Podcasting talks and lectures

Recently I’ve been asked to put a number of talks and lectures online for our local Christians in Science group. The usual structure is to separate the lecture into a couple of audio files; providing a track for the main talk and another for the question and answer session. The last talk had 3 speakers and they wanted 3 separate MP3 files posted online, one for each speaker.

I provide a M3U for people who want to listen to everything, but this time I thought I’d provide a podcast as well, widening the audience reach (hopefully, as talks on Science & Religion aren’t always people’s first choice to listen to ;)). At which point the separate tracks, so handy when downloading via the website, became a problem.

For those not familiar with podcasts, here’s an overview of the structure.

A podcast is effectively a RSS feed for a ‘radio show’ (for want of a better description). It’s also the name given to the audio within it - so “listen to a podcast” is referring to the audio, not the RSS feed
Inside the podcast are many items: usually one item per show. The Item will contain details such as the show’s title, a description of the show and other associated details.

Inside each item (yes it’s all confusingly nested) is an enclosure. The enclosure specifies the MP3 file which contains the audio show.

Right. It sounds more complex than it is, but for the discussion coming that structure (RSS feed/podcast -> Item -> Enclosure) will be important.

My problem was that for our local group of Christians in Science, we put on 4-5 events a year. That would suggest each event should be an item. However there are many audio files for each event. Technically you can have many enclosures in an item, but iTunes doesn’t support this feature, which if you care about a sizable chunk of the podcast listeners is a big problem.

So what can I do? Put each audio file in a separate item was my first thought. In a way this makes more sense, as it allows a different description for each speaker. However, if you stumble across one of the files, how will you know it’s speaker 2 of 4 at the event?

This raised another question: what consists of a podcast? I had originally planned to have one RSS feed for CiS-CS listing all events. With multiple items for one event, should I create a separate RSS feed (podcast) for each talk and lecture? Again, that makes sense at one level, but then there’s no way to keep up to date with new talks as they’re posted online, which defeats the point of podcasting in the first place!

So what have I done? I took the coward’s route out, and haven’t put up a podcast yet!

Which approach makes the most sense to you?