Click to embiggen

- Ryan

[Image is licensed under Creative Commons Attribition-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. Original from http://www.fotopedia.com/items/flickr-2260682216.]

Sin #1: Cutting All The “Ums”

I understand the impulse to do this. When you’re editing audio, every “uh”, “um”, stutter, restarted sentence, vowel elongation and the like are discordant notes. Many of us as podcast editors hate those. They grate on us. So we remove them.

I did this in the early days of Master Plan. I thought it was “good audio.” Today, I can’t stand to listen to that. I did what I call today over-editing. The end result was (a) many hours of work on my end to produce the show, (b) a lot of cut waveform artifacts you can hear, and (c) the remove of the human quality in a voice.

It turns out that only I really noticed them. Listenrs, it turns out, are used to human speech. Ums and Uhs and the like are a part of that. However, jarring cuts in the waveform are not a part of that — and those do get noticed by listeners, particularly headphone & earbud ones.

Today, on the rare occasion I still edit audio, I don’t slave over every Um. I only work on the ones that happen in succession — “Back when we were uh uh uh developing Podcast the RPG…” And even then, I’m as like to leave one in for the human element as I am to cut them all. It largely depends on how easy it is to cut all of the Uhs in a moment without leaving a cut artifact behind.

I saw it as part of my duty as an interview podcaster to leave my guests sounding human. A few Uhs and restarts helps convey that humanity in a way we unconsciously recognize. Now, I was incredulous to this idea, until I started watching and listening to professional interview pieces. Stutters are at times left in. They’re character.

And it makes editing easier if you aren’t trying to remove them all. As to which ones I remove? Generally ones in succession (“uh uh uh”), sentence & thought restarts that last ten or more seconds, and anything that makes it hard to understand what’s being spoken.

Sin #2: Separating Speakers in Left & Right Track

I’m going to use a bit of hyperbole here. If you have some people speaking in just the left track, and others in the right track, you either intentionally or accidentally despise your audience.

Often, your listeners are going to be listening on headphones or earbuds. When you do that, you’re saying “fuck you, you don’t get to listen to my show” to:

• Folks partly deaf or completely deaf in one ear — can’t hear half the conversation
• Folks with a sore ear or ear infection — can’t hear half the conversation
• Folks who have inner ear disorders — the conversation is literally disorienting, dizzying (this applies to grossly non-normalized audio as well)
• Folks with suddenly-busted headphones (since they do wear down) — can’t hear half the conversation (this also applies to commuters with stereo system problems, which is much more expensive)
  I had this happen on a plane trip once. That…sucked. Luckily, the shows I listened to were in mono.
• Folks with a reason for only wearing one ear bud, like going jogging in a traffic-busy urban area and still wanting to be aware of your surroundings. Cuz, hey, cars.

Some of these situations are temporary, some permanent. But even cater to the temporary — if I can’t listen to your show when people are talking about it, what are the chances that by the time I can, ten other things have grabbed my attention instead?

And that doesn’t even address when the two tracks are not normalized, so that one side is quite and the other loud. There’s one indie podcast years ago that used to do this. I stopped listening the day that the grossly un-normalized spiking laughter happening in just my left ear nearly caused me to clutch my head in pain and disorientation. Remember, we use our ears for balance. Don’t fuck with that, and you’ll keep more listeners.

If you’re just doing a talk show, make it mono (or barring that, identical stereo…which is just like mono except you’ve doubled the file size). Unless, of course, you like telling a portion of your audience that you are comfortable discriminating against them–because that’s what we feel when podcasters thoughtlessly make such audio.

- Ryan

May 25th, 6:00 P.M. PST: Podcasting and New Media #zinechat ! Guests Ryan Macklin, Mur Lafferty, Don A. Dehm, Patrick Hester, John Anealio!

I’m looking forward to this. Anyone who has known me since my first podcast, Master Plan, debuted in late 2006 knows that I love to mouth off about podcasting. I’ve done a few panels and the like, and even if I’m semi-”retired”, I still have a lot to say about the one-man podcast shop and how to work with/use podcasters as a publisher. (After all, the reason 95% of you know me starts out with me being a podcaster, even if you don’t personally know me from that. That’s how most the people I work with did. So I suppose I’ve forged my rep through new media.)

Plus, you know, that’s an A-class lineup she’s got. You want to know more about podcasting & new media, check it out!

- Ryan

>>> Original poster wrote:
>>> A question for you more experienced people: [Question that was recently discussed]
>> Reply wrote:
>> Didn’t we just have this conversation recently? [A curt summation of some points]
> Useless Reply wrote:
> Yes. Yes, we did. [End of message]

Way to be a cockbite to the poster, guys.

Yes, you had that conversation recently. Did the original poster? Maybe they just joined the mailing list/forum/whatever. Maybe their lives were busy enough to where they didn’t notice the thread before. I sure as hell didn’t–as far as I’m concerned, that was the first time in a bit this conversation happened. Or, and this might be a shock to you all, sometimes people ask questions in different ways because their brains are wired differently.

Your experiences in a community are not universal.

Your context in a community is not universal.

Your history, both distant and recent, is not universal.

Your brain’s wiring & information processing is very much not universal.

Stop acting like it is. Stop shaming people for not sharing your brain. Stop being cockbites.

Here’s how the reply should have happened:

>> Original poster wrote:
>> A question for you more experienced people: [Question that was recently discussed]
> Reply wrote:
> Hey! We recently tackled this. You should check out the discussion here [link], but in short here’s the answer: [answer]

It’s interactions like these that turn people off of communities and hobbies. I almost said “it’s people like these…” but that’s unfair–nice people have off-days, and I don’t have the experiences, context, history or brain wiring that those people have to know if this is something they regularly do.

Oh, and if your reply is to just dog-pile on someone, like Useless Reply did above, just walk away. You Don’t Need That Third Taco.

Still, bad interaction. Bad form. I feel bad for the original poster because it was just an innocent question from someone who lacked mastery of a topic that could have been treated with a little more respect. After all, each and every one of us started out lacking mastery of the things we love today.

A final point: politeness in replies is like putting a little english on the shot that’s your point–it helps you get the point across.[1]

- Ryan

[1] Maybe not the best metaphor, but I do like the phrase “put a little english on it.”

Here’s the thing: not every day is April Fools’ Day. It is the first time your readers see it, but then it’s indexed by Google and comes up on search results every day of the year. Then you have people missing the date of a post (or missing its significance since we tend to forget that AFD exists except around AFD), thinking it’s legit, and…screw it. Here’s what happens:

You can also visit RPG.net to see this in continuous action. :)

When you do April Fools’ Day pranks, know that this’ll happen. I’m not saying to not do it, but just know going in. Eyes open, and all that.

- Ryan

When someone shares a link on Facebook, it looks something like this:

Here I’m making folks who follow my Facebook profile aware of my mouthing off. Facebook intelligently grabbed the start of my article, in this case the first 48 words. Now, 48 words isn’t enough to say “hey, here’s what I’m talking about” — after all, there is an art to this whole “introduction” thang. Still, let’s look at some others.

One of Mine That Sucks

This is one of the ones that made me think more about this whole “craft a good intro” thing. Look at that and tell me if it actually conveys anything. Since the original post just has that as the first paragraph before the blockquote hits, that tells me a bit about how Facebook treats such content. Doing that only gave me 26 words. Whee.

Some of the Recent EHP Family Posts

Here are three posts, from Fred Hicks, Rob Donoghue, and Paul Tevis, provided with merely academic comment. I think you can draw your own conclusions. (And seriously, this isn’t easy to always remember. Especially if you don’t use Facebook much or at all.) The images link to the original posts.
(Comment: Notice that it cuts Fred off. That’s normal; it does that when it hits a certain length. I suppose I could spelunk the Facebook API to find out the particulars, but the great thing about this is that I don’t have to. I can be a lazy user.)

(Comment: I find it interesting that Facebook picks up Cam Banks’ comment rather than Rob’s actual post. Goes to show how Facebook’s algorithm & Blogspot’s markup talk…or don’t…with each other.)

(Comment: I like how Paul often starts his posts with a single sentence. In the case of this post, “Everyone’s opposite is different.” Notice that Facebook doesn’t grab that.)

It’s Not Just You

I’d like to say that it’s evident of the links about that it’s not just you that’ll do links to your stuff on Facebook. Your fans & friends will, as well. So even if I was all “fuck Facebook, I hate having vectors of self-marketing that are cheap and easy, and also, hey, mah peeps,” your peeps will use it. So take note.

Here Daniel Perez Liked my post, thanks to the WordPress plug-in Add To Any. So you see what he did, how it looks, and overall the effect is has on the timeline others see. Of course, someone who likes it could click the Share button in Facebook and propagate it, meaning that whatever ends up being in the blurb based on your initial few dozen words will be spread around the Internet.

Back to that D&D Post

Let’s take a look at what that D&D post I talked about yesterday looks like as a Facebook link.

That’s very unfortunate, but not the blogger’s fault. The browser rendering looks nice enough, but Wizard’s markup doesn’t play well with social media. Goes to show you that older faux-blog technology is more of a hindrance than folks realize.

Hopefully this is of use to folks looking to make use of social media like Facebook to, you know, actually rock your social network-fu.

- Ryan

So, when I see someone entirely hate on mobile readers the way this article from Wizards did, I’m of a mind to speak about it. Let’s start with vector. Follow along with my iPhone screencaps to see where this article goes wrong:

The Vector: How I found out about this article

I follow @DaveTheGame on Twitter, because he’s fucking brilliant. So, when I see him talk about a favorite technique of his, and someone talking about it much better than him, my interest is piqued.

Here’s the thing, though. Part of the reason my interest is piqued? I have absolutely no idea what Dave’s talking about, other than it’s probably smart. A reminder that You Don’t Own Your Message.

Chris Perkins’ name sounds familiar, but there’s no traction in for me. Like I’m sure people will be linked to this and have no traction for Ryan Macklin. That’s important to keep in mind here. Anyway, continuing. I clicked on the link in my phone…

Initial View

Like most blogs, the initial page sucks. But the seasoned smartphone reader only briefly sighs, if at all, and moves on to make the article readable by tilting orientation and pinching to zoom in. (Side note: mobile themes rock. Daniel Perez introduced me to the plugin I’m using for my blog: WPtouch. Go ahead, load this motherfucker in a smartphone.)

Actually Readable

So, now I know the title is I Don’t Know What It Means, But I Like It. Which is funny at the time of this post, because my reaction is “I also don’t know what your title means.” You get the typical-of-certain-sites useless meta-paragraph at the top. Easily enough scrolled past to get to actual content.

Scroll Down

Alright, still no clue what’s being talked about. Whee for an intro vignette to a freakin’ article. Since I don’t know what’s being talked about, I’m skipping past this context. I can always go back and read it if the subject gives me cause.

Scroll Down II: The Quickening

Oh man, now with “…but not the focus of this particular article” I’m just pissed. Given the additional effort it takes to read this on a smartphone while traveling, being on screen four now, my time feels pretty damned wasted. (Dave’s tweet doesn’t count.) There are a lot of links I can follow on my Twitter feed and RSS reader in my travels. But I was really, really curious as to what Dave was referring.

This is what we call a “bait and switch,” except you actually need to bait beforehand. Still, Dave did the baiting for the author, so I continued on. That said, I went from being an interested reader into an annoyed one. An uncharitable frame of mind. Maybe if I had a vested interest in this author, I would forgive the irritation. But while you’ll have that with your alpha fans, your second-order readers won’t feel that. (They might become alpha fans over time, if you treat them well.)

Scroll Down: Endgame

“And frankly, neither do I. Which brings us to the true subject of this article.” 367 words into the article, this guy finally gets to it. Even on a browser, the point isn’t arrived at until around the end of the first scroll/beginning of the second, depending on your screen size.

After four screens, clicked on the “Tweet” button at the time to go back to my timeline to find something else. No sense in reading something that’s just pissing me off. Not that I have any idea what Dave was talking about in the tweet that linked me here, but whatevs.

Why This Tends To Happen

Bloggers write stream-of-conscious. Sometimes they only copy-edit themselves, sometimes someone else copy-edits. You rarely get deeper editing in what’s typically treated as throw-away or short-benefit work. There will be another blog post tomorrow, or next week, or whenever, and a year from now people will forget a particular blog post exists. Not the same treatment you give books.

On some random fuck’s personal or micro-professional blog, that’s probably okay. Still lame, but not entirely detrimental. Likely a lower percentage of second order readers. (At least, until said blog ends up getting a stupidly large audience.) But for the website of the largest game company around, it looks pretty careless.

An Easy Fix

It wouldn’t take much to fix this article for the mobile reader. Without editing the original content, just add at the top: “Today I’m going to talk about X.”

Is it the best way? Usually not. But it’s not bad, especially if you still aren’t going to get to the meat of the article for four scrolldowns. And you don’t have to give away the farm in this opener — stating the topic is not the same as stating the conclusions you’re going to draw. So have no fear that you’re going to slice the balls from your wit by doing so.

A Side Note On Cutesy Titles

Later, I went back. On the next screen, which I didn’t bother grabbing on my phone, he finally gives you context for his title. That goes to show that this author is writing only for alpha fans, though that’s probably unintentional. A better title and an lead[2] that’s not utterly buried would do better for second order readers, whether on smartphones or not. Which leads me to a choice:

• If you want a cutesy title that requires the article to make sense of the title, present that context in the first 100 words. People are going to refer to your article by title (if even that — Dave didn’t give any specific context), so know that people are going to be entirely clueless when they click on the link.
• Or, you know, don’t use a cutesy title that doesn’t introduce what you’re talking about?

That’s actually a bit flippant. There is a good reason to use cutesy titles: crafting a lasting emotional context for the reader. At the point of discovery of what the title means, that mindstate will be associated with the article, like you’re laughing at a joke you an the author get. (Of course, that assumes one reaches a charitable mindstate at that moment. I think this post illustrates how easy it is to cement a lasting negative context with said technique.) But, like with every technique, what you intend by using it should be something that you as a writer are conscious of.

As Always, It’s All About Intent

Of course, if you actually understand what you’re doing by making a proper topic introduction nearly 400 words in and using a title that has no non-contextual meaning, hey, more power to you. It’s all about intent. But I’d be surprised if that was intentional here.

- Ryan

[1] He said, not having testing this post with graphics on his phone before scheduling it…

[2] Welcome the the post-insular journalism world that is blogosphere. “Lede” is jargon. :)

I mentioned my thought on hate, which in its compressed, unnuanced made-for-Twitter form, was:

I will now propose the Macklin definition of hate: Giving airtime or effort to things you don’t like.

It’s incomplete, but one of the questions I was asked, by Monica Valentinelli, was if there was room for critique in that. I’ll get back to that in a moment.

When I was given five minutes to talk about whatever on my recent Jennisodes interview, I chose to voice my disappointment at mediocrity. And while I tried to make it clear, I didn’t both because it’s the Internet[1] and because I wasn’t working from an outline. This is something that’s bothered me for a very long time now[2], and I decided to give voice to it.

Here’s where those two things converge:

Critique cannot exist healthily on the Internet. So we cannot constructively point out the mediocre elements in games made popular. This inability to do so leads to a downward spiral of mediocrity.

I’m going to name a name, here, because everyone “in the know” either already knows or suspects it’s what I’m talking about: I think everything unrelated to game design on Apocalypse World is phoned in. Text design. Layout. Even fulfillment. And that’s okay for Vincent to do, because no one wants to slag him for any of it on ther Internet.

Why? The fans. His friends, who are going to have an emotional reaction to this. I’ll honestly bet Vincent himself doesn’t really care, but man, the people that look up to him will. Fans are the reason we can’t have critique publicly, because any attempt an book analysis will be drowned in a flamewar.

I want to make clear: I’ve read Apocalypse World a bunch of times. I’ve played it a bunch, run it a bunch, and as a game once I can get past elements, read forum posts to better understand it, talk with people who have more experience, man the game fucking rocks. The design is phenomenal. It’s everything else that’s problematic and, dare I say: lazy and/or rushed.

I want to make doubly-clear: I’m finally giving you an example because I have tried to find a way to talk about this without pointing to something, and I haven’t found a way that works. So, fuck it, I’ll roll the dice and deal with the flames if need be.

Honestly, I don’t care about helping Vincent. Apocalypse World’s been published. It’s done. Vincent’s a big boy, he’s done this enough to know what corners are being intentionally cut. I don’t see any accidents in his decisions with his products. He’s pretty fucking knowledgable and doesn’t need me telling him what’s up.

But my heart feels for the person who honestly wants to try, but is scared, confused, lacking knowledge, and again scared of this new endeavor. He or she sees the wild success of something unedited, poorly laid-out and otherwise looks like little effort went past rules design, and that gives him or her the permission to let fears rule the day and not try any of those things as well. The rushed or lazy products of popular geniuses allows talented neophytes an excuse to also not try.

For that reason, I want to pick books apart. I want to point out flaws so that we can talk about why they don’t work, when they would work, how to do better. I want to arm people trying this for the first time with information. I want explore these things we all love. And right now, I do privately, in IM and Skype conversations and drinks at the bar.

Always to people I know. Usually to the choir. And I’m honestly tired of that bullshit, because it feels so unfair to everyone who genuinely wants to engage this craft with the fullness of their heart and soul. Like, you know, me a few years ago when I said to Luke Crane that I thought not calling out products and talking around them on the Internet was “ivory tower bullshit.”

I’m going to reword the above: I so, so desperately want a world where we can critique in public. But we can’t, because of the fucking Internet. The agendas of everyone viewing are not universal. You don’t know if the poster:

• Actually likes the thing they’re talking about and wishes it was better (a.k.a. reading charitably)
• Has an ax to grind against the publisher/designer/whatever (a.k.a. reading uncharitably)

And readers have their own varied agendas:

• To comment and actually engage in learning & teaching
• To pepper their mind with thoughts for the future, but otherwise passively read
• To win points on the Internet by “defending” their favorite designer
• To respond emotionally about something their friend is involved with — both with the target of my critique *grr Ryan is Wrong!”) and with me for posting it (“grr Ryan is Right!”)
• To engage in the brain chemical reward cycle that happens with you tell someone they’re wrong on the Internet
• To win points on the Internet be “defending” the original post from those in point three above.
• To stir shit up, engaging in a different chemical reward cycle

Critique can be non-toxic if only the first two types are allowed to speak. But it’s the Internet. We may deserve better than this, but this is the world we have. We have no one skilled at moderation to direct the flow of attention in a critique. We just have asynchronous, fire-and-forget technology, the ability to execute a chemical reward cycle and walk away.

Feels like the Internet is why we cannot have nice things, which I think we say too often without feeling like we can act on it. (Yes, this is an emotional statement, since the Internet is pretty fucking cool in many other ways.)

To address one thing that Greg Christopher said:

Freedom is messy. And tearing down production barriers does result in a lot of crap.

Freedom is messy, and totally awesome. But the production barriers being broken down aren’t why we have a lot of crap. We’ve had a lot of crap since well before we were born[3]. The problem is the lack of freely available knowledge. The barriers are social, not technological.

So, fuck it. I’m going to stop being a part of the problem by saying nothing. My intent for next week is to write about how neophytes can overcome some basic issues, without having the advantage of, as Rob Donoghue put it, being Ryan Macklin. And, damn it, I’m going to use examples. I’m going to break that rule. I will need some time over the weekend to collect those thoughts.

- Ryan

[1] Which I try to not let be an excuse. It’s just a fact of life I have to contend with.

[2] Folks from Story Games in 2008 may remember some bullshit called “The New New Honesty” — a term I hated, but was one of the core cheerleaders for. Which lead to be realization about how forums worked, causing me to start my now-abandoned forum Cultures of Play, which tought me really, really keenly how forums work.

[3] Why do people have blinders about the past that makes the present always seem more filled with crap? Seems to come up often in conversation lately.

Simple statement, complex idea. To break it down some, hopefully, we’re dealing in an age of rampant asynchronous communication and content-on-demand. (To be fair, synchronous communication over long distances is by and large a relatively new concept to humankind, and we’re still struggling with institutions that have business models set up around content-on-scheduled-broadcast. So, these are partly societal growing pains. At least, I utterly hope it’s just that.)

Parenthetical disgression aside, the point is that because we’re talking about content that is consumed at the viewer’s choosing and lacking an immediate feedback cycle, we’re actually kinda fucked as content creators. Here’s why: we have no idea what mental state our reader/viewer/listener is in.

One, we have no control over the immediate past. Living in a constant fire hose of subscription-centric information, with Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, all that, whoever reads what you’ve written will do so with the last thing their read still imprinted on their mind. Here’s an example:

• Jeff is reading this very blog post on his iPad’s RSS reader while waiting for food delivery. He’s a bit grouchy from being hungry. Right before that, he got an email from his boss who is pissed off because their client is pissed off and it’s trickling down to Jeff. So, Jeff’s in a crap mood and that’s coloring how he’s reading this post.
• Will is reading this in the morning, after waking up all natural-like on his day off. He’s got his iPad RSS reader and reading in the bathroom, right after checking his email. He got a sweet love-letter from his girlfriend that he read a few minutes prior, so he’s going into everything super-charitibly.

Those are extreme examples, but even positive or negative tweets you read prior to a new, unrelated one will color your read of that tweet.

Two, we have no reasonable expectations for when our readers will end up reading this. This gets into talks about circadian rhythm and all that jazz, but the time of day we read something does have a great impact on how we read things. (That said, this feels like utter common sense that someone’s done an actual study on. So if anyone knows of one, please comment with a link? Thanks!)

Three, in an age of retweets and likes and other social media propogators, you may well be impacted by someone’s commentary before reading what they’re talking about, thus coloring any follower’s perception of that blog. Now, people will still form their own opinions, but coloring is pretty influencial.

• Jeff sees a tweet to this post with the hashtag #smartpeopletalking, and clicks on the link. His viewing is likely now colored with a sense that he’ll get something out of it. Maybe I’ll fulfill that expectation, maybe disappoint, but regardless that’s what he’s coming in with.
• Will sees a tweet to this post with the comment “Macklin’s got it wrong again, that fuck.” He’s probably viewing this now with hostility or at least negative interest. So, hey, I have a reader that has a very differently-colored agenda with my post.

(That said, the latter can also work to your advantage. If you hear that someone that routinely hates things you like rants against something, you’ll probably go in with a more open mind thanks to the magic of association. Couple years back, used to be that RPG Pundit fulfilled this role for fans of indie games, which is why people sent him review copies. Negative reviews sell games.[1])

Four, people have long-term baggage and innocuous elements of a post will set people off in random directions, positive and negative. For instance, when I see someone add a smilie to charged language, like:

You’re wrong :)

…I get extra-pissed off at the passive-aggressiveness of it. Now, person might be trying to inject levity, but man instead I have years of interactions where that’s been used in order to get away with being a cockbite. So, I can’t read that uncharged. Similarly, I had a friend recently tell me about how he sees the footnotes[2] that Paul Tevis, Rob Donoghue and I do as being “cliquish.” I wanted to say, rather dismissively, “eh, that’s just your baggage,” but then I realized he had a point — and one of the reasons I’m making this post. I don’t control his reaction to using footnotes, or anyone else’s. And I have to remember that.

Granted, that doesn’t mean I’m going to sterilize my blog. If I did, I wouldn’t have a giant cockbite in my tag cloud. But I have to understand the cost of using these techniques of information presentation, if I’m going to be effective.

Now, not all of these problems are new (nor is this list exhaustive), but the ways in which we consume media today worsen their effects. And they ways in which we can be very publicly reactionary[3], which then further worsens it. While I like to add “and here’s stuff to do” to these sorts of ideas, I don’t have one right now. “Be mindful” is crap advice, but it’s all I have at the moment. Be mindful as a content creator and as a content consumer.

Because, again, you don’t own the moment your post will be read. You don’t own the headspace of your reader. And as much as you wish you did, you don’t own your message…because you don’t have control over the messenger: the Internet.

- Ryan

[1] And since negative reviews sell games, I never negatively review. If I hate something that much, the worst thing I can do for it is to give it no traffic.

[2] Hi!

[3] Which, for personal reasons, has been a touch harder for me to put a lid on lately.

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.

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. ;)

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.

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.

First is the Podcasting 101 panel I did with Ed Healy. It went pretty short, partly because there was a room snafu and we needed to clear out earlier. If you’ve heard either of us talk shop before, this won’t be new to you, but I still think it’s always good info. (Running time: 19:29)

Note: it does start a minute or two late, so you mainly miss Ed & I introducing ourselves & the beginning of my “so, here’s how I screwed up” bit.

Second is the “5 Major Design Mistakes” presentation I did with Leonard Balsera. That was a load of fun, as we riffed on and kept harassing the other as we talked. (Running time: 40:13)

Fun fact: a friend of mine who was watching live texted me when we were done, asking if Lenny & I were mistaken for lovers often. (And if that doesn’t get you to watch the video, I don’t know what will.)

Not that I was involved in them (except as occasional mouthy audience), but check out the other presentations online by going to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/gamesu. I also believe some of them will be up elsewhere, as there was a second video crew (the one we were looking at in the panel with Lenny), which means that some of the videos that aren’t up on UStream now hopefully will be available somewhere later. If you’re interested, I recommend you follow @NEONCON on Twitter for updates.

And yes, I know — the pig hat is life.

- Ryan

…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.

“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!

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

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

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.