Collide Magazine

Geeks on Podcasting

Scott McClellan - Originally posted Tuesday, January 8, 2008 -

Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell heard the term “podcast” for the first time while listening to NPR in June 2005. “We thought, ‘Wow, that’s really interesting,’ and so we bought into it and started listening to podcasts and got hooked,” says Lewis (below). Five months later, the husband and wife team came up with the idea for a podcast of their own: GeekBrief. Neither of them had any experience in front of or behind a camera, so it’s somewhat surprising that GeekBrief was conceived as a video podcast from the beginning. Nevertheless, after a month of refining the concept of GeekBrief—a five-minute overview of technology news and gadget reviews, minus the complicated tech jargon—the podcast was launched Dec. 23, 2005. Three weeks later, they had 3,000 viewers. Yes, you read that correctly.

“It was incredible because we started out thinking we had a few months to figure out what we were doing, because we didn’t know what we doing,” Lewis recalls. “We expected an audience to show up because we were determined to quit our day jobs and do this full-time,” Campbell adds. “We just didn’t expect them to show up so fast.”

Intentionality

The secret to the early success of GeekBrief, other than the quality of the podcast itself, appears to be twofold. First, the timing of the launch. “The timing was very intentional,” Campbell says. “The reason we were doing video was that Apple had just released the first video iPod in October. We were expecting lots of people to get them for Christmas and want video to put on them, but there wasn’t a lot of video content in iTunes then.” The timing couldn’t have been better for a brand new video podcast, especially a podcast that appealed to those with an interest in technology.

The second factor that contributed to GeekBrief’s early start was the couple’s participation in the community at Podcast Alley, a podcast directory that also serves as a hub for all kinds of information relating to podcasts and podcasting. The Podcast Alley forums enable users to discuss podcast news, podcast production, podcasts they are currently listening to, and much more. Lewis and Campbell got involved by “spending time in the community,” she says, and through “being a valuable part of the community by answering questions, whatever we knew about. You know, how to do this or that.

“When you’re a valuable part of the community,” Lewis says, “people just start to know your name.” The intentional relationships built within the avid podcasting community at Podcast Alley, coupled with the intentional timing of launching a video podcast as video iPods were first released, got the fledgling podcast off to an amazing start.

Measuring Popularity

Two years later, with individual episode views now numbering in the hundreds of thousands, GeekBrief is the epitome of a successful podcast. Of course, pinpointing episode view numbers is still something of an inexact science. “Everybody is reporting things differently,” Campbell explains. “Some people count a partial view as a full view. Some people count repetitive views as a full view.”

GeekBrief is part of a podcasting network called PodShow, which belongs to the Association for Downloadable Media—an organization that, among other things, is seeking to bring some conformity to web video statistics. Until they get the issue sorted out, actual video podcast viewiership is still anyone’s guess.

“Our raw statistics say we have between 200,000 and a million downloads per episode,” Campbell says.

A few episodes have been reported as topping 20 million views, but those figures seem inflated to Lewis and Campbell. Bots (little software applications that crawl the Internet performing specified tasks) might repeatedly hit episodes with certain keywords, and if each hit by a bot is counted as an episode view by a reporting utility, the number of reported views is quite different from the number of humans who have actually watched an episode.

“It seems like 400,000 [episode views] could possibly be an average, but that could be half bots,” Campbell says. “It’s hard to know for sure.” Even if half of the 400,000 figure can be attributed to bots, GeekBrief has still drawn quite an audience. Not bad for a learn-as-we-go operation that still shoots each episode in the couple’s living room and dining room.

Church Geeks

With Lewis in front of the camera and Campbell behind it, GeekBrief’s colloquial approach to technology has resonated with geeks as expected, but some aspects of their demographics are surprising. Along with grandparents and housewives, a lot of pastors follow the show. “Out of all the demographics and people who say they’re watching, like grandmothers or whatever,” Campbell observes, “the pastor demographic stands out.”

“I don’t know why they’re drawn to it, but I’m happy they are,” says Lewis. In the end, her best guess is that GeekBrief has a lot of takeaways for people who work in local churches and are looking to integrate podcasting, or technology in general, into their ministry. “One of the things we hear from time to time is that we share how to do things and get things done and what we’re learning in the process. You know, with equipment and all that.”

Given that their livelihood is wrapped up in podcasting, Campbell and Lewis aren’t the most objective sources when it comes to the medium. They believe churches should definitely get onboard. For churches, Campbell notes, it’s even easier for them to get started than they may realize. “One advantage pastors and churches have that the average person doesn’t necessarily have is that if they want to podcast, they have equipment already. It’s not hard to adapt a church audio system to get a podcast ready. Just get a Marantz [AV receiver] or something to plug it into and you’re ready to go.”

In addition to podcasting, Campbell and Lewis both see live streaming as a tool with a lot of potential for churches. “Don’t just do one thing. Podcast and stream,” Campbell advises. He continues: “I think every church, if they’ve got a camera, should be streaming. If I’m sick and I can’t be there on a Sunday morning, let me be there online.” Lewis adds: “Podcasting can be just taking what you’ve recorded and putting it out there so people can consume whatever they want, however they want, wherever they want, instead of just on the stream Sunday morning.”

Father Roderick

If you’re sold on the idea of doing a podcast for your church beyond the scope of simply publishing sermon audio, Campbell suggests learning from a priest: “A good model for pastors is Father Roderick. He’s a Catholic priest in the Netherlands and he does a podcast called Daily Breakfast. It’s like a morning prayer time and it’s really short, and then he does podcasts that are teaching [spiritual ideas] using things such as Harry Potter—kind of like you guys do with COLLIDE. He has access to the Vatican, so the last time the Pope was being picked, he was there, walking around in the Vatican. I was all into that. It was very interesting to hear it from the inside.

“If you’re a pastor, I would definitely check out what he’s doing,because one thing he’s accomplished is that he’s viewed as very cool. People who don’t want to have a connection to a church are listening to him and being spiritually fed through his ministry. And he doesn’t even present it really as a ministry. It’s a passion for him.”

Passionate Podcasting

A passion for podcasting is a quality Campbell and Lewis undeniably share with Father Roderick. The GeekBrief team’s passion for podcasting has led them to see the medium as a destination rather than a stepping stone. Lewis says, “People ask me all the time, ‘Are you excited about the possibility of getting a TV show or an actress role?’” She tells them, “No. Why would I want that?”

Rather, she continues: “I want to use TV and radio as a way to expose people who aren’t aware of podcasting to the podcasting world. I’m not interested at all in going out and being in movies or having a TV job. I love doing this in my pajamas! That’s what I love about this opportunity—we can do it and it’s ours. We don’t have to answer to anybody.”

That mindset signals something of a shift in mass media. Instead of podcasting in hopes of being discovered by a TV network or movie studio, Lewis and Campbell are podcasting because they believe in the medium itself. After all, podcasting has changed their lives, and it has allowed them to be part of the lives of hundreds of thousands of others. Reflecting on GeekBrief’s pervasive appeal, Lewis says, “I’m loving that GeekBrief has become a part of people’s lives and encourages them to say, ‘Hey, I’m a geek and I’m proud of it!’”