A few weeks ago, I asked members of the
Edmonton Podcasting Meetup group what topics they would most like us to talk about. "How to ask good questions" came out on top, and I'm happy to oblige. It's something I think about a lot, as the host of an interview-style podcast and as a listener of many more. Asking good questions isn't just a podcast skill. It's a life skill.
Figuring out who should speak at the meetup was percolating in the back of my head last weekend when I was interviewing Jeff Samsonow about his new web series,
The Underdogs of Comedy, for an upcoming ad on Seen and Heard in Edmonton. And it occurred to me, "Hey, Jeff would be a great guy to talk about that!" After all, his skill at asking questions was one of the many reasons he was hired to replace me at the helm of Capital Ideas — you can hear him in action on the
Capital Ideas Edmonton podcast.
So it was settled. Hear me ask Jeff about asking questions at the May 29 podcasting meetup. Sign up here.
Just a word about where the lines are, because it can be more complicated when you're an independent media producer who wears all of the hats than when you work in, say, a mainstream media newsroom.
You will see ads for The Underdogs of Comedy next week, and they're
paid. I booked Jeff as a meetup guest with my editorial hat on, the same hat I wore when I included his recent post in the blog roundup this week, and that's unpaid. I know what hat I'm wearing at any given time, but it may be hard for you to know. All I can do is disclose. Hence, this.
One more note on money: It's hard to ask for. Since I started Seen and Heard last summer, mentors have been advising me to put a tip jar on my site, to make it easy for people who want to support the work to do so. I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it, even though I know this work is valuable and valued. A tip jar just feels dangerously close to charity, and that's not what this is meant to be.
But a straight-up exchange of value feels better. So that's why I've launched the "classified ads" section you'll see below, prompted by an inquiry from Colin MacIntyre (who you'll also see in the podcast roundup, but for editorial reasons). This idea has been percolating for a while, inspired in part by the classifieds in Nick Quah's indispensable
Hot Pod newsletter and the ads that ran in
How to Douglas.
We have almost 300 subscribers now, and as you know, they are smart, dedicated and plugged-in. If you have something you'd like to promote to such awesome people, and you want to support this project along the way, send me your 300-character ad, and for just $20 plus GST (so $21), you can accomplish both.
I'm at
karen@unlandmedia.com. This is pretty manual right now, but if there's interest, I promise I'll make it electronically easier to do.
Oh, and if you'd like to weigh in on future Meetup topics,
the poll is still open.
