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?
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.
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 McLuhanaptly 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.
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.
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 multimediajournalism?
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!
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.
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.
Here's a video about starting podcasting. If you can get past his annoying voice there are a lot of things for us to consider before we start our podcast.
Also guys our market research survey is up and running. Start sharing it with your friends, family and people who aren't your friends and family, and let's find our target demographic!
My problem with podcasts is that I am an internet consumer
with the attention span of a goldfish and the tendency to click through link
after link until I end up somewhere completely different having achieved absolutely
nothing. Apparently this is a common affliction of the modern
internet consumer that media producers work tirelessly to cater to. Although
much of the success of the podcasts Jaime posted on our PodCastle come from the
personalities themselves, I believe that the rest of the success is grabbing
and holding someone’s attention on the website. Personally, I’ve never been one
for podcasts, I prefer videos, but in saying that I have never really given
them the time of day. So this morning I checked out some of Jaime’s links and found
myself drawn in by the quirky pictures accompanying podcasts on Party Truck USA
and the teasers for the podcasts on The Bugle and Radiolab. I think making the
site of publication visually intriguing would be something to experiment with
(obviously after the podcast is made).
I love Lucy’s handshake idea as a fun cultural oddity to
explore in the format of a podcast. I think describing awkward handshakes could
be quite funny, however it might not work as the subject matter is so visual.
This is the kind of subject that might be also explored through the vodcast or
montage/slideshow (anything visual and moving I suppose) to complement the chat
about it.
The success of our podcast (Depending on how we measure
success of course):
In my search of what makes a podcast successful I stumbled
across this Australian science podcastand according to the website, it was runner up in the National Science Week's Big Blog Theory
for best Australian science microblogger. This podcast is small-time compared
to some of the others we’ve been looking at. The intro to the website reads “The
podcast on science, curiosities and general knowledge. Brains really do matter!”
More of a niche market than others but I didn’t click away from the website
straight away. The layout works for my attention span. For example, on the
summary of podcast 153, the topics covered are written in point form so it’s
easy to skim and decide whether the podcast is worth listening to.
Also, given
the dry (although that’s a matter of opinion) and dense subject matter, the use
of background music, slow speech and soothing tone of the presenter, the
podcast becomes a bit of easy listening which I thought was interesting. The
success of this podcast, other than the comprehensive list of scientific topics
covered, lies in the layout. Before I listen I can see what is covered in the summary
section. In regards to self promotion and funding the website includes a button
on each episode to donate through PayPal, share on social networking sites, and
subscribe through iTunes. It also has a merchandise section which is a bit
strange and doesn’t seem very necessary. It’d be interesting to know how many
people have actually bought a ‘brains matter’ cutting board. So I don’t think
merch is on our list of podcast-additions but I really do think the site of
publication needs to be interesting to look at and have a practical layout if our feature is also focused on what makes a podcast successful.
So to continue on from Snoop Blog aka Nirupam’s game plan,
Step 7: experiment with visuals to grab attention and make
the podcast more interesting
We all have a vague idea that Podcasting is a medium for young people- but obviously our information is not grounded in evidence.
So I thought I'd find out- Who is our audience? This research is obviously American-centric, but since our project is very much globalist AND technologically our society is on part with the US, these graphs are very useful.
1. Nearly 50% of Podcast Consumers are between the ages of 12 and 34.
This graph shows that 37% of Americans are between the ages of 12 and 34. But as you can see from the graph below this comprises of half of the podcast consumers in America.
This doesn't alter our strategy of creating technologically edgy, interesting content. The market for podcasts, vidcasts, animations have already been firmly established. The Edison Consumer Report demonstrated that although the term 'Podcasting' has hit its cap [the amount of people that recognise it], the accessibility Smartphones now provide, has increased Podcasting the behaviour. The report recommends podcast producers to provide multiple hooks and packages for their content- even separating 'Podcasts' from 'Shows' to acknowledge differences in consumption habits and audience.
This justifies our multimedia approach- we are acknowledging the dynamic new media environment where we can accommodate personal tastes in medium while providing useful content.
2. Podcast users are more likely to use social networking websites.
Perhaps more importantly, Podcast users are a lot more active on Twitter than non Podcast users.
This tells us a lot about podcast consumers. They are more accessible through social networking than other members of society so we'll be able to communicate to our audience via Facebook and Twitter. I've created a Twitter and a Facebook page for our podcast so that we can access the masses and market our feature effectively.
BUT our marketing should not end there. In Lecture 3: Avoiding the Googlisation of Everything, we learnt about Search Engine Optimisation and what we can do to make your page as 'searchable'. The importance of marketing early is important, so I've added some meta-tags to our blog.
3. Podcast Consumers are also likely to be Content Creators
So we've had a lot of issues with what our content should actually be. "Is podcasting about podcastingtoo mundane?" was a big concern for all of us. But lets consider a few things first:
If we do a podcast on "handshakes" or other cultural oddities, is our podcast unique? I mean, what separates it from any other podcast out there? By creating a web feature for individuals interested in podcasts, we create a fresh angle on a relatively unexplored field. I mean, we are all podcast users, but have we ever seen an investigation on podcasting?
The Content doesn't need to be boring! Lets get some interesting guests on to talk about their podcasting experiences and give credibility to our feature!
If the graph above tells us anything, its that podcast users are more likely to be podcast creators. Our market is set up well- a twenty-something podcast consumer who is more likely and enthusiastic to set up his/her own podcast.
In Lecture 2: Citizen Journalism we learnt about Terry Flew. What I took away from Flew was that we live in an era of citizen journalism- and as journalism students we should not only be trying to understand the world of podcasting, but also how this idea of democratisation of information works. When we make a podcast about podcasting, we are embodying Margaret Simmons' Gift Economy. Once we share this informative feature, we are not only giving our podcast users with the tools for producing their own podcast via our "how to make a podcast" content, but also are demonstrating how the delineation between amateur-professional of the "old media" no longer applies.
Our ideas have been great, but what has really stuck with me is the importance of podcasting. Now I'm not talking about newsworthiness. I'm talking about its place as a form of new media. An underrated symbol of the technological shift in media. The Dark Knight of new media you could say.
So "podcasting" really kicked off around 2005 when an MTV VJ Adam Curry thought "hey! why not take audio, text and visuals, combine them into a multimedia file and automate them onto mp3s, ipods etc".
This is what really differentiates podcasts from an audio file (which have been on the Internet for quite a while now- as have videos and text). A Podcast is the whole package- a multimedia file. Just think about when you've downloaded a Hamish and Andy podcast onto your ipod, and you see the list of topics they talk about and the visual with some sort of advertisement.
But I digress... The real thing that sets podcasts apart is the delivery. No longer does a user have to go online and search for content. It's pretty much sent straight to you through an RSS feed on Itunes for example, which updates and informs a user whenever there's a new podcast available. The convenience is why podcasting has really taken off.
In a sense, another part of this convenience is the "time-shift" that Podcasting has allowed. Some have called Podcasting the "Tivo for the ear". Basically I can download a Podcast, leave it on my iPod and then listen to it at my convinience. Personally I save them for my train journeys home, but the disadvantage of that is when you find something funny but people just think you're grinning like an idiot.
Speaking of Time-Shifts. Take a look at this. Anyone can listen to podcasts anywhere, any time. Even Roman Empire soldiers [I think!]
So all this is why listen to podcasts? But the more pertinent question is why make them?
The most obvious format is the repackaged radio show- no music, no ads, no news reports, no worries. But it has been used for a lot of other purposes as well. I remember when I went to the Smithsonian museum in 2009, and they had a podcast in the form of an actual tour guide. It was brilliant. But my point is that podcasts are used to transfer information. Teachers have used to it create audio lessons for students, preachers to create sermons, and the CERN Large Hadron Collider has a podcasting tracking their progress, debating scientific and ethical issues, and just some light science chat.
Podcasting is cheap. In fact I've got microphone in my laptop- check. I've got Audacity to edit and record- check . I could have presented this blog post in the form of a podcast.
You are in control of your content. Any one can make them. It can be a daily thing, weekly... or even a once off. And a lot of the regulations that apply to normal radio broadcasting don't really apply to podcasting (swearing anyone?)
This is Nirupam signing off. Until next time, stay classy my lords.
If you're a new visitor you might be wondering why the
hell we call each other (and you, gentle reader) Lords... The answer if simple,
if entirely ridiculous. Before the oh-so punny birth of the Podcastle - as both
a name and an internet institution - we blogged here as the Lords of Blogtown,
an admittedly terrible pun on movie none of us has actually seen.
If you're groaning in pun enduced embarrasment now,
perhaps consider the alternatives.
Our genius brain storm session also rained down these
atrocities in word play
Snoop
Blogg
Pod
Fiction
Resevoir
Blogs (clearly we love Tarantino too much)
Every Blog
has his day
Every Man
and his blog...about podcasts
The
Podfather
See, now 'Lords of Blogtown' and our incomprehensible
monikers don't seem so bad. As bad. quite as bad. Ok, they're terrible.
·My father always used to say
you can judge the character of a man by his handshake; if it was weak and limp
there left much to be desired, but if he tried to launch you to the moon with
his shake, well, there were bigger problems.
·A handshake can actually indicate
quite a lot about a person (just another sign of body language) shown in this news report:
·Cultural sub groups from
cliques in high schools to gangs use this ritual on a daily basis to empower,
strengthen communities, engender superiority and exclude.
·Furthermore nations, religions
and ethnic groups display their unique culture through different modes of
greetings. (e.g. the iconic Italian ‘kiss on both cheek’)
·Analysing these social patterns
of introduction and greeting could be an interesting and relevant topic for our
podcast. This would also be relatively easy to research as subjects for
interviews, anecdotes and general content would be readily accessible (as
practically everyone from the general public engages in this sort activity
everyday).
·But the good news is that there
are so many different angles/places we can take this topic, as there are so
many different sub groups out there & countless levels of intimacy in
social settings to observe and interview.
·We could discuss the trends of ‘funny’
handshakes that exist in popular culture (There are so many: the Salmon, the
Fresh Prince..)
·This is a YouTube clip of some
boys’ take on a few of the different
handshakes out there:
·Also, here is a montage of the famous
handshake of Troy and Abed from Community (I obviously had to include this:
We could explore the
gender/social implications of different greetings in Australia:
·E.g. Why is it acceptable for
most Australian girls to kiss and hug when greeting each other but might be
viewed as gay if two boys did the same? Does this indicate a culture of
homophobia amongst many Australian men? In Ghana, despite being quite a conservative
Christian nation, it is not uncommon to see two male friends walking down the
street holding hands (with no homosexual undertones).
·What about the power relations
between the sexes regarding greetings in different social settings (If a man
were to meet a woman over social drinks (amongst mutual friends) they might
kiss on the cheek, however in a business meeting would only shake hands).
·We could discuss the different
protocols we have within our own friendship circles as university students and
those in our other walks of life (e.g. the politics of kisses versus hugs)
Another idea is the awkwardness that occurs with a handshake gone wrong
·Check this out:
·It might also be valuable to
interview those that feel uncomfortable with such physical contact (Jaimie you
said you were one!) and why.
·There are also different levels
for this awkward physical contact: in social settings, with relatives and with
strangers e.g. in job interviews.
·And here is an article from The Guardian listing
the top 10 worst handshakes.
and here is another written description about bad handshakes.
·In fact the whole concept of
touching a person you’ve never met as an introduction, and then repeatedly
again every time you see them from then on gets stranger and stranger the more
you think about it…
·We would need to build on and
develop this idea in order to decide whether it has enough substance to flesh
out into an entire podcast.
·A drawback for this topic to be
chosen for a podcast is that the subject matter (shaking hands) is so visual.
However it could be a fun challenge for us trying to aptly describe all of
these situations, and would be even more of a success if we could do it well.
If it becomes too hard I’m sure we could always include a few visual aids
(either videos or images via another medium) to compliment our podcast.
·Other questions remain as to
the time limit (if there is one?) for our final podcast, how many
speakers/interviews/music should be included etc etc….
