The Podcast Pedant

(Yeah, it’s been a while. But look! Here I am again! Enough said on that.)

(Further note: I’ll stick URLs in later. It’s late, and I’m too tired to do it now.)

So I just got back from the 2006 Podcast and Portable Media Expo.

I made it a priority to go this year because, frankly, all of the talk about it last year made me jealous. It sounded like I’d missed the podcasting event of the year — and in 2005, I probably did. There was no PodcasterCon, no PodCamp, and very little at Dragon*Con. This year? It wasn’t the only game in town, but I think it was very much worth the expense to go from a business perspective, and it was a hell of a lot of fun.

I went partly to get some business done, and mostly to meet people. I’d call the business part about a 60% success — I’m not going to talk about everything I’ve been involved with, but I had a few important conversations and missed a few others because everyone was busy. No big deal; that’s what e-mail and Skype are about. The biggest accomplishment was the energy behind the Podcast Guild; we got some new gears turning, and it looks like it’s finally on its way to becoming what it needs to be. ¹ More later on that.

The people, though — that was hugely successful. I met most of the people I was hoping to meet, and many more. And it bears out an observation I’ve made from other events: despite our personas online or behind the mic, in person we’re a big circle of friends. I didn’t shake a single hand that wasn’t warm and welcoming. In some cases this surprised me: as much of a smartass as I am much of the time, I expected at least a few cold shoulders or even harsh words, but there were none the entire weekend. Everyone was cool. It was a great vibe.

Was it a deep learning experience? Not to me, though I confess I’m an unfair judge. I don’t know everything, but I know quite a bit already of what was being presented. However, the few program events I sat in on were more slick, corporate-vanilla, and “on the surface” than deep examinations of the issues. I’d even include Evo’s and my own presentation in that. I actually felt better about the panels at PodcasterCon last year, where there was less speechifying and more intimacy between the moderators and the audience. That’s not to say this was a dud; there were some good messages here. I’m just not sure from my own perspective that a session pass would’ve been worth the money, if I hadn’t had a free pass already as a speaker.

The exhibit hall was much the same: a fun place, but little depth and few surprises. Podcast Ready put on a great face as the primary sponsor,² and the Podango mini-conference³ seems to have been a hit. Most of the rest of it was what you’d expect: here’s Shure and M-Audio, there’s LibSyn, over there’s PopCurrent, yonder are a few podcast producers, etc. There were only two gadgets that threw me for a loop:

• Box Populi’s “Podcast in a Box,” a Linux-based recorder that delivers true, no-kidding, automatic podcasting with zero interface. Aimed right now at the university market under the Meedu brand, you don’t even have to push a button: your tech guy either schedules a start and stop time for your lecture and it begins and ends recording (and publishes to their Web host) with no intervention, or you pop in a USB flash key which triggers the recording, and it publishes when you take it out. I have never seen a podcast process with no grunt work before. I think it’s brilliant.

• The iMorphosis “PodcastLink,” a sort of hardware-based podcatcher that will plug directly into your MP3 player (including iPods) and populate it without a computer. ⁴ This reminds me of those old $100 e-mail and Web appliances — the ones they marketed to your grandparents. Like those, it will fail, because it’s a clever solution lacking a problem. Anyone who has the knowledge and desire to listen to a podcast is going to have a computer sitting around. Under what circumstances is it worth real money to avoid plugging your MP3 player into your computer?

What mattered far more than new gizmos was just listening in for the general tone of the Expo. Leo’s keynote, about getting down to business and protecting what we do as a brand and an industry, pretty much set that tone, and I felt it throughout most of the presentations and a lot of the conversations. You had plenty about podcasting for fun, sure, but underneath it, everyone was really focused on success. There was a drive throughout the whole thing. A hunger. I cannot tell you how many times and in how many ways I heard the word “metrics” used, during the day and late into the drunken night. I can’t really criticize — I was saying the same lines as everyone else.

Is attending the Expo important? That’s a complex question. It’s fun to attend regardless of its importance. I’d say it’s moderately important to attend if you’re treating your podcast as a business; and it’s critical to attend if you intend to stake a claim in podcasting beyond your own podcast. Events like this are, in a very real way, the conversation that podcasting has with itself. The sharpest observation I had was that the conversation was entirely about the people and companies who were there. People talked about Podcast Ready. People talked about SwitchPod. People talked about Blubrry and Podcast Pickle, both of whom had successful and fun party suites.

Apple was discussed very little except in regard to the recent fracas with Podcast Ready. And I barely heard Podshow mentioned at all. Even the Podshow podcasters who attended weren’t talking about Podshow. The ridiculous Hummer limo, running guests to their anti-conference or whatever it was, only got rolled eyes. I’m pretty sure they have no idea how much it’s hurting them to detach themselves from podcasting’s conversation. They weren’t there, so they weren’t on the radar. And a company that survives on the creativity of individuals can’t afford that.

Besides, they’re missing the fun.

I didn’t miss the fun. I had lots of it. All businesses, priorities, and importances aside, I’ll be going again next year.

And I hope to see you there.

1. That “industry consortium” Leo mentioned in his keynote speech? He was talking about the Guild. I’d mentioned it to him the night before. ↩
2. I don’t just say that because I work for them. ↩
3. They called it an “unconference,” but they’re wrong by all usual definitions. ↩
4. Except it’s configured from their Web site. For which you need a computer. ↩

Hey look, kids! I made a file with reverb and cheesy sound effects!

2006 Podcast Awards Promo

If you want an uncompressed version for your podcast, you can find the AIFF file here.

Listen to it. If you agree with me, then play it in your podcast.

The reasons in this promo are just part of why Todd Cochrane’s “People’s Choice Podcast Awards” piss me off. My problem isn’t with Todd,¹ it’s with the categories that don’t really represent podcasting and the nomination/voting system that’s absolutely guaranteed to to wear down the patience of every participant. So what if it drives traffic to look at the ads? Are you celebrating advertisers or podcasts?

The concept of a “popular vote” award is inherently flawed. It’s not flawed because of technical issues; it’s flawed because merit is not decided by popularity contests. There’s a reason why everyone goes nuts over the Oscars and not the Golden Globes. There are other awards gearing up now with juried systems which look much better to me — the Podcast Peer Awards for general podcasting and the Parsec Awards for science fiction — and I wish them better luck.

I just hope no one’s getting emotionally invested in this whole awards thing. Podcasting with the intention of winning an award is even sillier than podcasting with the intention of making money.

1. If you’re reading this, Todd, I honestly do think you’re a swell guy who does a lot for podcasting. You have got to get a copyeditor before you ever say anything in public, but that’s not a mortal sin, it’s a venial sin. ↩

In eight easy steps:

1. Have a great idea for a podcast network. To pick a random example:¹ The Sci-Fi Podcast Network. Start with a major name at the head of it, and recruit some early leaders in your category. Make a cute alien mascot. Get a lot of people excited.
2. Once you’ve got a solid base of resources built up, start screwing around with them a little. Message boards popular? Move them to a third-party provider with an inscrutable URL and inferior aesthetics. Wipe the archives. No sense living in the past!
3. Keep experimenting with the stuff that works. Make every change for the worse. Repaint your site in a horrible Day-Glo green and purple that causes physical eyestrain.² Replace the cute alien mascot with…a cow. Defend every decision with “Market testing shows people love this!” Ignore the opinions of members of your network. If people complain too loudly in the forums, delete their posts.
4. Meanwhile, start to erode the brand identity of your network. People are coming to your site to find science fiction podcasts? How limiting! Start two other “networks” on other subject areas. Cross-linking them would be obvious and banal. Instead, make sure the original “Sci-Fi Podcast Network” URL points to a meta-network page, and make people hunt for a smaller link in the text to click through to the list of SF podcasts.
5. Of course, the trouble with that is that there’s still a page somewhere with a list of science fiction podcasts. There are no synergistic cross-brand relational compatibilities to leverage there! So ax that page, and simplify things to much smaller lists on your front page again.
6. Oh, and the name? Gotta go. Make a new name. Something with zazz. Something redundant. Something like… The Podcast Entertainment Network. Or PodcastPEN for short.³
7. Finally, because you’ve probably got a number of pesky science fiction podcasts still hanging around, boot them all and hide their forums, and make them resubmit to your new network under a more restrictive set of guidelines. The new terms of service will require them to promote your non-brand more regularly and consistently, and maintain a show format according to a strict formula that conforms to your “right way” of doing podcasts. Oh, and it will also contain such gems as:

   Each show host should think in terms of a minute of ads per 15 minutes of show. You will keep (to use or sell) one of the 30 second spots and the network will fill the other (with a network show ad or an ad a sponsor has purchased)… PEN offers a generous revenue sharing program (50%) for each audio ad we secure for your show. If you do not wish to participate in our advertising program, please provide your reason on our submissions form. Exceptions will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

8. Voilà! You’ve just driven away everyone who thought it might be fun to be listed in a science fiction podcast directory, but doesn’t want to be told how to podcast or how to advertise.

This might seem mean-spirited. Perhaps it is, although I didn’t start out meaning to be mean. But this really bugs me. A couple of people whom I really liked⁴ had a good, simple, effective idea and implemented it well — and then, over the course of a year, allowed their unfocused business ambition to dissolve a good community into nothingness. It’s a shame. I’m not upset that they wanted to change things. Nor that they wanted to make money. (Although a 50% ad commission is just wrong.) I’m upset because they didn’t realize what they had, and in trying to make it something else they lost something of benefit to everyone.

It’s a shame. And no, I don’t intend to just bitch about it. There are positive steps that can be taken, ways that it could be done right. The obvious response to my complaint here is, “If you think it could be done better, smartass, you try it!” And I think that’s a good answer. But that’s another post.

1. Okay, so it isn’t. You got me. ↩
2. To be fair, they did back off on the colors after some of us raised a rallying cry for listeners to check out the site and send feedback. The green and purple didn’t go away, but it retreated to the edges. ↩
3. The “P” in “PEN” stands for “Podcast.” Again. So it’s really the Podcast Podcast Entertainment Network, or PPEN. Turtles all the way down. ↩
4. And still do like, honestly, although I suspect that after this blog post they’ll never want to speak to me again. ↩

(Pedant’s Note: This is a guest essay by Chris Miller of Podiobooks.com and several other podcasts. Yes, I’m opening the Pedant up to other contributors. Have something you’d like to share? Drop me a line.)

I have a bad habit of overcommitting myself. No…wait…that’s not quite right. I have a bad habit of committing myself and then mismanaging my time. It’s a character flaw, and one that I’m working to correct. However…one of the inevitable consequences of my time mismanagement is that, sooner or later, I begin to feel as though I am being pecked to death by ducks. Everything piles up, and all I want to do it run and hide until it goes away.

I know what I should do: bear down, shoulder to the grindstone, nose to the wheel…or something like that. Still, when it all feels like the Myth of Sisyphus, I want to slink off to the local Barnes & Noble, buy a coffee, and read graphic novels.

I was starting to feel this way in February of this year. There was work to do on Podiobooks, I had my own solo podcast that was dreadfully late. I was helping Mick Bradley with his two podcasts, and was starting yet another with a friend. All of the activity had shifted from a series of welcome challenges to a collection of large, stinking seabirds hanging around my neck.

I was venting about all of this to a friend, and his question was, “Why don’t you just quit the podcasts?”

I thought about that. I could, of course. Let’s face it, few of us are getting paid to do this. It’s a colossal time-suck at times. It’s endless fiddling with settings, levels, microphones, mixing boards, all to get rid of that low-level hiss that never seems to go away. It’s the late nights, knowing you should be in bed, but you’re just not able to rest until you get the thrice-damned thing edited and posted. Damnable though it may be at 3:30 am, it’s also the coolest thing you’ve recorded to date, and you just can’t wait for people to hear it.

That’s the core of it, isn’t it? The listeners. I remember when I got the first bit of feedback about my podcast. First off, I was stunned that anyone was listening. Secondly, I was thrilled that this individual, a podcaster whom I respected, mentioned me in his show. The clincher was these words, “I’ve been listening to Chris Miller’s Unquiet Desperation. I like it. He’s got some worthwhile things to say.”

Do you recall how you felt when you were told by a fellow podcaster or a listener that they really liked your show, that it meant something to them? Inside your head, weren’t you doing your own personal Sally Field imitation? (You like me! You really like me!)

It’s like a drug, this appreciation thing, and a little goes a long way. As we continue to put out episodes, we all try to hone our craft, shape our message. We try to be a bit more profession, or we try to spice it up, keep it fresh, but still keep our audience. In some arenas, we compete with other podcasts. But at the end of the day, know that people out there like your work it enough to keep a lot of us going.

It is for me, at least. None of the podcasts that I’m on have more than two hundred listeners. I’m fine with that. I’m not the most recognizable name attached to Podiobooks.com, and I’m fine with that, too. What keeps me going is that, at this time in history, any one of us can pick up a microphone, grab a copy of Audacity, and find those like-minded folk that we would never had a chance to reach otherwise. We get meet other podcasters who have the same struggles that we do, the same self-doubting natures, the same need to speak and be heard. It’s massive, it’s global, and it’s just about the coolest thing I have ever witnessed

So, now I sit and work through my endless piles with GTD. I have my lists and my inbox, my folders and my files. I run like a not-quite finely tuned machine because this has become more than a hobby…it’s a connection to something larger than myself. To give up friends that I’ve made doing this is unthinkable. It’s worth the long hours, the days of prep, the answering of listener questions and subscriber feedback. It’s even worth the occassional argument on the email list. We’re doing something revolutionary here…never doubt it. One day, we’ll look back on all of this: we’ll see how media was changed by a bunch of “amateurs” with laptops and and a couple of microphones. We can say that we were there.

If that’s not worth it, I don’t know what is.

Unfortunately, I have to belay my earlier self-satisfaction. As MKB posted on the Yahoo! list, the Shelly the Republican site is actually a satire blog.

I’d started to develop my own suspicions anyway, when I clicked on Tristan’s link to his own blog is fan fiction based on the writings of Frank Key and the fictional pamphleteer Dobson.

Frank Key’s Hooting Yard podcast is one of my absolute favorites, and I was honored to have Mr. Key narrate a piece for Escape Pod. So I know what that’s about. And if “Tristan Shuddery” is capable of appreciating the fine aesthetic derangement of Frank Key’s work, it seems tremendously unlikely to me that he himself would actually be deranged enough to say what he said about the iPod.

(Saying what he said about Escape Pod? Well, you know. Different tastes and all that.)

In any case, it made for an entertaining few hours. I don’t regret being fooled by it. This was the trolling of a Troll Grandmaster, and I feel privileged that he took the time to troll Escape Pod.

Oh, what a frabjuous day. Not only is it my last day at my day job, but this popped up on my morning Technorati search:

Podcasts Part 2: Science Fiction or Satanic Fiction?

Tristan, a guest blogger for Shelley the Republican, is on a crusade against podcasting as the next Hot New Immoral Thing. His first article on the subject is all about the iPod and why it’s a ticking heathen time bomb:

Apple neglected to mention that every iPod ever sold included a hidden feature called “Podcasting” which they unveiled in mid 2005.

This feature allows liberal media direct access to young Americans without any of the safeguards that make TV channels like Fox News fair and balanced. A quick scan though some of America’s most popular podcasts is proof enough that a dangerous liberal minority have seized control over this influential channel.

Wow. Just wow.

But the second piece is the beautiful one to me, because he reviews my very own Escape Pod to reveal that we’re leading children down the path of perversity and occultism. He cites a few stories as examples. I don’t know what the hell the “industry standard CAPAlert scoring system” is, but EP apparently scores an 8.2 on it, which means we’re evil incarnate or something.

The blog post wraps up with a petition to the FCC to regulate podcasting, and tips for what to do if your child has become “addicted to science fiction.”

This is my favorite review ever. Now I know, for certain, that we’ve Made It.

Happy Beltane, everyone!

I hope that everyone celebrated today by listening to the Jonathan Coulton song (MP3). It contains the wisdom of our age. ¹

That’s my hope. Of course I know that most podcasters celebrated, as they celebrate the beginning of every month, by asking/begging/cajoling/bribing/menacing their listeners/colleagues/henchmen/old-ladies-in-the-street to vote for them at Podcast freakin’ Alley.

I know I’m a heretic on this issue. I’m fine with that. I’ll keep bitching because the PA voting system was obsolete, useless, and annoying a year ago, and by this point it’s got all the relevance of an indigenous people dancing and singing around a Coca-Cola bottle praying for cargo. ² It’s not just annoying any more to have people spend five to ten minutes on their podcasts begging for votes. It’s embarrassing.

It embarrasses the whole medium, and it loses listeners because it distracts from content. We want to go up against broadcasting? You don’t see the whole cast of Lost lining up on the beach once every episode to shout, “Don’t forget to vote for us at TVGuide.com!”

Does it work? Hell if I know. I’ve always gotten a few hits from Podcast Alley, albeit not that many, and I’ve always been ranked somewhere around 100 even though I’ve never once asked for a vote. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t begrudge the people who voted for Escape Pod there on their own initiative, or who left comments. The comments especially are valuable. My problem isn’t with the voting, it’s with the asking for votes. It’s bloody annoying, and whatever audience gains your podcast gets from being higher-ranked could surely be dwarfed by spending the same time talking about your podcast in places where people who are interested in your subject matter hang out.

Market yourself outside of podcasting, and spend your listeners’ time on good content, and you’re taken seriously. Podcasting is taken as a serious form with serious ambitions. Everybody wins. Spend your listeners’ time hoping to rope them into status games with other podcasters, games that the listeners don’t care about, and we look like a bunch of kids wrestling over King of the Sandbox.

Either way — enjoy the weather!

The water’s not cold, baby, dip in your big toe…

1. But not at work. Really. ↩
2. Someone’s gonna come after me for inappropriate cultural epithets, I know. Or for inappropriate use of a trademark. I can’t wait to find out which. ↩

I just spent a few hours here catching up on e-mail and sending out some necessary Escape Pod correspondence.  Didn’t quite wipe out my two months’ backlog of stuff, but I made a dent.

About half a dozen messages went to other podcasters with questions or requests.  Replies came back pretty much instantaneously.

What do I learn from this?

1. Every podcaster in the world except me answers their e-mail promptly.  I’m the solitary schmuck.
2. Every podcaster in the world is on e-mail the middle of Saturday night.

What’s up with that?  I know I don’t have a life, but doesn’t someone out there have one?  Or at least rent one?

…Yeah. So people are starting to ask me why I haven’t blogged about Podshow yet, or the episode of Keith and the Girl where they take apart an anonymous Podshow contract. It’s well known that I have opinions on the subject,¹ and I’ve gone on at some length before on the Yahoo! Podcasters list and on Podcast Alley.

That’s probably why I haven’t brought it up yet. I’ve talked about it so much elsewhere that I’m getting more easily tired. That, and I’m afraid if I get started I’ll keep going ad nauseum. I don’t want this to become the Anti-Podshow Blog. There’s a lot of other stuff to talk about. Like, you know, making podcasts.

But I seem to be expected to say something, so I’ll say this in brief: Long-term exclusivity sucks. I’m not suggesting that it sucks for me, and it might not suck for you. It sucks for everyone.

A man whose last name is synonymous with a popular Indian food dish² has contacted me directly to tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about, and that everything I seem to think about Podshow is wrong. He has been unable to tell me what specifically I’m wrong about, which is a shame because I can’t correct my statements. Being right is a whole lot more fun than being wrong. So to cover my hindquarters: if I’m wrong that Podshow puts its podcasters into long-term exclusive distribution deals with no termination option on the podcaster’s side, then obviously all my complaining is groundless and nobody should worry about what I say.

But if they do, they suck. And you should avoid making such a deal for content that you create and own. With anyone. Ever.

Questions?

1. Many would call that an understatement ↩
2. No, not Eric Rice. The other guy. ↩

Besides being home sick with a stomach virus and sleeping for 16 hours today…

So I’ve just written a PHP script that goes and checks a ton of feeds, extracts  information from them, and saves it into a database.  A fun thing to do.  Life is peachy.

Except that half the feeds I’m checking are failing — not because there’s an error in my script — but because Feedburner is down right now.

My podcast is with Feedburner.  This doesn’t fill me with warm fuzzies.  How about you?