Like You Know?

Three recent events led to this blog post:

• I was driving a while back and listening to podcasts. Two in particular by highly experienced podcasters who are very articulate.

• Meanwhile I’d just completed editing a podcast episode of my own. (This was Episode 32, which you might have listened to already.)

• And a few weeks before that I was involved in a debate on an online forum about editing podcasts.

The common thread is humanity in the finished product. Versus professionalism, I suppose.

The online debate saw me advocating leaving some “humanity” in recordings, whereas others wanted “clean” recordings.

The podcasts I listened to today had “um”, “er”, “you know”, “like” aplenty. Because of editing and the debate online I was listening out for this. These “verbal tics” did not detract at all. Indeed the speakers sounded informal and human.

Now, it has to be said I’ve met all these podcasters – and would expect to be able to have good, friendly conversations when we meet again.

To bring this to Marna’s and my podcast, we are striking a particular pose. A genuine one but a conscious one: While we both work for IBM neither of us is making formal statements on IBM’s behalf. And, while we might have the tacit encouragement of our management, we’re not directed by them. In short, we don’t consider our podcast a formal production but just two friends having fun making a contribution.

If we were scripted and professionally produced we’d sound a lot different. And I think our episode structure would be different. And so would the content.

Having said that, I have two principal aims when editing:

• Reduce the incidence of “um” etc to a listenable level.
• Faithfully reproduce the conversation.

To that end, I generally don’t move stuff around or edit for content. I also try to do the easy edits and, beyond that, leave a few verbal tics in.

So you won’t get clean recordings from us. But you’ll get what we’re thinking, with some humanity left in.

And I’d say this song wouldn’t work without “you know”. 🙂