Lots of people assume that you need to do short podcasts. After all, people’s time is valuable, right? And we’re all overloaded with too much info anyway.

But Leo asked his audience and 20,000 people responded, Phil Windley reported from a keynote Leo did today. They told him “do longer, more technical podcasts.”

Leo’s show? It’s TWiT. Length? 120 minutes.

That said, on ScobleShow you won’t find me shying away from weird length podcasts and videoblogs. Why do we need to fit into a format? If it only takes three minutes to demo a product, why take six? On the other hand, if walking through San Francisco with Thomas Hawk is interesting, even after two hours, why shorten it to 10 minutes?

Hey, we’re going drinking tonight. At the Podcasting Expo here in Ontario, CA. But now I see we have a Web 2.0 drinking game to play with, thanks to a Steve Rubel link.

How about we customize this game for the Podcasting expo?

Everytime someone says something about Adam Curry, take a drink.
Everytime someone mentions Revision 3, take a drink.
Anytime Kevin Rose is standing next to you, take a drink.
If you see Chris Pirillo naked, don’t take a drink, just turn off Valleywag.
If Leo Laporte mentions Robert Scoble in his keynote, take a drink (I have to take three).
If Jason Calacanis offers you $10 to blog for him, take a drink.
If your picture ends up on Valleywag because of your drinking behavior, you must take a week off of alcohol.

Anyway, say hi if you’re at one of the places in Ontario we’re at. Cell phone is 425-205-1921, but I usually can’t hear it ringing when we’re out partying.

Yeah, I know I’m not funny. So make up your own game. 🙂

I love Jacob Bowser. He gets it. He said “it felt like you were right there, part of the conversation.”

Exactly.

Aside: second installment of Photowalking with Thomas Hawk is up. I should have titled this “it gets darker.” The other installments should be up soon.

Being part of the conversation is the key to this new world. It’s why I hate talking about advertising and CPM (cost per thousand visits) or ad units or interstitals. I’d rather talk about what is on Digg or Techmeme or on Dori Smith’s blog.
There has got to be a new kind of advertising where companies can get their products found and discussed, but not cause they shoved them in your face like they do in TV where they interrupt your football game to talk about shavers or beer.

I wish I had better answers, though. If you were a company trying to find new customers, how would you approach advertising?

And, yes, we need advertising to fund content development. Even a “cheap” show like mine is expensive. You should see the bandwidth bill we’re running up, not to mention that doing it right (with multiple formats, better audio quality, better lighting, etc) costs money.

How do I provide value to my sponsor so that they are happy and keep doing it? I love how Hugh Macleod made Stormhoek wine part of the conversation. How so? He gave me a bottle of the stuff. Now I’m addicted and keep asking for it at the local store. That draws stares cause the local store already has something like 100 different kinds of wines. But they don’t cause a conversation with my friends the way that Stormhoek does.

I pour that sucker and everyone starts talking about their favorite Hugh cartoon.

Or, go over and see Ze Frank. I don’t even need to link to him anymore. If you don’t know how to find Ze’s show you don’t deserve to watch. Have you clicked on his “snack?” I have. It’s getting tastier and tastier as time goes along.

I can imagine finding a little treasure from an advertiser in there someday. Imagine if someone like Starbucks says “free lattes for Ze viewers.” I’d be there, and my loyalty to Starbucks would grow cause they are supporting something I love. Not to mention, it’d cause a conversation.

Yahoo this week is about to cause a conversation. Watch what they do on Friday night. Watch your Flickr feeds. Your videoblog feeds. Your podcasting feeds. I bet Yahoo gets in there. Why? Cause they figured out a way to cause a conversation. Even better. They figured out how to bring the conversation to their front lawn.

What conversations are you a part of?