Business View Magazine l January 2023

9 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 12 OPENING L INES to humanize county government and give people a chance to get to know the person behind the program,” Person said. Person said he’s found people are much more willing to be a guest on the show because he focuses on having a more casual conversation style and doesn’t release a video form of the podcast. “It’s much easier to get people to talk on the podcast because there’s not a TV camera there,” he said. “When you’re trying to line up guests, they’ll go, ‘Oh, there’s a TV,’ and I’m like, ‘No, we’re audio only,’ and that’s always an easy sell to get people to come talk. That’s what I’ve built the county conversation podcast as — it’s not an interview show, it’s just a conversation.” Kate Pierce, the New York State Association of Counties’ multimedia specialist, said the structure of a podcast makes it easier to speak to a wide variety of people. Being a state association, creating a podcast allowed NYSAC to highlight its legislative advocacy and interesting initiatives at the county level while still being convenient for the county officials who are featured, she noted. “County officials are so busy, so it’s hard to sit down and watch an hour-long webinar on a specific topic,” she said. “NYSAC has a lot of educational webinars, and that’s a big-time commitment and it’s also difficult to travel across the state for different workshops. Podcasts are an engaging format and you can be working on something else in your office or on your commute. “It’s a really flexible and dynamic medium of accessing information and they’re just available on demand, so you don’t have to wait for a specific live event — you have it pinged up ahead of time, and you can listen to the topics that interest you and skip the ones that don’t.” NYSAC’s “County Conversations” podcast addresses local and regional issues as well as the impact of national issues at the county and state level. “Our mission at NYSAC is to foster excellence in county government and unite the voice of New York county leaders, so our guests really represent that range of voices that come from the public and private sector, from the state and