A few days ago, GoSpeed said I was a no-bullcrap kinda guy, cards on the table... tell it like it is.

Radar has a few things to say about Podcast Island and people's opinions of it.

There's been ups. There's been downs.

There's a place in my heart for PI and PI2 because that got Crap Mariner into SL.

I keep thinking "What can I do to help that I won't feel like it's gonna fizzle later on?"

I do know of two new things that are going to provide a spark of activity and traffic, I hope:

• Stuart's bringing SLPN there with the potential of getting regular podcast recordings there. Hopefully this will build up the Podmafia fan base as well as get interesting discussions of SL issues with Radar's own "town hall" episodes.

  And, I'm not going to pull punches on this one - sometimes the threesome gets stale. "Do you have any topics?" "What are we talking about?" "Inside joke 1" "Inside Joke 2" "Inside Joke 3" zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  Learn from the collapse of Secondcast, or repeat it.

• The permanent version of the exhibit we put together for SL5B will be installed somewhere there. People wanting to learn about podcasting can learn some elements of it there before wandering off to research it more and try their hand at it.

  That'll add a badly-needed educational aspect to podcasting. It won't be ivory tower of primitives, sure, but Radar's videos are amazing. If I ever got a Mac, I'd have no fear of getting abck up and running with producing 100WS, eh.

One thing that could help is moving the meetups to a time other than Monday at 6PM.

Yes, I know, nobody owns any particular timeslot. Hell, look in events and there's 10,000 things to do at any moment in time.

Among podcasters, though, which I do think is some kind of social network/community thing... you've got Open Mike and you've got the monthly Podcaster Meetups. Even once a month, it's still at the same time. And I think Rich and Yxes would be valuable members of any discussion with the invited speakers at the meetups.

Let's cut the bullcrap for a second, okay? That last Podmafia's got a whiff of bad blood going about that time conflict. Just. effing. Say. It.

Fine. Yxes? Radar? Listen up - can we all just end that conflict? This crap's gone on long enough.

Heck, I'd be willing to make sure Clocktower events didn't conflict if the meetups were at, say 5. Or some other night.

I swore to avoid conflicts in scheduling on my part for the greater good, and I meant it. Tell me where to slide out of, and I'll slide quicker than crap through a goose.

Whatever helps the greater group, right?

I dumped my own weekly meetups to throw support to the monthly ones. And the whole "No, keep doing yours, this one's separate" response was bullcrap... Harry Truman said to put all your eggs in one basket and guard that basket. Strength in unity, strength in numbers.

As for:

Certainly if I wanted to I could lob a few cheap shots back at people without even having to strain, but I’d rather not.

Got any for me? Because in my mind, they're not cheap shots.

There's opportunities for improvement on my part.

I invite any and all commentary, criticism, and suggestions for improvement on my management style, consensus-building methods, promotional efforts, and occasional underhanded vicious ankle-biting.

Certainly there’s areas where those of us who are there could do a lot better.

Everybody's got their own management styles, ownership models, trust levels... heck, watch Biz in SL with Cybergrrl Oh for another expression of the co-owner model in the form of Athena Isle that's actually profit-minded.

Cujus regio, cujus religio.

Here's the L$64,000 question - how do you measure what's working and what isn't? How do you measure success? How do you measure satisfaction? What makes you feel good?

Traffic? New podcasts? New friends? Laughs? New recipes? Money?

And if anybody tries to put a King Of Podcasting In SL Crown on my head, I'll take it off.

Glue it there, and I'll put my damn neck in the guillotine.

The grid already had an Adam Curry. And, thank God, he got the eff off of it.