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The radio studio was in my hotel room in Washington DC on Tuesday– in town for the EDUCAUSE ELI conference, Jim Groom, Martha Burtis, and I (plus friend and guest Steve G) did what we could to keep ds106 radio on schedule — even pushing the radio concept farther with a call in show, or “Bitch n Design”

The topic will be “Bitch about ds106? and it is where I take live callers—and tweeters—concerns, ideas, and general impressions about ds106 thus far. I’ll ask you to consider what’s working, what’s not, what do you like, what should we kill, keep, etc. It’s no holds barred radio. I have done this every semester so far at about week 6, and doing it via the radio station is not only expedient, but could be very fun. I expect you all to play along.

And play we did.

We ran up to my room to use the wired connection about 15 minutes before start, and darned of the technology did not behave. Even with Jim praying for it:

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Despite my Nicecasting confidence, the application mixer refused to grab sound from Skype as a source- (it would try and fail). Maybe it was an issue with the new version if Skype? Or maybe it was a conflict of using the laptop mic as the input source for Nicecast and Skype needing it too.

Lacking time to troubleshoot, we punted. I gave the wire to Jim’s computer, so he could be the Nicecasting station, flipped on my MIfi so my laptop could be used to do Skype… and it worked well (despite my fumbling with the new Skype interface- apologies if we did not get to you).

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It was fascinating to hear the students honestly call out Jim for the short notice time on announcements and the over use of 80s music (okay, none of them did that)… but what other class has a freaking call-in show? One where the students get to give such direct feedback?

It was like smooth music to see how both Jim and Martha listend and openly addressed the student needs. The real joy was hearing the honest opinions of the students, many of whom are in different places of their ds107-ness.

There is a lot fo energy for this class, and I am addicted to it.