ACLU of MA "Freedom Unfinished"
The initial brainstorm breakdown of the ACLU-MA's website from October 2021 which helped us focus our episode arc on the most pressing issues.
One of the last projects before my departure from Matter Communications was spinning up the "Freedom Unfinished" show for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts in the Spring of 2022.
The project kicked off with an extended pitch/RFP process, where my brainstorm and website breakdown became crucial selling points. The goal of the initial concept map was to align our vision for the series with the ACLU's priorities and ongoing initiatives, as well as ensure a tonal match with the national ACLU's existing podcast series.
The contract eventually involved a two-season scope and had us crafting a four-episode first "season" arc featuring case studies and expert opinions from legal advocates at the intersection of technology and civil liberties. The topics spanned cybersecurity, facial recognition technology, and algorithmic injustice.
Over several weeks of format and content-shaping collaboration, I refined the Miro concept map into a single-source visual resource for our show notes and considerations which evolved meeting by meeting. What a difference a few months make!
This was the revised show flow board's contents as of January 2022--a far cry from the initial spec work website breakdown done back in October.
In addition to the upfront spec work, my responsibilities included preparation for and conducting interviews with subject matter experts from across the legal and ethics fields, requiring constant attention to evolving dialogues and perspectives. Throughout the process, I played dual roles--a coach for our clients and a process mentor for a newly onboarded podcast producer.
Each episode integrated content from 3-4 guest expert interviews in a semi-scripted format. We'd capture an hour's worth of content with our guests when they could pencil us in and digest those transcripts into our episode structures. Once we'd cleared the content with the guests, we'd write host segments in coordination with our ACLU-MA staff hosts to weave it all together. With a client as rhetorically adept as the ACLU, every word, every phrase mattered–both for stylistic consistency and rigorous legal compliance.
Ultimately, I was only involved in the planning stages through to the assembly of the first episode, but it was the most show-running experience I'd had assembling something from the ground up since Vicarious Surgical's "More Capable" podcast project.
While not a business-backed project, I later put all of these skills to the test for the run of the Sheila for Malden limited podcast series in 2023.
