Back on February 9th, I wrote a post about how I was feeling like a podcasting hippy, because I asserted that I wasn’t going to beg people to vote for me on any of a number of different sites which attempt to rank podcasts.

I didn’t really expect it to be noticed, but Dave Slusher mentioned it in his February 13th podcast. Dave apparently tried really hard to walk the past to “podcast purity”, but finds himself asking that people vote for him on podcastalley, and expressed the opinion that I would be disappointed with him.

Dave, fear not! I’m not disappointed. I wasn’t really trying to act as anyone’s conscience, although in reading my posting again, I see that it could be taken that way, and there are several other related points I could have made more forcefully. Let me try again, and perhaps in the repetition my point will be made more clearly.

First of all, I’m not immune to the call of popularity. I get a charge with every email that I get regarding my weblog and my podcasts. The idea that people the entire world over may be looking forward to the new episode of Brainwagon Radio just rocks my world. I’m averaging about three hundred downloads per episode. That’s three hundred people who have volunteered fifteen minutes of their day to find out what I’m doing and what I have to say. That rocks my world.

When I began podcasting, pubsub.com gave a linkrank for my blog somewhere in the eight hundred thousand range or lower. Today, my blog is ranked about fifty thousandth. Why do I know these things? Why, because I’d like to know how popular I am, of course. I also noted that you are ranked about 1000. Man, that’s really cool. If we assume that popularity scales as Zipf’s law, that means that you should be reaching about fifty times as many people as I am, or fifteen thousand people per episode. Yeowza! Good job, man.

A couple of months ago I asked myself a question: “What are these guys doing to attract readers and listeners that I am not doing?” After all, I was podcasting really close to the beginning. Many popular podcasts began significantly after me. Why have some podcasts gone through explosive growth in popularity, while mine has trudged along with fairly meager growth in popularity? You see, I wanted to be one of the popular kids too.

A few days worth of contemplation gave me a few answers.

One reason that people are more popular is quite simply that they work harder than I do. Take for example Todd over at Geek News Central. That guy is obviously busting his ass to promote his podcast, develop ties to others who are doing podcasting, trying to line up sponsors, checking every statistic he can find to see who is linking to him, and begging his listeners to vote for him. He’s doing everything he can to make every objective measure he can find as positive as possible.

The second reason that people are more popular is that they have offer a better product. Take Michael Geohagen and his outstanding Reel Reviews. Oh, my, god. That guy is simply outstanding! He takes a popular topic (movies) and delivers terrific content every time.

Lastly, the third reason that some podcasts are more popular is because some of the people behind the podcast are more popular. Take for example Adam, or Dawn and Drew. They are successful as podcasters not so much because of their message, but because they are the ones saying the message. The triumph of personality over content.

So, after introspection, I had my answers. If I wanted to be popular, if I wanted to climb into the stratosphere of elite podcasters, I saw what I needed to do.

But I also saw that what I needed to do wasn’t what I wanted to do.

My friend Tom runs an experimental music series in here in Berkeley. One time I asked him why he did it, why he poured his energy and his cash into it, and he said “nobody else is promoting the kind of music that I want to listen to, and if I don’t do it, nobody else will”. That conversation popped back into my head as I thought about podcasting.

Underneath all of the talking about gadgets and geeky computer science and audio and the like, I have a message:

The Internet will allow you to communicate with people you’ve never met, and exchange information about any topic, no matter how niche, no matter how small. You can use whatever medium you desire: text, audio or video and directly reach people in their spare moments throughout the day. And most importantly, no matter what skill level you have, even if your budget is miniscule, you can do it.

To me, my audience isn’t an audience, they are all potential bloggers and podcasters. Perhaps all they need is an example of one guy podcasting for the sheer fun of it to realize that they can do it, that they can participate. The world would be better if everyone were blogging, if everyone were recording their stories and ideas, and sharing their photographs. Just as my friend Tom is trying to create an environment where music is created, encouraged and shared, I’m podcasting in part to show that your thoughts and ideas can be shared.

People will fight for fame and fortune. I’m not surprised or even disappointed that it happens. But I’m interested in podcasting because it gives an outlet for individuals in the long tail. Maybe some of us will become famous out here, but regardless, this is where the good stuff is, even if it isn’t popular. I know why I blog and podcast, and that’s enough for me.

I’ve come to suspect, as my brother has often asserted, that I’m a hippy.

You won’t find me squatting in a geodesic dome, smoking plants that I grow in my garden. I don’t drive a broken down VW bus, crudely decorated with cans of spray paint. I’m not a fan of “free love”: my wife gets all I have to offer.

But as I have recently come to realize while trying to put out more podcasts, I am a bit of a hippy. I’m not the slick, polished voice of the media. I’m the broken down folk singer who isn’t always on key, and doesn’t always sing about what’s popular, but does it “for the love of the music, man.”

Not everyone who is podcasting is a hippy. Some people treat it like a business. Some people treat it like a contest. Indeed, a great deal of the discussion about podcasting seems to center around how to become popular and how to make a buck. Nearly every podcasting index site seems to run some kind of ranking, and many podcasters nag their listeners incessantly to vote for them. Some even have created podcast awards.

I’m not sure whether to be amused or depressed. For all the talk about how different podcasting is, we see that podcasters are (as a whole, with exceptions, obviously) not much different than the people involved in the more traditional media they hope to replace. Ultimately, people will scramble for bits of money and bits of fame, and in doing so, they lose sight of anything truely interesting they have to say.

I’m perhaps as guilty as the rest, but I promise to try to not waste your time in some attempt to move up a couple of notches on the popularity scale. If you want to vote me up on some list, go right ahead, but I’m not going to waste your time telling you to. I’m not trying to sell my own vision, but merely to put my own vision out for consumption. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to buy into it or not, and ultimately, whether you do or not doesn’t affect my desire to put it out there.

I don’t have the ego necessary to believe that what I do is important: let’s face it, I talk mostly about geeky stuff and gadgetry. But I would like to make one point: if you are considering doing a podcast, just do it. Don’t worry about not having the right equipment, the right voice, the right message, or enough technical knowledge. Don’t listen to the naysayers who run down blogs and podcasts as being the noisy, useless voice of an uniformed populace, and particularly don’t listen to yourself when you listen to your first attempt and begin to think those same things. I still think I sound funny when I listen to my own podcasts. It’s natural.

Frankly, I’m sick of talking head media. People in suits. People who smile while discussing pain and death. Pop music stars as role models. Fashion. Bleh. I’m just not interested.

If you are sitting in front of a machine capable of showing you this posting, you probably have access to everything you need to create a podcast. I used to think of computers as boxes for computation. Later, I thought they were all about applications. Now, 90% of what I use my computer for is communication, and podcasting is just another way that I can use to reach not just an audience, but a real community.

I’m not selling anything. I just do it for the love of the podcast.

Addendum: Special thanks to Lisa Williams for helping me clarify this train of thought with her excellent Four Minutes About Podcasting.

Try comparing this blog entry with the audioblog that I mentioned yesterday. Same event, different media, different impressions. Thanks Wil!

Addendum: Perhaps I should expand on why I think this is interesting. Some people have claimed that audioblogs are a waste of time because of their many “disadvantages” compared to the written word. Yes, the written word is more compact, can be composed with simpler equipment, and generally allows for more thoughtful, precise description of events and feelings. On the other hand, recordings of speech can convey immediacy, informality, intensity and emotion in a very real way. Wil presented two different versions of the same event. Which is better? Which is more powerful? I think they give different aspects of the same event. I find both compelling.