Second in a series of posts about PAB09. The first is here. The audio from PAB09 will be posted in chunks over the summer on the Canadian Podcast Buffet with Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche. I urge you to check them out as it will, no doubt, be some high-quality listening. I was totally blown away by a JOLT! delivered by Scarborough Dude. It was some heady stuff.
Daniele Rossi’s JOLT! Reach Out and Touch Someone was an reflection on his work with his Stuttering is Cool podcast.
Stuttering is Cool is a community for people who stutter. Daniele compared the stuttering community to the shared experience of war veterans who only talk about the war with other veterans. Thanks to the affordability of hardware and software he is able to tap into a worldwide audience of knowledge sharing and mentoring. He challenged everyone to help others to make a difference. And also, to never underestimate your podcast idea. After all, he said, “Who’s going to stutter on the air?”
Tim Coyne by Daniele Rossi
Next up was Tim Coyne with Unkempt – The Creative Workflow of a Storyteller.
Tim Coyne does incredible storytelling in Unkempt, part of The Hollywood Podcast. His talk was The Creative Workflow of a Storyteller.
For Unkempt, Tim started paying attention to life, to “the connective tissues between the story and the mundane”. A big part of Tim’s process is the time he takes to put his story together. Unlike the delightful Scarborough Dude, he doesn’t record on the spot, put it together and put it out. Instead, Tim takes time to establish the connections in his story and “connect the dots”, because “not everything is a story yet”.
For example, he experienced the film shoot featured in his Root of Passage podcast in May 2007 and put the podcast out in March of 2009. Says Tim, “Things weren’t a full story yet. Things needed to happen.” He develops his shows to have some sort of thematic element and deeper meaning.
For someone who takes such care to develop his art, his tools and workflow are really crucial. (Here, Tim is preaching to the choir, as I am a total geek for workflow tweaks and lifehacks.) He has refined a toolset that works to capture his thoughts and inspiration. Tim was inspired by The Creative Habit from Twyla Tharp and David Allen’s Getting Things Done which helped him devise a way to get his thoughts, ideas and inspiration into a processing system. Some of his tools:
- Jott – calls number from his mobile, dictates his thoughts, gets an email transcription
- OmniFocus – as a tool for gathering and developing the concept, list of ideas – a running creative process for me – what were the big ideas, the quotes in whatever experience he’s talking about
- Scrivener – likes being able to see his story as he develops his scripts and how things interconnect and how projects relate to each other
Tim likes to tackle his work one act at a time. He says “over time he’s also gotten more strict about being really efficient in opening act which is the teaser.” He tries to take care of the listener in Act 1.
He also develops a theme for each episode that includes title, music, photo that ties back to “the big picture of the show”.
When engaging in the process of developing an episode. He tries to write an essay about the show going to do. He also does a live performance at a open mic night. He says the live performance helps him, “check audience response and connection” and to take and see if he has a story worth telling.
I was inspired by Tim and his story about how he puts together his wonderful stories.
Jay Moonah by Mark Blevis
Jay Moonah gave a five-minute JOLT! called Search Engines and Trust.
Jay was inspired to undertake a project exploring the trust people have for search engine results by a comment made by a teacher on a CBC radio program. She called in and made the comment that most of her students “believe what Google tells them is right”. Late last year, Forrester Research came out with a survey on trust. At the top of the list, people trust email from people they know, second most-trusted source is consumer product ratings and reviews. Search engines/portals come in at 3. That got Jay thinking about trust and search engines. As a marketer, “part of what you do every day is called SEO. Basically, you do your best to get results to the top when people type them into Google.” Jay believes that the reason people think Search Engines are trustworthy, is because they don’t think people are in the back-end trying to manipulate the results. “When media literacy is being taught in school, they don’t say “be critical when you’re typing things into Google”.” So many people are part of a generation that grew up with things published in print being vetted through a process. Now people are pushing things to get to the top of a search engine. Jay was inspired to write an e-Book on the topic which was published on as a manifesto on ChangeThis.com. His final message “tell people you know who are information consumers to read past the first results in a search engine.”
I’m fast-forwarding to Sunday to highlight the session delivered by Whitney Hoffman as part of Pecha Kucha, (where a presenter delivers a 6-minute talk on a standard format of 20 slides for 20 seconds each). If when I arrived in Kingston I was feeling low and burned out, by Sunday morning I was starting to feel more like myself. Whitney delivered a wonderful presentation on the 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media which was an excellent reminder of some of the fundamentals of how to “be” online. Certainly, as someone who makes her living in the space, it was pretty much the best sermon I could have heard on that particular Sunday morning.
In 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media, Whitney reminded us that “fame popularity and expertise are not the same thing”. She spoke about the sins, and the flip side, the seven virtues.
Prudence – take a moment to breathe, reflect before posting
Justice – fair and equal are not the same thing, strive for treating others like you would like to be treated
Restraint/Temperance – Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. You need not to attend every battle to which you are invited.
Courage/Fortitude – Develop the ability to confront fear, pain, risk, uncertainty and intimidation
Faith – trust in the truth of a person, place or thing. Loss of control requires adoption of faith
Hope – believe things will work out
Charity – help others without thinking “What’s in it for me?”
Whitney reminded us that “you are never given an idea without the power to make it happen. You may have to suffer for it however.”
Thanks to all the people who made PAB09 such a quality experience.
