Hello, I’m Stilgherrian. It’s time to record some more episodes of my podcast The 9pm Edict. This time they’ll be spread across two continents and three cities — Washington DC, as well as Adelaide and Melbourne.

Everyone who pledges to support the project will get access to a secret stash of photographs and audio outtakes, to be posted during and after the journey.

Why? Because these three cities have just been added to my work schedule. I’ll be organising my plan of action and any guests over the next few days, and I’ll post the details here. For now, here’s a few sample episodes, and the itinerary.

Here’s the most recent ranty eposide, The 9pm Shoddy Time Machine, from 19 September 2018.

City 1: Adelaide

I’m flying to Adelaide on 28 or 29 September. Amongst other things, I’ll record a conversation with Nicholas Fryer, who does The Arch Window segments, based on your TRIGGER WORDS and our own personal issues.

City 2: Washington DC

Thanks to FireEye, I’m covering their Cyber Defence Summit in Washington DC on 1–4 October. They’re covering my flights and accommodation, but I’m staying on for the weekend of Fri 5 to Sun 7 Oct at my own expense. I’d like to record some material relating to my first encounter with the Capital of the Free World™.

I’m not sure exactly what I’ll do yet. Maybe it’ll be something like what I did for The 9pm Goatfest Tasmania. Or maybe not.

UPDATE: I’ll be recording an interview with the remarkable Mike Godwin, creator of Godwin’s Law.

City 3: Melbourne

I've arranged for FireEye to fly me back to Melbourne, so I can cover the Australian Cyber Conference, the national conference of the Australian Information Security Association (AISA), on 10–11 October. Once more, I’m staying on for a few days at my own expense to record some more podcast material.

I plan to record at least one long-form interview for The 9pm Probe series, much like this one with author and columnist John Birmingham.

A Note on the Rewards

These are more or less the now-standard rewards I offer for podcast recording projects. Further rewards may be added as the campaign progresses. Suggestions welcome.

Your contributions will help defray the costs I’ve already incurred, and help provide me with an income while producing the podcast(s).

I’ve taken a bit of a punt with this one. I’ve already booked accomodation in Sydney (the night before my early-departing flight), Adelaide, the weekend in Washington, and themytime in Melbourne, as well as the final Melbourne–Sydney flight and airport transfers. That came to $1571.56.

Pozible’s fees, bank fees and other administration costs take about 9% of any total funds raised. On top of that there’s 10% GST.

It’d be wonderful if I could get all that back, at least, so I’ve set the first target at $1600. That’s slightly less than the amount in the spreadsheet, but it’s a nice round number.

It’s be even more wonderful if I could generate some actual income from this work, I’ve therefore set the second target at 

$3200.

The Fine Print

In recent Pozible campaigns, I’ve put in a production fee for each “nomal” episode of The 9pm Edict, and The 9pm Probe interview episodes, at $520. Each Public House Forum episoide is double that at $1040.

Each normal episode of The 9pm Edict takes roughly a day to research, prepare, present, and post. Each Public House Forum episode takes two days all up.

As usual, I base my calculations on the MEAA award rate for casual freelance journalists, about $960 per day. As a casual rate, that already includes allowances for superannuation, leave, WorkCover and the like, as well as equipment costs. I’m discounting that by 30% to $650 per day because a lot of the work involves copying and uploading files and other mechanical tasks, so I can do other things at the same time. And I’m discounting it even further by another 20% because I love you.

If you want to see my working, check the numbers (version 2, PDF).