It was a full house in Studio A of Ryerson University when Jay Moonah kicked off PodCamp Toronto 2008 with a direct question: “How many of you are not yet podcasting?”. Well, I can’t remember the exact wording of the question, but it was along those lines. The last time I saw that many hands go up that quickly was when the crowd at the final game of the Ottawa Lynx sent the team off with ‘a wave’.
If I had to guess, 80% of the room was there to learn about becoming a podcaster which is probably why so many stuck around in Studio A for the Zero to Podcasting workshop when the Podcamp sessions began. The room of about 40 people were engaged in the discussion, sharing their thoughts and asking the kinds of questions that podcast veterans forget about all to easily once they establish a rhythm in their recording and production.
Rob Lee and Katherine Matthews (purldiving.com) kicked off the day, leading campfire discussions on picking a topic for your podcast, planning your podcast and selecting technology. Among other things, Sage Tyrtle (Quirky Nomads) offered her experiences on scripting her entire show and explained why she has made a conscious decision to not publish her scripts online. Scarborough Dude showed off his coveted iRiver 795 and explained how he uses it with his ‘pencil mic’ to record DicksnJanes anywhere and anytime.
Following lunch, Bob Goyetche and I led a workshop during which we recorded, edited, mixed and produced a podcast called ‘Hiding in the Closet’. It was not the kind of show the average podcaster would ever produce since the entire room contributed recorded elements including group sound effects (cheers, laughs, scowls, etc…), audio comments and fictitious listener phone calls. One participant was selected as a host who recorded intros for the show and individual segments, and a show extro. Derek Miller’s Fakeout was selected as the theme music for the show and then the entire package was threaded together in front of the room as part of a demonstration of Audacity.
As the show was put together, we repeatedly reminded the room that most shows are recorded and published with very little editing which doesn’t afford much of an opportunity to showcase the amazing things that can be done, easily, with Audacity. In fact, several veteran Audacity users approached us after the workshop to announce that they never knew some of the features that Bob demonstrated with just a keystroke or click during the session — features that could have saved them days of time over the last few years.
Before the day was over, we created a new account on Libsyn, added relevant information about the podcast in the account, uploaded the show that was produced during the workshop, added ID3 tags, created a post, published it to the site and then subscribed to and downloaded the show using iTunes.
As the day wrapped up, the group discussed some of the ways to promote a podcast including directories such as iTunes and CanadaPodcasts.ca. Our brains were all pretty full by that point and we could tell that everyone in the room (ourselves included) needed to shut down for the day.
Zero to Podcasting continues at 10:00am today with the following agenda:
- Owning your online presence (30 min) — Campfire / Circle Discussion
- YourName.com (with GoDaddy) (30 min) — Workshop
- Your own WordPress site with a Libsyn back end (2 parts; 30 min each with break in between) — Workshop
- The Podpress plugin (2 parts; 30 min each with break in between) — Workshop
- Portable recording (30 min) — Campfire / Circle Discussion
- Next steps (2 parts; 30 min each with break in between) — Campfire / Circle Discussion
Hiding in the Closet [1:38m]:
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