After an experiment of almost a year, Gigavox Media has decided to fold Open Source Conversations back in IT Conversations. Frankly this is a decision I've hoped for for some time. At the time Open Source Conversations was created, there was a lot of open source shows coming to IT Conversations and Gigavox was anxious to create sister channels for IT Conversations.

I like not splitting things up, but I also recognize that as more and more material is published on IT Conversations, listeners have a tough time figuring out what to listen to. I didn't want to lose the ability for someone who's interested in open source, for example, to lose the focus that OSC provided.

Consequently, we've created what, for now, I'm calling a "special collection," in this case for open source podcasts on IT Conversations. Now any show on IT Conversations that has open source as a topic will show up in that collection, in addition to showing up on the IT Conversations homepage and in whatever series it's part of.

This let's us offer the advantages of OSC--people just interested in open source can visit the open source conversations collection or even subscribe to an RSS feed of open source podcasts--without foregoing the general content on IT Conversations.

In the future, I'll be looking for other topics that people might like us to create collections around, with their own RSS feed, and adding them to the list. Things like GIS, telephony, and Linux come to mind. If you have suggestions, please contact me.