Speaking at Podfest Expo: AI & Podcasting

I spoke at Podfest Expo 2024 in the Pecha Kucha track. My topic was AI & Podcasting. Since Pecha Kucha talks are typically 20 slides which automatically advance every 20 seconds, this isn't a long talk by any stretch of the imagination.

So, what's a speaker to do to give value in such a short amount of time? Well, I knew there were several AI focused tracks throughout the three day event. Which made me want to give some foundational concepts as a sort of onboarding for the rest of the knowledge attendees would gain in the coming days.

My goals were simple:

1. As podcasters we should absolutely look into utilizing AI, but the innovations are happening so fast even long-time AI pros are experiencing overwhelm.
2. Take lots of notes over the course of Podfest Expo. Learn from speakers AND fellow podcasters.
3. The majority of the world is NOT actively using AI...yet. Which is good news because that means we all have time to experiment to find what works for us.
4. For podcast producers working with teams, look at the collaborative tools which will fast-track the production process.
5. Think of AI as your second brain. Work together to create audio magic.

When it was all said and done, I had folks walk up to me who told me my talk was insightful and they appreciated my approach. Which was rewarding. As a speaker my goal is to be informational, educational, and somewhat entertaining. Based on the audience response during and after the talk, it looks like I hit the mark.

Sharing AI Tools

Are you using AI as part of your podcast production process? If so, let's talk tools. I'll begin:

When it comes to working on projects as a team, I'm a fan of tools which make collaboration simple. OpenAI recently released ChatGPT Team for entrepreneurs and small business with a minimum of two team members. This was exciting news for me as the previous collaboration tool was ChatGPT Enterprise for large organizations. With ChatGPT Team my small production team can benefit from the power of ChatGPT to actively collaborate on projects.

So Many Options

While I was at Podfest Expo, I made a point to attend as many of the AI sessions as I could. So, I took my own advice and collected a whole lot of notes. Now that I'm back home, I've shared these notes with my team. We have divided up the tools we think could work for our podcast projects. Each one of us will do the research on our respective tools and then report back to the team on what we have learned. The tools that look promising will be used on a test basis to see if they deliver what we need. We are going to make February our AI experiment month. It should make for some exciting times.