Description 54 - Standing In the Way of Connection

It's new media vs. old media, and only one makes me break out into song. I give an idea of how podcasting helped change my life and why commercial radio is the way it is, featuring a mashup, some power tools and not enough water.

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Associated links
Podcasters Across Borders
Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche
Danny Michel and Wallace Hartley
Canadian Podcast Buffet
The QN Podcast
Talking Stick Podcast
Wooby Communications
chrisbrogan.com
Christopher S. Penn's Awaken Your Superhero
In Over Your Head (Julien Smith)
Tod F-ing Maffin :-)
Terry Fallis' The Best Laid Plans
Nora Young: CBC's Spark and The Sniffer
Dan Misener: Jim Dupree: Enthusiast and Grownups Read Things They Wrote As Kids
A plus D
The CRTC and the transcript of my day at the Edmonton hearing (my group was second)
Painting With Ella videos on myspace

Tech note: because this episode is so long, it's at 96kbps to save on file size.

You can find Danny Michel doing the second verse of "Hartley" by going to his music page, scrolling down to his 1999 album Fibsville, playing the streamed sample and listening for the third clip in the montage. Yep, dude makes it easy, don't he?

Of course, no kind of media is all good or bad. Podcasting is not all a warm and fuzzy diary room, nor should it be, and commercial radio is not inherently evil. Even the prevailing mindsets involved have their myriad variations. The people I worked with for the CRTC hearings were wonderful, the commissioners themselves were understanding and patient (I wouldn't give my worst enemy their job of having to listen to people like us for days and days at a time) and mean well. Also while I find the attitude behind CCD programs sometimes patronizing, I also know artists/bands who have been really helped by them (The Ambers, for one - money from Rawlco funded the recording of the song I'll be playing in the next episode). It's just Joe Average and grassroots podcasters don't know well the motivations of "old media" and radio/government folks don't quite get what's behind much of this "amateur" podcasting thing.

There wasn't much time to mention Bruce Murray, known as being the force of The Zedcast, and the kind of guy who would walk up to me on the boat cruise last year, start chatting with me, and introduce me to some great people to give me some social momentum. This year, he had to stay in Nova Scotia, and was greatly missed at PAB. Yet he made his presence known in a very funny video he sent, that was played during the opening of the conference. It was a riff on podfading (when podcasters stop podcasting so much, which Bruce can be accused of) which included some silly video footage he'd shot during past PABs...including of me. This of course I didn't see coming. So along with everything else, I'm known as the girl who flipped her hair and said she was feeling "conferency". I gave him hell in my special way over the phone later, but certainly it could've been more embarrassing (he's probably working on ways to make it so in the future), and considering his past work, it was an honour to be included.

And no, I'm not being diplomatic about that.

(Update: June 25 - okay, now Bruce has that video on you tube. Will his wonderfulness ever cease? Could it? Please? Anytime now?)

The Description PAB Teaser

Part of me going to Podcasters Across Borders this weekend has involved sending in a "PAB Teaser," or a 2-3 minute sample of the show. So I went through all 53 episodes of this podcast, took clips from all of them, then edited everything down into under 3 minutes. The process was a bit of a trip, and I hope listeners get a kick out of the result.

Here's the Description PAB Teaser!

As for folks who are actually going to PAB and haven't been here before, it doesn't look like I'm getting Description 54 done in time, so scroll on down past Gooch and the Doctor (which you can thrill to later) to the latest episode, Description 53.

Gooch & The Doctor!

It's my last day in Edmonton, where I've recorded enough for two episodes, one of which I'm hoping to pull off before going to Podcasters Across Borders in a couple weeks. But in the meantime...if somehow you remember Description 07, you'll know I was a small part of a certain culture headquartered at 6 Ross. During that halcyon time, there were some short films made by and featuring some of the residents of that house, and another of them is on youtube, hopefully with more to come.

To review, Frank (The Gooch) and Craig (The Doctor) are friends from way back in Sault Ste. Marie. I got to know them when they were in Memory Bank, whose music I played here a couple times. They've gone on to other things, but they're still Gooch and The Doctor, and I'm privileged to know them.

As for their sitcom personae, The Gooch is somewhat similar in real life to Frank, and The Doctor is a little bit like Craig when it's about 2am and he's just finished a mickey of Bacardi. His iconic haircut is no more, and there's no way he would've gotten that far moving that couch by himself.

As for whether they can communicate with each other telepathically? The world may never know...