credit.  A few weeks ago, Dave Winer and I made a pledge to work together on Podcasting. Building a community where users and developers party together.
I told him I would be his wing-man. Now, being someone's wing-man goes beyond a partnership. It is a deep devotion to keeping each other's backs covered and keeping a sharp eye out for anything that puts us in harms way. And just like in the movie Top Gun, our mutual existence depends on this complete trust in each other. Aviation guys take this shit seriously.
Dave's post yesterday asked the question if bloggers and podcasterspodcster's wanted tho hear the real story that led us to podcasting. The answer should be a resounding yes from us all. For to understand the present, you must understand the history of how we got here, and only then can we create the future.
This is a story that has been written over many, many years of work that Dave has done, and is well documented throughout the web.
Unfortunately, as Dave correctly points out, he is often not correctly credited for his work, if at all.
I know how this feels. When I registered mtv.com, that led to a precedent setting lawsuit, I was portrayed as the first domain name 'pirate' by people who came to the internet years later. But perception is reality and labels stick. I can't change that anymore, nor did I really have the tools at the time, like a weblog and google.
Credit is important, it is how we track history. It is the source code to ideas. It is the path to payment for big companies, it is how artists and writers are ensured their work will be respected. If we do not respect the credit of any of these people, then they will eventually stop contributing their work. Proper credit is incredibly important.
I'm not about to let this happen to my wing-man on this flight. And not just because it means we both will spiral down in flames, but because it's the way we need to work with each other on the web. Weblogs, podcasts and every other new form of communication we develop must be used to make the world better. Not just more of the same.
Which is why I was startled when I felt my wing-man rattling the stick. I was pointing us in a nose dive and he was gently reminding me that speed doesn't kill, but lack of it, if we hit the ground.
Podcasting comes from a marriage of weblogs and radio. Dave and I are like the Reeses Peanut Butter Cup commercial, where one person eating peanut butter bumps into another eating chocolate, and they both witness the discovery of a wonderful new taste. Only our 'bump-moment' didn't happen rounding the corner, we've been working together and with other people on this for years. The ipodder script I wrote to put his Morning Coffee Notes on my iPod automatically, merely popped the podcasting pimple that had been brewing for all this time, building up pressure, waiting to be released. Sorry, that was a disgusting visual. But you get the idea.
And it didn't stop there. Users and Developers started working together on the mailing list, propelling podcasting into the public eye.
As I was helping Dave with advice on mics to use and other radio tricks of the trade I realized that the developer teams needed a daily program to test their ipodders against. That's how the Source Code was born. I also realized how much I enjoyed listening to Dave's shows. Although infrequently scheduled, they contain a whole new form of listening pleasure. It isn't slick and polished, but that makes it so much fun to listen to, all the stuff that you never hear on the 'real' radio. It influenced my own podcasts enormously.
Thinking about this right now worries me that I won't be capable of leading a meaningful podcasting session at bloggercon by myself. We need the same balance of peanut butter and chocolate cheesecake. RSS, OPML, weblogs, aggregators, XML-RPC, enclosures, Weblogs.Com Audio.weblogs.com are among Dave's inventions. Podcasting is built on all of it.
Perhaps Dave and I should do a live version of Trade Secrets, where we bring the session participants in as if they were calling in on our show.
Of course we would podcast the entire thing... [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
12:06:16 AM 
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