Continuing Studies: for Higher Ed Podcasters

[00:00:00] James Cridland: And so all of this is around putting the power and the respect back into the hands of the creators. And making sure that what people see around our podcast is absolutely right, whether it's transcripts, whether it's the recommendations, the pod roles, or whether it's all manner of other tools as well in there.
[00:00:20] Neil McPhedran: Welcome to Continuing Studies, a podcast for higher education podcasters to learn and get inspired. I'm Neil McPhedran, founder of Podium Podcast Company, where we work with a number of higher education podcasts.
[00:00:32] Jennifer-Lee: And I'm Jennifer-Lee, founder of J Pod Creations. Podcasting is broadcasting. We want you to know you're not alone. In fact, there are many of you higher ed podcasters out there and we can all learn from each other.
[00:00:43] Neil McPhedran: That's right, Jen. And before we jump into this episode, while we're on the topic of higher ed podcasts, please check out higheredpods.com where we encourage you to join our community.
[00:00:54] Jennifer-Lee: Please do.
[00:00:56] Neil McPhedran: Okay, Jen. Super excited for this episode today. I've been talking to you about this for, what, two years now, and we've got the man himself, James Cridland, to tell us what Podcasting 2.0 is all about.
[00:01:13] Jennifer-Lee: Finally, somebody can give me all the answers because, Neil, you're awesome. Love working with you, but you've been nerding out about Podcasting 2.0 for like, yeah, the last two years. And I'm so confused by it. Because what I'm confused about is I know that it's out there. I can Google it. But when we go to the U.S. conferences like we have in the past, or even I just got back from the UK one, obviously people like James who are part of the 2.0 movement are there and they do keynotes.
[00:01:43] But there's not really a big representation of Podcasting 2.0 unless I'm not seeing it there. But I don't know, do you feel even when we've gone to Denver and Dallas that it's mentioned a lot? Because I definitely have not had the conversations at the podcast conferences about 2.0.
[00:01:59] Neil McPhedran: No, it's conspicuously missing, which drives me nuts, actually. And I think specifically for higher education podcasters, there's a number of really amazing opportunities for us. So with that, let's get into it. And we're going to start with James going way back to the beginning and the basics of explaining what Podcasting 2.0 is. Welcome, James.
[00:02:24] James Cridland: Thank you very much for asking. It's great to be here.
[00:02:27] Neil McPhedran: Okay. So this is going to be a fun conversation. Jen and I are, I would say, on two differing ends of the spectrum of our knowledge of Podcasting 2.0. In a sense, each be representing our part of our audience in asking you questions about it. So we've purposefully not dove in too much cause I just, we'd sort of wanted to keep it for this conversation here. So why don't we just start with the basics? What is Podcasting 2.0?
[00:02:52] James Cridland: Well, very basics are, it's a way of making podcasting more interesting and better for the audience, which is very basic. But if you look at how podcasting started, podcasting started twenty years ago. And it's based on RSS. And RSS is a wonderful tool, which is open, which allows anyone to publish a podcast, which will get into any of the big podcast directories. And about a year or so into podcasting, Apple came along and Apple said, this podcasting thing looks really interesting. We would like to add it into iTunes. But one of the things that we would like is images.
[00:03:30] And so Apple added an additional field into RSS for images and RSS has always been extendable in that way. And so Apple launched a few new features, you know, things that we take for granted, like categories as well, which is an Apple thing, as well as, of course, you know, the little thumbnail that you actually see when you're listening to a show. And those have been, you know, features, which everybody has used over the last twenty years. And all that Podcasting 2.0 is it's really a group of people coming together to add additional features like that to make podcasting better.
[00:04:10] Jennifer-Lee: Okay. I had someone explain it to me in a totally different way and yours makes it sound way better. Someone, and I Googled it too, to make sure that I got correct. They said the podfather created Podcasting 2.0, but they didn't because they wanted a place to be able to speak their mind and not be squashed. Which doesn't make sense because I feel like, like you said, anyone can start a podcast. So I feel like the way that you explained it to me was probably the correct way, or is the correct way. And the other way, I don't know, like, it just sounds very more confusing. So thank you for explaining it to me in a better way.
[00:04:51] James Cridland: Well, I mean, it comes from, uh, the podfather, Adam Curry and Dave Jones, who has worked alongside Adam for many years. It comes from something that they did, which was the podcast index, which was exactly that. It was making sure that there was always going to be a directory, an index of podcasts out there. Which everybody could be in and which you wouldn't necessarily be taken out of. At the moment, the only real big podcast index is Apple's. And Apple is a lovely company. And I'm sure will do no harm to any of us.
[00:05:22] But it's always good to have a backup. And so the podcast index is a directory, which you can go, you can download the entire thing if you want, and that is running a bunch of different apps. And Podcasting 2.0 came from that as we were going well, can we do other things with this other than just have a directory?
[00:05:38] So, yeah, I mean, that's absolutely part of the story of how it came to be. As a British person, more used to, you know, European and Australian regulation, I'm less about the whole, say whatever it is that you want and much more about making things better for other people. And so that's where I'm coming from. But, uh, yeah, absolutely.
[00:05:58] Jennifer-Lee: Yeah. Okay. So they weren't totally wrong in describing it to me that way, but I guess too, with Apple and a lot of those other players, you can be rejected as well. Like Apple does have the right to refuse your content. So, would this Podcasting 2.0 then be able to accept anything, or is there still some guidelines?
[00:06:16] James Cridland: Well, so, Podcasting 2.0 isn't a directory of shows. It's come from a different piece of work called the Podcast Index. You know, the Podcast Index has all kinds of shows in there. It's got four point one million different podcasts in there. Just to put that into context, Apple has about two point eight million, although they don't really share that number.
[00:06:34] Lots and lots of different shows in there. But you know, as with anything on the internet, you'll find some stuff that you probably don't want to go and have a listen to. And that's a very different thing. So what Podcasting 2.0 is all about is it's about new features, making podcasting better.
[00:06:50] So some of those new features might be, for example, you know, the big one is a transcript. So if you want to find out what was said in a podcast, if you want to, um, you know, perhaps you've got difficulties hearing a podcast, perhaps you just want to dip into your favorite podcast while you're standing in the supermarket queue and you don't want to put your earbuds or your silly big headphones into your ears and actually just read what people are actually saying, you know, a transcript is a really, obvious example of something that makes podcasting better for everyone.
[00:07:23] Makes it much easier to search, makes it much easier to do a whole bunch of things. And that technology is part of Podcasting 2.0, as well as a bunch of other things. Um, so that's what Podcasting 2.0 is really all about.
[00:07:37] Neil McPhedran: Our audience, as I had mentioned, is university podcasters, higher education podcasters. So, maybe we can sort of frame it up a bit for our audience. James, you're a university podcaster for your local, what's your Brisbane university? Is it Brisbane?
[00:07:53] James Cridland: Well, we've got the Queensland University of Technology and the University of Queensland. We've got, the entire set here.
[00:07:59] Neil McPhedran: Okay. So you're University of Queensland. Got a podcast. What are some of the features of Podcasting 2.0 that you would want to be looking? I think transcripts is a great one. I think that's a given. That's a requirement actually for a lot of universities now to offer that. But what are some of the other, uh, features that you would be wanting to embrace?
[00:08:22] James Cridland: Well, I mean, there are loads of different features. You can see them all at podcasting2.org, which is the website, um, where you can go and learn, uh, more of these. I think, you know, I've got a few favourites. One of my favorites is something which the feature itself is called a pod role, although please don't call it that in real life because that's an embarrassing word.
[00:08:41] But a pod role is a bit like a blog role that we used to have twenty years ago, where we would link to other shows or to other blogs twenty years ago that we really liked. And so on all of our blogs, there used to be this little blog role of, you know, I also read these blogs and I really enjoyed them and I would recommend them.
[00:08:57] And so similarly, a pod role is very similar. And so in some podcast apps, you will already see that appear. Where you can actually see, okay, so the person who made this show also recommends these other shows to go and have a listen to. It's a much better recommendation engine than just leaving it up to some algorithm.
[00:09:16] Because who knows what the algorithm is actually doing. So I really like the pod role as being, you know, an example of the sort of thing that you can do. So it just, you know, as with all of these features, it goes into the RSS feed, which means that any podcast app, which is capable of understanding how these things work can actually, you know, show particular, you know, features to you.
[00:09:38] Jennifer-Lee: With the pod role feature though, are, is there any concern, like especially dealing with universities that are like Ivy league or have a huge reputation. Are you able to choose what's being recommended after your podcast or not? Because,
[00:09:53] James Cridland: Yeah, because it's in, yeah, absolutely. Because it's entirely up to you, the podcaster, as to who you recommend. So if you're using, for example, Buzzsprout, which is one of the podcast hosts which support this, in the dashboard for your podcast, uh, one of the questions it asks is, you know, who else would you recommend? And it adds those links automatically into the RSS feed. So, yeah, I mean, and all of this is around respecting the creator.
[00:10:19] We talked about transcripts a minute ago. Apple will automatically make transcripts for you. And Spotify is trialing something that automatically make transcripts for you. But that's not respecting what the creator wants. The creator wants to have the control over their own content and make sure that their content is great, which is why it's up to us to add transcripts in to, um, do a good job with those transcripts and make those available in the RSS field.
[00:10:47] And guess what? If we do that. And Apple takes our transcript instead of making some automatic one. And so all of this is around putting the power and the respect back into the hands of the creators and making sure that what people see around our podcast is absolutely right. Whether it's transcripts, whether it's the recommendations, the pod roles, or whether it's, um, you know, all, all manner of other, uh, of other tools as well in there. So, yeah.
[00:11:14] Jennifer-Lee: That's so great because obviously when you're on Spotify on paid plans or even on YouTube, you can't control what commercials are necessarily playing. Sometimes if you are an organization, maybe there's something you don't support and you don't really want that to necessarily follow you.
[00:11:31] James Cridland: Absolutely. And so that, that's a massive, uh, that's a massive thing. And so all of this comes down to the creator having that control. And creators is another thing. One of the things that, um, Podcasting 2.0 has is it's got, um, what's called a person tag and what a person is it's somebody like you and me, where you can add who the hosts are, who the guests are in this particular show.
[00:11:56] And of course, that then means that an app can go, okay, well, this person was a guest in these, in all of these other shows as well, or this is where this host also does shows and can use all of that. But again, we've not got that information in the RSS yet in terms of podcasting, you know, as a whole. And so being able to add, being able for creators to add, you know, this person is the host of this show. Here's where you can find out more information. Here's a picture of this person. You know, a ton of information about that. Then all of that is possible through that particular feature. Apple has something which is similar, but it's a proprietary thing.
[00:12:35] Only Apple has access to it. So the podcast person, uh, feature is a really useful one in being able to show exactly who does this show and who the guests were. So, you know, again, that's a super useful, uh, thing to end up, um, you know, uh, using. And there are a bunch of other, I mean, I can go through, uh, I can go through a ton more, including some of the more esoteric ones, but there's a bunch of, uh, features in there.
[00:13:03] With, um, uh, you know, some of them are being adopted by more podcast apps than others. Um, but, uh, there's a bunch of really clever, um, you know, new ways of extending what we do in terms of the podcasting world and adding new features that just make the whole thing better.
[00:13:23] Neil McPhedran: You made a whole bunch of really good points there, James. And this is why I wanted to have you on to talk about it, because I don't think it's even just a benefit for podcasters. I actually think this is actually just built for university podcasters. There's so much of what you're saying, which I think we want to, you know, we want to control, um, over, but also just like that, you know, the people tag for example, like that's what research is about. That's what, you know, the, who's involved with the project, who's involved with the research paper, who's involved with the, you know, the podcast.
[00:13:57] James Cridland: The person tag is one thing. There is also, the folks are also looking at how we expand categories because Apple's categories, we all use Apple's categories again, because Apple, but is there a way of expanding that so that we continue using Apple's categories. But we have more defined categories in apps if we want them.
[00:14:17] So there's the whole category thing, which would be very useful for researchers. You know what my favorite tag or my favorite feature, uh, is the location tag. So what we have at the moment is if you want to find a particular podcast about, I don't know, QUT here, then search for QUT. And if someone had put QUT in the description field, then maybe it might turn up, but maybe it, you know, it might, you might get all kinds of other things in there as well. Maybe somebody didn't write QUT correctly and wrote Queensland University of Technology. All of this kind of stuff. So the location tag is a really interesting one.
[00:14:59] And the location tag, it's undergoing a little bit of reworking at the moment. But the idea is, it's about the editorial focus of that particular episode. So if you're doing a show about the Eiffel Tower, then it's about the Eiffel Tower. That's what you would put in the location tag. And also what you would put in there is, in the future where you're recording this particular show, because that's useful for researchers in other ways as well.
[00:15:25] And the important thing around the location tag and the reason why I find it so exciting is that the ideal usage of that isn't just a point on a map, a lat lon that you might have seen where you're just pointing at a particular place on the map. It also has a space for you to put an ID from a tool called OpenStreetMap, which is a completely open map that anybody can go and edit.
[00:15:52] So what that essentially means, lots of technical gobbledygook, but what that essentially means is in the future, you'll be able to go to your podcast app and you'll be able to say, I would like all podcasts that have been produced about MIT, for example. And it will look at the location tag and know that it's that particular thing, or even better, all podcasts that have been produced about a university in the U.S. or in Massachusetts or all podcasts about a railway station in London.
[00:16:27] And you'll be able to actually pull all of that information together because of the linked data that exists in that location tag. So from my point of view, I'm very excited about that. It's, um, there's quite a lot of heavy lifting to make that work well. Um, but you know, as, uh, another example of a new feature that you can add into RSS, you know, I think that that's a super exciting one.
[00:16:50] Jennifer-Lee: I'm excited about that because, and Neil probably can also chime in about this, but when we're even searching for guests for this podcast, it's sometimes hard to even find institutions with a podcast. And then also you're like talking to somebody with that university like, oh no, no, we have a podcast. We have like ten of them, but then they're hard to find within that organization.
[00:17:12] And to even figure out if they're still alive, is there a way to sort out dead podcasts with 2.0, because I think that's one of the things that drive me nuts in any category, and especially working with clients, is like, kind of like, oh, there's a podcast on this with this title that I want and I'm like, yeah but did you not check it because it's dead and there's so many dead podcasts and no one's getting rid of them.
[00:17:33] James Cridland: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's like a bookshop There are so many books that have been written and they're not writing a sequel. Uh, how, why have they not got rid of them? But yeah, no, you're absolutely right. That's not something that Podcasting 2.0 will help with, but downloadable podcast indexes, like the Podcast Index will absolutely help with that.
[00:17:53] There's a field in there which is last updated, and that's a really easy way to work out whether or not a show is still being worked on, uh, or not. Um, but in terms of, you know, the, there are some great podcasts out there that have been made that are complete. Um, there's even a little tag in the RSS that you can mark a podcast as being complete, which is interesting.
[00:18:15] Um, and so all of that, uh, is certainly available. Um, so yeah, I mean, you know, a bunch of this, a bunch of this, uh, stuff and I think, you know, what excites me about, um, some of these, uh, tools is that, um, it's really good to find new shows, um, to be able to curate a list of shows that are interesting, that are, you know, recommended by the same people as the show that you're currently having a listen to. Or other people have recommended, you know, in, into that show as well. Um, for example, if you go and you have a look at some of the shows that I do, you can see other people who have recommended my show. Well, if they are recommending my show, I am probably interested in hearing what they're doing. So there's a really interesting sort of, you know, world, um, uh, coming up of, um, different shows which are being recommended by different people and so on and so forth.
[00:19:09] So there's a bunch of that. There's stuff around funding, um, making sure that your podcast can actually earn some money, which is important as well. And there's a, uh, and there's a thing called alternate enclosure, which allows you to do things with podcasts to offer them in different formats. Which is particularly useful for countries where, you know, data costs are incredibly expensive, um, or mobile phones don't have an awful lot of storage and all of that kind of stuff. So there's all kinds of, uh, all kinds of interesting, uh, of interesting things.
[00:19:41] Um, and, and I think, you know, it goes to show, there was a blog post, uh, posted about two and a half, three years ago from a guy called Michael Mignano. And he was the founder of Anchor, which is now called Spotify for podcasts, the biggest, um, uh, podcast host in the world. And he was, it was basically a long rant about RSS and how RSS will never change. And it's, uh, it, and it's a bad technology and we should be moving away from it. And I think this is just proving that no, RSS does change. That's the whole point of RSS. That you can add new features without breaking anything. And that's exactly what all of these tools are actually doing.
[00:20:21] Jennifer-Lee: He ranted about RSS, but his product needs RSS feeds to work?
[00:20:25] James Cridland: Well, he, his, in his ideal world, and he no, no longer works for, uh, Spotify. But in his ideal world, we wouldn't use RSS anymore. Uh, and we'd all use the Spotify app instead. Um, and that of course doesn't need uh, RSS really to work. And that would mean that Spotify controlled all of podcasting, which is not something that we want.
[00:20:48] Neil McPhedran: We want to keep the RSS feed and we want to enhance it, like we're talking about here with all these new features. Everything you're talking about is so exciting. Think about, you know, back to the discovery point you were making James. Try to find all the podcasts around a certain research topic. Like that's not really possible. You can't find that in Google and so on and so forth. You have to dig and dig and dig. We hear this all the time. That discovery mechanism you're talking about makes it, it turns it on its head for being able to find all the podcasts around one research topic or what's in, you know, the location tag.
[00:21:21] Like it's all super exciting. So, okay. So, I'm sold. Um, where do I, you know, like, what's the, like, what are the hosting platforms and the apps that are onboarding 2.0? Because I use Spotify to listen to my podcasts and I'm not seeing a ton of this popping up. So there must be apps that are different and I don't see these features in my host. Where do I go?
[00:21:48] James Cridland: Well, firstly, if you care about podcasts, stop using Spotify. Use an open podcast app. That will be the first thing that I would tell you. Anything is better than Spotify. So stop that.
[00:21:59] Isn't it a surprise that Spotify hasn't done anything that might give the power to individual independent podcasters rather than somebody that actually uploads all of their stuff into the Spotify system. So stop doing that. If you're looking for apps that support different Podcasting 2.0, uh, tags and functionality then one of the biggest ones is one that you may have heard of called Apple Podcasts. And Apple Podcasts, uh, supports the transcript tag, uh, which means that the transcript that I produce for my show is the one that is shown within the Apple podcasts, um, app, um, which is a really important start. It's the first, um, it's the first, um, Podcasting 2.0 tag that Apple, uh, uses. Um, Apple's quite slow in putting new features into their, uh, into their apps. And I think that's probably a good thing. Apple, um, uh, I mean, I used to work at the BBC a long, long time ago. And the BBC told me, um, when I was there trying to get, um, new features on the websites that I was in charge of, the BBC said, no, no, no, James, you don't understand.
[00:23:06] The BBC doesn't do things first. It does them properly. Um, and I think, uh, arrogant though, though that is, I think that's probably Apple's, uh, plan there. Um, Apple has done a really good job in integrating, um, creator generated transcripts into their, um, uh, into their app.
[00:23:25] But if you want to play around with, um, other apps that are doing a wider job. Podcast Guru is a really nice-looking app. It's available on both Apple and on Android. It's got lots of these features in, including transcripts, and all of the funding, the payment stuff, which we haven't got on to, and many different, um, many different, uh, functionalities in there. Podcast Addicts, which is one of the biggest podcast apps on Android, uh, has some of these features in there as well, including the transcript tag, uh, Antenapod, which is an open podcast app again for Android, um, has more of these features every single day. Um, Pocket Cast is using some of these tools as well. One of the ones that I'd probably recommend as well is a, is one called Podverse, um, which is, uh, open source and, uh, which has basically integrated everything. Um, so, uh, that's a good one to have a look at either Podverse or there's another one called Fountain.
[00:24:28] Um, which has done a very good job. Um, and, and there's one other which, um, which is a website which, uh, anybody can use regardless of what mobile phone they have. Um, it's a, it's an app called TrueFans, uh, and you just go and have a look at, uh, TrueFans, um, and that's basically an app as a web browser, which, of course, you can then install onto your phone as if it was an app anyway.
[00:24:50] So, tons of different apps doing things. I think one of the exciting things and the frustrating things about Podcasting 2.0 is there's lots of functionality. Um, there really isn't anyone who is doing a brilliant job of supporting every single new feature out there. Um, so different features are being supported by different, uh, apps.
[00:25:12] You can see all of those apps at podcasting2.org, uh, the website. So, um, if you just want to have a listen and, uh, and have a play with some of these things, then use a new podcast app. Um, that would be the first thing. And the other thing that you asked, uh, about was, um, hosts and, um, a bunch of, uh, podcast hosts are doing a really good job supporting a lot of these, um, tags.
[00:25:37] Some of them are more difficult to support than others. Um, but, um, if you were to use Blubrry, for example, or Buzzsprout, those are two very big podcast hosting companies. They've supported, um, a bunch of these, um, a bunch of these tools for a long, long time, a bunch of these features for a long, long time.
[00:25:56] Uh, I use Buzzsprout, for example, that supports the transcript tag, the person tag. Um, it supports a bunch of, uh, of other ones as well, funding and all of that kind of thing. But there are, uh, a load of different, uh, hosts that also support, um, some of these things. Captivate, Transistor, RSS.com. So, you know, there are a lot of those.
[00:26:17] Again podcasting2.org will help you, um, find a host with the particular feature that you're actually having a look at. Um, but, um, you know, the, there's a bunch of hosts out there. The best way of course, is to roll your own RSS and write the code. Uh, good luck with that, but, um, that's another way of, that's another way of doing it
[00:26:35] Neil McPhedran: Well with our audience, there's probably some of them out there.
[00:26:38] James Cridland: Oh, yes.
[00:26:39] Neil McPhedran: Probably some of them out there, so.
[00:26:40] James Cridland: And that's certainly what I do. If you're going to do that, I would just say use a validator. You'll find there's a really good validator called Livewire. If you do a web search for Livewire validator, that will actually check all of the new Podcasting 2.0 features that you've added into your RSS feed and just make sure that you've done that correctly. And it'll chuck up a bunch of errors if you haven't. So there are tools out there to help you there.
[00:27:11] Neil McPhedran: We're definitely gonna put all these links in our, um, in our show notes and appreciate you running through all those options there. I've tried a lot of them. And definitely, I think our job then as podcasters are, if we're embracing certain features, we should be steering our audiences towards those apps that have those features. And so I think that's all part, that should be part of our strategy as we move forward.
[00:27:38] I want to go back to one thing when we talked about Apple. Um, that was quite, I think personally, that was, it's a key moment where one of the big, the, you know, of the big three apps, YouTube being the third, Spotify, uh, Apple and YouTube. That's what we see predominantly in our podcasts we work with are the one, two, three. But I thought that was a real moment that they adopted one of the tags and I thought that kind of legitimized to a certain extent, um, a lot of the work. And I don't know about you, but I felt like, okay, here we go.
[00:28:14] If they're, if they've adopted one tag, they're going to adopt more. So I think more reason for us to, to, you know, to, you know, to get involved with and to embrace some of these things.
[00:28:25] James Cridland: Yeah, it was a very exciting, um, time. It was actually the second tag, uh, the second feature that they've supported.
[00:28:33] The first feature, though, was so dull and technical that I, that, uh, frankly, um, uh, I don't want to talk about it. It's a thing called text, and you put codes in there and everything else. But that's, that was exciting because being the, the big, um, public facing, um, feature, um, that Apple, uh, has, uh, has adopted, um, that's, um, super helpful.
[00:29:00] And Apple has so many things that, um, you know, makes life difficult for it. It is the biggest podcast app, uh, certainly in North America. Uh, it's the biggest, or I should say U.S. and Canada. It's not the biggest in North America, interestingly, because of Mexico. Um, but if you, ignore that. Um, so Apple is already A, the biggest, but also B, it wants to make sure that its user experience is as good as it can possibly be. And so a lot of the things that it is doing is, how will people misuse this feature? And how can we stop people from misusing that particular feature?
[00:29:39] It's one of the reasons why Apple hasn't done the person tag, for example. And instead of saying who, you know, your host is, you have to send an email into Apple and it's all a very manual process. And that's because they're worried that people will just put, oh, I've got Joe Rogan hosting this podcast, ha ha ha, and, you know, hope that lots of people, you know, tune in.
[00:30:00] So, you know, so Apple will always move very, very slowly, but that was a very exciting, you know, a very exciting time. And the folks at Apple were, you know, I got the typical Apple, um, you know, the presentation, the big reveal, um uh, you know, and, uh, you could tell how exciting, uh, you know, how excited the whole team at Apple felt that this was, you know. And transcripts are super, super useful for research, super useful just for finding out what topics, what things have been talked about in a particular show.
[00:30:36] Um, so it's a super useful, you know, tool anyway. Um, and for Apple to actually put that in and respect what the creator is doing, uh, is a really important thing.
[00:30:47] Neil McPhedran: Yeah, totally agree about the transcripts as we've talked about. I think that's, uh, that is key for, and actually a requirement for all of the higher ed pods that I work with.
[00:30:59] It's a, you know, from the top down, they have to have that. Um, this is, uh, I, think this has been a really great conversation. I think that this is a good primer, um, and, um for, I think, for our audience, um, just, to learn about, but Jen, what do you think? Are you, we've come into this conversation from two different perspectives. What are you thinking?
[00:31:23] Jennifer-Lee: I understand it way better now. So thank you. And I'm definitely sold on it. I do love the fact that, uh, you said you can find out if shows are completed because, like I said, my issue wasn't with the shows that have been a long time or, like, completed and they have a purpose. It's with all the ones that go through pod fade and can't get past three episodes and, like, or one episode.
[00:31:46] I just feel like they're clogging up, someone just needs to sweep them out. Or someone, like, put up a trailer and then decide not to go anywhere. But that's just, I tell everyone to start podcasting, but please continue with it. I don't care if you have a season of five, just complete it.
[00:32:01] James Cridland: Yeah, that, I mean, that's certainly useful. I mean, the other thing that I would say to your audience, and this isn't anything to do with Podcasting 2.0, but it is something else that I would really recommend. There is a analytics tool out there called OP3, um, there's a website, there's a website for that, op3.dev. And if you are taking public funding, if the public is funding your show in any way, you owe it's to them to at least show how your podcast is doing. And so using an open podcast analytics service like OP3, so that, um, so that, uh, firstly, you're adding to all of the data, which is in there. So we all understand how podcasting is doing, but secondly, so that you're sharing how many downloads you're getting and how many users you're getting, uh, on all of that kind of stuff is a really, really important thing. Particularly if you're getting money from other people to make that particular show. So if you can, one of the things that I would really recommend, it's, it couldn't be any more private as well. It's very good in terms of listener privacy as well.
[00:33:05] I would really recommend, uh, anyone who's making a show to use OP3, um, as the thing that you do your, your stats with. It means that all of your stats will be completely comparable with anyone else who's using OP3 and it's such a super useful tool. So, um, yeah, I'd really recommend that as well.
[00:33:26] Neil McPhedran: I appreciate you bringing that up. I am a big advocate, um, of it. We've got all of our podcasts we work with on it. And Podium is a founding, um, partner actually. And so we're a big, big fan of John Spurlock.
[00:33:42] James Cridland: Yeah, you and, um, the newsletter that I put together, we're both, uh, financial supporters of it, and it's a wonderful thing, so I would heartily recommend it.
[00:33:52] Neil McPhedran: Okay, well, I think that we've got a ton more things that I want to ask you, and I, and Jen, you just said the same thing, but I think let's just, uh
[00:33:58] Jennifer-Lee: We didn't even get into, like, monetization. I just want to sit down and talk with James, and now I have, like, I want to know his opinion, but brought up a good point about the public funding, like a lot of people use the app Buy Me a Coffee for podcasts too, and I wanted to know your opinion on that. But that might have to be for another time.
[00:34:17] James Cridland: Nothing wrong with buying me a coffee. Buymeacoffee.com /James Cridland if you want to.
[00:34:25] Jennifer-Lee: I love it.
[00:34:25] James Cridland: But I mean,
[00:34:26] Neil McPhedran: Of course you've got it set up.
[00:34:28] James Cridland: But I mean, you know, joking aside, one of the features of Podcasting 2.0 is a feature called the funding tag. It's a super easy tag. And literally all that it does in a lot of podcast players out there is that it adds a button in the podcast player. And it says, help fund this podcast or whatever it is that you want that button to end up saying.
[00:34:50] So if you are using Buy Me A Coffee or Patreon, or you're using, you know, other services, which are very similar, um, then the funding feature allows there to be a really easy, obvious button, which is supported by loads of different shows. Um, sorry, loads of different apps, which allows you just to click that button and you'll get taken to the Buy Me A Coffee page. Or whatever it ends up being. Um, you know, so, uh, yeah, I mean, that's another Podcasting 2.0 feature.
[00:35:20] Jennifer-Lee: There we go. Love it. And everyone head on over and buy James a coffee. We should be setting that up, Neil. Why aren't we buying Jen and Neil coffees? That's what I want to know.
[00:35:32] James Cridland: Correct.
[00:35:33] Neil McPhedran: That's, well, that's what we're going to start doing. We got to do this now. Yes. So anyway. Okay. Well, thanks James. Jen, you'll be seeing James in London and I guess probably actually when this thing airs, you guys will have seen each other and met each other by then. So in real life, so that's great. But thank you so much, James. And I'm sure we have lots of questions and, um, we'll funnel more questions your way if we get any.
[00:35:54] James Cridland: Absolutely. Always, always, always happy to come back on.
[00:35:56] Neil McPhedran: Yeah. And do tune in and, uh, to, uh, James's newsletter and daily email. It's fantastic if you're not already.
[00:36:04] James Cridland: Thank you.
[00:36:06] Neil McPhedran: Okay, Jen. That was awesome. Are we coming out of the conversation with you having a bit more of an understanding so when I rattle on and geek out about Podcasting 2.0, we're starting to get on the same page?
[00:36:19] Jennifer-Lee: We're definitely on the same page now. Actually, this one blew my mind because it's a lot of the things that we talk about, I know to our clients, but a lot of people don't do it in the regular podcasting space. Like the importance of scripts, like the importance of categories.
[00:36:34] And as we learned with 2.0, you can really dig down to what your category is all about. So it's not as broad. So it's like all these things we've been talking about. But no one actually said there was a solution for it. And now it makes more sense to me because honestly, Neil, when you were going on before, I just thought it was all about Bitcoin, but it's not.
[00:36:53] Neil McPhedran: Right. Yeah, we didn't, James wanted to talk about that a few times. And we kind of, we really held off on that portion of the Podcasting 2.0, that whole value for value, which is attached to Bitcoin. We'll park that because I don't think that's super important for our audience, for the higher education podcasters.
[00:37:09] But yeah, you're right. Um, I think this is something we really can lean into as a cohort here, if you will, within the podcasting ecosystem. I know how all the clients that I work with transcripts, for example, are a must, like, that's a requirement actually for access. So knowing which apps actually are implementing transcripts. James mentioned Apple, but some of the other ones for sure. So this is what we're going to do. We're going to walk the walk. We're going to turn our podcast more into Podcasting 2.0 okay, Jen. So we're going to talk to another host. We talked to Transistor. They're quite, with Justin Transistor.
[00:37:50] They're quite Podcast 2.0 compliant. We've got lots of interviews coming up. We're going to talk to a Podcast 2.0 app. Just sort of open up the aperture. And we're going to start working through this so we can all, as a group and a community start to infuse this into our podcasts and we'll start walking the walk here.
[00:38:11] Jennifer-Lee: I'm excited. I'm getting an education because even though James cleared up a lot of things for me, I'm excited to learn more.
[00:38:18] Neil McPhedran: I think we now know what it is. I think now the next step over the next couple of months, and we're going to do this with our podcast, is to how to implement it and how to steer our audience, uh, towards the apps that they can take advantage of. So for example, Spotify, we've learned is bad. They're not cooperating. So which are the apps that are good?
[00:38:40] Jennifer-Lee: They didn’t say that, we'll get canceled by Spotify.
[00:38:46] Neil McPhedran: Okay. Anything else, Jen? I think that's a wrap on that one, but yeah, show notes. So look at our show notes. We're gonna put some more details in there, some links to some of these apps, and we do transcripts. So look out for the transcripts. We do chapters. Look out for the chapters, uh, and you can start to see how those function in some of the app.
[00:39:06] So, and we're going to start doing a whole bunch more of the, uh, features as well too. So, okay. That's a wrap.
[00:39:17] Jennifer-Lee: Thank you for tuning into the Continuing Studies Podcast, a podcast for higher education podcasters. We hope you found this episode informative and inspiring. If you enjoyed the show, we encourage you to follow and subscribe to our podcast on your preferred platform so you'll never miss an episode. But if you found this episode particularly valuable, please consider sharing it with your friends and colleagues who also might be interested in higher education podcasts.
[00:39:43] We also invite you to join your peers on higheredpods.com where you can connect with other podcasters in higher education and learn from others in the field. Thank you for being part of our community. We look forward to continuing to bring you valuable insights and conversations around higher education podcasts.
[00:40:02] See you in the next episode.