Most Podcasts Are Too Darn Long

After editing text for a quarter of a century, and multimedia content for— well, a lot less than that, but a while— You know what I’ve noticed about most podcasts I’ve heard? They’re too darn long!
Especially the technical ones. They desperately need editing.

Occasionally I’ll download a bunch of podcasts by Conversations Network and others. Then I rarely listen to them, because most are too long. Even now, with money and professionals involved, podcasters still don’t get what broadcasters have long known: an audience's discretionary listening time comes in short chunks.

Throwing up a long, rambling recorded conversation or presentation without editing is just that: throwing up.
Do you know what broadcasters call unedited content?
Raw.
Do you know what they call 75 to 80% of that content?
Cuttings. Floor sweepings. And that’s professional stuff.
Typically, a half hour interview will yield a crisp, informative, entertaining 7-10 minute program, if it's good stuff to start with.
A podcast, just like any media, must be edited to be of value.

48 card freecell game; well, whaddya know!

Not much of a game-player, so you can imagine
my surprise when I stumbled into this amazing
outcome in a late-night freecell game:

Song for GVISPI, from 2001

Here's the link to a song I wrote for the 2001 holiday party of GVISPI, the Great Valley Chapter of the International Society for Performance Improvement:

http://www.gvispi.org/_ProgramMeetings/00000009.htm

GVISPI is about helping people and organizations perform better and keep improving. You can't beat that. Check out the rest of the site!

David

Free, limited-time offer to podcasters

After editing text for a quarter of a century, and multimedia content for— well, a lot less than that, but a while— You know what I’ve noticed about most podcasts I’ve heard? They’re too darn long!

Especially the technical ones. They desperately need editing.

Throwing up a long, rambling recorded conversation or presentation without editing is just that: throwing up.

Do you know what broadcasters call unedited content?

Raw.

Do you know what they call 75% or more of that content?

Cuttings. Floor sweepings. And that’s professional stuff.

Maybe a good half hour interview will yield a crisp, informative, entertaining 7-10 minute program. Or maybe not.

So, here’s a free offer: If you’re posting your recorded material as podcasts, and want some experienced help editing them, contact me. I can give you some time, because I need to freshen my chops a bit before I start billing for it. My practice, your advantage.

Offer expires Friday, January 19, 2006. It may also be withdrawn sooner, if I get too busy.

Storytown Publishing Company

Is it a TV series, an online participative game, or an actual place?

A fantasy place that brings to life the many self-published books that were written from the heart, and could have been hits, if they'd just had a good editor, some rework, and caring promotion.
Some progressive POD (Publishing on Demand) houses, such as Infinity, might already have a wealth of such stories, and authors who'd cooperate.

It's a town where each week, a repertory company brings the story to life, and the author, or an actor surrogate, is in it. That's Storytown.

The setting is fanciful, like the towns in big fish and edward scizzorhands. My preference would be a cross between East Haddam, CT and Prescott, AZ. A big town square, dominated by a large central building--courthouse or town hall, maybe-- with big steps, a broad green, and a nearby geographic anchor, such as a bay, a mountain, or both.
Off the town square is a rambling, old hotel. One wing is a bar-restaurant where a lot of interactions take place. It also houses a small publishing company. The business works like a late 50s song factory, but instead of song writers, there are story editors reviewing, rewriting and elaborating, bringing the stories to life.

This is where the magic begins to happen. One calls over a cubical wall to another, "Hey, you gotta hear this.' Others drift by, stop to listen, and chime in. Almost imperceptibly, they begin to morph into the characters, drift out into the street, and the story takes life.

Sometimes something will go wrong, like in Princess Bride where the Fred (something) character says to his grandpa, "No, that can't be what happened." Something inconsistent will happen, or a character will say, "I wouldn't say that" or "Are you kidding?" If the discrepancy can't be resolved, the story can be killed in mid-scene. The other characters may just drift away, grumbling, or back to what they were doing in their offices, as they take off a wig, remove a fat suit, and so on.

Conversely, in a story that's evolving especially well-- say, a poigniant moment-- a writer may smile, step out of character, and reflect, or comment to another, "you did that beautifully. I was really touched." All else will go still, then resume when the moment passes.

What about this as a conceptual framework for an online, participatory game, and the participants are (online agents; I forget the real word)?

It could launch as a vodcast series, with sponsors. I could probably get intern editor/actors, series writers, and production people just from Kelly Writers House at Penn, and Temple's Media school. As it picks up sponsors, the talent would start to get paid.
Maybe Scribe Media Center-- they've helped produce lots of street stories and audio memoirs.

It could be a theatre piece, but that tends to become a dead-end quagmire.

From Immersive Cinema to the Daggumit Summit

Ed wrote:
Hi David,
I’m in Portugal teaching a course in Immersive Cinema and am honeymooning as well…
Let’s connect late Sept or early Oct...
Best,
Ed

David replied:
Congratulations, Ed! How's Espinho? BTW, the British organizers misspelled your name--

Scientific Organizing Committee:
Ed Lanz (Visual Bandwith)
Johan Gijsenbergs (Sky-Skan, Inc Europe)

No wonder! Lantz must be real tough for a Brit to spell, especially compared to Gijsenbergs. And give me a Bandwith over a Bandwithout, every time!

TELL ME ALL ABOUT THE CONFERENCE when you get back.
Hey, is it just about scooped-proscenium spaces?
What about projections? Laser, maybe-- on translucent scrims and pressurized mist curtains?
Or guerilla VR collective experiences? Actually, you could mix large-format projection, VR, and real people. Script your participants in the physical space, maybe?

WHY, IT'S A PRIMITIVE HOLODECK!
Just like the "real" holodeck on Next Gen, it could immerse role-playing participants into interactive literature. As with blogging and serious online gaming, the best players could evolve into professional performers, and pros from hard-shell (e.g., mainstream) media could migrate into it, along with Sonys of the world, who would spend lots of money and still fundamentally misunderstand. (Oh, I see they're a sponsor of the conference. Never mind!

Actually, my money's on Nokia. They won't try to figure it out, they'll just listen real hard to their customers, and do what they're told. Very, very well. But they don't know it yet, so they're not a sponsor. This year.

It's like this:
TO CREATE A CHEAP IMMERSIVE ENVIRONMENT:
Start with a large-format "screen" for the background projections: a large tent, an inflatable building, or even a parachute suspended and puffed out, shock-corded to the ceiling and walls of a large room.
A 3D multimedia program runs through a wireless router.
Each participant, thru one's own wireless device, experiences foreground details, synced and rendered by location coordinates within the space, thru stereo headphones and VR goggles.

SPEAKING OF NOKIA-- IF THEY HAD READ THIS FIRST, THEY'D BE A SPONSOR.
How about cell phones with:
- An alternate channel to link to a wireless audio VPN, to provide a virtual environment without hogging cellular bandwidth
- Stereo, for the surround-sound audio portion
- A location-tracking router to render the dynamic 3D A/V

Wow, where'd that come from? That's really off the track! Too bad I can't sell these ideas. Nah, too far-fetched. Nobody'd ever want to do that. Guess I'll go chop some more wood now. Otherwise I'll have to fire up the kerosene lamp just to see what I'm doing.
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BOA NOITE, and my best to you and your new wife, whomever she may be,

David

HEY, here's another rambling I did before I actually looked at the conference site:
I left my cinematic work in college, but
it hasn't stopped playing in my imagination.
The warbling voice and shifting eye still haunt me
in a moment when a glimpse of a face on the street
becomes a tangent, reeling into an unbidden scenario
that scrolls up from some hidden place.
A shoulder appears.
Pressed on by some unseen burden, it sinks around a corner
like a stone in water, without the ripple.
Did you make that up? No, Mother.
Don't tell stories. Well-l-l, ...
Now, can you tell me what really happened?
Oh, not another story!

Whoa, I got carried away there, too. Maybe I'm just limbering up, before I lumber down to the marked-up copy on my desk. I'm writing materials and promo for the Earth Charter Summit in Phila on Oct 7. The podcast PSA I offered to do was rendered moot when the public program was canceled for lack of funding, so I offered to write anything for the leaders summit.

And they do need it, or it'll just be a daggumit summit.

Oh, I am on a role!
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