Ourmedia as a podcast portal

I spent a half hour on the phone this afternoon with Doug Kaye, the brilliant and talented workhorse behind IT Conversations.

We’d like to bring you into that conversation.

Doug has been a longstanding participant in the soon-to-launch Ourmedia project (docs here) as a member of our wiki.

We agreed that while other forms of personal media like photographs already have a compelling home on sites like Flickr, there is currently no equivalent for Internet audio and podcasting.

Doug has lately been stretching IT Conversations into new directions, going beyond tech talk into other spheres. Says Doug:

The most popular content, for example, has been the Pop!Tech sessions (Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Barnett, etc.) I particularly like giving a forum to these big-ideas people. My guidelines have been that the programs must be educational, inspirational or entertaining in addition to meeting minimum quality standards. But I’m producing programs such as “Voices in Your Head” (interviews with SciFi writers) and more.

It’s all volunteer work for Doug — a labor of love.

Doug pointed out that while Audiofeast.com (a site I’d never heard of) just pulled down $10 million in VC money, and the Net is abuzz with rumors of commercialized podcasting startups, there is no central hub and hosting service for podcasts.

Ourmedia offers that — and solves the affordability problem with free storage and free bandwidth. As Doug points out, that can be a real life-saver, when bandwidth bills can ding you for hundreds of dollars if your podcast gets a push in the blogosphere.

Doug and I share the view that we need to help sustain a culture of free, open, accessible podcasting for all, with podcasts freely shareable under a Creative Commons share-alike license.

Ourmedia sounds like the logical place to house such an operation — a place where podcasters can come, upload their podcasts (for free), form communities around them (for free), exchange tips and best practices, and obtain a full directory of available podcasts.

Who would like to help Doug and us help build out the audio portion of Ourmedia into a sort of podcast portal?

Podcast Central, anyone?

(Note: At this point, Ourmedia remains an all-volunteer, open-source media project. You’ll be credited on our Credits page, get a dose of online fame, and receive lots of good juju.)

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.