This article is the second post in the KINTO Technologies Advent Calendar 2024.

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Introduction to the background of our activities

Hello. I'm “Kinchan” from the Manabi-no-Michi-no-Eki team. I usually work as a corporate engineer, maintaining and managing the IT system used by our entire company. Recently, I have been involved in various activities, including as a member of organizations such as the "Generative AI Utilization Project" and the "Technical Public Relations Group."

In a previous tech blog, I introduced the origin of the "Manabi-no-Michi-no-Eki."

It also described our "in-house podcasting" activities. In this article, I will provide a detailed introduction to our podcast initiative.

This podcast initiative began with the following idea from HOKA-san, a member of the Manabi-no-Michi-no-Eki:

• I want to share various in-house activities through podcasts!

In addition to HOKA-san's very simple motivation, our team was made up of members who basically never said “No,” which led us to pursue it as part of the Manabi-no-Michi-no-Eki team activities.

Of course, since this is an initiative of the Manabi-no-Michi-no-Eki team, it is important to effectively combine it with “information dissemination for learning purposes.” After some discussions, we arrived at the following conclusion.

• Conducting interviews with persons who are hosting, managing, or participating in in-house study groups. And disseminating the interview results.

Our purposes were as follows:

• To answer the question, "There are many study groups in the company, but who are organizing them and what motivates them?"
• To let our audience hear first-hand voices from those who have actually participated in in-house study groups and feel their value.
• If someone is interested, this could be an opportunity for them to join a study group.
• By making the existence of various study groups visualizing/audible, a "culture of learning" will take root within the company.

"What is a podcast?"

Even though we have decided to start podcasting, we had questions like, "What should we do to make a podcast?"

• Is it something that can be released in the form of Internet radio? (Will people outside the company listen to it?)
• Does it have to be distributed using a dedicated app? (This could involve preparation efforts by both the distributor and the listeners...)
• What kind of equipment is required?

The more we thought about it, the more obstacles we found.

That said, our goal is simply to "deliver in-house information to the rest of the company," so we decided to proceed with an "agile mindset" of "first using an available system to make a prototype to test out the feel," and then "receiving feedback and making kaizen.

Now it's time for the first interview!

Once that's decided, it's time to choose the study group to interview! It just so happened that a large-scale study session called a "joint study session" was scheduled within the company, so we decided to attend this study session first and conduct interviews with its management team members. However, on the day of the study session, things got hectic, and we were unable to record the interview. As a result, we decided to take an alternative approach by having the management team members gather at a later date for an interview. (In fact, this alternative approach became the model for our future podcasts.)

The actual interview was very exciting, and we were able to complete the recording successfully. However, we then faced a new challenge! In fact, we had reached this point without deciding how to create the podcast content or how to distribute it. After much discussion and trial and error within our team, we settled on the following:

• Processing of the recorded data
  • Using Clipchamp (a Microsoft 365 family product) to create a video file with a focus on audio.
• Streaming method
  • The file is uploaded to the in-house SharePoint, where the audience can access and play it on their PC or smartphone.

The podcast release flow was finally decided as follows:

1. Completing the content
2. Conducting an internal review within the Manabi-no-Michi-no-Eki team
3. Conducting a review by the interviewees
4. Conducting a supervisor review (after the first review, if there are no major concerns, the supervisor will hand over the decision-making responsibility to us for subsequent reviews.)
5. In-house announcement (= the release)

We have established this simple flow, suitable for in-house content only. After that, once all the checks passed, we were able to finally release it inside the company!

Subsequent podcasts

Having gained confidence from the release of our first podcast, we are now moving forward with the planning of our second and third podcasts.

With each interview, we accumulated knowledge and became able to formalize our process to a certain extent.

• Formalization of the planning process
  • Collecting information on in-house study sessions and information dissemination activities
  • The Manabi-no-Michi-no-Eki team will approach the management team members to conduct interviews.
  • Podcasting the interview results
  • Internal announcement after reviews by the management team and interviewees
• Formalization of recording, editing, and distribution
  • Interviews will be conducted via Zoom (since our members are dispersed across multiple locations).
  • Each person's PC microphone and conference room microphone will be utilized. The sound quality will be shelved for the time being.
  • Zoom recording data will be used as the audio source.
  • The audio source data will be edited and processed using Clipchamp.
  • After editing the audio source data, it will be saved in the company's internal storage (MS SharePoint).
  • Listeners will access the content via MS Stream.

Thanks to this formalized process, we have been able to smoothly operate the system, and up to now, we have successfully distributed 11 pieces of content.

About the future

As we continue our podcasting activities, we have developed a desire to expand in various ways.

• We want to interview people who are involved in various in-house activities beyond study group members.
• We also want to interview members of the management and have them share their candid opinions with the rest of the company.
• We want to expand our output beyond just the company.

We, the Manabi-no-Michi-no-Eki team, will continue to actively share information in the coming years. Stay tuned!