DB#340 - Excitement Overdose
Today: a special Comic Con report; Lost - the Videogame; Indy 4: the return of Marion Ravenwood; the Simpsons Movie - visiting the animation studios with Luis Escobar; SQPN and new audiences; Podcast Awards 2007: 8 SQPN nominations! Strategic voting: my thoughts and advice; St. Anthony now also covers data recovery: the resurrection of my frozen harddrive!
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Great geek segment! A little un-common sense and a bit of prayer can go a long way.
-Bob
Congrats sqpn on all your monimations. I hope all shows win. while Hands an Feet may have a smaller audience, I think it would be great to enlarge that audience of teens and young adults as they the future fot he Church and such an award would be a great opportunity to bring them into all the wonderful programming at sqpn. And, this audience may very well be the future of sqpn as well. While Catholic Insider may have a larger audience, at this time, (and it is a wonderful program) it may not be the “tool” that draws your future listeners to sqpn. Just my thoughts.
I respectfully must disagree with what you advised today with the voting on the Podcast Awards. I’m sure it wasn’t intended but you were pitting one show against another. I realize that you are trying to help all the shows but I believe it would have been better just to accept the fact that an SQPN show may not win in the religion category and that people should just vote for their favorite show. I don’t believe it is worth winning an award to pit one show against another. And unfortunately the show you chose for us to vote for was a show of yours! Again, not intended to gain glory for yourself, I know that’s not what you’re after, but at the same time, it doesn’t look good. And it can’t have made the creators of the Hands and Feet podcast feel all that great about what was being said even though you were not trying to insult them.
Please don’t get me wrong. I love what you do, and I agree that SQPN will be a major media force in years to come. But this kind of tactic, of manipulating the vote for a goal, is not right in this case. It’s different from when you set up strategically how we should nominate people. That was okay because no one was pitted against the other. But in this case I really don’t think it was the right thing to do.
I know that you are always trying to do God’s will and what is best so it pains me to write this, but I couldn’t let it go without a comment.
Susan,
You make some good points. I would counter, however, that since Catholic Insider really is the staple and foundation of SQPN, that as a whole network, it only makes sense to position that show for that category out of the SQPN shows nominated. To do otherwise could very well be a disservice to the network.
We could have promoted all of our shows for the religion category nominations, and probably have filled up the roster with SQPN shows in that one category alone. But that wasn’t the point, and no matter how you look at it, when the nominations were announced, SQPN was suddenly in an unavoidably awkward position of having to choose one show to promote.
Though it’s uncomfortable, I thought Father Roderick handled the topic with just the right touch. For those of us with shows on SQPN, we owe him quite a lot for helping our own shows find larger audiences. Voting for Catholic Insider seems like a no brainer to me, and as has always been the case, will most likely end up helping all of the other shows on the network at the same time.
And when it boils down to it, Father was just making a suggestion. I don’t think his intention was to force people to vote a certain way, but to help all shows on the network. And as the network grows and more shows are added, those people will only benefit from this as well.
We all benefit from Fr. Roderick’s work - both podcasters and podcaster listeners. I hope he wins in this category every year. He deserves it.
Well, you BOTH make good points; and perhaps the best thing to do is vote our consciences. And meanwhile we all should pray for the same detachment toward recognition that Father so well described us as needing toward material goods. The SQPN apostolate should grow in God’s time, or it will perhaps suffer. And that would be a greater tragedy than any single missed award.
I reread my comment and realized it might sound like I thought you were in it for ego feeding, and I DON’T MEAN THAT. But I do think it’s normal to think we understand how God’s will is best worked out, and we turn out to be wrong.
I had best stop here. It’s late on Friday, and I don’t want to hurt anyone. But I also don’t want to see you disappointed or frustrated by a fleeting contest…
Hi Fr. Roderick -
I also posted these on the RA forums, but I thought you’d find them interesting and helpful for future podcasts. The LA Times put out these great Simpsons facts at:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-et-simpsons28jul28,1,1257089.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews
Father, this was on the newly popular listing of stories on Digg.com. It might be better suited for the Secrets of Harry Potter, but I think you may want to address it is it keeps getting dugg. http://www.exposingsatanism.org/harrypotter2.htm
This is written from a very fundamentalist viewpoint, and there is a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment on the website. I can see this issue raising its head once again in the wake of the success of book 7 and movie 5.
God bless you and J.K. Rowling!
Dear Father,
I think your right about Catholic Insider as far as the SQPN vote. I listen to all of the SQPN shows in that category and I like the Carmelite prayer podcast also, but I will vote Catholic Insider. I do love the Hands and Feet Show also and hopefully just its nominations will get more people listening to it.
By the way did you know about thecatholicinsider.com? Crisis magazine which is a very good Catholic magazine that covers the faith and politics here in the states is going to be web only in September and will be using that domain name. I find it unfortunate that they choose that domain name because of the confusion. Though I wonder if they ever contacted you about this?
The issue I have with promoting Catholic Insider as the flagship is that while it is the oldest and most popular, it is so infrequently updated. There have only been 9 new episodes plus 5 video podcasts since the last Podcast Awards a year ago. And it was over three months after the awards were announced before a new audio episode was released, failing to capitalize on the great attention brought to it. I know that it takes so much more effort to produce Catholic Insiders and that is the reason why there are fewer episodes, but is that likely to change?
DB has 200 new episodes since last August and Hands and Feet have faithfully done 35 weekly shows in the past year.
I know the Simpsons series on Catholic Insider is going to attract a lot of people, but is it the podcast that is going to do the most for SQPN? Are you really going to have the time and energy to produce these soundseeing tours that we love and you talk about so often? Are you going to get through the piles of MiniDiscs?
I voted for it last year. Every day. If, by my votes, Catholic Insider wins another Podcast Award this year, will you be able to turn it into the regular, signature show that you want it to be and share your love of this world with all the people who check out the winner?
It feels like you put so much more of yourself and your heart into the Daily Breakfast. I think it’s a show with much more crossover potential - a Star Quest show. As a protestant, I found the Daily Breakfast and listened to it. I don’t think I would have even considered listening to a show called “The Catholic Insider”. I want to reward you with my votes for the show that I consider the true flagship of the network, but if you want our votes to go to Catholic Insider and you think the changes of the next year will bring it back to its former glory, I will direct my votes that way.
@Jon: I’m well aware of the frequency problem, and it is part of the growing pains of our network. SQPN is expanding rapidly, and guiding this development eats up a lot of time and energy. However, podcast production and consistency of our signature shows is high on our list of priorities. As soon as we get proper funding, we will bring in production assistants that can take the workload of my shoulders in terms of editing, which will ensure a steady flow of Catholic Insider episodes.
@Susan, Naomi: as I said in the podcast, I’m not disqualifying the merits of the other shows, but I’m proposing a strategic vote so that at least one of the SQPN shows has a chance of winning that category. The Catholic Insider, and all the publicity surrounding that podcast, brought in thousands of listeners to the network, many of which are now also listening to other SQPN shows. The Daily Breakfast hasn’t been able to do that, despite all the hard work - its audience has not expanded since last year. When you participate in a cooking contest, you make your signature dish. To me, and to a big audience, that is still the Catholic Insider.
@Jeff: No, Crisis magazine has not contacted me about this, and frankly, I’m shocked that they use that domain name to point people to their online magazine. After all, the Catholic Insider has been around since the dawn of podcasting, and is one of our household brands. I think we need to follow up on this, because it’s going to cause a lot of confusion.
Just a thought about backing up data on DVD’s. I usually do that using DVD’s from a good brand (high quality) and burn it at low speed.
It’s possible to lose data on cheap ones. Years ago I bought blank CD’s at ALDI market and backed up my data. The disks were unreadable after 6 months and I lost a lot of university stuff in the process…
When doing backups, use good DVDs and keep one copy off site. A fire could destroy all copies at a single site.
Robert
I’m happy for you regarding the harddrive. On the matter of Podcast Awards, I’m a little concerned about you trying to steer the voters to vote tactically. Aren’t the nominated shows independent and should be treated as such. If you like one show better than the other, you should vote for that regardless of how the total SQPN votes turns out. I never like tactics voting, neither on Podcast Awards nor anywhere else. I will vote on this year’s Podcast Awards, but I am going to vote for my favourite shows, period.
Father, do the podcast categories have first, second and third places? or is it just a winner?
I’m sorry but I can’t support your strategy. I love the Daily Breakfast but the Catholic Insider has not done much for me in the last 12 months and as Jon pointed out, there hasn’t been many podcasts in those last 12 months either. I feel the award should reward whichever podcast has been the best in the last year and that in itself should be the best promotional tool.
It seems as though there is a little animosity over this topic of the Podcast Awards, and there really shouldn’t be. I’ll give my two cents as our show is mentioned a couple of times on the show and on the thread…
Firstly, we are extremely awed by and grateful to our listeners who nominated us. It’s an honor to even be on the list!
While we would all love an SQPN victory for this category, I think it’s more important that people vote for the show that best deserves this award in this category. Although I can’t blame the folks at SQPN for their strategic approach, I think each person should vote their conscience and if that includes our little show, that’s cool. If not, that’s cool too. I’m not sure that I agree with the strategy, but that’s not my call and the SQPN board certainly has the right to promote the core SQPN brands over the affiliate shows.
Would I have liked to see Father Roderick and SQPN endorse our show? Absolutely, but if our listeners like our show and think it deserves the award, they are more than free to vote for it. I don’t think Father Roderick or Greg Willits or anyone associated with SQPN would disagree with that statement. Incidentally, we didn’t have any issues with Father’s comments on this episode. We support SQPN’s efforts and will continue to do our part.
It WOULD be nice to have a podcast award, but regardless of what happens, we’re going to keep podcasting because we love doing it and hopefully because people enjoy it. As long as we still have one listener with an open ear, we’ll be here.
Hi, Father Roderick.
Here are a couple of links about topics on previous shows. First, is an item I came across in a Dallas, TX newspaper about the 7-11 promotion of “The Simpsons”. Apparently it was a great success and a lot of fun for everyone involved.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-7-Eleven.ART0.State.Edition1.35fa414.html
Secondly, given the near disaster you had with your hard drive, here’s a really cool device that may make sense at some point in the future. It’s a little pricey at nearly $500, but watch the video and you will be impressed. By the time you’re ready for it, it may be more affordable.
http://www.drobo.com/
-Bill
My two cents on the discussion about the voting strategy:
If a popular SQPN show wins an award, it is likely that it will attract new listeners, right? Those new listeners visit SQPN.com and see more show, including the affiliate shows. So the affiliate shows are able to attract more listeners, too. This will not happen when the votes are spread over more SQPN-shows.
What Fr. Roderick suggested is applying the game theory that’s called ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma. With this technique the group is better off, even when some individuals aren’t.
Regardless of any awards outcome, I wish the Hands and Feet podcasters much success. They are reaching an important, youthful demographic on their own merits — my sense is that they outreach using other networking avenues (myspace, facebook, et al.) popular with teens.
Do make a backup to to DVD/CD. External hard drives are more prone to failure than internal drives. This is because the cooling is not as good. Good quality DVDs/CDs are not as affected by temparture. If you don’t already have Google Desktop. Get it and add the HDDLife gadget. It will tell you the internal temperature of the drive and whether or not it is in an acceptable range. Right now it is 25 C in my office, but my disk drive is 41.
Hi
good news re hard drive i have been using this freeware program to check my drives, it might have helped forwarn you.
http://www.panterasoft.com/
HDDhealth
[...] It may or may not work. As it warms up it increases the chance of failing again. Here is a podcast of a Priest in the Netherlands the successfully did this to recover his photos. You’ll have to ignore the "please vote this [...]