Intro: Coming up on the Voices of the Past Podcast, we’ll meet a blogger who’s painting the preservation world in pink.

And welcome to Voices of the Past, the podcast that connects you to the world of heritage online. I’m Jeff Guin, and today I’m talking to Kaitlin O’Shea of the blog Preservation in Pink. Kaitlin uses a combination of collaborative blogging and printable media to reach her audience.

And Kaitlin, thanks for being here, and I wonder if you would just start by telling us, what is Preservation in Pink?

O’Shea: Well, it’s a long story. I am happy to share it. It was first a newsletter. When I graduated from Mary Washington in 2006, I went to work for a couple of years. And in the first six months, I realized just how much I missed my classmates and the comfort of the department, and the constant conversation that we would have anytime of the day. Whether we were in classes or studying or out drinking coffee or whatever. I suddenly had this one project that I loved. It was an oral history project. But it was only one thing. I didn’t have my buildings, I didn’t have my conversations. I was interviewing people and transcribing. And that was the extent of my day usually. So I decided that I need to do something. And I could have just read book after book, but when you get home from work, you are still kind of tired. So I have always loved to write and once upon a time, I had a dream of working with a preservation magazine. And I decided that maybe I could write about it. I have this one friend who had been blogging, but she just had a personal blog. And I thought, well, that is kind of interesting, but I didn’t start with a blog. So I decided to try a newsletter. I had four years of journalism experience in high school. I still remember all the lessons that I learned there. I did layout and editing and things like that. My very first issue, I think I only told one preservation friend about it. And she encouraged me. She’s like my preservation cheerleader. And I said, well, I am just going to write all the articles and show people what I can do. And then next time I will ask people to contribute. And she wrote one article, and I wrote six pages of stuff and sent it out to everybody I knew.

Also back in school, senior year, in one of my classes, we watched an anti-Walmart video about how Walmart came into Ashland, Virginia. And the people were fighting, and for whatever reason they chose the pink flamingo to be anti-Walmart. And the movie, it was just so heart-wrenching and by the end Ashland, Virginia lost and they got their Walmart. And my friends and I, we were distraught. We were heartbroken. Some of us were already not shopping at Walmart, and we decided we loved the pink flamingos. And so that kind of just picked up speed that last semester of school.

To fast forward again to the newsletter. This time, flamingos have just been out of control. We would send each other little flamingos and do little things like that. So I was tossing around the idea of including flamingos just for fun, and thought it was not that serious, but then I decided that it was going to be mine and I wanted it to be fun and not just “preservation.” Somehow I came up with Preservation in Pink, and it just kind of went from there.

Guin: Excellent. I think sometimes when people think preservation and they think preservationists, they think strident… obstructionists… just talking about average, everyday people. And this seems to be a reputation that has developed overtime, justified or not, but looking at your blog and even the beginnings of it, you’ve got some elements in there where you have a very strong preservation ethic, but it’s presented so well and so subtly that it has a different tone to it. Is that something that was intentional on your part?

O’Shea: I started Preservation in Pink with the mission of teaching people and showing them that preservation is not just academic, it’s not just professional, it really applies to every part of everyone’s life. Because it’s not just buildings, it’s not just battlefields. It’s quality of life, it is pride where you live, it’s heritage, it’s knowing where you came from and where you want to go in respect to the past. And all these things together, whether it is shopping locally or respecting the environment, it’s really important and if we do all that then we will all live in a better place.

And that is a lot to take in all at once, so I try to insert it here and there where it is talking about local shopping or this fun preservation activity, I mean really. I can connect anything to preservation, just give me a few minutes.

Guin: Well, how do you define historic preservation? What’s your personal definition?

O'Shea visits one of her favorite places: the architectural salvage shop

O’Shea: It means a lot of things to different people. For me, preservation is collectively looking toward the future with respect for the past. It’s understanding communities, the way of life, your built environment, your heritage values, in the sense that we need to remember the past in order to create a brighter future. That’s the basis of my definition. But the methods of doing that are all the facets of historic preservation, which to me is this huge umbrella term. But it involves architecture history, research, community and preservation maintenance, folklore, museum studies, economics, archeology..the list is never ending. For historic preservation, it provides us the opportunity to shape and direct a world in which people are proud of where they live even though people may be proud of different areas for different reasons. We have to respect cultures and areas and regions. When people have tried in what they and where they live and where they came from, then every action they do in a place matters. And that’s how we can create a better place and that’s how I believe historic preservation has the ability to save the world.

Guin: I guess in that same thing, taking that a step further, looking at your blog, you have a lot of things that are strictly historic preservation or strictly heritage values, but then you sometimes go into some things that are a little peripheral there. And you mentioned Walmart earlier, and actually one of your most popular posts is about Walmart. Can you talk about that?

O’Shea: Sure. That post–Save Money, Live Better–I wrote because the campaign just bugs me, and I won’t go into that. I think that one is one of the most popular because people are Googling “Walmart” or “save money, live better,” and for whatever reason, Preservation in Pink just pops up. So that remains one of the most popular posts every single day. We can get 100 views in one day, just that one.

Guin: Looking at your popular posts, and what people seem to respond to, what seems to make up a good blog post?

O’Shea: I guess I would categorize a good blog post in a few different ways. One is obviously a popular one. One like Save Money, Live Better. If that is getting a lot of people to visit Preservation in Pink, and maybe see the blog and are looking for something preservation related, and not just Walmart related, then that’s great. That helped increase the visibility.

But I guess a good blog post, from my perspective, is one that is well thought out and meaningful, and brings people to historic preservation maybe in a way that they didn’t know before. There is just some little anecdote I told that they became more interested in it. Maybe the story was interesting that day or maybe one of the guest bloggers wrote something fun, maybe broadening their horizons, and hoping that they will come back.

Sometimes I say that a good blog post is one that my sister, who is a freshman in college, will comment on. Because she is just starting to understand what I talk about and what I do. And if she found it enjoyable, then I figured that a lot of people might have enjoyed the post that day.

Guin: Well, tell me bout your favorite blog post on Preservation in Pink. What’s the must read blog post on your site?

O’Shea: I have a few that are my favorite, a lot of them relate to my oral history project, kind of just days on the job. Because they mean a lot to me and to kind of share what I do and what I did as an oral historian, and remember a fun day of what it was like to be in oral history every single day.

One of my favorite to write is called, Why they don’t let me outside. And the title is inspired because most of the time I am inside. But once in a while, in my office we would just go outside. And that day I jumped and kind of twisted my ankle and it was still a really good day, but by the time I got home and sort of fainted from a swollen ankle. And it was a mess of a day. But after I fainted and woke back up, I was fine.

Guin: And you still have good memories of that day?

O’Shea: Yeah. So kind of posts like that. Another one is Oral History and Me: It is Complicated. Not love-hate, but sibling relationship with oral history. It’s so frustrating, but you love it no matter what.

And then I have some others that are more personal reflections. One is called Old Memories: The Evolution of My Favorite Place. And that’s about my grandmother’s town in New York. And I grew up playing on the beach, but now that I’m older, I don’t play as much, but I run on the beach. And I appreciate the place in a different way. And all of those I attribute to touching out on preservation values in a non academic way that I hope people enjoy.

Guin: The reason that we have these cultural resources is because of the people and the traditions handed down. In talking with those people you get a lot more insight and context about the cultural resources themselves. So I think that’s great. Well, you mentioned earlier your newsletter and your journalism experience, and design and layout. You’ve used that in the Preservation in Pink newsletter. Now not many bloggers do this. Why did you do this, and who is this newsletter targeted to?

O’Shea: Again, the newsletter was first and the blog came after. I needed a way to keep Preservation in Pink on the web for anyone who wanted to access it because I can’t afford to print it and mail it to everybody. And that is kind of silly since everything is on the web. So the blog, at first, was just two posts a year. I need articles for the newsletter, and then in 2008, I started putting on more posts every couple of months. And then toward the end, I really wanted people to read Preservation in Pink. I really needed this to go somewhere, and so I started making it a daily blog. And the newsletter and the blog are intended for the same audience. But it is a wide audience. It is anyone who is interested in preservation because it is what they do or because they don’t know much about it. And I try to gather articles from the wonderful contributors that seem to always be willing to add something. But everyone has different experiences, and for me to just share my own on the blog is not the same as having a newsletter. Having a newsletter kind of bring out more voices than my own, which I imagine people don’t want to read all the time.

Guin: Then let’s look at how your blog has developed over time because aside from having a newsletter, which is kind of rare for a blogger, you also have multiple contributors. And that’s not that rare for a blog. For a heritage blog it is fairly rare. How did that start?

O’Shea: Really, having a 5-day per week blog was kind of hard. And to come up with something that is hopefully interesting everyday. Right now it is three to four with grad school getting in the way. But I thought maybe I could be like other bloggers. I read a lot of different blogs: running blogs, wedding blogs, friends blogs. And a lot of people have guest bloggers. And I thought that would be a good way to draw in more readers/viewers. People could say, hey I wrote for this blog, go read it.

So the guest bloggers, I guess they started out kind of slowly. People I knew, my friends from college and fellow preservationists. And it was a nice break for me, and I figured it was a nice break for the readers. It was something different. It was something I couldn’t write about because I didn’t know much about it. And now I have a permanent posting up on Preservation in Pink asking for contributors and bloggers. Some people are more willing to contribute to the blog because it seems like less pressure. I mea, it is. I always feel like the blog is less serious than the newsletter. I mean, when I talk about cats and flamingos and whatever, it is a little more fun. And it is also more time-sensitive. So, one guest blogger, Brad Hatch, he has a ton of “preservacation” blogs, as he calls them, because he has a whole series that he wrote for me. And we posted them every couple of weeks or so. Whereas keeping all that for the newsletter would be a lot. And having a series in the newsletter that’s only twice a year is hard because that is asking readers to remember or go back six months ago and follow up from that first article. Whereas on the blog, I can link from post to post and readers can find it that way.  So I guess the newsletter developed the same way, there was not a lot of people at first and now there is many many people. For this next issue, I have even different contributors than usual. It’s really just helped to bring more of an audience. And more diversity.

Guin: Excellent. Well, you talked about being a grad student. I know that’s a lot of pressure. I want to hear about how you balanced being a grad student with doing such a rigorous blog schedule. Also, I am sure you are involved with other forms of online media or social networks as well. How do you balance all that?

O’Shea: I am just the type to do what I have to do. And it was a concern, maybe I wouldn’t have enough time. But I decided, no. It has come this far, it is still getting a lot of viewers. And I really enjoy it. It is kind of an outlet. So, if I don’t feel like writing my paper, maybe I can do something a little bit easier like writing a blog post. It also keeps me connected with everyone in my grad-school bubble. It’s the same of balancing anything else. I like to run a lot, I help out with the UVM track team. As far as other social networking, I have a few other blogs that are not like Preservation in Pink, they are just for fun or to keep track of running or something. Those I only do when I have the time.

Guin: Do you promote Preservation in Pink through any other networks? Do you do anything else other than consistent blogging to attract readership?

O’Shea: I do. I have a Preservation in Pink Facebook group page. And when I have a newsletter or I am asking for contributors, I pretty much email everyone who has ever met me. Any more former and current classmates have done a lot to help. They will share it with people they know. Send on the newsletter or send on the website. Last year I made business cards and postcards. So anyone who wrote for me, I send them a “thank you” with some business cards and also a Preservation in Pink magnet. Some people put it up at work so their coworkers saw the magnet and asked about the website. I try to make sure the tags and the categories are sometimes general and sometimes specific. So it could come up in photography, it could come up in preservation, and people could come across it that way. I have it on my resume. I like to share it with fellow preservationists.

Guin: Knowing that you are in graduate school right now, and knowing that you are going to have to get a job, does that affect what you blog or what you blog about?

O’Shea: It’s the same as when I started. I won’t write anything that I think is too judgmental or something that I would look back and go, “Oh geez, why did I write that?” I mean, my opinions might slightly change or my intellectual understanding of something might change, but I feel that what I put on Preservation in Pink is fit for anybody to read. And I am really honored when people way above me have read it.

Guin: Well the great thing about a blog is that if you do evolve intellectually or learn something new, you can always update the post or you can go and write another post and reference the old one. And it’s OK to show that you’ve learned something. And your readers learn along with you. So that’s great. Well, you mentioned early about using WordPress, and I use WordPress. I am active in the WordPress community. And you talked about tags and categories. And I don’t think that is something I have covered on Voices of the Past before. Can you tell me, in your opinion, what the different is between a tag and a category. And how you use those concepts to optimize your posts.

O’Shea: Well, this is just my understanding, and I might be slightly off. But from what I found, is tags are what people come across when they Google something and categories seem to be just within the site itself. I have a lot of tags because of all the posts, and I try to minimize the categories. So categories I use if someone is searching within Preservation in Pink itself. How can I find out your roadtrip posts. Whereas tags I look at as something people search on the web that could bring them to Preservation in Pink.

Guin: You said that you actually get inspiration from other blogs sometimes. What other blogs do you actively follow?

O’Shea: A new blog that you just did a feature on, My Own Time Machine by Sabra Smith. I think we are blog soulmates. Our blogs are similar, they are complimentary, they are a lot of fun. I love what she writes, so I have been following that since she started.

I follow Place Economics, which is not updated that much, but I like reading whatever he writes.

I follow Route 66 blog. Another WordPress blog. It is like the clearinghouse for Route 66 news.

Then I follow unrelated preservation blogs as well.

Guin: Obviously social media and blogging and all this stuff is growing. And a lot of heritage folks, although some have been slow in coming on board to using the social networks, that is going to change. And folks are getting on there wondering, what do they do to get started. Especially with blogging because that seems to be the heart of any social media effort. What advice do you have for those individuals or organizations getting involved in blogging for the first time?

O'Shea and the "flamingo girls."

O’Shea: I would say, if you have something that you love and you want to start a blog and write about it and talk about that subject, don’t start it expecting tons of readers and comments. Do it because you love it and keep doing it. I mean, Preservation in Pink isn’t the biggest blog out there by any means or even close to it, but the readership has grown immensely between this year and last year, and it is just consistency and I don’t really do it for anyone other than myself. I write for people who are interested in preservation, but I do it for myself too. So just keep at it and share your blog with anyone you know. I guess that’s my best advice for anyone.

Guin: OK, I want to take a step back a bit. What made you decide to use WordPress instead of any of the other blogging platforms that are out there?

O’Shea: Well, I love WordPress, let me just say that. I don’t really like Blogger for a professional looking blog. I think it is too simplistic and too kind of bubbly. You can’t create very many pages, and I don’t know much about creating your own template. Whereas WordPress had all these beautiful templates and you could change them all the time. And add all these Widgets, I think we call them. And those were really the only two I knew. I guess TypePad and so many others you have to pay for, or at least you used to. But anyone who is going to start a blog, I always recommend WordPress because it is just really easy and really fun.

Guin: Well, good. Kaitlin, thanks for being on Voices of the Past.

O’Shea: Thank you very much!

Outro: And that was Kaitlin O’Shea of blog and newsletter, Preservation in Pink.

Now, if you would like to learn more about Kaitlin and Preservation in Pink, that is at voicesofthepast.org. There you will find a transcript of this interview plus several others we have done with other folks in the heritage field using social media to make a difference in their world.

That’s all for this edition of Voices of the Past. Until next time, I’m Jeff Guin, and we’ll see you online.

Greg originated the popular MythShow podcast. In this interview, he talks about the importance of the storytelling tradition, building a quality web presence around your podcast, and setting personal priorities with new media

Click to play (Click to Play)

Guin: Greg, thanks so much for joining us on Voices of the Past. I wanted to start out by asking you how you actually got into the world of mythology. Was that something you went to school for or was it something that you grew up with an interest in?

Lemon: I think it began as growing up with an interest in mythology. I remember in elementary school going around the library, I found this book on myths and mythology, and I picked it up and I really enjoyed it. So, I am a computer professional by training, but I really enjoy stories and storytelling and mythology specifically.

Guin: What’s your favorite myth?

Lemon: It is really hard to pick a favorite myth. I really lean closely to the classical Greek and Roman mythology and pantheon. But if I were to pick a favorite book, it would be Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” where he goes in and talks about the mythical journey or the hero’s journey that is found common through many mythologies. So if I had to pick a favorite book, it would be that one.

Guin: You have to have a passion for this to actually turn it into a podcast. A podcast is a lot of work, and it’s a lot of commitment. How did that passion translate into you creating a podcast?

Lemon: Well I love podcasting and I love the technology around the podcasting. At the time when I was doing the podcast, I was really excited. I had a lot of interest in it, and I loved sharing stories and the storytelling and trying to convey that interest to other people. The one thing that I see that is missing today is the art of storytelling. And people are so interested in–or in education they are so interested in the reading, the writing and the arithmetic and tests that the have to take, that they forget the human side of the history. They forget the human side of this experience that we have, and I feel that myths, folklore, fairy tales and things of that nature really help to bring that back. I feel that’s kind of missing and I saw that that was missing from my kids’ education and felt that was something that needed to be brought back.

Guin: Well, you don’t actually consider yourself a “quote” heritage professional. Is that right?

Lemon: Correct.

Guin: Well then, what were your goals when you were actually creating the podcast? How did you want to add to the conversation?

Lemon: I wanted to be able to provide stories. And as I had mentioned before, I felt that the education material that was presented was missing a lot of that. My kids didn’t know who the Gods and Goddesses of the mythologies, they didn’t know the characters from the American folklore, they were missing that kind of stuff. And I felt that if I had the same feeling that perhaps there would be parents out there that felt the same. So I created these podcasts as an introduction to these stories, myth, folklore, fairy tales and what not. As an educational resource that people could turn to to maybe supplement what they were maybe learning in education.

Guin: You seem like such a natural podcaster. I mean it seems like something…you’ve got the voice and you’ve got the relational interview style. Were you in broadcast before this?

Lemon: Actually no. I was a Sunday-school teacher for many years, and I was a scout leader for the Boy Scouts of America. So i developed the art of storytelling around a campfire or sitting around in a Sunday-school classroom. The comfort with podcasting and with interviewing just comes with time. I’ve been doing this since 2006, I think…I’ve been doing this for many years, and so I’ve enjoyed it and I’ve become more comfortable communicating via person, via Internet, via video, via audio. And so that’s something that just comes over time with practice. I did have aspirations to go into broadcast at one time, but career paths being what they are, I feel that I enjoy podcasting and the intimacy that comes with this new media much more preferable.

Guin: Do you have any favorite podcasts that you’ve done?

Lemon: That I’ve done or that I’ve listened to?

Guin: Well, both. We’ll start with the ones that you have actually done yourself or your favorite episodes where there was some piece of information that you just connected to, or a guest that you just really enjoyed…

Lemon: I have had many wonderful opportunities to interview individuals on the Mythshow podcast. There’s the Celtic Myth podshow. A wonderful partnership between Gary and Ruth. In England, I was able to interview them and their podcast specifically focuses on Celtic mythology. But they tell it in more of a roundtable. As you would imagine a bard around a campfire, they use many voices, they use sound effects, and you really get the feel that you’re in a campfire. And you really get the feel of the storytelling.

Guin: Alright. Then let’s talk about the podcasts you enjoy listening to that are not your own. What do you listen to in your leisure time?

Lemon: The ones related to history that I really enjoy: there’s the History of Rome podcast, while not mythologically based, it does have that wonderful historical element that has gone and is continuing to go through the history of Rome. There’s also the 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast, which has since concluded since he’s covered all the Byzantine Rulers. But that was a wonderful history-based podcast that took the…because we know about Rome and we know about the Middle Ages, and this covered that stance in between. And so those are two wonderful solo-reading, one-person podcasts that I really enjoyed. I mentioned the Celtic Myth pod show. Wonderful stories are being shared there. But then I also enjoy the technical podcasts as well. There are many daily podcasts on news and technology, the weekly commentary technology shows and just a variety of fun shows out there.

Guin: Why do you think these stories are important to share in this new media format?

Lemon: We need to be able to remember that sharing stories has been a past time for generations if not even before recorded history. In fact, some of the earliest recorded history are these ancient stories. If we could think of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, that was originally an epic poem that he recited. We need to remember that there’s the story element, the human aspect. We as people are not names, places and dates and events, but it is the stories between those names and places that really captures the human element. I feel that with mass entertainment, while I do enjoy a good Disney movie and I really do enjoy the efforts they have done to bring those fairytales–or the mythologies–into modern dialog, we’ve got to remember that that’s not the only thing out there. The Disnefication of the Little Mermaid or the different princesses or even “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aladdin,” those are wonderful stories that they’ve been able to interpret, but we need to be able to share the stories ourselves. How wonderful would it be if we were able to have a digital recorder in the pockets of the soldiers storming into Normandy on D-Day. How wonderful would it have been to have had audio recordings of the people in the Civil War or of times past. We have snippets of that, we have the official histories by governments, but if we could have that insight into the regular soldier’s life. If we could have that pioneer that was crossing the plains to the farmer. If we had those stories, how much more rich of an understanding would we have of our heritage or of heritages around the world?

Lemon: One of the favorite stories that I am reading to my children now are the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories. While not mythology-based, I really enjoy sharing with my daughters the story of a young girl who lived in a completely different time under completely different circumstances. And I hope that the values and lessons that Laura Engles learned on the prairie can be translated into things that my own daughters can use.

Guin: You said that you weren’t originally a broadcast person and you kind of got into it in 2006–that was practically the ancient days of social media. How did you actually learn how to do it and get into it?

Lemon: Well the very first podcast that I listened to was one called “Muggle Net,” which is a podcast based around the Harry Potter books. I’m a big fan of the books, I loved reading them and sharing those stories. It’s a whole new fantastical story there and I started listening to it. And I really got into the technology of podcasting. There’s just so much more to podcasting than just clicking the record button. There’s the website, there’s the technology, there’s the audio editing, there’s the production, there’s the marketing. All of those things fascinated me, and in 2006, I went to the Podcasting and New Media expo. And I went there without an idea. I went there trying to figure out, I wanted to be involved with it. This would be a great, what could I do? And during that expo, I was brainstorming and I came up with the idea, I love to share stories. And I went home that night of the first expo and registered the domain name and started recording. And from then on, the association with other podcasters, with those at the time in Orange County, Calif., and those that I’d met throughout the country, and honestly throughout the world. That I enjoyed the interaction with the people. Probably too much, because as time went on the podcast started to get more slowly produced. But I enjoyed the social interaction and the technology surrounding it.

Guin: What technology do you use to do your podcasts?

Lemon: Well, the first couple of podcasts that I have, you see the headset that I use in this video stream. I started with just my computer plugging in a headphone. And honestly those podcasts sound terrible. But I got out there and I was enjoying the technology. Eventually, I was able to upgrade my equipment. You can tell a distinct different when I got a new H4 microphone, and I still use that today for recording podcasts. And it’s not so much that my hardware improved, but being more comfortable around the microphone. Knowing what I wanted to share, being able to speak more eloquently so I would have fewer edit cuts and it would take less time to edit the podcast, and also making sure I knew what I wanted to say, even practicing it. Most of my podcasts were written out, word for word. And it sounds like I am reading them, and it’s because, well, I was. I didn’t try to hide the fact. And that saved a lot on the editing time. But then again, open conversations like this one was a lot of fun as well.

Guin: Yeah. Well, you know, it is all about the content. And actually creating content that people can use. So, whether that’s scripted or whether that’s free-form, as long as people are getting something out of it and they are coming back for more, it’s all OK.

Lemon: The basic premise that I had with my podcast shows was that it was written, it was educational, and so I felt that it should start from the basis of a written essay. Whereas interviews and other shows, depending on how well they know their audience, depends on the kind of content that they should deliver.

Guin: Well tell us about that because audience is critical to having any form of successful online presence. Tell us about your audience and what you do to try to cater to that audience and build your audience.

Lemon: In full disclosure, the Mythshow and the Mythminute podcast that I produce have been on hiatus for over a year now. And so I have lost a little bit of the contact with the individuals that listen to the show. I still see that people are downloading it and still enjoying the content, but I have not been actively podcasting that due to economic situations, due to commitments with my family. Because when it comes to recording a podcast or reading a story to my kids, the kids win every time. And I think that is how it should be. And so, I wish I could have more time, but there’s only 24 hours in a day.

But to know your audience is so critical. Even if you don’t know individual names, you need to define the person you want to talk to or your desire to communicate. Are you looking for teenagers, are you looking for adults, are you looking for professionals in a certain genera, are you doing it for your family and your future posterity. Recording your own stories so that they can be enjoyed in years to come. Knowing your audience now will make the decisions so much easier in the future. You’ll be able to not agonize over every single decision, but you’ll be able to say, “Well, what would my ideal audience member want?” And go with that.

Guin: Well, do you have any tips for people who are just trying to get into podcasting?

Lemon: Well first of all, have fun. This is an exciting technology, and it is a lot of fun to participate in it. Like we said previously, know your intended audience. Be very specific about planning your podcast, even going as far as writing up a profile of who you would want to be. Name, age, gender, profession. Know this person and know why you are talking to this person. And why the information is important to them. Also, set realistic goals with your content creation. A lot of knew podcasters, when they start out, they go, “well, I’m going to produce an hours worth of content every week. Well, that goes two or three weeks, and then it goes two weeks in between and then it goes a month, and the content gets shorter and shorter, and I speak of this from personal experience.

You’ve got to set realistic goals. If you can only commit a couple of hours a month, understand that that’s what you can do, and don’t set the expectation for your audience that you’re going to provide a weekly show when in fact you can only provide a monthly show. Also, this is a new technology, this is a lot of fun, but record a few podcasts, experiment with the content. The format, the length. Try to get into a grove before releasing your shows. A rule of thumb I have often heard is record five full shows before releasing any, that way you have been able to record, produce and enjoy the process of five shows and you can see what works. And also, one last thing, is to build a community. Being a solo podcaster is kind of hard because you don’t have a group of individuals around you if have an historical society, if you have a group of like-minded individuals who want to create a podcast, share the responsibility. Share the fun, and then that way you can keep each other motivated. And you can share the work load.

Guin: You mentioned before that a podcast is only part of the undertaking. Tell us a little bit about that. What do you do to help support your podcast?

Lemon: There are many different forms that a podcast can take. You can have the simple RSS feed, which is really simple syndication. It’s the technology used to deliver the actual audio. You can be as simple as that, or you can have a website with shownotes so that people can add comments and you can start that discussion. You can even go as far as establishing a web forum, where people can converse and start to share a lot of information. Whatever you decide, you need to know your community. If the people that are listening to your podcast are very passive and only want to get the content and go, then it may be difficult to form a community. However, if you have an organization and the people begin really active, become really active with comments, a blog with comments, with active discussion and even a forum would be a great way to build that community. As you start out, there’s going to be very few people. But as long as you put out good quality content on a regular basis, whether week, month or whatnot, you’ll begin to build that audience. But you also need to send out emails. You need to be able to rank well in search engines. Contacting people in traditional off-line methods. Those ways you can bring them online and build your audience. And there are many books by professionals on the subject matter, and if I had the “holy grail” of podcast production and getting my message out there, I’d have a lot more time to produce podcasts.

Guin: Are there other forms of social media that you use to either support you podcast or to just maintain your presence in the social space?

Lemon: I use Facebook. I have a personal account on Facebook. I also have a fan page for the podcast as many other do. The Celtic Myth Podshow is an excellent example of people who have used Facebook to an excellent degree on being able to promote their podcast. I use Twitter. I have multiple accounts. I have a personal account, I have a podcast account. And so other people can follow me there. I have a lot of interaction with social media that way, but also just going out there and having fun. There are meet up groups that you could meet up with, and there’s Tweet ups, Social Media Club. There’s podcamps; there’s a lot of groups out there ready, willing and wanting to share this information to help you start your own podcast. This community is wonderful and you don’t have to go at it alone. There are so many people out there willing and wanting to help. And there are excellent resources available at your local bookstore to learn how to podcast.

Guin: Greg, thanks so much for joining us.

Lemon: Glad to help.

Click to play

Welcome to the Voices of the Past Podcast. I’m Jeff Guin. Today I’m talking to Lisa Louise Cooke of the podcast and blog Genealogy Gems. Lisa is going to tell us how she first became involved in social media–in particular, podcasting–and how she uses the web to promote genealogy and help others become more passionate about family history. Lisa, welcome to the podcast. How did your passion for genealogy develop?

Cooke: The classic story of being passionate about genealogy is from the time I was a little girl and sitting with my grandmother and talking to her about her parents who came through Ellis Island and she was willing to entertain me and jotted down some notes, which I still have.  I researched off and on throughout my entire life, and around 2000, I got really to where I was doing it practically every day. And really knee-deep into doing it. Before that I was raising kids and that kind of thing, and a friend of mine had said at the family history center, “Gosh, you’ve got some ideas here, you’ve been finding things that I’m not finding. You gotta find a way to teach people this.” And I thought, I don’t know how am I going to do that, and then 2007, my daughters all got together and they bought me an iPod for my birthday, and I discovered podcasts. And I always kid people because the young people go to see what they can spend money on, which is music and videos and that type of thing. Me, I’m cheap. I go and look for the free stuff. And so I found podcasts. And within a month I had my own podcast online. And I think it just captured my imagination. It just hit me, “This is my medium, this is a way to get the word out.” Because if you’re going to teach, it is wonderful to get to teach in a class of ten, but how about reaching 10,000? And then everybody benefits and you get this community going and it’s terrific.

Guin: But there seems like there would be quite a learning curve between actually having that passion and then translating that into reaching that audience of millions. What did you have to do to put a podcast together and actually start your own blog. Was that difficult?

Cooke: I think it wasn’t difficult because I was so passionate about it. It’s like when it hits you this is the right way to go, this is the right medium, I know what my message is, then it was like there aren’t enough hours in the day. And so for 30 days I think I was doing it around the clock–just eating up everything I could find in terms of how to get podcasts, how do you hook up the computer, where do you get a mic, how do you set up a blog, and I was constantly–if I wasn’t podcasting or setting things up myself, I was out running around and listening to other people on podcasts explain how to do it. And that’s why I think that within the month I was able to get it up and running. But the ideas had been formulating for a long time. And it is kind of the classic story of you can look back at your life and say, “Wow. Everything I’ve been doing up to this point has been about getting ready to do this.” Because everything from my theatrical background to producing videos to being on a television show and learning about interviewing, my passion for family histories, some of the teaching opportunities I had had in small class settings, all came together and it was like, “This is the time, this is the moment where it all gels.”

Guin: Well actually I was going to ask you about that because you really do have a vibrant personality and obviously you know what you are doing around media. Did you have a media background?

Cooke: Well, I’ve always been interested. I’ve always, when video first came out to the computer, I was always dabbling with that. I was creating home videos and compiling photographs and setting them to music. Around 2000-2001, I was actually the drama director at my church, and I convinced them that we need to do something beyond just talking in front of folks. We need to get visual and get multimedia about it. And so I started not only producing plays, which were live, but then saying, “Wouldn’t it be fun to do a little three-minute video?” Well, that just captures them all off guard and catches their attention and gets them involved in the activities going on. So I did that for a couple of years and I was amazed at the response. The way people responded and they were willing to hear messages and maybe get involved when just getting up in front of the group and talking with a microphone wasn’t cutting it. So that really showed me the power of it.

Guin: Did it take a while for you to actually develop your voice for your blog?

Cooke: Well it had probably come a little bit easier to me because I had done some script writing. Many of the productions I was doing as the drama director, I was actually writing and producing some of those shows. So, I had a sense about dialog and having worked in community theater and that type of thing, but you are absolutely right. You have to figure out what your voice is. And I think, I was probably watching some documentary on Martha Stewart, and she was talking about sitting down and writing her first cookbook and that she had to find her voice. And I don’t know why but it always stuck with me. While I don’t have to write this academically, people may actually respond to me if I write it more like as I write a script, which is this conversation, this emotional connection with the people that are interacting on stage. Couldn’t I have that with my readers? And in the end, it’s just a lot easier to write as yourself. And I think that if you are very honest and true about what you’re saying and you really care about it, then you just have to let that come naturally. And it really does, and I find that the more I am myself, the more response I get.

Guin: Well, and also your audience develops around that. Who are those people that are your audience?

Cooke: You know that it’s funny. I was thinking about that question before we started, and I thought: I have two. I have my present-day audience and I have the audience of 2020. Do you know what I mean? Because the Internet is so different. What I’m doing, I’m thinking about how am I reaching those needs today and what people want to hear about, but this is going to be likely online for years and years to come. And everyday I see people streaming in and signing up and subscribing to the podcast, and I realized, “Wow, they are going back to episode 1.” And they are starting, and people will write me and go, “Oh, I’m on a binge, I just listened to 30 episodes in a row trying to get caught up.” And so that’s kind of the nature of media, and the idea that I’m not only speaking to the folks who are researching now in their genealogy, which typically are 50 plus, right? They tend to be older in age, they have a little more time, a little more income. But I do have, because of the multimedia presence that I have, I have a lot of younger folks as well, surprisingly. They may not be going to a genealogy society or they may not be attending conferences, but they are totally with me on Twitter and they are totally with me on Facebook and they found the podcast without me having to explain how to do it. I figure, the 20-somethings of today are the 50-somethings of tomorrow who will have some more time and who will have raised their kids and start to be thinking about, “Wow, I would like to leave something to this family and to these children, and I want it to be more than just me.” You know, we are all just ourselves and can only accomplish so much, but to give them an entire heritage of ancestors and family culture is a phenomenal gift and when that strikes you, that’s where that passion comes from. I hear it all the time from my listeners. You know, you can’t do it fast enough because wow, this is really meaning I can give back and in really significant way. So yeah, my audience is so warm and they are so wonderful, and I was recently out on a medical condition and people were emailing me and just, it’s a wonderful community. I love it.

Guin: Well, you mentioned your audiences are with you in different forms of media that you are engaged in. Kind of give me a timeline, an overview, of what you did. I mean, you started with your blog and your podcast. How has Lisa Louise Cook’s involvement in social media developed over time?

Cooke: It started with the Genealogy Gems podcast, and did that for about a year. I guess I started the blog later. I started in like February, later in the summer I realized I needed a blog. I needed another channel to get people, and I had actually produced a couple of videos that made the rounds. One of them was called, “Socks to America,” which is a funny little video I did about sock puppets and their heritage and how they immigrated. And it was funny how it took off and ran around the Internet and people were sharing it. So I very quickly realized I’d like to have a YouTube channel and have a place to put those videos. And of course the wonderful thing is, while my website is not as integrated as I would like it to be, I wish I had one website that had everything on it, but cost is a contributor and time. So I have a lot of different channels that are interconnected. So for the user it is hopefully a very streamlined usage of the website, but in reality they are going to different places: when they visit my blog, when they visit my video channel, that type of thing. And I got into Facebook probably shortly there after. And then I got approached by personalized media to do another genealogy show, and I had one in mind that I was thinking about and Genealogy Gems was taking off. So I started Family History Genealogy Made Easy, which is kind of more of a course in genealogy. Not a hardcore academic course, but each episode’s devoted to one topic and I try to do it in a way that you could start in episode one knowing nothing about genealogy and actually follow along and get going right away. And then let me think. I started doing speaking engagements. Family History Expos contacted me and said, “Hey, you ought to be out here talking to our folks,” and so I went and got hooked. I love going to the conferences.

Guin: You were talking about your speaking engagements and how much you enjoy those and how much it helps you to connect to your audience. How did that develop and what do you get out of going to those speaking engagements?

Cooke: I’m one of those odd folks who enjoys talking in front of a group. I am probably more nervous one-on-one than I am in front of a large crowd. And many years ago when i had just first started in the business world, I went to seminar, and it was how to make presentations. And I thought to myself, “I want to do that. I want to do what she’s doing.” But I had no idea what the topic was going to be. And I was raising children so I know I couldn’t travel from town to town or do that kind of thing. But again, I learned some of the techniques and it planted the idea. And so, I started doing some speaking engagements after we did “Texas Ranch House,” and people wanted to know about the experience of being on a reality TV show. And then I also started doing a couple little groups who asked me to come and talk about genealogy because I’d been working on the history of a local historical house in our community. And so I did some of those and I just found that I really enjoyed it. And I loved the instant response. Just like with the theater: there are two people on stage. There is you and then there is the whole crowd and their energy and what they’re doing. And so like I said, Family History Expo contacted me and gosh, just a couple months after the podcast started of in 2007 and said, “You got to come out to Utah, we’re having a conference. Do you have a couple of classes you’d like to teach?” And I said, “OK!” And so i ran and put them together and put together a little booth, and it just took off. My big emphasis is I love technology and I love using technology for genealogical purposes. And Google is one I started with shortly after my podcast started. My very first Gem in fact was Google site search, and those classes have been sold out, packed out and standing room only ever since I started teaching them. And I realized people are past how do I get online, but they really want to know, “How do I make the most out of what I’m finding” because there’s so much. And so I love to be able to fill that niche and then if they decide they want to become a premium member later and I’ve got the whole thing on video series. So I try to have resources I can point them to so when you get home from one of my classes, you’re not sitting there scratching your head saying, “What did she say? Where do I start?” So I love too that the podcast, the videos, pretty much all of that can all work together with the live presentations. I don’t have to give up working with people in person to be able to do multimedia online.

Guin: Well you brought up the premium memberships and that is a rarity among heritage blogs and just people working in the heritage field, they haven’t quite gotten to that level. What made you decide to go with a premium membership model?

Cooke: Well I knew I had to pay for what I was buying. My husband said, “Where’s the money going to come from?” And I said, “I don’t know.” I mean, I did not get into it to make any money. But you do find yourself yearning for the next software program or the Macintosh, which I just got into, and things that can help me do a better job of what I’m trying to share because that is a number one thing for me is quality. I would rather not put something out than to have it be kind of subpar and not really hit the mark. So premium membership was also something that people were asking for. They were saying, “Where can I get more? You are only doing this once a week or I want to see what you’re talking about and not just hear about it.” And so I thought, I found a place that had a reasonably priced membership software and I just hacked and hacked on it until I figured it out, and then I realized that this was a  way to go in depth into some of these topics that we hit on. And I always try to give people these nuggets they can work with. But I love having the ability to go more in depth and then having the video version so that they can follow along live on the screen with me, right as I go. And the response has been tremendous. I wasn’t sure. Genealogists like to get things for free; I appreciate that. But I think if they like what I am doing and they want more and they feel like they are connecting with me, then they’re excited about getting it and I’m totally excited about delivering it. So I have just gotten to know my premium members even more, and hopefully it will keep growing because it has made it possible for me not to “podfade.” That’s one of the things that happens to people. You get an idea and you are passionate, you find a way to get past the roadblocks and the technology, and it is just really easy to get overwhelmed, run out of money, whatever, and all of a sudden we’ve seen it before, those podcasts and those videos just fade away and you don’t hear from that person anymore. I felt like generating some income was important for me to sustain what I am doing, and I think that that’s another reason people are happy to pay for that additional content. They are getting something out of it and they also know that I am going to be around.

Guin: Did you use anyone else as a model when you created your premium memberships?

Cooke: Actually, the models that were out there, I didn’t like that much. Some of them were really expensive, some of them were “We are going to auto renew you for the rest of your life unless you can figure out how to cancel us.” There were elements to them that I didn’t like very much. So I’d have to say Jason VanOrden, he did the Podcasting Underground, I think it is called Masterminds minds now or something. But it was a podcast. He was dabbling with that model around the same time, and I started to get anxious and wanted to get going on it, so I just listened to what he was talking about and what he was thinking about for his business and then I ran out and tried to find and luckily there were some resources out there. But like I say, I tweaked the model to the way I felt it would best meet the way of my audience, which is preservationists and archivists and genealogists, they are an unique group with certain expectations, and it was important to respect that.

Guin: Absolutely. Well you mentioned earlier, and you brought it up, Texas Ranch House. Tell us about your experience there.

Cooke: One, I couldn’t believe that they’d picked us. That was a whole experience. It took as long to get selected as it did to go out and live in 1867. And just in case your listeners haven’t heard of it, Texas Ranch House was on PBS. It was part of their kind of “house” series, and our objective was to go out and live as if it were 1867 on a 400,000 acre ranch in the middle of nowhere in Texas. Actually, a gorgeous area near Big Bend, but the idea was, and it was really interesting, because the premise was you’re 20th century people or 21st century people, how would you handle the 1867 experience and how would you adapt. It was not supposed to be an reenactment, but it’s amazing with every house miniseries that came on line, everybody went raving mad. “Oh my gosh, they’re not reenacting, what’s wrong with these people.” That wasn’t the premise. But obviously being a genealogist, I think they picked me because I said, “Look, I had a great, great grandmother from west Texas in 1867, this is my one and only chance to walk in her shoes or her boots and her corset.” And they wanted that.

Guin: You didn’t have to wear a corset, did you?

Cooke: Oh my goodness! A corset and seven layers. Which, in a 114-degree weather were peeled off very quickly. And it was funny because I got together with some ladies who live out there and fairly minimal conditions. I mean, some of them kind of enjoy living more of that rustic pioneer life. And we talked about, “OK let’s get down and dirty. How much are you wearing and are you shortening your skirts at all and do you always wear your corset,” and they were like, “Oh no honey. Unless there is somebody coming down the road that I can see, that corset is off and it’s about getting the work done.” So anyway, my whole family went, which was my husband and I and three teenage daughters at that time. And can you imagine what kind of salesman I am to get three teenage daughters to agree to go Texas?

Guin: No I can’t imagine.

Cooke: Oh my gosh. But there were two experiences. There was filming a reality TV Show and there was living in 1867. And the two shall meet and clash heads, which they do, but you really are kept in the dark. That is the main thing that I don’t think people realize is how in the dark you are as a participant. We didn’t find out until we got there that our executive producer was straight out of MTV. And so you’ve gone through all this and then it hits you, they are trying to get the 20-something audience and this is a reality TV without the million-dollar prize at the end. And so it was a constant struggle between their vision and our vision. And then they had a struggle between their vision and the vision of the company in Great Britain that actually financed it. So I learned a lot about the makings of a television show; the politics of it. I learned a lot about interviewing because one of the things they did was they took us out about every 7-10 days and they interviewed us individually for an hour. And of course much of that never showed on the show. But one thing I can tell your audience is when you’re watching reality TV, be aware of what you’re not seeing because the final product is in the hands of the editor and also the person who adds the music. You can be saying something and they can be playing violins behind you and you sound really amazingly intelligent or they could be going doke-de-doke-de-doke, just some funky music behind you and you’re like, “Oh, I look like such a dweeb, you know?” So it was interesting. It was interesting to see the end product, and we all looked at each other and said, “What summer were they at? Which ranch were they at?” Because it was so different and it was this tiny sliver of, we calculated, 1800 hours we were out there, three months. And 95 percent of that was the day-to-day living and as a woman, as a wife and a mother, when I watched the house shows, I want to see how did they cook, how were they sowing, what was it like, how tired were they. And they almost never came in our house, I don’t know if you ever noticed that in the show, but they couldn’t come inside and film because you would see how much we were getting done. And their objective was to show us as lazy. So, you run the risk of a little bit of a character attack, but I still look back and say it was my seven million dollar free vacation. It was the genealogy Disney Land that you get once in a lifetime and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Guin: But would you do it again?

Cooke: Would I do it again? We would go out in a heartbeat and live in 1867 on a ranch without TV cameras, no problem. Rattlesnakes, centipedes, 114 degree weather, it was an amazingly fantastic experience. I know exactly what my great grandmother felt like. Would I go on reality TV again and let them paint my character and create a character for me? No. Because that was really painful, and that was something I probably never really had a chance to really talk about, which is, it was really really painful for our family. And I don’t know how they do that and go to sleep at night.

Guin: Right. And especially with teenage daughters because that’s a sensitive time and there are issues where they want their privacy and everything is a drama and I feel that way with my 5-year-old daughter, so I can image how it is going to be when she’s a teenager. So that would be something. You are kind of exposing yourself there a little bit. Although the premise for the show, it seems like there would be more purity to the concept than some of the other shows like Real Life.

Cooke: Well I think when the shows were done in Great Britain, they had more of that purity and I love those. When the British come to America and film Americans, they bring their own stereotype of what Americans are like. And also the American producers don’t trust the audience to be able to stay with the academic side of it or to stay with the historical side of it. And they think they need to spoon feed a bunch of chaos and they did a lot of things to try to stir that up. So it is an unfortunate statement about what they think about the intelligence of the American public. But one thing I can tell you about my daughters, they came out of Texas so confident, so capable. They had an experience that almost no American child gets these days. And that is, they knew that if I don’t bring the wood in, we all go hungry, period. So when you tell your 5 year old when she’s 10, you need to go back, you need to bring your laundry down. If they don’t, what happens? The world ends? But for three months, my daughters had a sense of “I matter to the lives and the well-being of my entire family.” And the bonding that we got out of that and the sense of trust and togetherness, was phenomenal. And for no other reason, that would be the reason I would ever do it again.

Guin: Do you have some kind of checks in your own life where even though you are so connected and you are dealing with an audience that always wants another piece of you. How do you center yourself as a human being away from these tools?

Cooke: In terms of technology, my approach is a little different, and this is one of the things I talk about in my classes–particularly my Google class. You are not the slave of the Internet or of technology. It is there to serve you. And so everything I do, I approach it that way. It is so easy to go online and become very very overwhelmed because you feel, we are taught to be polite and you respond to things. And you start to just have it take you away with it, versus, for example when I teach a Google class, you can go to Google and you can put in your key word and you can have it give you 10 thousand different results and spend the rest of your life trying to comb through them, trying to find your genealogy. But what I do is to show them how to use the tool to actually set it up to use it as a genealogy dashboard where it is kind of like their home center and get these tools to work for you. To go out and find things and bring them back, to help you select and stay on top of your priorities. It is kind of what I do all the time in terms of my media. I want to say a message. I want to know what my message is, and if you know what your purpose is and your research and your preservation work and your genealogy, then you have to approach the technology that says, “What will you do for me.” And you pick and select, and you just let the rest of it go because you cannot possibly do it all and there is just more to come. So I don’t think you should be a slave of it.

Guin: Has your sense of mission always been very clear in your mind or was there a point in your life where there was a transition or an event that kind of helped you form your sense of mission that you have today?

Cooke: Well I think having my children. It gave me a sense of going beyond myself and being committed to their well-being and the well-being of my family. Whenever I interact with my kids, even today as grown adults, in the back of my mind is: does this help me get closer to them in 20 years, does it help me get full access to my grandchildren, I’m going to be a grandmother this year. And is everything I am doing helping me to bring me closer and to communicate better how dear they are to me, and the same thing with my audience. Am I communicating how dear they are to me because they really are. And if it’s not going to communicate that, toss it aside. It’s like when you talk about blog writing: editing is the number one thing. It’s what you leave out, get rid of it. Ah! It is just like reality TV, it’s what you leave out. That’s how you craft your message and I have a little note that is on my bulletin board and I look at it everyday and it says, “Are you working on your dream?” And my dream is kind of my mission, it’s, “Ah, a tombstone, what do I want on the tombstone?” What do I want people to think about and it’s interesting when I go to a conference, people will say, “Oh, when I think of Lisa Louise Cooke, I think this or that,” and that’s awesome because that means that I have stayed on message and I have gotten rid of the periphery stuff that just doesn’t add value. And I don’t know, I just think that overall what I want to do is I want to be able to leave something of value for generations to come. Not only within my family but also within the world. And isn’t that a wonderful trait of the Internet and of technology? Those podcasts will be out there well beyond me. That maybe this is going to help somebody else’s grandchild. Ah, I don’t know, maybe it will all be irrelevant, it might be. But I like the idea that it isn’t just lost the second that it’s done. And that’s a good thing.

Guin: Well, I guess that leads us to our next question. Where do you see Genealogy Gems going in the future? And not just Genealogy Gems, but Lisa Louise Cooke as well?

Cooke: OK. I will tell you the truth. I don’t even go by Lisa Louise. Do you know why I started using Louise? No, I am just telling you. Because after Texas Ranch House came out, I wasn’t sure if I wanted everyone to think of Mrs. Cooke or Lisa Cooke. And actually I am one of seven generations of Louises in my family. So that is just a little tidbit for your listeners on where the Louise comes from, and where do I want her to be? Where do I want Genealogy Gems to be? I want it to be continuing to foster that relationship with the listeners and just on the technology side of things. Some of the things I am looking at is–I am hoping I can pull this off–I’d love to do a live show once a month. So that people can actually call in. Maybe it would be chat, I’m not sure how that would work yet. I am looking at some different platforms to help me do it, but I would love to be able to do more of the in addition to what I’m doing is once a month they can just call in and we can just talk about how are the things that you are learning on the show, that you are picking up on your genealogy society. How are those things working for you? What do you think about them? What are your roadblocks? Whatever people have been talking a lot about libraries that have been closing lately because of budget cuts. Those are things that are important to people, and I think that would be another step in the community would be to be able to actually live talk. Right now I give them a voicemail line. There are lots of different ways they can connect with me. But it would be wonderful to do a live show. I’m also doing a lot of things with Family Tree Magazine. I am doing some online webinars and I just finished writing three courses. They are putting together a family tree university that is going to be online, so I am actually going to be able to teach classes using this coursework that I have written, and my students can email me and it will be interactive. And they can take these courses and learn more in depth on different subjects. So there is always an educational component I guess to it. And the fun thing is, whenever I write a class like that or do the research for it, I get to get a breakthrough on my research. I mean, I always learn something new. So it is selfish in that way as well.

Guin: So here’s a scenario: Someone’s watching this and they’re inspired, and they are developing their own sense of mission, and they want to involve new media in it. What advice would you have for that person?