I spent a half hour on the phone this afternoon with Doug Kaye, the brilliant and talented workhorse behind IT Conversations.

We’d like to bring you into that conversation.

Doug has been a longstanding participant in the soon-to-launch Ourmedia project (docs here) as a member of our wiki.

We agreed that while other forms of personal media like photographs already have a compelling home on sites like Flickr, there is currently no equivalent for Internet audio and podcasting.

Doug has lately been stretching IT Conversations into new directions, going beyond tech talk into other spheres. Says Doug:

The most popular content, for example, has been the Pop!Tech sessions (Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Barnett, etc.) I particularly like giving a forum to these big-ideas people. My guidelines have been that the programs must be educational, inspirational or entertaining in addition to meeting minimum quality standards. But I’m producing programs such as “Voices in Your Head” (interviews with SciFi writers) and more.

It’s all volunteer work for Doug — a labor of love.

Doug pointed out that while Audiofeast.com (a site I’d never heard of) just pulled down $10 million in VC money, and the Net is abuzz with rumors of commercialized podcasting startups, there is no central hub and hosting service for podcasts.

Ourmedia offers that — and solves the affordability problem with free storage and free bandwidth. As Doug points out, that can be a real life-saver, when bandwidth bills can ding you for hundreds of dollars if your podcast gets a push in the blogosphere.

Doug and I share the view that we need to help sustain a culture of free, open, accessible podcasting for all, with podcasts freely shareable under a Creative Commons share-alike license.

Ourmedia sounds like the logical place to house such an operation — a place where podcasters can come, upload their podcasts (for free), form communities around them (for free), exchange tips and best practices, and obtain a full directory of available podcasts.

Who would like to help Doug and us help build out the audio portion of Ourmedia into a sort of podcast portal?

Podcast Central, anyone?

(Note: At this point, Ourmedia remains an all-volunteer, open-source media project. You’ll be credited on our Credits page, get a dose of online fame, and receive lots of good juju.)

A few weeks ago Eric Olsen of Blogcritics.org asked me if I wanted to take part in a new experiment. Guy Kawasaki of Garage.com was trying to spread word in the blogosphere about his new book, The Art of the Start, by having his publisher sending it out to various bloggers. We could rave about it, pan it, or toss it on the recycle heap. All we were committed to do was write a few words about it. (And, no. No money changed hands.)

Thankfully, The Art of the Start is a worthy read, especially for those who are launching a small business, tech startup or organization, or are considering doing so.

Kawasaki, a longtime startup evangelist, entrepreneur and venture capitalist, has written a business book that eschews the usual insider jargon and leaden prose for an accessible, engaging ride through startup hell.

Kawasaki has seen it all over the years – blunders large and small, business plans bulky enough to crush a small dog and concise enough to fit on a napkin – and he guides us through this sometimes exhilarating, sometimes vexing landscape with a light touch and a sense of whimsy, culled from years on the speakers’ circuit.

You want breezy? Here’s breezy:

“Bill Reichert, a managing director of Garage, likes to tell entrepreneurs that the odds of raising venture capital are equal to the odds of getting struck by lightning while standing on the bottom of a swimming pool on a sunny day. He’s exaggerating. The odds aren’t that good.”

In The Art of the Start, you’ll read about positioning, pitching, bootstrapping, recruiting, raising capital, partnering, branding, rainmaking, and other things that go into launching a successful venture.

For instance, Kawasaki advises would-be entrepreneurs to devise a succinct mantra for internal consumption, to boil down the essence of the company’s mission to a single phrase or idea. That’s different from a tagline, which is for the public. Nike’s mantra is “Authentic athletic performance.” Its tagline is “Just do it.”

He offers several large corporations and organizations a hypothetical mantra, free of charge. Coca-Cola: Refresh the world. Wendy’s: Healthy fast food. March of Dimes: Save babies. U.S. Air Force: Kick butt in air and space.

Most newbies to the business world “fire up Word to write a business plan, launch PowerPoint to craft a pitch, or boot Excel to build a financial projection. Wrong, wrong, wrong!” he writes.

Instead, he advises, you should get going by getting going. Think big, strive for something grand. Don’t work in a vacuum – find a few soulmates. Polarize people by creating something that catalyzes passion, pro and con.

Kawasaki isn’t afraid to challenge conventional dogma, as when he advises, “Most experts wouldn’t agree, but a business plan is of limited usefulness for a startup because entrepreneurs base so much of their plans on assumptions, ‘visions,’ and unknowns. … Organizations are successful because of good implementation, not good business plans.”

He also points out that your pitch is more important than your business plan. Most entrepreneurs get it backward: “A good business plan is a detailed version of a pitch – as opposed to a pitch being a detailed version of a business plan. If you get the pitch right, you’ll get the plan right.” He offers a 10-point list of the subjects that should be covered in any pitch for investors, and if you’re looking for VC capital, this alone is worth the price of the book.

Another useful chapter is “The Art of Recruiting,” which should be in the bookcase of every HR department. The author – as he does throughout the book – taps into the experience of others, in the case, Amy Vernetti, the headhunter for Kindred Partners, who outlines the art of reference checking. Among the questions she would ask of references:

- How would you rank him against others in similar positions?

- What contributions has he made to the organization?

- How do others in the organization view him?

- In what areas does he need improvement?

- Should I speak with anyone else about him?

I could go on, but you get the idea. Kawasaki has pulled together a lifetime of business lessons in this relatively short (226 pages), accessible and smart work.