Openminds

I participated in a podcast interview with the Globe and Mail recently. The experience was interesting. A recorder, a couple of chairs and some q and a’s that were then put into cyberspace for the globe readers who enjoy listening to audio versions of interviews.

Afterwards it made me think about how there is a real place in today’s online world for both the written word and the taped audio experience. Sometimes I want to read the journalists viewpoint and how they weave the story and fill in the blanks contextually for me as a reader. And sometimes I want to hear it straight from the person who is being interviewed without anything but their raw answers. Both serve a purpose and create interesting content for the reader/listener of the papers journalists.

I also think its true that sometimes the language of the new media world can be off putting to those of us who are used to more traditional terminology. The words used to describe the experience – podcast for example – can be in some weird way intimidating. But there it is. We are living in a world of podcasts, twitters, webcasts and on and on. All of us better not only get comfortable with the language but also gain a real grasp on what exactly that language represents in terms of our daily interactions.

I’d suggest those of us over the age of 40 may want to go into a room, close the door and spend an hour of research on wikipedia. There you will find a quick reference version on all the new words and lingo that matter in today’s world. It will help put that new language into common language that we “older” folks can understand.

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