Hi all
I do a weekly radio program on a community radio station (ie its a volunteer position). And I'm looking for ideas to make it easier to track the program preparation. I've tried a number of approaches, and all have flaws.
What happens on my show ? Most weeks I interview someone live, perhaps different people in different segments. Some weeks I may prerecord a phone or field interview which I then edit (a very time consuming task!) and put on CD. For either live or prerecorded interviews there may be more or less research required, and I also prep the questions. I also ask the interviewee for a short bio.
Getting the people to interview varies greatly - sometimes they contact me and other times there are many emails back & forth as we discuss date and content.
Some weeks I have a co-presenter whose role in preparation varies greatly from zero to quite collaborative.
Most weeks I go to the radio station library and select my music, but at a pinch I can source it all from my own iTunes library. Sometimes there is a strong link between the interviews/other content and the music, other times the latter is really just a filler.
I have at least one other segment that I need to prepare - more on where ideas come from later.
After the show each week I need to thank any guests, update the website, and file my notes. I also like to download the show from the stations's logger and listen back to parts.
At any one time I have a forward plan of guests pencilled in for specific dates - this lives in a Pages doc. It changes a lot and there are lots of blanks.
I also collect lots of ideas - some are in Omf as notes or links to websites.
Others are in a paper tray of newspaper articles and scribbled notes that I think of the "pond". As each program looms closer, and ideas/guests haven't presented themselves to me, I go trawling in the "pond" of ideas or the Omf Ideas project and see what I can find.
The final drawing together is the running sheet (a Numbers doc) which gives a minute-by-minute listing of what should happen when. I never stick to it, but at least I know where I need to speed up or slow down. As I get more experienced with presenting the show this running sheet is getting less precise (eg I now just allow 4 mins for all tracks unless they are under 2 or over 5 mins). During a week's preparation I usually do a rough version about 2-3 days from broadcast day to see if I have any major holes and to see how much music I need. I do the final version either the night before or the morning of the show).
So what have I tried in terms of Omf?
Initially I had a template from which (using Curt's script) I would create a new project (I started with just being one week ahead, but now I have 2 weeks of future programs). As time went on the template got more and more elaborate, but still seemed to create more work than it saved, and I would forget to do things. For example, the tasks and the dates due differ for a prerecord vs a live interview. But then I had so many task & sub tasks that when I looked at it, there was no quick way of seeing what I had to do, in terms of admin emails, or some research and question prep. So I avoided looking at at, and essentially relied on memory - the opposite of good GTD practice.
So then I tried a different approach and cut the template right back, and created an Omnioutliner doc for each week. Now my Omf tasks essentially tell me to look at the OO doc to see what needs doing every day from Wednesday (my program airs on Monday). But I still need to put things like 'Waiting' tasks into Omf, or other little jobs that I need to pop up in front of me when I'm crunching though my tasks. But it all feels very messy and I feel like I'm spending too much time tweaking the system rather than doing the work.
The post-program tasks are straight-forward and sit nicely in the template.
So my questions to the forum essentially are does anyone else have this sort of work for which they successfully use Omf and/or has anyone got any suggestions on my current setup ?
[Having just typed all this out, I've had an idea - maybe I need to need make my running sheet in Numbers more integral to the preparation process. Current columns are Minutes, start time (calculated), item (eg "CD") and then notes which is most of the width of the page. Perhaps there could be more columns on the right (that I dont take into the studio) where I track stuff.... but if I'm not careful I'll be building Omf in Numbers - scary thought!]
(I've been using GTD and Omf for quite a while and am quite comfortable with perspectives and contexts, and all of Omf's goodies. I can read Applescripts and make minor changes, but wouldnt like to write anything from scratch.)
Cheers
Kazza
I do a weekly radio program on a community radio station (ie its a volunteer position). And I'm looking for ideas to make it easier to track the program preparation. I've tried a number of approaches, and all have flaws.
What happens on my show ? Most weeks I interview someone live, perhaps different people in different segments. Some weeks I may prerecord a phone or field interview which I then edit (a very time consuming task!) and put on CD. For either live or prerecorded interviews there may be more or less research required, and I also prep the questions. I also ask the interviewee for a short bio.
Getting the people to interview varies greatly - sometimes they contact me and other times there are many emails back & forth as we discuss date and content.
Some weeks I have a co-presenter whose role in preparation varies greatly from zero to quite collaborative.
Most weeks I go to the radio station library and select my music, but at a pinch I can source it all from my own iTunes library. Sometimes there is a strong link between the interviews/other content and the music, other times the latter is really just a filler.
I have at least one other segment that I need to prepare - more on where ideas come from later.
After the show each week I need to thank any guests, update the website, and file my notes. I also like to download the show from the stations's logger and listen back to parts.
At any one time I have a forward plan of guests pencilled in for specific dates - this lives in a Pages doc. It changes a lot and there are lots of blanks.
I also collect lots of ideas - some are in Omf as notes or links to websites.
Others are in a paper tray of newspaper articles and scribbled notes that I think of the "pond". As each program looms closer, and ideas/guests haven't presented themselves to me, I go trawling in the "pond" of ideas or the Omf Ideas project and see what I can find.
The final drawing together is the running sheet (a Numbers doc) which gives a minute-by-minute listing of what should happen when. I never stick to it, but at least I know where I need to speed up or slow down. As I get more experienced with presenting the show this running sheet is getting less precise (eg I now just allow 4 mins for all tracks unless they are under 2 or over 5 mins). During a week's preparation I usually do a rough version about 2-3 days from broadcast day to see if I have any major holes and to see how much music I need. I do the final version either the night before or the morning of the show).
So what have I tried in terms of Omf?
Initially I had a template from which (using Curt's script) I would create a new project (I started with just being one week ahead, but now I have 2 weeks of future programs). As time went on the template got more and more elaborate, but still seemed to create more work than it saved, and I would forget to do things. For example, the tasks and the dates due differ for a prerecord vs a live interview. But then I had so many task & sub tasks that when I looked at it, there was no quick way of seeing what I had to do, in terms of admin emails, or some research and question prep. So I avoided looking at at, and essentially relied on memory - the opposite of good GTD practice.
So then I tried a different approach and cut the template right back, and created an Omnioutliner doc for each week. Now my Omf tasks essentially tell me to look at the OO doc to see what needs doing every day from Wednesday (my program airs on Monday). But I still need to put things like 'Waiting' tasks into Omf, or other little jobs that I need to pop up in front of me when I'm crunching though my tasks. But it all feels very messy and I feel like I'm spending too much time tweaking the system rather than doing the work.
The post-program tasks are straight-forward and sit nicely in the template.
So my questions to the forum essentially are does anyone else have this sort of work for which they successfully use Omf and/or has anyone got any suggestions on my current setup ?
[Having just typed all this out, I've had an idea - maybe I need to need make my running sheet in Numbers more integral to the preparation process. Current columns are Minutes, start time (calculated), item (eg "CD") and then notes which is most of the width of the page. Perhaps there could be more columns on the right (that I dont take into the studio) where I track stuff.... but if I'm not careful I'll be building Omf in Numbers - scary thought!]
(I've been using GTD and Omf for quite a while and am quite comfortable with perspectives and contexts, and all of Omf's goodies. I can read Applescripts and make minor changes, but wouldnt like to write anything from scratch.)
Cheers
Kazza