How many conversations about the changing landscape of media take place during lunch, while at an unconference or during a 5-7? What if some of those conversations could be recorded and turned into a Podcast? Why couldn’t they? That was the thought and spark behind a new Podcast called, Media Hacks.

"Media Hacks is a fairly frequent audio conversation (every couple of weeks or so) that looks at media, technology, publishing, culture and how we all interact with it and build community." The idea seemed simple enough, I figured every couple of weeks I would call on some friends and have the types of conversations that I already have over lunch with people like Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, Earideas) and Julien Smith (In Over Your Head and co-author of the forthcoming book, Trust Agents). I figured it would be a nice break and a way to freshen up the Six Pixels of Separation Podcast. What’s that old saying, "be careful what you wish for"? Julien and I discussed the feasibility of the show, and managed to wrangle up McGuire along with Chris Brogan (chrisbrogan.com and co-author of the book Trust Agents), C.C. Chapman (Managing The Gray, Accident Hash and The Advance Guard) and Christopher S. Penn (Financial Aid Podcast, Marketing Over Coffee and Awaken Your Superhero) to take part.

Conversations add value.

Every two weeks we all get on the phone, choose a couple of topics or issues that are interesting to us and yack about what it means. It’s supposed to be free-spirited, raw and real. So far, the results have been great. So much so that it went from this random audio segment idea into a full-blown show. We have managed to record four episodes already. The third one, which was recorded live from the Carnegie Deli in New York City last week went live on Sunday, and episode #4 is already recorded and should be published in about two weeks.

We even gave Media Hacks a home of it’s own right here: Media Hacks.

There will be more guests who will come in and out and not all of us are on every episode, so you never what you’re going to get. So far, it’s been an amazingly fun and interesting project. The biggest surprise has been how much I learn from the other hosts and where the conversation leads. It usually sparks a lot of ideas for newer pieces of Blog and Podcasting content, which is never a bad thing.

If you’re interested in new thinking on new media, I hope you’ll give it a listen and feel free to contribute to the conversation as well.