Podcasting is dead — long live asynchronous podcasting.
Covid times had everyone online at the same time. It was a golden era of Zoom meetings, Clubhouse and other synchronous platforms.
Now, we are back to the scheduling conflicts and struggles of getting everyone together at the same time.
Often, it’s not even the most efficient way of carrying out meetings, calls, interviews, and many other tasks. It’s expensive to gather everyone together and make them pause everything else when only one person speaks at a time. You cannot speed up or speed-read the conversation to get to the point and save time.
Asynchronous tools change that. They are nothing new. Mail has been around for centuries. Slacks and other communication tools work the same way. Even social media sites like Twitter and Instagram.
For a few days, I have experimented with a new tool called Airchat. It looks a bit like Insta stories at first glance. You could also describe it as an audio Twitter if you consider Twitter as a place to share your ideas.
Airchat is something new. It’s not just copying the old formats in a new shape. It changes the behaviour and opens up new possibilities. I will not give it the disservice of defining it prematurely. The product is still under heavy development.
I will let you experience some of it first-hand. I exported a discussion about Airchat. It starts with a “stitch” from a different discussion that I added to my room and this was the kick-start to the topic. The first segment happened earlier and I was not part of it. The rest happened in my room.
You can have monologues but other people can jump into a discussion with you. It can happen almost simultaneously if the participants happen to be online at the same time but often that’s not the case. You can consider your response and reply when convenient for you.
The end result can be a podcast episode or just a chapter in a longer or ongoing topical debate.
You can listen to the exported segment but I encourage you to visit the web version (go to the ‘airchat’ tag) that allows you to see a better version of the experience. It’s still limited compared to the capabilities of the app version.
PS. For now, I have stopped producing new episodes of my podcasts Talks with Petri and Purpose ‘n Clarity. If you want to get the latest content visit my site’s main page for my social media entries (and profile links).
