EVE General Discussion

Length. A number of EVE podcasts run to well over an hour. Some to two hours. And one has occasionally hit the four hour mark. (I can read a week's worth articles on themittani.com and EVENews24 in less than four hours, and they hit upon all the important news of the week.) A number of these podcasts trumpet their length, as though that's one of their winning features. I can tell you right now, you're limiting your audience. Few people have time to listen to two hours of podcast. In my experience, the sweet spot length for a podcast is in the 45-60 minute range.

Focus. I find unfocused discussion to be a problem with the majority of EVE podcasts. When I'm listening to an EVE podcast, I want to hear about EVE Online. I do not want your opinion on last week's episode of The Walking Dead. I do not care that you prefer the Packers over the Jets. I do not care that you just had to bring your car in for maintenance. Or that it annoys you when you buy a basket of blueberries, that the ones at the bottom are mostly gone bad. I don't want to listen to you ramble on about everything that pops into your head during the recording of the podcast.

Focus, again. If you have a topic for discussion, then stick to the topic. Long-winded tangents do nothing but deflate the topic at hand, to undermine everything that was said before the tangent. Learn how to stay on topic.

Music. I realize that some of the podcasts run as live radio-style shows, and that they insert music between topics and guests. This allows the hosts to grab drinks and have bio- breaks. But before archiving the show as a downloadable file, please consider removing all the music. It's really no longer necessary. You've already subjected your live listeners to your music tastes, why continue to subject your archive listeners to it?

Hosts. Three hosts/speakers, maximum. Nobody can keep track of six people nattering on, and talking over each other. It's confusing. It's loud. It's chaotic. Two hosts are preferable, with a third rotating guest. But never more than three.

Guests. When you have a guest, please know what knowledge they bring with them to your podcast. Please have questions ready for them ahead of time. While they are a guest, please focus topics on their knowledge base. Too often a host will introduce a guest then they'll dive into topics that the guest isn't particularly knowledgeable in. If you have a small-gang PvPer on, don't involve them in a topic on highsec industry. We're not simply interested in hearing a guest speak, we want to hear them speak on topics they're very familiar with.

CSM. Podcasts get too excited to have CSM members on all the time. Often they have very little of value to say. If you're pretty sure you know what sorts of canned answers a CSM person is going to give, then asking them that question is a big waste of time. It's a big waste of time having them on in the first place. Don't have them on immediately following a CSM Summit. They are so hogtied by the NDA that they can't talk specifics. And they won't. You know when you ask them what the summit was like, that they're going to say "It was good. Different than the last one, but good." (And be careful with Hans, because he can turn "It was good" into a 1000 word monologue.) Nobody needs to hear that, it's a huge waste of everyone's time. Wait until after the summit minutes are released, after you've read them, when you can write out a set of very specific questions. Having the CSM as a guest is not a draw unless listeners are sure there's something of value going on in the meta-game at the moment (i.e. summit minutes, the release of a devblog, etc.)

do not care that you prefer the Packers over the Jets.

I think the greater issue here is that Poetic can't find a focused and informative podcast from the EVE community.

It's something we're lacking.

In short, you don't listen to podcasts because they have too much talking from other people.

Kind of scary when forum posts start getting footnotes. Better stomp those buggers to death before they reproduce and everyone starts footnoting.