient usage of your time, aka no wasted trips. We could even spin this for the greeniacs, but I won’t digress.

All this talk of libraries, has me feeling guilty that the places that I loved so much as a child, I never go to. But that is another post. In the metaphorical story of the library its books, an answer starts to materialize. What if the City website was the library? The books, well the books are the mountains of civically relevant information available on websites that are in the “library”. And if you aren’t all the way stupid, you will have figured out that you play the same role in both scenarios, the patron, or consumer.

Think of it, a symbiotic open working platform that subscribes to a best practice standard. Not only would the political, governmental mumbo jumbo, be present and filed away, but the events, social interaction, community pulse. All of this information could be searchable through the “new and improved” City portal that has worked diligently with the interested public to offer such a service. The information could even be aggregated in cool little widgets that could be offered as iPhone applications or desktop client application displaying the day’s most popular, or what people are talking about in the form of meta information that is entered when a link is submitted to the City portal.

As the provider of the content that wishes to attract a crowd to the City of Stockton you are not left out of the loop, you will merely supply the civically relevant information submit a link through a secure and literally spam free form, attach tags and viola you are now Stockton Certifiably Relevant.

The open portion of the platform would allow all the users of the portal to also attach tags to each respective event based upon their likes. Such as I search art show, find Snap Jackson’s latest photo gallery being displayed at the Tidewater Cafe, I might tag this as badass, or must see. Now not only does the event carry the best practice standard metadata (ie tags), but it also carries my personalized tags that my friends and I use to describe events. This is how the engine would evolve would be by the monitoring of the most used tags and popular links. The pulse of the City could be realized resulting in a vibrant well informed group of citizens.
In the name of, I don’t want to steal any more of your precious time, we will leave this thought to ferment in the minds of the believers.

Keep the conversation going, keep innovating and always stay fresh.

This is only the beginning.