A Public “Thank You” to Jared Spool

I had a great conversation with Jared Spool on the way to and from the aforementioned Boston Media Makers Group Meeting Sunday morning.

Jared took the time to view the 3 interviews on the site and offer some much needed constructive criticism of the content to date.

He noticed a tendency to stick slavishly to my list of questions, and in doing so, bypassing opportunities to dig a little deeper to particularly interesting answers to my previous question. He felt it might come across that I don’t particularly care what the answers were, just as long as I could get through my list of questions.

He encouraged me to engage the audience by engaging more with the interviewee. By questioning or challenging responses rather than letting them just pass by. Doing so would certainly make the videocast far more interesting for all participants involved.

He cited Conan O’Brien and Terry Gross (Fresh Air on NPR) as examples of two great interviewers I should take time to listen to in order to emulate their style. There were a couple of others that he mentioned, but suffice to say that by studying the art of great interviewers, I could become a better one myself.

He had a few other suggestions, like having transcripts ready that people could scan through on the page (they can be cheaply done through using CastingWords.com’s transcription service) so that people could quickly get the main ideas of the interview and determine whether they WANT to invest the time to listen to the interview. He added that creating audio podcasts (which I have done, but not yet published) would make it more accessible to those like him, who routinely download podcasts on to their iPod and listen to them in their leisure, rather than having to view the interview online.

His comments meant so much to me, both as a friend and as a colleague, that he would take the time to help me make my labor of love that much better.

So Jared, thanks for being my friend and offering your wisdom and guidance. I’ll be sure to follow your advice as I develop my plans for ZBIZ.TV interviews down the road.