Category: Podcasting

I am working on a very exciting episode of Missionary Talks. I have not put out an episode for two weeks, but this one should make up for it. It is a short bio of the life of David Livingstone. If you are not familiar with him, you should check out his Wikipedia entry. In general, he was a very quirky personality and probably the kind of guy you could not stand being around too much, but he also did some amazing things. I am going to focus on the amazing things he did for the podcast.

At this point it looks like it will be close to 30 minutes or more in length. I will probably break it up into 2 episodes for the podcast and then have a single episode containing the whole thing that can be downloaded separately. This will keep the podcast within a close semblance of my normal episode length.

I have to get back to my regular arm twisting to get some other missionaries on board with doing some recordings. Starting next month I will begin to have contact with missionaries from different parts of Mexico. That should spice things up a bit. I still have 8 other missionaries here in town than I can interview, but I don’t want to saturate all my interviews with just this area. I am trying to spread the locals out a bit.

Here are a couple of promo clips concerning the Let Them Hear You contest that Dancing With Elephants (among others) is running. I mentioned it in the latest podcast episode. I don’t know if I will be getting an episode out this week, so wanted to post these before it is too late.

Contest ends on Friday at 11:59 pm Central time.

The first is from Dr. Steve from the Dr. Floyd podcast.
[audio:doctor_floyd.mp3]

The second is from the people who are running the contest.
[audio:let_them_hear_you_2.mp3]

Check out the contest website and write some reviews for your favorite podcasts and be entered into a drawing for a nice prize package. Right now the prizes are as follows:

1st Runner Up:
3 Blind Mice’s Good Grief
Jonathan Coulton’s Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow
A Large comedy4cast Coffee Mug donated by Clinton of The Comedy4Cast Podcast **NEW**

2nd Runner Up:
A $25 iTunes Music Store Gift Certificate donated by Jen and Alan of The Dinkycast **NEW**

Grand Prize:
3 Blind Mice’s Good Grief
Jonathan Coulton’s Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow
Seasons 1-4 of The Radio Adventures of Doctor Floyd donated by Grant and Doug of The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd
A 1 Year Membership to Dr. Floyd’s Imagination Nation donated by Grant and Doug of The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd
A Marware USB Travel Dock for the 2nd Generation iPod Shuffle donated by Steve of The Lifespring Family of Podcasts **NEW**
An Apple iPod Shuffle

I have submitted almost 30 reviews so far. I am going to win something here. Hopefully part of what I win are some reviews for Missionary Talks over at iTunes. I got one new one this week, but could really benefit from more.

Grammar Girl has been in the newspaper a lot recently. She also appeared on Oprah not long ago. I have seen video clips of her on local and national news shows. She is getting around.

The point of this post is to show how that podcasters are being heard. I know some of our productions are only being listened to by family and friends. And, if you are doing it because you want to produce content, then that is perfectly fine. Others are producing shows to be heard or seen by hundreds of thousands of people. Grammar Girl is one of them.

The New York Times article is about her audio book that she released a few weeks ago. It really has nothing to do with podcasting, rather about how quickly an audio book can be produced.

I think it is a good thing that the article does not focus on her as a podcaster and what a podcast is. That is certainly necessary at times. But, in this case, the article gets beyond the “how” and focuses on the “what” she is doing. Or, as it is here, on the fact that the content can be produced by an author in a short period of time.

Even better would be if the article was just a straight promotion of her book. It essentially is that, but it is shrouded in something newsworthy.

Congrats once again to Grammar Girl for putting podcasters in a good light.