From left: Christopher Wink, Brian Blanda, Sean Blanda at the Eiffel Tower

So, that was fun.

If you have noticed the lack of posting around here, it is because my friend Chris Wink and I have been traveling Europe while podcasting our advice along the way over at We Dont Speak the Language.  Im back now, and if you are looking for some sort of summary of the trip, head on over the WDSTL (the last episode will be released on Sunday).  However, I’d guess if you are reading this blog you are more concerned about media and behind the scenes aspects of the podcast.

This was my first experience with any sort of video podcast, as well as the greatest test of my ability to produce content under a wide range of circumstances.  I’ve written posts in London train stations, filmed an episode in a Eurail train, and co-interviewed a former prostitute in Amsterdam.  While I would be lying if I said I mastered the art of the video podcast, here are a few lessons I can pass on to anyone considering something similar:

Promote, promote, promote. Initially we sent out a mass email to those in our contact lists that we thought were interested.  We also created pages on multiple social networks.  This wasn’t anywhere near enough promotion.  In reality, for every three posts we wrote we should have sent an email to a travel blog.  We should have left comments on other blogs.  We should have hung a billboard on Philadelphia City Hall if we had to.  This is not to say we were unhappy with our numbers.  I cannot speak for Chris, but our hits and subscribers were right around where I thought they’d be.  I was happy with the comments left as well.  However, after about two weeks on the road, the numbers stayed relatively flat.  Had we been more active in promotion our numbers may have been better.

I severely underestimated the work needed to grow an audience in the short term.  Most projects I have had were long term in scope and, foolishly, I was never in a rush to attract hoards of viewers.  I was big believer in getting the ball rolling and then letting traffic grow organically.  But WDSTL taught me that your promoting to content creation ratio should be somewhere around 25/75.

You need tons of hard drive space. According to the “WDSTL” folder on my external hard drive we created just under 30 gigs of content.  Additionally, when editing video you need a large portion of your hard drive available as a scratch disk.  Luckily, Wink had a laptop with a decent amount of space and I lugged along an external hard drive.  As a rule, I’d say each minute of video you wish to produce in your episode you need at least a gig.  Sounds obvious, but the first time I received the “out of disc memory” warning it blindsided me.

Carpe Wifi. The odd thing about trying to maintain an Internet property on the road is that you, um, need the Internet.  The hostels we were staying in often had shoddy connections, if they had one at at all. And when you are uploading video that can be as big as several hundred megabytes, a bogus connection can slow you down for hours.  An alternative was to pay as much as $3 every half hour for Internet access at a cafe. I once was so desperate that I walked the streets in Hungary at 11 p.m. with a laptop in hand trying to mooch off of a open wifi connection.

So whenever we found a reliable and fast connection we stopped and uploaded all of the video we could.  Sometimes this caused us to delay our plans, but mostly it was a matter of seizing the great wifi while we could, because we never knew when we would get another chance.

You can produce a decent looking podcast with a digital camera.  We produced all of our video using a Nikon Coolpix s210 camera.  It produced 640 x 480 video that was more than good enough to be played on a computer screen.

Seriously, our tripod saved our lives. We didn’t have a camera man after my brother Brian went home, but our trusty bendy tripod usually fit the role just fine.  To learn about all of our equipment used, check out the WDSTL post.

Being on camera is tough. Aside from once presenting a business plan and speaking at CMA, I have very little public speaking experience.  Although, I was once conned into doing our high school play (I was Kili the dwarf in “The Hobbit” thank you very much).   Being on camera and constantly rewatching myself as I was editing forced me to pick up on my verbal and physical ticks.  Ticks such as talking too fast, using certain phrases repetitively, and not speaking clearly. I also began to dissect my posture so I could appear comfortable on camera.

I still have a lot of work to do, but the only way to get better is to do it.

Be familiar with compression.  I spent more time than I would like to admit recompressing video in Final Cut and Windows Movie Maker.  Before you begin your podcast shoot some test video and try to get the right mix of quality and size.

Be familiar with distribution options. Know that iTunes needs Quicktime video. Know how to utilize BitTorrent.  A true podcast will make the content available in whatever format their views demand.  If I were to start over, I would have done a better job and offered more options than just an iTunes and a XML feed.

Above are just a handful of suggestions.  I do recommend you check out Kelly Sutton‘s work if you want someone who knows way more about video podcasting than I.

Time to put food on the table

Sean's future is in this box.

Since graduating, I’ve been lucky enough to travel cross country, work for one of my favorite newspapers, and podcast my trip across Europe. But I’m done vacationing and exploring for the time being, and it is time to get to work.  I’ve struggled with what my ideal job would be.  Throughout my college career I’ve wavered between what industry I wanted to get into.  Did I like writing?  Video?  The Web?

But I’ve come to realize that I just love information and will do any job that allows me to create content in multiple forms.  This may be through personal projects such as Consumer Whore (which will get a kick in the pants in a few days) or by getting on the staff of a forward thinking newspaper.  But as of now, basic parts of my life such as of where I will work and live in the coming months are a big question mark.

If you excuse me, I have some cover letters to write.