Here at Talis, we do a lot to reach out to our customers, as you would expect. They, for example, get Talis Talk every month, and communicate with teams and individuals here in the usual variety of ways.

We’re also becoming increasingly proactive in engaging, both with the wider library community, and with entirely new audiences such as those forming around Web 2.0 and the Participation Age. In this context, we’re not selling products. Rather, we’re carrying forward an important conversation about the way in which society, its institutions and our expectations are changing, and about how we need to think, experiment and build together in new ways. The conversations involve Talis customers and non-customers alike, and will have a fundamental impact upon the ways in which future services are assembled.

We have our annual conference, with this year’s in Birmingham (UK) on 15 and 16 November. We also get out to present at other people’s events.

We have our new series of Research Days, the third of which was successfully held earlier this week.

We have panlibus, and a growing stable of sister blogs with which to carry the debate forward on the leading edge. We also write for a variety of journals and trade publications.

Very soon, we’ll be launching our new magazine, both in print and online. Watch this space for the formal launch announcement, but with our Marketing team occasionally requisitioning my desk this week to spread out the final proofs, I can vouch for how good it looks…

We’re also about to start a very different venture, with our entry into the world of podcasting, and that is the real subject of this post.

Existing technology podcasts, such as those distributed through IT Conversations, are excellent. There is certainly room for more, though, and we believe that Talis brings a perspective to this space that is currently unique and potentially of interest to quite a diverse audience. We straddle the library/information science and technology worlds, and can clearly see how much each stands to gain from the other. With these podcasts, we intend to build bridges between the two, whilst also offering content of interest and relevance to those who may currently consider themselves to occupy only one of these spaces.

We are currently approaching a number of contributors, with a view to signing them up to do interviews with us. Within Talis, we of course have a long list of people we’d like to hear speak, and I’m working my way through that list just now. If there are any people you’d especially like to hear (or if you’d like to volunteer yourself!), please send an e-mail to podcasts [at] talis[dot]com.

Once we have an agreed set of speakers and topics for the next few months of podcasting, we’ll publish it here and invite questions to the speakers from all of you. Where feasible, we’ll incorporate your questions into the interview.

We look forward to reaching out and engaging with the community in a new – and hopefully participative – manner, and I personally look forward to the opportunity this grants me to talk with many of those from whom I have so much to learn!

Technorati Tags: Libraries, Podcasting, Talis, Web 2.0