Well we’ve done our third Beercast now. We’re happy with the results and hope you’ll send us your feedback. Download it now!. We took a departure from the Technology this week and talked a lot about Women, Men, and the stuff that happens when they interact.

If you haven’t visited Beercasting.com yet, please do. I launched a quick new re-design. In any event, here’s the Time Index for those that are interested:

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OK. So the experiemental phase is over (download it here). I tried a BeerCast with some of my friends a few days ago and though the content was good the sound quality was for shit. A few nights ago, however, we made a switch to using MiniDisc to do the recording and the results were nothing short of phenomenal. More importantly, however, was the involvement of the passive audience.

When you BeerCast, you do it in a public environment and its inevitable that someone is going to sit next to you. This happened tonight while Chaj and I were speaking. We actually ran out of juice and needed new batteries. So as he ran across the street, I realized that we might have been loud so I explained to our neighbors what we were doing. Suddenly, there was a new excitement to deal with. It was immediately obvious that we needed to involve these nice folks and so the first guests were invited in.

Chaj and I have been mentally sparring on how long one of the BeerCasts should be. So far, we’ve managed to not go any less than 1:30:00 (an hour and thirty minutes for you out there). This reminds me of that Mark Twain saying, “I started to write you a short letter, but I wrote you a long one instead”. The insight being that it’s 1) hard to be concise and 2) almost unnatural.

I am of firm belief that if you’ve listened an hour, you won’t care how much longer it goes since obviously there’s a conversation at work and you would hate to not know the ending. I could be wrong.

In any event, we went from us 2 to 5 and the conversation only got better. We’ve already got 2 new guests planned for the next show and hope to make it the unspoken rule for all shows going forward.

I hope you’ll be able to tolerate it all.. and if not, tell me when we should have stopped. We’re DESPERATE for feedback.

Show The re:chaj Show Date November 11, 2004 Location Ariba Ariba Hosts ReRe Chaj Download reChaj_11_16_2004.mp3

0:00:00 INTRO Introduction and Rules 0:01:02 INTRO Topic Rundown 0:02:27 TECH The B Word 0:05:35 TECH It’s Content Management Dammit! 0:10:50 TECH CBS - Blogs are CB Radios 0:11:40 TECH Be The Human Filter 0:15:05 TECH MBA Students Don’t Do Blogging 0:15:45 TECH Does Blogging Breed Honesty? 0:18:30 TECH Vanity and Money - Sugar and Spice 0:19:35 TECH How Do You Measure Blog Success 0:21:10 TECH Show the Love, Give Some Comments 0:22:30 ** Beer Change 0:23:10 TECH Photobloggers are Linkwhores 0:25:25 TECH How Do You Measure Your Audience? 0:27:39 TECH Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words, Writers Prepare To Earn 0:30:00 TECH The Bigger The Post… 0:31:29 TECH Photoblogs and Trackback 0:32:35 TECH Chaj Is A Genius 0:34:00 TECH How Trackback Works 0:35:41 NEWS Bush Cabinet Emptying Out 0:37:40 NEWS Powell / Arnold / Rudy For President 0:39:25 NEWS What’s Up With That Giulliani Guy? 0:42:44 NEWS Is America Ready For A Black President? A Woman President? 0:45:34 NEWS Bush Was More African-American Friendly 0:48:00 NEWS Politicians Are Highly Atypical People 0:50:25 NEWS ReRe Doesn’t Trust Warriors 0:52:15 NEWS Small Business Represent 0:53:47 ** Batteries Died 0:54:13 ** New Guests Added 0:54:50 NEWS Giulliani Was Opportunistic 0:56:35 NEWS Cabinet Redux - Politics Of Leaving 0:58:40 NEWS Next Election - Lots of Issues, How About Being Qualified? 1:01:00 NEWS Presidential What Ifs 1:02:20 NEWS Back To That Qualification Thing 1:05:00 NEWS Why Are We In Iraq? 1:06:12 NEWS Merging Church and State 1:07:36 ** Beer Change 1:09:10 SOCIETY (Extreme) Christianity 1:12:23 ** Signing Off

I recently attended the Podcasting session at BloggerCon III and was amazed at how much inertia there seemed to be behind the Podcasting craze. At first, I was quite skeptical about podcasting, likening it to being forced to listen to a phone conversation while being muted, but over the last few days it’s truly come to grow on me.

As my interest peaked, I started to wonder what I could do to contribute to the movement and how I could squeeze my voice into the mix. My initial thoughts were to simply do an audio version of SocialTwister.com. I was originally planning to enlist a buddy of mine, whom I often talk about various issues relating to the site.

Then it hit me. I thought more about the way I came to form many opinions and it involved discussion with my friends. I had previously joked about recording our conversations and now it seemed quite reasonable to try it.

Beercasting was born. The premise is simple: Put a bunch of people together, add some spirits, and conversation flows in every which direction (some great, others bizarre). In short, the best conversations form in the froth of a frosty mug. I’ve outlined some of the notes for how to do one here below.

BeerCasting Guidelines

1. Topics automatically rotate when a new beer (wine, drink, etc.) is ordered
2. Anyone can speak at any time, the loudest one wins
3. Anything goes, there’s no filtering.

BeerCasting Recommendations

• Determine your topics ahead of time as a rough guide for things to hit when you are at a lull.
• Try to record your BeerCast on a Sunday through Wednesday - the other nights tend to get more crowded bars and lots of background noise.
• Try to keep the group size down to 4-5 maximum people - it’s hard to discern too many voices without really good equipment
• Designate one person to guide the discussion.
• Don’t stare at the mic - be natural or it won’t work

Soon, I’ll be launching the Beercasting.com web site for anyone to try publicize their own beercasts. There’s a bunch of neat little features planned that should make it a pretty interesting little experiment. Until then, send me links to any beercasts you do and I’ll publicize them.