At the ASBPE (American Society of Business Publication Editors) Conference, I attended two breakout sessions to help me understand a little more about the sorts of things we're starting to do for some of our clients—creating, editing and sharing video and audio custom content on the web. The sessions—one on video and one on podcasting—were pretty basic; but they were thorough enough that if given a camera, a microphone and a cord to connect both devices to my computer, I could have a video and audio file posted in 20 minutes. Seriously, that's how easy it is. And no, the end result would not win a Grammy or an Oscar, but it'd be good enough for the Web.

And that was the lesson (besides "Always use a tripod" and "Don't upload wav files to your Web site"): It's so easy—and inexpensive—so why not give it a try? In both sessions, someone raised their hand and asked for data on how popular the videos or podcasts were and how they measure their effectiveness. I don't recall the answer (there's a breakout session tomorrow on being a better reporter) because I was too busy thinking: If it's so cheap and easy, why not give it a try. If it doesn't stick, no big deal. If it does (and it will, according to what I've been hearing today), all the better.