SplaTT's Blog

The future of Mick and my time with The Podcast Network

I suppose its time that I filled you all in on exactly what is going on with The Podcast Network and myself.

A few days ago I officially ended my relationship with The Podcast Network and I am no longer a director, a shareholder, an employee or a show host.

I don’t want to bore you all, but as TPN and this part of my podcasting career took up a large part of my recent life, I want to give you all some background on what The Podcast Network was and the direction I plan on heading in now that I have left it.

As you may or may not know, The Podcast Network was not only Australia's, but the world’s first commercial podcast network. It was launched by Cameron Reilly and myself on the 14th of February 2005, which was just over two months after we had started our first podcast, G'day World, on the 29th of November 2004. We were early adopters and first movers (hey...we launched before Podcast Alley opened its doors) and it felt good.

I was on the verge of quitting my job of nearly five years as the Executive Producer, and then the head of Singleton OgilvyInteractive (one of Australia's largest interactive agencies) and the idea of launching a media network was the last thing from my mind. Initially I had planned on starting an emerging technology consultancy company, called Principius, which was to provide a variety of services to the marketing and communications industries around the areas of emerging technology. But the amazing growth and interest in both G'day World and The Podcast Network from around the world meant that Principius got sidelined. I then entered a world where I spent between 12-14 hours a day creating podcasts, designing and building a "large quantity" of blog sites, maintaining servers in Australia and then the US and also looking after the marketing side and acquiring / educating advertisers and sponsors...all of which I enjoyed at the time.

One of the bonuses of starting a media network with my background, both as an "ad executive" and as a reasonably well known blogger (in certain tech and marketing circles), was that the media and the conference circuit opened up to me for the first time in years (at the time Singleton Ogilvy & Mather didn't really believe in letting staff attend or speak at conferences or to the press), and I got to appear in a lot of both real world media (Channel 9 (Australia TV network), the BBC, The Bulletin, etc) and online media sites (Microsoft’s Channel 9, Market Watch (1, 2, 3) , Excalibur, The Blog Herald, Blogosphere Radio, The Chris Pirillo Show, etc) around the world as well as being invited to speak at quite a few conferences and events in Australia like Breakfast Bytes, Blogtalk Downunder, The 2005 Digital Advertising Summit, the D>Art.05 Forum, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) Broadcasting Conference 2005 and the AFR 4th Annual Advertising Summit .

TPN also had some amazing firsts in the world of podcasting, including; launching the worlds first podcast radio drama, Claybourne (which i found in a late night web surfing frenzy), the ability to subscribe and listen to TPN via the Windows Media Center, a major sponsorship deal that i organised with Motorola, a Scottish BAFTA nomination and a distribution deal with an Australian wide WiFi providor to name a few of them. This not only helped to grow the exposure of The Podcast Network but also of myself.

Let’s face it; it was also fun being called one of Australia’s future media moguls and being asked to speak at events like the ACMA conference in Australia and being the only Australian to be invited to attend events like Search Champs v2 in the US by Microsoft. As Rupert can now doubt attest to, the life of a media mogul can be pretty exciting. As a lot of you also know, the life of being a founder and director of a fast growing online venture can also be exciting. Another bunch of you also know that the life of building web sites and maintaining web servers can also be exciting. But doing all three…well…that can be a real pain in the proverbial after a while.

While all this was going on, I also decided that it was time for me to move back to Melbourne after spending 10 years living the high-life in Sydney. My best mate (who I have known since I was 13), was in the process of putting a large IP based CCTV security camera project together for a company in which he is a part owner, Landmark Security, for the 2006 Commonwealth Games (specifically the Athletes Village) that was held in Melbourne and I decided that if he needed my help and time he was going to get it…that’s what good friends are for aren’t they? It was also an incredibly interesting project to work on and as an aside it also allowed me to try and settle back into my home town and to take a short break from TPN, podcasting and blogging and to have a good think about the direction I wanted to continue in.

Well for a variety of reasons I have decided to move on from TPN.

Some of these reasons include the fact that I never really had the time I needed to do "my thing" with Principius (which was the reason I left Singleton OgilvyInteractive in the first place), and also that after having spent over 15 years in the online / interactive / tech business and the marketing world, I felt that I was really just doing the same things that I was doing 10 years ago but putting in twice as much time and effort, and in the end...well...I just wasn’t enjoying it. Finally I am also a strong believer that if you are going to be involved in something, and you can call me old fashioned here; you need to believe in that what you are doing is heading down a path that you believe in 100%. So the decision I came to in the end was that by retaining my role within TPN I was not only holding back TPN but more importantly I was holding back myself from moving forward and growing.

I have to say though, that the time I spent building the idea and the physical entities of both G’day World and TPN, was a great experience. I got to work on an amazing project and along the way got to meet and interview some truly amazing people and I wish all of the past, current and future hosts (a few of which I knew well before TPN had started), all the best with their podcasting and other endeavors in the future.

So what will I be doing now that I have officially left The Podcast Network? That's a pretty big question that has been in my head for a while now. Other than firing up Principius again, during the last few months I have been looking at a number of possible projects (both web and non-web based)…some of the them are straight out of my own head and a few are with some really exciting companies that are working on some really amazing projects. I do know that I will still keep up my blogging, as I seem to have got the bug back again recently, and I may even start up podcasting my own personal show/thoughts as well…which is where TPN started...well...for me it did anyway. I will also be speaking at a few events in the near future, such as the AIMIA Future of TV Forum, the Advertising, Marketing & Media Summit 2006 and the Blogs, Wikis, & RSS event.

I also feel that after spending 15+ years in the internet / new media / digital fields in Australia, it's time that I gave something back to the industry that I love, so I plan to do my bit for our industry body in Australia, AIMIA (the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association), by standing for a seat in the upcoming National Executive election as well as at the Victorian Chapter election.

To all my blog readers and subscribers, and there are a lot more of you than I ever thought there would be when I started SplaTT’s Blog on the 23rd of March 2003, I hope that I can keep you interested enough to keep you reading and/or subscribed to my "collection of random ramblings…"

:)
Mick (SplaTT) Stanic

Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic at May 19, 2006 4:53 PM | TrackBack