By Marcella LaFever
From its roots as audioblogging in the 1980s to its reinvention with the release of the iPod in 2004, the phenomenon of podcasting seems to have skyrocketed in recent years. The inaugural Vancouver Podcast Festival just took accessibility to the digital world to a new level this past November 8th to the 10th.
I could only attend the Friday sessions but it was nice to bump into Jess Wind through the twitterverse while waiting for the panel discussion on “Idea to Audio” to commence. Jess was waiting eagerly for the livecast of Hannah McGregor’s podcast Secret Feminist Agenda in the next session but it seems we did have at least one thing in common – getting some tips on starting a podcast from a fantastic panel that included some people that even other successful podcasters were eager to hear. 
One question to the panel about ways to assess success led to a nice little list, from the obvious “downloads” to the more obscure and harder to measure – big data on whether audience listened all the way through or when they dropped out. Other measures included
- interactions at podcast events
- engagement through twitter, FB, Instagram
- Returning listeners
- critical reviews
with a reminder for “different measures for differ
ent types.”
In Hannah McGregor’s session that followed, we were treated to Hannah’s first ever live interview with two women criminal defense attorneys, Gloria Ng and Colleen Elden. As Hannah puts it, to talk about “charter rights, feminist friendship, and whether the law is a tool that can be bent towards justice or is inherently aligned with the oppressive function of the state!”
The final free session of the day was one with CBC’s Geoff Turner about his podcast On Drugs and David Payne’s Somebody Somewhere taking on true stories of the legal system. Both fascinating to say the very least 🙂
I truly wish I could have made it to the rest of the festival but I am pumped to finally get the Outdoors Golden podcast up and running soon.