[UPDATE: We had a good turnout for a first event. In the end I went to Newcastle to pitch a seminar, so didn't make it. Interested in hosting or coming to the next one in January?]

Plodcast, by the West Midlands Police, wants more ‘budding bobbies to join the force’. In their surprisingly fun radio-style podcast, presenters respond to and encourage listener feedback and interview those working in the force. Find out what Scene of Crime Officers do on the job, from those doing it now. Bringing a potential career choice to life in ways the traditional job description can’t, this podcast gives applicants more confidence on what to expect from the actual position for over 15,000 happy listeners.

The non-profit Green Thing makes it easy to be a bit greener. Every month, subscribers (and only subscribers) get emailed or fed two videos from world-class filmmakers showing a different Green Thing to do. October’s Green Thing was to ‘Walk Once’. The community aspect of the website allows visitors to see how many users did the ‘thing’, and how much CO2 was saved in total by all the viewers. Their videos inform, help their site obtain regular visitors and encourage participation.

A

Alert
Stay alert, listen and respond. The basic concepts of taking part in the Blogosphere. If you don’t stay alert you’ve lost control, you can’t respond, you can’t initiate conversations: you’ll look like you are stonewalling.

Authentic
Blogs (especially) are best when their authors are authentic. They may include long sentences, detailed analysis or critical opinions. Typically, those things run counter to traditional public relations.

Avatar
Life-like representation (or not) of a user’s appearance in MMORPGs such as Second Life.

B

Blogs
A weblog, web log or simply a blog, is a web application which displays time-stamped posts on a webpage. Blogging allows you to quickly and easily update website content, encourage user interaction, boost name recognition and increase traffic.

Bloglines
Consumers use a RSS reader (such as the online service www.bloglines.com) to read all their favourite Feeds in one place quickly and easily.

Buzz
Blogs facilitate the spread of buzz – honest, informative or thought-provoking posts about issues important to customers tend to be spread more often. Bloggers are often buzz spreaders, and they can funnel many others like themselves to your blog and your organization.

C

Citizen Marketers
Your customers are writing about your products or services whether you like it or not: www.creatingcustomerevangelists.com/cm/

Cluetrain
Cluetrain Manifesto – a 1999 online manifesto. It is all about what works when it comes to doing business on the Internet. Read it: www.cluetrain.com

CMS
Content Management System. Can be expensive software that allows users to update websites. With Open Source and blog software (such as TypePad), these tools are now available to almost anyone to build, maintain and change website content constantly.

Corporate Blog
Employees of corporations are posting official or semi-official blogs about their work. Read www.thecorporatebloggingbook.com and make sure your employment contract or company handbook addresses blogging: www.corporateblogging.info

E

Evangelists
Blogs fan the flames of customer evangelism. Their personal nature helps humanise your organization. Blog enthusiasts are excellent evangelist candidates. They’re early adopters.

F

Facebook
A social networking website. The second most visited website on the World Wide Web.

Feeds
RSS content updates from a publisher are called “feeds”. Look for the RSS orange logo. Web feeds are widely used by the weblog community to share the latest entries’ headlines or full text.

Flickr
An online photo management and sharing application. Your could use Flickr to: host an image library that you can password protect (if you wish) for the press, internal or customer use.

G

Google Alerts
If you want to be alerted when someone writes about you, your products, your area of expertise or your company, create a Google Alert www.google.com/alerts

I

Instant-feedback
Blogs function as an instant-feedback mechanism. Readers can respond to your posts or link to them on their own blogs. These features provide feedback on ideas and issues that strike a chord, or highlight new or existing problems.

M

MMORPG
Massive(ly) multiplayer online role-playing game. Online role-playing video games or worlds in which a large number of players interact with one another virtually. See Second Life.

N

Napsterize
Blogs can help you and your company Napsterize your knowledge. A blog is about sharing what you know, think and believe. Search engines index your ongoing knowledge-sharing, making it easier for customers and prospects to find you.

O

Open Source
A set of principles and practices that promote access to the design and production of goods and knowledge. Most commonly applied to the source code of software that is available to the general public.

P

Podcast
A method of distributing multimedia files, such as audio or video, over the Internet using RSS, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers.

R

Reputation
Thanks to blogs, positioning, message delivery and reputation management are in the hands of the public – the days of autocratic message control are over.

RSS
Really Simple Syndication. Fast emerging as the standard for informing consumers when web-based content is updated. Using RSS, website owners can provide instant updates to their users.

S

Second Life
Second Life is a privately owned, subscription-based 3-D virtual world. You view the world through your PC with broadband. You can buy or rent property, travel, shop, work, listen to live music, have a pint, dance, have sex, fall in love, possibly get rich, all from your computer.

Syndicate
With a weblog you can publish external content on your site and syndicate your content to other websites and users.

T

Tagging
On a website such as Flickr, tags are adjectives that describe a photo’s category (such as ‘total lunar eclipse’). All of the photos that share a particular tag can themselves be explored as a group. The blog search engine called Technorati.com uses these tags to retrieve search results.

Technorati
The main blog search engine: www.technorati.com

Three-legged Stool
Why blogs are so powerful. The three legs: search engines, your customers and the media. Blogs get high search rankings, they are a low cost way to communicate with your customers, blog and get media interest.

Twitter.com
A social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based messages) via text, instant messaging, email or the Twitter website.

W

Web 2.0
A call to action and a turning point for business. Web 2.0 marked the coming of the blogs.

Wiki
A wiki is a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or edit all content quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration. Wiki technology is the foundation for the electronic encyclopaedia: Wikipedia (a free encyclopaedia built by its users).

Y

You Tube
You Tube originally started as a personal video sharing service, and has grown into an entertainment destination.