In today's digital age, podcasts have become a powerful medium for sharing knowledge and connecting with audiences worldwide. As a marketer, I recognize podcasts as a powerful marketing and nurturing tool because I have seen them do so firsthand. After getting to know the two guys who head up our Innovation Lab, I knew a podcast would be right up their alley.   

11:59's Chief Innovation Officer, David Lindstrom, and Director of Emerging Technology, Eric Muckley, PhD, are frequent contributors to this blog and a wealth of knowledge about emerging technologies. However, it wasn't their sheer knowledge that first had me thinking that they would do great on a podcast–it was their contrasting personalities. Our marketing team has come to know David and Eric lovingly as Bert and Ernie.  

David and Eric are childhood friends with a comfortable banter that immediately sets everyone at ease. David is the self-ascribed "people person" who can contextualize emerging technology for a business professional. Eric is more comfortable digging into the weeds of complex technologies. He has such a deep knowledge and understanding of these complex technological issues that he can easily explain them in layperson's terms. David and Eric make these challenging topics more accessible to the masses.   

David and Eric's distinct personalities and strengths drew me to pitch them on starting a podcast for 11:59 Labs. Thankfully, they were all in.   

Finding Our Identity 

From our early brainstorming and strategy sessions, the podcast team knew that we didn't just want to put another podcast out there that was already being made. We wanted to ensure that we contributed something different and helpful to the "every man" and the experienced technology professional. We wanted to lean less on research and more on practical application. It was important to us to always bring the technology back to why it matters for your business. There is a lot of misinformation out there trying to scare business leaders into adopting new technology, and we wanted to set the record straight.   

We came up with three types of episodes that we wanted in our rotation:   

• Cut Through the Noise: taking complex topics and breaking them down into digestible content.  
• Lessons by Labs: taking a deep dive into broad topics like Cryptocurrency or Large Language Models. 
• Look Inside the Lab: showing how 11:59 Labs is not just discussing technology but how we're actually putting it into practice.   

Hitting Record  

Starting a podcast about emerging technology is vague and leaves a giant blue ocean of possibilities for what we could talk about. So, after we decided who we wanted to be, the next order of business was what we wanted to talk about.   

Looking through the lens of the 3-episode types we had determined, we could see more clearly some topics relevant to our audience. We took the approach of recording episodes in batches, so for our first recording session, we planned to come out with 5 recorded episodes. Some topics included Large Language Models (LLM), Web3, Cryptocurrency, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), the Metaverse, and more. David and Eric originally came up with a structure they wanted to follow, but we found that while recording, the best content was when they were conversing with one another off the cuff. The genuine curiosity and personal application made the content engaging and worth listening to.   

 
While our first episode hasn't yet been released, I know this podcast will help a variety of people.  

• It will help the young professional have an edge when it comes to productivity and efficiency.  
• It will help the experienced business leader make more informed decisions around emerging technology.  
• It will help any developer or tech professional contextualize their work for business.  

It has already helped me! In one of our episodes, David and Eric discussed prompt stuffing with an LLM to generate a better answer. I was able to use that strategy at work the very next day for a task that was completely unrelated to the podcast. This podcast will encourage our listeners to be confident in new technology and to see it as an exciting tool to add to their arsenal.    

We can't wait to release our first few episodes very soon–so stay tuned.