– Sex and Podcasting –

Patrick contributed a great “how podcasts can help with a recovery effort” idea — which is to equip recovery workers with MP3 players filled with basic-info podcasts in different languages. That way, when they are out in the field, they can communicate with people even if they don’t speak the language. Those same MP3 devices could be used to collect “in their own voices” messages that can be brought back to a central clearing house to be used to reconnect families that have been separated.

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This podcast explores how podcasts could help a community get ready for a disaster like Katrina. I volunteered to be the citizen spearhead of the Y2k preparation project for my town – St Paul, MN – back in the late ’90’s. Our team relied a lot on stuff that FEMA provided, most notably a handbook for “building disaster resistant communities” called Project Impact. I was struck by how podcasting could help with such a project and dug back into the archives to find some of that stuff.

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Show notes

I had a heck of a time tracking down the old FEMA Project Impact stuff, because FEMA cancelled the program when the Bush administration came in (a bad idea in my opinion). Here’s a link to an old FEMA page on the web archive that describes what Project Impact was all about, and gives a bunch of case-study examples of how you could do it in your community.

Here’s the link

This is the last in this trio of podcasts about how podcasting and podcasters could help with the Katrina relief effort. I’m a hands-on type guy — I’m looking for what podcasters can DO to help. So if you’re a podcaster, this means YOU. If you’re friends with a podcaster, forward this to them. I think podcasters have some unique contributions (real hands-on useful stuff) that they can make to the relief efforts — and I rattle off a half-dozen examples in this podcast.

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In any endeavor, it’s good to know what your goals are. After all, it doesn’t make much difference which way you turn the wheel at the end of your driveway if you don’t know which way west is. I make my living repairing projects that have gone off the rails and i always look for four kinds of things;

– how can we become more nimble?
– how can we improve quality
– how can we save money?
– how can we get more resources for the effort?

In this podcast I try my hand at answering those questions with regard to how podcasting could support the Katrina relief effort.

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Radio stations of all stripes (not just community radio stations) have a very long tradition of community service when disaster strikes. I hope that podcasters will embrace that tradition, and there’s no better time than the present to get things started. This is the first of a series of podcasts that propose some answers to the question “how can podcasters help with the Katrina recovery effort?” In this show, I try to imagine what it might be like to be a volunteer heading down to help with the recovery — what kind of podcasts would I want to listen to while I’m traveling there? What kind of podcasts would I want to listen to while I’m working? Who might produce them?

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