Sorryâ

Allan Jenkins and Lee Hopkins have bowed to public pressure (hi, mom) and are cranking out their irregular chats on an irregular basis.

Perhaps they need to eat more fibre.

Anyway, in this rivetting (ha ha! very unlikely â Admin) first edition they:

• briefly review the recent IABC World Conference in San Francisco
• talk about a US Governor who keeps going walkabout (a very Australian tradition)
• D. Mark Schumann, the new IABC Chair, with a great post about what IABC means
• the vagaries of the humble toilet across the continents: your Peter Stuyvesant smoking, air hostess chatting-up, international jetset playboys consider water levels and acoustics.

Honourable mentions in this podcast go out to:

• Donna Papacosta
• Shel and Michele Holtz
• Sue Horner (whose name Lee forgot in the podcast â bad boy, Lee!)

Please send your brickbats or bouquets (or any invites or swag) to Commscafe@gmail.com.

This has been an RS production â and we donât mean âRip Snortaâ.

She runs the Twitter account @valpakcoupons for Cox and Valpak and has fascinating insights into how and how not to use Twitter.

Gila also shares with us how her colleagues are using these new communication landscape tools.

I was personally delighted to see that her business card announced her as a âCommunications Generalistâ; in this age of increasing specialisation and unnecessary âboxing inâ of oneâs skills, abilities and attitudes (and I think of Sir Ken Robinsonâs excellent Closing Address today and his brilliant book, The Element: How finding your passion changes everything) her employer recognises the value of having someone who can turn their considerably skilled and passionate hand to a wide variety of communication tasks.

I hope that what Gila shares will encourage you to consider taking up some of these new tools and seeing for yourself how they can revolutionise your organisation and how it communicates with all of its stakeholders, both inside and outside of itself.

Luckily, I have finally got to meet him and during a discussion in a noisy bar we entered into a discussion about 3D virtual worlds and the presentation I gave at the #iabc09 World Conference.

So I stuck my new and much-loved easi-speak mic in front of him and captured some more gems from the man.

The result lies before you: be gentle with that audio file, Virginia!

Two such friends are Bryan Person and Donna Pepsicola Papacosta, the Canadian chanteuse behind the wonderful trafcomnews podcast.

Bryan decided to interview Donna about podcasting for his daily audio show, the Daily Boo. I decided to stick my marvellous new easi-speak microphone in between the two of them and capture what they said.

The result lies before you: gentle with that audio file, Eugene!

A rather futuristic thought piece on Second Life or other 3D Collaborative Virtual Worlds and our existing 2D web properties such as our traditional website, Facebook, Plaxo, MySpace, Twitter, et al.

Plus a request to the community at large to help me with an academic paper. Iâm looking for your âa-haâ moments when you âgot itâ about Web2.0, and when your colleagues, your clients, your managers, etc., âgot itâ â what were the circumstances around that âa-haâ moment? Email to SL@LeeHopkins.net

Eight minutes and 53 seconds of â    well, I was going to say âaudio geniusâ but let us just say, âaudioâ

• On a new portable digital recorder for podcasters,
• Dave Fleet's Social Media Training wiki and
• the REAL meaning of 'Twitter' (and a tip of the fez to Luke Armour for uncovering a cracker of a Twitter profile)

All in all, five minutes and 16 seconds of audio enlightenment [4.3mb].

www.LeeHopkins.net

Iâd appreciate your comments.

• the election is over â now what will happen about Australiaâs atrocious broadband?
• Australian financial institutions not ready for Web2.0, but realise that consumers are demanding it
• Australian Federal Police (AFP) acknowledge their lack of skills within virtual worlds, so will set up island in SL and recruit savvy teens and web consultants to create one of the largest units within the AFP

In all, 14 minutes and 55 seconds of audio entertainment and enlightenment.

Steve is half of the award-winning Slingshot Studios here in Adelaide, two photographers (Jim is the other chap) who are as passionate about their photography as I am about business communication.

In this interview I ask Steve about digital rights photography, in particular whether âstockâ photography is a good or bad thing. Steve has unsurprising views, but what he also reveals is fascinating!

Not only do I finally get a vlog up and 'live', but I also get to interview online marketing legend and all-round good guy (aka 'white hat' not 'black hat') Bill Sweetman.

Based in Toronto, Canada, Bill is the power behind the 'must-listen-to' podcast 'Marketing Martini'. Like Donna PepsiCola, Bill's podcasts are short, sweet and very 'to the point', with no waffle or fluff. I cannot recommend them highly enough!

Bill graciously agreed to be interviewed by me and we discussed why blogs are so powerful and loved so much by search engines, why Social Media in general (including Facebook) is so powerful a business tool for 'connection', and Bill shared some fabulous tips for getting the most out of your search engine optimisation tactics.

All in all, 29 minutes and 37 seconds of insight, wisdom and 'stuff' you absolutely need to know. As he says on his Marketing Martini site, Bill is officially 'on holiday' at the moment so I am especially grateful that he took the time to answer my questions and give of his wisdom.

Subscribe to my audio podcast feed and receive my audio podcast every time I publish one [hint: there's another great interview coming out next week!].

Links:
Dan York: http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2007/07/windows-live-wr.html
LiveWriter download: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/
Zoundry: http://zoundry.com/
Crackbook: http://facebook.com/
Twitku: http://twitku.com/
MyRagan: http://myragan.com/
Communicators Network: http:/communicatorsnetwork.com/
GreatNews: http://curiostudio.com/

So what's in today's show?

Employee Communications -- why they are so important!

This edition is being published as both an audio podcast AND a video podcast -- and in two 'flavours' of that, no less!

Firstly, the audio -- you can download or subscribe to my audio podcast feed and receive my audio podcast.

Video -- you can subscribe to my video feed (for playing in iTunes or your video iPod, for example) or you can download the iPod friendly version OR the PocketPC-friendly version.

Cool, huh?

If the demand is there I might even set up a separate subscribe feed for each type, iPod and PocketPC.

Whichever way you want it (audio only, iPod or PocketPC) the edition is only 16 minutes long and worksafe -- what a bargain!

So what's in today's show?

Employee Communications -- why they are so important!

This edition is being published as both an audio podcast AND a video podcast -- and in two 'flavours' of that, no less!

Firstly, the audio -- you can download or subscribe to my audio podcast feed and receive my audio podcast.

Video -- you can subscribe to my video feed (for playing in iTunes or your video iPod, for example) or you can download the iPod friendly version OR the PocketPC-friendly version.

Cool, huh?

If the demand is there I might even set up a separate subscribe feed for each type, iPod and PocketPC.

Whichever way you want it (audio only, iPod or PocketPC) the edition is only 16 minutes long and worksafe -- what a bargain!

It's been a while -- and we knew you missed us so we came back!

In this cheeky chat we:

• Craftily reference a YouTube video of Aussie satire show CNNNN
• Let you know that GoToMeeting.com are our sponsors (and we think their product is great, too!)
• Chat about Allan's recent 'off the grid' experience over the Dec-Jan period -- he loved it, we missed him, and he only thought of Lee twice but was blown away by how 'matter of fact' some folks in his travels consider podcasting and blogging
• Talk about the time it takes to create a podcast versus a vidcast versus a blogpost, and Allan has a superb strategy for dealing with the whole 'time it takes' issue for SMEs (Small-Medium Enterprises) -- plus he explains why he rarely listens to podcasts and explains why Auburn University takes a day off to celebrate Robert French once making the 'Coffee Stain at the Bottom of the Cup' section of Allan's blogroll.
• Link to such luminaries as Mitch Joel, Bryper, Josh Hallett, Robert French, C.C. Chapman, The Divine Miss M (nice new image for your Diary of a Shameless Self-Promoter podcast, Heidi!), Donna PepsiCola, Steve Crescenzo, Stuart Bruce, Shel, Neville and FIR, and the IABC Conference in New Orleans
• And talk about LibraryThing.com and the wonderful scanning mouse you can buy for $15-20 -- well worth it!

Along the way we rip the p*ss out of each other (as usual), disagree with each other (as usual) and shed more light on business communication than you will see at an Aerosmith concert.

Agree with us? Disagree? Let us have it - both barrels! Drop your comments on the show blog, or even better send a Waxmail to our new Gmail account: commscafe at gmail dot com.

All in all, 36 minutes of caffeine-fuelled hyperbole and satire

I'm not sure why this particular interview fell through a gap, but Deakin forgot to publish it -- so I have instead!

Brad's views on the importance of employee communications is STUNNING!

He has so many diamonds within his head that the man is a walking jewellery store!

What does he do?

"I'm the little sheep dog you see running around cattle, trying to keep them all heading in the same direction."

So he explains how he helps 40,000 employees put all their left feet down in front of their right at the same time, including saying 'No' to those who would try to hijack the strategic communication goals.

"We need to move from 'message deliverer' to 'meaning maker'"

If you're thinking that the easiest way to communicate with 'the troops' is via the intranet, you are in for a rude and powerful wake-up!

I cannot recommend this 55 minute interview enough -- even listening to it again now I find myself getting buzzed all over again from the amount of passion and energy that Brad has; he's contagious!

Yes, it has been AGES since I published a podcast without my colleague in arms and good friend Allan Jenkins, but as he's not back on deck from his exceedingly well-earned break until next week I figured there was no harm in releasing one of my own.

In this edition I argue that there are still times when paper and pencil beats digital -- but not many!

Links: OneNote, MindManager, Moleskines, D*I*Y Planner

At just 4 minutes and 45 seconds long, and worksafe friendly, it's a bargain!

Today's soup de jour:

• Anshe Chung projects revenues from Second Life will hit around US$2.6m for 2006. Not bad; she even intends to double her employee numbers to 50. Mind you, we still don't know how the 'Donald Trump' of Second Life feels about having more realistic hair...
• My new 'best blog of the week', CleverClogs by Marjolein Hoekstra, not only gives me a fantastic new way of organising my RSS feeds, but also points me to a free 5gb online hard drive and personalised filing system. Cool!
• Tool tip: Password Master 4.0 for Windows PocketPC
• Today's brilliant vid clip comes from the 'What Women Really Don't Want For Christmas' category
• Thanks to Donna P for her lovely card

Enjoy!