::Blows dust off the blogging desk::

Greetings and salutations, it has been awhile since I last posted in this space, and that is because I finally have something new to discuss here. For those of you not in the know, in addition to serving as on-air talent here at MSP, I handle a variety of behind the scenes tasks as well, one of which is scouting and contacting third-party talents for interviews. I use a variety of tools in order to get that job done, but my most well-oiled wrench is my e-mail since so many people have e-mail and it tend to be privatized, unlike some of my contacts on Twitter. Something that has irritated me from the very beginning is when a potential guest lacks clarity in the regard, either hiding the e-mail address in a spindly little corner or forgoes e-mail altogether. I understand the concerns about spam and other malware, but that is why many list their e-mail not at a direct link but something that has to be typed. I have encountered this practice from all sorts of entertainment pockets and it grows ever more annoying the more professional an outfit professes to be, not naming names of course. So basically I come here to say please dear god, stop this idiocy, it irritates me and will make me less likely to peruse you for the show if you hide your contact details like that.

s promised the latest episode of my adjunct VLog series detailing the various goings on behind the scenes at MSP. In this installment I talk about some previously announced information, including this very forum and then without naming any names, I once again complain about certain potential guests not giving me a message in return. I’ll say it before and I’ll say it again, I find a lack of a response to my inquiries about an interview to be frustrating, irritating, vexing and most of all rather rude. As I said in the VLog, I am giving that a couple of more days before moving on and clearing the slate. Things I forgot to announce in the Vlog proper is that ProtonJon will be returning on June 15 and Kim is going to be doing regular movie reviews on her blog here on the site.

Greeting everybody who might by chance glance at the sidebar and see this article. I just wanted to throw out a quick update to mention that a new episode of State of the Show will be filmed, I am just not exactly sure when. In addition to my expanded duties eating more and more of my free time, I have come to the determination that they work best when there is MSP stuff to talk about, and while there is certainly things to talk about, I am still making a determination in one area, namely guests, I might wait until a couple more Season 5 slots fill out, but if too much more time passes, I will make a new Vlog with a truncated list anyway.

Greetings everyone, it has been awhile since I have used this sidebar column of mine due to various factors, in between real life, my on-screen and off-screen roles on the show and updating the main page, I have not found the time to do a full on blog post. Roles that gain ever more responsibilities, for example, these last two weeks we have been in back-room discussions with last week’s guests NakaTeleeli and ElementalOgre. At first they were to be no more then average guests, stop by for an hour, talk about their projects and then everybody moves on with their affairs.  Then they were invited to our upcoming April 27 with Team Meat as guest panelists, this was done not only because Mac and I had had a few “getting to know you” sessions beforehand. Also, I mentioned to Naka that the invite was also to bolster the discussions about video games. It isn’t that Mac doesn’t know about games or anything, but he lacks the time to put his full resources into researching a game, especially a long game like Recettear or Torchlight like I do, so this was an action to bolster that side of things. When I relayed this message to Naka he floated the idea of becoming of he and Ogre becoming permanent parts of the show. This is turn has spurned on a new segment for the program, which is currently un-named, so many things to do, so little time, were the three of us, along with Mac the other members of our cast or even the guests talk about video games, new, old, upcoming, you name it, we will probably talk about it. Now that the announcement has gone out I am readily looking forward to this new portion of the broadcast.  For our premiere edition we shall be discussing the 3DS, the new announced NGP, indie gaming and maybe even the Kincet.

Greeetings once more loyal readers it is once again time for me to blather on for a few paragraphs about an aspect of the business of this show that I wish to focus on and in keeping with the tone of this column,  it is going to be me bitching about something and once against it is guest related. As usual this isn’t directed at anyone in particular, it is, how do I put this quasi-systemic to the proceedings.

Anyway, today I would like to rail against tenativity shown amongst various guests when it comes to actually committing to the show. Now I certainly understand some of the reasons and rationales behind this, though sometimes the reasons elude me, but all of this it ties in to the aforementioned prudence I mentioned in an earlier column.  When booking a season we have only a certainly amount of slots, 26 to be exact, allotted to a season and given this also involves a specific date for each show, they are also moving targets that need to be handled with a certain amount of promptness.

A lapse in diligence will usually result in what I like to call extended negotiations, so long as the base desire to be interviewed is still present. Indeed, I can deal with such things as annoying as they are, but when it comes down to it, getting a show slot pragmatically speaking comes down to those who are willing  to sign up for x slot at y time and this especially is true when multiple negotiations are going on at once, it is no matter who the guests are in stature or prominence, first come, first serve as it were. Just the way this thing works.

Right, I am quite aware that it has been quite awhile since my last posting, but honestly I only feel the need to create a topic when I am feeling inspired, and this is one such occasion.  Today I am going to tackle one of the more frustrating aspects of the job, and yet one that certainly doesn’t get nearly enough coverage, and that is silence.

Indeed, I suppose we could be guilty of our own bits of silence when it comes to this site, I for one would not deny it, though in our defense, we hold no real obligations towards regular column postings, especially since all of us tend to be busy with other things. Indeed, the other side of the coin is true as we, in my humble estimation, do not get much feedback from various listeners and readers of the site. Though really those are minor frustrations compared to the main part, the silence of guests.

I will grant it is part and parcel of the routine guest drives that are held behind the scenes here, though the one that rather infuriate me is when interest is shown beforehand. One much more the none occasion there have been contacts who expressed interest in appearing on the show, but when things moved to a more formal stage, all of sudden all that could be heard was silence, dreaded, dreaded silence and it becomes vexing.

If one is truly not interested, then why show any interest in the first place? Barring that, if you are interested, I would like to be told, so I know for a fact that there is no more business to be conducted and thus can turly move on to other contacts.  A subset of this phenomenon is when a contact is shown to have an interest but there is conflicting schedule parameters, and to that I say is there is only so much flexibility we have in our own schedule and when it gets down to it we will favor guests who are willing to commit; in short, there are no reservations for maybes.

Right, with that now out of my system, it is time once again to part into the mists of time until the calling of inspiration drives me to write something new.

Greetings and salutations loyal listeners, Adam here, it has been awhile since I last posted anything of merit, or really, anything at all in this space. In addition to developing a rather nasty case of writer’s block, we have been alternatively busy and more recently not busy with the show. Gear up for season end shows takes a bit of elbow grease, but I think there in lies my next edition of “In The Crafting Of A Season.”  Plus, there has been the matter of the two week long vacation that I took full advantage of, but we have returned with our Season 3 tour de force with the wonderful Kris Straub, now abvailable for download on our talkshoe site and through iTunes and we hope to have another interesting episode as we welcome Philip “Frump” Hofer – Game Developer + Web Designer and “Surrender” artist EviktedRei to the broadcast. Cheers and excelsior!

Hello, dear viewers, it has been awhile since I have made an update of any sort. The column always gets pushed to the backburner when doings are transpiring.  To wit, one of the big things that we have been working on for awhile is the shaping of Season 3 , and now I further this goal by publishing our guest list for the first half.

May 26

Season 3, Eps. 1 – Kris Straub Starslip Crisis and Tweet Me Harder with

Jared Cowing

May 29

Brad Guigar of Evil Inc.

June 2

Philip M. Hofer – Game Developer + Web Designer with EviktedRei

June 9

Dirk I. Tiede of Paradigm Shift

June 16

Patrick McLean of How to Succeed in Evil

June 23

Sean McGuiness of Twisted Kaiju Theater

June 30

DeceasedCrab of DeceasedCrab’s Youtube Let’s Plays

July 7

Amanda Hardpold of B and R Productions

July 14

Darren Bleuel of Nukees  

July 17

Wes Davis, Owner/Founder of Star Army RPG.

July 21

Nate Piekos of BlamBot

July 28

Yan “Kern” Gagné and Friends of Studio Drowtales Inc

Aug 4

Jason Dobson: Freelance Gaming Journalist

Aug 11

Raheem “MegaRan” Jarbo of The Random Experience

Greetings and salutations returning readers; it has been awhile since I last posted for various reasons due to various backstage reasons, new guests to book, upcoming guests to get orientated, big shows that needed preparations, busy, busy, busy. At any rate today I am going to talk about one of the new challenges that we face, the switching of formats of solid footing. For a season and a half this was a program primarily about webcomics. Sure, there were some exceptions here and there, but even guests like Lewis Luvhaug and David Malki have connections to webcomics. The changeover kinda started last week with CB Ash, but that was before events changed with Brian Clevinger. This week there is no second guest, this week there will be no familiar discussions about webcomics, or even cousin fields in which to make some comparisons

For the next two weeks, we are going to be talking video games with a specific bent and this will be far from the last time we take ventures off the webcomic trail for that is what we do, we do more then webcomics, we do entertainment, though I am unsure if we do harder, more educational topics yet. Be that as it may, it is going to be interesting to see how all of us will adapt to this changing landscape and I for one look forward to the mixing of fields. Keep abrest of the space fore next time I will disseminate how well we are handling the curve-balls, or at least attempt to. Also, before I go I do have a non-article related announcement to make as Moonhawk Studios Presents is pleased to welcome J.L. Haramof Picatrix to the regular guest panel crew, good to have you aboard J.L.

Greetings and salutations, I know it has been a bit of time since my last article but sometimes the so called real world does inject. At any rate in this installment I want to describe some of the rigors that goes into researching the works of the various guests that we showcase on a weekly basis. The first bit of research comes from the initial contact during recruiting season, wherein a brief examination of the targeted work will ensure, if I am not already familiar with said work.

During recruiting season I do a cursory surface examination, it is really all that I can muster due to the fact that when this recruiting season is being enacted I have quite a few candidates to appraise during the rounds, so the in-depth research tends to get held off until the week of whenever so and so guest is being featured. As far as deep analysis goes, well, this varies from week to week and guest to guest, but the specific point I wish to speak about are guests that have, for right now, webcomic archives that contain hundreds upon hundreds of back episodes.

Usually I can make it through a webcomic of recent origin or a webcomic that has an archive of at most 300 to 400 pages in a day or two. Occasionally we will feature a guest that has a webcomic, a recent example being one Katie Sweet of Juathuur whose archive boasts a good thousand plus pages, it becomes quite a daunting task. It is unfortunate that the proper amount of time and effort can be invested into properly absorbing all of the details and nuances of such a backlog. This has the unfortunate effect of blunting and generalizing my interview questions.

I suppose the overall point of this article is to mention to the purveyors of these archive heavy webcomics is that the onus is going to be on you to bring forth some of the more obscure details of said webomic. Join me next time as I discuss the challenges behind researching some of the non-webcomic related project that we plan on featuring in the near futur.