Hey podcast listeners, check out Content Talks, a new podcast by Brain Traffic on content strategy. The first episode features Kristina Halverson interviewing Ann Rockley about content strategy issues. It’s a great interview, and Ann sounds lively and engaged. Kristina steers Ann towards detailed stories and experiences as they make their way through a host of content issues. Kristina says they will be producing a … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 70 min. In the barrage of information created by all the social media channels, how can you find relevant content? How can you move past forms of noise to actually produce content that engages users? What forms of social media do students respond to the most? These are some of the questions we explored in … more »

I attended Podcamp Salt Lake City (Podcampslc.org) on Friday for the third year in a row. The attendees have fluctuated. The first year, about 30 attended. The next year, about 90 attended. This year, the attendees decreased to around 45. Sometimes events just suffer from poor timing. We are all so busy. But I noticed another trend: more and more sessions focused on social media, … more »

The other week I visited Performance Audio in downtown Salt Lake to see what recommendations they had for microphones. The clerk asked me what audio interface I was using. I said I was just plugging my mixer directly into the computer. He looked shocked and said no matter how good of a microphone I bought, the real increase in performance would come with an audio … more »

I’m rethinking the focus of my podcast, and I’d like to get your feedback. With each of the following poll questions, you can see the results immediately. If you have responses that don’t fit the yes or no answers, please use the comments field below the post. Thanks for the feedback.

A couple of months ago, I wanted to start a podcast at my work, and so I interviewed someone who has been in our IT department for 28 years about the evolution of the department over the years. The podcast took about a month to get approved, and the week before it was posted, as I was tracking down the person who controlled our iTunes … more »

Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success challenges assumptions about innate genius and natural-born talent. Through a series of detailed examples, Gladwell explains away these gifts by attributing them to practice, timing, circumstance, upbringing, culture, and opportunity. In other words, those really smart, successful people we admire—Mozart, Bill Gates, the Beatles—weren’t born with natural talent. Instead, they had the right upbringing, were in the right … more »

Attendance at PodcampSLC tripled from last year. More than 100 people attended, filling the main conference auditorium at Neumont University in Sandy, Utah.  I especially enjoyed the opening address from Scott Johnson of MyExtraLife.com. He recommended that you try throwing everything against the wall and see what sticks. As a cartoonist, he showed dozens of cool figures he’s drawn, including one drawn with a sharpee … more »

At Podcamp SLC, I’m giving a presentation about how to interview remote and local guests for podcasts. Rather than going into the technical details of my recording process (which I would be happy to do), I’ve decided to share stories of memorable podcasts that changed my interviewing style and approach. Of the 80+ interviews I’ve done, a dozen of them made me rethink my method … more »

If you’re in Utah, come check out Podcamp SLC on Friday, March 27 at Neumont University, South Jordan. I’ll be presenting on “Interviewing Remote and Local Guests for Podcasts.” Here’s a description of my presentation:

Podfading is a term used to describe podcasters who start regular podcasting shows, but then fade away — either quickly or gradually. Podfading is a regular theme in the podcasting world. For example, Benjamin Grundy of the Mysterious Universe podcast recently went into “deep space hibernation.” Brian Oberkirch used to podcast, but hasn’t published a new podcast for months. Even the host of the WordPress … more »

I was recently interviewed by David Dick for the Usability SIG newsletter. The title of the interview is “I’d Rather Be Writing – The Man Behind the Words.” Check it out. They also reprinted my post on Customizing Sharepoint, which has gotten more hits than I ever imagined.

Thom Allen presented on WordPress and Podcasting at Wordcamp Utah. Below are my notes, which I mostly took from his slides. See Thom’s full presentation here. Preparing Your Podcast Capture extensive metadata in the ID3 tags of your audio file. This helps increase the visibility. Give your podcast files a human readable name (not something like nar0081008.mp3). Host your own podcast files. This allows you … more »

Several people have asked if I have a list of all the podcasts I’ve published (rather than having to page through the archives). I just added a comprehensive list below the Tech Writer Voices graphic on the right sidebar. Click the See all episodes link. (By the way, I created that page by inserting the loop on a page template, stripping out the content tag, … more »

If you’ve listened to podcasts on my site, you’ll notice that for the past 3 months, I haven’t posted any new podcasts. It’s also been about three months since Aaron or Scott from DMN Communications published a podcast. What happened? Is podcasting dead? No, podcasting is not dead. But I’ll explain my break.