This week I’ve updated my Authors page on Maximo Secrets, and added a new photo, oh dear, I’ve suddenly got 8 years older. I’ve added the three most recent IBM badges that will indicate credibility and will swap in the IBM Champions 2022 badge when it is issued. We are developing a similar page for the website of the small Dutch company that employs me and I have permission to use quotes from my three nominees in the IBM Champions program. When I update the page again, I’ll add the quotes and ditch the bits which look as if I might be trying to promote myself for a job.

I gate crashed the Blogging for Beginners Course monthly workshop courtesy of the invitation from Tanya. The topic was how to create a static Homepage and a custom Posts Page using the Blog Posts block. It has come just at the right time for me because I need to do some major surgery on the blog I started last year, which was to be my digital scrapbook.

I’ve been spending a lot more than the allotted one hour this week as I try to catch-up on documenting the first 8 episodes of my personal podcast which I am going to call ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’. This is a take on the George and Weedon Grossmith book ‘The Diary of a Nobody’ which was first published in 1892 although it had been serialised in Punch a few years previously. I’ve been calling myself a Digital Nobody or Digitally Anonymous for several years, as apart from LinkedIn I will not be known on other social media, except for the family WhatsApp. 

When we had the Ken Gagne talk a few weeks ago, I thought I would have to be spending time on Twitter and Facebook to build a following for the podcast. But I’ve decided I really don’t want to spend time on social media, in fact a couple of weeks ago I placed time limits on LinkedIn, BBC, WordPress, my most often used sites, although with the podcasting posts, the announcement of IBM Champions, and the troubles in Ukraine, I’ve failed miserably to keep to any time limits on any day recently. The ‘Diary of a Digital Nobody’ is just for me, if others find it and like it then that’s great, but I won’t spend time promoting it. 

The podcast for Maximo Bite Size is different and will be driven from the audience I already have on Maximo Secrets and will be found by anyone searching for Maximo. I don’t have to fight it out for an audience as there seems to be only one other person with a Maximo related podcast, so that avoids the need for any social media except what I already do on LinkedIn.

Anyway, I now have 8 scripted episodes for ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’, one for each week of this year, a diary starts on 1st January, doesn’t it? I’ve read through them all out loud, and realised that I have repeated myself a little, but I can correct that next week and do a final proofread. The timings vary from 14m50s on Week 1, with three around 7m20s and the last two around 10 or 11 minutes. I had wondered whether I should make them all roughly the same size, but sometimes nothing much happens in a week, and other times a lot more can be said, and so I am much more relaxed about one episode being double in length to another.

I wasn’t trying with the narration, and I didn’t record it, but the one thing I did notice was I wasn’t emphasising the right words. Prior to a recording you are likely to have a dry run, and then record a couple of times. I will print out the script and highlight where I need to emphasise and pause. I’m also thinking that it will be better if I am standing. I’m thinking this whole process of learning to deliver a podcast may take some time while I learn the techniques, so I’ve decided that I will create a new web site and publish the scripts first. I’ll feel as if I am making progress if I have at least published something.

The other decision I’ve made is that I am going to use my paper diary to jot down what is happening rather than leaving it to the weekend to try to remember what has happened. I’m also going to try to limit the documenting to one hour or one CD. I am beginning to feel that catching up on the documentation for both ‘My Podcasting Journey’ and ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’ that it is all beginning to take over my life. Perhaps I am feeling the first symptoms of podfade before getting to the point of recording anything.

And what of Maximo Bite Size? I can justify spending some work time preparing for my daily Zoom calls with Tadas, our engineering intern from Latvia, I will spend 45 minutes preparing. The documentation for this will provide base content for a podcast script. I can finish off the script for each episode in the evening and this will be the focus for the one hour of documentation. Over the next couple of weeks, I aim to catch up so that I will have 10 scripts written, although they may not be the first 10 episodes. Unfortunately, I have already covered with Tadas some of the topics that will be in the first 10-15 episodes and I can’t justify taking Tadas through these again. Currently, at the time of publishing I have three episodes which are mostly written and require proofreading.

When I look back at the objectives I set myself at the end of week 7, I have achieved the bigger tasks. The first 8 weeks of ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’ and the first two episodes of ‘Maximo Bite Size’ were completed. I have a Zoom call with Tadas that is probably worth editing, it was where I had spent 45 minutes preparing, I still need to listen to this. The other objectives I will roll into Week 9.

Objectives for Week 9

• Create a website for ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’ and publish the first 9 weeks as written scripts, I might also add some photos. Theme is likely to be Twenty TwentyTwo. 
• Complete the documentation of five episodes of ‘Maximo Bite Size’. 
• Keep a daily diary
• Do a trial record of Episode 1 of ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’. I’ll use Audacity for this.
• Revisit the objectives I set in week 4, now considering both podcasts.
• Start learning how to edit using Descript and the captured Zoom calls.