Kennedy-Spaien, Dot Com

I’m really pleased with the current batch of projects I’m working on, and thought you might be interested in some of these yourself.

First, as always, I’m neck-deep in producing The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show With Jimmy Moore. This has gained a lot of prestige in the last few years. The show airs on Mondays and Thursdays and is currently featuring interviews with various low-carb celebrities and physicians. [I also did the theme customization for this site.]

Also, I’m producing the Twin Peas Blog and Podcast for host Kelly Damron. Kelly shares knowledge and experience dealing with issues of infertility, premature birth and parenting twins. I’m very proud of this one- it has tons of original music (by me) and the overall effect is similar to “This American Life”. [Another customized theme, here.]

Recently I completed a blog setup for the amazing Phoenix Gilman, author of Diet Failure: The Naked Truth.

Hmm, a common theme - everyone I’ve worked with lately is a published author!

Anyway, please check these out and, as always, please consider giving the shows a review in the iTunes store!

Links:

Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show Site and iTunes
The Twin Peas Pod site and iTunes
Diet Failure: The Naked Truth Blog
My company, Disc of Light Media and Consulting

Whaddaya think of them apples? Let me know in the comment section below!

Recently I’ve been thinking about the fact that since I’m billing myself as “The Podcast Doctor™” why don’t I currently have an active podcast of my own?

I’ve been so busy helping my Disc of Light Media clients with their shows that I kind of let that slip through the cracks! Oops!

So I’ve decided to test the waters by re-launching the Health Hacks Podcast — with a few changes.

The premiere episode of the relaunch can be listened to at Health-Hack.com (coming soon to an iTunes near you!) or by subscribing to the RSS feed.

In this relaunch premiere, I’m interviewing blogger and author Kelly Damron. Kelly recently wrote Tiny Toes: A Couple’s Journey Through Infertility, Prematurity, and Depression and writes the Twin Peas blog as well.

Please check out the show and Kelly’s blog to learn about the great work she’s doing to educate people about the practicalities and stigmas of issues like IVF, lactation difficulty, prematurity and post-partum depression!

…If you love either, you should never watch them being made.

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself!

Pic found at 10 Creepiest Old Ads.

About 2 1/2 months ago, I was in a car accident. I’m largely alright at this point, but my right hand and foot, as well as my back were fairly messed up.

2 weeks ago I started getting “back in the game” so to speak, but I had to completely re-invent my ‘to do’ structure. For whatever reason, the system I had been using was now alien and obtuse to me.

So I started scouring Lifehacker, Lifehack.org and the holy testaments of Merlin Mann, Steve Pavlina, David Allen and Steven Covey. As a result, I quickly became overwhelmed by “process”. Particularly bad were the software based solutions which became a large time sink and source of “analysis paralysis.”

Finally, one day I realized that my productivity had actually sunk to ZERO! I was actually spending 100% of my non-family time trying to find a productivity system I could live with. That way, of course, lies madness.

I had become Ahab, and my white whale was named “To Do“.

Ultimately, the pressure of time slipping away got to me and I simply grabbed a blank sheet of printer paper. I made 7 columns corresponding to the days of the week, and filled in my recurring tasks. I left non-recurring tasks in my mind for the short-term, and quickly became productive again! Yay!

Now this clearly won’t do for the long-term, but I’ve developed a taste of pen and ink, and I’ve been eyeing that fugly, oversized calendar we got free from the local Chinese delivery restaurant…

Fantastic. Met up with Ellen Moschetto and Pistachio and many more. Attended 3 sessions so far: Viva La Vida freelance (www.freelanceliving.wordpress.com - join the fun!), The Bigger, Better Deal Of Podcasting with Chris Brogan and David Eckoff (touchy feely wellness and empowerment goodness) and The New Rules Of PR with David Meerman Scott, which was invaluable. Grab his free ebook at http://davidmeermanscott.com/.

I’ll edit later to add more links.

This ain’t a how-to. I wish I had this skill down to a set of easily reproducible steps, but sadly every time it comes up, the solution is different.

One of my clients, Jimmy Moore of The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show, scored an interview with Dr. Dean Ornish. The interview was a year ago, so I hadn’t yet drilled “best practices” into his head, plus he intended the interview to be for his blog, as the show hadn’t started yet.

Suffice it to say, the interview sounds like it was recorded via tin cans and twine to a wax cylinder (actually a microphone on a telephone). And it is over seventy minutes of raw audio. My job: distill it down to two 25-minute episodes and clean it up.

The stakes are high: a low-carb personality interviewing the king of low-fat diets is bound to be a ratings topper, but OUCH! what a job.

If you find yourself in this kind of situation (and you’ve already decided not to retain my services to fix this for you) here’s one tip:

Use a 30 band graphic EQ plugin in your editor (I use Audacity for editing and Garage Band for final production in these cases). If you start completely dropping frequencies from the low end, you may find that you can subtract out the lowest five or so sliders without changing the sound, while making the signal less “hot”. This will likely allow you to boost your gain without worsening the distortion already present.

After this, you will still have your work cut out for you, but it may be just what you need to start the salvage operation! Just remember, you can’t magically perfect a bad recording after the fact, but this tip might just get you started!

Check it out at: The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore.

As of October first, 2007, I am no longer an employee and am making the Disc of Light Media Group, run by myself and my wife Eve, my full time focus.

Wow, that was a scary sentence to write, but an exciting one as well! It is auspicious that PodCamp Boston II is happening so soon, as lots of my friends will be there for support (and networking - hint, hint!).

What does Disc of Light Media Group do? Well, several things. First, it is a music label dedicated to personal growth and meditation materials. We currently have a wholesale trade with certain New England area hospitals, but our retail program has become moribund, and I will focus some energies there.

Also, I am carrying on executive producing the podcast “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show With Jimmy Moore” and the video program “Healthy Helpings TV” that originated with Grasshopper New Media. I am glad to take on more clients of this type on a consulting basis. [In the previous sentence, "consulting" should be construed as "fee-based".]

I create custom music and provide audio pre- and post-production for audio and video projects. Need your audio of that important interview cleaned up? I’m the guy!

In addition to hundreds of podcast episodes of original music and theme songs, I am an alumni of the film-scoring department of the Berklee College of Music.

Lastly, Disc of Light performs consulting services for bloggers and podcasters. We are particularly interested in adding clients in the area of Food-related projects and cooking shows.

I am planning on developing the www.Disc-of-Light.com website to reflect these changes. Currently that site is exclusively for our music label.

For the curious, a “Disc of Light” is either a chakra or a reference to optical media (CD, DVD). Take your pick!

Please keep Disc of Light in mind for any opportunities you may have or hear about!

“Extending the conversation” is what New Media is all about. We should be doing everything possible to facilitate this. There are interesting things being said that you may be missing! The fix is a two way street for bloggers and blog readers.

Bloggers: Do you have a comments feed? If not, get one, pronto. On WordPress it is as simple as putting up a link to:
www.yourdomain.com/yourblogdirectory/comments/feed/. You can even burn it at feedburner!

A caveat:
Chris Brogan has a WordPress blog at www.chrisbrogan.com, BUT if you really look at it, he’s using an URL redirect to:
www.grasshopperfactory.com/cbc/.
Don’t try to use the vanity address to hack this. Instead use:
http://www.grasshopperfactory.com/cbc/comments/feed/

For other blog platforms, you’re on your own, but it can’t be that hard.

Blog readers: Look for comment feeds and add them to your feed reader of choice (I still prefer Bloglines over the more newfangled Pageflakes or Google Reader). If you can’t find a comment feed listed and the site in question has the text “Powered by WordPress” in the footer, you can subscribe using the above-mentioned URL formula anyway.

So, let’s ALL extend the conversation!

Stepping out of my “Mr. Producer” shoes and putting on my “voice talent” hat (gotta love those moderately mixed metaphors), I tried something new at the HHX (A.K.A. Health Hacks) podcast this week.

I don’t normally work from a script, but extemporize on a theme I’ve been contemplating for a while. This week I basically used my bit from earlier this week on “The Secret” as a script. You may have read that article here at this site.

I noticed that I sounded very different when reading. I made a real effort not to sound “flat” as reading often does. So instead I sounded “affected” — kind of faux-stentorian with a Captain Kirk kind of abrupt, jerky verbal lope.

On YouTube, Ira Glass has a great set of talks on podcasting. He talks at length about how terribly unnatural he was on air for many years. This gives me hope!

My other big gripe — I hate it when others so this — is that when I was quoting text, I slipped into a sarcastic tone of voice. Real professional, that. Maybe I can do punditry for FOX.

On the subject of recycling blog posts as podcast segments, it never would’ve occurred to me to do it, until I realized that many podcasters I respect (and a few I produce!) do this all the time. It still seems a bit weird, but then again, the audiences are not 100% the same, and there is something to be said for “working smarter, not harder.” I actually did the blog post as a dry run for the segment, because I wanted to take the time to really articulate my thoughts as clearly as possible.

I think that despite a “snack culture” where a million little projects like podcasts, blog posts, Tweets, etc. are churned out and many otherwise rational people are saying that “editing is dead”, there is still real value in doing a thoughtful post-mortem on what we put out for the world. It isn’t just an exercise in navel-gazing to evaluate the HOW of self-presentation.

So, new media types, do you recycle your content? How do you feel about your voice/presentation? Most importantly, do you look back at your work, or only ahead?