"Ladies and Gentlemen, we have lift off"

Yes, I know, I tinkered with the famous phrase just a bit.

Back in 1969, when the Apollo landed on the moon, our well respected NASA officials either must have only had men working in the Houston control center OR they believed that only men were listening to and watching history get made. Hey, what gives!!

Nevertheless, we at Blogtalkradio certainly do not share the same view towards gender equality in the Blogosphere. In honor of Jaime's participation at the Blogher conference this past weekend in San Jose and our launch of the Women in the Blogosphere series, one of our objectives is to help level the playing field in the blogosphere. See Jaime's post earlier today.

The phrase "we have lift off" couldn't be more appropriate for the launch of Blogtalkradio. In less than one week, "on air", we have over 475 shows programmed, originating from more than 20 countries (including such landmark countries sucsh as Chad and Swaziland), covering more than 20 seperate genre's. Truly incredible!!

This past past weekend, while we were sweltering in the heat in the northeast along with the rest of the country, our friends at the Los Angeles Fire Department hosted their first blogshow. Although we did have some technical problems, namely an unanticipated number of inbound calls hitting our platform, the folks at the LAFD were quite pleased with the experience.

Not only do we appreciate their patience and their loyalty to this new medium, they had nice things to say to the LA Times. As you can see on the following link, and I quote

"The thing is really to empower the public," said spokesman Brian Humphrey, after his first show from the department operations control division four floors below City Hall East. "It's obvious to me that there's interest and a potential need."

The article in today's LA Times, goes on to say,

"Humphrey also foresees "LAFD TalkRadio" as a resource in times of duress, such as the response and recovery phase of a disaster. The department could rely on its own broadcast to inform people and let them know they're not alone.

The key word here is "empowerment". Over time, my posts will explore this concept in great detail.

Brian, once again I want to thank you and the LAFD for using Blogtalkradio and helping us to improve and promote this new and exciting experience.

Alan