Content as a Driving Force

Tod Maffin posted a 'Five Point Roadmap to Podcasting's Future'. Jake Ludington wrote an excellent and detailed follow-up. Their main focus is technology though, the means.. Two sentences in Jake's piece jump off the page: "Content is the one area technology cannot fix" and "At the core, we need better content". Absolutely. Better recording tools, smarter aggregators and api integration are crucial for lowering the threshold and increasing the capabilities and quality. But without unique content as a driving force, both for pulling in excited crowds and directing the technical development, the road leads mainly to smarter software, not better or more popular podcasting.

Adam Curry did it by taking the first steps in such a way that people were buzzing. Geeks jumped in, bending the tools to make it happen. We are now hitting the ceiling. The tools more or less match the demands of current content (creativity) and discussions circle around perfecting the status quo. Who and what will inspire the next leap? Forget 'Prime Time' or even Big Names for a while: there is a potential worldwide audience of millions, that's hanging out somewhere between 'Morning Coffee Notes' and Prime Time. We need content to match that opportunity and technology to facilitate it.