I'd Rather Be Writing » podcasts

Why I Love Audible

Tom Johnson — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:10:32 +0000

I just got back from a 4 mile jog up and down the night sidewalks of my city. I’m not much of a jogger, but after a day of sledding, parenting, traveling, cooking, and changing baby diapers, I needed to get out for an hour on my own.

It’s relatively cold in Utah at night. About 34 degrees right now, so I wear a balaclava and gloves. And of course I have on a sweater and exercise pants too. But more important than anything, I have my iPhone attached to my arm and am listening to the second book in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series from Audible.

I’ve been an Audible listener for about a year now. Prior to Audible, I used to listen exclusively to podcasts. As early as 2006, I was seriously into podcasts, both listening to them and creating them. But at least for the past year, I’ve been listening to audio books, mostly fiction, from Audible.

I listen while I drive to and from work (a 25-minute commute), while I walk or jog, and while I shoot baskets at the gym. I can concentrate with almost full attention in any of these modes. I also sometimes listen to audio books when I can’t sleep.

When I first joined Audible, I tried listening to nonfiction. I listened to Jesus, Interrupted, by Bart Erhman. I liked his book so much I listened to another Erhman book: Peter, Paul, and Mary. Then The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. And The Social Animal, by David Brooks. At this time, I just had an iPod Nano (not an iPhone), and it was a little hard to keep track of my place in the book. Additionally, though these nonfiction books were engaging, they didn’t entirely consume me. I tried Master and Commander, by Patrick O’Brian, and Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy. These were better, but not entirely captivating.

One day I saw a colleague wearing headphones on his way into the office. I asked what he was listening to. He said, The Hunger Games. My wife and 10-year-old daughter had burned through these books eagerly, and since my colleague was a fellow basketball player with similar interests as mine, I decided to give it a try.

I absolutely loved listening to The Hunger Games. For the next few months, I listened to it non-stop. I listened to all three books in the series (and reviewed it here). My time listening to podcasts and non-fiction audio books dried up. I fell entirely for fiction.

After finishing The Hunger Games, I asked my colleague what else he recommended. He said, If you liked The Hunger Games, then you’ll love Mistborn. Mistborn was a fantasy novel by Brandon Sanderson, a local author. And it, too, was a trilogy. I ended up listening to Mistborn for the next couple of months (my daughter did too). In fact, my daughter even did her science fair project from a concept in Mistborn. My colleague was right. Though Mistborn was a novel in the fantasy genre, I liked it considerably. I had always been too snooty of an English major to read fantasy before, but this novel completely sucked me in.

After Mistborn, I downloaded another popular book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. My wife had read all three novels by Stieg Larsson and said this book was impossible to put down. It is definitely more graphic and has adult themes, but I am completely smitten by this series as well.

There’s something about fiction that draws me further in and keeps my attention, especially if Simon Vance is narrating (he does voices well). I now prefer fiction to nonfiction. It’s an escape, and when I’m running along the sidewalk at night, I’m not in some cold Utah landscape but rather in the middle of a novel.

Listening to fiction from Audible also fits into my diet plan. A few months ago, I decided I wanted to lose weight. No surprise, it turns out that in order to lose weight, the allowed calories per day mostly leaves me hungry. I’m not following any specific strategy other than to burn more calories than I consume each day. And I’m using the MyFitnessPal app to track calories. MyFitnessPal uses the concept of “net calories,” which are simply the total calories after accounting for exercise. For example, if your daily calorie limit is only 1,500, but you go jogging and burn 500 calories, then you can consume 2,000 calories for the day.

Following this strategy, I started exercising more frequently than before — if only to stay within the general calorie limit for the day. And so far it has worked. Within about three months time, I’ve lost 20 lbs. But there’s no way I would find the patience to go jogging or walking without a good audio book to listen to. Audio books are integral to my motivation.

I know many of you are fiction readers. Many others may work out regularly. Or you may have long commutes. Whatever your situation, I highly recommend Audible. It’s the best audio book service online, and it seamlessly integrates with mobile devices such as the iPhone.

I like Audible so much that, after a year of faithful listening and hearing them promoted on podcasts such as This Week in Tech and Grammar Girl, I decided to become an Audible affiliate myself.

As an Audible affiliate, I’ll review books from time to time on my site, as well as encourage you to check out good audio books that I’m listening to. You can get started with a free audio book right now. Here are my three favorites:

If you decide to check out Audible later, please visit their site by clicking one of the Audible links on my site, such as the Audible sidebar graphics or links in this post. This will track the reference back through me.

If you have any good audio books you recommend, please let me know in the comments below. I’ll be finished with the Stieg Larsson series soon, and I’ll be looking for another book.

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Webinar Recording: Designing Quick Reference Guides

Tom Johnson — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:39:25 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I gave an STC webinar called Designing Quick Reference Guides. This was a general STC webinar, and usually I am not allowed to repost the recording, but due to some audio difficulties, I had to re-record it, and the STC gave me permission to post the re-recording. Here are the files to watch or download the webinar:

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Podcast: “Anyone Can Write”: Changing Roles for Technical Communicators

Tom Johnson — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:01:13 +0000

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Length: 45 min.
Powerpoint

This podcast is a recording of a presentation I gave to students at the Missouri State University technical writing conference on April 23, 2010. This presentation has some overlapping content from the previous presentation on Trends in Technical Communication that I gave to the teachers, except that with this presentation, because the audience was students, I focused mainly on the changing roles technical communicators are playing.

My basic premise is that many IT environments have an assumption that “anyone can write.” Because of this assumption, technical writers are changing their roles, becoming hybrids with additional skill sets, or moving beyond the basics of writing in order to provide both value and find fulfillment.

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Podcast: Trends in Technical Communication

Tom Johnson — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 04:38:10 +0000

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Length: 45 min.
Powerpoint

This podcast on Trends in Technical Communication is a recording of a presentation I gave at the Missouri State University Workshop for Teachers of Technical Writing on April 22, 2010. Although trends in technical communication could cover a variety of topics, I chose to focus on four trends: hybrid roles, social media, collaborative authoring, and multimedia. Here’s the description of my presentation:

In a sea of ever-changing technologies, tools, and methods for documentation, technical writers often find themselves gasping for air trying to keep up. At the lead of the current trends, the following topics continue to gain traction: multimedia, such as screencasts and other video content; wikis, as well as other collaborative authoring tools and methods; hybrid roles, especially with usability, quality assurance, and audiovisual tasks; and finally the messy, fragmented content of social media, which stands in sharp contrast to structured authoring.

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Podcast: From Overlooked to Center Stage [12]

Tom Johnson — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 08:12:29 +0000

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Length: 45 min.
Powerpoint

This podcast is a recording of the presentation I gave at the STC Currents conference titled “From Overlooked to Center Stage.”

If you read the essay and then listen to the recording, you’ll notice some differences because (a) I can’t remember everything I wrote in the moment that I’m presenting, and (b) oral delivery doesn’t exactly work like a written delivery. Nevertheless, I tried to communicate the same story.

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Podcast: Ten Voiceover Techniques (PodcampSLC)

Tom Johnson — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 03:55:04 +0000

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Length: 45 min.

A couple of weeks ago I presented on voiceover techniques to an audience of about 35 people at PodcampSLC. I should have researched my audience a little more before the presentation because, from what I could tell, most people were there to learn how to start a podcast rather than learn voiceover techniques for professional screencasts. Hence, I received no questions at all (okay, one person asked one question). It was still a good warm-up practice for the voiceover presentation I’m giving at the STC Summit next month.

After the presentation I kept thinking about a tweet Nancy Duarte, author of Slide:ology, posted a while ago. She said something like,

Inexperienced presenters worry about their presentations. Experienced presenters worry about their audience.

Sound advice, indeed. One technique I’ve seen some presenters do is start by asking the audience what questions they have or what they want to learn. Then for the bulk of the presentation, you just answer those questions. Usually all the questions are covered in the presentation you prepared previously, but it still gives the audience a more direct impression of addressing their unique needs and concerns.

I would have gladly abandoned my presentation on voiceover techniques if I knew the audience was full of people curious about how to break into podcasting, or people curious about social media tactics to market their podcasts. But alas, once I dived into the presentation, I heard nothing but silence in terms of feedback. Perhaps by then it was too late. No one wanted to ask a question so off topic. That or they were all hungry for lunch.

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Podcast: What’s New in Flare 6 — Interview with Mike Hamilton

Tom Johnson — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:00:13 +0000

Download MP3
Length: 45 min.

Flare 6 is available today from Madcap Software. This weekend I interviewed Mike Hamilton, VP of Product Management, about the new features Flare 6 contains. In this podcast, we talk about five of the new features in Flare:

Batch processing GUI and macro targets
Topic metadata (e.g., owner, status)
The new link viewer
Mobile targets
Multimedia integration

Mike also mentions some user interface improvements, usability refinements, and hints at upcoming integrations with SharePoint later this year or early next.

Check out Flare 6 on Madcap Software’s site. And if you’re looking for Mike Hamilton’s blog, see http://madcapsoftware2.wordpress.com. You can contact Mike by email at mhamilton@madcapsoftware.com.

With the Flare 6 release, I’m particularly excited about the multimedia integration and link viewer. I signed up for the beta but have been so busy with an upcoming project release that I haven’t had time to evaluate it. Madcap was kind enough to upgrade me to version 6 as a thank-you for the podcast, so I’ll probably be posting about the multimedia integration soon (along with some screencasts using my new mic).

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Sailboats and Cruise Ships, or, How My Work Podcast Was Dwarfed by a Mega Work Podcast

Tom Johnson — Thu, 21 May 2009 04:16:30 +0000

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 feed and Feedburner, I found that another department, Digital Media, was in the process of launching a full-scale dedicated radio station with 24/7 programming and more than a dozen new shows, with new episodes published weekly, also downloadable as podcasts. Radio.lds.org allows you to listen to a live stream of programming online or, if you have an HD Radio in certain cities, you can listen in your car. All the shows also have feeds in iTunes, so they double as podcasts on your iPod.

The podcasts at radio.lds.org target a Mormon audience, but you may find the Everything Creative show interesting. Some of the other podcasts include informal conversations with leaders, stories related at conferences, a history of hymns, scripture stories, and other topics. The focus on conversations and stories is right on target.

Seeing this full-scale podcasting effort (I hope they haven’t underestimated the work necessary to keep this going), made me rethink my work podcast. There’s no longer a need, because it is being fully filled elsewhere, through another department.

A few years ago, as I was transitioning from a startup to a large company and feeling a little frustrated by the bureaucracy of approval required for nearly everything, an older colleague explained this metaphor. She told me small companies are like sailboats, nimble, quick and able to turn sharply, without much notice. Large companies, on the other hand, are like cruise ships. Massive and heavy — it takes them half a mile just to turn around. But while slow, they can also do incredibly powerful things.

I apply this metaphor to the podcasts. My little work podcast, which strangely seems the product of an IT startup, even though it is part of the same organization, is buried in the shadows of Radio.LDS.org’s gigantic all-consuming 24/7 radio station/media outlet/podcast deluge.

While on the topic of podcasts, the other day Gordon McLean of One Man Writes asked listeners what their favorite podcasts are. Here’s what I listen to regularly on my iPod right now: IT Author, WordPress weekly, Boagworld, The WordPress Podcast, This American Life, InDesign Secrets, Brain Sparks, NPR Technology Podcast, This Week in Tech, and Grammar Girl.

My favorite podcast of the week is the IT Author interview of Geoffrey Pullum, an English professor who debunks many assertions in Strunk and White’s Elements of Style and Fowler’s Modern English Usage. I learned some interesting things about grammar from the interview. First, the that versus which rule, using “that” for restrictive clauses and “which” for non-restrictive clauses, appears to be an invention by Fowler in the early part of the twentieth century.

And Strunk and White’s enforcement of singular verbs with certain pronouns (for example, “None of us has an umbrella” rather than “None of us have an umbrella”) also seems to be a rule invention, not in keeping with the accepted grammar of his day.

I consider myself fortunate to live in a time when so much information is available and consumable for free.

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Podcasts | one man writes

Tom Johnson — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:19:00 +0000

Podcasts | one man writes.

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The Best Thing I Did This Week

Tom Johnson — Mon, 18 May 2009 01:09:24 +0000

This past week I started exercising at lunch—it was the best thing I did all week. Given how sedentary the job of technical writing is, you’d think this would be a no brainer. But in fact, it’s not. My company’s gym is rarely used. I see just two or three people (out of hundreds) in there during lunch.

While working out, I also listen to podcasts. Lately I’d gotten a bit out of the podcast-listening habit, since I was carpooling with someone who didn’t like to take lunch but instead work eight hours straight. After I switched to the bus for transportation (a new bus route opened up in my city), I’ve been able to embrace a more flexible schedule.

Now that I’ve been exercising at lunch, I’ve noticed that I have a lot more energy in the afternoons. I’m not a big exercise guru by any means. I mostly run a little, lift a little, and jump up and down on a small ledge (in an effort to someday dunk a basketball). But the break refreshes my mind, gives me a change of pace, and allows me to feel alive again (unlike the numbness that sets in from sitting in an office chair all day).

This lunchtime hour provides me the only practical time for working out, because when I get home in the evenings, it’s so much harder to go for a run with three kids, a wife, dinner, and exhaustion. In contrast, after working for about four hours, I’m ready for a break, and running on a treadmill doesn’t look so bad.

If you have an opportunity to work out at lunch, definitely do it. Working out also gives you a perfect opportunity to listen to podcasts. In fact, I can’t imagine working out without a podcast. It would be like driving a car without a radio—doable, but not very fun.