Reports from the Asylum

This full-day workshop takes you through everything you need to know to produce an audio podcast. You’ll get hands-on experience in recording, editing, and mixing audio, podcast file formats, setting up a podcast blog,
and interacting with your listeners. Bring your laptop and headphones and let Podcast Asylum co-founder Sallie Goetsch show you how to avoid mistakes that drive listeners away or make podcasting more work for you.

Details

Saturday, June 11, 2011
9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

TechLiminal
268 14th Street
Oakland, CA 94612

Cost: $197

Topics

• Choosing and refining your topic
• Show length and frequency
• Show format (e.g. number of hosts, interview style, live call-in show)
• Involving your listeners: comment lines, blog comments, forums, and more
• A few basic microphone tips
• Recording devices
• Intros and outros
• Podsafe music and other copyright issues
• Audacity
• Levelator
• MP3 file format: Bit rate, sample rate, stereo vs. mono
• Show notes
• Listener statistics
• Media hosting
• Podcast plugins
• iTunes and other podcast directories
• Promoting your podcast
• Podcatchers and alternate subscription methods: Stitcher, iPhone apps, etc
• Common mistakes and how to avoid them

Register now—only 8 spaces available

I spend quite a lot of time at conferences, meetups, seminars, networking events, and the like. Often I’m there for my own professional development. Frequently enough I’ve been invited to present. Sometimes I’m there because the organizers have hired me to record the speakers.

In almost all cases, I have one of my recording devices with me: the trusty iriver IFP-795 or the newer Tascam DR-07. If I’m recording officially, I naturally try to patch directly into the sound system for better quality and less background noise, but this doesn’t always help as much as it should because most presenters don’t use microphones properly.

The problem is partly the microphones that one finds in most conference venues. These are not like the microphones podcasters buy. Podcasters tend to get microphones of great sensitivity, mics that need to be carefully shock-mounted behind pop filters so they don’t pick up any extraneous noises. Microphones meant to be used in soundproofed studios.

The microphones you find in conference venues are meant to stand up to mistreatment and to be used for a wide variety  of purposes. They don’t pick up background noises. That’s usually good, given the size and acoustic qualities of the rooms they’re used in, not to mention the large crowds rustling, whispering, and coughing.

The down side is that these microphones also don’t pick up foreground noises unless you are practically chewing on them. And very few business speakers (unlike musicians) want to get that close to a microphone. Most will forget to keep it with them if they turn to look at the screen or to take a question from someone off to the side.

The result is that most of the time, half the room can’t hear the speaker. The poor sound engineer might turn the gain up too high and generate awful feedback when the real issue is that the speaker just needs to keep the mic a lot closer to his or  her mouth.

If you’re a professional speaker and you’re going to be in venues that don’t wire you with a headset or lapel mic (headsets are better; the lapel mic doesn’t move when you turn your head), practice speaking into a microphone, intimately, at home. If you don’t have a microphone, hold something else of approximately the right size and weight. Do it until it becomes natural.

If you’re concerned about hygiene when sharing a microphone with strangers, carry some anti-bacterial wipes with you and give the mic a swipe before you use it. But keep it close to your mouth at all times unless it proves to be more sensitive than mics in conference venues usually are.

Your audience will thank you for it.

Something has been happening while I wasn’t paying attention. In theory, I should be keeping an eagle eye on all things podcasting, but there hasn’t been that much news about podcasting.

Actually, that’s the problem. For a change, no one saying that podcasting is dead, but that’s because no one is saying much about podcasting at all. A Google Trends search reveals a steady drop-off in searches for the term “podcasting.”

Searches for the term “podcast”—which would include searches for podcasts on specific topics—have plateaued and are creeping downwards, as well.

Even Podcasting News publishes a lot of posts about topics other than podcasting. It’s been years since the Podcast Expo got swallowed up into BlogWorld, where podcasting is now scarcely more than a footnote.

But somehow I thought that podcasting would still be the star attraction at PodCamps. Admittedly I haven’t been to a PodCamp since 2007, when the Podcast and New Media Expo was still in Ontario, CA and podcasting was still pretty much at the high point of the hype cycle. There hasn’t been a PodCamp close enough for me to attend.

But in 2006 and 2007, PodCamps were about podcasting. There was no shortage of things to say about podcasting, and other topics were always discussed in relation to podcasting.

Not so any longer. A couple of weeks ago someone urged me to attend PodCamp Toronto on February 26^th. Now, I would love to go to PodCamp Toronto to see all my East Coast social media friends. I’m sure it’s going to be a lot of fun. Events like that usually are, regardless of the sessions.

But I was shocked when she said “PodCamp is about everything and anything new media—not just podcasting,” as if that would make me more likely to attend, or organize, a PodCamp. You’d better believe that if I organized it, it would be about podcasting. (Alas, between running the East Bay WordPress Meetup and serving on the board of the Bay Area Consultants Network, I am already doing more of that kind of thing than I can handle.)

I checked the schedule, and it’s true. Perhaps a third of the sessions at PodCamp Toronto are about podcasting, if you count the ones where people are podcasting live but actually discussing the usual topics of their podcasts. PodCamp Boston is even worse—maybe a sixth of their sessions are about podcasting.

All of these other subjects are interesting, yes. But why call it PodCamp if you aren’t going to focus on podcasting? Why not Social Media Camp?

The spread of smartphones and the introduction of tablets, combined with the boom in “apps”, means that podcasters have a much better technology infrastructure than we did back in 2006 and 2007. But most of the services that once existed for audio podcasters have disappeared.

Unless podcasters call attention to themselves as a potential market for software developers on the iOS and Android platforms, no one is likely to create any new services to take the place of the ones that no longer exist. People are still producing and listening to audio podcasts, but independent podcasters have dropped out of the public eye.

There are lots of conferences where you can learn about blogging, Facebook, and Twitter. There aren’t many—by now, in fact, there may not be any—where you can find a comprehensive treatment of podcasting, from the 101 basics to the new opportunities presented by changes in technology since 2005. If we aren’t careful, podcasting could end up homeless.

And that might be a fate worse than death.

David Strom and Paul Gillin just interviewed Doug Kaye of the Conversations Network over on MediaBlather. The segment that particularly struck me was the discussion of how audio podcasting is faring by comparison with video, and, more poignantly, by comparison with what we expected of it back in 2006 and 2007 when we were sure podcasting would take over the world.

There were lots of reasons to think audio podcasting would always have the edge over video. It’s more portable. You can multi-task while you listen to it. The file sizes are smaller. You can record it anywhere. It’s easier to edit. It’s more interesting. (Oooh! Did I say that?)

But.

There are three factors Kaye points to in the ascendancy of video.

Short-form vs. Long-form

Most online video is short, well below YouTube’s 15-minute maximum. The exceptions are things like the TED talks—but those videos have a six-figure production budget. Watching one video doesn’t require a big commitment.

While some audio podcasts are only a few minutes long (Grammar Girl comes to mind), fifteen minutes is actually on the short side for an audio podcast. You want something long enough to get you through your commute, but that means prospective listeners have to put in more time to decide whether to subscribe.

Sharability

It’s easy to share a video with someone else—just send a link. While many podcasters do have players embedded in their sites so that listeners can send friends links to particular episodes, it’s not quite the same, and doesn’t often happen. (Unless, of course, the friend recorded the podcast episode himself.)

Doug Kaye pointed out that while there are dozens of free hosting services for video, there’s almost nowhere you can host an audio file for free. That’s because of the third factor.

Ease of Advertising

It’s harder to put ads into audio. In particular, it’s hard to do it unobtrusively. With video, you not only have pre-roll and post-roll options, but overlays and ads on the page that the video is embedded in.  And advertising is the monetization model that everyone in media knows and understands.

And there you have it, really. Podcasting turned out not to be a way to get rich quick. So everyone who wanted instant money got out.

For listeners, of course, the comparative absence of advertising on independent audio podcasts is one of their advantages. But because it’s harder to commercialize them, they’re more likely to grow steadily than explosively.

Nevertheless, I foresee continued growth, rather than a dieoff. As Shel Holtz likes to say, “New media don’t kill old media. Old media adapt.” Long-form audio podcasts continue to attract strong and loyal followings. Not all material is suitable for short video, and not all of us enjoy watching it.

Me, I postpone clicking on those links from friends as long as I possibly can. I’m just not a video person.

Listen to the entire interview on the MediaBlather show page.

Podcasting links for July 30th through August 19th:

• Get Smart About Podcasting –
• Audioboo –
• 100+ ideas for Podcasting – PPP –
• 7 Things You Should Know About Podcasting –
• Podcasting Under the Gun –

Podcasting links for May 24th through July 28th:

• Podcast Audience Now Half Of Internet Radio Audience » Podcasting News –
• Podcasters See 31% Ad Revenue Increase » Podcasting News –
• 4 Reasons to Add a Podcast to Your Blog –
• Who Needs The Internet? “Push Radio” Promises Podcasts Via Digital Radio » Podcasting News –
• The Rumors Of Podcasting’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated – But Her Maturity Is Sadly Ignored –

Podcasting links for April 23rd through May 21st:

• How Does the Cloud Affect Podcasting? – ReadWriteCloud –
• Wizzard Announces Quarterly Stats, Passes iPhone App Milestone » Podcasting News –
• 50 Podcast Resources I Use Every Week [Tools] | Nobody’s Listening –
• The Purpose Of Podcasting | Six Pixels of Separation – Marketing and Communications Blog – By Mitch Joel at Twist Image –
• Podcasting: Intimidating? Yesterdays medium? or are you plain scared? – Michael’s Ramblings –

Podcasting links for April 8th through April 15th:

• How To Submit Your Podcast To iTunes » Podcasting News –
• Multi-Track Podcasting App For The iPhone, iPad Updated » Podcasting News –
• podcast with WP – using Feedburner and custom fields, not a plugin
• How To Embed A Podcast Into A Blogger –
• Podclass – Online classes, e-learning, online education, distance learning & more –

The San Francisco Podcasting Meetup group closed on Friday, April 9th, 2010, because none of the 311 members was willing to take on the job of meetup organizer. The most recent organizer had put out calls asking for volunteers to replace him as long ago as August 2009, but no one stepped forward.

I did think about taking it on (it would be a logical thing for the Podcast Asylum to sponsor), but, as I told the person who tried to volunteer me for the job, I’m already running another meetup and it was more than I  could take on.

I’m sure the other group members also have commitments that prevent them from volunteering, but I suspect there were other, more important factors in the demise of this meetup.

For one thing, the group hasn’t actually met for at least six months. I think the last time I attended a meeting was in 2008. There were not many people there, and we were in a cafe that was difficult to reach by public transport, not a good place to park even for those of us with magic blue placards, and had no projection facilities for speakers. The location before that was the back room of a restaurant, slightly more private and definitely more convivial (as well as closer to BART), but also not the best place to give a presentation.

So the closing of the meetup group doesn’t change much in the lives of Bay Area podcasters. We weren’t meeting in person, and we weren’t using the discussion group or mailing list features, either.

Does this mean podcasters have run out of things to say to each other? There was a time—before I ever joined the group, alas—when the San Francisco Podcasting Meetup met every month and had 30 or 40 people in attendance. Of course, that was back in the days when podcasting was fairly new, and most of today’s veteran podcasters were still figuring out how to do things.

It was also the era when many people seemed to think that podcasting would be a way to get rich quick, so they jumped on the bandwagon and showed up to learn about “monetization.” (It is definitely possible to make money from podcasting, but you need either a large audience or a wealthy and devoted niche, and you don’t get either of those overnight.)

It’s now 2010, and the earliest members of the meetup, if they are still podcasting, have solved their technical problems. They’ve chosen their microphones, their mixers, their audio editing software, their method of recording Skype calls. They’ve read—and sometimes written—books about podcasting. They’ve made their decisions about whether to have advertising or sponsorships or ask for donations or go with a premium podcast model, about where to host their files and how to generate their RSS feeds.

In other words, there just isn’t that much left to talk about for experienced podcasters. If you read the Podcasting News blog, you’ll see that not only don’t they post as frequently as they used to, most of what they write about isn’t podcasting. It’s WordPress, or blogging, or the iPad.

Innovations in portable media players in the past few years have focused on video and books, not audio—and particularly not on creating a device that makes it easier to find and subscribe to podcasts.

So what is a podcasting meetup to meet up to discuss?

There are still people who are just coming to podcasting, who don’t know about things like ID3 tags (and how iTunes changes them) or the Levelator. One option would be to re-focus the meetup around newbies and turn it into an informal podcasting course, with the more experienced members taking it in turn to present how-to sessions. That’s still an essentially finite project, but if you’re meeting once a month and going over, say, everything that’s in Podcasting for Dummies and Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies, you’ll get through a couple of years and you might build up some momentum.

Or you could survey those experienced podcasters and find out what issues still bother them—or what they’re running up against that wasn’t a problem when they started. There are still things to talk about, like how to know when to stop producing your show versus retooling it and how to handle increases or decreases in popularity over time, or the storage requirements you face after five years of podcasting and the question of what to do with your archives.

Now that the novelty has worn off and the hype has gone away, your members would be the truly dedicated and the newly starting. So what would you do with a podcasting meetup?