I think what drives our podcasts (and certainly where it began) is our desire to chat with other people in the IP world, and hear what interests them; and to have a chat about what is or has been going on globally in the various areas of Intellectual Property.

The podcaster (usually Duncan), sets up a conference call to our participants.  Usually Jeremy Phillips in the UK, and, as often as we can get him, Shamnad Basheer from India, and one or two other experts from somewhere around the world.

The call is always anchored at 12:30pm London time, which enables everyone to be able to double check if necessary.  That means Duncan places the call at about 9.30pm over our winter, and 11.30pm summertime – late!  After he greets his guests, I guess he ‘officially’ starts.  Once the call is recording, the show begins!  When completed, and Duncan farewells everyone, he listens to the entire call, noting topics which were discussed so they can be included in the podcast blogpost on the website.  He also notes any particular ‘bloopers’ in need of deleting!  Once he is done, Duncan sends the file to me with his show notes and points to watch.

I use audio editing software to edit the file and to check everything.  The podcast intro music is added to the start of the file, I record (usually several attempts!) the introduction (written by Duncan, thank you!), and add a generic outro including our music again.  Once I’ve played with the sound levels for each participant, as they each come in at different volumes, and deleted the bloopers, each portion is quick mixed down to a single mono track.  This is then converted to an mp3 file. 

Once this is done, the hardest (and longest) part is over.  I listen to the file in iTunes, to ensure it sounds great(!), then add extra info to the file, including the IP Think Tank album cover. The file is uploaded to our website, I write the blogpost (well, Duncan wrote it, I just copy it!) and add the mp3 file…and voila – we have a completed IP Think Tank podcast show, that is also available to subscribe to in iTunes.

Enjoy 🙂

[photo credit: Ollyhart]