I like the direction Eden Spodek and I are heading with our new podcast Community Divas.

In Episode 3 released a few weeks ago, we interview Saul Colt, Director of Magic for Freshbooks and the Smartest Man in the World! Freshbooks is a billing platform based on the Internet. I am a Freshbooks client, and an avid fan as well. I happened to have met Saul before he came to work at Freshbooks, and I was happy when he signed on with this growing company. Saul talks about how Freshbooks sees their clients as a community and uses a number of methods (including meeting them in person) to stay connected with them.

In this Episode we also address a question from Mark Blevis, a veteran podcaster and social media strategist who has encouraged us with our podcasting endeavours. Mark took his question and expanded on it in his blog post “Technology is not Community“. I love it!

In Episode 4 released tonight, we talk with Daniele Rossi, a web designer, graphic artist and podcaster. We discuss his creativity podcast Spud Cast, his new fun The Laughing Podcast, and especially his Stuttering is Cool podcast that has helped him to connect with others in some surprising ways.

We also address a question from Jane Rowe who works in the stationery business and writes a fantastic business-related blog called Moving Stationery. She asks about a business bringing together a community that has not yet quite formed in the b2b (business to business) world. Just as I did in the call centre recruiting workshop, I relied heavily on the Forrester Research book Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, and Eden and I bounce around a few other ideas.

The Community Divas recently travelled to Montreal for Podcamp Montreal, an “unconference” about podcasting and social media. We gave a presentation about how we started our podcast and what goes into an episode. We also solicited feedback from the audience. One big thing we heard a few times is that people would like us to interview those who are not just involved in online communities, but who are in “real world” communities as well. I agree this would be a good direction for us, and we will slowly head that way. It just so happens we know a lot of great people who also spend a lot of time online, so it may take a little time to round things out a bit more.

If you haven’t yet listened to Community Divas, you can find the audio files on our blog at http://communitydivas.com or on iTunes. You can download to your iPod or other MP3 player, or listen on your computer. Each episode runs about 18-22 minutes long.

The second episode of the podcast Community Divas that I do with Eden Spodek is now live!

In this episode we continue our interview with Jay Moonah, Connie gives an update on recent problems with Twitter, and Eden asks how many social networking spaces is optimal for a community.  The interview with Jay is very interesting because he talks about research by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in the recent book Groundswell, how you can look at demographics to determine which social networking space to use to speak to a certain group of people.  He also talks about personal branding, how it is difficult to get out more than one message about yourself if you are known for one thing in particular (for him it has been music).

You can listen to this episode on your computer from the website communitydivas.com or download it from iTunes. We have also set up a Facebook page and a FriendFeed room for those who are so inclined. Or follow Community Divas on Twitter.