In my last post about the right collaborative tools I said I would talk about how BT has been successful using podcasts. How did we achieve this?
Why use podcasts?
BT needed a cheap and easy way for people to explain by ’show and tell’ with other people how to do something. They say a picture paints a thousand words and demonstrating how to do something in a few minutes is much better than screens and screens of guidance and tips.
What did you use?
BT beta tested an open source solution with a few users who were keen to share content this way and helped them with their work. Others wanted to find out how to do things using this approach rather than reading words or phone calls. Building on the experiences of podcast producers and consumers we have developed it into what we call Podcast Central.
Podcast Central has grown in a year to over 300 podcasts. In May alone we had over 22,000 page views and over 8,500 downloads.
We have wider needs such as online training courses becoming shorter podcasts with a more friendly, informal, approach. We are reviewing what to use in future so any suggestions you can share will be great.
How does Podcast Central work?
I have attached some slides on how we use Podcast Central. They take you from the BT Homepage, our corporate intranet portal, to Podcast Central. You can find out how we publish a podcast, how we view a podcast, feedback comments and ask for a transcript.
It is based on the You Tube approach of keeping it simple and easy and not trying too many ‘nice’ features that can over-complicate the user experience.
Tags: best practice, beta testing, bt intranet, social media, value
June 24, 2009 at 10:59 am |
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June 30, 2009 at 2:51 pm |
[...] using other social media tools that benefit both people and BT. These include wikis, blogs and podcasts. These are all available for people in BT to use even if they are [...]