I won’t start off this article with a lie. I did not come up with the idea for Geeks 4 Weeks. That was my other half’s brainchild. He wanted us to do something together each week that would be fun and if nothing else, a little online diary of us.
He had previously found success on YouTube, with his gaming channel Allcast Irish Gamers hosting gaming events around Ireland. He had everything we needed in terms of mics and editing programmes. I thought ‘why not?’
Our first episode was very much out of my comfort zone. I had to get used to the sound of my own voice. I prefer the written form of communication. Then he told me it was going to be filmed too. I remember thinking: “For jaysus sake, what is he trying to do to me.” So now I had to be on camera too.
We started episode one with my binge watch of the week. This was the remake of Sabrina the Teenage Witch renamed The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. The concept of the podcast is essentially to sell what you have been watching that week to whomever you’re talking to. So, I had to convince Petso (my boyfriend) that this program was indeed worthy of his time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybKUX6thF8Q
The idea was to replicate that common scenario when, for example, your sitting at lunch and you start to tell your friend about a program your watching at the minute and you naturally sell it. Sometimes though that can be a tough feat on a podcast, as we have a pre-planned list we are working through. As such, only the most interesting and attention-grabbing shows are usually covered.
We decided to add in segments such as News You Can Use – another break time conversational filler. It’s a piece of geek news that might save you looking boring or old in front of younger people (I’m only 32 – just to put it out there!)
We also have another segment called Geeky this Weeky, where we tell the listeners what we have been geeking on this week. It can be a book, film and series. Sometimes we have guests on and their job is to convince us to watch their chosen topic. Along the way I have noticed it’s the person’s passion for whatever they are talking about which sells it – not the topic itself.
All these segments and ideas grew organically. It’s nice to see reactions from people when they enjoy the show and tell you how they feel about the latest episode.
We have guests intermittently. Yet, we remain loyal to the fact that it’s ours and we’re not willing to change it drastically or loose the heart of it by having someone on who has a big number of followers but may not be the right fit necessarily. Any guest we have on is chosen for a specific reason, whether it’s a love of GoT, a huge passion for anime or they’ve been around the block and would like to convince us to watch what they think is TV gold.
We have listeners all the way from Australia who have reached out to us; on how certain topics rang true for them. For example, we had an episode on “gaming and depression”. We saw the real side to our following after this and it was lovely. Listeners told us about their depression struggles and how they feel gaming helped them.
Our main reason for starting this was to spend time together. However, it has shown that the geek community are ready to embrace their true nerdiness and spread it as far as they can. And when I started, I didn’t think I’d be playing Dungeons and Dragons on a Sunday pretending to be a barbarian because it might be more fun for me if I wreck things. But here we are. And I kinda like it …
