Perils of Pocasting on the Road

Well, I spent the past four days in Las Vegas (which is about too and half days too long to be in Vegas if you ask me) attending the NAB 2011 show. I was there to evaluate new equipment that Oberlin College will be purchasing for the Art and Cinema programs for the next year.

While I was there, our class podcast was due. So I had the bright idea of creating my podcast in my hotel room. In my podcast I would share products I saw at the show for the Oberlin faculty. I thought a podcast would be a good venue for this. I looked at the podcast like I was doing a radio piece just for the Oberlin faculty. While I thought it turned out OK, recording on the road presented some challenges:

• Hotel Internet: For $11.99 per 24 hours, one would think the internet connection would be a little more stable.
• Air Conditioning: I broke my podcast into little segments (one segment per product). It seemed as soon as I was close to being done completing a segment, the AC in room would start blowing and I would have to start all over again.
• Paper-thin walls. In the time I was recording I was interrupted by the following: housekeeping, the vacuum in the hallway, someone sliding a menu of a pizza place under my door, and loud, drunk people (of course) screaming the hallway.

But I was glad I finally got it done and I learned two lessons:

1. Podcasting is a lot harder than it looks or sounds.
2. If you are going to create a podcast in a hotel room, place the "Do Not Disturb" sign on your door.

That's all I have for now. I hope we receive our grades for our website soon. I just want to make sure that I am on the right track. Hope to see you next week when I do my synchronous discussion.