This Saturday and Sunday is the Podcast Maker Weekend, a diverse series of workshops that runs alongside the London Podcast Festival. Sessions will cover the art, craft, technology, and business of podcasting. Each will stay online for 72 hours after streaming to accommodate podcasters anywhere in the world.
This weekend brings together major voices as well as independent makers and production houses. On Sunday, Kathy Tu (The New York Times’ Opinion Audio, Nancy) and Avery Trufelman (The Cut, 99% Invisible) will present “How I Made This,” a masterclass in which each will talk through the creation of a favorite piece.
Designed for beginners and experienced creators alike, the Maker Weekend was started in 2017 by Martin Zaltz Austwick. Workshop tickets are à la carte and affordable. They’re ‘pay what you can’ starting at £2, whether you choose “Sound Design, Simplified,” “Audio Drama on a Budget,” or sign up for the whole roster.
Spotify is beginning to test “Polls,” a new feature designed to make podcasts interactive. Listeners will answer questions posed by the podcast hosts during the show, writes Sarah Perez of TechCrunch. “The user can then answer the question and view how their answer stacks up with the rest of the listener base in real time.”
“Podcasts that support polls will only be able to feature one per episode, and each poll can only pose one question,” Perez explains. “A host could ask the audience to vote on who the next guest should be, or they could ask them to settle a debate that cropped up on the show.” The feature is in small-group beta testing.
A user has to participate in order to see a poll’s results. According to Spotify, the votes will remain anonymous. For that reason, Perez figures “the goal is not to accumulate individualized data on listeners” but to inform the host. Anonymous how, though? Finding new ways to accumulate that data is kind of Spotify’s thing.
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