Question: Why these guidelines?

Answer: A few months ago discussion about creating a cross-promotion network for business podcasters sparked interest among subscribers to the IpodderBusiness list. Since then a few people on that list have explored what building such a network might entail. To date little progress has been made in developing such a network. At this point it is unclear whether the notion of building such a network is still of interest and if so what the characteristics of such a network should be. This site and these guidelines are intended to:

1. Re-ignite the discussion around the concept of creating a cross-promotional network among business podcasters. To analyze in-depth what specific benefits business podcasters hope to receive from participation in such a network.

2. Presuming that those benefits can be clearly articulated and are widely shared, the next objective is to determine by what means a group of independent business podcasters can organize and collectively build and participate in such a network to their mutual benefit.

With the above objectives in mind the following guidelines are presented to provide a starting point for discussion. These guidelines attempt to define what participants in the business podcast network might consider as they think about either building, joining or participating in such a network.

Guidelines for the Businness Podcast Network:

1. A podcast network should place the listener at the center of its considerations. A podcast network should be designed to facilitate listeners efforts to find, subscribe and interact with business podcasts and podcasters who provide the type of content that precisely satisfies their interests.

2. The network should be sufficiently flexible to facilitate the involvement of podcasters and their current AND prospective sponsors or advertisers.

– The degree to which the business podcast network thrives will depend on the degree to which it facilitates the involvement of all of these participants.

3. A podcast network, reflecting the increasingly de-centralized nature of the Internet, must balance centralization to facilitate listener discovery of content and collaboration with support of decentralization thereby freeing podcasters and listeners from the rigidity of a closed and potentially proprietary architectures.

- The concept of a common “open source” tagging scheme is considered one practical way to achieve this balance

4. Recognizing the value of communication feedback loops, the Busniess Podcast Network should facilitate interaction:

– Between:

– Podcasters and their listeners

– Listeners of a podcast and listeners of other relevant podcasts

– Podcasters who produce relevant or similar podcasts

– Among:

– Listeners of a podcast

– Listeners of various relevant podcasts

5. The Business Podcast Network should not hinder any individual podcasters goal of wide distribution at the expense of another’s reduced profit making options or vice versa.

- Podcasters create podcasts to achieve a variety of objectives. Some wish to share their podcasts as freely and widely as possible, other’s seek to profit directly from their podcasts.

- As a starting point the tools and services that comply with the Business Podcast Network should permit business podcaster to easily transport their content from one service “platform” to another to ensure their freedom of choice.