I am a volunteer audio engineer for IT Conversations, a popular podcasting site that (among other things) makes available presentations from conferences like the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, BlogHer, Pop!Tech and MeshForum.
What does it mean to be an audio engineer? It means that I get the original audio recordings, edit them in various ways, add all the audio chrome at the beginning and end, and encode them to podcast and archival formats. It's all good fun and a weirdly relaxing hobby.
But I'm also a software guy and once I'd done a few shows I couldn't resist the urge to create some tools to make the whole process easier and to achieve consistently high quality. I'll be writing about them in subsequent entries in this blog. I hope to help the whole podcasting community by making these tools available for free. You can find them on my Web site which is a PostNuke horror story at the moment. But that is a discussion for another day.
One of the great things about working with Doug Kaye (the founder of IT Conversations) is his high standards for the shows. Both the audio quality and the substance of the presentations are top-notch, which is why ITC is so highly regarded. Editing each show is a unique adventure. My personal goal is to make the final podcast a better experience than being there live. Well, at least in the sense that the coughs and sneezes are gone, the dead air while waiting for PowerPoint to come to life is trimmed, and the questions can actually be heard. When you start on a show you never know what you are going to run into. I'll be sharing some of these stories too.
It is intriguing to watch the podcast phenomonen develop. I live in Vancouver and walk by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) on the way to work every day. They are on strike now and as I see the picketers I can't help but think that whatever battle they are fighting now, it's going to be a completely different discussion soon. I used to be a big fan of the CBC. Now I walk past their big grey building with my MP3 player, the size of a pack of gum, plugged in and listening not to the radio but to a collection of really interesting podcasts hand-picked by me to suit my tastes and interests. I haven't tuned in to the CBC for ... months?
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When I was in college I worked for KQKS 104.3 FM, a Denver radio station. Audio and video production can be a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteSince I've gotten my iPod, I haven't listened to any radio stations, but I'm doing the same thing you are with a custom selection of podcasts, books, and music. It just makes for a better end experience.