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Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Cape Town Community Podcast is Coming, Part 3

I train people for a living and I have come to appreciate the fear of learning something new.

At least I thought I had until earlier in the week when I began to learn something new.

My best friend’s husband, Bob, who has been recording music for years, offered to teach me how to use the recording software necessary to create a splashy new podcast. Do you remember that scene from Airplane! where Ted Stryker first goes into the cockpit to fly the plane and he looks over the console and it seemingly goes on forever, an endless series of buttons and dials? Ted knew he was in over his head and was not prepared to fly the plane. That’s how I felt when we got started.

Then I thought, “C’mon Don, you do this all the time at work. You learn new things and then you write about them.” And two hours later I had gone from totally lost to aware of my surroundings with a wonky compass and a map in hand. Sure the map was in another language but I seemed to have to the tools I needed to eventually find my way.
It was also nice to know that I had purchased everything I needed to begin producing our upcoming weekly podcast. I brought all of the equipment to Bob’s just to make sure, fearful he would say “Where’s your velocitator?”

“A velocitator?” I would ask. “Is that a must-have for recording?”

“Only if you want people to hear your voice” he replied in my head. But no such conversation took place. I had purchased all of the necessary gizmo-dads and I would soon be good to go after a proper lesson followed by a bit of practice. I may have to curb some of the blogging over the next week to make time for some dry runs.

On the way to work last week I began to worry about how I would sound on the show. I’m not worried about sounding nasally. I can’t help that. No, I am more concerned about getting flustered and not being able to find the right words.

“Superman… he’s… it’s cool when there’s… that is to say… when he… uhhh… caterpillar.”

Perhaps that might be too extreme an example of verbal flubbing, but I have a general concern for speaking with all the eloquence of Bizarro. But I shall plod on, sure that Jerry and I are going to be able to offer the comic book community something worth listening to!

I’ve mentioned previously that I am no technical wizard and proved so this weekend as I spent a good portion of my time working on a new logo (above). I was determined to have something high-resolution to place on iTunes, Zune, and everywhere else the podcast will be listed, linked and so on.  I called Jerry to ask what he thought of it. “It’s huge” he said, which received a “that’s what she said” in reply. Just wait til you hear more of our comedy gold!

We’re less than a week away from recording our first recording—which I affectionately refer to as the first of our Beta episodes. Tonight I’ll wrap up the opening and closing scripts before heading off to bed.

Stay tuned dear readers!

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