Screenshot from my Lumia 925.
I FINISHED #AUDIOMO this month with several lingering thoughts about social audio. In short, I think spoken content can sustain community initiatives.
You won't find more than an niche of people online who admit to subscribing to audio content as well as creating their own spoken responses to it. That's what makes the annual audiomo project more interesting for me. When I spend the time to set up a listening post as well as carve out the time to make my own contributions, I get real engagement.
It's engagement that extends beyond the month-long activity stream. In my case, I've audio subscriptions set up that extend before Leo Laporte had RSS audio feeds for his radio show. I've been listening to some of the same voices for more than 10 years now and I've two 250 GB hard drives that contain half-hour podcasts from the first semesters that I taught creative multimedia to university students. It's a genre that paved the way for broadcasters to extend their message (and their marketing reach) into the hundreds of thousands. Sponsor jingles and embedded messages crossed oceans and went into outer space, thanks to engaging audio clips.
A few special things happened to me during this month's audio activities. Because I committed to trying to make a five-minute contribution every day as well as to listen to a core group of 20 people offering their own audio, I had to give up listening to a dozen other audio subscriptions that were downloading all the time onto my iTouch. Now I feel behind in my professional listening. But a little voice inside my head suggested that because I took the time to hook up, listen and respond, I'd developed important and engaging professional contacts that should serve well into the future.
