Stanford Offers Web Podcasting
Channel on Social Innovation
PALO ALTO, Calif.
The Stanford University Graduate School of Business has established a podcasting channel, Social Innovation Conversation, which provides free audio programs where experts, activists and scholars discuss and debate global social and environmental issues. Coordinated by the Center for Social Innovation (CSI), the new channel includes collaboration from the Pittsburgh Social Enterprise Accelerator and The Conversations Network, a nonprofit online publisher of spoken-word events.
Officially launched last month, the channel, <www.siconversations.org>, is intended to work as “a collaborative online platform.” Programs will include expert interviews, conferences and faculty lectures. In addition, influential professional and academic institutions have been invited to contribute to the channel.
“With this new information delivery system, we are seeking to put valuable knowledge and best practices insight into the hands of a wide international audience,” says Kriss Deiglmeier, the executive director of the Center for Social Innovation.
According to Deiglmeier, Social Innovation Conversations builds on the work of the center. Established in 2000, CSI prepares leaders and organizations to address increasingly difficult social problems, such as climate change, poverty and population growth. “Social Innovation Conversations will enhance [the center’s] efforts to promote the mutual exchange of ideas and values across disciplines as well as across the public, nonprofit and private sectors,” Deiglmeier says.
Eric Nee and Alana Conner-Snibbe, the editors of the center’s Stanford Social Innovation Review, host the programs. The channel’s programming lineup currently includes panel discussions from “Bridging the Gap,” the Stanford 2005 Net Impact Conference, and presentations from the 2005 Effective Disruption Management Seminar.
“Our goal is to create a popular channel on the Web,” Nee says, proclaiming that it already “provides an engaging and provocative dialogue about the most effective ways we can improve society and the environment.”
The channel concept was tested by The Conversations Network with pilot podcasts from the seminar. According to officials, seven audio programs were downloaded 53,000 times over three months, with nearly half of the listeners coming from outside the United States.
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