Amsterdam Podcast Festival

Last week I travelled to Amsterdam for the Dutch Podcast Network’s fifth annual Podcast Festival. Dozens of podcast producers, media professionals, journalists and aspiring podcast makers gathered in the Dutch capital to network, learn together and discuss the future of podcasting. Although mostly a Dutch delegation, there were people represented from all over Europe and indeed the world, making it a fitting event for International Podcast Day, on which the day was held.

Personally, it was my first time in Amsterdam, and I was struck by one thing: water! This is a city dominated by it and the transport network reflects this. Indeed, it was wonderful to be able to sleep in the centre of a city without the rush of car noise. I am sure that many urban planners could (and do) learn from the feel and structure of Amsterdam.

Back to podcasting…

Of course, not being a Dutch speaker, I was only able to attend the ‘English stream’. of the festival, although I spoke to delegates who had attended the Dutch stream to ensure I was up to date with all elements of the conference/festival. There were a number of themes that came through strongly during the event. Firstly, ‘the power of the pause’ and ‘using silence’ in an edit. Secondly, the need to be more accessible in podcasting and appeal to ‘the 1 billion’ in the world who have a disability of some kind, whether that is physical or psychological.

Josephine Karianjahi, an entrepreneur, podcaster and founder of the African Podcast Festival (which takes place in February next year) started our stream with an inspiring and diverse talk on the importance of accessibility and the question of how to make podcasting more accessible. Her talk was interspersed with short films from some of her contacts who have a disability of some kind. As podcasters we were encouraged to ensure we have transcriptions, thorough show notes, time coding and simply that we ensure we tell people where they can access the podcast. As podcasters it is sometimes easy to forget that not everybody knows where to go to access a podcast, so occasionally we need to put ourselves into the minds of new potential listeners. We also learnt why Youtube and video is quite so important for podcasting when it comes to accessibility, and the work that podcast platforms still need to do to make podcasting more accessible for potential new podcast makers.

When it comes to the ‘storytelling’ aspect of the event I was enthralled, and my eyes were opened. We were fortunate to hear from two highly successful and talented storytellers/journalists/podcasters - Alexi Mostrous from Tortoise Media, writer of the highly successful Sweet Bobby Podcast, and Avery Trufelman, producer of the highly successful Articles of Interest and 99% Invisible. I was reminded of the importance of constructing a story and of the effectiveness of highly skilled production. Avery told us that we need to appeal to somewhere in the middle of ‘tourist to purist’ - podcast listeners might not be an expert in a subject, but also they will want to go deeper than surface level.

Lastly, were the themes of ‘discoverability’ and ‘having a talented team’ - without these two things a podcast will not be as successful as it might be otherwise.

All in all, a fantastic few days in Amsterdam. I hope to return. Thank you to the organisers of the festival and to all of the podcasters who I spoke to.