Reflecting on Invisible Voice’s First Season, and Looking Ahead

Hey guys – and yes, I know it’s been awhile. Life’s been a little crazy, and I’d like to keep it at that.

BUT. As some know, this past quarter at UCSD hasn’t been a waste for me – I had the opportunity to whip up an hour-long weekly radio show on the campus “radio station”, KSDT. (it’s actually only an internet stream but it USED to be a radio station darnit!) Today, the quarter’s been over for a week, the first run of the show is done, and I have ten full episodes and a debate to produce in two weeks. Before I dive into that, I thought it would be nice to do a brief lookback on the overall production, with more specific thoughts as I release the archived version of each episode.

What Went Right

It took a few weeks for the team to settle, shifting from myself, Tom, and Cody, to myself, Tom, and Austin – with support people varying each episode. Once we got established by show four, things began to click and go -really- well. I feel like the show had good chemistry and attitude, we were in studio on time every week (not always starting on time, thanks to technical gremlins!) and almost always got in our preshow planning meeting. Austin and Tom, complete newbies to broadcasting, picked things up quick and got relaxed and comfortable with the format very quickly, well enough that they were able to do a show without me for episode nine!

My primary goal was to focus almost exclusively on getting the show part of the show right – by and large we got off to a great start.

What Went Wrong

Coordination – but only partially. This is the kind of effort that has to start very light – extra bits like regular, on schedule production, companion blogs, webcam, etc. have to be secondary to the sound. I wish we could have gotten a little more energy to force that stuff out, BUT. I’ll be happy with what I can get, and now with momentum at our backs we should hopefully get it better this fall!

There were a -lot- of technical issues with the studio – partially my fault, since I was supposed to know it inside and out off the bat. There were issues with the show before us running late, before it got yanked halfway through the quarter. I wanted to foster a friendship with the show after us but that never got off the ground due to time issues.

Overall, this was and will remain a learning experience, so I won’t nitpick about rough edges in the actual show. We’re rookies after all!

Most Important Lesson Learned

Two hour time slots are like manna from heaven, since there’s plenty of room for short breaks for the crew to quickly butt heads and get on the same page.

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What’s Next?

I have a ton of production work to do! I intend to have every episode of the Invisible Voice on youtube much in the same manner this one is.

That’s ten episodes to go. Hooray!

Until I get that done – you may not see very much from me save for:

• The occasional guest article (once average traffic gets stirred up a bit)
• Short and sweet blog articles on one thing or another
• Quick (half hour tops) podcasts in the spirit of ‘TheDougem Drives’, except I won’t be driving.

Why am I putting myself through all this suffering? The Invisible Voice is part of my portfolio now – I and the team worked hard to put it together, we need a venue to show it off to get people excited about coming back in the fall!

I can never say it enough: Thank you SO much for your patience and hanging around, whether you’re a new face or someone who’s been around long enough to see me attempt to conquer medieval Germany.

When will I get back to nice, long podcasts? Two months tops, I’m hoping.

If you need stuff to tide you over until then, I recommend both The Blaze as well as PJMedia. Instapundit on PJMedia is also excellent – it updates throughout the day!

Cheers till then