In this podcast series, Candice Nolan interviews professional podcasters or people working in the podcasting industry. This week features veteran podcaster, Paulo Dias. He is the Audio Content and Convergence Specialist at Ultimate Media, All-round podcast enabler and Contributor Business Live Redzone.

He dispels the myth of the unique podcasting idea, and advises wanna-be podcasters to get stuck in before they lose their nerve. But first, buy a microphone!

Transcript

Spudcaster: [00:00:00] Baobulb.org is a podcasting platform and a medium for storytelling. This podcast is also available on all the major podcasting apps, including apple and Google podcasts. Podcast your life with Baobulb.org.

[00:00:19] Candice: [00:00:19] Hey, how's it. Paulo: All right. Candice: Also, this isn't going to take up too much of your time just to give you a kind of picture of what I'm

[00:00:24] trying to put together.

[00:00:25] So I wanted to give, um, new hosts that sign up with me, kind of like a, like a, a bird's eye view of podcasting, what you need to know, um, where to go to find out information, good resources, um, good questions to ask, you know, with people to ask that kind of stuff. So kind of connecting people in that way.

[00:00:46] And that's where you come in. So before we start, just, just to start, if you would, if you wouldn't mind just stating your name for the record and in what capacity you speaking to me, please.

[00:00:58] Paulo: [00:00:58] My name is Paulo Dias . I am head of convergence, creative and digital audio with Ultimate Media.

[00:01:06] Candice: [00:01:06] Awesome stuff.

[00:01:08] just give us a little bit of a background into how you

[00:01:11] got into podcasting.

[00:01:13] Paulo: [00:01:13] In particular, I was, I've been working in radio since 2002 I'm on all sides of radio. And then sort of like, as I entered radio, the digital side of radio started coming about, and then people would send through a shortcut, send through a keyword to a short code. And get a link.

[00:01:36] Candice: [00:01:36] Um, I missed quite a bit of what you said there.

[00:01:39] The line went a bit iffy if you wouldn't mind. Just starting from the beginning.

[00:01:43] Paulo: [00:01:43] Sorry. No worries. Um, so. I started working in radio in 2002 and sort of like, as I started working in radio and getting my feet under the desk there, the digital side of radio started coming about. And at the time it was a streaming of radio stations.

[00:02:00] As simple as that, just putting a little button on the station website, people would listen online and then we started taking the best on-air features, our most popular features and sending them out to people over SMS, short code. So they would send us the short code. We’d send back a link and they could download that to their phone.

[00:02:18] And then obviously if you progressed into, uh, putting them on to apple, then it was iTunes then. Yeah, it was iTunes then. And there was the early days of podcasting. And then, you know, just through that process, I started discovering podcasting. Myself, um, and started looking at what was happening internationally and things like that, and always had a passion for it and, uh, have sort of like maybe through a bit of will.

[00:02:43] Uh, but mostly through being a bit of a fan boy, I have, from my position of being, working in radio, both radio stations and independently being able to forge and create and force a local podcast industry. Um, and you know, thankfully for pandemic, uh, we finally have one.

[00:03:04] Candice: [00:03:04] All right.

[00:03:04] And if you wouldn't mind just elaborating a little bit about that.

[00:03:07] What do you, what do you think

[00:03:08] the impact of, uh, COVID has been on podcasting in general, but in particular in South Africa.

[00:03:16] Paulo: [00:03:16] So I think there was always like a small, healthy community of podcasters, but it was like, almost like, if you...