What If You Held A Podcast Conference And No One Listened?
Isn’t audio the reason we gather together? If so, why don’t I ever hear any?
Welcome to Dispatch #64 of The Audio Insurgent. Greetings from my hotel room in St. Louis. After a quiet spring mostly at home, I’m in the midst of a ton of travel.
Speaking of which…
[TODAY’S MAIN THING: THE CURRENT STATE OF PODCAST CONFERENCES] I’m just back from attending The Podcast Show in London last week…and I have some thoughts. While I stood there among the many attendees (the organizers claim that 10,000 people attended, a figure that I find almost impossible to believe), something dawned on me: over two days of attending sessions about podcasting, pretty much no one played any audio of an actual podcast.
It was complete “tell, don’t show.” Lots of bloviating about podcasting and making podcasts, but no one showed a single receipt. Now, I am not certain that it never happened, but I was in and out of many of the sessions, and brought this up with a number of others while I was there–and no one could recall anyone playing any tape (with one minor exception I encountered, mentioned below).
“Oh, that doesn’t surprise me at all,” one friend said. “This isn’t a conference about podcasting, it is a conference about podcasting as an industry.”
Another said, “I feel like I go into a session about the future of podcasting, and in it everyone stands up and says ‘The answer is buy my product.’”
You may read this and think I’m knocking on The Podcast Show. I’m definitely not. It was actually a great gathering and they got a number of things right. There was a great range of speakers from many different segments of the podcast industry that often aren’t brought together. They created a layout for the conference space that allowed a lot of casual interaction, places to go for a quieter conversation, and just the ability to stand in one place and still manage to run into so many people. For networking and connecting–it was a great opportunity. Content-wise, I learned a lot and met some fascinating people that I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise.
But the only time I heard anyone play any audio from a podcast was when the hosts of No Such Thing As A Fish played the opening of their first episode (they’ve done more than 500 brilliant episodes since)--but nothing recorded in the last decade.
Part of it could be the set-up. The organizers did try to infuse more creator-focused sessions this year, but many were hosted on a stage in the main exhibition area. This is an obnoxious choice that Podcast Movement has embraced as well: putting sessions in the same physical space as the main social space and exhibitor booths. I’m sure this looks great on paper, but as an experience, it is horrible. I spoke at a session with this set-up at Podcast Movement last year, and I couldn’t hear anything above the roar of the attendees in the larger main space. I couldn’t even hear what my other panelists–sitting next to me–were saying. The Podcast Show tried to mitigate this by putting wireless headphones on seats for those who wanted to hear the session more clearly. But that feels like the wrong kind of solve.
Not having audio to share and listen to just felt like a missed opportunity. For example, I attended a very interesting panel with the creators of the BBC’s terrific series The Banksy Story. During it, the producers were discussing scenes–how about we hear some? The series included an interview with the actual Banksy and the panelists talked about what it was like to hear his voice and how affecting it was. Wow. I would have loved to hear that too. But let’s also keep in mind that this session was happening next to the Shure microphone booth, the main stairway leading to the second floor, and stalls for about eight other vendors.
I also attended the Resonate festival in Virginia this year, and it kind of had the opposite effect: too much glorification of tape without enough grounding in the business and industry insight that it would take for anyone to ever be able to hear or pay for any of that audio.
I think the perfect podcast conference combines these two things: a reverence, examination, and appreciation of the audio work we create, as well as programming designed to figure out how to support innovative and creative work by connecting it to audiences, plus figuring out how to pay for it. Then circling back to using that information to make more informed decisions about what content to make. It should feel like a cycle.
Right now it doesn’t.
The “no one is listening” thing extends to other potential definitions as well. Most podcast conferences not only lack playing audio, but even in sessions, the emphasis was on talking, not listening. People on panels don’t do a lot of interacting, instead just waiting for their turn to talk. A lot of serial pontification without a lot of interchange, questioning, or vulnerability. I don’t see a lot of people change their minds or feel differently during panel discussions–I also see zero disagreement. I often say that nothing is more boring than listening to a group of people who all agree with each other. I’m usually talking about podcasts when I say that, but it applies to conference panels too.
This conversation reminds me of an event two years ago, when I was asked to come speak at a Christian broadcasters conference about podcasting. While there, I found it very moving that they opened every general session with a prayer. It wasn’t the spiritual element I found moving, but the prayer reminded them of why they were there. Sure, they spent their sessions talking about audience and promotion and business opportunities and the normal things you’d expect at a broadcast conference, but that gesture reinforced a sense of purpose. The expression was the reason they were there and what connected them together. Otherwise, there was no point.
I’d argue that at a podcasting conference, playing audio should be our version of a shared prayer. What connects us all isn’t CPMs, programmatic tech, or download metrics–it is our shared belief in listening and the power of the spoken word to change hearts, lives, and minds–even for a moment.
We could all use as many reminders of that as we can fit.
[ONE OTHER TINY THING: QUALITY OVER QUANTITY] Read this post from Steve Goldstein’s Amplifi Media looking at the lessons from attempts to scale up in TV and podcasting. Short, sweet, and some brilliant points and takeaways.
[CAN WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE, PLEASE? MY NERD HELMET] Here is a fun fact about today’s dispatch that you probably wouldn’t have guessed otherwise: it was entirely written using an Apple Vision Pro.
After four months of hemming over it, I purchased one shortly before heading to London. Jesse and my wife have already gleefully dubbed it my “nerd helmet.”
I won’t bore you with a review, except to say that it is pretty great–much greater than you might initially expect.
I would share a few reasons why I bought it.
The practical reason, and yes, despite everyone’s reaction to me acquiring this, there is a practical reason. I love to travel, but I hate traveling. I’m on the road pretty much non-stop for the next 2.5 weeks, and the Vision Pro allows me to convert unproductive, uncomfortable, and unappealing spaces into productive, comfortable, and appealing spaces.
But the real reason I embraced it was because I have a compulsion to push myself: to learn new things and figure them out by forcing myself to do things differently. Once you put one of these things on, you see its potential (even if it isn’t fully realized today) and understand that VR/AR/spatial computing/whatever is unquestionably going to be part of our lives in some future form. By pushing myself to learn how to work and interact with the world using this new technology, I’m learning, I’m adapting, I’m working to be ready for the future when it arrives. Maybe that’s why I rarely find change threatening–I always try to find the opportunity in it.
And…I’ve gotten immune to the people around me teasing me about things like wearing a computer on my face. And of course they all tease me brutally…and then they all want to try it.
And for those who mistakenly think of this as me being a tech nerd–the nerd part is true, but I don’t try new tech as often as some think I do. I embrace new things when they solve problems for me. And not everything I pursue as a challenge to myself is about tech. My other new initiative for myself is trying to improve my handwriting. Now THAT is a real challenge.
Okay, that’s it for today.
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Make great things. I’ll be listening.
--Eric