Why Podfest Felt Different This Year

We’re back from Podfest and this year felt different in some ways. We're recapping our favorite moments from the conference, from reconnecting with Buzzcast listeners and hosting our meetup to surprising industry shifts on the expo floor. We talk about what stood out, what was missing, why the sessions felt more creator-first than salesy, and get into frozen hallways, cold showers, Hall of Fame moments, and one legendary birthday party!

Links mentioned in this episode: 

• Join the Buzzsprout Facebook Community Group or the Reddit Community
• 2026 Podcast Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
• Tom Webster: What Would You Do If You Actually Loved Podcasting?

Contact Buzzcast

• Send us a text message
• Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods

Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!

Chapters

• 0:00 Back From Podfest
• 7:55 Hall Of Fame Highlights And Tributes
• 9:24 Artwork Standards And App Support
• 10:45 What Would You Do If You Actually Loved Podcasting?
• 19:12 We Had A Birthday Party

Transcript

Jordan: 0:00

We're back from another Podfest. You guys feeling rested and ready for this episode after a full week?

Alban: 0:06

Oh, yeah, 100%. We've we've had a few days back, and it was great to see everybody. It's a good reminder, especially the days after we come back, of why we go to these conferences, why we take people. I think every year I go, man, that's just intense while we're there. And then I was going through our Facebook group yesterday, and there were so many people who I didn't even meet who were posting about all the things they learned or things that they took away. And it's a I it's really life-giving to go and read all of those.

Jordan: 0:35

It really is. It's so fun. And it's it's nice to like see them in the community group because you know, you don't actually usually see them in real life, but you met them at the conference, you recognize them from their pictures, and it's so nice to actually connect with them on like a deeper level after meeting in person. We got to see a whole bunch of Buzzcast listeners.

Alban: 0:55

Cycling Men of Leisure came up.

Jordan: 0:57

We had Claire from Creativity Found, uh, Lewis, Love I Lawyer, and of course, we got to see Sparkling D, who again for love language is gifts, and she gave us like a bunch of wonderful goodies, including a holistic wellness journal, which I promptly filled out for January because we're coming to an end of it and I gotta get on top of things.

Alban: 1:18

Is the journal for the whole year?

Jordan: 1:20

Yeah, it is.

Alban: 1:21

You need to keep checking in about once a month or two. It's that's kind of proud of this wellness journal is going. You don't have to share your journal entries. Come on, Al.

Jordan: 1:29

I was gonna say, yeah.

Alban: 1:30

Not read the journal, but like, is the journal having the desired effect?

Jordan: 1:34

I think so. It gave me an opportunity to like reflect a little bit more on what my goals are personally for this year. And you know what? I actually was looking at it and I was like, you know what? I'm actually starting to accomplish some of these already. So it actually made me feel better, even though I didn't really do any like New Year's resolutions or anything like that.

Alban: 1:51

Good on you. January 23rd, one of the most toxic elements in my life are my podcast co-hosts.

unknown: 1:57

No.

Kevin: 1:59

I I will say I heard from more people than I usually do at podcast conferences that the sessions were really good. Yes. Yes. We don't get to go to a lot of them because we are at the booth the whole time. But as more and more people kept coming up to the booth, I'm saying, how's the conference going? And they're saying that they were learning a lot, all the talks in the sessions were great. And I don't know. You don't always hear that at conferences.

Jordan: 2:19

A lot of times what you hear is that basically they're sitting through, you know, a 30-minute long sales pitch. And I actually heard the contrary this year where people were saying, like, you know, usually it's kind of sales pitchy and people are just, you know, pushing their own product. But this year it felt like people were actually, you know, really in it to help creators and like teach us something instead of just doing pitches.

Alban: 2:42

You know, there it might there might be some kind of irony that when podcasting was like super hot during COVID and we had just tons of people who are showing up trying to get into it, that there was a lot of money in the space, and that led to more sales yet. We had Mark Cuban multiple years at podcast movement.

Kevin: 2:57

Yeah.

Alban: 2:58

And as soon as that kind of went away, then all the people who are really into the medium because they love connecting to the community, they love doing audio, they're all giving talks still. So you still, you know who I saw? Um, Cliff Ravencraft, podcast answer man. Yep. Cliff was really big in teaching podcasting. I mean, when I first started in 2014, he was kind of like the person I looked up to and read a ton of his stuff. And I walked around the corner and I'm like, Are you Cliff Ravenskraft? He's like, Yeah. How do you know who I was? And I guess he's getting back into teaching podcasting again.

Jordan: 3:34

Oh, that's awesome.

Alban: 3:34

So after quite a hiatus. Um, can since we we named a bunch of people, I had a few new people that I met. Rich from Two Guys on a Plane. Oh. We talked about his podcast.

Jordan: 3:44

Rich is great.

Kevin: 3:45

Jordan and I hung out with Rich on uh Friday night for quite a while. We had a fun time.

Jordan: 3:49

Yeah.

Alban: 3:49

Uh Joe Miller, Titans of Transition, and Abby from Talk Your Abs Off.

Jordan: 3:55

Such a good name.

Alban: 3:57

All people that I've met for the first time, I think. No, no, no.

Kevin: 3:59

You met Abby in Tampa.

Jordan: 4:01

Did we? Yes.

Kevin: 4:02

She's a Tampa podcaster and she was at our meetup. You're right. All right. Met for first or second time. There you go.

Jordan: 4:07

Yeah, I got to meet um Shyann and then um also Allison from Author's Edge. And Allison is really active in the Facebook community. So that was another one that I was very familiar with on like a community level. So if you're not in the Facebook community group, get in there. Like it's such a good group. All right, and it would not be a conference without some quirks. Back in Dallas a couple of years ago, we had like the cricket Armageddon thing happening.

Kevin: 4:34

That was awesome. That was the best.

Jordan: 4:36

There's there's not much that tops this, but it's really funny because when we were at Orlando, we had a huge cold snap last year. And then this year we had a huge cold snap, and it was freezing, literally freezing, like water was frozen. And the heat was out on Thursday when we were at the Expo Hall. And I'm an Idaho girl. I was so cold, and like it was it was like this weird wind tunnel in the hallway, and I would literally see leaves scattering in the hallway with the wind. That's how windy it was in the hallway was there was leaves going through.

Alban: 5:09

It was so cold. Somebody asked me, uh, I think it's from Spain, and they were like, is this how cold it always is in the States? And I was like, I honestly don't know if this hotel has heat. Like, I really I'm wrong. It does have heat most of the time. I think they were having issues. It's Orlando, the AC is cranked up to max, probably like 11 months out of the year.

Jordan: 5:32

Yeah.

Alban: 5:32

You know, Orlando is super hot, is this massive area, and they've got this big class dome, so there's lots of heat coming in. They're probably always needing to keep it cool. And I was like, I don't know, man. There might they may just keep the AC on 24-7.

Jordan: 5:46

And then on Saturday, the water heater was broken, and so like nobody got to shower because it was all cold water.

Kevin: 5:54

Well, so I mean, I think that that didn't affect all rooms because my room was cold. So in order to keep it warm, I just ran my shower on as hot as possible, 24-7.

Jordan: 6:04

Wait a second.

Alban: 6:05

Yeah, I didn't I didn't experience the hot water issue either.

Jordan: 6:09

You didn't either. Oh man.

Alban: 6:11

Highlight for me was as always the Buzzprop meetup, getting together with everybody. Uh, tons of people who just been with Buzzprop for a long time. They know the product, they often know team members, they're learning a lot. They give us the best feedback that we really can get from anybody. Uh-huh. And then you just get to hang out and have a couple drinks. I get to relive my old waiting tables days and pass out. The bar in the beginning is so opposed to it because they're like, I think this violates some sort of like labor law, alcohol law to hand you 20 drinks. And I'm like, I'm not gonna drop it. And for some reason, you give them any excuse, they're like, oh, you're not gonna drop it. Good to go then.

Jordan: 6:55

I love our meetups because we have like opportunities to connect with podcasters, I mean people in a more personal level at those meetups. It's not like we're standing at the expo hall, like, you know, talking about their podcasts and stuff like that. Like these meetups are us like getting to know what their interests are, like outside of their podcast or things that we have like in common. So um, I was talking with Bruce for a long time and he has uh a podcast about like grieving after like losing a child. And then I find out that he actually works for United. And I said, Oh, Rich from Two Guys on a Plane is across the bar here. And I was like, he's a flight attendant. And so I was like, all right, well, you two need to meet. And so I like pulled them together. And yeah, we stood there and talked for I don't even know how long, but it's so funny because if you looked at their two podcasts, it would, it would be they they you wouldn't think that they had anything in common. But then when you get to know each other a little on a deeper level, like then you can connect on other things.

Kevin: 7:52

Yeah, I didn't know that. That was great.

Jordan: 7:54

Really fun. Uh, we also had uh podcasting Hall of Fame inductees for 2026, which includes our friends James Cridland and Ariel Nissenblatt. So congratulations to them.

Kevin: 8:06

Yeah, our meetup was the same time as the Hall of Fame induction ceremony. So we weren't able to attend, but that video is now on YouTube, which I had to watch. I was trying to find the audio version. I don't understand why they don't have a podcast. Like I just wanted to hear the speeches. I didn't need to see the people giving the speeches. Yeah. But I did watch it, I did listen, and uh James and Ariel both did great. Uh Ariel, very funny presentation. She did ad reads during her acceptance speech.

Jordan: 8:34

Did she really? Oh my gosh. Okay, I'll have to link to that then. I need to watch that.

Alban: 8:40

There's also a nice tribute for Todd Cochran, who kind of started the podcast hall of fame and really it seems like did 95% of the work for it for the years until he passed away. So it was nice for everybody to remember him and have that opportunity.

Jordan: 8:55

And there was another really wonderful tribute uh given by Dave Ramsey for Dan Miller, who hosted 48 Days to the Work You Love and presented, you know, the podcasting Hall of Fame Award to his family.

Kevin: 9:08

Yes, that was so good. Very moving. Dave Ramsey, of course, an incredible speaker and podcaster, but yeah, just very touching and a very good personal friend of Dan Miller. So that was really nice that he was able to do that.

Jordan: 9:20

And did we have any sessions that stood out? I didn't make it to any.

Alban: 9:24

I made it to one session. Um, it was the session that I spoke at. So I don't know if I'm a I'm a biased reviewer, uh, but I got to talk about podcast artwork and uh had a pretty good turnout. It was nice to kind of talk about that. I hadn't given that talk in years.

Kevin: 9:41

Yeah.

Alban: 9:41

And just seeing how much has changed, how much hasn't. And it made me want to go back and kind of do a little bit more, you know, research into which podcast apps have which artwork now displaying because outside of the show level artwork, there's obviously episode artwork and chapter artwork. And those are just not always supported or they're supported in some formats across some podcast apps. And so I kind of want to go through just the top 10 or so, maybe make a test feed and put the artwork in different ways and just figure out who's supporting what so we can say it with confidence because it's you know, artwork is getting more and more support, and I think it's great. You know, I really enjoy, especially if you're like in car play and you're driving and you know you're getting chapter art or something. And I think for podcasters, not knowing exactly when and where it's being displayed and how it kind of holds us back from leaning into it more. And so I think that's something we could go do and report back.

Jordan: 10:45

Yeah. There was actually a talk that I'd heard about because uh Tom Webster wrote up a blog about it. I don't think that this was the title of his session, but it was really at the core of his session. Um, he talked about what you would do if you actually like loved podcasting, if you truly love podcasting and you were in it for the love of it, not for the monetization of it or something else. And I'll I'll link to that blog in the show notes too. I read through that and I just felt like it was everything that we've been saying on this podcast, and um, it really resonated with me a lot. And he had some really fun anecdotes in there, which I think will tie into our next episode about making podcasting fun, because uh he has a lovely anecdote about um his passion for magic, which I didn't know about Tom. And he talks about how magicians get on stage and the way that they like keep it fresh and stuff is audience interaction. I was like, man, that kind of sounds very similar to podcasting. So uh yeah, I'll link to that in the show notes. It's it's a great read too.

Alban: 11:48

Improve your podcasting by adding magic tricks.

Jordan: 11:52

Adding magic. Yes, that's exactly what you said.

Alban: 11:55

But I'm definitely holding up the card you picked. Yeah, Tom uh gave that talk opposite mine, or I would have gone to his. Uh, we met in the hallway and we were talking about podcast movement and some of the plans they have for that.

Jordan: 12:08

Uh-huh.

Alban: 12:09

And then he told me about the talk, and I was like, oh, great, what is that? And it's the one 30-minute block day that I have, you know, that I have to be somewhere.

Jordan: 12:17

Yeah.

Alban: 12:18

But uh, maybe I'll go read the blog.

Kevin: 12:20

I think that would be really nice to read.

Jordan: 12:22

It's so good.

Kevin: 12:23

One uh last quick thing that I I want to touch on, just something that I noticed is the expo hall at Podfest, I think was smaller than it's ever been. Yeah. Maybe I mean, maybe the first couple years it was smaller, but in the in the past 10 years, I think the expo hall was a little bit smaller. Noticeably absent were like two categories of vendors that we typically see a lot of. We usually see a lot of podcast hosting companies. And this year it was us, Blueberry, Libson, and RSS.com. I think that was it. I think that was a and also nobody selling equipment. Yeah, that's what the other category was like hardware vendors, so no microphone vendors, usually BH or CDW or somebody's there showing off a bunch of all the latest equipment and stuff, and and neither one of those vendors were there. Himalaya wasn't there either.

Alban: 13:08

Himalaya's been absent for a few years. Oh yeah, if everybody anyone remembers the days where Himalaya used to come and throw these just massive parties at any podcasting event for like three years. And apparently they're really uh they're really, really big in China, and they did all sorts of stuff, but then they were breaking into podcasting for a bit, and uh we got some pretty cool parties out of it. But I don't know if many people ended up using Himalaya for podcasting.

Kevin: 13:33

Yeah. But I mean, specifically in the podcast hosting space, some names that have been around for a while, like Podbean, not there, and oh yeah, Red Circle, not there, Captivate, and and um Mark was inducted into Hall of Fame and still Captivate didn't make a presence in the Xbox.

Jordan: 13:48

Yeah, that's true.

Alban: 13:50

It was good to see Mark. It was good also to see Sam, who worked on Captivate forever. I did miss Kieran. Kieran always is mostly there, and I guess he Mark said he was back at the office still building new things for Captivate.

Kevin: 14:04

Yeah. I I I know it's a big trip for them, but it's like uh it's it's probably the second biggest podcast conference in the US that happens every year. And it's I don't know, not not necessarily concerning, but interesting, right? As some of these podcast hosting companies are probably pulling back a lot on their spend. I know there have been some layoffs specifically on the Libsyn team. Libson was there, but set up kind of more as like featuring video stuff than you know, audio first podcasting stuff. So I don't know, changes are about.

Jordan: 14:34

Yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see what they do.

Alban: 14:36

Yeah, it is. I didn't really think of it, Kevin, but it is kind of like a bit more what podcasting was similar to in maybe 2017, 2018. Right. Some of the first podfests we went to. I think either you or I have been at every Podfest between the two of us. And in the beginning, you'd go and there were maybe two vendors there. Right. And it was all one big room. And one consistent piece is uh John Lee Doumas was there at the very first Podfest, and then he was back this time.

Jordan: 15:06

Was he there for the podcasting hall of fame ceremony?

Alban: 15:09

I think he was present, he was presenting the podcast hall of fame. But at this point, you know, I kept seeing him around the conference hall, and there's lots of people who are still in it, and I guess maybe this is the moment where we can start seeing more and more people who are just like in it for the love of the game, and they're still coming to the podcast conferences because they love you know all the friends and relationships and the medium.

Kevin: 15:30

Yeah, yeah, and and there's big changes planned for podcast movement this year. I think it's gonna happen in New York. Yeah, there's a new ownership group involved with podcast movement, so we'll wait and see what that event turns out to look like. But really, in the US, there's there's kind of two big podcast conferences that happen every year. One is Podfest, one is uh podcast movement, and again, we don't know what's gonna happen with podcast movement, like how different that's gonna feel than previous years. And I'm I'm starting to see Podfest, especially, and lots of other local areas are doing smaller meetups all around the country. Yeah. And so I wonder if that that could be a fun new trend.

Jordan: 16:02

I love it.

Kevin: 16:03

Like maybe it's not these mega conferences anymore, maybe it's smaller conferences. Now, of course, the pod show in London is growing, like Wildfire. I think they're in their fourth year or fifth year, and that show is getting more and more popular. But that's a big journey for US-based hobbyist podcasters or, you know, like semi-pro podcasters to make that trip and the expense involved with that. So for US-based people, the idea that like smaller little meetup type conferences or one-day conferences might be coming to more local cities could be a fun trend. I like that.

Jordan: 16:32

Yeah, I think like when I look at the conference calendar coming up here, we've got South by Southwest in March, which South by Southwest is in uh, I think Austin, Texas. And then we have uh On Airfest, which is in Brooklyn, and then we have Podcast Movement and uh Podcast Show London. And Podcast Movement is being hosted in New York this year. So I was I was hoping we'd get more pop-ups here in like the Pacific Northwest or Los Angeles.

Alban: 17:01

I mean, I heard about a lot that were somewhat local. Somebody who's doing one in Charlotte, um, Atlanta's got a couple.

Jordan: 17:08

That's local to you.

Alban: 17:09

Yeah, local to us. Um somebody who's doing one in Miami. And obviously, we have um pretty strong community here in Jacksonville.

Jordan: 17:18

Huge, yeah.

Alban: 17:18

And I don't know what the opportunity is, but there's a bit of me that wants to figure out how do we help support these without committing to attending all of them. Because it it is a lot to go fly and you know, go do a few days, because you have to fly up there, you have to get ready then to be at a small conference. But I want to find ways to support them because it's really cool that I think the local meetups are probably more valuable if you're no 10 local meetups with a hundred people rather than one bigger one with a thousand. Just because when everyone's local, they can all still spend time together and they can all come back in a the next quarter, the next quarter, the next quarter, and you build the relationships that are going to be kind of last beyond the conference. Go to so many conferences where you meet great people, but they live across the country. Yeah. And so you just are hoping to see them at the next conference a year later, but there's not much opportunity to meet up in the interim.

Jordan: 18:18

You know, I have an idea, and it might be cheaper than like flying into a bunch of conferences. What if we buy a tour bus and we go across the country and host uh tailgate meetups, tailgate podcaster meetups. We'll have like a little portable grill and we'll grill a bunch of like hot dogs and hamburgers.

Kevin: 18:36

That would be so fun if I was if I was 25 again. I would be all in.

Alban: 18:41

When I first started working for Kevin, you had you pitched this. I don't know if it was even for Buzz Sprout. It might have been, but somebody had just done this like fresh books, had gone across the country and done a bunch of conferences.

Kevin: 18:52

Yeah, they got an RV and went around the work and run around the country.

Alban: 18:55

And you're like, should we do this? Um you were in your 30s, I was in my 20s, and so I think that between the two of us, we were like, you know, this could actually be pretty cool.

Kevin: 19:04

It could be fun. Well, we can maybe figure out a way to do it, but probably not gonna be with these these oldies on the bus.

Alban: 19:11

Kevin, did you hear that we uh we got called out on Pod News Weekly Review? I did.

Jordan: 19:17

What for?

Alban: 19:18

We got called out for Kevin's birthday party.

Speaker 1: 19:23

Kevin, who is one of the uh people at BuzzCast and Buzz Sprout, um, has admitted in the past not only does he uh triple X um his podcast speed listening, but he does that for movies as well, James, which I think is the weirdest thing ever.

Speaker: 19:39

I know, which is very, very strange. It was his birthday on Saturday. Happy birthday. Yes. So I don't know which birthday, but it uh apparently it was important enough uh to um have the entire company close the stand on Saturday morning and and go up for his party in the evening. So um yeah. So that must be really good. So Kevin, I I'm I'm sure that you will enjoy your bus pass.

Jordan: 20:05

Oh man.

Alban: 20:06

So the the last day of Podfest, you know, it's mostly winding down, and we we've gone to it for eleven years. The last day, you've mostly are just seeing people for, you know, the fourth time. And so everybody who really wants to come comes the first day. And so the last day we packed up a little early and team headed back to Jacksonville for Kevin's party. Um and James had a funny little bit in Pod News Weekly Review. In his defense. Whose defense? My defense or James's defense? In our defense, in your defense, while uh leaving early is bad form, and Pod New or and Podfest had planned, you know, this date, had this date on the calendar for I don't know, six months. Getting to a party late is also bad form. And Kevin had been planning this party for 49 years. 49 years. I've been planning this.

Jordan: 20:58

So it was a very important one.

Alban: 21:00

If anything, I gotta say, is kind of on Podfest because they they could have looked at the calendar and gone, whoa, big birthday party coming up this weekend and shifted the dates around.

Jordan: 21:11

Yeah, I will say uh basically, for our listeners who had attended podcast movement in Dallas, what happened was Kevin went to the iHeart party at Chicken and Pickle and said, child's play. Like I could do better than this.

Alban: 21:27

Actually, that kind of is a good that was kind of what you did. You were like, Oh, this is awesome. We've got a bunch of pickleball and people hanging out and having drinks. And you went, we could do this in at uh Toontown. Yeah.

Jordan: 21:38

And do it better. Yeah, you had uh your son's band playing, and it's funny because when he told me my son's gonna be playing at my party and we're gonna get them set up, I was like, okay, like that's really cute. It's really sweet. And it turns out they're actually really talented. Like they're really good.

Kevin: 21:56

It's a full-on, full-on rock show. I had to walk around beforehand and give everyone earplugs because everyone's it maybe not my same age, but getting close or a little older, and uh it's it's very loud.

Jordan: 22:08

I appreciated it because I was I was able to hear at the end of it, and everyone else around me who did not have the earplugs in were like, Oh my gosh, my ears are ringing. Like, yeah, you got Kev had warned us. He told us.

Alban: 22:19

I found it uh so surprising how much of the music they played was like 90s rock music. I love that they were uh heavily incented to play music that we would know. Oh, okay. I could have put two and two together on that one, but what I really came up with was man, Gen Z is like getting back into the good music. Yeah.

Jordan: 22:40

Or like they got taste. Yeah.

Kevin: 22:42

I mean, to be fair, they do normally play, like they do pull from our genre of music uh a little bit more than you would expect. But when we were negotiating the fee for the show, because this band has to charge something, I put a set list together. I think I pulled about 40 songs. Whoa. And I said basically your fee is going to be X dollars for every song that you pull off this playlist. And do you guys agree to that? And they said, Yeah, that sounds cool. And so they pulled as many as they could to make as much money as they could.

Jordan: 23:07

They played for a long time, which for a group of high schoolers is shocking.

Alban: 23:11

Kevin's watching the uh invoice skyrocketing, and he's glad, all right, last song, guys.

Jordan: 23:17

He's just wrap it up, wrap it up. Yeah, when we're talking about like a band playing, you you're picturing like some kids in a corner with like, you know, their sets, and it's not very good. No, they were up on a stage, there was lights, like Kevin had like LED light bars, like programmed.

Kevin: 23:34

Yeah, I'm the official light person. I don't know what you call a light person for a band, but I'm the lighting tech. You're a roadie.

Jordan: 23:39

My husband like ran a music venue, like ran a music festival in Washington, and he was impressed. Like, that's how good this was.

Kevin: 23:46

I'm so glad that we got when we set up the Buzz Sprout recording studio in the office. We bought a bunch of lights that we used to light it properly for the little YouTube videos and stuff we were making at the time. And I pulled all of that stuff. I'm like, yeah, we're gonna use all that.

Jordan: 24:00

It was so good. So that's my uh that's my first Jacksonville birthday party experience. And now I've been ruined and I could probably never go to another one again because it'll just be underwhelming. The bar's too high.

Kevin: 24:12

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Jordan: 24:13

All right, so for our next episode, we're going to be talking about how to make podcasting fun. So if you have uh any ways that you have injected more fun or experimented with your podcast to kind of like refresh it or give it new energy, go ahead and tap the Texas show link in the show notes to send that in. And until next time, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.