Minor Technicality Ep35 - Drive baby flashy flash
Published by on February 20th, 2008
It’s Minor Technicality 35 and three years since I started this podcasting lark.
Today’s episode, I talk about the joys of attending speed awareness classes - thanks, Mr. Speed Camera - and have a moan about podcasters who auto-play their shows on their websites, and since it is around the third birthday of this show, a little despondent retrospective on how community within podcasting failed to live up to its potential and 2008 is time to move on and look at the new, and very different, age of independent media.
Tracks from Harrison Kennedy and Manic Street Preachers from the Podsafe Music Network. Running time: 37 minutes.
Promos from Chillcast and Tips from the Top Floor - and TableRappers, of course!
4 Responses to “Minor Technicality Ep35 - Drive baby flashy flash”
Now then Neil,
Just listened to the show.
Firstly, that MSP track rocks. I’m listening to it again and again. The only problem is that you’re talking around it
More serious point: I’m a lapse podcaster, but I never really understood what the podcast “community” was meant to accomplish. To your mind, what would a thriving community look like?
Helping beginners get started? Collaborations? Cross-promotion?
I see (saw) all those things happening, and involved myself in all of them at various times to varying degrees.
But at the same time, I was always looking out for myself first and foremost. Maybe this made me a bad member of the community, but when you have limited resources (time, money and expertise) it’s impossible not to (and still have a ’successful’ podcast).
So when people say “it’s sad to see that the community isn’t thriving” (paraphrasing), I’m not sure what you have in mind as a thriving community.
Just my two bob…
I can only go back to the initial picture I concocted when I started Britcaster.com. It was immediately obvious to me that UK podcasts were going to have a very hard time being noticed amongst the American flood of podcasts appearing weekly at the time. So the concept of that community was an all-for-on-one-for-all idea where the community as a whole was active in raising the profile of everyone.
In reality, human behaviour kicked in and the vast majority became passive, and therefore a downward spiral of the potential value of the community was inevitable. I was certainly overly optimistic about the potential for group-focused activity to benefit everyone involved.
Collaborations are starting to happen again now, positive ones at that, and involving individuals who will go the distance, not merely jump the shiniest bandwagon. Good stuff is happening after a significant lull. Community, however, is simply not to be within this podcasting world.
I leant SOOOO much about forums and communities from the britcaster forum. Furthermore I learnt from your personal mistakes as a forum mod. I know that where I am now is slightly different and that I have to deal with angry teenagers rather mild mannered British geeks but when it comes to get people to collab on things - to work together and to unite then the only way to do it is use force - iron fist in a velvet glove time!
oh - plus the fact you can count on human virtue but you can rely on human greed - plus, as I’m learning more and more now - people will just make complain and moan (plus make ’suggestions’ solely to boost their comment count!
luv ya,
cs
More than happy to provide you with a learning experience Mr. S.
I’m actually in the business of running a forum once again (more about that another day), though it is an odd animal this time, with passionate individuals but very little friction - the passion is very positive, which is something of a relief.
Firm hand and iron fist - I totally agree that zero tolerance is the way to go with forum moderation.