I’m a little late commenting–I only started listening to your podcast two weeks ago, and I wanted to go through the episodes in order, so I just finished off #23. It’s been great couple of weeks and I’m not sure how I’ll fill the commute when I get caught up.

I won’t bother to duplicate the ideas that others have already expressed; instead I’ll spend a bit of time trying to articulate ideas that haven’t come up yet. While I too am much more likely to listen than to watch a podcast, the question of whether your listeners would want to see you reminded me of one issue that I’ve found myself wondering about fairly often over the episodes: discrimination. That is, one value of video is that I can pretty easily tell who’s talking. Usually, I think, regular listeners to a radio show or whatever pretty quickly get attuned to the voices of the participants, especially if the number of participants is low (and I think three is certainly a manageable number). To my ear, though, some voices are just similar enough that even though I hear them a lot I have trouble distinguishing them. And for whatever reason, Tom and Mills sound enough alike that I’m often not sure who’s talking. Usually it’s not all that burning a question, but it’s occasionally important to tracing the nuances of a discussion.

There’s probably not that much you can do to address that issue (short of Mills or Tom deciding to adopt a distinctive accent–British upper-class ones seem to succeed well in the US). But it is something I hope you can keep in mind as you talk to guests. It’s not always easy to address there, either, but radio offers models for strategies, I think.

On the subject of guests: I really value the guest segments of your shows. As others commenters have pointed out, one of the strengths of your podcast is that you all are people worth listening to; the key to good guest segments, I think, is that they should also be people worth listening to. So much is happening in the field that I often bemoan the fact that I don’t have gobs of opportunities to hear all of the really smart people in digital humanities talking about whatever it is they specialize in or what they think about some recent development or whatever. I’m inspired by smart people talking about interesting things, and more smart people is always to the good. I realize that getting guest segments into a podcast is always going to require some more effort, so I appreciate when you’ve gone to the trouble to do it.

What I think is a minority opinion: I generally prefer less planned and focused discussions. You mentioned that there’s a tendency for you to chat as though you were in the hall or something. To my mind, that’s the most valuable kind of conversation to overhear–I think there are fewer chances to eavesdrop on conversations among interesting and smart people than to be addressed by interesting and smart people.

Finally, on a closely related note, I think that one big strength of your podcast is that it enacts the model of scholarship that you profess. Just last night I was waxing enthusiastic about your podcast to a colleague of mine here at CDRH, and it occurred to me that one thing I value about it is that it’s a demonstration of how it’s possible to do scholarship on the web in a forum in which one isn’t always worried about being “right” or protecting one’s reputation. It seems paradoxical but it’s true, I think, that the warts-and-all approach is often the best way to garner respect. Of course, it’s crucial that you aren’t mostly warts . . .

Happy birthday and thanks for the stimulating conversation.

For my purposes, 45 minutes is a bit too long — I subscribe to almost 30 podcasts, so I’m completely dependent on the blue (“New”) bullet on both my iPod and in iTunes to tell me what to listen to… so if I don’t finish a long episode on the first try, chances are I won’t get back to it later. I’d actually prefer that you break up each episode into two separate segments, but I’m probably in the minority.

Oh, and I love the suggestion above by Lincoln, to collaborate with THAT Podcast to do a video about how you produce Digital Campus.

Keep up the great work!

Audio volume: I’ve had no problem (I tend to listen to you while playing video games with sound off) so I can adjust volume of speakers easily. But, you might want to try ReplayGain which gives an decent baseline for audio tracks–and you can use the information from ReplayGain to adjust things in Audacity.

Length: It has always seemed good

Video: No. It would ruin your simple setup and add nothing.

Guests: If they have some special expertise that would be good. But, when you have a guest they should be doing most of the talking. But, if it’s just adding a fourth person for the show it will get more cumbersome having so many people.

Topics: I think you do a good job–I really like the links you provide since I my aggregator for podcasts is Google Reader and not iTunes so your blog posts are one click away. I’m always up for copyright discussion–how the prevalence of music piracy is changing people’s opinions about copyright law and how that affects their views of tight fisted Academic Journal copyright control. (Especially in relation to some of the new online journals you’ve linked to). It’s as related to scholarship as JuicyCampus 🙂

Keep up the good work.

I listened to the podcast this morning and I’m trying to give you a little feedback.

– First thing is don’t worry about the sound quality, it’s fine. Remember it’s the content that matters.

– The format, three sections, is good. Keep it.

– Guest are usually good. Use them.

– Video is not important (for me, at this time).

– I like the technology part but the real take-away are stories about how the technology changed (enhanced) the learning or teaching experience.

I happen to work in an environment where the uptake is pretty slow. What I need is convincing stories as to how and why these things work and why everyone should care and be willing to make the investment.

Happy Birthday, and I’ll be listening in the upcoming year.

I too am surprised at the generally good audio quality you maintain with such cheap gear. There are many podcasters who spend a lot more money but fail to get the sound as good. You’re certainly not the worst culprits, but I think in general when you consider car stereos and low-quality speakers on computers a louder volume is better: people can easily turn the volume down, but they can’t turn it up beyond 10 (or 11 if they have a special amplifier). Perhaps a bit more compression before normalization would be in order? But this certainly isn’t something you should be worrying about too much.

I think the overall quality of the show owes a lot to Dan’s charm and naturally smooth chairing of proceedings and the general likeability of all three of you, and also to the fact that you seem to be doing things in a way that comes natural to you. The whole chemistry of the show is what, in conjunction with interesting content, has put it into the list of 5 shows that I listen to regularly. I don’t think you should tinker too much. It’s great to have guests on from time to time, but it’s also great to have just the 3 of you talking about the topic(s) that you have chosen for the episode. I certainly hope you keep the Picks of the Week.

One quick word on substance. In general, you come up with plenty of good ideas between you, but there are certain dangers associated with the fact that in general your ideals are in sync. I’m thinking in particular of the episode where you seemed to accept uncritically the idea that a Google-provided campus email system was superior to one provided in-house. Even if you think that security-related counter-arguments are hogwash, I think you owe it to your listeners to state them clearly before demolishing them. This was one of those occasions where a little list of points to cover, perhaps on a wiki page shared by the three of you, might have been a useful aid.

A final pedantic note:
“required” is spelt incorrectly on the field for mail address input on comments.

As a fellow podcaster (http://afripod.aodl.org/), I was especially interested in your candid self-critique. Since you asked for feedback on this process, here are some of my thoughts:

Length and Format: 50 mins is a bit long. Consider shortening the initial “News Round-up” segment and doing a little editing of some of the conversations. They sometimes wander a bit. I would like to hear more about digital issues on campuses outside the US. Keep the “Picks of the Week.”

Guests: I am biased on this issue because my podcast is organized around a featured guest(s) . . . but I think having guests really opens up the possibilities for dialogue, networking, and knowledge-sharing. Given that CallRecorder and Skype have served you exceedingly well so far, there shouldn’t be too many technical problems having on- and off-campus guests on the podcast more regularly.

Content: As you point out in #23, the focus has gotten sharper with time, thus enhancing the quality of the show. The content you present is outstanding. It’s the reason I come back to your show again and again. Building on what others have said in the postings above, I would be interested in hearing more about how specific projects at CHNM demonstrate the ways in which new media are changing the field of history.

Overall, the hosting trio has excellent chemistry; the format is solid; and the analytical insights consistently sharp. Thanks for a terrific show and Happy Birthday!

I much prefer podcasts to videocasts. It might be just me, but I take in a podcast while I’m doing something else (like drive or walk the dog or see above) and it works for me.

I’m an instructional technologist so your content is really relevant to what I do and I consider listening to Digital Campus professional development. Thanks for doing this excellent podcast! I always look forward to it.