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Hey, Megan, let's do a podcast. Great idea. What
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should we talk about?
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What if we did a quick podcast about the process of doing
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the podcast? I love it. That's
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super deep and meta, and I would expect nothing less of you.
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Thanks. So, okay, the podcast started. Let's start where?
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At the beginning. It was not my idea. It was
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Dean's idea. Years ago, he said, hey, we ought to do a
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podcast. I'm like... Hey, we
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ought to do a podcast. I don't have time for that. But then after a
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while, you listen to people, and other people kept saying,
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hey, you ought to have a podcast. Hey, do you have a podcast? So. So
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after a while, you start to listen to all the people who say you ought
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to do a thing and do a thing. Yeah. So let's do, like,
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lessons learned from season one. What do we wish we could
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go back and tell past Meg and past Megan about?
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What are we learning so far? Well, I think one thing
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that's important is coming up with a theme. We struggled with this
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a little bit. We decided to call it Tangents.
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Tangents with Torrance Learning. Sometimes it feels a little more
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tangential, sometimes a little less. I figure this will probably
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evolve over time, and it kind of
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matches a little bit. Our logo, we've got this curve logo,
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and I imagine that ball moving up
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the logo and then shooting off it, in a tangent, off
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into space. You provide so much
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good, intentional story around what may otherwise be
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seen as a cop out to coming up with a theme. Because, hey, we're just
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gonna go off on tangents and talk about whatever we want. Yep.
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And everyone told us we needed a purpose and stated outcomes
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for the podcast. That's probably important. So, you
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know, I mean, one of those things is that it's a chance for us to
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hang out. Totally is. And all the cool kids have podcasts. Yep.
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They're all doing it. We also get to use this as a chance to stay
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in touch with our network. I like that a lot.
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And it's also a way to kind of document, in an
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easy way, some of the stories and concepts that are core to our work so
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that we can easily share them with others like our clients or the team
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or community at large. So it's been really nice
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to say, oh, wait, wait, wait, I have a podcast on that.
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Yeah. So it's not really about marketing or sales, is
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it? Nope, not at all. I mean, sure, that's nice, but that's not why
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we're doing this. Don't tell the marketing team.
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So we also found, you know, we got some
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advice from and encouragement from our friends who are
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already doing podcasting, Betty Dannewitz and Matt Pierce,
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here in Michigan, in particular in the learning industry
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and settling on a good structure. That's probably
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one of the key things as well. It's important to have a
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flow, find a groove. And, you know, it
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took us a few episodes to get that down. And it's probably still evolving
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and will evolve over time because, you know,
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we've got a few episodes in there, but I know it can take, you
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know, maybe even a hundred episodes to really feel like
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you've got a good, solid flow. This one will be fun to come back to
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100 episodes from now. Yeah. Can't even
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imagine. I think one of our other lessons learned was how
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to make time to do it because this is fairly time
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consuming in terms of prep and recording, and
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that doesn't even count all the editing. So we have
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blocked off big chunks of Friday afternoons when things are
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otherwise quiet. We're a little bit more relaxed,
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sometimes a little punchy, and so far we're batting
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like one for two. We booked two sessions and actually
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managed to have one out of that. So booking more time than
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we think we'll need. Super key
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would be like, get yourself a great producer. Dean
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is awesome. Dean is awesome. Dean comes by this
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professionally and so we get to lean on that
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so much. He is a music producer, an engineering, mixing, production
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guy. Super sound nerd.
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Basically, he does things that sound way cooler than what I do all day.
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Yeah. And stole this from other
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podcasts, but "ABR" always be recording. Dean is always recording.
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And not only that, but because of
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his background in music production, he created our
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little music diddy. We have a
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ditty, but we also have like a super professional setup.
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We have professional microphones that I'm afraid to touch. And
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like, we're in one room, he's got a whole big soundboard in the other room.
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Like this is a professional deal. Yeah. Yeah. And
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another key thing that has helped us a lot is that
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we set up a shared Google Doc so we
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can both be typing in there at the same time, editing notes.
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And then it's color coded so I can see when I'm talking. You
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can see when you're talking. Makes it super easy. It does.
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That eases up the prep a lot. And we have taken
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definitely a release to learn and iterate
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approach to this. Super agile. We
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record a few, release them, get feedback from folks,
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we debrief ourselves. So retrospective as we go.
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And Dean gives us feedback and that's been really, really
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helpful. So if you've given us feedback about the podcast, thank you.
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Thank you so much.
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And so that's our episode about podcasting.
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Now that we're in, this is what, our tenth podcast ever. Our tenth episode.
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Tenth episode. We're onto something here. Yep.
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Okay, Meg. So how'd you think that one went? I think pretty good.
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We had to take several takes at that. Even though you would
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think this should be an easy one. We're
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talking about the thing that we're doing, and it's not like we have to do
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a ton of research, but it's
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hard to make sure you're hitting all the points you want to. Not
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being overly wordy and have a
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good flow. Keeping it tight. But I think it's a great one. To start off
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season two, we've got lots of cool stuff coming. We've got agile
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ceremonies. We've got learner personas and empathy
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maps and learning engineering stuff and overnight thoughts,
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which is different than overnight oatmeal. So we have lots of stuff
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coming up. Stay tuned. This is Meg Fairchild
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and Megan Torrance, and this has been a podcast from
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TorranceLearning. Tangents is the official podcast of
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TorranceLearning, as though we have an unofficial one.
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Tangents is hosted by Meg Fairchild and Megan Torrance.
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It's produced by Dean Castile and Meg Fairchild,
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engineered and edited by Dean Castile, with original
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music also by Dean Castile. This episode was
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fact checked by Meg Fairchild.
