As you may know, I'm at Balticon this weekend. In addition to hob-nobbing, elbow rubbing, idea getting, and swag grabbing, I try to attend a few panels. You know, for the look of the thing.
At 4 o'clock, I was planning to take a virtual tour of the universe with Chuck Gannon. I attended some of his panels last year, and I really enjoy listening to him wax scientific. He's a seriously smart dude, and I think I get smarter just being in the same room. It's also really awesome to listen to smart people geek out about the science of things that don't exist yet (that we know of). Unfortunately, at 3:55, he was stuck on the side of the road with a broken down car. Someone had been sent to get him, but he was not going to make that session. So, I decided to wander and see what else there was.
I ended up in...
Podcasting -- Where to Begin
It seemed like it might come in handy if and when The GXG resumes. Don't look at me like that, we all have busy lives. We'll start back up soon. Probably. Especially if you harangue us and tell us how much you love and miss us. We're geeks, we're suckers for attention. I digress. Contain your shock.
On this panel were Christopher Morse, Mike Luoma, Gary Lester, Dave Robison, and Thomas Gideon. (Here's hoping I got all those linking to the right places.)
Random Highlights
Dave Robison, when asked what one should podcast about, said, "Anything that changes the vector of thought..." I liked that turn of phrase, so I wrote it down. Thomas Gideon pointed out that Podcasting is peer media, so really it's okay to talk about anything, so long as you are interested in it. That the cool thing about listening to podcasts is hearing people bringing their passion about the subject... WHATEVER the subject is... into their assessment of it.
There was some talk about content versus polish, and what's important, and I liked Gideon's answer... that there's a baseline of quality that needs to be achieved in order to reduce listener fatigue. In other words, if the quality is so poor that it's hard to hear, or hard to listen to, you're not making it easy for your listeners to enjoy your content, even if it's incredible. That makes a lot of sense to me.
Unfortunately for me, none of them really had a lot of experience with using Hangouts On Air as podcasting tools, but they did point me towards someone who might.
I also took some notes about the gear they use for my later researching.
One more thing before I close up the Podcasting portion of this evening's rundown... I would be remiss in failing to mention Disasterpiece Theatre, whom I had the great pleasure of discovering at last year's Balticon. I fully intend to be at their "After Dark" session tonight. Possibly with drink in hand.
Done, Done, on to the next one...We will now take a brief break, and when we return...
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