planet sab

Web 2.0 Expo Berlin #3: Tim O'Reilly

Sometimes it happens and somebody either flies under your radar or you have misconceptions about a person. I guess have to confess that I neither read much from Tim O'Reilly before the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin and I didn't think I was missing all that much. Leaving Berlin inspired and subcribed to the O'Reilly Radar, I realize I was wrong.
I pointed out Tim's keynote in my first post about the conference. Again, I was pretty inspired. After a slow start he hit some points that resonated with me. Later on Wednesday I had the pleasure of being part of a blogger round table, where he sat down with about 25 of us and answered questions. He was very laid back, confident but not "the star" (although this might be hard to tell from 60 minutes). I even got to ask a question which, after watching several videos about Obama tonight, wasn't unimportant I guess. Andrea Vascellari taped this one, too:



And now the Radar. Yesterday, Tim posted a lengthy albeit very substantial endorsement of Barack Obama which I can only hope reached a lot of undecided US voters. I shared it via Google Reader and now again, go read it.

So, thank for a great week, Tim.

timoreilly, radar, obama, vascellari

Brand is a promise, a promise of happiness

The above is a great quote from a conversation between Joseph Jaffe and John Gerzema of Young & Rubicam, author of The Brand Bubble. Listen to it on Jaffe Juice #115, I highly recommend it, I listened to it twice.
Join the Conversation

jaffejuice, johngerzema, youngrubicam, brandbubble

Speaking English Podcast Media kit

Using the own blog to pimp oneself, well, that will never get boring, will it? As announced I sat down and wrote a preliminary media kit for the Speaking English Podcast. Now you have two options:
1. Leave a comment and offer advice or criticism.
2. Send me an email and inquire about your options to advertise in the podcast.
Both are very welcome. Have a look:

Speaking English Podcast Media Kit

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: kit media)

mediakit, media, statistics, speakingenglishpodcast

Web 2.0 Expo Berlin: Tom Raftery - Electricity 2.0

Thank you Andrea Vascellari, for taping and sharing this:

Interview with Steve Gillmor about his musical past

Steve Gillmor was kind enough to chat with me about music. You can find the podcast over at Channel 14/Kanal 14, enjoy.

gillmor, stevegillmor, music, podcast, kanal14

Web 2.0 Expo Berlin #1: take-away – ecological and societal urgency

Content-wise, the parts of the Web 2.0 Expo Berlin I actually got to see were inspirational to me. As part of a company which is trying to do its part to promote renewable energies I was particularly happy to see Tim O'Reilly encourage entrepreneurs to create more value than they need and to tackle areas that matter to every human on the planet. If you have 27 minutes, you should watch his keynote (recorded by fellow blogger Andrea Vascellari):



I was also happy to finally spend a few minutes talking to Tom Raftery of, among other things, GreenMonk. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay to catch his talk on Thursday but the slides are online and worth a look. Once there is a video, I'll post that as well.

Electricity 2.0 - Using The Lessons Of the Web To Improve Our Energy Networks

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web2expoeu08 w2eb)

If you are interested in energy conservation at all, you should probably listen to this interview of his with General Motors abou the Chevy Volt, the electric vehicle expected to become available in 2010.

w2eb, keynote, timoreilly, tomraftery, ecology, urgency

Follow-up on revver

The other day I wrote about my revver issues. Somebody was kind enough to respond, but after my follow-up comment all I am getting is silence. Instead something has happened on the technical side of the game. Feed-burner tells me I am still having over 7k downloads per day, however, stats for the latest episode on the revver site show merely 137 views.
And I checked, in the meantime there has been no message on either payment info or change of statistical analysis.
After reading Kent Nichols account of how the Ninja left revver (Thanks Tim), I am thinking (more like a communcations consultant) that one might just have to track not only clients and topics/companies related to them, but also services one likes to use. What do you think?

Vaynerchuk hits home run

You have to give the man credit for a great idea. As far as podcasts go, this might actually a better concept than winelibrary.tv.
Endless topics, cheap to produce, suspense, give-aways. Scalable to a network with all the sports out there. And lots of niches, too, I might just start a show on my Shanahan card and jersey collection.
I agree that the video space is wide open, dying for content to replace traditional tv programming.

Podcasting: the whole 9 yards is actually much longer

You can write and read as many "25 tips on improving your podcast"-guides as you want, even act upon the tips – the learning curve just never ends. This week alone, fueled by input from Gary Vaynerchuk, C.C. Chapman and the guys from Marketing over Coffee, I felt like a pre-schooler yet again. And believe me, looking at the numbers, the Speaking English Podcast is about to enter his Sophomore year in High-School pretty soon.
The lesson here though is, that the work is never done. There is always room to improve. Every day. Work on the info text of each show. Add a new distribution channel. Find new ways to measure. Connect more to your audience.
Every day.

Open letter to revver.com

Dear people at revver (yes, that includes "the guy who can't read a calender),

for more than two years I have given you my content from www.speakingenglishpodcast.com for free and used your player, promoting your brand. Even more so, I allowed you to monetize my content in your name.

In return I received some money, but let's be honest, almost 500k views this year alone did not even translate into a three-figure sum for me. It might have, but you are late with payments. Almost four months late. And the money you promised to send out on September 11th which would have been enough to buy my wife a decent dinner, did not reach me yet. And I just double-checked my PayPal account.
What the hell is going on?

I can tell you what the hell is going on. You are ruining the one USP you had. There are so many video platforms out there (which, btw, I am all feeding through Tubemogul.com), easy monetization was your one advantage. The only one.

Since that seems broken I see no reason why not to talk more with sandieman at viddler, I really like what he did with Gary Vaynerchuk. Ask a Ninja switched, the mentos guys put there latest video on vimeo, it seems as always I am the latest to realize the ship is doomed, but I will move on.

Just give me the money you owe me. Or I'll send the Ninja!