Well, I guess I've dipped an experimental toe in the water of podcasting... so much of experimentation is driven simply by the toolchains being made simpler. Both my paid newsletter and podcasting experiments are entirely due to making the experimentation easy.
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I think this is an under-rated effect. When you are experimenting, you don't want to have to navigate toolchain risks in addition to the fundamental risks of whatever you're trying. It's like double jeopardy. A product that removes or significantly mitigates one of the risks wins
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Related: the more you can drive the production capability to the last mile (or last click in digital), the more experimentation you'll encourage. Blogging was about being able to compose and publish with one click right in the browser instead of screwing around with files/ftp
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I stayed away from podcasting so long for several reasons, the big one being that though I like talking, I don't like listening to podcasts. I have a text-in-voice-out (TIVO?) feedforward relationship to orality. But the secondary reason was the production toolchain being awful.
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The first time I tried it, I had to use Audacity with that dump "illegal" plugin or whatever to generate MP3s, edit/process, upload, and do tons of other crap on distribution. Now with substack, it's click record, click to publish. Done.
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In fact, the reason I got into video before audio was that with Zoom, video was actually easier to do (though it also produces audio). I posted a few experimental vlogs on ribbonfarm a few years ago.
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Never continued because the visual set up (cleaning office enough to be presentable, shaving) is too much work. I suppose I could do a low-production schtick with just a phone camera and a YouTube dress-down aesthetic, but for now, I'm only doing video for online course stuff
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Also I suppose because video doesn't add much unless there are slides, or it's 2 people and there's facial language to watch.
