Making a Podcast, Intro: A Year of Producing the Recompiler

The first episode of the Recompiler podcast posted on February 4, 2016. This means I’ve had nearly a year of experience producing a podcast and in a series of posts, I’d like to share what I’ve learned.

Unlike with In Beta, a podcast I co-hosted with Kevin Purdy, I am responsible for the entire production of the Recompiler podcast: content development, booking, interviewing, audio engineering (recording and editing), publication, and promotion. With In Beta, I was just a host, responsible for developing content, performing the show, interviewing guests, and writing show notes. Staff from 5by5, the network to which In Beta belongs, did all the other audio engineering tasks and already had a publishing and marketing platform in place.

In truth, figuring out how to do the audio engineering was my biggest obstacle to creating the Recompiler podcast. It’s why there was a several months-long gap between our announcement about the podcast and our first episode.

Looking back, of course, many of the things that seemed overwhelming at the time are now routine. In the next series of posts, I share what I’ve learned. In doing so, I hope to encourage any of you who are interested in making your own podcast and give you to concrete tips for getting started.

Next up: Making a Podcast, Step 1: Identify a Topic, Point of View, and Structure.