HPR is a podcast community for those that want to have a go at podcasting but don’t have the resources or skills to be able to go it alone from the start (although some of the regular contributors do also have their own independent podcasts). Setting up and managing a podcast site is quite a commitment if your not sure if you want to do more than the occasional show, and as it already has regular listeners you’re sure to have someone listen to what you record.
HPR releases a new show every day Monday to Friday but these are all from shows made by the community members, and can be of any topic of interest to the contributors. As the title suggests many of the shows are technology related, but they don’t have to be. Recent shows have covered, Repairing a Truck, brewing beer and recording a band. So for example if your into making Jam and want to share how to do this on a podcast you can.
A few weeks ago one of the Volunteers who manage the Web site, posted a podcast explaining that there were only a few shows left in the queue for publication and if things didn’t improve there was a danger that without any future content the site would have to close. This was the rallying cry I needed to get off my backside and record something for HPR.
It’s not my first go at podcsting as I was a member of the fullcirclemagazine.org podcast for a few months with some other members of this Makerspace/LUG, and had also done a one off podcast with, Dan lynch (Linux outlaws), Pete Cannon (The Dick Turpin Road show), Les Pounder (fullcircle podcast) and Heeed, which was released as HPR episode 0844 called ‘The Flying Handbag’. We recorded this show during Blackpool Barcamp in 2011. It’s quite funny although slightly adult content, so if you want to listen its in the HPR archive.
However as far as recording myself alone talking (or rambling) about something I wanted to share with an audience, was something I’d not done before.
The biggest fear I had was the perceived difficulty getting it in a format to broadcast but it’s all taken care of by the community volunteers, all I had to do was record my show, (I chose to share about how I started to use Linux, as my first show) and then choose when I wanted it to be aired, follow the instructions on the upload page, and the rest is done for you.
So if you’ve ever been tempted to have a go at a podcast but didn’t know how to go about it give it a go via the HPR podcast community
Watch out Blackpool Makerspace attendees I’ll be bringing the Zoom H2 to meetings and trying to encourage people to do interviews for future HPR shows.
This is an edited version of a post on my occasional blog at:
Blackpool LUG and virtual Makerspace 