I spend a lot of time making podcasts for people and helping others to create podcasts. During a quiet patch, I decided to look at doing something different and innovative. That's when I found out about Clwstwr, where innovation is front and centre.
I met a Clwstwr producer, Gavin Johnson, to talk about funding opportunities.
At that point, I was thinking of applying to be on the Clwstwr Ideas Lab, a program that introduces you to R&D and how it works. However, I wanted to get an insight into the types of ideas that Clwstwr supports. Gavin told me about the types of ideas that work well for research and development, how they vary from niche ideas that fill an industry gap to unspecified ambitions. He also said that great R&D can happen when you have an idea for something that can make life easier.
I told Gavin that I'd like to make a solution to a problem he'd had that very morning.
Gavin was frustrated with the fact he didn’t finish listening to an entire episode of his favourite podcast on the train to our meeting. The episode was 42 minutes long, but the train journey was only 27 minutes, so he missed the last 15 minutes. Usually, that end section is where the best bits are. I told Gavin that, based on my knowledge of audio, I reckoned something could be done to adjust the length of podcasts to suit your expected listening window. That's where the idea for my product, Accordion, started. I wanted to create something that allows you to control the podcast duration, without affecting tone, structure or listenability.
I went into Clwstwr’s Ideas Lab with a few different ideas.
The program taught me enough about R&D so that I could apply for funding and have a chance of understanding all the hoops you have to jump through. It was helpful to learn how to demonstrate why you think an area is worth investigating, how you're going to do it and how to prove that you're not going in with a preconceived solution. The team encouraged us to work through some of our own ideas, then choose one idea that we could apply for seed funding with. I chose to apply for funding to develop my podcast duration idea, which was called ‘SMART Podcasts’ at that time. I wanted to look into smart podcasts and what might be possible in the future.
I successfully applied for seed funding from Clwstwr.
Gavin became my Clwstwr producer from here on in, which was great as he had been with me on my Clwstwr journey from the start. The first part of my seed project involved desk-based research. I spent a month researching what exists, what was possible and where there's room for innovation. I developed a list of ideas for potential R&D projects around smart podcasts, but I was most keen to deliver the solution that had appeared in my mind when I initially spoke to Gavin.
Two freelance specialists helped make my ideas a reality.
While developing my ideas and two product prototypes for the second phase, there were points where I struggled to see how I could get concepts from inside my head and onto a screen as a functioning application. I sought recommendations on who to turn to from Gavin and people I'd worked with in the past. I found Matt Brealey, a web developer, and Rebecca Saw, a coder, who came on board to help me make my prototypes.
I created two prototypes to prove my concepts.
The first prototype demonstrated that you could shorten podcasts and still retain tone, structure and listenability. At this stage, there wasn’t any automation involved, just me pulling very late nights editing audio! The second prototype proved it was possible for your smartphone to use your historical GPS data about your regular journeys to pick the right length of audio to play you when you next make that journey. From creating these, I felt that there was more scope for the first prototype to go further; the function that the second prototype delivers is something that could potentially be combined with the first prototype in the future, or kept separate, but I didn’t want to take it any further at this stage.
Off the back of this work, I successfully applied to Clwstwr for project funding.
I used the project funding to develop the first prototype. I wanted it to be able to deliver the adjustments in duration without relying on a human to edit all of the audio. For this, I developed an algorithm that allows accurate automation to take place.
The MVP is at a point where I can take it to potential investors.
It’s great to be able to show the product to others and demonstrate what it can do, so that I can build interest and hopefully investment in Accordion. I can't share or publicise much information about the algorithm or how Accordion works; part of my Clwstwr experience involved getting legal advice and investigating patents, which was really useful. I’ve applied for an international patent for Accordion.
The outcome of my Clwstwr project funding has enabled me to launch a pilot.
With Matt and Rebecca still on board, we have since moved on to the next stage of development. Again, this phase started thanks to Clwstwr; someone from the Clwstwr team informed me of a European scheme called Stars4Media, which encourages different media companies from countries in Europe to collaborate.
Following a successful application to Stars4Media, they're now funding a collaboration with Europod, a Belgian podcast company. Europod have produced a 10-part podcast about Angela Merkel, which we are using as the first series the public can apply Accordion to. When you go to www.accordion.live, you can pick an episode and choose a duration.
Now, Accordion is under the pressure of a commercial, professional environment. We've come a long way since the casual chat I had at the start with Gavin, thanks to Clwstwr and Stars4Media. The next challenge is to get lots of user feedback on Accordion as it currently is, then we can try to make it an even better product.