#ds106radio is just like heaven

Written by Anne-Marie Scott

It’s been nearly a year since myself, Maren and Tannis started broadcasting together on #ds106radio.

Radio adventures started out for me with listening to birdsong as Jim Groom broadcast his days in Italy. The contrast with the depths of a prairie winter, and the total absence of such sounds in my city centre apartment was stark and I felt both comforted and homesick. Tales of the first lockdowns in Italy soon became a forecast of what was coming to us all.

Jumping on the airwaves and trying our hands at broadcasting was a way to connect and meet up in the absence of conferences like OER20, but over the last 11 months it’s morphed into something quite different. It’s still fundamentally about connecting and fun – the talk to music ratio remains a notable feature of our show – but we’re much more sporadic in our schedule now and much less planned and organised in our programming (themes have given way to “anything goes”). I’ve not improved any in my production skills, however I care a little less, so that’s a kind of progress.

I’ve shared a bit about my setup as I’ve learned more about how to use Audio Hijack, and I’ve tried to make some contributions to housekeeping, aware that if it weren’t for Grant Potter doing that solo for nearly a decade we wouldn’t be having this much fun.

What else has changed?

We now have some super-sweet custom bumpers thanks to Brian Lamb.

Tannis has become the queen of multi-tasking.

Maren’s Christmas dreams came true.

There’s been a semi-regular cross-over show.

We had a Christmas Party.

There have also been regular pupdates, slipper talk, welly boot tales, a regular joke about trousers, and 2 milestone birthdays. I was so sad one Sunday I couldn’t talk at the start of the show, and one of my cats chewed my headphones live on air and borked my setup.

We know we’re about 10 years late to this party and we have felt thoroughly welcomed by old hands. In turn, it’s been a pleasure to see new DJs come along after us (waves to Lauren and Tim) and yay for not feeling like the newbies anymore.As we all tire of constant screen time, I see talk of radio more and more often. I loved Steve’s comment below from a recent chat.

What would our Great Pivot have looked like if we went to campus radio and not Zoom I wonder?

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