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Ideal Podcast Duration

Some of you may have noticed a poll on the left side bar on our home page.  These polls provide a great way for me to aggregate your feedback on how to improve the podcast.  When I first started this podcast my target duration was 15 miuntes to a half hour.  Then I started interviewing all these interesting people and my duration shot up to about 45 miuntes.  I actually edit the hour long interview down quite a bit, but they are still longer then I planned.  Maybe that is a good thing.  Let me know what you think.  How long would the ideal podcast be for you?

Preferred Delphi podcast duration?

  • Don't care, just keep them coming! (45%, 53 Votes)
  • 15 - 30 minutes (28%, 33 Votes)
  • 30 - 45 minutes (16%, 19 Votes)
  • < 15 minutes (8%, 9 Votes)
  • 1 hour (3%, 3 Votes)

Total Voters: 117

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8 replies on “Ideal Podcast Duration”

It is important that all information is given through and not edited out, so duration should not be important – maybe break it into more episodes/parts, if it is too long.

I usually listen to the podcast on my way to and back from work. As that’s a ~20 minute drive I can typically listen to a 35-45 minute episode split in two and I think that’s a good duration in any case. However, like JB I would also prefer if you were able to solve this by splitting the interviews into several episodes rather than trimming them down.

Then again… I’m not really sure if I could stand to wait a whole week for the second part… 😉
Maybe publish the second part as a special mid-week episode?

Keep up the good work! It’s been a really entertaining and very informative ride so far! 🙂

Cheers,

Oliver

Split them into multiple parts of 20 minutes, but release them all at the same time. Otherwise if one starts listening to a large podcast and then syncs with iTunes before having listened to it all, sometimes it gets deleted as having been listened to.

Personally, I find podcasts an awkward way of communicating hard info. Sure, it’s interesting to hear the person’s voice, but they’re not ideal for truly technical stuff. If you vaguely recall there was something very relevant to a current problem in some podcast or other – you’re up the creek without a paddle.

Text transcriptions are the way to go. You can search, cut-and-paste, print for reference, mail them to a friend, highlight relevant bits – much more useful.

…for example, I downloaded the Barry Kelly podcast to a memory stick (because I can’t disturb my work colleagues at work).

But I still haven’t gotten around to listening to it at home! Were it text, I could have read and digested it here at work.

Reading is faster, and you can re-read tricky bits until you have understood them, whilst the chit-chat parts can be browsed over.

I do agree that really hairy technical stuff is easier to grasp, search and maintain as text. I remember the UNDU was pretty good (Unofficial Newsletter of Delphi Users).
But I think that the podcasts is for something entirely different.. That is to tell us not-too-technical stuff…
I download the podcast, stick it on my iPhone, and like Oliver Giesen, I listen to it on my way to work (I’ve got an hour and a quarter each way, so thats ok for me)..
Ken, I can’t really (safely) read the stuff on the way..
So, this is for me an opportunity to actually do something whilst going to work.. If I had to read it, I’d probably never get it done…

Just my two bits..
/Jens

I will try breaking long interviews into multiple parts, published closer together. We will see how that goes.

I agree that a podcast is no replacement for written text. I’ve been looking at transcription options. I generally prefer text to podcasts as well, but my goal was to fill the gap when a podcast works – like driving to work, etc. As Jens points out: You can’t read while driving (actually I tried it, and it isn’t to safe).

I commute by tram and often take the opportunity to prepare my work day. One of the advantages of living in a European city.

Just quickly want to add, I DO think your podcasts are great and I really, really appreciate what I get out of them, text or no text. Thank you very much indeed for the idea and effort you put into them!

So: Now we need a volunteer to transcribe them.

Why is everybody looking at me? 🙂

But back to the question; I’m not sure breaking them up is going to make everybody happy. If, as it seems, people listen whilst driving, does that not mean selecting/sorting the clips you want to hear makes things awkward and dangerous again?

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