An Important Twentieth Anniversary For Podcasting

Twenty years ago this week, two Australians started a podcast.

I met Mick Stanic through the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and Mick introduced me to Cameron Reily. The two of them were Australia’s first podcasters with the aforementioned G’Day World podcast.

I guested on the pod a few weeks later. It’s not an understatement to say that this appearance was pivotal for me. Cam and Mick launched The Podcast Network (it was 2005; snappy names were in) on February 14 2005, and I produced and hosted one of the launch shows. Since then, I’ve podcasted on average every week… for twenty years.

Mick is no longer with us, but I sat down with Cameron earlier this month to talk about those early days of podcasting. Cam summed up the impact on us nicely a few minutes into the chat:

“It has had a big impact on both of our lives. We didn’t become massively rich and famous as we both expected in 2004. But we both had our lives dramatically impacted by our podcasting efforts, and it has certainly been an overwhelmingly good thing that has happened in my life.”

My memory isn’t what it was (I was convinced we’d chatted for G’Day World earlier than we had, and that the episode itself was published much later than expected) but the legends of rock and roll never quite match up to diaries. Nevertheless, sit back and listen to as much of the early days of Aussie/Scottish podcasting as we can remember.