Neil Gorman gave one of the more memorable talks of PAB2007, mostly for quoting Julien Smith :
Your podcast is NOT a fucking toaster.
And Smith wants to be sure we never lose sight of that fact. Podcasts are valuable : we invest time and energy in them. And while Gorman agrees that a podcast isn’t a throw-away, he wants to make sure we avoid podcaster burnout.
Gorman sees podcasting as a frontier, similar to the one explored by Shatner’s most famous character, Cpt. Kirk. For Kirk, as for all humans, exploring frontiers is a secret to happiness. Gorman believes that podcasters today have reached a stage of quiet desperation, aching to recapture the early, frontier days of podcasting. Result? Many of them are on the verge of podcaster burnout.
How to avoid this? According to Gorman, burnout is a state of mind. The solution? Shake things up a little :
- do a new show
- do new things with a current show, like bring in a guest host
- change the show’s format
Should you treat your podcast like a toaster? Gorman mainly sides with Smith… until the danger of burnout begins to loom. Then, according to Gorman, it’s time to replace your toaster with a new model.
And here I was waiting for a Microsoft flying toaster metaphor.
Flying toasters, broken toasters. I’m not enough of a geek to realize the difference – just enough of one to mix my metaphors
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