Category: Stilgherrian Live

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Stilgherrian Live Alpha: lessons from episode 1

Frame grab from Stilgherrian Live Alpha Ep 1

If you missed the first episode of Stilgherrian Live Alpha, it’s over at Ustream. That’s the program exactly as it was broadcast on Thursday night.

(Yes, I could have embedded the Ustream player in this page, but I didn’t because of point 3 below.)

I’m chuffed that a 26-person audience generally found it “entertaining” and “enjoyable” even though it was screwed up technically and the main feature interview didn’t happen at all. It felt much worse from where I was sitting.

Traditional media runs technical trials behind closed doors. Only when everybody is happy that it “works” does the new technology get used “for real”.

However I chose to make this public. With bleeding edge technology it’s useful to share experiences. It feels like extreme programming: just start building it, knowing that you may change things along the way, and learn everything in parallel.

So even though our program didn’t fly well — heck, it’s a flaming wreck at the end of the runway! — the black box flight recorder tells us many things…

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Stilgherrian Live Alpha: episode 1 tonight!

Episode 1 Tonight: Stilgherrian Live Alpha

I’ve just organised by first guest(s) for tonight’s inaugural episode of Stilgherrian Live Alpha. And, as you can see, we’ve spent half the night playing with graphics too.

I’ll be speaking with Adam Purcell and/or Jared Madden from Emerge.tv about tune-out.com campaign — their counter-campaign to the music industry’s propaganda film, Australian Music In Tune, which I wrote about the other day.

How can the music industry respond to the dramatic changed happening around them? Is it actually too late for them to change? And it’s interesting to note that the film on their website right now isn’t quite the same as the one originally released…

Since it’s the first program, I’ll probably tell you a bit about myself and what’s been on my radar this week. If there’s anything you’ve wanted to ask me, now’s the time.

Stilgherrian Live Alpha is recorded live at stilgherrian.com/live at 9.30pm Sydney time (1130 UTC), and I’ll be talking “talkback” via audio and video.

If you turn up early, you’ll probably see us doing some last-minute technical tests. And once the program is recorded, I’ll turn it in a podcast — details later.

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Stilgherrian Live Alpha: a program brief

Photograph of Sennheiser S825 microphone

Decided! The first episode of Stilgherrian Live Alpha will be “recorded live” on the Internet this Thursday 8 May at 9.30pm Sydney time. Oh shit! That’s tomorrow!

I won’t repeat what I’ve already written about my plans [1, 2]. This post presents a Program Brief — so I can clarify my thinking as much as anything else — and gathers a few recent thoughts. I’m intending to make the entire process transparent in the immodest hope that someone might find it useful.

Aims

  1. Continue my process of moving from doing hands-on technical work to media production, executive production and consulting.
  2. Build upon the “Stilgherrian as a blogger” brand to establish the core personal media global microbrand of “Stilgherrian as a presenter”, around which I can gather other projects.
  3. Establish a regular audience who can become the core of my 1000 True Fans.
  4. Develop and document production workflows so that we can produce similar programs quickly and cheaply.
  5. Experiment with and settle upon a suite of hardware, software and services which works for me in this context.

See, there is method to my madness!

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So how will this podcast actually work?

Photograph of Sennheiser 825S microphone

My podcast thoughts are rapidly congealing into a nice creamy chocolate custard pudding filled with cocaine: edgy and invigorating, but still appealing to traditionalists. And deeply, deeply satisfying.

Conversations on Twitter this morning helped provide focus for the evolving plan… and raised some questions. I’m determined to make this program “live”, or at least “recorded live”. But how will it actually work?

I have the technology and experience to produce full “broadcast quality” audio material — see the pretty Sennheiser microphone? However I really want to explore the program format(s) and production techniques needed to produce micro-radio and micro-TV using whatever can be carried in my backpack. While audio quality may not be perfect yet, it’ll eventually catch up. For the time being the novelty value means the audience will endure it. Especially if I can keep the content fresh.

As I said perhaps a little too cruelly this morning, podcasts sound either like ABC Radio National (people talking to themselves), or the worst of community radio (ditto). Being able to interact with people while the program is happening is important. I admit my opinion is coloured by having produced (endured?) 4000+ hours of live talk and talkback radio.

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