PodFest Cairo Ushers in a New Storytelling Frontier

By: Reem Elmaghraby

@reemelmaghrabyy

PodFest Cairo, the region’s first conference of its kind, put Egypt on the map of a new storytelling frontier when it kicked off on March 7 bringing together the growing local podcast community and giving them opportunity to network.

The six-hour conference featured session speakers discussing a range of topics from how to talk on a podcast to the technologies needed, listening sessions where people enjoyed a variety of podcasts then discussed them, and prominent guest lecture.

“It [PodFest Cairo] has been an idea that I’ve been considering for a while as I’ve watched the popularity of podcasts increase globally. It’s an opportunity to survey the podcasting community in Egypt to see who’s interested in producing podcasts and to get an idea of the potential for listenership as well as sharing knowledge about the industry,” said Kim Fox, Journalism and Mass Communication professor at AUC and the founder and organizer of PodFest Cairo.

The keynote speech, ‘The Power of Storytelling,’ was given by Hannah Allam, a Washington-based national security correspondent for NPR, who talked about her experience switching from print journalism to audio and her ten tips for storytelling.

Before going into radio, Allam worked for BuzzFeed in print but she lost her job as the industry began going digital. Instead of looking for the same job elsewhere, she decided to challenge herself by switching to audio.

“The tools we use are going to change, but storytelling is forever,” said Allam.

Allam was later joined by JRMC alumna Rawan Lasheen, a Business TV presenter and in-house reporter at Al-Ghad News Channel, as they both shared tips drawn from their own experience to help in interviewing people.

Lasheen also added that before going on air and conducting an interview, one has to research their interviewee in order to know how to get them comfortable with talking to a microphone.

“If you are short on questions, you could get another question from the answer,” Lasheen said.

Fox and Mohammad Badawy, the senior technical supervisor in the JRMC Department at AUC, had a session where they talked about the equipment behind podcasting. They discussed the pros and cons of certain technologies. Fox said that lack of professional equipment shouldn’t stop anyone from starting.

“You use what you have and what’s available, and I’m not going to pass up an interview with let’s say with a high ranking official just because I don’t have a professional audio device,” Fox said.

The conference also included a delivery and narration session given by Nour Ibrahim, a senior PR and media coordinator at AUC Venture Lab, and JRMC alumna Mariam Rizk, a broadcast journalist at BBC Arabia.

Hisham Abdien, the executive editor at Enterprise Egypt and Rasha Al Deeb, a free-lance podcast consultant and trainer addressed issues of monetization in podcasting.  

PodFest Cairo was concluded with an Inaugural PodFest Cairo Pitch Competition where three groups came up to the stage and pitched their podcast ideas in seven minutes to judges Allam, Mazen Yassen, content creator and founder of Just A GoProer, Let’s Go BIG and BIG studios, and Farid Y. Farid, a reporter at newswire AFP Cairo.

Ahmed Feteha, an AUC alum and a freelance translator, won the competition with his pitch for an Arabic podcast titled  على الحافة (On The Edge), that talked about mental health.

The conference allowed many people to mingle and created a comfortable space ranging from experts in the field to those who were just starting out.

“It enabled me to know a community of people who think like me. It gave me a platform or space for me to network and to know people and possibly collaborate [with] in the future, and know more about the technology and the information behind podcasting,” said Mohamed Alkady, a political science senior at AUC.

The Moderator, Nadine El Guiddawy, a JRMC alumna and currently a PR consultant and presenter, closed the conference by saying that they are planning on hosting “a mini version of PodFest Cairo in the fall at AUC for the campus community”.