Commentary by Ellen Domb

TRIZ Podcasts: the resource story

Our friends at TRIZIndia have started a podcast series that will be both a tutorial on TRIZ methods and a discussion of how to teach an apply those methods in real situations in real companies. It is free and easy (no passwords, no registration process.) Try the first one on Ideal Final Result at http://trizindia.podbean.com/

The announcement said, "Everyone, We have started a podcast series on basics of TRIZ tools. Please give your feedback on the series. We will reach out to some of you to participate in the podcasts. You can also reach out to Murali Loganathan, Shankar Venugopal, Prakasan K or me, Bala Ramadurai to include you to participate in the podcasts." So I sent my positive feedback on the first recording, and asked Bala for the story behind the production. It is a very good example of the use of existing resources, and use of the supersystem resources in particular.

"Podcast was one of those ideas which came to me when I was stuck in Bangalore traffic and I thought this is the best resource to listen to podcasts. So, I listened to Getting Things Done podcasts streaming from my cellphone to the car stereo. One fine day, it hit me that TRIZ should have a podcast of our own. Instead of dismissing the idea, I wrote it down at the next light :-) next action - talk to Murali to find out if he was interested and then Shankar signed up. Murali couldnt make it, since he had to be in the other MindTree Office and Shankar said his daughters weren't doing well. I was hell-bent on recording the podcasts that very day or it would become one more of ideas which never lifted off. (Time = 0 in Size-time-cost, I guess).

"Murali quickly booked an audio bridge and we had Shankar dial in as well. We did a trial run on my cellphone (which doubled up as a digital recorder). It seemed to play my voice well, but drowned Shankar's and Murali's voices. Now, optimization time and I had the parameters perfect. One hitch though, since this was universality at play, my cellphone went off and disrupted the recording. Learning for next time, change the mode of the phone to Offline before starting to record.

"Again, my condition was simple for post-production - only one step to upload, no intermediate steps. Due to the cut in the recording, Murali had to struggle with formats and freeware, finally he managed to merge the 2 files. What format do we use to upload? wordpress wanted mp3, but some size limitation. Facebook wanted mp4, only 20 minutes, tumblr, youtube, we tried them all, none worked. Prakash to the rescue, podbean was the instant suggestion and turned out just fine. Prakash also managed to embed the player on trizindia.org."

Now that you know the story, please join TRIZ Journal commentators and authors by listening to the podcasts, send your comments, and volunteer to be recorded.

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