Today’s Age has a article (requires free subscription) on Podcasting, the audio version of blogging, and suggests its adoption is outpacing its text-based cousin. While the numbers are still low—5000 podcasters in the US—the idea is exciting considering Polanyi’s idea: you know more than you can say and you will say more than you can write down. If it is easier to speak it, then recording an MP3 file and making it available to an audience might be an effective approach to transfer what you know.

A few weeks back I suggested a way to use blogs to help people find information rapidly and create new social networks using content as the catalyst. I can see how podcasting could be added to this solution but it is not just a simple replacement for blog posts. For a podcast to be effective—that is, be listened to—some work must be done to produce the podcast. I’m guessing an effective podcast sustained over a period of time will require more work to make it interesting that writing a regular blog.

Within an organisation I can see a variety of different types of podcasters:

• the official podcasters who craft professional programs which replace the audio tapes that describe the lastest product or new development;
• the sanctioned podcasters who are given time and tools to create podcasts such as key specialists within the organisation; and perhaps
• communities that wish to report, using techniques such as interviews, their progress and achievements

Can podcasting be a useful tool within organisations?