I’ve performed and edited more interviews in the last two years that I can remember; I’d guess more than 300. During that time, I’ve coached and trained people and given presentations on interview skills. I’ve come to realize that people also need coaching on being a great interview guest. Here are my suggestions:

BE ENERGETIC AND DYNAMIC

If you use a monotoned voice or lack energy and inflection during your interview, the listener will tune you out. Your voice is a powerful tool; use it well.

BE CONCISE AND ON TOPIC

I’ve edited a few interviews in the last few weeks in which the guest carried on for so long after a single question (at least five minutes in all cases), and lacked energy (see the point above), that I actually forgot what the question was. The nice thing is that this makes the editing decision easy — lose the question and answer.

GIVE THE LISTENER SOMETHING TO REMEMBER

It’s sad to say that most of us have grown to expect great speakers who can talk in sound bytes. Having said that, little packages of information are great because your audience will remember them. Frame your ideas in a quotable way.

HAVE STORIES TO TELL

Having good responses for each question is important. It helps a lot if you are able to support your responses with entertaining and interesting stories where possible.

BE RELAXED

This is a lot easier said than done for many people. If you can focus on the interaction between yourself and the interviewer, and think of the interviewer as a curious friend, it will help a lot. Talk “with your host” not “at the microphone”.

Do you have any stories about being an interview guest?

From STLtoday.com, the online version of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, comes this excerpt of an interview with Stewart Copeland in which he was asked about his candid review of the first full-length concert of The Police reunion tour.

Q: Do you stand behind what you wrote on your blog about the band’s Vancouver show?

A: It was a private little joke on my private little site. A lot of artists have their own little sites, and mine is where I write a review of all the things I do and where I might give myself terrible reviews.

I might go through a show with a big smile, but an amp might have gone out and it might be what I call a disaster gig. And the audience has no idea. So I was just sharing this inside gag with a few people, and Reuters picked it up and misrepresented it.

Q: How did Sting and Andy react to the blog?

A: My two buddies have a sense of humor. They first heard about it from the wrong side, but then they got it. We can truly say we’re our own harshest critics, and that was the worst review we got. And it was a great gig anyway.

And, for my friend AJ of the Bob and AJ Show, here is the closing quote from the interview.

Q: What reunion would you like to see happen?

A: ABBA. I’m only sort of half-kidding. They did some really good pop songs, though they’re probably pretty ugly now. But we were ugly, too, and we’re still playing.

Photo: fboosman

The latest version of the Canadian Podcast Buffet features an audio collage of PAB2007 speakers and panelists to kick off the show. In my haste to edit and publish CPB I left a number of speakers out of the collage. This morning I completed the collage, republished CPB and made the PAB2007 tribute available on the Podcasters Across Borders site. I can’t help making it available here, as well.

 

 PAB2007 tribute [3:13m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Canadian Podcasting Legal Guide was unveiled by Andy Kaplan-Myrth and Kathi Simmons at Podcasters Across Borders and is now available for download (in html and pdf) from the Creative Commons Canada site.

The presentation by Andy and Kathi will be available for download on the Canadian Podcast Buffet in the next two weeks.

Audio comments for the Derek K. Miller audio birthday continue to trickle in even though we have already delivered the final mix.  If I receive enough comments, I will edit another package with a different song.

If you missed the first wave and still want to participate, send your 5-10 second birthday wish in MP3 format to markblevis@gmail.com, or phone it in to +1.206.350.6487.  Deadline is 5pmET June 30.

Episode 71 of the Canadian Podcast Buffet has been published which means that season two is officially over.  For the next two months, all of the official PAB2007 conference audio will be released through the Canadian Podcast Buffet while Bob and I recharge.  Season three kicks off in September.

There’s a big community initiative underway to send birthday wishes to Derek K. Miller. It’s very simple to participate. Just send an audio comment of 10 seconds or less (a 5 second limit is ideal) via MP3 to markblevis@gmail.com or call it in to +1.206.350.6487. See the original post below.

Please send your contribution by 8pmET tonight (June 28).

Thanks to Sean McGaughey for kicking this off and Bill Deys for rallying the community.

Photo: Inside Home Recording co-hosts, Derek K. Miller and Paul Garay, at The Police concert in Vancouver.

clipped from deys.ca

Over IM this morning with Sean McGaughey he pointed out the recently Derek Miller of The Penmachine Podcast has a birthday fast approching! He has also received some news that isn’t so Happy. You can read about it on his blog, he has been amazingly open and honest, but I feel this is not the time or place to get into that in great detail. Anyways in light of all that we want to put togeher a bunch of Happy Birthday and Well Wishes for Derek. We need two things, first is some audio. Say whatever you want, from as simple as “Happy Birthday” or more personal if you choose. Mark Blevis has steped up to take on the task of editing it all together, so send your audio to markblevis@gmail.com.

Tod Maffin is to blame for a lot of things. If you’re keeping score, one of his deeds was introducing me to Bob Goyetche.

That act took place on June 9, 2005 at Le Cafe in Ottawa. Tod was doing some cross country travelling and organized meetups at each of his destinations. Bob, Cat, Simon, Julien, AJ and Interplanet Janet made the trip in from Montreal.

I don’t remember how it actually happened — that Bob and I figured out we could be good friends and that we were a good team in the making. I think we just decided one day to try a few ideas out and they worked. And if something works, you take care of it; you invest more into it and see how far you can take it. At least, that’s what I like to do.

If I had to pick the single most significant quality of our partnership, it’s that we care about the people we interact with and the activities in which we participate. In our “outside lives”, we both deal with political agendas, lack of commitment, inability to make and act on decisions, and absence of fun. Working together is refreshing and invigorating.

Bob and I will be recording episode 71 of the Canadian Podcast Buffet in a few minutes — the last episode of season two. Like last year, we’ll take some time off to get to know our families, again, and get involved in some of our own projects, and then kick off season three of the Buffet in September. Like good friends, though, we will remain in close contact. It’s hard to be in a great community and not swing by the same intersection once in a while.

Thanks for a another great season of CPB and a second great PAB, Bob! And a very special thanks to Cat and Simon, and Andrea, Lucy and Bayla for your patience and support (I don’t know how you guys put up with us).

I thought PAB2007 would end and I would be able to return to a normal life. Not so. I have been constantly thinking about what I’ve learned from the conference, about conference planning, and how we even planned this thing in the first place. You can expect a number of posts as a result.

Here is some of what I’ve learned from co-organizing/co-running PAB2007.

Lesson 1: Be transparent then trust and believe in the community
It’s not easy being shouldered with tough decisions — especially when they result from your own mistakes. Take, for example, the Saturday afternoon draw for the Zoom H4. That was a closed draw that was to exclude speakers, sponsors and organizers. So, when we drew the name Chris Sherry, who is affiliated with one of the sponsors and didn’t catch it, we had the potential of a real problem. We decided to come clean with our mistake and include the community in the decision. The community unanimously forgave our mistake. Immediately after that was resolved, Chris Penn stepped up and donated a second Zoom H4 for the Sunday draw. This leads me to the next lesson learned.

Lesson 2: Include everyone
For our first Zoom H4 draw we announced that speakers, sponsors and organizers were specifically excluded from qualifying for the draw. Many speakers rightfully expressed their disappointment — after all, they weren’t paid and they are part of the community. For the second Zoom H4 draw we decided that all paid registrants, speakers and sponsors who were in the room at the time of the draw qualified to win.

Lesson 3: Share the love
As part of PAB2007, we held a children’s book drive for Kingston’s Central Public School. The drive was a huge hit. We collected 86 amazing kids books and the community felt great being a part of that. Later in the weekend we held a collection to raise money to replace Bruce Murray’s camera after it had disappeared from the conference room the night before. The community raised $291 before Bruce’s camera turned up. When we talked about having a 50/50 draw as a possible use of the collection, Chris Penn piped up with the suggestion that we donate the money to Central Public School. The community immediately approved of the idea.

Lesson 4: Remain calm; the problem can be solved
Actually… what I told a few people — and practiced — during the weekend was to “remain calm and the problem will solve itself”. Many people say that a lot can go wrong at a conference, failing to acknowledge that there is a lot that goes famously well. More importantly, if you think creatively — and keep your wits about you — there is likely to be many possible solutions for every problem (if nothing else, you won’t be stressed).

I have a few posts that I’m working on as part of my reflections on and wrap-up of PAB. I’ve been slower to get them together than I had hoped.

In the meantime, I found this fantastic group photo taken with Jim Milles’ camera (Bruce Murray may have been the photographer). I love this picture. I love that it showcases one of the great qualities of PAB2007… that it’s big enough to be a conference and small enough to result in a great family photo. The picture says so much more than I can articulate, so I’ll just quietly admire it for a while and remember the great event made possible by everyone in the picture, and a few people that aren’t in it.

See you next year!