LONDON PODCAST FESTIVAL

THE LONDON PODCAST FESTIVAL

The London Podcast Festival is an annual celebration at Kings Place, with live performances and talks from the world’s greatest podstars. Official Partners with Acast and BBC Sounds.

I attended this festival as part of my role with Radio Platfform. I am the marketing and events officer.

The event was for podcast makers or for those who do work or are keen on radio. So perfect for me! The festival is aimed at meeting industry professionals to teach, give tips and advice to help understand how to make a successful podcast.

The following podcast workshops are ones that I attended; ‘Ask me anything - production basics’,Using Social Media to Market Your Podcast and ‘Editing basics’.

Ask me anything - production basics

Industry professionals Meera Kumar and Sam Mbatha talked me through the whole production development from how to record the episode to the release into the public domain. In this session, they explained about the microphone, the audio editing software, copyright, and the noise reduction. Sam showed the various software in how to edit such as how to cut in or split one part into 2 parts, how to reduce the echo, background noise, export, add special effects, and much more.

Fingers on Buzzers Show

Jenny Ryan (from the chase) and Liz Porter (comedien) opted for an alternative podcast vibe. They set up a quiz show format with Les Dennis as the guest participant. The quiz was similar to the TV programme ‘Family Fortunes’ and allowed for hilarious audience participation!

Using Social Media to Market Your Podcast

With Dan and Kat; they talked about the various social media platforms and explained which could work/not work effectively for promoting podcasts. The outcome was that a positive response is based on a good relationship with the audience to understand and gain more followers - engagement is key.

Editing Basics

In this session, they explored recording the sound and editing feature, one of which included an innovative programme called ‘Descript’. Descript allows you to edit audio features. For example, I can edit the transcript and the programme will update the audio or I can add words to my transcript and Descript will add it in!

My experience with podcast

Growing up, I never had access to podcasts due to my Deafness. However, in 2019 I worked with Edward Lee at the RawFfest festival as a volunteer, after that Edward encouraged me to try podcasting, then I had a real interest in Podcasts and the idea of one day making my own. I started to listen to BBC Sounds for Asian podcasts, I knew it was something that would interest me and would allow me to try and attract a more diverse community into radio and podcasting.

Every time I go out with friends and work colleagues they kept saying to me “Saf, you should set up your own podcast because you really good at talking to people and have an interesting topic to talk about”

I never thought I would actually enjoy making a podcast. I also want to give a mention to my manager Alan Humphreys and thank him for arranging and allowing me an opportunity to attend the London Podcast Festival which gave me a real opportunity to meet new people who have talent and creative skills to be learnt from.

This was a great event for me to attend because of all the time I've seen music, films or attended festivals, I have never known this type of event/festival. If podcasts or learning new skills are your thing? I would definitely recommend people to go.