The Post Production Lane
Cards from episodes placed in the combined episodes sub-lane are generated here. This lane acts as a placeholder and backlog for the writing and publication process.
The Publish Lane
This lane is broken into two lanes for the two forms of media in which we publish written material. The first is the email lane. We send out two emails a week to our subscribers with extra content on the episode topic. The second is the website lane. We write extensive show notes for each episode and occasionally blog posts when the material was more than could be covered in an episode.
Email Campaign
We use MailChimp to manage our email campaigns. Each week we send out two emails to our subscribers. On Wednesday they receive an email with a teaser about the show being published on Thursday and the outline for that show. On Friday we send an email containing extra information about the topics covered in the episode. These are both written in HTML with inline CSS. I designed templates for each of these emails so anyone can write the email in the same format each week.
Website
Each episode has extensive show notes written with a breakdown of the episode and time stamps for each segment. These are also written in HTML with a template to provide easy formatting and continuity across episodes.
Our earlier episodes did not have these extensive notes so we would write blog posts for the information discussed on the show. Occasionally we will have a topic that is too broad to cover in an episode. Rather than record two episodes we will write blog posts on these topics to provide extra content on the website.
Order of Writing
Typically an episode will follow a guided path from A-D on the image to the left. (A) being the outline email sent on Wednesdays. This will be written and scheduled in MailChimp. Next we will write the show notes (B) from the outline and online sources. We will include all the references from the episode along with a summary of the IoTease and Tricks of the Trade segments. Elaborating on the show notes the extras email sent on Fridays (C) will also include secondary references in the form of additional links. Finally if a blog post is to be written the episode moves to (D).
The Social Media Lane
This lane was originally titled Scheduling for our WordPress schedule and episodes placed here awaited scheduling on WordPress. Since we started the email campaigns this lane was converted to social media. Episodes placed here are scheduled in Buffer to appear on our various social media accounts. An episode will be here for 3 weeks before being moved to the archive.
The Archive
The final resting place for episode cards that have passed through the entire process from initial idea through publication and social media promotion.
Published as Planned
Once an episode has spent 3 sometimes 4 weeks being promoted on social media it is moved here to make room for newer episodes. Occasionally a popular episode will be pulled and returned to the social media lane for a second run.
Started Not Finished
Similar to our review process for recordings the written publications also have a review place in the archives. Occasionally issues will come up in the writing of the show notes or emails. Like with the Post Production these cards receive priority in our sprint planning on Mondays.
Discarded Renders
This lane is a remnant of the days when I would do all of the post production myself before we had our audio guru on the team. These are finished episodes that need to be rerecorded. We currently have three episodes in this folder that we recorded before purchasing the new equipment. The quality is so much better that at our last sprint planning Will and I decided to rerecord them on the new equipment.