Dave’s Midlife Blog

On March 21, 2005, the first edition of The Word Nerds went onto the Internet. With that my personal journey into the world of podcasting began. It’s been a great two years. Thousands of people know who I am, more or less, because of that podcast. It has succeeded far beyond my wildest expectations.

The first edition (my partners Howard Chang and Howard Shepherd and I decided to call our shows “editions” rather than “episodes,” since we weren’t telling stories) was just a simple five-minute speech-only monolog. I was recording directly into my iBook’s internal microphone, primarily to learn how to use the Audacity recording software. When it was over, I decided the edition was good enough to keep. It is still the first show in our podcast feed.

In late April or early May of 2005, I sent a promo to Adam Curry to play on the Daily Source Code. I was very thrilled to be driving home from teaching one day and to hear my voice come out of my car speakers while listening to the DSC.

Later on, at the end of my commute, I heard an extremely intriguing promo sent in by a German woman who called herself Annik Rubens. She was promoting her own podcast, Schlaflos in München. I decided to start listening, and discovered one of my absolutely favorite delights in the entire podosphere. If you are German speaker and have not heard SiM, you are missing the boat. Subscribe now!

I sent Annik an email and introduced myself. Turns out she had started listening to The Word Nerds as a result of hearing my promo on Adam Curry’s show. We stayed in touch and became big fans of each other’s shows. I discovered that Annik’s short segments and her very brisk, casual, but crystal-clear and attractive German voice were the ideal listening exercise for my advanced students. Schlaflos in München remains a central part of my German 4 curriculum.

Only much later did I discover that Annik Rubens and I began podcasting on the very same day. The first episode of SiM appeared on March 21, 2005. Annik mentioned that on a special shout-out edition of SiM today.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch, liebe Annik! Ich freue mich auf viele weitere Folgen von SiM! (Congratulations, dear Annik! I look forward to many more editions of SiM!)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 9:02 pm and is filed under Annik Rubens, German, podcasting.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.