I first heard about podcasting in September 2004 when Rex Hammock mentioned it. That’s when I discovered podcasting pioneers like Todd Cochrane, Adam Curry and Eric Rice.

The following January 2005, I started co-presenting a business podcast called For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report with my friend and colleague Shel Holtz. At that time, I lived in Amsterdam, The Netherlands; with Shel in California, USA, we connected and recorded our podcast via Skype.

Since that first episode in January 2005, we built FIR into a series with six distinct podcasts:

• FIR: The Hobson & Holtz Report – a weekly show recorded on Mondays with commentary and opinion at the intersection of online communication, business and technology.
• FIR Live – an occasional live call-in show that started at BlogTalk Radio where a topical issue is up for discussion by the two co-hosts and usually a panel plus listeners who add an opinion in the chat room. Today, FIR Live has evolved into a live video show, using Google+ Hangouts On Air and YouTube.
• FIR Cuts – occasional clips from the virtual cutting room floor of The Hobson & Holtz Report.
• FIR Interviews with newsmakers and influencers from the online technology and organizational communication worlds.
• FIR Book Reviews aligned with our theme of PR/communications and the online world.
• FIR Speakers and Speeches – occasional podcasts of speeches, keynote addresses, breakout sessions, and other recordings from meetings and conferences of interest to PR and communication professionals.

We publish every show on the FIR website, and I cross-post here as well.

In the summer of 2007, McGraw-Hill published How To Do Everything With Podcasting, a 360-page book that walks you step by step through the whole process of creating, publishing and promoting your own business podcast. Much of what we experienced and learned from doing our own podcast informed our thinking when we wrote this book.

FIR has a vibrant community of listeners across the social web to discuss topics of interest to other listeners, centred around the FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

In late 2013, Shel and I started taking the FIR brand to a new level by co-founding the FIR Podcast Network – a platform for other voices to join us and talk about their passion and professional interests in audio podcasts that they create and publish under the FIR brand name.

By mid 2015, the network had grown to offer more than 20 distinct podcasts.

In September 2015, after nearly eleven years and 824 episodes, I decided to end The Hobson and Holtz Report and step away from active involvement in the network. (Details.)

If you haven’t listened to any podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network yet, do try one out.