So for those who are interested, I've set up a little tracker in RescueTime because I wanted to see just how much time I spent on a typical interview each week.
Part of this comes down to my own personal tick; I have tried and I just can't get past the idea of releasing a talk or an interview with "um's" or "uh's" or stammers in it. If I could, I could cut the time way down, but since I won't, well, it takes me on average four hours of editing to produce a 30 minute show each week. Yeah, that's super nerdy, I know, but I think it adds to what I hope is a "polished" podcast. I don't know about the rest of you, but I treat many of my favorite podcasts as reference material; I go back and listen to many of them over and over again. It's my hope that these podcasts are not seen as "throwaway" weekly blurbs, but as real meat and potatoes stuff that people will want to hold onto and listen to over and over again as well.
Serious question, does the flow of the conversation feel normal and natural to you, the listener? I hear every click and pop, as wells every overly inflected point when I edit. Some of that is just not fixable without sounding really artificial, though I have joked with SideReel's resident audio editor that I have become the master of the "poor man's cross-fade", which is where you drop the volume on the last word and fade in on the first word where the edit takes place. Do you hear it? Is it enough to notice or comment on? If so, I'm genuinely curious.
So this week Matt sat down with Eric Jacobson. Eric works with Turner Broadcasting, and manages a team of testers. I liked this interview because he talked about what can be a challenging topic, and that's dealing with motivating testers. I know full well how it feels to be a tester who is just going through the motions, without any real purpose or focus, and I like what he has to say about helping testers get engaged and involved (it inspired an article I'm hoping will be published soon; I'll let you all know if it gets picked up). Eric also explains what it was like to be "invaded" by the Rebel Alliance at a conference last year, where he found out he didn't get the room he had hoped for, but they gave him a suite with a fold down bed, but a big space. This led to a meeting and talk session of the Rebel Alliance and a number of lightning talks by the participants (and video footage, too :) ). So anyway, if you're tired of my blathering, by all means go to and listen to Episode #48 for yourself :).
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1 comment:
You mention how sometimes making changes makes people sound artificial. I've actually had the experience of meeting some people who naturally sounded almost electronic. It was quite an odd experience to be honest. I appreciate you put so much passion into the production values for the podcast, i think they usually come out pretty well.
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