My first experience with podcasting dates back to December 2005 when my parents gave me a video iPod for Christmas. Prior to that I wasn’t really familiar with the concept of podcasting but soon after loading iTunes on my laptop, and rummaging around the iTunes store, I stumbled upon some very interesting content and the best part was that it was all free! Not only that, but I could press one little button and get fresh stuff automatically delivered to me whenever I plugged my iPod in for charging.
Soon after this “iPodiphany,” I started to think about how I might be able to use this tool at work. At that time I was the executive director of the American Sail Training Association and we produced a rather large public event each summer called the TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE which is a series of tall ships races and maritime port festivals. One of the problems we had was how to effectively educate the general public about our organization’s mission as well as the diverse missions of the participating ships. Inspired by the Acoustiguide experience that many museums offer to their visitors, but having no budget for this type of thing, we began to look into producing our own podcast audio tour of the ships that visitors could download before coming to the event.
So I handed off the project to a new, young team member to produce the podcast. Being that a sigfnificant part of ASTA’s mission is oriented toward youth education, our narrators were several summer interns who had experience sailing aboard the ships. We worked with renowned tall ships photographer Thad Koza and invited each ship captain to regale us with one of their best sea stories.
While it certainly wasn’t Acoutiguide quality, I think it serves as a useful example of how podcasting effectively fit in the overall organization mission and created a richer visitor experience in the process. The only real cost involved was junior staff time and from that perspective it was a project that they could take pride in. Athough not a perfect solution, podcasting became a new communication channel for the American Sail Training Association. We very inexpensively created a richer educational experience for people who came down to sea the ships. (pun intended.)
If you have iTunes installed on your computer and want to listen to this podcast tour of the ships, you can do so by clicking here.