Even before all this talk of non-profits, I wasn’t doing a particularly good job of finding sponsors or underwriters for our programs. Having only limited sponsorship revenues wasn’t a problem for me, but we have some amazing hosts at IT Conversations who are true professionals and make their livings by producing shows for us and broadcast radio: Moira Gunn (Tech Nation), Larry Magid (Larry’s World), and Rob Greenlee, just to name our regulars. And then there are our semi-pros who host shows less frequently such as Halley Suit (Memory Lane), Phil Windley (Technometria), Scott Mace (Opening Move), Ernest Miller (The Importance of the Law and IT), Denise Howell (Sound Policy), and Dave Slusher (Voices in Your Head). Heck of a list, ain’t it?

We have a terrific stable of hosts and programs and they deserve some income commensurate with their efforts, the quality of their shows, and the size of their audiences, and to achieve that goal, we need the help of a part-time salesperson. So if you’re an independent sales professional and you’d like to sell underwriting slots for what many people believe is the #1 high-end (broadcast quality in every way) podcasting network, here’s a chance. I don’t think there’s yet enough income from IT Conversations alone to feed your family, pay the morgtgage, and make the payments on the Ferrari, but if you start with IT Conversations, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to represent some other high-end podcasters, too, and maybe make a pretty decent living at it, let alone corner the market for podcast ad sales. Interested? Email me at doug@itconversations.com.

As I threatened, I’m slowly disabling the M4B/AAC feeds for IT Conversations. My goal is to get rid of them altogether. Yes, I know all you iPod users love your bookmarks, but producing and hosting 2x files is going to become a significant issue in the future.

Now the word is that with the new iPod software, you can bookmark MP3s in the same manner as you could with the M4B files. If that’s not the case for you, please let me know the model and software version of your iPod.

In the meantime, I’m sorry that this change has also cause the re-loading of files from the RSS feeds. This was unavoidable since iTunes reasonably suspects that the files are in fact different and new.

Okay, all you identity gurus. (And I know you’re reading!) Here’s today’s challenge for you. For the new project we need to make sure we have authorization to record and publish tens of thousands of events every year from all over the world. How can we be reasonably certain that the person who gives us such permission is who they say they are and that they’re authorized to grant such permission?

It’s easy on the relatively small scale of IT Conversations. We have a written contract with each of the events we publish. But that’s not scalable worldwide and with the volume we anticipate.

I thought of one way we could do this, based upon the technique that Technorati uses to allow someone to claim an RSS feed. To demonstrate that the person has some association with an event, we could require that they add some invisible unique string to the HTML of one of the web pages associated with the event. We parse the HTML, find the secret string and close the authentication loop. The only problem is that we’re then limited to events with an on-line presence.

Got any better ideas for this one?

Scott Loftesness writes about the future of public radio and how it might be affected by satellite radio and podcasting. The future of public radio instantly became clear to me when I realized I had no interest in getting my local NPR station to carry Chris Lydon’s new show.

In a flattering blog post, Darren Paul Griffith comments on a segment of my interview with Cameron Reilly. But I should point out that my example of The New York Times’ $49/year policy and how that relates to the remixability of content, came from listening to Halley Suitt’s interview with veteran blogger, Meg Hourihan. Meg really gets it.

(Hear the MP3 version with additional commentary in beautiful monophonic audio.)

New Programs This Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating. For descriptions, visit the IT Conversations home page.

• Jeff Cove – Flat-Panel Television (rated 3.3 by our listeners) LCD or Plasma? High definition or rear projection? Should you wait for another year to buy a bigger, brighter, cheaper set or get out your credit card right away? The choices are overwhelming. Host Larry Magid speaks to Jeff Cove, VP of Strategic alliances at Panasonic, about such visual media advancements and what to look for, then go for.
• Dr. David Coy (3.4) On this week’s Biotech Nation segment, Moira Gunn interviews Dr. David Coy, Professor of Medicine, Tulane Health Sciences Center, about how their research may unexpectedly help a very common condition: macular degeneration.
• Dr. Alva Noe (3.5) Moira also speaks with Dr. Alva Noe, professor of philosophy at UC, Berkeley and the author of "Action in Perception." They talk about the nature of perception, and how philosophy is quickly meshing with cognitive science.
• Joel Garreau (3.5) Moira interviewed Joel Garreau, the cultural revolution correspondent to the Washington Post. They talk about GRIN: genetics, robotics, Information and nanotech.
• MGM v. Grokster (3.7) Host Ernest Miller along with Denise Howell and Charles (C.E.) Petit disect the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling overturning a District Court in the case of MGM v. Grokster. The decision says Grokster could be found guilty of an "act of inducement" by encouraging (or not discouraging) its users to share infringing files. The panel considers the implications for publishers, software developers and manufacturers, and looks specifically at the outlook for BitTorrent.
• Scott Cook on Customer Relationships (3.8) Customers and customer relationships are fundamental to the growth of any business. So why is it that as a business grows it moves further away from its cutomers? Instead of walking a mile in their shoes they discard them. Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit, understands the importance of customer-driven innovation and credits it for the success and perpetual growth of his company.
• Rob Curley – The World Company (4.4) Since the dot-com days, nearly every newspaper in the world has made use of the Internet and now has a website where readers can get their news faster than they can get the hardcopy paper. But just having a website is one thing. Doing it right — which is what Rob Curley is known for — is another. Hear Rob’s fascinating keynote presentation from the Integrated Media Association’s New Media Summit in which he gives examples of how he and his web-development team at the Lawrence Journal-World continue to do it right.

We’re all thankful to Apple for increasing the awareness of podcasting and bringing us more listeners, but perhaps it’s no surprise that things are still a bit rough around the edges.

DailySonic suggests that iTunes may be caching MP3 files, a definite no-no. [Source: Dave Winer]

The default scan in iTunes is once a day and only retrieves the single most-recent program. That may be fine for most podcasts, but here at IT Conversations we release as many as three programs per day. So unless you change these settings in iTunes, you’re going to miss some of our best programs.

One advantage of becoming a non-profit is that when people keep asking me, “What’s your business model?” I can just smile and say, “I don’t have one.” (That’s how I’ve answered the question for the last two years, anyway.) Of course, even non-profits need revenues to pay for expenses, so here are my plans for revenue generation in the new venture.

1. Quick-Delivery Conference Audio. Shortly after a major event (1-2 weeks, depending on the number of sessions) we’ll release all of the audio online for a fee. It might cost, for example, US$5 per presentation or US$100 for all 30+ sessions from a complex conference. We’ll split the profits 50/50 with the event producers. Note that we’ll still publish the conference sessions at the rate of one show per week like we’ve always done, but if you’re in a hurry you can pay a few $$ for the privilege.

2. Membership. This will be modeled after public radio. Membership will not be a gateway to the content. The content will always be free with the exception of the quick-delivery option above. Membership may get you special web-site features or thank-you gifts, but it will primarly just be a way for you to support our on-going operations.

3. Grants. Ideally, the above will cover all our expenses, but we may seek private (non-governmental) grants for special projects, to help us ramp up, or to launch new programs or series on specific topics or in new parts of the world.

Here are a few paragraphs — the long elevator pitch — I’ve written about my new non-profit venture:

Every day there are scores or even hundreds of fascinating and important conference sessions, lectures or other presentations that are lost. They simply evaporate because no one captures or records them. Some of these presentations are by the greatest and most inspiring minds of our time, and many could be important to people in the far reaches of the planet, if only they could hear them.

My new project is to capture (record) all of these presentations, post-produce them, and make them available worldwide for free.

To record tens of thousands of events each year, we will appeal to the social conscience of the worldwide army of podcasters – 10,000 today, and 25,000-50,000 within a year – who I believe will be enthusiastic about the opportunity to give back to their communities and to the world. As a side benefit, these “podcaster stringers” will hone and extend their skills and build their reputations in ways that could benefit them financially and otherwise.

We will build an online “dating service” that will match podcasters with events in their communities. Likewise, we will recruit volunteer writers and producers to create and edit the metadata and descriptions that accompany the recordings. Content will be managed, and quality will be maintained, by a Wikipedia-like system and community. High-volume content will be delivered by a combination of BitTorrent and partners such as the Internet Archive.

We will cover not just IT or even technology, but literally every topic about which someone speaks and another person finds it valuable enough to capture.

More to follow over the days and weeks to come.