Dan Bricklin posts an interesting narrative and analysis about his experiences moving into podcasting. Interesting primarily because Bricklin is one of the rare people who understand that there are differences among media, and even within various formats of the same media (one-minute sound bite versus thirty-minute interview). More important, he's put a lot of time and effort into re-learning how to communicate as he moves into audio, getting audio professionals to help him learn, and thinking a lot about what he's doing. Useful things to think about for anyone who moves across media, whether it's from text to graphics or audio to video.
This switch to audio will be tough for some people trained only in writing. With writing you needed to know how to type (a skill) and manipulate a word processor and email and maybe part of a content management system. Nothing that hard for regular people, and most stuff is taught in grade school now. So, the main unusual skills are writing ability and "journalism" training. With audio, most of the reporters who are doing new podcasts need to have and be proficient with lots of expensive fussy equipment, do a new type of editing they don't teach in most schools (for making editorial changes as well as sound changes, compression changes, etc., etc.), speak fluently and clearly (or know how to fit it with editing, just as they often do with print), and more -- lots of geeky skills and a bit of how to "act naturally" on top of it. On the flip side, reporters are finding whole new ways to do their craft of "reporting". They may need additional skills but they have more outlets for their work. Of course for the techies at heart, it gives you a great excuse to learn about a whole new area and get lots of new toys.
[via Dan Bricklin's Log]
Posted by johndanseven at August 16, 2005 11:05 PM