iTunes is a capricious friend, so I hesitate to boast, but I was pleased to log on this morning and find that our Children’s Story Podcast, Storynory is at 21 in the UK Arts and Entertainment Category, just ahead of the Capital Breakfast show with Johnny Vaughn.

But despite having set “Family” and “Education” as iTunes subcategories, we don’t warrant a ranking in those charts. We do, however, appear under Education as a “featured” podcast, rather than in the separate chart. It’s annoying that big Brand Podcasts, such as BMW and Penguin are often plugged on the front page of iTunes under “New and Notable” despite being behind us in the charts.

If you set the “popularity” ranking in the fourth column of an iTunes podcast search (in the latest versions of iTunes, changing from the default “relevance”,) Storynory comes out top for a search on “children”, ahead of the BBC’s “Big Toenail Clippings” programme. But if you search for “kids” we come nowhere at all, despite having it as a key word and mentioning it in our description. We do, however, come out as number one in popularity for books, ahead of Penguin.

iTunes works in mysterious ways - but as 80% of subscribers use it, it’s THE most important promotion for any podcast - and Podcast Alley etc are far, far behind.

The We Media Conference is quite mind-numbing. At first I thought that what it needed was a break-out zone, where you could get away from the boring speakers and meet interesting people. Now, after hours and hours of this, I think it needs a darkened room where you can lie down with an ice-pack on your forehead, with an intravenous drip of some good whisky.

The main subject is how “We Media” - ie the BBC, Reuters, The Times, The Guardian, can “embrace” citizen journalism and use it to their own ends.

Far from being “We Media” it is “They Media” sitting up on the stage and talking without much knowledge about citizen journalism. For a moment it came alive when they had a blogger on the stage - Rachel North who was inspired to blog by being caught up in the London bombing. The rest has been open-ended and vague. The most cringe-worthy moment came when a “young” 31 year old BBC smarmy presenter introduced some “digital assassins” ie bloggers (some of whom work from the BBC), who sat down at the tables with the old fuddy-duddies so that they could talk to real bloggers. Oh God! That was the most embarrassing moment of any conference I have ever been to. Rightfully, it was heckled by an old Private Citizen in the Dad’s Army mode who somehow got into the conference.

Richard Dreyfuss did the Hollywood, “I’m not a typical star because I care” turn, with his tie loosely pulled to one side, telling us that the young can’t be trusted with “this technology” because they haven’t been properly educated in the meaning of Democracy. Then actors are always repulsive as themselves, even if they are wonderful being somebody else. (The Tin Men will always be one of my favourite films).

Even the survey which kicked off the conference was bogus. It was presented as saying that people don’t trust bloggers to tell the truth - but in fact it turns out that the question was whether people trust bloggers to have the good of society at heart. This is an entirely different question, and it’s a black mark against the BBC that they twisted this.

Helen Boaden, the BBC Head of news who decided to keep reporting that the London Bombs were a power surge on the tube got off lightly. Nobody asked her about it, even though an authentic victim/blogger was on the stage. Helen was asked what blogs she reads,and she named one by her boss and another by a BBC journalist.

There’s no sense here of the variety and liveliness, human warmth/spite, and sheer entertainment of grass roots media. All I can say is thank goodness I didn’t pay to get in. Actually, they could charge people to get out. I don’t think I’m going to be posting any nice thoughts about the BBC until I’ve got over this.

BBC’s Mark Thompson is on the stage at We Media. Definitely most thoughtful Director General the BBC has had for years. He says that new media will shake up the old broadcasters - “It’s a very disruptive phase, and many won’t survive”.

But listening to him on how the BBC will meet the challenge, the main thing that comes across is that he’s asking questions about how to involve “We Media” and hasn’t yet got the answers. But he gives a clue, “neither top up, nor bottom up.”

Here’s how I see it. The BBC won’t be copying Flickr or MySpace as some suggest. It’s not a blog hosting company. That’s “planet bonkers” as the Sunday Times commented. But there will be projects that are directed by the BBC that pull in the public more and more, using their blog posts, audio, video, pictures etc.

The BBC will of course set the agenda. It will cross fertilise TV, Radio, Online, and social media. The public will chip in - but within the parameters of the “programme”. Think Crime Watch. The BBC highlights some crimes, the public ring in and say they saw the guy with scar running down the street last Thursday. It can be faster, but it will also be much deeper in the new media world. Projects can be spread over weeks and months and build up into an archive of BBC journalism and citizen journalism content on a particular subject, with thousands of people contributing. The important part will be how this content is organised, so that it’s user friendly.

Neville Hobson writes that yesterday’s announcement from the BBC represents a “seismic shift” in the way the Corporation sees its role. The World’s largest broadcaster is “re-inventing” itself for the age of participatory media.

I would not go quite so far. It seems to me that the BBC has reached a first stage - outlined by its head of interactive radio, Simon Nelson, in an interview he gave me a couple of months ago - of accepting that “on demand” is a big part of the future. In other words, the BBC will be as much an online-archive of media as a live broadcaster. People will view and listen to content in a variety of ways at a time of their choosing. There will be a massive educational resource on the BBC’s servers, and a historical, social, and above all cultural wealth that can be accessed at any time.

As Simon Nelson said, the realisation that media is for the future as well as the here and now, will effect the way the BBC makes programmes. It makes you focus on the “classic value” of what you are doing. You are not just chasing today’s ratings, but trying to create something that will be appreciated and downloaded in years to come. This is the quality that was so lacking from the BBC in the “multi-digital” era of the remote channel hopper and ten second attention span. I know that Greg Dyke was a hero at the BBC, but when he was in charge, you really did hear people question the reason for its existence all the time. You don’t hear so much of that now. It’s largely because the BBC is thinking about quality again, as well as ratings.

The second thing that is happening - but I think to a much less great extent - is a shift in the meaning of “public service” broadcasting. In the past this has always meant a service for the public. Now it is starting to include a service by the public. We’ve seen it with pictures an videos sent in by the citizen journalists. Now in some slightly unspecified way we are going to see more of it in the BBC’s online services. Next week the BBC is co-sponsoring the “Our Media” conference about participatory media. I think we are going to be hearing a lot more about “Our BBC”. But there is still a lot of figuring out of what that means. It’s something all big media organisations are going through - but it’s fair to say that the BBC is more open-minded and creative about participatory media than most,not least because it doesn’t have to work out how to make it pay.

Perhaps it’s a co-incidence, but every time the BBC’s licence fee is up for renewal, it re-invents itself for the age. When I was there, it was re-inventing itself for the multi-channel digital TV age. This sounds cynical, but perhaps it’s not a bad thing. Imagine that the NHS faced a possible cut in or total annihilation of its budget every ten years. I think it would focus its mind on value for money, and giving the public, not its employees, what they want. They might start to inform and involve the public more in decisions about their own health. If you needed to see a cancer specialist pronto, the “particpatory” NHS would make sure that you did, by hook or by crook. You would hear a lot fewer lectures about “policy”. Your GP would take care to park his brand new BMW with personalised number plates round the back of the surgery where you can’t see it. He might be willing to drive round to see you out of surgery hours, like his forebearers did 30 years ago. He wouldn’t claim to be running a “complex business” just because he employs an accountant.

Sometimes the BBC’s licence fee model backed up by a Public Service remit and a statutory Charter seems out of date, but it provides much needed discipline that is so lacking from the bottomless-pit model of publicly funded services.