100 – Episode 100

[00:00:00] David: Hi and welcome to the IDEMS podcast, a special IDEMS podcast. This is the 100th IDEMS podcast and I’m delighted to be here today with my fellow directors Kate Fleming and Danny Parsons. I’m David Stern, welcome to our special podcast and welcome Kate and Danny.

[00:00:27] Kate: Hi David. Hi Danny.

[00:00:28] Danny: Hi, hi both. Excited to be here for the 100th episode.

[00:00:34] David: It is. It’s quite an achievement to get 100. I think a year and a bit ago, Danny, when I approached you to say someone asked me to write a blog, but I can’t write. And you said, yeah, you should do a podcast instead. I didn’t quite expect it to take shape as it has.

[00:00:50] Kate: I would give you full credit David for being a driver of this where I see that you are a force of nature in keeping this podcast going. Every time you say, let’s do a podcast, I say, well, let’s think about the topic, you say, oh, I have a million topics. So, yeah.

[00:01:06] David: I have to claim here, Kate. I only ever said I had about a hundred topics, so I’m going to run out soon.

[00:01:14] Kate: That’s fine. If I really do think about it, there are lots of things, but yes.

[00:01:18] Danny: And the consistency is, yeah, it’s been great, doing two every week, basically, to get to this point. I think it’s the reason why it’s kept going.

[00:01:26] David: And of course we don’t need to tell the audience that we didn’t always do them all in the same week. We sometimes had them in advance. And we sometimes didn’t.

[00:01:35] Kate: Yeah, the scramble.

[00:01:36] Danny: However that happened, they got done in the end.

[00:01:38] David: Exactly, it has been a real learning curve. One of the things that I think is so important is that other people are getting involved, and I’m really glad I’ve only done 99 out of the 100 because Kate, you and Lucie took one on!

[00:01:56] Kate: We did. And actually there are some other conversations, it did come up in fact that someone who shall remain unnamed was willing to do a podcast with me and not with you. I have no idea why.

[00:02:10] David: I am not surprised.

[00:02:12] Kate: I only think that was because I caught him off guard, and so he had prepared his excuses with you, whereas when I said it, he didn’t have time, and he said, Okay! So, yeah. That’s the trick.

[00:02:27] David: We do need a multi pronged approach to get more voices on. And I think that is important, when we started out, I was very grateful to Santiago, to Lucie, to Lily, for actually stepping up and being willing to week in, week out, work with me to produce these episodes. And they have been outstanding in stepping up to have these conversations to keep the podcast going.

But more and more we are looking to get more diverse voices on. We feel we’re learning how to do that in a way which is still true to the IDEMS approach and IDEMS thinking. And in a way which we actually start to work with our partners more because we have a lot of partners out there.

[00:03:16] Danny: Yeah, I’m enjoying seeing more episodes with, you know, interviewing other people and people we work with. I think the earlier episodes, obviously, your voice is quite dominant. But I think that was, by design, as you mentioned, that there’s a lot of ideas around IDEMS that we’d like to get out and writing is not your thing. And so that was never going to be a way to do it.

So I’m glad that we’ve also been able to do that and efficiently get out a lot of these ideas, which made it quite dominant from your voice at the start. But I think that’s fine and I’m enjoying now hearing other people on the podcast.

[00:03:57] David: Absolutely, and that’s definitely the direction we want to go. And Kate, the voice who I’m hoping is going to become more dominant is very much yours. And you also have an idea how we as an organisation should be communicating about ourselves. And so you are keen to make your voice more dominant.

[00:04:16] Kate: Yes, I mean the unfortunate thing is that I have ideas that require more complicated execution. I think we have come across topics where we’re aware that more thoughtful, almost journalism, where it would be nice to frame a story, have some interviews, go back out again to contextualizing information, where you kind of have that arc of a narrative versus the interview.

But that of course takes editing, that takes work, that takes a little bit more planning. I don’t want to set the bar so high that it becomes an impediment to just getting a podcast out because obviously we hold a lot of information that can just be revealed in conversation. So I don’t want to make it more difficult to get the podcast done. But it would be nice occasionally, I think, to have some episodes like that.

[00:05:05] David: Higher production value episodes. I mean, I couldn’t agree more that that is desirable, and I am absolutely delighted that you are interested in leading on that, because I recognise the limit of my skill sets here. I can hold a conversation. I do not see myself having very good journalistic skills.

[00:05:25] Kate: No, and I don’t think that I necessarily excel at it. But I think it would be interesting. And I think if I could find someone else on the IDEMS team who really is interested in doing that work, where we together could figure it out. I think that would be nice.

I think we as a team always enjoy collaboration more than working in little siloed bubble. So yeah, finding the other person, call out to the IDEMS team or extended IDEMS community, who else might be interested in that? I think Tim at Topos, give him a shout out if he’s interested in this. Maybe Danny, maybe you’re the sleeper on this. You’ve been wanting to do this all along.

[00:06:02] Danny: Maybe. I like the idea. And yeah, I’ll deflect away from myself now. But yeah, I like the idea of that mixture of more off the cuff kind of episodes of conversational, and then some that are more planned out and got not necessarily just high production values, but maybe more sort of planned out exactly what the topics will be covered and what won’t be covered, so it has a more of a sharp focus, I guess than the conversations, which can sort of go in different directions and cover lots of different things.

[00:06:32] David: I think, Danny, what you’re highlighting is that, as we do in the future have more of our partners come on, being able to give them an alternative set of people as well who they could be doing it with. One of the attractions that I find a lot of people have found doing an episode with me, is the fact that my basic mode of operation is to say, well, let’s book in an hour long call. We’ll have a discussion, a little bit about what we’re gonna do, we’ll record it, and if you’re not happy with it, we’ll record it again.

And so far, no one’s wanted to record it again. And so it’s really time efficient. But I can see there’s other people where the idea of doing that, this is not something they want to do. And so having other approaches available, we believe in options by context, that would be great to have a whole range of things where, I think particularly, as Kate you’ve alluded to, for certain topics, being able to delve a bit deeper, to get multiple voices on individual episodes, to go out and get real partners talking, oh, that would be wonderful.

[00:07:38] Kate: Does either of you feel that there are stories that immediately come to mind where you think, oh, we really haven’t been able to tell this well, or something you know you’d like to see, or is it something you’d just be curious to see how it takes shape?

[00:07:50] David: Oh, I could reel off a whole load of stories where I think we haven’t been able to tell them well. Yes. Even just the sort of one which you’re aware of, Kate, the STACK stories from what’s happening in Kenya in particular, but beyond as well. I think those stories, telling them across multiple people, getting more than one person involved, that could be really powerful.

[00:08:13] Danny: Yeah, there’s the Agroecology Hub as well. I know there’s a few episodes on that, but I think deeper into that would also be really fascinating. And yes, and lots of other topics as well. I think some of our statistics work on R-Instat and things like this and more into the climate, which has been discussed a little bit. So yeah, there’s loads.

[00:08:34] Kate: Yeah, I agree. And I think even as you’re both talking STACK, agroecology, they’re all good examples of if you just hear about it from the outside, it’s easy to see it as just a single discipline. It’s easy to think, oh, that’s not interesting to me. Whereas the moment you dig into it more deeply, I would say STACK is a good example of something where do I immediately think math assessment is going to be this thing that I’m really interested in? No.

But then when you get into meeting lecturers in Kenya and all around Africa, where it’s like, oh, you have this interesting problem, a thousand students in your class, talking to the different stakeholders in a university, understanding the student’s perspective, it’s really an education problem. All of these layers of it that I think mean that pretty much anyone could find a way into the story and be really interested in it, or at least see how it’s analogous to other problems they are interested in. I think if we could unpack that more, it just gives people more ways in.

[00:09:35] David: And I think exactly as you described, the different stakeholders, it’s not that every stakeholder needs a sort of full episode, it’s just that getting the different stakeholders to have a voice on an episode, oh, I would love that.

[00:09:50] Danny: I think what makes that really interesting as well is just they can have such different perspectives on even the same topic, what it means to them. I’m thinking a bit of the Agroecology Hub and some of the partners get very different things about it and contribute very different things, all kind of really interesting.

So the different perspectives would be, you know, it would be really interesting to hear that from people versus hearing our view of it, it can be very different to actually what’s the important things to our partners and the stakeholders.

[00:10:25] David: Absolutely. And you’re right with the Agroecology Hub, again, there’s so many layers to this and it’s not just layers sort of going down. It is this fact that we integrate science, movement, practice. And so we’re getting very different perspectives. If you’ve got somebody actually involved in using, or doing things, that’s very different from the people who are advocating for them, or from the people who are studying them.

[00:10:55] Kate: Or the people funding them, even. You really begin to understand all of the different perspectives, the different problems people are trying to solve, how they think about it. I think something that we are positioned to share is to kind of shed light on the ecosystem, where I think often when you hear about something that’s delivering impact, it feels very small, it can feel quite constrained and you don’t really see the interplay of all of these different forces.

You don’t see how people might feel in conflict who are actually much more aligned than they realise. I think you both have told stories in agroecology as an example where initially something felt adversarial or people were competing for resources or power or whatever. And then in the end, it turned out actually our interests were quite aligned, you know, giving this group power ended up yielding better results for me.

I think it gives people a way into breaking out of a lot of narratives of scarcity or competing or, you know, that you can’t share space. And yeah, I think that’s something there needs to be more of.

[00:12:02] David: I think Lucie and I have had an episode or two which have touched on this a bit more deeply, where researchers who have given power to the people who are doing actually end up getting incomparable data back, which means that their learnings and their studies can be transformed. That’s sort of one example of what you were just highlighting.

[00:12:24] Danny: One of the things I’d be interested in on the podcast as well is interviewing people doing interesting work, which kind of maybe relates to our work or relates to topics that we’ve discussed on the podcast, but not necessarily just our partners and just people involved in our project. That would also be really interesting to, you know, there’s lots of general development discussions that you’ve had around the work in West Africa. And that’s just one example where opening it up as well to not just people involved with us, but people sort of adjacent and doing interesting, similar, and maybe quite different things as well.

[00:13:00] David: Well, we have one such episode, which came out when we were discussing responsible AI for lecturers. It was exactly that. It was a researcher who was adjacent to our work, but very relevant. And we had a wonderful conversation. And so I’d love to do more of that. And we haven’t been out looking for that. But you’re right, maybe as we have hit the hundred, this is something we should be proactively looking for.

With the slight concern that I have, that this is time consuming and everything we’re suggesting is going to make it more time consuming. And so I would just like to get your thoughts on, you know, this has been an important investment for IDEMS. It’s been a substantial investment of our time to make this happen. Not just in the recording of the podcast, but the production of the podcast afterwards. The work that’s been involved in actually getting them out to people in different ways. And I believe it’s been worthwhile. I’m keen to get your thoughts on this.

Should we be investing more or less?

[00:14:05] Danny: I’m impressed how it’s got to the 100th episode, as I said, and it’s been a lot of work. I think one of the keys to that is the fact that it’s not a huge amount of work and time commitment for anyone in our team so that it can be done. Because this isn’t our main work or one of our big projects. We’re not a company that produces podcasts as our main business.

So I think it has to be something that’s not, you know, a huge time commitment for everyone involved. But that’s where I like maybe having this mixture of those episodes that do take a bit more time and effort to put into, but keeping, you know, the episodes that we have been doing, which has got us this far.

[00:14:46] Kate: I agree with Danny that I think it’s hugely valuable, but I also recognise it’s only one channel. There are so many other things that we could be doing. So I was talking with Sal, you know, he’s really interested in doing a blog that really gets into AI. And you’re thinking about that quite mathematical sort of scientific, but blog writing, not needing to meet the standard of a research article, but something that can just be getting ideas out, show the interesting work our team is doing and isn’t relying on someone to feel like they have to be articulate in spoken word.

So some people that’s an easier way to communicate where other people are going to want that sort of space of writing. And so I think the more we can give different people different avenues. And again, not create something that’s so all consuming where it’s just like, we’ve decided we’re all in on podcasting and it’s going to be journalistic level podcasting, but in the end that ends up only telling some of our stories, that ends up excluding some voices or perspectives that people want to share.

So I guess that’s it, is just really trying to figure out how to have a range of options and allow those to go deep in their own way. I think that’s what I’m trying to figure out.

[00:16:05] David: How long have you been with IDEMS, Kate? Because this sounds like a very IDEMS thing to say. Here we are, a small organisation that doesn’t specialise in communication, and we should diversify.

[00:16:17] Kate: Well, also, I guess we’re emphasising evolving, adapting, you know, all these different things that we’re thinking about. But yes, I think options will be good for us.

[00:16:29] David: And I think one of the things, Danny, that I hear in what you’re saying is that, actually, although we’re not a specialist podcast producing company, we have got a methodology which now is tried and tested. And one of the things that I would be interested in is actually, you know, there’s a lot of partners that we have where what if they could tell their stories in a similarly easy way? Is this something where, I’m not suggesting we become a podcast company, but is it a service we could now be offering? With some of our partners, we could be helping them to develop their own podcast series, not as a high production value, but just as this sort of, you know, very achievable, consistent, stream of episodes, because I suppose that’s what it’s become.

[00:17:22] Danny: Yeah, and I like that idea, we’ve got a method that works for us. And a lot of podcasts are not high production value and very expensive to make. A lot of them are just individuals recording stuff, you know, at home and with their own devices and things like this. We’re basically doing that but to a level that’s sort of good enough to share widely as well. And so I think this could be attractive for a lot of organisations, especially, as you say, not organisations who this is their main focus, but as part of that communication to the outside world, which is very important for a lot of our partners and communicating the impact that they’re having.

[00:18:03] Kate: I still think that it requires, like it requires the person on the team who is the, just they are dedicated to this. I think David, if you weren’t the driving force of this podcast, it would languish in some way. Not that we wouldn’t get things done, but I think it comes so naturally to you. You are so enthusiastic about it. It’s so, the way that you communicate.

[00:18:30] David: Well, I was going to say that’s simply not true. This hasn’t come naturally to me. I have acquired the skills to do this. Now my claim is, watch this space. Certainly before we get to 500, I think my voice on this would be almost non existent. I really expect over the next few years others to step in, to step up, and I think maybe you’re right.

Maybe it’s at that point when we’ve done it and it’s sort of handed over from that initial driver, which has been me, then I think it’s the sort of thing where we might have institutionalised the skills. But I want to be clear, the big effort hasn’t been by me, the big effort has been Santiago and Johnny and even Lucie who have been doing the post processing, who have been doing the work on the actual transcript once it comes out so that that can get released. Who have been setting up the processes in terms of the way that this is processed and released in a way which is efficient and effective.

And we’re not perfectly there, and that does take time. I mean, each episode has a processing cost which tends to be higher than the recording cost, which is interesting. But it’s still, we keep it relatively minimal, so it’s not much higher than the recording cost.

Anyway, we are getting towards the sort of marker which we should be wrapping up, but it’s been fun, our first three way podcast. I know we’re going to be told off for speaking over each other a bit much. I apologise Santiago. And I do think that we are at a place where, having got to this point, I’d like a last reflection from each of us on by the time we get to 200, can you think of something which you’re hoping will have happened to either the podcast as a whole, to a specific episode that we might have had, something you would have liked to see happen. What do you hope is going to be coming up in the IDEMS podcast?

[00:20:30] Danny: Well, for me, I’d really love to see us sort of reaching out to get more listeners over the next 100 episodes. We know that this is a really useful, the podcast is really useful just for communicating, even internally within our team and for people in our team to understand some of these ideas.

But I’d love to see us sort of being a bit more on the marketing of the podcast side a bit and reaching out to people who might find this interesting and make more connections with people and get feedback from people who find it and listen to us. So that, that’s what I’d love to see.

[00:21:03] Kate: I would second that to start. I mean, I had something else of my own, but I would say I second that definitely, you know, how do we build out the infrastructure where we are capitalising on this better? Like how do we really use this in a way integrated into the website, into social media, whatever we’re doing, what are the ways that we’re getting a bigger audience for this, where we feel that there’s more of a conversation happening, where I would just love more commentary and input and to feel like we are really landing and connecting and inspiring?

Even something that’s controversial, maybe someone has a strong disagreement. I’d like to hear that. I think that would be really interesting to feel like we’re part of this broader community and conversation. So that’s one thing.

And then the other thing I would like to see, which we’ve kind of touched on already is, can we get to that, not all the time, but the occasional more produced and really where someone wants to take the lead on that, where something has a higher production value? Like when we produce our first kind of longer form storytelling journalism podcast, for me that will feel like a real achievement and I think will be just interesting to see how that comes together and how do we tell a story and how we put our own imprint on something that is a form that, you know, lots of people are doing, but it feels like ours?

[00:22:30] David: Absolutely. I look forward to both of those. I do just want to say about the marketing, we’ve never tried to get people to listen to it yet, so it’s not difficult to try harder. But I agree that this is a good time. You know, there is a backlog, which I think has some richness to it. It has diversity. It has a range of voices.

It does have a bit too much of my voice, and so if I’m looking at the thing, I hope going for the next hundred is that I hope my voice is less dominant. I think it won’t go away yet. It seems I have a little more than a hundred episodes in me. So I still expect to be involved going forward, but I do hope that more voices become more dominant. And that would be the thing that I think would be really interesting to see over the next year.

And yes, thank you both for this. Any final, final thoughts?

[00:23:23] Danny: See you in the 200th episode.

[00:23:28] Kate: Yes, that. I can’t wait for the 200 episode recap.

[00:23:36] David: That would probably be the next time we have an episode with the three of us. So, yes, look forward to seeing you both then. Thank you everyone.

[00:23:44] Kate: Thank you both.

[00:23:45] Danny: Thanks