Is it Newsy?

Hey Lords,

So this is a little elaboration on the pitch presentation, and our segment on newsworthiness. We didn't get time to go into it, but I think there's some really interesting thinking around building our Podcastle now. New media, is all over the news at the moment.

• Facebook has just become a publicly traded company. This isn't just big news for budding media moguls (like ourselves) but the billions of facebook user who have just had access to their personal information totally commoditized.  This also demonstrates the economic and social relevance of internet media. Podcasts, like FB, are an easy outlet to publicly vent private information. Which leads me neatly to...

• Social phenomena of sharing. Gen Y seem to have really taken to their new-agey early education. We're very much into sharing. The vast tirade of priate information now self published on the web is very interesting to social commentators and observers. Podcasting is an up and coming media for self expression and independent publishing. 

• Yahoo CEO, Scott Thompson, has made news earlier this year after it was revealed he lied in his resume. While not a specifically social media or new media story, it raises public concern about the trustworthy of individuals with access to personal information broadcast online. Podcasting can and often is, a media for self expressing and the publishing of pivate information to an internet, who may not be entirely trustworthy.

• The Bugle scandal (see for particularly creepy pic of John Oliver). I've written about this before but in terms of diect and relevant news-worthiness we can't look past The Bugel, a London Times sponsored podcasts that was axed after some pretty scathing reporting on it's parent company News Corporation. It's unclear the extent to which this satirical style of reporting contributed to the axing but it was certainly suspcious timing. 

 

We also can't look past the increasing trend of internet content consumers (particularly podcast consumers) becoming independent content producers. Blogging, micro-blogging, tumbling and facebooking are all growing exponetially. We are reach an epoch characterised not simply by the mass reception of digital information, but by mass involvment in its authorship.The Podcastle is relevant and newsworthy, if only because it facilitates this increasingly popular process and supports this paradigm of contemporary digital authorship.

A podcast can easily become integrated into your pre-existing social media network. Increasingly avenues for online self publishing have become networked and conglomerated. The digital content producers of the future will integrate podcasts into this network. Check out this awesome infor graphic

Source: blog.hubspot.com/

See you in the Podcastle,

Jaimie 

The Verge!

Goooood morning,

So I have found the perfect platform to publish our feature - an US-based technology website called The Verge.

Like us, they want to reach people with an interest in technology and new ways of communicating. Their mission statement is also eerily similar to what we're looking at - to cover the intersection between technology and culture.

They also have a podcast! The Vergecast is a regularly updating tech news podcast, which we could look at to get ideas on how we want to do ours in terms of tone, format, etc.

I think they would also provide a great opportunity for us to find our audience as we would be able to utilise their established audience, especially through their social media profile, which would be a great opportunity to gain exposure for our podcast. We could then build on that foundation to create our own social media profile.

What do you guys think of The Verge as a potential website to publish our feature?

Eye Candy

Good morrow Lords,

So Julia has me thinking.... 

I always thought that the great thing about podcasts was that, like radio or music, they can be a totally interesting backing track to an otherwise boring task (driving, cleaning, running pointlessly on the spot in a gym somewhere), but I never really thought about the podcast simpliciter. I never really thought about how you might enjoy a podcast, if you weren't actually doing anything else.

Our meetings have been pretty persistently throwing out the idea that the popularity of podcasts must have something to do with their portability - that the 'listen anywhere, anyhow, anytime' quality of podcasts is an integral element to their success. Julia has made a massively important point here!! Some people will simply be listening to The Podcastle while sitting at their desktops, or laptops, or staring blankly at their smart phones. I've had a hunt around the internet and come up with a few super clever ideas podcasters have used to add some pazazz! (I apologize for my use of pazazz)


Animation:

I've seen a bucket-load of examples on YouTube of producer and fan animated podcasts. The Ricky Gervais Show is an awesome example of this. Started off as an audio only podcast, and then was animated for HBO in the States and Channel 4 in the UK.

 I've seen a similar thing done with clips of Hollywood Babble-On (Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman's celeb news /Liam Neeson dick jokes podcast) on YouTube. I'm not sure if this was animated in house, or if it's just  incredibly elaborate fan-art.

Unless one of the lords, is actually the defrosted Walt Disney, I'm not sure animating the cast is going to be possible, but I've seen a whole bunch of other (probably simpler) visual techniques.

Vidcast:

According to my gamer brother Day[9] is some kind of pro-gamer demi-god with whole lot of Korean fans... obvisously he's tapped a niche market, that's probably not going to be ours, but his podcast is super visual. That's because it's actually a vidcast. There's no fancy camera work, editing or set he just films himself talking into his computer.

Picture Time:

So it's pretty low tech, but there is also the option of adding still images to our podcast and uploading it onto YouTube. Rob (you know, the one with the podcast) has a pretty good, if woefully uninteresting example of this.

Comment away Lords.

The medium is the message

My Dearest Lords,

I realise that through this feature we will be telling a story, and I think that the best way for us to map our journey is by utilizing a plethora of creative content forms and multimedia. Marshall McLuhan aptly coined the term ‘the medium is the message’ back in 1964, and they way mediums reflect and affect societies is an adage that is obviously still relevant today.

Herbert Marshall McLuhan

(1911 – 1980)
Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Marshall_McLuhan_holding_a_mirror.jpg

Using a variety of multimedia is the most effective way to easily, quickly and engagingly convey our message/information to a contemporary audience, as this process will enhance the user experience through interactivity. I think that what is paramount to the success of our feature is that it creates a multi-sensory information experience, capable of drawing attention and engaging a global audience.

The content is inevitably going to be evolutionary, developing as we investigate and encounter challenges in our own transition from amateur to professional podcasters.

Source: http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/3744987/2/stock-illustration-3744987-multimedia-icons-orange.jpg

Here are some of the examples we discussed in the meeting:

-       We have agreed that we should represent our various story elements through a convergence of text, audio, still images, animation, and video. But this needs to be fleshed out!

-       I know there will be textual sections complemented with instructional pictures, animation, and audio files such as the fortnightly podcast (presented by us). The site should also include external links to recommended websites for further research.

-       I liked the idea of the instructional ‘How to’ sections such as ‘setting up your RSS Feed’, and I think we should include discussions about finding an audience or developing creative content. We have discussed adding our own reflections and investigations into the history and current climate of podcasting, and Jaimie had a good idea about conducting interviews with popular/successful podcasters.

I also found this journal article called What is multimedia journalism? By Mark Deuze, and I think it is worth a quick read! It’s about how contemporary journalism is being defined by new technologies like multi media newsrooms – in practice, education as well as research. Enjoy!

Talk show guests

So I was thinking about people we could possibly interview/talk to about the podcasting process and realised that this reality television podcast I listen to called Rob Has a Podcast (I don't care what you say, Survivor is quality television) has a pretty apt history for what we're doing. It was started a few years back by Rob Cesternino, a former contestant on Survivor who had experience working in IT, with little to no resources. It was recorded in his apartment with just a few laptops etc, but has since grown (due to its large fanbase), and now receives funding from advertising and affiliation type things with Amazon.com, and from contributions from fans.

I shot Rob an email to see if he'd be willing to answer some questions on starting a podcast from scratch and, since he works in IT, if he could perhaps shed some light on the technical side of RSS feeds and the like.

Anyway, check out the show's website linked above, as its also a pretty good example of a support network for the podcast itself (and is full of images for you, Julia), and their facebook page.

He's also got a cartoon version of himself as their logo, which I thought was pretty cool.


                         


I thought this was a good example of a more grass roots podcast that could potentially come in handy when thinking about our own.

Breaching the gate (or, predicted challenges)

Hello hello,

So, as this ball begins to build momentum, I thought it would be a good idea to briefly go through a few of the tech challenges/obstacles/hurdles/smash your head against the wall moments that amateurs may encounter during the course of producing a podcast.

TECH STUFF
Firstly, there are the obvious technacy (or is that technocy? Yay for neologisms...) issues regarding the recording and publication of the podcast. Like Nirupam suggested, the most important of these will probably be learning how to set up and maintain an RSS feed. I think (hope) this will be a lot easier than it first seemed; surely there are simple hosting sites that we can take advantage of, such as FeedForAll.

There are also a lot of readily available tutorials on podcasting and RSS feeds, that range from the complicated and tech language heavy to the podcasting for dummies style. Apple even have their own detailed guide on podcasting - though maybe their newly acquired pocket money could go towards making it a simpler read.

To elaborate a little more on what an RSS actually is, it's basically a feed that is used for pages/blogs etc that are constantly updating. Think Twitter/Facebook's ability to update magically before your eyes without refreshing the page. So for a podcast, it essentially allows our many listeners to listen to/download our latest episode as soon as we're done with it, and without them having to navigate from a single location.

IN SHORT, they are a very handy tool for the lazy.