It seems like you can hardly spit these days without hitting a podcast. Spit at me, I am at it too!
What you can do these days (like having a web based multi-source recording studio, like Zencastr is far ahead of what I was doing in 2006 with a tiny pocket sized digital recorder.
I’ve had a long running show I do with Antonio Vantaggiato, the Puerto Rico Connection (our frequency of episodes might be measured in years, but hey, it’s a podcast). I’ve done a small side project producing one for the leadership site for BC Corrections, it’s called CorrTalk.
But I’ve been doing the most in the last year for my work with OEGlobal, where I plan, record, edit, and publish the OEG Voices podcast.
I just did a new episode that I feel like has a clever flip on the normal mode. So follow my wayward line of reason.
If I ask you to be on a podcast I produce, it is ike I invite you over to my house, it’s my setup (Zoom, Zencastr, whatever), and you drop in. We talk, and you go home.
For this newest OER Voices, the subject lent itself to changing that. I wanted to run a conversation with my friend and colleague Ken Bauer, who is at the Tec de Monterrey in Guadalajara, Mexico. What I wanted to talk about is his long running (it’s like as old as the pandemic) meet up he calls Educator Coffee (or Tea) Time aka #educoffee.
You would find word of Ken’s #educoffee sessions as the appear on The Twitter:
I approached Ken a few weeks ago with my podcast flipped idea. I wanted to record an episode of my podcast and invite Ken, but instead of having him come to my place, I suggested I record it in his spacem during an actual educoffee session.
Ken said yes, and we agreed to record this on October 7. And I suggested if he wanted he could invite anyone he wished.
As it happens, I did one of those timezone faux pas, and had entered it for his time rather than my time in my calendar (he is an hour ahead of me). So I get a DM message (very polite as Ken is) like “we are here!” So Is scrambled to find my headphones, locate his zoom link and show up late.
We had a great group! It was a Hollywood Squares 3×3 grid with some folks I know and others I met- we had representation from the UK, Mexico, Paraguay, and across the US.
Oh yes, the podcast! It was a fantastic freeform conversation, much of which was around this open spce Ken had created where people can decompress, vent, or just share their dogs. I can make you click you the site to listen
but just as easily run it from here.
I appreciate Ken and everyone in the space being okay with my hijacking the coffee time.
I like this idea I call “Podcast on the Road” and have at least one more situation where I will join someone else’s session and record an episode there.
What do you think?
To me it feels a little different, but maybe it’s just another gimmick? But if you do a podcast or have some kind of meeting/discussion space online and want to talk about openness and education, I’d like to drive up in my podcast van.
Featured Image: A remix of Outside Broadcast van: Mascot: ACC Stevens and Harry Croot flickr photo by ABC Archives shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license where I inserted OEG logos and changed the words on the side of the van. Because I can.
Hello, #StillTrueFriend!
Well, I can just say that it is always important to pay attention to whether or not you left the seat up, because other people might find it embarrassing if you left the seat up and they did not notice and maybe they fell in.
Plus, if that happened when you were doing a podcast like you say (but why would you do a podcast on the road where you might get run over or have a lot of traffic noises?) and you fell in then your phone or microphone or other technology might get all wet and that would not be a good thing (or, like our #SuperTrueNewOldRadioFriend @ScottLo would say, “oh, the humanity!“ because he makes his podcasts on the Hindenburg).
Well, I just thought I would drop in a comment because it is late at night and you made a blog post late at night and so I read it late at night and so it is kind of like a late at night comment for me.
Be careful if it gets snowy because it also gets cold when that happens.
Well, bye!
Your #TrueFriend,
Tina
@iamTalkyTina
Thank you so much for this Alan. I would not have been able to do this myself and I think it creates an archive of what #educoffee is. One of the rules at #educoffee is that we don’t record it, so you doing this is very much appreciated to leave this record.
Sending you a big hug amigo.
I think it’s a grand idea. It occurs to me that, even when you get 2 or 3 guests on a podcast, there’s always a host-guest dynamic going on, and one of the distinguishing features is that the guests don’t really talk to each other a lot. In this episode, though, you can hear what happens at an #educoffee. All the social moves of spontaneous conversation are there: questioning, referring to stories from outside the recorded period, expanding and calling back one another’s ideas, etc. And instead of an “interviewer,” you’re just present as one more participant, if occasionally one who gives shape to the discussion. (Since after all, Ken was still technically the “host”.)
It’s great to have that document of the event, instead of (or in addition to) some synthetic/reflective pieces.
The only thing which I feel is missing is that the introductions do feel a little more like “podcast interview” introductions, instead of the social introductions we probably would have given each other. It was kind of fun in the post-show to realize that I’ve tweeted with Donna and Lawrie, but I don’t think I’d ever heard their voices before that gathering.
Thanks Joe, and it was such a joy to be there with you!
There was not really much of a plan here, and I am sure I need to find a balance of how much is in the norms of the space. I did want to nudge the intros to share the range of people present. I think being able to know who is there is different when you are there versus listening to a recording.
On the other hand, if I do not interject a little, than I am of just a documentarian with a recorder.
Making it up as I go! Cheers
Nudging the intros was important from my perspective as this was the first recorded archive (and perhaps will be the only one) of what #educoffee is about. So having those names recorded was indeed important imho.