As we continue to do the weekly CAVEradio show, we’re constantly looking for ways to improve the overall experience. During the live show is one thing - that’s just winging it - but we know that not everyone can tune in live so many probably listen to the podcast replay. Well, after our last show I decided that just a replay isn’t enough.

During the show many listeners gathering in the CAVEradio IRC channel to chat. They chat amongst themselves, they respond to what we say, and we respond to what they type. It’s a very, shall we say, intimate experience. I believe that the listener chat room is really 50% of the show and is responsible for whatever success we have. But when it comes to show replays it lacked that context.

Listen to the podcast replays myself, I would hear something we said in response to a chat message without addressing it as a chat message. To someone listening (either live or recorded) and they not having that information it could sound quite bizzare (if funny). And while I can’t do much to have live listeners not join in the chat, I challenged myself to create a chat replay.

Since we use a standard IRC channel (thanks, Big G!) you can use a typical IRC client. The client I tried for our most recent show had a logging feature. At the end of the show I had an entire transcript of the chatroom. I also had a audio replay of the full two hour show. I just need to mash them up.

Some late night slamming after our CAVEcrew Midnight Breakfast resulted in what I’m calling The CAVEradio Experience. Which is really nothing more than syncing up the text chat with the audio replay. It took a little bit of thinking to get the timing just right, and I’m only about 75% happy with how it sits right now, but it’s a great proof of concept.

But is it worth it?
That’s where I need you to tell me.

I need to know if the chat really adds anything to what you hear on the replay…especially if you weren’t listening live to the show. Since this thing is still in somewhat of an alpha/beta mode, I don’t have a workflow figured out, so it’s tedious to mash up a transcript and audio. But if people are interested in this type of experience, I can design a better workflow that will make it easy to create.

The other option is to just post the transcript for download. That eliminates the context of the audio, which can make for an interesting read, but maybe that’s just what everyone wants anyway.

So please give it a little test run and let me know what you think. If nothing else, it tested my Javascript skills yet again. I’m quickly beginning to know Javascript better than I do my PHP!