One Year of Podcasting

When I announced the Talking Shop Down Under podcast back in February earlier this year I wasn’t really sure what would happen.  I didn’t know if I’d be able to find enough people to talk to, wether I could keep up an (almost) weekly broadcast schedule and do it on a shoe-string budget, or even if the show would be interesting enough for people to listen to more than once, and yet here I am at the end of the year having just published the 40th episode for the year and with a slowly growing audience base.

Wow!  I’m very, very surprised.

I’m so appreciative of all the guests who have appeared on the show and have had a great time talking with each and every one of them.  I’ve also really enjoyed the audience interactions I’ve been having via Twitter, and lately with the livestream broadcast of the recordings.

This last one is something I’d like to try more of.  It’s obviously much rawer than the edited episodes, but I think having you listening in live while an episode is being recorded gives you a much greater chance to hear the questions asked that you want asked, not just whatever pops into my head at the time, so keep an eye on the @talking_shop twitter account and when an episode is recording feel free to ask questions via the chat room.  We may even try for some dial-in talk-show style interactions in the new year.

Anyway, here’s some stats for those who are interested.  As a note it’s always hard to know just how many people listen because subscribers to the feed and episode downloads don’t always mean the show was listened to, plus the download stats from archive.org (where I host episodes) seem to update at random times and not very often at that.

Subscribers:

The show is sitting at around 250 people who follow the feed and as you can see, the number of listeners has steadily grown throughout the year.  Those little blue spikers are when people are downloading/listening to the mp3 file.

Most shows get around 300-350 listeners an episode, with the largest number so far being 700+ for the Scott Barnes/WPF is Dead episode, and next being the WebForms MVP episode with Tatham Oddie.

As would be expected, most people who follow the show are from Australia, which is to be expected since that’s the audience I’m targeting. The next 4 countries of the top 5 subscribing nations are:

• United States
• United Kingdom
• Belgium
• Mexico

And finally, for the curious, more people listen to the show via the RSS feed than they do from ITunes (though it’s a close run thing).

So if you’ve been a regular listener this year then I tip my hat to you and say THANK YOU!

P.S. Suggestions for guests and other show ideas are always welcome.

New Gadget: Blue Snowball Microphone

As part of my desire to improve my podcasting techniques (for the Talking Shop Down Under podcast) I’ve just gone and purchased a Blue Snowball microphone.  Here’s a few pictures of what it looks like:

 

What surprised me was the size of it.  From promo photos on the web you can’t really get a feel for the size of it, but the impression is that it was about half the size it actually is.

To try and get a feel for the sound quality difference, I recorded some audio using my Logitech headset, a Guitar Hero World Tour microphone, and then the Snowball, using each of the 3 settings.

The audio is completely unedited, including all my ums and ahs and clicks as I flick switches on the back of the snowball so it should give you a good idea of what it’s capabilities and sound levels are like.  I should mention that the snowball audio sounds a little echoey simply because I recorded in my kitchen area and there is nothing to deaden the sound so it’s picking up audio reflected off the walls and floor :-)

Download mp3

Announcing the Talking Shop Down Under Podcast

Following on from my previous blog post where I wondered publicly wether I should create yet another podcast there was enough feedback and interest in it to convince me to have a crack at it.  So that’s exactly what I’ve done.

So I’d like to announce that the Talking Shop Down Under Podcast (the name of which was actually chosen during the first episode) is now available for your auditory entertainment and listening pleasure!

Go check out the first episode where I chat with Scott Barnes and if you like it then feel free to subscribe to this podcast in either of two ways:

Talking Shop Down Under RSS Feed

Talking Shop Down Under on iTunes

Let me know what you think and I hope you enjoy it!

Learning To Podcast

For a bit of fun I decided to try and record a podcast just to see how it’s done.  As it turns out, it’s not too hard at all.

For my little experiment I wanted to try and do one of those interview style podcasts, not just one where it’s me talking by myself but one with another real live human being at the other end of the line.  Here’s what I did.

1. Watched a “how to use Skype for Interviews” presentation on slideshare.  Thank you Doug Kaye and Paul Figgiani!
2. Found a human guinea pig for my little experiment.  Thank you “Subject A”.
3. Grabbed a utility for recording Skype conversations.  Thank you Call Graph!
4. Grabbed another utility for post-editing audio files.  Thank you Audacity!
5. Made a Skype call with Subject A, did the interview and recorded it.  Kind of important.
6. Did some post editing with Audacity to remove as much microphone bumping and kids screaming in the background as I could.
7. Exported the edited audio as an MP3 file and done!

I think the end result was reasonably good, though listening to it a few times I realise I need to improve my vocal skills, but hey, it’s a first time go at interviewing and playing with the technology as well so I’ll give myself some latitude for improvement.  I also had a play around with making Subject A sound like they were on a telephone using a VST plugin for Audacity which helped create a nice “calling in to the show” feel.

All up I found it pretty easy to put together, the hard part was finding some useful tips on how to do it.  If you’re thinking of creating a podcast of your own then hopefully this will give you a starting point.