The Hard Road – A Slick Infiltration

Meet Ben Yendall, the storytelling, community-building co-host of Tales from the Hydian Way, a podcast about a role-playing game set in the Star Wars universe. As Ben says, Tales from the Hydian Way is about as niche as you can get, but podcasting is a great medium for serving your particular pack of people. He followed the advice we've often heard here and elsewhere: Make the podcast you want to listen to. I don't play the game and I stopped watching Star Wars at Return of the Jedi, and yet I tune into Tales from the Hydian Way from time to time just to hear them talk. Ben and his co-hosts David and Joshua improvise fan fiction online with people all over the world in the game, and then analyze how to do it better on the podcast. Isn't that amazing? It might be tempting with that level of expertise to exclude newcomers. But Ben has no time for gatekeeping or noob-shaming. "It doesn't do us any good to make the community smaller," he says. That's pretty great, too. This episode is also available in iTunes, on Google Play, on SoundCloud or on Stitcher. Ben made these great local recommendations: Basket of Yegs, Troy Pavlek's podcast about civic affairs Northern Nerdcast, Dan Shessel's look at all things nerdy in Edmonton RPG Casts, a repository of role-playing-game-related podcasts. You can find Tales from the Hydian Way on Twitter (@thehydianway) and Facebook. Ben himself is @deuteriumice on Twitter. And you can often find him in real life at our Edmonton Podcasting Meetup. The next one is on Sept. 18 at Cafe Rista, on the subject of how to start a podcast, and we'll be mining the expertise of our veteran podcasters to help people start their own. Sign up here. This episode was one of several recorded at the Makerspace at the downtown Edmonton Public Library on 100 in 1 Day. Watch for more episodes recorded that day in future weeks. This week’s Seen and Heard in Edmonton is brought to you by Taproot Edmonton, a new member-supported home for local stories created with the community and not just for it. We just launched the Story Garden, which you'll hear Mack Male talk about in this episode. If you’d like to help create a new way to sustain how-and-why journalism in our city, join Taproot today. Musical credits: Beethoven’s Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 2 No. 1, played by Daniel Veesey, from freemusicarchive.com.

I had the great pleasure of talking to Ben Yendall of Tales from the Hydian Way and Trina Shessel from the Northern Nerdcast on stage at the Needle on May 12 during NorthwestFest's LunchPods series. Both Ben and Trina have cultivated a community around their podcasts, and are members of Edmonton's growing and increasingly connected podcasting community. They shared a lot of excellent insights about how and why they got into podcasting, and what they have learned about "community" in all (or at least many) senses of the word. I also talk a bit about the Alberta Podcast Network, which is now officially in the works thanks to funding from ATB Financial. This episode is also available in iTunes, on Google Play, on SoundCloud or on Stitcher. You can hear even more about the Alberta Podcast Network, and ask me anything about it, at the next Edmonton Podcasting Meetup on May 28 at 1 p.m. at Variant Edition Comics and Culture. Register here to attend.  Some other links mentioned in the show: The Northern Nerd Network's YouTube channel; Ben's other podcast, Heroes of the Hydian Way; The Tales from the Hydian Way Patreon campaign; The meetup where Ben and Trina offered advice to The Broadcast; Two big Doctor Who podcasts made in Edmonton: Radio Free Skaro and Verity!; The Chicago Podcast Cooperative, a model for the Alberta Podcast Network; Local examples of using music on podcasts: CKUA's Capital City Records podcast, Kat Griffiths's Start the Music, Cups N Cakes on Mixcloud;  Local examples of live phone-ins: The View Up Here, Northern Nerdcast on Google Hangouts; Chris Sikkenga and Paul Deleeuw's Montreal Sauce; My Edmonton podcast roundups; Castria, where award-winning podcasters help you make yours (and help me make mine); The Needle Vinyl Tavern, great hosts for the inaugural LunchPods series. Some of the other LunchPods sessions have made their way into various feeds: Northwestfest Panel, featuring Paul Matwychuk of Trash, Art, and the Movies, Erin E. Fraser and Matt Bowes of Bollywood is for Lovers and JP Fournier of The Movie Jerks; Mind the gap: How podcasting can fill a news void on women and politics: Alex Zabjek and Trisha Estabrooks of The Broadcast talk to Scott Fralick about podcasting as a vehicle for journalism. NorthwestFest is over for this year, but you can see who won the awards, and mark your calendar for more nonfiction fun in May 2018. Seen and Heard in Edmonton is brought to you this week by Taproot Edmonton, a source of curiosity-driven stories about the city, cultivated by the community.  This month Taproot published Mack Male's popular list of summer festivals and events. If you're looking for something to do over the next few months, Taproot has you covered. Taproot is a member-supported site — our stories are free for all to read, but members gets to participate in the stories from the beginning, and we have more perks coming. If you'd like to get in on the ground floor of a new way of doing and funding local journalism, join us. Musical credits: Beethoven’s Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 2 No. 1, played by Daniel Veesey, from freemusicarchive.com.  

The Way

Amongst all the summer franchise blockbuster fare in the theaters there’s an indie movie or two.  One of them takes place during the summer and features a water park, so we saw that one – The Way Way Back. The Moviegoers – Episode 15 – The Way Way Back