FIR Interview with Microsoft’s Paolo Tosolini on Academy Mobile: Dec 4, 2007

Academy MobileIn July 2007, Microsoft introduced Academy Mobile, an internal social computing initiative aimed at creating a knowledge sharing environment among employees through the use of videocasts and podcasts.

Academy Mobile is the latest in a series of online learning initiatives developed within the Enterprise Partner Group at Microsoft where employees can create, watch, listen and share videocasts or podcasts with peers; subscribe to specific search queries, presenters or tags; and download content onto their mobile devices.

In this FIR Interview, Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz talked with Paolo Tosolini, New Media Business Manager at Microsoft, about Academy Mobile including discussion on its objectives, how the programme was developed, aspects about the platform on which it runs, and communication and organizational challenges in rolling out such a programme globally.

About our Conversation Partner

Paolo TosoliniPaolo Tosolini is a New Media Business Manager at Microsoft responsible for a new internal corporate initiative called Academy Mobile (description and video). Funded by the Microsoft Enterprise & Partner Group, Academy Mobile is a social media platform available to all Microsoft employees to share knowledge and best practices using podcasts.

Prior to this role, Paolo worked in several other groups at Microsoft, including MSN and Office, where he managed the Office 2007 partner early adoption program that resulted in more than 500 partner solutions developed at launch.

Paolo is also co-author with his wife Francesca of a blog, podcast and e-Book called Italy From The Inside, where they share travel and cultural tips about Italy using new media.

download for immediate release podcast

Download the 34-minute conversation here (MP3, 15.8MB), or sign up for the Interviews RSS feed to get it and future interviews automatically. For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a such as the free Juice, DopplerRadio or iTunes, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon. To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the twice-weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, sign up for the full RSS feed.

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Podsafe intro music - On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

Posted by neville on 12/03 at 12:47 PM

  1. Hi Neville and Shel,

    I’ve just listened to your interview with Paolo Tosolini talking about Academy Mobile, and wanted to give you an update, from a Brit perspective!

    Well, Academy Mobile came to the UK last week, when we had Academy Mobile Day here in Microsoft’s UK campus in Reading. It was a great success, and we had some great conversations, with internal people, plus my podcasting buddy John Buckley over at http://www.citizenscoop.co.uk.

    You can find more about this over at my blogs at http://blogs.msdn.com/pcogle and http://petecogle.com. I’ve been podcasting for nearly two years (mostly in the unsigned music field) but since I joined Microsoft 13 months ago I’ve been looking for a way to get people to take podcasting seriously.  I managed to create a couple of podcasts, but these were spread across various websites and there was no *platform* to give these pieces a “home”.

    Now that we have Academy Mobile we have that home and I’ve been able to persuade my own department (I manage one of the support global support teams) to invest in podcasting for communication, training…. and fun. We’re calling it “GeekPod” because that’s what we are, and what we love.

    I travel in Europe quite a lot, and early next year I shall be going over to Bangalore, India, where I hope to be able to take the message to those folks, give some podcasting workshops and encourage them to podcast anything and everything!

    Great show. I’m subscribed!

    Pete

    Posted by Pete Cogle  on  12/19  at  05:38 AM

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