Continued from In which I am shamed into podcasting

After we decided to do an internal Metia podcast, my job was to gather content and, well, do a podcast.

Speak freely, comrade, and please to ignore microphone
If you decide to do a podcast in which you interview people, one thing you'll find right away is that most folks don't believe that they are worth listening to. No, that's not exactly right--if you were to sit down with them informally and ask them about a project they've done, I'm sure they'd be happy to talk freely with you. I think that shyness develops when you ask if you can record them talking. Maybe the idea of having one's off the cuff statements preserved for the ages, to be scrutinized by strangers, spooks a lot of people. I can't imagine why.

So what I tried to do was reassure people that this wasn't an interview but a friendly conversation. With any luck, as the conversation went on they'd gradually forget about the little red recording device on the table. (I've heard that some podcasters overcome the tyranny of the recording device by using inconspicuous body rigs with a tiny microphone attached to their lapels.) A couple of times I dropped jokes in with the assurance that they'd be taken out in edit, which (I hoped) would demonstrate that there was indeed a safety net below them: I wasn't going to leave anything in that might be inappropriate.

Arm-twisting and obsolescence
Getting Steve, Andrew, and Geoff Bilbrough to appear on the podcast was pretty easy. However naturally self-effacing they might be, my pitch made it clear that this was for the Good Of The Company and for Metia's sake they rose to the occasion most admirably. Metia's three Editorial directors sought me out when they were in Seattle for a summit meeting. They were excited about what they were doing and wanted to use the podcast to spread the word.

When it came to booking a project team to reflect on work that they'd done for a client, a number of approaches presented themselves. I decided that the most efficient way to get them on board was to convince the account manager in charge of the project that it was a good idea, and let her get the team to talk with me. Account managers are good at persuading reluctant people to do things. Not taking advantage of that would just be poor resource management.

I recorded five episodes in fairly quick succession. The only bump in the road came when I sent the Editorial directors' episode around for approval. Between the time I'd shut off the recorder and the time I'd sent the file out to them, nearly everything we'd talked about had changed. Suddenly the show was hopelessly outdated, and had to be shelved.

Insert metaphor about cobblers' children or shooting dodos or something
I learned another lesson about timing: always have at least a couple of finished episodes "in the buffer." I posted the fourth show a couple of weeks ago, in the middle of a flurry of writing projects. Now I don't have a fifth show ready to go. It won't be terribly hard to create a show from scratch, but I have a lot of other things on my plate for the rest of the month, and it would be easier if I could just pull a show out of my hat. Specifically I think a backlog of project team reflections is ideal for this purpose. Everything that's discussed in those types of shows has already happened, so there's no expiration date on it.

The perils of being a one-man band
The process would be helped considerably if I'd delegate more of what I'm doing to other people. For example, a couple of account managers are on the podcast team--maybe they could stay on the lookout for projects that would make good podcast subjects, and schedule the interviews. Or--and this is really ambitious--build the podcast into our company workflow, so that when a project is completed, the person in charge is presented with the option of submitting it as a potential podcast.

Next: launching the podcast, and the response

Tags: podcasting