What resulted was around 30 episodes of a podcast that turned out pretty well!  How was this done?  How can you do it with your own podcast?

Keeping it simple

The first obvious thing when you want to do something in a short period of time is to keep your idea as simple as you can.  Our podcast “theme” was dead simple. Two minutes, three questions.  The format of the podcast made it really, really easy to shoot.  Second, we were at an event where we had a few thousand people to interview at our disposal.  Had we each come up with this idea at our respective homes, it would have been a long time before we could have produced 30 episodes.

In one of the best sessions at the New Media Expo, Shane Robinson and Roxanne Darling of Barefeet Studios, walked through “How to produce a low cost, high quality daily Internet TV show”.  On the third slide of their slideshow presentation, you will see the “Daily Show Ingredients”.  The first two ingredients are “Simple Concept” and “Simple Execution”.

In other words, if the idea for the podcast is too difficult to pull off, you’ll probably not be able to do it.

Ask for help

I couldn’t have produced a single episode of 2 Minutes at New Media Expo without Kyle and Brandice’s help.

First, Kyle recorded each of the episodes with Brandice’s digital camera’s video feature.  He also gave us hand signals when our time was almost up (remember, our goal was 2 minutes or less).  Brandice and I took turns interviewing each attendee.  We did this for a variety of reasons. The first reason was because we thought it’d be a good thing to have two different hosts.  The fact that she and I are male and female I think added something to the show.  We also had different people that we wanted to interview, so it helped that while one of us was recording an episode, the other was taking notes.

Just a small aside about taking notes.  You have to take notes if you are doing interview-style podcasting.  And don’t be shy about taking lots of notes if you can.  Brandice, Kyle, and I shared a Moleskine (which Brandice lovingly referred to as my hippy notebook) and each of us made sure to jot down all of the information we could about the person.  Name, URL, title, etc.

The equipment doesn’t matter

I can hear the video and audiophiles storming my apartment’s front door right now!  When it comes down to it though, you just have to start making video.  Even if in the beginning you’re using your digital camera’s video mode, as we were.  Or maybe a Flip video, or the new Zi6, which aren’t too expensive.

The point is; you can always upgrade video equipment later, you can never get back time.

Dead simple video editing

To be honest, shooting the videos was by far the easiest part of the process.  The cost of time really comes in production.  Editing, titling, tagging, clipping, etc. can really become quite a process.  The key here is to keep your edits simple.

For NME2Min we simply added a 16-second title at the beginning of each video with the name, title, and URL of the attendee.  When we imported the videos into our Macbooks, we opened up iMovie ’08, dropped the videos in, added the titles, exported, and uploaded to Viddler.  The process was very simple and required only a few minutes per episode.

Publishing with Viddler

Viddler had the privilege of powering the official New Media Expo Videos Web site. We thought, “what better place to share our videos of the New Media Expo than right on that page”.  We did toy with the idea of building a brand new site, but again we wanted to keep this idea as simple as possible.

So we setup a new profile with the Viddler username of nme2min, which meant it gave us an official New Media Expo URL to send people to for updates.  This gave us a feed, flash videos for easy viewing, and an instant community of viewers in one move.

Here is an example episode of Brandice interviewing C.C. Chapman.

Be sure to watch all of the episode of 2 Minutes at New Media Expo.

Conclusion, have fun!

In just a single day we were able to produce about 30-episodes, get them uploaded and ready to share with the world.  Many podcasts have a schedule for new episodes; daily, weekly, monthly, etc.  We could have easily made NME2Min last 6 months worth of episodes if we wanted to.  In one day!

The most important thing about this process was that we had a lot of fun doing it.  We got to interview some really great people and help them to advertise themselves, their companies, and their products to the world in a fun way.

So, do you have an idea for a video podcast? Get out there tomorrow and build one.

(This post was also suggested via the suggestions page. Do you have a suggestion for a post topic? Please use the suggest page!)

Some blogger I am, I didn’t even mention that I was going to go to the New Media Expo in Las Vegas.  Well, I did. And it was great. And you should have been there.

But now onto my point and why I used the above photo in this post.

Las Vegas is like Podcasting.  Sure, it is pretty well established.  There are very professional, glamorous, and dare I say elegant examples already in place. There are, of course, some “not so good” examples too – we’ll call them coolers – which inevitably show themselves in such a place.  But there is a fact which rings true and ever clearer in my ear now that I’ve attended the New Media Expo this year; it is still getting bigger.

Both Las Vegas and Podcasting are continuing to grow at a rate that seems fairly hard to calculate with any metric other than potential.  I was really happy to hear Gary Vaynerchuk say in his keynote speech on the first day of the Expo that people need to exercise patience and work hard to achieve their goals in podcasting.  And that mantra ran right through until the very last day.

People were very, very excited about the new tools, gear, the growing community and seeing each other’s faces – but more importantly they see that they can build a viable commodity all on their own, so long as they’re willing to work at it.

I was there, of course, with the Viddler team including Rob, Donna, Kyle, and Brandice.  We all had a great time sharing a booth with TubeMogul, meeting up with tons of Viddler members, and helping people set up their customizable Viddler players.

For weeks prior to the Expo we helped the New Media Expo team by setting up the video portion of their official site.  It ended up being a big hit for both the Expo and Viddler, and anyone not able to attend the Expo.  We consider video at these types of events to be the most powerful form of media for a backchannel. If you’re going to a conference, organizing one, or would just like information on how we put this together, be sure to drop me a line.

On the very last day Kyle, Brandice, and I created a show on-the-fly called Two Minutes at New Media Expo.  We did this by doing 2-minute interviews with as many people as we could on the last day of the Expo (which only went until 1 o’clock).  In that short amount of time we interviewed nearly 30 different expo attendees, companies, and even Kings. We have a bunch more episodes coming out so stay tuned! How did we do all of this? I’m planning on writing a post called “How to build a video podcast in 24 hours.”.  If you don’t see this by the end of next week yell at me.

I think I can speak for the entire Viddler team when I say that we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves at the New Media Expo this year and that we’re looking forward to the next one.  Viva la New Media Expo!

Podcamp Philly opened my eyes to a completely different way to help grow Viddler’s community in new directions, and to help me do my job better. Solve the problems of the community you want.

We’ve got an incredible community on Viddler. Loyal, active, bright, and fun people that are willing to help us through our growing pains, partially because we strive to fulfill their requests as we move forward. Listening to and acting on requests is vital to growing a strong and sustainable community.

But what if we’d like to also attract a completely different Viddler? How do you branch out from your core community into a different community? Some may say education is key. Going out and educating ‘that other community’ about your product. This is true, but only partially true. The main strategy should be to strive to help the new community as much as you’ve helped your core community. Figure out the main problems of the new community and adjust to meet their needs.

The typical active Viddler is someone that enjoys conversation and actively participating in community activities. This is a great community to start off with. This will mean that as new ones join the community, it won’t seem inactive, stale, or unwelcoming. But rather they will be immediately accepted as though they’d been there all along.

The typical podcaster is not one of these people. More often than not they are community leaders themselves. They have an audience that they speak and interact with. In order to help podcasters you really need to either become one yourself, or immerse yourself into an event like Podcamp Philly, to really see the daily challenges these producers face. Don’t just speak to this new community, listen to them when they speak. And that is what I tried to do at Podcamp Philly; listen.

“Who is new to Podcasting?” (credit: CC Chapman)

Here are two main points I took away from Podcamp. Neither of these things where revelations to me but both were definitely solidified in my mind as very important points to remember.

1. Even though our technology for “citizen journalism” (or podcasting and videocasting) has improved 100-fold in only a few years, we are still very far away from making this as easy as it could be. Producers, editors, and everyone else involved with creating a really great podcast has a huge learning curve ahead of them when they are first starting out. Once they get rolling they face many daily challenges. They are constantly changing strategies until they find the perfect mix to get their “show” out and into your hands. Once they find that perfect mix they generally stick with what works. This all takes a lot of time and their time is valueable.
2. Most video podcasters do what they do because they love doing it. If your service inhibits that passion in any way, you lose. Sure, a few podcasters are now making a living with their podcast, this doesn’t mean its all business. Podcasters may put up with crappy service to earn a living for a time, but in the long run they’ll end up finding a better way. Be that better way.

I really enjoyed myself at Podcamp Philly. I’m happy that Viddler had the privilege of being one of the sponsors so that everyone in attendence could get all of this information for free. The more people that know how to do a podcast well, the more podcasts we’ll see, plain and simple. I’m looking forward to other Podcamp events in the future (there is one in Boston I might make it to). And I’m really looking forward to next year, when everyone in Philadelphia has had an entire year to learn, grow, and teach even more people about this wonderful world of self-publishing.

Oh, and the parties were great too.