Florrie de Havilland: Satellites to Stationery

What happens when a satellite engineer's hands stop working, and how can creativity emerge from constraint?

For Florrie de Havilland, a period of debilitating ill health  meant reimagining her entire career and discovering unexpected joy in the delicate art of calligraphy and the mechanical precision of letterpress printing.

Having had a successful career in mechanical engineering, including testing satellites for space missions, Florrie's neurological condition – affecting her hands and arms – forced her to eventually reconsider her career path and find a new way to balance her energy. 

During a two-year recovery period, Florrie had turned to watercolour painting and calligraphy, finding that these artistic pursuits offered something her illness had taken away: control. 

The conversation reveals fascinating parallels between Florrie's engineering background and her current creative practice. The same precision and problem-solving mindset that helped her test rocket thrusters and solar panels now informs her approach to calligraphy and her operation of "Penelope," a 1.25-ton vintage printing press from 1960 that dominates her studio.

Today, Florrie creates bespoke wedding stationery that tells each couple's unique story, and beyond the commercial aspects of her business she finds profound fulfilment in volunteering with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, creating materials for children's wish events.

Perhaps most touching is Florrie's description of finding her tribe among fellow letterpress enthusiasts: "When you meet some letterpress friends it's fantastic because they're just as crazy as you are." 

Florrie's story reminds us that creativity isn't just about making beautiful things – it's about finding new paths forward when traditional ones become inaccessible, and discovering community in unexpected places.

creativityfound.co.uk

Researched, edited and produced by Claire Waite Brown
Music: Day Trips by Ketsa Undercover / Ketsa Creative Commons License Free Music Archive - Ketsa - Day Trips

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Transcript

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Florrie de Havilland 0:53

🎵 🎵 I had two years off work, which weren't particularly fun, to be honest. The first year in particular was very much just trying to back and forth from all these doctor's appointments. At that point in time, there was no way I could have gone back to work and I would have had all the controls sort of taken away. But being able to experiment like that gave me something to do and feel like I was getting a bit of my life back. But the thing about letterpress is you Pretty much everybody who does it is a bit of an odd one because you've got to be quite special to be very excited about that sort of thing. But oh my goodness me, when you meet some letterpress friends, it's fantastic because they're just as crazy as you are. I get so much joy from it. It feels really lovely to be able to give back in that way and be creative and have all of this sort of input and know that I'm making a difference to somebody's life.

Claire Waite Brown 1:55

Hi, I'm Claire. For this podcast, I chat with people who have found or re-found their creativity as adults. We'll explore their childhood experiences of the arts, discuss how they came to the artistic practices they now love, and consider the barriers they may have experienced between the two. We'll also explore what it is that people value and gain from their newfound artistic pursuits, and how their creative lives in which they're practical necessarily everyday lives. This time I'm chatting with Florrie de Havilland. Hi Florrie, how are you? Hiya,

Florrie de Havilland 2:33

I'm very well, thank you. How about yourself?

Claire Waite Brown 2:36

Yeah, I'm very good, thank you. Start by telling me what your current creative outlet is, please.

Florrie de Havilland 2:44

Creative-wise, normally watercolour and wedding stationery, but at the moment I am particularly headfirst in calligraphy.

Claire Waite Brown 2:53

Brilliant, well we will find out more about all of those. When you were younger, what kind of creative activities did you enjoy and were they encouraged at home or at school? So

Childhood Art and Engineering Career

Florrie de Havilland 3:04

I really always loved art, art classes, even though one of my teachers I wasn't as keen on, but the other ones were fantastic. And I actually continued doing art until A-level and it was only when I went to university that I sort of stopped. But that's actually when I took up watercolour a little bit, just doing colour or friends and family. Yes, then when I was an engineer already, then started to really go into the watercolour and everything. It was encouraged at home. It was my granny, mostly, who encouraged me. My parents never discouraged me, but it was mostly because they weren't as creative as my grandmother was. She would do everything. She would knit clothes for us. She would sew all the curtains. She would do upholstery on her own, watercolour, acrylic. You

Claire Waite Brown 3:56

mentioned engineering. So, and you mentioned you've done art up to A-level. How do we then progress?

Florrie de Havilland 4:25

really didn't want to be in proper study mode for seven years, which architecture really is. And so I thought in astrophysics, you normally end up in education, you know, either doing a PhD or doing something more in research, which I also wasn't too interested in. So yes, then I decided I was going to do mechanical engineering and ended up working in the space sector. So that actually quite nicely tied in everything, except for the design, which is why I am a creative outlet.

Claire Waite Brown 4:58

Ah. how long and what are your prospects with mechanical engineering then with studying and then what can you go on to do? I

Florrie de Havilland 5:08

knew that I wanted to do something that was a bit broad because I didn't know what I wanted to do. So mechanical engineering is sort of the most broad out of all of the engineering disciplines. So I had my master's degree in mechanical engineering. And yes, after that, I ended up working at Airbus Defence and Space in Germany. That was as a thermal engineer and thermal analyst and then after that I was actually headhunted for a position where I was the first woman in Europe to hold my job title completely inexperienced but they saw something in me and I took that job like a Dr. Water and it was absolutely fantastic and that was thermal test manager so testing satellites before they were launched

Claire Waite Brown 5:53

oh wow goodness me so does that kind of fit in with the astrophysics or am I being stupid there

Florrie de Havilland 5:59

It does.

Claire Waite Brown 6:00

It does.

Florrie de Havilland 6:01

We don't know how that happened. It was a complete happy accident, especially because I wanted to move to Germany because my husband's family come from Germany. And so I knew that if I was serious about him, probably needed to be serious about learning his language. And so I said after university, we're going to move there and we're going to live there until I'm fluent. And so that's what we did. So I applied for all these jobs and obviously didn't get very many of them. I think I I applied to 60, 70, didn't get a single interview because I didn't speak the language. And then eventually this job popped up and it was just fantastic.

Claire Waite Brown 6:38

Oh, how brilliant. So how long was it taking you to learn the language while you're applying for these jobs then? And especially, I'm imagining it's not just everyday language as well. There's going to be terminology within those fields of work that are very different. So how were you learning that and how did that go? Well,

Florrie de Havilland 6:59

there's still quite a few thermal engineering terms that I don't actually know in English. So when I started, it was only about three months, and I was doing an intensive language course living with my in-laws in Germany, which, yeah, actually went incredibly well living with them. I, you know, didn't really know what to think. I get on with them really well, so that's nice. And then when I had this job, because there wasn't technically a job opening, but they said that they really liked me and they wanted for me to do an internship because normally in Germany when they study engineering they have at least one year of practical knowledge so internship and so they said if you do this then we might be able to make the job for you and yeah after six months there I did intensive language courses three days a week for three and a half hours after work and so I didn't get home until gone 10 p.m. and it was horrible I was so tired and Yeah, but it worked. I mean, then for my second job in Munich, all of that was straight off the bat, all in completely in German.

Claire Waite Brown 8:06

Amazing. Well done. Thank you. Before becoming the satellite tester, and I'm going to ask you more about what that actually means when we get to that point in the timeline. You've told me before that you had a break in Korea due to health issues and that that was when you started to explore creative activities again. Can you tell me about that time? I

Health Challenges and Career Break

Florrie de Havilland 8:28

had two years off work. which weren't particularly fun to be honest the first year in particular was very much just trying to back and forth from all these doctor's appointments and it was really horrible it was very stressful I was very lucky that I have the support network that I do as well I think if I didn't have my husband I would have had to move back in with my parents you know so I was very lucky also having friends around me but it was sad because I was in a completely different country to my parents and even my in-laws were easily seven to nine hour a drive away but we we managed I ended up with a diagnosis having neurological disease and then was on some medicine for it so that was you know good to get me sort of back in but um yes I it was it was pretty awful just sort of being there and not really being able to do anything.

Claire Waite Brown 9:17

Can I ask what were the symptoms and then it took a lot of toing and froing to get um a diagnosis is that right?

Florrie de Havilland 9:25

Yeah so I still believe I don't have a full diagnosis I think I have a diagnosis and medicine that helps with it. But basically my arms didn't always work or my hands. So my hands, I wouldn't be able to move my fingers. My arms just felt, you know, as if I'd gone to the gym for hours on end just for doing small things like brushing my teeth. Actually, when I started working in Munich, I did say to them, look, this is my situation. I have this illness. It's very manageable, but My general rule of thumb is if I can't brush my teeth in the morning, I'm going to take a sick day. And yeah, they were very accepting of that.

Claire Waite Brown 10:07

So then how do creative activities come along if it's your hands in your arms that are feeling the symptoms?

Florrie de Havilland 10:14

Slowly. A lot of watching videos and being learning techniques, I guess, and just sort of being like, I can do this. Go on, I can do this. And yeah, it was incredibly frustrating, but I just had to get on with it because it just It felt awful just sort of seeing everybody when I was 25. So all of your friends are sort of starting to get engaged. They're looking at buying houses. I mean, I already had a couple of friends who were married and they were moving up in their careers, setting up companies. And I was just there sat on the sofa, just like, I can't do anything. This is awful. And so I just thought I need to do something to take my mind off it. And because everybody else was at work, I had all this time during the day to play with for when I was working. then I could get on with it, learn some new skills.

Claire Waite Brown 11:03

And what did you turn to? Was that watercolour at this point or lots of things?

Florrie de Havilland 11:07

Both watercolour and calligraphy. So I'd always had an inkling that I would be good at calligraphy. I just sort of quite liked the idea of it. I mean, my handwriting is terrible, but the idea of calligraphy and having these beautiful strokes after lots of practice and everything, but having rules that you can stick to, but then you can learn to break and that's sort of the engineering coming in and I quite like having the rigidity and the rules and then yeah figuring out how to mess with them and the watercolor that was definitely a bit more challenging because I wanted to do it at school but I was a bit too deep into acrylic so they told me to stick with what I know basically so I bought a lot of books watched a lot of videos and I had paper taped down to sort of eight different boards and would draw the same flower over and over and over and over again until it started to actually look like a flower.

Claire Waite Brown 12:04

And was that helping you emotionally as well as like giving you something to do? Other benefits around it, do you think?

Florrie de Havilland 12:13

Absolutely. I mean, also, even now I still benefit from it, seeing some of my calligraphy. And some of this was from two years into my calligraphy journey. And I look at it and I think, wow, I can't believe that I gave this sort of stuff to my friends. I can't believe that they have some of these commissions on their wall. But no, it's fantastic. And it was really cathartic, I think, because doing something, having, I mean, I didn't always know my limits at that point. I'm a lot better at it now. But it was pretty good knowing I was in control of it. At that point in time, there was no way I could have gone back to work. And I would have had all the control sort of taken away. But being able to experiment like that gave something to do and feel like I was getting a bit of my life back.

Claire Waite Brown 13:03

Yeah, understand. So once you've got a diagnosis of sorts and things being managed, is that when you were able to go back to work? And then when you do go back to work, can you keep the creative stuff going as well?

Florrie de Havilland 13:21

I think I just set it on LinkedIn that I was looking for a job and hadn't even updated everything. And I've received this message about this other job. And to be fair, Germany were very good at getting unemployed people back into the market So there was all sorts of counseling and workshops, like one-on-one workshops and everything, which I thought was fantastic. And I was having one of these sort of workshops with this woman. She had a workbook that we were going through, and that was more sort of like your emotions around going back to work after being ill. And I said to her, I called her up and I was like, I've got a job interview. Can we go through the job interview things instead? Can we do a mock one? Because it was all... told it was all going to be in English the interview and it was all in German which was terrifying but I still got the job so it can't have been that bad but no and so I was very open from the beginning about my illness and I did say to them at one point right I've been working on setting up my own business and I had to sign a waiver to say it wouldn't interfere with the business that I was doing there and I said okay I'm more than happy to do that and yeah so started working full time and doing a little bit on the side for my company.

Claire Waite Brown 14:39

So tell me then about the satellite testing. What do you do on a day to day basis when you're a satellite tester?

Testing Satellites and Space Components

Florrie de Havilland 14:47

Well, I mean, there were definitely some fun parts and some not so fun parts. So there was a lot of document writing. And I was on call a lot. And that was actually ended up being the reason why I left the job because the being on call was became a bit too much for me, not having a single weekend for about three months. And then I'd be woken up at four to seven in the morning, something like six times. I'd still have to be in at work at 9am. And that obviously didn't work really well with my health. But no, it was really fantastic. And I'm glad I had that opportunity. I would love to do it again, but just I don't think I could do the on all part. And that was so testing satellites and their components. So I worked on all sorts of missions. One of my big ones was rocket thrusters. That was really cool. And solar panels. I did a lot of solar panels. So the solar panels that we use, they're all now up in space and you can see them every now and then because they do all the European GPS. That's quite cool. Wow. When you were just writing documents, you would get sort of, I think, because I had a Fitbit at the time, I think I did something like 2,000 steps or something at work. And then the days where I had a test on and we were doing the test setup or takedown after post-test, I would easily do 30 plus thousand per day. Wow. Just running around like a mad thing. So the big test chambers we used, they were two meters, two and a half, three and six. meters I've now got a five meter one since I've left I used to the thermal vacuum thermal balance tests which is where you put the satellite or the component into a so also all in the clean room as well so I've got some really nice safety shoes that I wear as my trainers now because they've never been used outside so put the test object into the chamber you seal it off and then depending on the chamber but generally it takes about 24 hours to pump down to vacuum condition that's why you have to be on call because if it takes a day to get it down there then somebody has to be operating it at all times so if there's something goes wrong because it is a dangerous bit of kit but then we could test well I can't remember what the upper limit was especially if you do like an infrared test but it was I normally went up to between plus 180 and minus 180 degrees and sometimes it will be more sometimes less but we could go down to 10 kelvin which is just incredible that sort of time just mind-boggling absolutely I

Claire Waite Brown 17:41

did wonder what the on-call was but now you've explained that

Florrie de Havilland 17:45

now that makes sense it's really silly because obviously I was doing it for so long that you just sort of think oh yeah of course I was on call but yeah that's not normal for an engineer I should have explained that sooner that's

Claire Waite Brown 18:01

fine you needed to stop that you were enjoying that but needed to stop that did you have plans thinking of what you were going to do with that before you stopped that or was it a case of like I can't do this anymore I need to stop this and then I'll figure out what happens next what did happen next

Florrie de Havilland 18:23

it was very very sudden if I'm honest I went downhill quite quickly I had probably about two weeks where I couldn't brush my teeth in the morning I was already in contact with a disability officer because as soon as I started the job I thought I'm just gonna find out who's responsible for these things and just sort of introduce myself so that if there are problems down the line and I'm glad I did that because obviously there were problems down the line and I said to her look I'm really struggling and basically because of the nature of the job being on call I couldn't only work part-time I had to be full-time or not at all and I'd already sort of been thinking about changing before it got really bad to working part-time in a print shop just to get some experience for my company. I wouldn't really be getting much money at all, which is fine because it was more just I needed to be healthy and have a bit of income. And so I said to my boss, look, I've spoken to the disabilities officer. I've done this. I really don't think I can continue here. Can I get out of my contract early? So we did that. And I worked for a few months in a print shop to learn the back end of print and how to do all these sorts of things. And that's been invaluable actually. And it's been really useful making connections here back in England and meeting printers and knowing the terminology because there's so much terminology that you don't

Claire Waite Brown 19:48

know you need to know. Yeah, yeah. How do we get from being in Germany back to the UK and how things look for you right now?

Florrie de Havilland 19:58

Stupidly, I decided to move back two weeks before my wedding.

Unknown 20:03

Okay.

Florrie de Havilland 20:03

which was awful I

Building a Creative Business

Florrie de Havilland 20:05

would not recommend that to anybody we had to itemize because of customs every single item that we owned so we had not just the wedding prep but also this I was actually let go from the printing job because they were struggling and I sort of said right that's fine I'll go full-time on my company but I sort of hinted at my husband at this point I think it's time for us to go home it feels like it's coming to a natural end so it was a few months just getting things ready. Yeah. Itemizing everything. I didn't enjoy that.

Claire Waite Brown 20:40

Your business is your full-time gig now. Is that correct? It is. Good. How very lovely. Tell me about it, what you do. Tell me also how you, because you mentioned earlier about learning a bit more about the back end of running a business other than creating the lovely things that you want to make. So sorry, I always do this. I bundle loads of questions together and then expect you to remember it all. Tell me about what you do in the business, how you find balancing business and creative stuff. And also because you've talked about your health, how you balance that if you have any issues with that in this situation. So there was three questions there. Sorry, Florrie.

Florrie de Havilland 21:23

All right. I'll try and remember. I'll probably go off on a tangent anyway. So the main sort of core two parts of the business are designing wedding invitations and calligraphy. Wedding stationery in general, not just the invitations. So that's also things like menus and seating charts and everything that comes with it. I also do in-house letterpress printing, which is something that I sort of learned from when I was working at print shop, but I didn't really. They had Heidelberg platen and I said to them, I want to learn how to use this. And they said, yeah, good luck mate if you can get it running and so I went and paid for a course and came back a week later fully qualified Heidelberg platen instructor now technically even though I wouldn't really want to do that because that is a dangerous bit of kit and then yeah bought my own letterpress found it on eBay and the rest is history I don't know if you've seen what this sort of bit of kit is but it's a one and one and a quarter ton printing press that they call it the windmill because it has these arms that go around like a windmill but it's a lot faster I can tell you that much my one's from 1960 and her name is Penelope and before you use her you have to go through and thoroughly oil every little bit and do all the maintenance and then you can start thinking about actually using the printing press love Penelope love being able to do the printing in house but that sort of falls more under the wedding invitations. Is that individual letter tiles? Ah so that's interesting I don't actually own any of those the types typeface I could do but then you don't have as much freedom for the invitations so I like to I've got this amazing vendor on the Isle of Wight and she makes these printing plates for me so then I have anything so I can even do my own calligraphy and then I digitize it and then I send it off to her and she makes them and sends them back

Claire Waite Brown 23:40

got it

Florrie de Havilland 23:41

so everything can be completely individual and personalized if you wanted a logo for example I've done a couple of business cards and if you wanted a logo then you can have that and letterpress is when it's directly pressed into the paper so you have a nice indentation

Claire Waite Brown 23:56

brilliant got it thank you for explaining that

Florrie de Havilland 23:59

I just it's one of those things when you get too deep into the technical stuff stuff then you forget that not everybody knows that but the thing about letterpress is pretty much everybody who does it is a bit of an odd one because you've got to be quite special to be very excited about that sort of thing but oh my goodness me when you meet some letterpress friends it's fantastic because they're just as crazy as you are

Claire Waite Brown 24:22

brilliant yeah so when you say about the wedding stationery then so individual people can come to you and you design their whole suite of what they need.

Florrie de Havilland 24:35

Absolutely. Them or wedding planners, whoever really. I like to work with the couples personally because I like to have a personal experience. Everything's completely customer bespoke. So everything's unique to the couple, which is really nice. So they can really make their own mark on their wedding. And I have always said to them, you know, you want your guests to be able to open the wedding invitation and say, oh, that is so Susie and Tom. Oh, course this is their one so that even looking at the names they know who's invited them and it's nice because I can put some little details on for example one customer she was introduced to her now husband by her grandfather and unfortunately the grandfather her grandfather passed away before the wedding and they wanted to honor him somehow and he had a teapot collection so he had a little teapot on the invitations and it just makes it so much more personal and really makes and a piece of art for that couple.

Claire Waite Brown 25:35

I love that idea that when you open the invitation, you know instantly whose wedding that is because that's their vibe, definitely. And do you have any concerns or more problematic situations around the business side of things? Have you got the hang of that now and the two, the creating and the promoting the business sit hand in hand beautifully, easily?

Florrie de Havilland 26:00

I've fallen out out of love again with social media and I haven't posted in a long time and I know that I just need to sit down and do it but If it weren't for the marketing side, I would love it. It's just the marketing that I'm really, oh, I wasn't born to do that sort of thing. I've been actually, since we last spoke, I'm developing an app for my couples, which is very exciting.

The Joy of Letterpress Printing

Florrie de Havilland 26:31

And it will be the first of its kind. I didn't mean to get into this. I never wanted to learn coding. I don't know how this happened. But this is the sort of thing that I enjoy being able to go off some random tangent and provide something that's genuinely useful for people out there. Because I found when you, at least when I was looking for wedding invitations and how to sort of when to send what, the information out there is so limited and it's normally big confusing tables and everything. So I'm developing, I'm just in the final stages because it all works. I just now need to make it look nice. Not an actual app you download on your phone, but just a little questionnaire basically. And it comes up with a personalized timeline for you. So it has questions like, are you having a destination wedding? Are you sending save the dates? Wedding date, obviously being a big one. And then it tells you exactly when to order and when to send what. So save the dates, invitation and on the day.

Claire Waite Brown 27:29

Brilliant. That's really exciting. What a good idea.

Florrie de Havilland 27:32

Yeah. See, if that was more what I was doing, I enjoy doing the design work. I enjoy doing even the technical things. I've built my website. I've thoroughly enjoyed doing that. And then there just little things like posting on Instagram, which I just... can't handle. But I'll have someone to do that for me at some point, I'm sure.

Claire Waite Brown 27:53

Yeah, that's the best way. Trying for somebody else to do it. The bits that you don't like. And we've talked before on this show about, you know, investing in that, but it's also investing in saving you time because that person can do it much quicker than you can do it because they know what they're doing. Tell me then about your health and your creative life balance generally how is this all affecting your everyday life in in many ways emotional physical mental

Florrie de Havilland 28:24

the only other downside that I have for working for myself is that it is a bit lonely because I'm at home all day every day I do miss working with people a lot and that has actually definitely affected my mental health more than my physical health has affected anything I'm such a social person but no otherwise my health hasn't been too bad it's been fantastic being able to choose my own hours i mean for example yesterday i didn't really do very much until the evening and i guess i'm also quite lucky that i don't have children yet so i can do that but it was good being able to sort of manage my time in a way that works best for me

Claire Waite Brown 29:09

yes exactly and you you can work to your energy levels when you're at your best and then other than this app that you're developing have you got any thoughts of what you want to do in the future oh I

Florrie de Havilland 29:26

mean I'd like to do more even more letterpress because I really really love the letterpress I love the manual side of the job and it's just yeah I think also having this massive one and a quarter ton bit of kit under my control feels pretty empowering I think I might be a part of it but But yeah, I would like to do more letterpress and more calligraphy. I think I've been advertising so much about my wedding stationery, which is, I really love the bond with the couples, don't get me wrong. But it would be nice to have a few more calligraphy commissions coming in as well, because I thoroughly love that. But that all comes with time, especially because a lot of my wedding couples ask for calligraphy. So quite often I handwrite into each individual's name, whether that's on for their place names or on the invitations and that normally goes down very well so yeah we'll see it's nice to have a mix

Claire Waite Brown 30:26

yeah brilliant and it sounds like you are enjoying it and it is making you feel happy

Florrie de Havilland 30:34

yeah I am enjoying it I just obviously you don't need to put this in but oh my god I hate marketing

Claire Waite Brown 30:42

but that aside this can be a thing when what you loved to do physically with your hands become a business, are you still able to get joy from the actual creative process?

Florrie de Havilland 30:54

I get so much joy from it. One of the things that I do as well is I work quite closely with Make-A-Wish Foundation. And I find that so incredibly rewarding. I mean, it's incredibly sad as well, but it feels really nice to be able to offer them my services. So for example, I've done book signings for this one girl. Make-A-Wish-Wish was to write a book. So I did all the invitations to this. It feels really lovely to be able to give back in that way and be creative and have all of this sort of input and know that I'm making a difference to somebody's life.

Future Plans and Finding Fulfillment

Claire Waite Brown 31:31

Brilliant. Thank you so much, Florrie. It's been really lovely to speak with you. How can people find you

Connect with Florrie

Claire Waite Brown 31:38

on the dreaded social media and elsewhere? I'm

Florrie de Havilland 31:42

going to be better. This week, I'm just going to do it. I'm just do it yes you can find me on Instagram and Facebook at some point I'm sure I will be on TikTok that is in the works but I just need to get to grips with the other social media platforms first otherwise you can visit me at my website so Facebook and Instagram it's de Havilland Memories and the website is dehavillandmemories.com it's very nice and simple if you can spell it thank you so much Florrie yes Thank you so much for having me on.

Claire Waite Brown 32:19

You're very welcome.

Support Creativity Found

Claire Waite Brown 32:21

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, perhaps you'd like to financially contribute to future episodes at buymeacoffee.com / creativityfound. There's a link in the show notes. If you are listening on a value for value enabled app, such as Fountain, True Fans or Podcast Guru, feel free to send a few sats my way. And if you have no idea of what I'm talking about, you can find out more by listening to my sister podcast called Podcasting 2.0 in Practice