Podcasters’ Emporium: Let the Revolution Begin

I have had the most amazing few weeks in relation to podcasting. Last night I recorded the first of many podcasts that I am going to be doing with James Williams of the LifeStyle PodNetwork. The show is called Podcasters’ Emporium. But that is the end and the beginning of a journey.

James and I have been talking for a while about many things but we usually end up talking about something to do with podcasting. There has been a gradual hatching of a plan that we probably did not see coming but now that we have come this far we are glad we did.

James was struggling with trying to find a vision and a path for his show. We had so many discussions about it, I kept coming up with ideas and suggestions. My motivations were a tad selfish in that I was really wanting a podcast out there for podcasters. A show full of tips, tricks, advice and interviews. So yeah I was pushing him in that direction. The reason being is that I believed that he could pull it off! The other reason was and is that there is a great need for a podcast like that in the podcasting space. Just go and take a look at the podcasts on podcasting in iTunes.

So we decided to relaunch Podcasters’ Emporium with a difference, a podcast for podcasters with a vision to build a quality community full of podcasters from all over the globe and strive to be a “go-to” resource for the community. But James wanted me to co-host, easy decision.

Much of what else I would want to say was said at the first recording of the show together which will be episode 10. The energy and the enthusiasm for this project is huge and it comes out in the podcast. We have some great stories and ideas. I am so excited about it. So take a listen and find out why it will be worth listening to.

If you are a podcaster, you need to listen to Podcasters’ Emporium. Not only that, we don’t want a passive audience, we are committed to building this community and making it a valuable resource and not for us; for you. There are details in the first show about how you can become involved and be a part of the community.

Also check out the show synopsis before the fist show is launched tomorrow.

The Revolution Starts Now. Your going to love it!

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Where are the Australian Investors?

Last week it was announced that PodShow has secured 15 million in funding. So what I want to know is where are all the Australian investors?

Sure PodShow is a large podcasting network who report themselves to have over 1000 shows. They have been there since the start (as close to) and they have indicated that they plan to move into the U.K. That is big in anyone’s book. They will not talk about what sort of revenue they are generating from their 1000 shows, but I would think that it was not as much as you might think. At the moment there is not a lot of money in independent podcasting. Networks of podcasters certainly makes a difference and a few big names help. But input is disproportionate to output. Not to mention the opportunity cost of your time that it takes to put together a show. That is not counting the hours spent marketing, blogging and monitoring comments and staying in touch with listeners. Maintaining that level of commitment from your hosts on a network is difficult. But I digress.

With all this bloody cash being thrown around I don’t see any Australian investors or big companies seeing the potential of podcasting. I am not saying that they should invest 15 million but a couple of million would not be wasted. Podcasting and on-demand media is the future of entertainment, news, gaining and keeping the attention of listeners, viewers and watchers. I want to know where all the forward thinking and revolutionaries in the broadcasting and communication industry are.

There are some great Australian businesses out there that need your investment and we are yet to see a substantial commitment to new media and the future of broadcasting in the world within Australia. I don’t want to see Australia become a late adopter and be left behind and the inevitable laughing stock of the world. The support of Australian companies means that they stay here and a part of our culture. At present they regret that they are here because business and investors appear to be backward and slow to adopt. This is partly due to the backward Internet connectivity we have in Australia and the strangle-hold grip companies like Telstra have on the minds of the Australian public.

Having said that I admire the likes of Exploit Prevention Labs that have been quick to show confidence in the medium through practical support of podcasts based in Australia. These are baby steps and with companies like PodShow taking 15 million dollar steps and making it fairly clear they are wanting to be more than distributors of podcasts; we had better get going, fast. I fear that we are going to loose the future and have it dictated to us by one or two; but isn’t that how it always is?

Disclaimer: Exploit Prevention Labs are a sponsor of The Global Geek Podcast of which I am a co-host.

Update: A perfect example of the state of affairs from Cameron Reilly

Rally the Podcast Community

One of the reasons that I love podcasting so much is the fact that behind all the productions is a community of great people. This is a group of people united by a common purpose and usually are only too happy to help fellow podcasters.

Despite the range of topics that we cover as podcasters, our styles and personalities or whatever we are all working towards the same thing. That is to have our say, be a voice, further the industry and get the word out to those that don’t know about the great medium called podcasting. Podcasters are in it for podcasting. Plus it is a hoot.

The Internet is a funny beast. I have made an observation. Some bit of news happens, sure those at the front line see it first and blog about it or notice it in searches. This is the first wave, this can still take a few days to happen. Then over about the next three to five days, depending on how big the story is; it reaches “critical mass” within the blogosphere. What’s that I hear you ask. It is that point at which you start to see trackbacks, the information gets disseminated and talked about. Whatever it is becomes more “news worthy” (whatever that is!). This happens on a smaller scale as well.

So I posted my plea for a new co-host on the 5th of September. At first I got nothing, no links no replies to the story. I publicised it a bit more on forums and kind people have linked to the story at my request. Now yesterday and today I am starting to see the effect of that. Incidentally, four days have passed. So the take home message there is; don’t loose heart if you are breaking a big story or have written an exceptional post or advertising something you want to sell, wait for critical mass.

So today I have recieved a response from a forum, the comments in The Global Geek Podcast Blog. In addition I got a pleasant surprise this morning when I checked the blogs and I noticed that there were two trackbacks to my post for a co-host.

So thank you to PodcastNYC.net for carrying the story. This is a pure example of a fellow podcaster seeing a comrade in need and helping out. Here it does not matter that we are from different networks or production style or whatever else might separate us. It is this sense of community that is evident, that which is important. This is the essence of community network that the Internet both facilitates and engineers as time goes on. It is one of the best aspects of what the Internet can do for you. I can see no other reason for the proliferation of engineered social networks on the net.

The other trackback I found this morning was from Podcasting Jobs Podcast. I have touched on the issues that Jon Watson raises before and indeed during this effort to find a new co-host:

“To date, nobody has put together a real concerted effort to provide a “podcasting classifieds” type thing. Some podcasting sites have job sections, but they’re generally pretty sparse.”

This is a niche that is yet to be filled. I will add that if it is filled, would it be done right? It will only work if it is supported by the community and the services that are offered are slick, inexpensive (or free). A social network for podcasters? We certainly need a space that offers:

• Connections
• Sources of information
• How to’s
• Potential Advertisers
• Support
• I need… [a new co-host]
• Where to find podcasting resources like music

To name but a few examples that I can think of. However Jon goes on to say:

“The lack of podcasting job sites isn’t a reflection on the services, rather it’s a reflection of the space right now.”

I fully agree, until podcasting is more accessible to the masses and “trusted” by advertisers, the potential marketing value will be limited to a few.

So thanks guys for the vote of confidence and the support, keep it up and remember to let me know of anyone that might be interested in the “job” as long as they don’t mind they are doing it for nothing! Don’t worry I do it for free as well.

What Bit-Rate Do You Use?

Since my original post about bit-rates and podcasting, I have thought a lot about what bit-rate I should encode the Global Geek Podcast. So after a lot of thinking we are going to give 64bps at a sample rate of 44100khz. This should give a fairly good balance between file size and quality.

In my original post I did a very, very small survey on the podcasts that were on my PC at the time and I thought why not do a full on survey and get a better picture of what everybody uses. So this post uses a service that is new to me but maybe not to you called, ZOHO Polls.

This is a great site where you can create a great looking poll, people can come and vote and they can leave comments. We are not allowed to post the poll on WordPress, but if anyone wants to post it on their’s visit the poll and click the add to Blog link on the top right and copy and paste the HTML. A lot of these things use Java Script and we can’t use that because there are security concerns and it is an easily exploited and used to inject a modified script that might be nasty.

So sound off podcasters, I want your vote! If the format you use for encoding is not here then please choose the closest and leave a comment. I can modify the poll so if I a getting a common theme for certain formats I will add it in.

Click Here to Vote!

You Can Also Subscribe to the RSS Feed for the Poll Here