Podcasting Workshop – adtech NYC 2006

So my last session on Monday was the Podcasting Workshop by Craig Syverson, the owner of GruntMedia. He just was at podcasting conference and is heading to web 2.0 conference this week. A man on the go! Craig was originally from Ideo – an industrial design firm, concepts, spaces. He produced hundreds of little video clips that would show future services, products, etc. He left and GruntMedia was born!

VideoGrunt – educational series on digital video for beginners (works cross-platform, Premiere, Final Cut, etc.)
PodGrunt – same idea for podcasts
The meat of Craig’s presentation was in this well-structured diagram for the various steps you needed to be aware of when putting together a podcast. So let’s begin the journey.

STEPS
1. Concept – what are you trying to accomplish? audience? experience?
2. Strategy – how does it fit overall? how will it grow? scale? asses value?
3. Format – really breaks down the session of a shoot, advertising in the beginning (fake ads for future ad placement, get users used to them)
4. Produce – need a good writer, script most important (interviews, spontaneous) Need a great host. copyrights, permissions are important as well. Need entry level HD camera and audio gear – wireless lavaliere (quiet room and mic close to source) sony/sennheiser.
Add room tone.
Buy good cables.
5. Post – production. post production, final edit. final output. (nice graphic)
Better backup!

6. Compress – sort of a dark art. video has different standards, how many formats will you offer? Either offer 1 or everything. There will be lots of experimenting and testing. Keep it all in the same format throughout the production process. Exports 1 big file. Goes into compression software. Output into QT, WMV, Flash, etc.

Low data rate – interview
High Data rate – moving, scaling, etc.

7. Identity – file/episode naming (optimized?), think consistency (ID3 data)
8. Feed – build the RSS xML file, find a host (dt hosts!), CashFly (media file host) PodCast Maker 1.2 (Mac platform app) very easy to use. Uses Feedburner to mirror Cashfly feed. Sends iTunes to Feedburner feed.
9. Website – basic info about building website to serve audience.

10. Monetize – new distribution, contexts, audience, new media, etc.
It’s all about content in the end.
Opens up many advertising opportunities.

Overall this was a very informative, well presented session to end the day.