On Thursday 4^th March 2021 I joined JCI Sheffield’s workshop ‘An Introduction to Podcasting’ delivered by an international trainer, Peter Van De Velde from JCI Belgium.

I wasn’t sure what to expect as I am a keen podcast-listener but that’s as far as it goes and I joined to find out more. This year is my local (JCI Edinburgh) organisation’s 75^th anniversary and as local president I have been thinking outside the box together with my board on how we can make this an unforgettable year. Creating a podcast was one of our ideas so I joined to hear if this was do-able for people who are not super techy.

The workshop was outstanding and I learned so much more than expected. It started with a nice welcome from JCI Sheffield’s Mark Smith and there were participants from all over Europe, showing the beauty of JCI’s international side.

The workshop itself started with some theory. What is your “why”, a very important question to ask. Why do you want to create a podcast? Then came the next question to make us think, “who”, who are you making your podcast for/who is your audience? After some more useful theory inside into podcasting such as preparation and question styles we moved on to the part I personally found most useful and most challenging… the technical side.

After the theory part trainer Peter put us to work with a practice session. All the way from recording a voice note to editing it in a software program and showing us options on where and how we can publish our podcasts. This was incredibly useful as I had no clue about this side of podcasting, and by the feedback from the group everybody else found this very useful too. I really enjoyed that Peter didn’t just tell us how to do it but also encouraged us to try it during the workshop so we could ask any questions when we got stuck. This hands-on practice gave me the confidence that I can record my own podcast.

My top takeaways include:

???? Zoom can be used to record podcasts

???? ways to edit podcasts, for example editing out "uhms" and watching out for this when recording

???? platforms you can use to upload and promote your podcasts

Before joining this workshop, I knew I could interview people but was a bit worried about the technical side, now I know I can do this too. Thank you JCI Sheffield!

Keep your eyes open for JCI Edinburgh’s podcast to celebrate our 75^th Anniversary where we capture 75 years of JCI Edinburgh history. We will kick off our podcast around our anniversary day which is the 19^th of March, which also coincides with the JCI Scotland National Conference 2021. If you have any stories relating to JCI Edinburgh that you would like to share I would love to hear from you and see you at our national conference. 

You can reach me on president@jciedinburgh.org.uk or you can grab your conference tickets here - JCI Scotland National Conference.

Valérie van Kemenade - JCI Edinburgh President 2021