For anyone hosting a “radio show”, those words are certainly music.  Yesterday Matt Hester and I hosted the first Talk TechNet show.  Our guest was Jeremy Moskowitz and we had a great time chatting it up online and on the phone.  Attendance of the show was very good and I wanted to thank all of you for attending and being a great audience. 

Here are some observations of mine, as well as some feedback that came in on the evaluations we received:

• Publication of the 1-800 number - for years we’ve given people the ability to call into our webcasts in the event Live Meeting audio wasn’t working for you.  Our process and procedures were set around that mode because it helps keep our cost down.  We broke the process yesterday.  We would still love for you to tune in via Live Meeting, but considering it’s a show where the audience asks a question on the phone, Live Meeting isn’t going to work for that.  I am looking into Live Meeting two way audio, email confirmations with the 800 number and PIN, a static phone number and pin that doesn’t change, and placing the call-in number on the slide for the show duration.
• Live Meeting Question/Answer Panel - I realized well into the show that the Live Meeting QA panel is ok for asking questions, but it is going to be rather mediocre for answers.  All of the answers to questions our guest handles will be contained in the recording of the show. If you don’t want to call in, that’s cool.  We’ll still watch the questions coming in this way and try to answer as many as we can.
• Keep it Short - I noticed in the eval comments that someone wanted us to keep the answers shorter and more concise.  I agree with that and felt the same way.  As the host and moderator, I will try to cut in and make that happen.  This will give us the opportunity to take more questions and provide more answers.
• Demos and Technical Level - it appears some of you still want demonstrations.  I get that.  The proper venue for that is a webcast where the presenter has content, virtual machines, etc. ready to go.  Right now we aren’t doing that.  I have entertained the thought but for now I want to make sure everyone understands the intent is to have the conversations with the cost of entry being a telephone.  I don’t want to force people to a computer and Live Meeting.  As for the technical depth, this will ebb and flow depending on the guest, the question at hand, and their familiarity with the problem and subject.  I’ll certainly monitor the questions and answers and see how we do.  With only one show under our belt, I think we need a few more to see how this is going to work.
• Are we helping? - I am of course interested in the shows ability to help you get things done.  Here’s a direct quote,

“I actually had a question answered. This webcast just helped my project move over a hurdle.”

More information

I’ve been putting together a number of locations you will want to be aware of.  We have a landing page, blog and twitter account as usual.  Here are their locations and the intent of each.

• Landing page - most of you have probably already seen http://technet.microsoft.com/talk.  This page will provide the calendar of episodes.  You’ll be able to see what’s coming or grab a replay of a previous episode.  For the coming shows, I’ll provide registration links for you convenience.  Replays are currently in .MP3 format only and I am simply point to the RSS feed in case you want to subscribe with a capable player.
• Blog - I created a standalone blog at http://blogs.technet.com/TalkTechNet.  It’s purpose is life is to host the replays of each episode via the RSS feed there.  If we start doing live webcam video, or demos in Live Meeting, I will create additional feeds for those types of media.  Until then, it’s basically the podcast channel for the show.
• Twitter account - since I was creating landing pages, blogs and other stuff I figured I might as well create a twitter account, too.  It is of course at http://twitter.com/TalkTechNet and I’ll post fascinating little tweets about the show.  I would also like to take questions via twitter or a hashtag so we’ll get to that in another show or two.  I welcome your input on that.

That’s it for now.  Talk to you tomorrow on the next show.  The topic is System Center Configuration Manager with Jason Sandys.