The podcast took about a month to get approved, and the week before it was posted, as I was tracking down the person who controlled our iTunes feed and Feedburner, I found that another department, Digital Media, was in the process of launching a full-scale dedicated radio station with 24/7 programming and more than a dozen new shows, with new episodes published weekly, also downloadable as podcasts. Radio.lds.org allows you to listen to a live stream of programming online or, if you have an HD Radio in certain cities, you can listen in your car. All the shows also have feeds in iTunes, so they double as podcasts on your iPod.

The podcasts at radio.lds.org target a Mormon audience, but you may find the Everything Creative show interesting. Some of the other podcasts include informal conversations with leaders, stories related at conferences, a history of hymns, scripture stories, and other topics. The focus on conversations and stories is right on target.

Seeing this full-scale podcasting effort (I hope they haven’t underestimated the work necessary to keep this going), made me rethink my work podcast. There’s no longer a need, because it is being fully filled elsewhere, through another department.

A few years ago, as I was transitioning from a startup to a large company and feeling a little frustrated by the bureaucracy of approval required for nearly everything, an older colleague explained this metaphor. She told me small companies are like sailboats, nimble, quick and able to turn sharply, without much notice. Large companies, on the other hand, are like cruise ships. Massive and heavy — it takes them half a mile just to turn around. But while slow, they can also do incredibly powerful things.

I apply this metaphor to the podcasts. My little work podcast, which strangely seems the product of an IT startup, even though it is part of the same organization, is buried in the shadows of Radio.LDS.org’s gigantic all-consuming 24/7 radio station/media outlet/podcast deluge.

While on the topic of podcasts, the other day Gordon McLean of One Man Writes asked listeners what their favorite podcasts are. Here’s what I listen to regularly on my iPod right now: IT Author, WordPress weekly, Boagworld, The WordPress Podcast, This American Life, InDesign Secrets, Brain Sparks, NPR Technology Podcast, This Week in Tech, and Grammar Girl.

My favorite podcast of the week is the IT Author interview of Geoffrey Pullum, an English professor who debunks many assertions in Strunk and White’s Elements of Style and Fowler’s Modern English Usage. I learned some interesting things about grammar from the interview. First, the that versus which rule, using “that” for restrictive clauses and “which” for non-restrictive clauses, appears to be an invention by Fowler in the early part of the twentieth century.

And Strunk and White’s enforcement of singular verbs with certain pronouns (for example, “None of us has an umbrella” rather than “None of us have an umbrella”) also seems to be a rule invention, not in keeping with the accepted grammar of his day.

I consider myself fortunate to live in a time when so much information is available and consumable for free.

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I’m also an active member of the Church, and like most male members, served a mission in Venezuela for two years when I was 19. (I’m now 32.) My wife is a lifetime member, but I joined the Church at 15. Jane and I were married in the Manti temple in Utah after only four months of dating at BYU.

I’ve had the idea for a collaborative scripture reading site for a while. About 5 months ago I created a Ning group and experimented with a beta version of the site. We had about 20 members (mostly family and friends), with at least a quarter of them participating regularly. The site was taking off. But then I fell behind in my reading, I became frustrated with Ning (the social network software I was using), and the site lost momentum. It went into a state of dormancy for a few months.

A couple of weeks ago at Church I realized I was slipping into a passive, automatic mode – going through the motions, but not really feeling passionate or engaged. I thought about the collaborative scripture reading project I had going a few months back, and decided to resurrect it, only this time using WordPress, following a reading schedule that synced with the Sunday School curriculum, and opening it to the general public.

I’m not sure if this version will be more successful, but I know that it engages me more. I am simply accustomed to the blog format, to reading and commenting and viewing others’ comments. I think applying social media to a traditionally print-based, physical format may have some interesting results. Right now, I’m the only one commenting on the site. But maybe it will grow into something larger. Anyone is welcome to participate.

You may belong to another faith, or to another group, such as a book club or a creative writing group. You can apply the same type of collaborative model to any situation. The cool thing about WordPress is its flexibility. You can bend it to serve almost any need. (If you remember, I also used WordPress to create my Writer River site.)

But really the technical part is easy. The community is much harder to create and keep going. Some collaborative blog sites, like Times and Seasons, have a tremendous energy behind them, and it is entirely due to the community of readers and participants. Without community, many authors lose motivation to keep writing.