A podcast for charity

Over the weekend I participated in a huge event for the Jay and Jack community. A 25 hour podcast occurred from 3:41pm Saturday March 15th until about 3:00pm Sunday March 16. I said 25 hours and that was just under 24, do you see a problem? Let's talk about the good news first. The guys were doing this show to raise money for a charity called Autism Speaks. In the time the podcast occurred over 2,500 dollars was raised. More money is being sent by snail mail and the online account is still accepting donations through paypal. The guys had a spew of guest hosts from Dale of the Married Man Podcast, Clif from the Jamcast and Lost Podcast Vidcast, Ryan and Jen from The Transmission, Ralph from The Dharmalars and several other podcasters that I can't remember because the event was just so big.

One of the guests that brought the most attention was Jorge Garcia, also known by his character name Hurley on ABC's show LOST. Jorge stayed with the guys for over three hours and answered fan questions (mine included!). It was probably one of the coolest experiences of my life to speak with someone who I have watched on television for the last four years. The guys were also planning to have Daniel Day Kim, or Jin from LOST on the show at 4pm Sunday. This did not occur. Unfortunately at around 3pm on Sunday Talkshoe, the client that had supported the show for over 23 hours, decided to crash and burn.

Basically the concept of Talkshoe is a piece of software that will hold a conference call with many users and it has it's own chat room. This was a perfect fit for the podcast since the admin can allow different guests to speak, many people can listen, and non-speakers can interact with each other and the hosts via the chat room. Jay attempted extensive testing by hosting a few Ramblecasts and a special live edition of The Lost Podcast on Talkshoe. It was a little sketchy for each edition of the show, but it held up quite well. We all knew going in that it was gonna be rough with talkshoe. It was realized that we could not hold a show recording for more than 3 hours because the chat client would freeze and users would start losing audio. This caused a lot of stress for Jay and Jack. They just wanted the show to run smoothly. Everytime we had to make a switch Jay had to set up a new show and all the listeners had to move. While this resolved the solution for a while, the process was still repeated at least 5 or 6 times for the entire marathon.

So the last couple hours of the marathon roll around and all of a sudden the phone number, shoephone and audio stop working. Talkshoe reported a 'coding issue' to Jay and that it would be fixed in 30-60 minutes. Well about 120 minutes go by and no fix was found. The guys then decided to call it quits cutting the segment with John and Colleen of Metrobuzz and eliminating the chance for fans to speak with Daniel Day Kim. While everyone was pleased with the 2500 dollars in donations we all know that Daniel would have brought more listeners and the opportunity for more people to donate. Also I was highly looking forward to the Metrobuzz segment and many fans were let down when it had to be cut because of 'coding issues'.

Here is our proposal. Anyone who particiapated in Jay and Jack's live marathon podcast or is a suporter of Autism Speaks needs to help us do the following. We are starting a campaign to get Talkshoe to fix their mistake by donating money to Autism Speaks. We feel that this will make up for the lost time and donations that resulted by the crash of their software. So go write in your blogs, send an email to Talkshoe at support@talkshoe.com. Every effort we can make to get Talkshoe to hear us will count. They really let us down when the show had been going so well. So get out your keyboard and write to them; urge them to make a donation to help the charity.

If you'd like to make a donation to Autism Speaks, you can do it through PayPal, by sending it to LPDonate@gmail.com OR you can send checks made out to Autism Speaks to the following address:

P.O. Box 40716
Raleigh NC. 27629

Thank you so much for reading, please go out there and make an effort by writing your post or making a donation. Every little bit helps.