AWPT recently began exploring a new media channel with our podcast “The Conformance Cast”, hosted by our team and featuring expert guests from fields related to accreditation, calibration, instructional technique, and more. Through The Conformance Cast, we hope to allow more people to access our educational topics in short, listener-friendly segments that are available on many different devices. Our first, five-part series on ISO/IEC 17025:2017 began releasing in November, and our next series will offer some consultant insights from environmental laboratory consultant Michelle Wade. Future topics will include QMS software, metrology applications, and other relevant topics. 

Though the medium of podcasting is less than 20 years old, it has exploded in popularity in the last several years, and this increase in public interest has made podcasts extremely accessible. There are now millions of podcasts, and dozens of podcatchers that listeners can use to download and listen to podcasts on their personal devices. This ready availability was part of what made podcasting an attractive medium to deliver some of AWPT’s supplementary educational content. Our goal is to make it available not only to our customers but to other industry professionals who may benefit from it. We also know that learners have different needs, and that some prefer audio-format media rather than written media like our blog posts or help documents. 

We have adopted a “series” format for The Conformance Cast to allow us to address a variety of topics that are relevant to learners in different industries. For several episodes at a time, we address a single topic with a single expert, then begin a new series on a different topic. Listeners can then decide to tune in for only the topics that are relevant to them or the entirety of the available episodes. Each episode is about 15 minutes long, making the information easy to absorb, especially between other tasks or during a commute. We invite listeners to leave feedback via our social media channels and to suggest topics they would like to hear about in the future episodes. You can listen to The Conformance Cast on all major podcast apps by searching for “The Conformance Cast,” or you can listen to all currently available episodes in your web browser at the-conformance-cast.pinecast.co.