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At the Community 2.0 Conference in Las Vegas last month, I joined forces with Jim Storer and Aaron Strout from Mzinga (disclosure: my employer, Monster, is a Mzinga client) in recording and producing a series of podcast conversations with some of the event’s presenters and attendees.

I wanted to share some of the details behind our work.

THE TOOLS

  • Recording. We used the Zoom H2, which can capture and split the audio of the interviewer(s) and guest(s) into separate audio channels (something that can really in handy as you’re editing). It also multiple options for pickup patterns and can record in both .wav and .mp3 formats. The user interface is reasonably intuitive, too. And if looks matter, the H2 ain’t nearly as hideous as its slightly more upscale uncle, the Zoom H4.
  • Editing. I went with Audacity, which is a free download and install for both Windows and Mac machines. I’ve produced more than 100 podcasts over the past two-plus years, and Audacity has been my editing tool of choice on all but one of those episodes. It’s easy to use, seldom fails, and enables me to edit and publish podcasts quickly – which was important for this conference.
  • File storage. We used both Mzinga’s servers and Libsyn, which charges a monthly storage fee but allows for unlimited downloads of your content (I pay $10/month for up to 250 MB of new audio files).
  • The blog. Our podcasts files were embedded into posts on the Community 2.0 blog, which runs on the Blogger platform and was launched a couple of months prior to the conference.
  • The audio player. We used the Flash-based audio player from One Pixel Out. You’ll see a version of that player on many sites and WordPress blogs, including mine. There’s really no reason not to use Flash-based audio players, as they make streaming a podcast episode from within a web page drop-dead easy. [Update: As of December 31, 2009, I have switched to the Flow Classic Player.]

BEST PRACTICES

  • Divide and conquer. If you’re one just one person trying to chase down guests, interview, edit, add show notes and mp3 tags, upload, publish with an associated blog post, and attend some of the actual conference sessions so that you have good material for your interviews, you’re going to be in for one heckuva challenge. Fortunately, we were three. Jim, Aaron, and I split the duties at C20 – they conducted more of the interviews; I did the bulk of the editing in Audacity; and we shared the blogging responsibilities.

  • Check the acoustics. I’m not a sound engineer, but I do know that some settings are better for recording than others. In one interview we conducted, for example, the muzak from an empty conference room came through louder than we had anticipated. Run some simulated sound checks in a few different spaces before you record for real.

  • Prepare the bookends. To save yourself loads of editing time at the conference – when you likely won’t have time to spare – you should pre-produce a generic intro and outro that you can dump into your audio editor and wrap around each podcast interview or segment. Here are the audio files I used, which feature music purchased and cleared for podcasts through Shockwave-Sound: 1) C20 intro 2) C20 outro (note: these link to .wav files).

  • Have a real plan. How do you intend to distribute and publicize the podcasts, and how will you use the content after the conference, if at all? These are important questions to ask and answer long before you ever hit the record button with your first guest on the conference floor. Why? Because your answers will influence the format, tone and length of the podcasts; the potential impact of the long tail; the types of questions you’ll ask during interviews; and the level of satisfaction your listeners are likely to have.After all, publishing a quick-hit podcast that announces time changes or a bonus presentation during the opening day of the conference is helpful, as long as the attendees can find and listen to that content on your website or blog (or in iTunes) in a timely fashion. Listening to that same podcast three months later on a post-conference CD, on the other hand, wouldn’t be useful at all. But, you know what would be of value for participants on that same CD? An interview with the conference chair about possible themes for the following year’s event. (Check out a conference podcast from Autodesk University that does something similar.)

IN THE END …

… our download numbers aren’t very large, and that’s very much because there was very little promotion of our podcasting plans – or of the C20 blog itself, for that matter – leading up to or during the conference. But because this was more of a proof of concept on the content and marketing side, we’re OK with that. We can do a better job of laying the groundwork next year.

And as for the conversations themselves, I think they came out well and included a compelling mix of speakers, thinkers, and conference goers alike. You can have a listen yourself via the links below and let me know if you agree:

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