All week this week I have been writing and publishing the short posts for Maximo Bite Size. I’ve written and published ten, 37 minutes of reading, so I’m guessing an average 4 or 5 minutes per podcast episode, truly bite size, but too small?

Each is packed with information; each is a summary of a piece of functionality, there is no waffle, and I think some listeners will hit the pause, rewind, and play, to catch a point so that they really understand what has been said. Listeners that are new to Maximo might just play through the episodes, trying to get an impression. Others may listen to pick up a point that they didn’t know. What I am trying to consider is whether episodes this short are useful, because it’s not too long a time to concentrate, or will the padding at the front or end of each episode distract from the listening experience assuming media players can naturally play the next episode of the same podcast, something that I will need to verify.

It has made me think, how will my listeners listen, where will they be when they listen? This is something I’ve not considered previously, not had a need to consider this. I have no doubts that the episodes will be listened to, because they will be available through the Maximo Secrets website. The ten posts dropped two a day over the last five days have over 150 views and I have not advertised that they exist as I normally do through LinkedIn. I still think that the written post, essentially the transcript, will get more views than the number of podcast listeners on the equivalent episode. Maximo is a work thing, in an office environment listeners will need headphones so they may opt to read than listen, besides the written posts will be found through a Google search when someone is trying to solve something specific.

The target audience(s) and the listening conditions will need to be considered, and some market research might be needed which I could do through a LinkedIn poll and my ZNAPZ colleagues, but first I think I will need to record something. Anyway, the good news is that my first ten episodes are written, and while I have something else to do over the next few weeks, I think I can justify spending at least half my work time writing more of these posts.

I do now have a new page for Maximo Bite Size on Maximo Secrets, and I’ll need to consider how I structure this. The episodes should be listened to in order, but they will also need to be grouped into chapters, these first ten transcripts are part of a chapter called Asset Management, and the 90-100 episodes that I am initially planning might require about seven chapters. And, what about next year? I can potentially see at least two more series after this, but I think they would be different pages obtained from a common Maximo Bite Size menu. So, I do need to think about structure to these pages, not just for the transcripts but also for the podcast episodes themselves.

Currently the posts have no featured image, it would be better to have one, but what would work? A screenshot seems weak, some sort of jigsaw arrangement perhaps. Maximo Secrets already uses a specific colour for each Maximo module, Asset Management is a cream colour and I have established an icon for each module too, Asset Management is a factory icon. For each module I have application maps that show how the applications (pieces of the jigsaw) fit together. So, I have something already to leverage but ultimately it would be better for the post featured image and podcast episode image to be the same. I need to get back onto Canva and see what inspiration I might get when faced with a blank canvas.

The Canva inspiration came quite quickly. The jigsaw idea was quickly abandoned as you can’t have the pieces fitting together how they fit together in real life. So, having abandoned the literal blank page, I duplicated the current Maximo Bite Size image and deleted the microphone and name, to give me half the size of the image to play with. I introduced the Chapter heading – Asset Management as a title, used the rectangular block to represent the application with its background colour the same as in the existing Application Maps, and added the title of the episode at the bottom.

It’s simple and quick to create. Sometimes there will be two rectangular blocks, as the feature I am discussing might be relevant to both the Locations and Assets applications. The coloured block would allow a visual search. I’ll have to test whether all the module colours will work with the Cobalt Blue background, most are pastel, but the ones which have a blue background will not.

Having produced the design and added it as a featured image it wasn’t appearing on the posts of the new Maximo Bite Size page, but it was showing on the Home page and the individual post. Eventually I tracked that down to the Customizer > Content Options setting which was not showing featured images on Pages.

There was then some fiddling around with the ordering of the posts and the layout of the posts, so that I could still see the text on the featured image. I also opted to use Excerpt text rather than just the first 50 words of the post. I didn’t want the right-hand side of text to be longer than the height of the image. Using an Excerpt allows me to get over what someone would learn if they followed the link on the image or heading.

Anyway, I think that I now have something that will work. I do have one issue and that the featured image on the Home page is cropped at the top and the bottom. I’ll need to consider how to control this, or whether I want to exclude the Maximo Bite Size posts from the regular posts. This can wait until next week.

The objectives for Week 15 are similar to Week 14 although I feel I did make a step forward last week. They are now:

• Start a new blog post page for Mixology, I’ve taken a few photos of cocktails over the last couple of weekends.
• Catch up on three missing My 2022 Diary posts.
• Start adding photos to My 2022 Diary posts.
• Start the FSE training course on WordPress.
• Do a trial record of Episode 1 of ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’. I’ll use Audacity for this.
• Continue to add and proofread documentation for ‘Maximo Bite Size’. Target 20 by the end of April, to include episode Excerpts and Image.
• Maintain a daily diary, it is still not a daily habit, perhaps for half the days in a week.
• Start learning how to edit using Descript and the captured Zoom calls.