Michael Bungay Stanier

[Dave John]

LOVING these podcasts.

I’ve been listening to them end to end and I am in awe at the simplicity that Michael brings to the process of rising above ourselves to see what we are immersed in.

There is such a generous wealth of techniques in these podcasts. His thinking dove-tails very nicely with GTD. I love his question – “What are you saying yes to, and what, (consequently) are you saying no to?”

Dave

 

[kelstarrising]

Thanks for this feedback! I love them too. So simple. I will pass your feedback along to Michael.

 

[Barb]

Do More Great Work

His book (Title above) is really wonderful too. I highly recommend it.

 

[TesTeq]

"Great" or "good enough"?

"Great" or "good enough"? That is the question.

First we have to clear our runway ("good enough") to have time to think about "great" work.

 

[muliebrity22]

I've been loving these, too. I will say that one technical thing that drives me nuts about downloading from connect (and these particular podcasts are a prime example), is that the series of things are not consistently labeled/titled. So when you download them to Itunes, they end up in multiple different submenus because the titling of the podcast itself or the "author" is not consistent. Yes, I know I can fix that manually in Itunes, but it seems like a silly thing to have to fix on a one-off basis. That seems to be a consistent problem with the audio uploaded for connect.

 

[kelstarrising]

muliebrity22--Do you mean the file name (such as StanierPersistence.mp3) doesn't match the name of the title we give it in the player and podcast (Creative Questioning 15 - Persistence)?

Happy to see if we can remedy this, or at least improve what you are finding frustrating.

 

[muliebrity22]

muliebrity22--Do you mean the file name (such as StanierPersistence.mp3) doesn't match the name of the title we give it in the player and podcast (Creative Questioning 15 - Persistence)?

Happy to see if we can remedy this, or at least improve what you are finding frustrating.

Thanks, Kelly. That issue you raise -- that file name doesn't match title of podcast -- is true as well. And that would be optimal. But, even without that, all of the creative questioning podcasts don't have the file name configured in the same way. I don't have the file names handy, but let's say one is StanierPersistance.mp3 and one is cq1.mp3. Those don't appear in a neat list, near each other, when you upload them. I also suspect that the "artist" or "author" is not consistently indicated on the files, as I have David Allen, David Allen Co, and David Allen Company as separate ipod artists. Within those, the same "family" of recordings (like the creative questioning group), might be under multiple different albums, like "The David Allen Company" or "GTD/Connect Members-Only" or "GTD Connect." So I have to go a lot of places and try a lot of names to find the full CQ series, as an example.
Carrie

 

[kelstarrising]

Ah, OK. Thanks. Seems like we could have done a better job creating a standard here. Let me chat with the team about this to see what we can do, if anything.

Thanks for the detail! this really helps.

 

[kelstarrising]

Hi Carrie,

Here's a little more info too that I was able to dig up for you.

I checked with Robert, our CTO, on this, since most of the recordings were added before I started with with Connect. It does look like the Public podcast feed uses "David Allen Company" or "info@davidco.com." GTD Connect podcast uses "The David Allen Company." Books on CD use "David Allen."

I just looked at my Connect podcast feed view and see the artist for every single Connect podcast as exactly "The David Allen Company" when I'm viewing Podcasts > GTD|Connect Members-Only Podcasts. That will hopefully give you a complete view of everything we put out from Connect, and hopefully an easier way to find what you need, versus looking at your "Music" view. When I look by Music, I do see that there is a blend of artists, depending on the source (book on CD vs. public vs. Connect.) Sorry for any confusion on that.

I personally named the Creative Questioning files on the website recently to all start with "Creative Questioning", but you may not be seeing those changes if you already downloaded the files. Right clicking on the podcast name "GTD|Connect Members Only Podcasts" and selecting Update podcast should bring you those changes.

If our team can assist further on this, please email us at connect@davidco.com.

Thanks!
Kelly

 

[ChristinaSkaskiw]

Downloading or subscribing

Hi Carrie,

I will say that one technical thing that drives me nuts about downloading from connect (and these particular podcasts are a prime example), is that the series of things are not consistently labeled/titled...

Are you downloading the podcasts from the connect site or are you subscribing in iTunes? I subscribe via iTunes and find that iTunes manages them well. However, I do experience the "messiness" you describe with "podcasts" that are not issued through iTunes but downloaded as mp3-files from wherever. They can be inconsistent in the "meta data" and iTunes sorts them into different folders/albums. What I also find annoying is that when you import an mp3-file, you cannot designate it as a podcast; rather it ends up in the music folder, and it "behaves" differently. (In general, it would be great if iTunes distinguished talk from music, be it podcasts or spoken books.)

Anyway, one such "podcast" not issued through iTunes happens to be Michael Bungay Stanier's "Find Your Great Work Interview Series", where he interviews interesting people about their great work. Recommended (At this point I thought it best to double-check that it isn't available in iTunes, and IT IS! Not sure if I just missed it before, or it has been recently added. In iTunes Store: Podcasts > Business > Careers > Michael Bungay Stanier.)

/Christina