I was leading a chat on Project Management for the MPLA Chew and Chat program yesterday and we got to talking about analysis paralysis and technolust – 2 great ways to avoid doing actual work while feeling like you are getting things done. As an example of my technolust failing, I pointed the attendees to a “thing” that I had been playing with that morning. I took the content of my class lectures, workshop slides and other Project and Knowledge Management content that I had in my Google Drive, added it to a NotebookLM instance and then asked the Google AI to make a podcast out of the content.
The results are occasionally silly and it’s clear that the AI isn’t really sure about what is “lesson” and what is “example” in my workshops, but really, I’m nitpicking. The fact that the computer took about 3 minutes to review all of those resources – transcripts from nearly an hour of lectures + 6 or 7 slide decks – and came up with something that is actually sort of coherent is *mindblowing*. I include the podcast audio here so that you all can hear it – warts and all.
One thing to note – after the session, I got a note from a friend who was in the session who said that 2 of her staff attended and within minutes of the end of the session, had uploaded a database info sheet into a NotebookLM instance and produced a podcast that librarians in her state can use to learn about the state-offered databases (for as long as they continue to be offered, at least – there is some real threat that they’ll go away entirely in the next year or so in South Dakota, so if you live there, talk to your legislator!!). This all had nothing (really) to do with project management (other than the topic of my foray into techolusting) but it was one of those cool serendipitous moments that I felt I should share…