One-Year Anniversary Episode: Reflecting on Our Podcast Journey
2024-11-04 19 min
Description & Show Notes
In this celebratory episode, we reflect on our first year of podcasting, discussing our journey so far, our motivations, key lessons and plans for the future. We share insights into the work that goes into producing each episode, our teamwork and some fun statistics and moments that have become part of our podcast’s identity. This episode also offers valuable English language tips, focusing on using the present perfect tense to reflect on achievements.
Please note, this epsiode was recorded before the terrible tragedy in Valencia, so although we talk about our upcoming trip, that has now been postponed.
In this epsiode we talk about:
Please note, this epsiode was recorded before the terrible tragedy in Valencia, so although we talk about our upcoming trip, that has now been postponed.
In this epsiode we talk about:
- Podcast Origins and Motivation: Our initial motivations for starting the podcast and how we wanted to reach learners in a new, engaging format beyond traditional blogging.
- Technical Learning Curve: From editing to equipment setup, we share our experiences of navigating podcasting’s technical aspects and reflect on learning to be comfortable with technology and overcoming fears associated with technical challenges.
- Teamwork and Freelancing: Working as freelancers, we all value the camaraderie and support we've found in this collaborative project.
- Global Audience: We are thrilled to discover our listener base spans 21 countries, including listeners from places as far as Sudan, Brunei, Egypt, and Mongolia. We are grateful for the support and look forward to reaching even more people.
- Plans for the Future: In addition to brainstorming new topics, we plan to deepen discussions on some subjects we've only touched on briefly. We aim to continue exploring diverse language topics that engage learners of all backgrounds.
Learning Tip: Present Perfect Tense
Throughout the episode, we naturally use the present perfect tense to discuss our achievements and experiences, such as “What have we achieved?” and “What have we done this year?” This tense is helpful when reflecting on the past with relevance to the present.
In dieser Jubiläumsfolge blicken wir auf unser erstes Jahr als Podcaster zurück und sprechen über unsere bisherige Reise, unsere Motivation, wichtige Erkenntnisse und zukünftige Pläne. Wir geben Einblicke in die Arbeit, die in jede Folge fließt, unsere Teamarbeit und einige lustige Momente, die zu einem Teil der Identität unseres Podcasts geworden sind. Außerdem enthält diese Folge wertvolle Tipps zur englischen Sprache, insbesondere zur Verwendung des Present Perfect Tense, um über Erfolge zu reflektieren.
Throughout the episode, we naturally use the present perfect tense to discuss our achievements and experiences, such as “What have we achieved?” and “What have we done this year?” This tense is helpful when reflecting on the past with relevance to the present.
In dieser Jubiläumsfolge blicken wir auf unser erstes Jahr als Podcaster zurück und sprechen über unsere bisherige Reise, unsere Motivation, wichtige Erkenntnisse und zukünftige Pläne. Wir geben Einblicke in die Arbeit, die in jede Folge fließt, unsere Teamarbeit und einige lustige Momente, die zu einem Teil der Identität unseres Podcasts geworden sind. Außerdem enthält diese Folge wertvolle Tipps zur englischen Sprache, insbesondere zur Verwendung des Present Perfect Tense, um über Erfolge zu reflektieren.
Bitte beachte, dass diese Folge vor der schrecklichen Tragödie in Valencia aufgenommen wurde. Auch wenn wir über unsere bevorstehende Reise sprechen, wurde diese inzwischen verschoben.
In dieser Episode sprechen wir über:
Ursprünge des Podcasts und Motivation: Unsere anfängliche Motivation, den Podcast zu starten, und wie wir Lernende auf eine neue, ansprechende Art und Weise erreichen wollten, die über das traditionelle Bloggen hinausgeht.
Technische Lernkurve: Von der Bearbeitung bis zur Einrichtung der Ausrüstung – wir teilen unsere Erfahrungen mit den technischen Aspekten des Podcastings und reflektieren, wie wir uns dabei wohler mit der Technik gefühlt und Ängste vor technischen Herausforderungen überwunden haben.
Teamarbeit und Freelancing: Als Freiberufler schätzen wir alle die Kameradschaft und Unterstützung, die wir in diesem gemeinsamen Projekt gefunden haben.
Weltweites Publikum: Wir sind begeistert, dass unser Publikum 21 Länder umfasst, darunter Hörer aus so weit entfernten Orten wie Sudan, Brunei, Ägypten und der Mongolei. Wir sind dankbar für die Unterstützung und freuen uns darauf, noch mehr Menschen zu erreichen.
Pläne für die Zukunft: Neben neuen Themenideen planen wir, einige bereits angesprochene Themen vertieft zu diskutieren. Wir möchten weiterhin vielfältige Sprachthemen erforschen, die Lernende mit unterschiedlichstem Hintergrund ansprechen.
Lerntipp: Present Perfect Tense
In der gesamten Folge verwenden wir das Present Perfect Tense, um über unsere Erfolge und Erfahrungen zu sprechen, wie zum Beispiel „Was haben wir erreicht?“ und „Was haben wir dieses Jahr gemacht?“ Diese Zeitform ist hilfreich, um über die Vergangenheit im Hinblick auf ihre Bedeutung für die Gegenwart zu reflektieren.
In der gesamten Folge verwenden wir das Present Perfect Tense, um über unsere Erfolge und Erfahrungen zu sprechen, wie zum Beispiel „Was haben wir erreicht?“ und „Was haben wir dieses Jahr gemacht?“ Diese Zeitform ist hilfreich, um über die Vergangenheit im Hinblick auf ihre Bedeutung für die Gegenwart zu reflektieren.
Transcript
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, we are the 3 English Experts.
I'm Rebecca.
I'm Dave.
I'm Birgit.
And welcome to this episode.
3 English Experts is your English podcast to
help you speak better English and create a
positive and happy mindset for your English learning
journey.
Hi everyone.
So just a bit of information before we
start this episode.
This following episode was actually recorded a couple
of weeks ago.
And you will notice that we talk about
our upcoming trip to Valencia, how we're going
to celebrate our anniversary.
Unfortunately, of course, this was recorded before all
the terrible, terrible floods occurred in the Valencian
region.
And due to that, we have actually cancelled
our trip.
Hopefully it's only postponed.
We're hoping to do that in 2025.
But because of the awful situation there right
now and people are suffering and it's terrible
and we just really it's not the right
time to be celebrating right now in Valencia.
So just if you're wondering when you listen
to the episode, we did cancel the trip.
But like I say, hopefully we will be
able to do that next year in 2025.
So hello, everybody, and welcome to a new
episode.
And this episode is special because we are
celebrating one year of our podcast recording.
Unbelievable.
Doesn't feel like a year already.
And we thought we are going to talk
about why are we doing it?
What's our motivation?
Has it changed?
What are we going to do next?
What could we have done better or give
you some share some statistics with you, some
facts about listeners we have, where they are
located and things like that.
Yes.
And there's also some learning, hopefully in this
episode, because there's a grammar tense.
What have we done?
What have we achieved?
We always would need for sentences like these,
the present perfect.
What are we going to do?
What is our plan going to do?
What's next on the list of things?
Yes.
So maybe some regrets, maybe some new ideas.
And Rebecca, maybe you could start sharing your
feelings about why are we doing this?
What's your motivation?
Has it changed?
Why?
Why?
No, I think for me, I think originally,
first of all, it's always fun to have
a new project.
And I think I got kind of bored
of blogging.
I think a lot of people got bored
of blogs and a lot of people were
moving over to this video or, you know,
podcast format.
So I think that was why it was
one of my main motivations was just to
try something different and just look at a
different format.
And I think I don't know.
I mean, Dave, I know you listen to
lots of audio books and podcasts.
You listen to a lot of content, which
I don't actually, I have to say, I
still read a lot.
But I think this this kind of format
is so popular, isn't it?
Where you can just you can multitask, you
can listen while you're doing the garden or
at the gym or whatever.
So I think that was one of my
things was just try a different format, see
if you can reach people in a better
way, in a different way.
Yeah.
Do something new.
Dave, would you agree with that?
Totally.
And I wanted to go the full hog
and record, film everything, but we decided in
the end at first to at least to
keep it as a podcast sound only.
But actually, I think we did a good
thing by recently adding the show notes, which
I think also, as Rebecca just said there,
you can multitask.
But if you enjoy the reading side of
things and learning from reading as well, it's
always good that you can listen and maybe
check the show notes, what we wrote, what
we spoke about, maybe get some new vocabulary
from that as well.
So I think that's maybe answering one of
the questions later on what we've sort of
gradually done better as we've gone along, what
we've learned from it.
But yeah, I would agree with that totally.
It's just I did blogging as well, I
admit.
And so, yeah, it is certainly a different
way.
At first, I was very nervous, thinking, oh,
how are we going to do this?
Do we have to type out what we
want to say?
Do we have to practise it 15 million
times before we do it?
But in actual fact, I think, I guess
you guys will agree with me, we've been
able to do it quite, as we say
in English, off the cuff.
So without really preparing it in great detail,
of course, we have our ideas, what we
want to say, but we don't write it
out or anything like that.
For me, that's a really positive thing, because
it's also I thought, oh, this is going
to take hours, you know, and it was
a real relief just to feel like, okay,
we don't have to script everything, we can
just talk and it's okay, it works, right?
What was your why for doing this?
Yeah, my why was to obviously also try
out this media form, but also to reach
people out there, because there's such a high
demand, I believe, in learning English.
Okay, there are a lot of podcasts out
there and material.
But yeah, we used to chat every now
and then before we were online, and I
thought that was really a good combination.
And that was my motivation to really reach
out for more people, help them speak better
English.
And I have learned it's no rocket science.
Yeah, completely agree.
I thought, oh my God, the techniques, the
microphone, what's going to be involved?
Yeah, Dave, as you just said, it's okay.
The effort we put into this, and the
outcome, I think we can be happy.
Yeah, we are content.
But on the other hand, I think it's
important to say it's not easy.
There's always things that you have to do.
And it's a lot of hard work that
you need to put in to produce everything.
I don't know, maybe Rebecca, you could also
just say a few things about what efforts
go into it, because I know you are
the end of the sort of what happens
when we recorded it and things like that.
Which is absolutely hilarious, because I'm not a
technical person.
I think my husband is still like, and
why are you in charge of editing?
Why am I doing that?
Because I can do it.
I think, you know, I mean, we do
outsource the editing.
So just did shout out to our editor,
Amin, who's absolutely fantastic.
Thank you.
Such a great guy.
And he completely understands that we were podcast
Muppets, let's say at the beginning.
What we were doing, what we needed to
send him, and he's really brilliant.
I think what I have learned, I think,
like Dave said, it's not easy.
It's not just like it's the easiest thing
in the world.
But I think I've learned not to be
so afraid of technical things.
And I would always be Mrs. Oh, no,
that's a bit, I'm not techie.
And I can't do those things.
And a bit like language learners, sometimes you
get this block, you think, I am not
a language person.
And therefore, I cannot learn languages.
And it's the same.
I'm like that with tech things.
I just think my head just blocks, I
just cannot absorb this information.
And I think that's been a good learning
point for me that I have learned to
step a little bit outside my comfort zone.
We're still not in the panic zone.
You see, Dave, I think videos, I would
be in the panic zone.
I don't want to be in the panic
zone.
I want to be in the stretch zone,
the stretch zone, but not the panic zone.
And I think that's been a really good
lesson for me, just not to be afraid
of new things, like new tech things that
you don't, you know, and it's not rocket
science, like bigger science.
It's not easy peasy, but it's not rocket
science.
I at the beginning, you know, I was
very nervous of the fact that everything you
said was sort of recorded.
And it's there forever.
And it's it was kind of a scary
thought.
But I think with time you grow and
you say, Okay, let's just go out and
try and have a bit of fun and
express yourself as you do and not to
worry about it.
Worst case scenario, it can always be.
As you say, I cancel out all your
shit, Dave.
Yeah, no problem.
You're welcome.
Don't give away our secrets.
You're welcome.
You're welcome.
Yeah.
What have I learned?
Also, I think I learned that it's really,
really nice to have something going on in
a team.
So sort of teamwork.
That's, yeah, that's really a good experience.
Because as a freelancer, we all have that.
We don't go out into the office.
And if that works, and it works well,
that's fantastic.
But also, I had to learn that I
still have a strong German accent.
Before I hadn't listened to myself.
Well, we still have strong Sheffield accents.
So don't worry about it.
Yeah, but everybody wants to have that nice
British accent.
And I thought before, maybe I thought, okay,
I wouldn't sound so German.
I don't know.
But that's okay.
It's okay.
And that's something learners maybe find important to
know.
But again, it's I think, you know, it's
this finding your voice and obviously recording, listening
to yourself recorded is nothing most people don't
like listening to themselves.
And it is a bit like, wow, do
I really sound like that?
It's a bit strange.
But again, it's getting used to it, accepting
it.
This is the way I sound.
And I, you know, to try and change
your voice too much is it would be
kind of weird and not authentic.
And so we are who we are.
And we sound how we sound.
And it's fine.
Because we have some nice statistics bigger, right?
People are listening to us.
Yeah.
And that's my personal highlight of this podcast.
When I look at the statistics, that it's
21 countries that listen to us.
And it's even, yeah, it's stretching, of course,
from Germany and Austria, USA, the states on
part number three, Brazil, quite a few people,
but also from Sudan, Brunei, Egypt, Egypt, Egypt,
Mongolia, Mongolia, Mongolia.
Wow.
Yeah, exactly.
Wow.
Thank you.
I think maybe we should have our next
visit to Mongolia and visit the person who
listens to us in Mongolia.
I just pressed on it by mistake.
I have no idea who you are.
But that's amazing how far we'll reach.
Yeah, it's amazing.
It's cute.
It's a nice concept.
I think the other, I mean, the other
statistics, we seem to have mostly people over
30.
That seems to be our target group.
So according to the statistics, that is our
target group, which maybe reflects on, you know,
English learning today that maybe younger people feel
more confident, have more, you know, connection to
English, would you say, through social media, Netflix?
And I think the English learning world has
changed over the generations.
Definitely.
Yeah, I agree.
Younger people, they might still be in education,
involved at school, university.
They might not have gotten to the stage
where they think they need to brush up,
but then getting into jobs after the age
of turning 30, maybe that's becoming more important.
Right.
Yeah, I would absolutely agree with Bigger's point
about the, yeah, the teamwork, because as a
freelancer, I think anybody who is self-employed
can relate to that, that you don't go
out after work with your co-workers because
you don't have co-workers.
You don't go into the office because you
don't have an office.
You know, you sit in front of your
screen every day and you meet lots of
nice people.
I, you know, I love meeting my clients
and it's, but it's not the same as
having peers, people who are on the same,
do the same thing as you do, do
the same work every day.
And it's just nice to share, just to
share experiences and ideas and motivate.
We do motivate each other and our different
projects.
And so, yeah, that's, that's one of my
highlights.
And that's something you, you cannot take for
granted.
I think that's fantastic that it works so
well between the three of us.
Nobody's thinking, oh, he or she is a
competitor or, yeah, that's, that's a good thing
about it.
We do share things.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My other personal highlight is every time, so
you don't see this as listeners, obviously, but
we do meet on, when we record, we're
actually all looking at each other.
So we're on Zoom.
So we don't sit in the same room.
And when we say goodbye, every single time
Dave waves, he waves at the screen to
us.
He just can't stop himself.
He goes, bye, does this massive wave.
And it's just really funny.
And you just, you have to sit on
your hands.
I don't know.
We can't stop him.
He's just going to wave.
Rebecca, we can try and talk really hard
into him because we are finally meeting.
We're going to meet, that's next, in person.
We've never met.
Yes.
So what are we going to do next?
Yeah.
Indeed, you are coming to my hometown, which
is, if you don't remember, is Valencia, Spain.
So on the 8th of November, the guys
are meeting up in Valencia.
Can't wait.
I can't wait.
And people still think it's weird that we've
never met.
They still cannot believe you're physically never sat
in the same room.
It is kind of weird.
It doesn't feel like that.
It doesn't feel like that.
I might not like you when I see
you.
I'm actually afraid that I think because I've
never seen the two of you standing up.
I think you're both quite tall and I'm
really short.
So I'm not very big.
So I've got visions of our photographs and
there'll be me in the middle, like the
little ones.
We put you on a stool.
I need a step.
I'm going to need a step to look
equally.
I'm not that.
I'm not that big.
I was imagining you quite tall.
I don't know.
Not that tall.
I'm already planning what heels to bring to
elevate myself.
I never thought about the heels.
Jesus, that's something else I need to think
about.
What heels are you wearing, Dave?
I don't know.
I'm going to have to ask my wife
if I can get some.
That's going to be cool, though.
Looking forward to it.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
But coming back to the content in this
podcast, obviously, we're talking about how it should
go on in the future, but it will
be going on, definitely.
So what the subjects will be, will there
be any change?
Or do you think after a year, we
have covered most important subject, David, do you
think, or what will be on the list?
No, I think that's one of the other
reasons for us all meeting up, that we
can actually do a bit of brainstorming, maybe
with a sangria or two or a cerveza
or two or three, or whatever it might
be to help the juices flow and the
ideas flow.
But no, there's loads of things.
I mean, I think English language and the
skills to do with English language are so
varied, so wide.
We could do it for another 50 years,
guys.
No problem.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
We'll be all little old ladies.
I won't be a little old lady.
Sorry, no, you'll be.
I'll be a little old man.
Anyway.
Okay, we'll just be old.
Let's establish we'll all just be old.
But yeah, I think like you said before,
though, Dave, although we've done a lot of
topics, we could deep dive a lot more,
that there are some that we've talked about,
we've touched on, but we haven't really gone
into that much detail.
So I think there's plenty of content to
keep us busy.
I think the only question is often, sometimes
the format as well, whether we want to
do it, maybe more shorter ones, or maybe
even more longer ones.
We've had one or two around about 30.
Maybe this is somewhere where we could get
comments from listeners.
Your feedback is always welcome.
So, you know, is it the more longer
style that you prefer?
Do you prefer the smaller style?
Maybe we should even think about doing really
short ones.
Who knows?
Really bite-sized stuff, snippets.
In actual fact, what's quite funny, the listeners
won't also know is we have a lot
of good conversations before and after our recordings.
We often thought of putting them together as
a little compilation, because they're often quite humorous,
I must say.
So, but yeah, who knows?
I think there's lots we could do.
Yeah.
What you have thought we would get more
feedback on online, on writing, because the feedback
is mostly by the people who listen.
So we see they listen and look at
profiles.
Would you have thought that would have been
different?
I really don't know, because I don't know
enough about podcasting to know how much audiences
engage, you know, from contacting and writing.
I get feedback from people.
People tell me, oh, I listen and I
recommended it.
But actually, you know, writing a review or
commenting is quite limited.
So I don't know how we change that.
If anyone has an idea, drop us a
line and let us know.
On the list for the brainstorming.
And how important it is.
I mean, of course, it would be nice
to have more feedback.
Feedback is always good.
But that's something we need to brainstorm and
think about how to engage our listeners more.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And that's all part of Valencia as well,
of course.
Valencia.
Yes.
Vamos.
I'm ready.
Yes.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Here we come.
Okay.
Thanks, guys, for listening.
We will really enjoy ourselves meeting up in
Valencia.
And for our next episode, we'd like to
talk about series, whether it's on TV, whether
it's on Netflix, Amazon, whatever it is, how
to choose a series for yourself to help
you improve your English.
So see you next time.
And I'm going to wave.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye bye.
Thank you so much for pressing play today.
If you have any comments, questions or perhaps
suggestions for future episodes, feel free to contact
us at our website, 3englishexperts.com.
Have a great day and see you next
time.