Podcasting Tutorials?

So, I've been thinking a lot about the kind of information that I want to convey here.  I am very fond of the tutorial format.  The problem is that I am not really convinced that blogging tutorials is appropriate.  The reason that I say this is that my tutorials tend to get long-winded rather quickly (as does anything that comes out of my head).  Tutorials seem to be a better fit for the multi-paged, online magazine format.  The problem I have with going that route is two fold.  First of all, I have no desire to spend time trying to convince some online editor to publish my tutorials.  Yes, I could always do it myself, but I really do not think that my goals match up with that format.  I, like many of you out there, am a busy guy.  I think I do a pretty good job of keeping current, but it takes a significant effort.  This is an effort that, sadly, most developers either do not have the time or the motivation to undertake.  My answer to this problem has been multi-pronged.  First, I utilize the wonderful service provided by Netvibes to keep my time spent having to jump from site to site at a minimum.  Secondly, (and this is something that Netvibes also helps with) I practice active "time shifting".  What I mean by this is that I utilize technology to help me make something out of the time in my day that is lost to the abyss.  The time I am talking about is that spent in the car, in lines, waiting for other people or even performing the less "thought intensive" parts of my day job.  Now, I do not want to give anyone the idea that I put all of those minutes to actively advancing myself.  A good many of those minutes get devoted to things that are nothing but mind candy.  I do, however, listen to a number of podcasts that take aim at intellectual topics or attempt to educate their listeners in some way or another.

This got me thinking: would a podcast be a good format for tutorials of this type?  While there are a number of podcasts that address software development, most of them focus on news or interviews.  From what I can tell, there really is not much out there providing active training to the community.  Personally, I know that I would listen to a podcast of this type...but that goes without saying.  What I am stuck on is whether or not audio is a format that would be widely accepted for this purpose.  I have a number of tutorials canned and ready to go.  So, I am contemplating recording a few of them up front to determine if there are any hurdles to getting this type of information across in an audio format...and maybe syncing that audio with a "screencast" if I get ambitious.  If it goes well, maybe I will release them and see what everyone has to say.  If the response is good, I'll keep it up.  I am a bit concerned about being able to create tutorials at a rate that would keep a listener base coming back.  However, if I get enough feedback, I may try to balance that out by requesting tutorial submissions from listeners.  We'll see...it is really just a thought at this point.

technorati tags:Podcasting, Software, Training, Tutorials