A big shout-out here to Obadiah Tarzan Greenberg, product manager at Webcast.Berkeley. Obadiah’s just recently joined the blogosphere, as I learned when his link to my blog appeared on my WordPress dashboard under “incoming links.” It’s delightful to be linked to, of course (more of what Brian Lamb calls “the power of positive narcissicism”), but it’s even more delightful to know that Obadiah is blogging. In addition to being a swell chap he’s also a vital resource for all of us, as I learned over a year ago when I consulted him for advice on setting up our own UMW Webcast series. In fact, the whole idea of a UMW Webcast series was inspired by Obadiah’s work. Doing research for a paper I was writing on Errol Morris’s film The Fog of War, I had discovered Berkeley’s webcast of a public forum featuring both Morris and Robert McNamara, the subject of the film. I was enthralled both by the forum and by the idea of putting all those resources onto the web. I immediately went back to my faculty and staff colleagues and said, “we must do this, especially for our Great Lives series.” When I got widespread agreement, I was then faced with the question of how to make it all happen–so I simply emailed the contact person at the Berkeley site, who directed me to Obadiah.

One charming phone call later, and I had all the information I needed to get the website up and running.

So here’s a public thank-you to Obadiah, and another installment in what could be (and I hope will be) the continuing saga of the growth of real school. When a mighty Research I university helps a small, public, primarily liberal-arts university get its start in webcasting, and when high-speed networked computing makes those contacts not only easy but likely, the sky gets a little bigger and blue-er. I am grateful.