Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

I’ve mentioned before that I think more podcasters take the idea of “seasons” as a silly, “let’s pretend we’re real media” way. Like, “ohh, look at us, we’re season 2! Aren’t we keen!”

Not that I mind people having fun, playing around at something, whatever, but I feel like if that’s what someone thinks of as a season, they’re missing the point. And it’s a point I’ve been talking about here and there for the last year or so. That seasons can be a good idea, if you understand them.

These days, I don’t enter into new projects without some plan of an exit strategy. Things that sounds like they’ll go over forever tend to end at a point of low energy, which is a violation of one of my podcast rules: “Leave people wanting more, not having wanted less.” Which means that with anything on-going (including this blog), I break my time spend doing that into seasons, and choose whether to renew that project after each season.

I’ve been talking with a friend about starting a new show, something we’re both interested in talking about but want to make separate from our current shows. He was worried about adding another ongoing commitment to his life, and I agreed.

“That’s why podcasts aren’t ongoing commitments to me anymore. I think in seasons. Tell you what, let’s try five-episode seasons. If we like our first season, we’ll renew.”

As I described my thought and the advice I’ve given over the years, he came at me with a new thing I hadn’t considered before. “No. I don’t want to do something episode-based. That doesn’t feel like it has a hard stop.”

This blew me away, because I hadn’t considered something based on time-elapsed before. Or, rather, I had and discarded it. “Yeah, but if we say ‘Let’s try this for two months’ and we only do an episode…I dunno.”

We compromised. Five episodes in fourteen weeks. That’s one episode every two weeks, with an extra four weeks to cover life happening. Not that we’ve started that yet, but then GenCon recovery really only started with me last week, and I have a backlog of life. We should be recording our pilot in September.

Another podcast I might be a part of (holy crap, it’s almost like I’m a media producer again) is taking a similar approach, and it’s smart[1].  Small, agile seasons. It gives us a target to shoot for that’s reachable in the short term, a period when we not only can but must seriously evaluate what’s happened, a time where we can plan to take a break rather than it just happening…and lasting several months. Most importantly, it gives us permission to walk away.

Permission to walk away while you’re at a high point is important to being successful at anything. You’ll be remembered for your last acts on something. If you ride something all the way down to it crashing, that’s what people will remember. People give me shit still for Master Plan podfading rather than properly ending (though I am, slowly, getting back on that horse because I feel like I should finish it right, even if that violates my rule above). And that’s the point of seasons — to give yourself permission to quit something while it’s still good when you think you don’t have another full season in you.

Also, funding. But that’s another topic for another time.

- Ryan

(Not sure if I’m going to stick to “Media Monday” as a blog topic, but I’m playing with the idea. We’ll see if it survives a season!)

[1] Yes, I just said my own idea is smart. I’m a humble guy.

Another Gen Con has passed, and now we ring in the new gaming year the way we ring in the new true year — by talking about antics we participated in and antics we missed during the New Year’s Party that is Gen Con.

The lovely and badass Jen Dixon of The Walking Eye Podcast did a great job filling in for our traditional One Cool Thing video:

(Look at that handsome bastard.)

Of course, you can get your fix by going over the shows we did as part of This Just In From Gen Con 2010! The post-show wrap-up, a.k.a. Ken Hite’s traditional unpacking of the Gen Con we all just experienced, will be up in the next day or so. (Some news about me will drop on that episode as well.)

But I just did a couple shows every day. There was amazing live coverage this year, thanks to the good folks at NeonCon. If you know me, you know I’ve raved about NeonCon since I was one of their GamesU (now rebranded CreativeU) guests last year. (With all or most of their GamesU seminars up online, you can see me make an ass of myself.) The team there — with folks like Doug and Jules being the faceman/woman for the broadcast — were a joy to work with and to watch produce what was essentially hours of Gen Con for those at home.

You can check out archives of the live stream, like the filming of the ENnie Awards, at http://www.livestream.com/neoncon/

I was really happy to accept on behalf of Jason & Steve at Bully Pulpit the ENnie Fiasco got. Of course, I also feel like a touch of a heel, because that was a moment that I wished I could have admired from the audience, like I got to with Ken Hite & Hal Mangold accepting their gold ENnies for Cthulhu 101 & Day After Ragnarok. But, the point of accepting an award is less for the person accepting and more for the crowd watching. When you’re up there on stage, your job is to say (using completely different language) “Thank you for putting the effort into this award and giving me this opportunity. I will not belittle those efforts.”[1]

In other words, it’s okay to fuck up my own award speech, but I take accepting for someone else seriously, because it’s their moment and the crowd’s moment, and I’m just a stand-in. A stunt-Morningstar or -Segedy, if you will.

Speaking of Fiasco, this was fun:

(Thanks to Travis & Kira Scott for the bourbon pictured in the photo.[2])

Anyway, that’s all right now. Thanks for indulging this non-post.

- Ryan

[1] A non-zero number of you are reading between the lines. Good.

[2] If your comment is “but there’s no bourbon in that picture!” I assure you there is. See those smiles. Yeah.

Been a bit since my last post — nose to the grindstone and all. I’m breaking one of my personally blogging rules (don’t post on a weekend), because I had a quick thought[1].

Some of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook see I occasionally do #HappinessIs posts. This is something I did on occasion back when I maintained my LiveJournal account — I would say something that brought me a little happiness and ask others to comment with their own. Since I’ve moved into the microblogosphero, I’ve stopped explicitly asking and merely imply with the hashtag. Damn limitation of Twitter and all…

I do this because the Internet is filled with too much fucking bile, and I do it in order counterbalance some of my own bitterness. But enough implied asking, so here’s some explicit: join me. Something makes you feel good? Tweet and start with #HappinessIs. Maybe you’ll brighten someone else’s day. Hell, maybe you’ll brighten yours.

Seriously, people. There’s too much bile with people hating online. If you’re as sick of the Internet being a hate machine, help me here. Be the change we want.

- Ryan

[1]Inspired by Fred Hicks tweeting about this awesome image.

(No, this is not an April Fool’s Day joke. Or it’s the world’s most boring one.)

The other day, I was showing my business manager, Justin Smith, how I go about producing an episode of The Voice of the Revolution. We started talking at around 7pm as I did my pre-post-production (what I call it when I’m working with the files before I start editing). It wasn’t until 9pm that I actually starting editing the source files.

It was around 9:30 that I really wished I had just recorded the screen and our conversation, because I’m sure others would benefit. (As would I — I don’t lay claim to doing this as well as I could, but because amateur/self-production is so cloistered, learning better techniques is a slow process.)

So I’m going to start a series that I’ll update from time to time. I have a lot to say about making an episode of any of the podcasts I do, and packing that into one blog post is madness. This post will serve as an introduction, for you to get a sense of what it is that I do.

The Voice of the Revolution is, on average, a 40 minute show. I do my damnedest to keep it from going over 40. There are four segments of varying length, three of which are done by the two co-hosts via Skype, and the remaining one being an interview done by one of the co-hosts and a guest.

Recording the three co-hosted segments takes a 35-45-minute session. The interview on average around 15 minutes.

And it takes me around seven hours to make all that into the end product.

That’s three hours less than it took when I started doing The Voice on episode #19.

“Holy fuck, Ryan, that’s a long time!” you might say. I know some of my podcasting cohorts tell me that. However, in the real world, a ratio of around 10x-time is a decent rate of production. I’m pretty comfortable with that, given that I’ve put a lot of pride in my abilities as an audio producer. But what I’m doing isn’t complicated, it’s just time-consuming. Anyone can do what I do. And I want to show you how.

This initial post will talk about the software I use and my overall philosophy on content.

Software

Even though I have a Mac, I haven’t found software that I’m happy with yet. So I keep an XP boot and run Adobe Audition 1.5. Audition isn’t available for the Mac[1], but if it was I would make sweet, sweet love to it. (And would actually bother to upgrade.)

Audition is a great waveform editor and multi-track mixer. For those who aren’t sure what I mean by that, a waveform editor is a program that manipulates the sound file — cutting, muting, adjusting, etc. A multi-track mixer is a program that lets you manipulate the way multiple sound files playing on top of and along side of each other.

(That’s a pretty simple description. I’m sure those who don’t know what I’m talking about are cringing at it. But then that description isn’t for you.)

That’s my main bit of software, my workhorse. But I use a couple other tools as well:

SoundSoap 2 is what I use to do some sound cleanup. But noise reduction and sound cleanup will need to be a post all of its own.

For doing all my remote calling work, I use Skype and with it PowerGramo Pro. I’ve been using PowerGramo Pro for years and it’s always been reliable. (Though, twice I fucked up by misconfiguring it, so user error is possible.)

And because I’m using Audition 1.5, which doesn’t handle .ogg files, I use Audacity to turn the .ogg files that Brennan sends me from his copy of PowerGramo Pro into .wav files. Otherwise, I stay the hell away from Audacity. It’s a fine program if you’re starting out, and I do recommend it for the newbie podcaster, but once you’ve been around the block a bit you’ll see where it’s frustratingly deficient.

Philosophy on Content

Justin was telling me that there’s a clear signature to anything I produce, that he can tell something is “a Ryan Macklin production.” Josh Roby once spotted that I started producing the Voice of the Revolution before we told anyone (which I think was episode 22 or 23, giving Brennan a few episodes to see if it worked out for him). That’s largely because of my take on content. (Which I’m pretty sure I talked about on this blog a year ago, when I was less consistent with updating it.)

Mechanically, I’m a subtractive editor — I cut what I don’t want from a source file to make my target file. But I don’t think of myself like that. I look at what I’m leaving in as additive, as having passed a litmus test for content. And that test is that it fits in one of the three categories:

• What’s said relevant information for the topic at hand (which is the point of anything I do[2]), or
• What’s said adds to the speaker sounding human (and thus reduces listener distraction), or
• What’s said adds to the noticeable rapport between the hosts & guests (which serves as a proxy rapport between the speaker and listener).

This means I don’t cut every “um” and stutter. This means that awkwardly-timed laughter might actually stay in the file. This means I cut when one of us rambles off topic, unless that ramble helps build rapport and I’m not seeing that built well beforehand.

I came up with these rules a couple years back, and I talk about them whenever I do a podcast 101 type of panel. The latter two are actually things that forced me to stop editing every stutter, um, and pause in the source file — a bad habit I had for about six months.

Next bit of content: the end result is king. If the recording has to be shifted around and be “out of order” in order to make more sense for the end result, I do that. Nothing in the recording is sacred. The end product is everything. So I will occasionally re-organize the file by cutting and moving around (though that’s usually difficult, for a number of reasons that’s also its own post).

That’s it for now. I’m over my 1K wordcount limit, and I’m late on finishing up March’s Voice episode. Back to work!

(If you have a specific topic you’d like me to talk about, feel free to ask in the comments. I have several in mind already, but think of it as voting for which you want to see first.)

- Ryan

[1] If you have a suggestion on Mac software that is comparable to Audition, I would love to hear it.

[2] This totally betrays the sort of podcaster I am. While I’m happy to participate on rambly panel shows, I will never produce one.

The two talks that I did at Neoncon‘s GamesU are available for your viewing pleasure!

Read the rest of this entry »

So, I am still recovering from the very kick-ass RinCon ’09 in Tucson, AZ. Man alive, it was awesome. I mean, we got to meet…

…wait, a video is worth a thousand words.

Some of the stuff that got mentioned that you should totally check out:

• Houses of the Blooded (tabletop game available, LARP being developed as we speak)
• A Penny For My Thoughts (which I edited! whee!)
• Castle Panic (which is holy crap fun)
• The Stars Are Right (which I have yet had the opportunity to play, but I totally should rectify)
• Sea Dracula (which will bring out the hardcore in you)

Yes, I just did show notes for a One Cool Thing. My production technique is unstoppable!

- Ryan

Also, this dude named Wil also talked a bit about RinCon.

Ever since the ENnie Awards in 2007,  I have been chief among those given a special honor: playfully jabbing at my good friend Paul Tevis’ Gold ENnie Award for Best Podcast.

“Oh, hey, it’s ENnie Award Winning Paul Tevis!” etc.

He has been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to turn the tables on me, and it looks like it’s possible this year.

But Master Plan and This Just In… weren’t nominated this year, Ryan! you say. And you’re right, they weren’t. But listen, silly rabbit, I don’t do just two shows. Oh no, I do three.

And that third show, the one I produce every month for IPR, The Voice of the Revolution, has been nominated for the ENnie Award for Best Podcast. This makes me happier beyond belief, as it’s a labor of love — working with Paul & Brennan is a joy, and even when technical issues color that with frustration, at the end of each month I have something I’m proud of and am happy to have my name attached to.

So, when voting time comes, I ask you: consider voting for The Voice. It’s the only way Paul will get to have his revenge on me.

Of course, that’s not the only product I’m involved in. Along with my editing The Voice, I also edited Evil Hat Productions’ Don’t Lose Your Mind — which, in my opinion, is one of the most badass books that conveys setting without being explicit about it. (I now understand the weird joy of seeing a book you edited be up for a “Best Writing” award. Not that I’m claiming “Hey, I earned that,” because that sweet, sweet writing was all the talented Benjamin Baugh. But the sense of being a part of someone else’s awesome, helping them achieve something wicked — that kicks ass, people. That’s why I do this thing.)

Finally, and while it goes without saying, it never should: Congrats to the other nominees! I am humbled (even if my prose doesn’t sound it, since, hey, media personality here) to be in your company.

- Ryan

P.S. HOLY CRAP! I’M UP FOR AN ENNIE!

Last year, Daniel Perez has this fantastic idea to get some group podcaster ads in Kobold Quarterly.  I was among those involved, and while I couldn’t tell you if I got any listeners from that ad, I can say that I was happy to be a part of that experiment and to have RPGPodcasts.com also in the mag. This year, Daniel’s looking to repeat the experiment, which I’m happy to partake in again.

Donald Dennis of On Board Games publicly responded to this, and in a way that I completely disagree with.  You can read is full text on his blog, but the part of want to respond to is this:

By charging podcasts for ad space the good folks producing the magazine are asserting they have greater value to us than we have for them, and that’s not a valuation I agree with. Why? It’s easy to skip advertisements in magazines without absorbing any content; it’s tougher to skip them in podcasts. Heck, if a podcast crew talks about a product, like a magazine, that’s about the same impact as a printed editorial or endorsement.

Donald, I think you’ve completely missed the point here. KQ hasn’t approached any of us looking for an ad-exchange or anything like that. KQ isn’t attempting to leverage us as a marketing tool in the way you mention. Sure, they could, and if they approached us as podcasters asking us to advertise, this argument would apply. But they didn’t — Daniel is looking for a few interested podcasters to take up a service KQ provides, that of advertising.  KQ is an entity looking to (I assume) be profitable, which includes meeting its target ad revenue, and we’re a group of entities looking to take advantage of that.

But the assertion that because less than a dozen of us are thinking “hey, let’s advertise on KQ” and that KQ is willing to take our money that somehow KQ is of “greater value” is assinine. That’s like saying that KQ has a greater value than the game companies that advertise with them — because that’s exactly what’s going on here. Just because it’s a different type of media outlet doesn’t change the advertiser-advertisee dynamic.

Let’s not stop there. Donald is saying that it’s wrong to claim that a professional magazine with an editorial staff is something “of greater value” than a group of amateur pseudo-radio nerds doing their own production and having an unverifiable listenership. That’s what 95% of us podcasters are — amateurs (perhaps with aspirations of professionalism, including myself) who do not answer to creditors if we miss an episode or come out late, and who cannot accurately verify listenership (as measuring downloads is a poor way to measure who is actually listening and who has just not bothered to stop subscribing, and have no reason to “catch up” since it’s a free show, removing that “I should get my money’s worth and check it out” sense).

But, is it wrong to assert that? I’m not so sure — it’s also easy to ignore ads on a podcast. Or after the podcast is over, on your commute, forget that the ad even played. Many podcast listeners aren’t in front of their computers when listening, so it’s potentially lost. And it’s rare that a podcast is listened to more than once by a person, so you don’t get repeat business potential in re-reading a magazine article. On the other hand, a print ad, while one can scan over it, exists in a way that’s referencable — people do re-read articles because print media makes referencing past data more convienent. So our ad is more likely to be seen again and again, even at a glance, by readers. And each impression comes with a more likelihood of follow-up. People are curious creatures (which is why my logo for Master Plan is meant to draw attention and make you wonder what I’m on about).

If you think you deserve some sort of free ad exchange because you’re a podcast, Donald, then why don’t you offer it rather than complain about a situation whose origins you’re not taking into consideration? And if you do, be prepared to justify that your show will bring an equivalent value to KQ that they believe they’re giving to you. Be prepared if someone tells you that “2000+ downloads isn’t 2000+ listeners.”

- Ryan

So, I promised Daniel Perez my thoughts on this a few weeks back.  Canon Puncture has released three episodes since, the last two of which I’m on, so these thoughts don’t reflect the current show.  That said, listening to CP 60 was interesting — I completely hated it, but it gave me something to think about regarding why I did and why, frankly, that was my problem.

In brief, the Canon Puncture guys changed their format at episode 60.  Instead of the prior “homage to Sons of Kryos” format (for lack of a better term) that involved multiple segments headed — and in some places even wholly created — by the different hosts, they have opted to just do one segment where the hosts talk about news & blog posts that have hit their radar over the last week. It went from a buffet of topics about what was on their mind to a disorganized news show.

I have a rule when it comes to new podcast & podcasts that changed their format: I’ll give you five minutes.  If, after five minutes, I have no interest in listening, I won’t — my MP3 player doesn’t own me, I own it — and I’ll skip over to the next show or play a song or whatever.  Five minutes in, I turned off CP 60 in disgust, and only turned it back on out of a desire to give Rich Rogers, my good friend, full feedback rather than just “eh, I turned it off after five minutes.”

So, I used “listener agenda” in my title.  Here’s where I get to that: there might not be anything inherently wrong with what the guys are doing on Canon Puncture, on any objective level.  Yes, I used “in disgust,” but I’m responsible for my own reactions, not them — because I’m responsible for my own personal listener agenda.  (Oh, and for those paying attention, I’m totally burying the lead here.)

(I’ve delayed on this post because I’ve tried to work out what I mean by that, but I have learned that I rarely know what I think about something until after I have written and posted it.)

The way I figure it, Listener Agenda is the idea that listeners have different desires and goals in listening to podcasts or other media.  This isn’t a revolutionary idea — in fact, we often will say something like “this isn’t the show for you” — but it’s one I don’t think we generally explore enough.

To be upfront: listeners have constantly shifting agenda, depending on what they are listening to, what sort of day they’ve had, etc.  I think people can see a baseline agenda in their media consumption, but also accept that it depends on various factors.

Some listeners have the agenda to be entertained.  They are focused on laughter, or levity, or whatever it is that they get out of the media they’re listening to that helps pass the time and please them.  I suspect a lot of commute-listeners are in this category, which is why actual play podcasts are as popular as they are, since that’s a lot of content with with to fill time.

Others have the agenda to be educated.  They are listening to shows in order to learn something, either on an abstract “I like learning!” level or for a specific subject they are dealing with.  I’m usually in this boat, as I have a constant desire to understand better my craft.  Listening to shows in order to understand something is very much engaging in that something.

Another agenda is to argue.  You see this a lot with any politically-charged topic or interviews with people that others love to hate, but there are listeners out there who will consume media specifically to make contact with it by arguing against it.  A lot of shows that stir up controversy are looking for listeners of this stripe, because they’re vocal.  (But I’m getting ahead of myself by talking about shows attracting certain listeners.)

There are other agendas, but let’s stick with these three.  First of all, these are not mutually-exclusive, but I would bet money that deep down at any given moment, there’s always one that’s dominant.  There’s never equality for that first-place spot at a point in time, even if so over a long enough sampling of someone’s listening habits.

Now, here’s where I get back to my reaction to CP 60.  Previously, I was engaging with two agendas: Education and Fellow Podcaster (yes, not in the three I listed, but that’s a specific agenda that media creators often engage in).  Specifically, I prefer Education in the form of detailed thought on a topic, akin to the old Sons of Kryos format and my own Master Plan.  So, when I listened to episode 60, my agenda was in no way met.  Instead, I had this other thing that, if my agendas were more aligned, I might have enjoyed.

I told Rich about some of the technical bits that he could tighten up on, and about why I didn’t like CP 60, but when it comes down to it, they crafted a show more meant to engage someone who wants to be entertained — illustrated by the ratio of banter to news content, particularly the more bileous banter that I really, really didn’t care for.  (Whether that’s also crafting a show for the Arguing listener or not is another question that I’m not sure I know the answer to.)

It was probably disappointing for Rich to hear it from a friend, but I told him that I didn’t expect to listen to Canon Puncture again, because there’s nothing in the show for me.  Others have said that the show’s new format is great, and cool — I totally disagree, but I respect that the reason I do is wholly about my tastes versus theirs.

Now, all that said, there’s another shift in Canon Puncture starting with 62.  Rich & I talked months ago about possibly doing some segments for CP, and back with their old format that made sense.  Given the new format, we brought up the idea again, and decided to give it a shot.  I enjoy the conversations that Rich & I have, and I hope others do as well, but I can respect if it doesn’t fit in with the current listener expectations — it certainly don’t seem to with Daniel Perez, who has jokingly (but not untruthfully) said that it doesn’t belong on the show.

By the way, “it doesn’t fit in your agenda” isn’t meant as a dismissal.  There’s a reason my third in my Podcaster Three Questions is “who is your target audience?”  You need to know what agenda you’re shooting for and if that’s the agenda your target audience cares about.  To those who complain about your show — if they’re not really in your target audience, whatever, but if so and you’re missing the mark, you need to fix your damn show.  Thus, if I’m actually in CP’s target audience (and I’m not sure I am), then they’re missing with the pure news format (though, possibly fixed with the additional content that Rich & I are doing as a second segment).  If Daniel is, then they need to this about ditching the stuff Rich & I are doing.  If we both are, having apparently radically different agendas, then they have a lot of soul-searching to do in order to resolve the conflict within their listener base.

Regardless of what they do, I wish the crew of the HMS Canon Puncture the best of luck, and will always be in their corner to help them out.

Anyway, this topic is something I’m going to chew on for a bit and write on more in the future, because I don’t think we ask a craft — by which I mean RPG podcasters — do enough discourse on stuff like this.  This is an awesome craft, and we could use more analysis of this thing we do.

- Ryan

People often talk to me about wanting to start a podcast.  For those looking to start a podcast, this is a good discussion to have.  Not being sure of what you’re trying to do has killed many a podcast, leaving behind a string of one-episode experiments.  In talking with these fine people, I’ve come up with a series of questions that I ask new podcasters-to-be to help them get a grip on this thing called podcasting.  There are no right or wrong answers to any of the question.  The goal in answering them them is to help the new podcasters better understand what they want to accomplish.

This is the first in a series of articles for new podcasters and for people who are re-thinking their current podcasts.

What will your show be about?

This is the first question I always ask.  At first glance, this seems like a simple question with a simple answer.  I’ve heard answers like “I want to do a show about game-mastering advice,” “I want to have a show where my friends and I can talk about things that are on our minds,” and even my own “I want to do a show about game design.”  But this question exist as a conversation starter, to start talking about the topics you want to cover and the format you want to follow.

Many new podcasters have a vague topic idea or a vague format idea when they get jazzed to start recording.  In the examples above, the people talking about game-master advice and game design have ideas about the topics they want to cover, while the person talking about a show with his friends has a good idea of how to approach the things they want to talk about – in other words, their format.

Knowing only topic or format is often enough to get you started.  But that’s the easy part; keeping your momentum going and publishing new episodes takes more work.  That’s where knowing both topic & format, and getting to know them better over time, come into play.

When you start talking about topic, don’t concern yourself with how narrow or wide it seems.  You may start off thinking that your topic is fairly narrow – I did when I first started talking about game design.  You’ll likely find that as you research and speak with people, you’ll find points of view you hadn’t considered, nuances that weren’t first apparent, and a great deal of information created by those before you.  That’s a function of becoming an expert on your topic.  Of course, there are exceptions; I doubt there’s enough material about “owlbears of the 20th Century” to get more than a couple episodes off the ground (though I invite folks to prove me wrong on that).  But overall, don’t let thinking your topic is too narrow stop you from podcasting.

On the same note, don’t be afraid that your topic is too broad.  If you decide that you want to do a show about play advice or fantasy gaming, great!  Those are very large topics, so much so that there are several podcasts that cover both in different ways.  You’ll find plenty to talk about on your topic, so you shouldn’t hurt for ideas.  But if you aren’t careful, you’ll run into “podcasting paralysis” — writer’s block for podcasters — from having too many ideas and not being able to focus on one.

How do you know if your topic is too broad or narrow?  That’s largely a matter of what you’re able to talk about on the subject.  To get a sense of that for yourself, come up with what you want to talk about on your first six or seven episodes.  If you’re struggling to come up with seven different things to talk about, maybe the topic is too narrow -– though give it a shot anyway and see what you’ll learn along the way.  If you are having a hard time limiting yourself to seven, it could be possible that your topic is too broad (though, it could also be possible that you’re just really, really eager).

If you do have too many ideas you want to start with, that can also lead to podcasting paralysis.  If that happens, look at common topics and picking a single group of them to start with.  This technique works for podcasts with multiple hosts who are trying to coordinate their ideas.  Perhaps our friend above who wants to make a show with his friends just has in mind “a show about role-playing games,” with nothing more specific.  The three of them come up with around 40 ideas of things they want to talk about, and around 15 of them involve gaming conventions.  Seeing that, and seeing that everyone contributed something to that group, they’ve found a starting point.

Should you be unsure of your topic even after thinking on it and making a list of your first few episodes, that’s perfectly okay!  Do not let that stop you from trying this great experience we call podcasting.  The most important thing to understand about this medium is that, because it’s consumer-created and has a much smaller gap between host and fan than other media, you’re free to experiment and your audience will generally be forgiving — especially if the changes you make produces a better show.  Feel free to narrow your topic as time goes on, because you decide you’re doing a “how to handle gaming conventions” show.  Feel free to broaden your topic if you decide you’re more of an “owlbears, then and now” sort of podcaster.  And if your answer to “so, what’s your show about?” is “I don’t know,” don’t worry – sometimes the best way to answer that question is to just do it and look back later.

Next time we visit the subject, we’ll continue by talking about the other part of this first conversation: understanding your format.