2007 was a big year for TPN in lots of ways. We grew; we stumbled; we struggled; we survived. Bootstrapping a start-up isn’t glamorous. Trying to keep a fast-growing business alive when revenues are still small and you are funding it organically can be frustrating. Every day bring new challenges. Things you survive by telling yourself “one day it won’t be like this”.

We started off the year with a re-design of the homepage and lots of fast growth. Around the middle of year our server admin quit and I had to put a stop to adding new shows. Then a couple of months later our webdev quit. For the last couple of months we’ve been getting by with favours from friends whenever we need IT support. So it’s been frustrating on lots of levels. In March I thought we would finish the year with a million listeners a month. We missed that goal. Since March we’ve been hovering between 450,000 - 500,000 listeners a month. Now - when I compare that to some of the radio stations in Melbourne or Sydney, I feel pretty good. TPN, currently, one full-time employee. Me. No funding. No sales team. No IT team. Just me and a team of excellent, dedicated and PATIENT podcast producers who have tolerated our bumps over the last couple of years. I want to thank them all for their sense of humour when things go awry (like they did again over the last couple of days when out FTP server flaked on us) and their continued support for the TPN vision.

However, despite the struggles, it was a pretty good year. As you can see from the numbers below, we served nearly 5.5 million listeners during the year (okay, that number is slightly bullshit - it’s our monthly unique visitor numbers added together - but it sounds good so I’m sticking with it), who listened to nearly 7 million TPN podcasts (that number is legit). That’s a HUGE number, especially when you consider that since we launched in early 2005 we’ve only delivered a little over 11 million podcasts. Thinking about that 7 million number for a second - if we assume that each podcast is an average of 30 minutes long, that means you listened to us for 3.5 million hours (145, 833 days or 400 years non-stop) in 2007. No wonder your brain is hurting.

Of course I also want to thank our listeners and supporters. Those of you who listen to our shows, interact with us on the blogs, in Facebook, at MODM, Twitter, Second Life, etc. Without you we really would be what the cynics in the mainstream media think we are - people sitting in our undies, talking to ourselves.

Dave Gray from TPN’s Global Geek Podcast and Dave Wallace / Mike Seyfang from TPN’s Extraordinary Everyday Lives show produced a first for TPN last night when they recorded a joint podcast from within Second Life. Check it out here! Well done guys!

It took me a LOT longer than I thought, but we finally have some new land in Second Life. I hope those of you who were hanging out with us a couple of months ago will come back and help us build up again! Click here to say G’Day in SL.

It’s that time of the year again when we ask you, our most loyal and lovable audience, to spend ten minutes of your life answering a bunch of questions about what makes you tick. We do this in the hope that this information (all anonymous of course) will encourage advertisers to increase their interest in advertising on our podcasts. We love producing these shows for you and we love the fact that they are freely available. However it takes a lot of work, time and energy and the costs of the infrastructure grow every year. We need to generate some revenue to allow us to keep building and getting better. You can help once a year by filling out our survey.

Click Here to take survey

Michaela and Steve take over The Movie Show this week as I seem to never get around to doing it! They kick off with a review of The Bourne Ultimatum, a film I personally refuse to see.

Duncan Riley wrote about his recent experiences at TPN’s HQ in Second Life today which is worth a read (link). It includes this screenshot of a spontaneous meetup we had a few days ago.

Duncan’s post is about the combination of using Twitter and Second Life for spontaneous meetups. We’ve been noticing over the last week that if we mention in Twitter that one or two of us are hanging out at TPN HQ, within minutes we have 10 - 20 people show up. And then we sit around having a group VOICE chat for several hours. I’ve never seen anything like it in my 12 years on the net. Duncan sums it up:

The ability to join and discuss anything in Second Life delivers something between a Barcamp or Podcamp, and a discussion at your local bar (or pub) amongst friends. I’ve read elsewhere suggestions that people who spend time in Second Life are sad; to that I can only respond: married with children. Whilst my wife was catching the latest episodes of America’s Next Top Model (streamed over the home network on a Zensonic Z500…which is probably pretty geeky) and my son was asleep I participated in a virtual recreation of many a good blog meetup or barcamp, and better still it was spontaneous.

After a 12 month hiatus (where does the time go?), Dennis Hays is back on TPN with his “Late Night Blues and Jazz Hangout” podcast. If you like blues and jazz, here’s a place to get a weekly dose of free, podsafe music for your ears.

A big congrats from TPN HQ to Wayne Turmel whose Cranky Middle Manager podcast (consistently one of TPN’s Top Ten shows) just got a plug from BusinessWeek! Funny though that it has been categorized as an “HR blog”.

tpnmeetup_001

Originally uploaded by dnwallace

We’ve had a bunch of people visit the TPN HQ in Second Life tonight. All together I’ve counted 20 people. We’ve sat around and talked about Second Life, transhumanism, politics, you name it. A very varied discussion. At one point we were all even blown up by some C4 explosive and killed. Very cool.

Update: We had 30+ people turn up last night at various stages. Lots of great discussions. Hope to you see you all visit soon.
More images here.

You may have noticed that TPN has had a lot of downtime recently. My sincere apologies. It’s been a couple of weeks in hell. One of the joys of running a fast growth start-up on the smell of an oily rag is that you never seem to have enough people or infrastructure. Over the last few weeks I’ve felt the brunt of that like never before.

I won’t bore you with the details, but just wanted to let you know that we seem to be making progress, thanks for a new awesome team of support angels we’re working with in Melbourne, and I hope we’re nearly back to normal.

I want to thank all of you for your amazing patience and consideration over the last couple of weeks. I also want to thank TPN’s hosts who have been incredibly accommodating. I’m very lucky to be working with such great people. I know it’s been very trying for them and for you, our audience. I can’t begin to explain the amount of stress and anxiety it’s caused me. Your patience is appreciated.

I can’t promise yet that we are totally out of the woods, but I feel good that we are going to be there within the next few days.

Peace.
Cameron.