Italian readers?

The march issue of the Italian Glamour is out in italie – any reader from there would be so kind to send me a scan of the interview i gave to them?

The interview was about podcasting + some of my illustration stuff.

It might take weeks before i get my copies here…


Posted: February 24th, 2005 | Author: m-c | Filed under: Projects | Comments Off

No Comments on “Italian readers?”

  1. 1 aj said at 23:15 on February 22nd, 2005:

    Phew! Now that we have the rules straight, we can all be nonconformists in an orderly fashion!

    :)

    I only say this not to offend, but as an ex-radio guy. I can’t let something go out that’s not up to my own standards. If they happen to sound more like “pro” radio than other people, that’s not a slam on other people’s podcasts; it’s just a personal choice and taste.

    I don’t want to sound like homogenized, neutered major-media either, but I also want my stuff to be concise, intelligent, and well spoken. Audio is a time-based medium: I don’t want to waste people’s time, I don’t want to make them reach for the skip-forward button.

    Other people are not ex-radio people and their podcasts will sound different. Not less true, less good, just different.

    It’s like bloggers: you can tell (often) who is a professional writer and who isn’t. That doesn’t stop the people who aren’t pros from writing…and it doesn’t stop them from writing well, either.

  2. 2 mel said at 01:03 on February 23rd, 2005:

    aj: I will read “Nation of rebels”. It talks about a post i wrote a couple of days ago, tatm-c and i were discussing about :)

    consumerism, culture, design and what we shall not do about it.

  3. 3 m-c said at 08:36 on February 23rd, 2005:

    AJ: thx for this input!!

    ‘I don’t want to sound like homogenized, neutered major-media either, but I also want my stuff to be concise, intelligent, and well spoken. Audio is a time-based medium: I don’t want to waste people’s time, I don’t want to make them reach for the skip-forward button.’

    i do agree – but for me it is obvious that there is a quality standard at some point, which wont be set up by anyone else than the podcaster himself, and by the listener who will be choosing which podcast he/she wants to listen to.

    There’s gonna be crap adn there’s gonna be hell good stuff – what i am mostly interested about is how this medium will be different from radio and find his own way :)

  4. 4 Jeff De Cagna said at 12:37 on February 23rd, 2005:

    I like your manifesto. I agree that we don’t want to put crap out there, but I definitely favor WYHIWYG (what you hear is what you get) podcasting. It should be fun, organic, interesting and definitely not overproduced!

  5. 5 m-c said at 12:45 on February 23rd, 2005:

    something i wanted to add:

    i wrote ’sponatneous’ because for too many people, trying to be a pro (be it in podcasting or just blogging) is enough to freak them out and keep them away from putting something online.

    — too many people fit into this gap — that is why many of them are just reading this blog right now and not making one by their own.

    I know this too well. Wanting to be perfect, people just end up doing nothing. There is a balance one must find.

  6. 6 aj said at 14:16 on February 23rd, 2005:

    Definitely, the perfect is the enemy of the good, as they say. And as a democratic medium — at least, democratic within broadband-enabled countries! — yes, there should be allowances for all styles, all levels of experience. At its most basic, you could record and upload a show using nothing more than an iPod itself (with a voice recorder add-on). I think it’s definitely cool.

    What I was trying to bring attention to was the rather absolutist nature of manifestos in general. They tend to be sweeping and general. In promoting the accessibility of podcasting for non-professionals, it seemed to me that your manifesto was deliberately shutting out people who, maybe, edit their shows with more skill. I’d prefer to see a kind of constitution and bill of rights, personally :)

    If you want to have a sort of Dogme ‘95 sub-genre within podcasting that’s a very interesting goal…

  7. 7 m-c said at 14:35 on February 23rd, 2005:

    i think podcasting is for anyone who feel like giving it a try – with our without radio show producing skills – and i did not meant to kick anyone aside.

    At the end, whatever the medium, and the way you use it, is not as important as what you want to express and the energy that will be shared.

    Hope this make sense..

  8. 8 Jeff said at 17:40 on February 23rd, 2005:

    I just wrote an article on my blog on a similar topic. I came from a listeners perspective and outlined a small number of things that I’ve noticed (most very simple) that could improve things for the listener. I label these as ‘nice bang for the buck’ opportunities.

    But overall, I agree that it’s the content and personalities that matter.

    Jeff

    http://randomthoughts.jeffoestreichweb.com

  9. 9 victor said at 22:12 on February 23rd, 2005:

    Blogs were like this at first… And now some companies use them for communications. While there is a difference between a press release and a company blog, it’s mostly a content issue, not a medium issue.

    Is the medium the message in this case?

    I agree that podcasting should be for everyone. But so is the web. Does that mean anyone with a professionally produced e-commerce site should shut down? No, that’s not what you’re suggesting. I get it.

    Do me a favor and listen to my podcast, and tell me if it’s too “professional.” After listening I thought I sounded a bit too much like a certain motivational speaker guy (with big hands)… But I’m going to work on that!

    Here’s the feed link:

    http://www.superpixel.com/davinci.xml

    Nice blog. Good stuff.

  10. 10 zonker said at 23:43 on July 4th, 2005:

    Sorry but as much I am a fan of a loose structure in music (or other media) which allows for songs to be completely explored past the 3min27second limit that Musique Plus allows, Im not sure I want as a rule that all shows be done in one take.

    I’ve done cegep and univ. radio and trust me, lots of people on the air arent that interesting when they have to adlib and dont have notes.

    I’m not saying that everyone should do it but if you have a lackluster personality, it’ll carry on the air.

    Sure, if you can riff like Robin Williams on a coke binge or Doug Stanhope pissed out of his mind (google him), that’s great but not lots of people are like Jean-Marc Parent, the ‘comedian’ who used to get about 10,000 people to come hear him talk for hours and hours. It wasnt humour, we were told, ‘its like sitting down in the basement with your friends’.

    I have to agree with Aj (loved the opening comment!) about a need to be concise. Audio blogs are used often by people who dont have time to just sit and listen (I do the dishes, wash the car , bike or take the metro while listening) and that the distance between the fast forward and the next button is not far.

    One thing I would add to you list is to make the quality of the recording and encoding as good as you can make it or can afford it.

    Your test run at the cafe blew my mind by the quality of the sound (Im gonna save some pennies maybe for one of those USB pre-amp thingies) but I get really annoyed when people compress their mp3s so much that you have problems understanding clearly what they are saying at 22kbps.

    The secret to compression whether it is images, audio, flash or video is to find the fine line between size of the file and quality of image.

    I understand perfectly the realities of storage, bandwidth and all that but if I cant understand what you are saying on a mp3, then Im not gonna listen.

    That I believe is a basic rule to follow.

    zonker