“The 9pm Edict” live from GoatFest Tasmania, Launceston, then to Hobart for a Private House Forum podcast

Hello, I’m Stilgherrian. You may remember me from such podcasts as The 9pm Edict and Corrupted Nerds. You may also remember me for other things, but let’s not talk about that just now.

LET’S TALK ABOUT GOATS!

HERE ARE SOME GOATS.

GoatFest Tasmania is “Tasmania’s Only All-Breeds Goat Festival and Field Day”, with “everything you ever need to know about goats and goat products all under the one roof”. And it’s on Sunday 25 February in Launceston. What’s not to love? Like, goats!

I WANT TO GO TO GOATFEST. 

YOU WANT TO HEAR ME GO TO GOATFEST.

Contribute, and the podcast will happen. Contribute more, and a second podcast will happen, but in Hobart.

Here’s a 2-minute audio summary.

Target 1 ACHIEVED: $2100 = “The 9pm GoatFest” live from Launceston

SUN 25 FEB: I’ll spend the day at GoatFest Tasmania recording material, tweeting thoughts and photos as I go. Then at 2100 AEDT I’ll incorporate those segments into a podcast recording, which as usual will be livestreamed.

It’s hard to say exactly what that will sound like, but it’ll be excellent. Obviously. There will be goats.

Here’s what my last podcast, The 9pm Glorious Cloaca, sounded like on SoundCloud, Spreaker, or my own website.

(I’ll actually fly to Launceston on Fri 23 Feb so I can spend Saturday getting to know the place and, perhaps, recording some supplementary material. This will also be tweeted, of course. With photographs.)

NOT-QUITE-ACHIEVED Target 2: $3400 = Add a Public House Forum in Hobart, so it'll be Private

TUE 27 FEB: Private House Forum 1 will be recorded in Hobart (TBA)  during the early evening, streamed live. It’ll sound a bit like the last Public House Forum, which you can listen to immediately below, or on SoundCloud, Spreaker, or my own website, but without the live audience.

(Venue and guests will be booked once it’s clear that the target will be reached. I’ll travel from Launceston to Hobart on Mon 26 Feb, and prepare for and record the podcast on Tue 27 Feb. My return flight will be on Wed 28 Feb.)

Beyond Target 2: More recording and the like

Any further contributions will go towards spending more time in Hobart to record more material. I’ll provide more details if we get that far.

A note about the rewards

IMPORTANT NOTE: The description for the $200 FORUM QUESTION is wrong. See the $199 FORUM QUESTION for the correct text. Choose either reward, they’ll be the same in the end.

The rewards currently on offer reflect the goals of Target 1, and are distinctly goat-related. I’ll contact you individually to lock in the details.

Once we reach Target 1, the usual Public House Forum rewards will be made available: ONE TRIGGER WORD and THREE TRIGGER WORDS and FORUM QUESTION, as per The 9pm Edict Summer Series. If we reach Target 2 and the Forum goes ahead, you may convert Target 1 rewards to Target 2 rewards if you so wish.

Further rewards may be added as the campaign progresses. Suggestions welcome.

Your contributions will provide me with an income while producing the podcast(s), and cover costs such as travel, accommodation, taxis, and of course the fees charged by Pozible, PayPal, and credit card processors.

I’m basing 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 $670 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.

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 — but I’ve only added in one day because I really want to get to Hobart.

In addition, I need to rebuild the podcast’s presence in iTunes and across other distribution networks. Apple dumped it from the iTunes catalog because the RSS feed contained errors. Other distrbution platforms have spring up since the podcast first started. Building the audience is an important part of my plan for 2018. Charging a proper rate for producing the podcasts will give me the time to do that.

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

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

When reading these numbers, bear in mind that my freelance jouralism doesn’t pay these rates, and health issues prevent me from working full time. This is a rebalancing.

Producing media, and managing other people who produce media, are what I’ve been doing for most of my adult life. There’s no real challenge here. I do this stuff every week.

The keys risks when producing any media to a defined schedule are that there won’t be any interesting content, that the production crew runs out of time, or that they’re suddenly not available due to illness, accident or disaster.

There’s always plenty of potential  content. In fact the real challenge — not that there are any challenges, sorry — the real production issue will be selecting what to cover.

As for the schedule, I know precisely how long it takes to make media. I’ve already blocked out time in my schedule.

The worst-case scenario — unless I’m actually completely incapacitated or even dead for the duration — is that things will be delayed. Even a failure to get to the destination can make for interesting media.

If I die, you’ve blown your money.

There’s also a chance that the goats will prove uncooperative, but that could actually work in our favour.