Hot Stuff in PodWorld
Even after only five hours of sleep, I couldn't wait to get out of bed and explore the world of podcasting. After admiring my own recent Pod Chronicles and The Barclay Show (which I will continue to post here and at the Barclay Towers site), I wandered out onto the net with a "Denver podcast" Google search. Lo and behold, the venerable Denver Post has created a very impressive podcast, which means they are my main competitor for the Denver Metro podcast market so far. Google did find a guy named Steve in Denver, but I was relieved to see that he is not a rival for mile-high podshare; he has only been a guest on someone else's show.
Which brings me to The BBQ Forum.
This is a podcast all about barbecue. Even before breakfast, this sounds pretty good. The podcast host is a guy named Ray. In his telephone interview with Steve, who is a deputy fire marshal from a suburb north of Denver, Ray notes that Steve has posted a lot on the forum, which has clearly been around a while before its podcasting version. "It's pretty much changed my life," Steve says of the BBQ Forum. And before you chuckle, as I did, you need to listen to the facts: how Steve's life after work now inludes barbecue competitions and catering gigs. "The Barbecue Forum has kind of been a shot in the arm for me for doing something different in my life that I was looking for," Steve tells Ray.
Tell me about it. Now that I have discovered podcasting (I've never been much of a BBQer), I wake up with about five ideas each day for where to bring The Show next. Later this morning, I'll tape a Mile High Pod Chronicles at the Denver Women's Correctional Facility. That's where my refresher training will take place so I can keep going into the state prisons as a volunteer. And then I want to do an interview for The Barclay Show with a 16th Street Mall panhandler, and then I want to do an interview on the high-rise development that is threatening to block views of the mountains from the Barclay....
Which brings me to The BBQ Forum.
This is a podcast all about barbecue. Even before breakfast, this sounds pretty good. The podcast host is a guy named Ray. In his telephone interview with Steve, who is a deputy fire marshal from a suburb north of Denver, Ray notes that Steve has posted a lot on the forum, which has clearly been around a while before its podcasting version. "It's pretty much changed my life," Steve says of the BBQ Forum. And before you chuckle, as I did, you need to listen to the facts: how Steve's life after work now inludes barbecue competitions and catering gigs. "The Barbecue Forum has kind of been a shot in the arm for me for doing something different in my life that I was looking for," Steve tells Ray.
Tell me about it. Now that I have discovered podcasting (I've never been much of a BBQer), I wake up with about five ideas each day for where to bring The Show next. Later this morning, I'll tape a Mile High Pod Chronicles at the Denver Women's Correctional Facility. That's where my refresher training will take place so I can keep going into the state prisons as a volunteer. And then I want to do an interview for The Barclay Show with a 16th Street Mall panhandler, and then I want to do an interview on the high-rise development that is threatening to block views of the mountains from the Barclay....
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Virgil's View from the Concierge Desk
It was a quiet night here at the Barclay this evening when The Barclay Show visited with Virgil Bentley, a five-year veteran of the Concierge Desk. I've always wondered what it would be like to sit behind the desk for a while instead of walk by it in a rush to go in or out of the building. I was surprised that in the five minutes or so that I hung out with Virgil behind the desk, only three people walked by. In between, the lobby was a quiet place where you could hear the whir of the heater fan by Virgil's desk. I trimmed up the raw broadcast in a couple of places using Audacity. In one, I had forgotten which show I was taping, so I simply deleted a reference to The Pod Chronicles and left in the corrected name, The Barclay Show. In the second, Virgil's account of carrying a heavy tray in a previous job at The Antler Hotel was interesting but didn't have much to do with the Barclay, so I trimmed it after a cell-phone interruption. I'm not sure of the artistic ethics of such trimming, because you can't hear a sign of it in the finished product. It makes me much less trustful of news that I hear or see, knowing how easily recordings or video can be played with. I'm sure they never do that on Fox News--right Mom?
Friday, December 16, 2005
Professor of Hip Hop
Samuel Aguiar Iniguez teaches English at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento. Last night at the Broiler Steakhouse his was one of many passionate voices invited by WESTAF to speak out on what we need to know about multicultural communities and the arts. Samuel is an intense young man whose ode to Hip Hop is captured on the following audio, without the usual Pod Chronicles intro and sign-off. Conversations about art among people of color always seem to be a different animal than what I'm used to. Art becomes a matter of life and death, of individuals and peoples willing to work relentlessly and to risk anything to find their authentic voices in the face of very good reasons to stay silent.
The Aluminum Suitcase & Other Travel Tips
Anthony Radich, executive director of the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), travels about 100,000 miles a year. So as we prepared to fly to Sacramento today, I decided to ask him for some travel tips. But what I was really interested in is the story of his ubiquitous aluminum suitcase. How come it doesn't have wheels? In this six-minute podcast, Anthony tells all but declines a vigorous sales pitch to sign up for a Frontier Airlines Mastercard.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Live from Seat 4C
A scratchy podcast from Frontier Flight 223 just before pulling away from the gate, filed from the cellphone.
Name That Podcast
Thanks to terrific tech support and training today from Drew Regitz at the Barclay's web page provider, Association Voice, I was able to create The Barclay Show as a menu option on the left side of the Barclay's official home page. So future episodes of TBS will appear there instead of here at The Chronicles. If you wander over there, you'll find the Judy Montero and Dennis Gallagher episodes, as well as a newly uploaded interview with the Barclay's manager, Kathy Dingman.
This leaves the matter of creating a second podcast for my own purposes, but I'm having trouble coming up with a name that works as well as The Barclay Show. The Len Show seems a bit much, so I've been toying with The Mile-High Podmaster, The Denver Show, KDEN, The Leonardo Show, The Lucky Lennie Show, KLSE, etc. My mother and father left a cackling message on my cell phone tonight, suggesting that I mimic the old-time broadcaster Walter Winchell, who somehow included Morse Code of his initials or name when he signed on to broadcast war news. So then my Dad gets on the phone and demonstrates what L-E-N would sound like in Morse Code, making little beeps into my phone mail. It was priceless.
It's nearly midnight, and I fly to Sacramento tomorrow for a Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) meeting on multicultural issues, so the new podcast will have to go unnamed for now. Any preferences or new suggestions would be much appreciated! Just leave a comment.
This leaves the matter of creating a second podcast for my own purposes, but I'm having trouble coming up with a name that works as well as The Barclay Show. The Len Show seems a bit much, so I've been toying with The Mile-High Podmaster, The Denver Show, KDEN, The Leonardo Show, The Lucky Lennie Show, KLSE, etc. My mother and father left a cackling message on my cell phone tonight, suggesting that I mimic the old-time broadcaster Walter Winchell, who somehow included Morse Code of his initials or name when he signed on to broadcast war news. So then my Dad gets on the phone and demonstrates what L-E-N would sound like in Morse Code, making little beeps into my phone mail. It was priceless.
It's nearly midnight, and I fly to Sacramento tomorrow for a Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) meeting on multicultural issues, so the new podcast will have to go unnamed for now. Any preferences or new suggestions would be much appreciated! Just leave a comment.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Auditor and Linguist Dennis Gallagher
Another Beta test of The Barclay Show....
A delegation from the Barclay Towers partied with Mayor Hickenlooper last night at the Adams Mark Hotel. Well, the Mayor wasn't there as long as we were, since his social calendar this time of year is much busier than ours. But City Auditor Dennis Gallagher stayed long enough to visit guests at the next table in a foreign language, probably Ukrainian. Then there was a Charleston contest which we didn't enter, but Barclay resident Tamara Norris offered expert assessment of the contestants.
A delegation from the Barclay Towers partied with Mayor Hickenlooper last night at the Adams Mark Hotel. Well, the Mayor wasn't there as long as we were, since his social calendar this time of year is much busier than ours. But City Auditor Dennis Gallagher stayed long enough to visit guests at the next table in a foreign language, probably Ukrainian. Then there was a Charleston contest which we didn't enter, but Barclay resident Tamara Norris offered expert assessment of the contestants.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Welcome to The Barclay Show
I've taken last night's three-minute interview with Judy Montero and posted it as a podcast at the iTunes store. I would not call this a user-friendly interface, but if anyone wants to hear the interview on their iPod, try this:
1) Launch the Music Store (if you don't have the iTunes software you will be invited to download it.)
2) Under the Advanced menu, choose "Subscribe to Podcast..."
3) Paste in this URL: http://lenedgerly.audioblog.com/rss/thebarclayshow121105.xml
4) Update your iPod
5) Under Artists, choose Judy Montero, then All, then BarclayShow01.
To hear the first episode of The Barclay Show without going through all these iPod steps, simply click on the arrow at the far left of the audioblog player below:
1) Launch the Music Store (if you don't have the iTunes software you will be invited to download it.)
2) Under the Advanced menu, choose "Subscribe to Podcast..."
3) Paste in this URL: http://lenedgerly.audioblog.com/rss/thebarclayshow121105.xml
4) Update your iPod
5) Under Artists, choose Judy Montero, then All, then BarclayShow01.
To hear the first episode of The Barclay Show without going through all these iPod steps, simply click on the arrow at the far left of the audioblog player below:
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Mr. and Mrs. Judy Montero
Our City Councilwoman from District 9 and husband Nolbert Chavez came to the Barclay Towers Christmas Party last night. Judy agreed to be my first victim to record a podcast for The Barclay Show, a project I'm crazy with anticipation about. The plan is to post podcasts on the Barclay Towers web page so residents and others can listen in on the life of the building. I have good audio from my Pentax Optio 5si camera, but the challenge is going to be using all the tools from Blogs n Dogs to upload the link for easy podcast listening.
