DDC Group: Wrapping up the First Week

While we’re on holiday, let me give you an update on our work.

Business Plan

Some people have asked me why we’re writing a business plan for this project. There are several reasons, among them, it’s a great way to systematically think through the many aspects of this idea – opportunities, potential partners, potential audience and customers, existing assets, etc. If this project goes forward, there will be costs, and a business plan is a tool to plan those costs and orchestrate the expenditures. And a business plan is about making a case to potential investors, and there are many potential investors in this entity, including the public radio system. We want to have our ducks in a row.

Over the past several days, each of us has written a first draft of sections of the plan. The next few weeks is going to be all about working and re-working these elements, so we have something coherent and sustainable.

Meetings

We spoke last week to representatives from the CPB, to get a broad overview of federal funding for public broadcasting, and how a digital distribution entity may or may not fit into that funding. We’ve had a few people drop in to listen for a while, too. This week, we expect to learn more about public radio’s Content Depot and public television’s Next Generation Interconnection System (NGIS). One of the big questions for us is how a digital distribution entity might connect to Content Depot and NGIS. I expect we’ll also meet this week with members of the Digital Distribution Task Force, a list of whose members is on the front page of our public wiki. That’s a broad group of individuals (some of us DDC’ers are members, too) that we’re using as advisers.

On the Road

We have three road trips planned this month – to Boston 7/10-12, to San Francisco 7/24-25, and to Los Angeles on 7/26. We’ll be packing these trips full of meetings with experts inside and outside of public media. This digital distribution system we envision requires us to tap the expertise of many. I expect the wiki will have a list of who we’re talking to, as that’s determined. I’ll put up a list here, too.

Your Comments, Thoughts

These are welcome. You can comment here, on Jake Shapiro’s weblog, or you add your comments to the wiki.

• What do think about public media in the digital age?
• Does our mission change or expand?
• What opportunities are there for public media? Pitfalls?
• What are you doing at your station to serve your audience online?
• What services should public media be offering online that it’s not already?

Your thoughts on any of these questions would be very helpful.