Promotes the ‘Cornwall Experience’
We were socially distant. For more than 30 minutes, Oscar Rivas and I sat at opposite ends of a table and talked into microphones. He was a good audience. He laughed at the appropriate times and often chuckled when I didn’t expect it. We were creating a podcast.
I met Mr. Rivas years ago when his in-laws agreed to use their property as a pick-up point for Trees for Troops. More recently, we got reacquainted when Mr. Rivas opened Du Good Studios in the same building as The Cornwall Local.
The studio focuses on social media so customers can devote their time to other projects. Mr. Rivas maintains that “trends are always shifting and it can be hard to keep up while you’re running a business. We live and breathe social media to help our clients keep up with these ever shifting waters.”
For most people, starting a business during a pandemic would be enough to put on their plate. But Mr. Rivas, who began life in Venezuela, was anxious to do something for his current community. He decided on a series of podcasts. The goal was to make viewers feel good about the place where they lived.
His initial guest was Brendan Carty, a first-term member of the Board of Education. People liked the podcast. And the person who created it liked it too.
Mr. Carty convinced him that “school board members are volunteers, who take a lot of heat, but help the community without getting paid.”
As his second subject, I got a list of topics shortly before we began recording and filming. There wasn’t much time to prepare, so most of my answers were spontaneous. I told a few of my favorite stories and even recited an original poem about a Cornwall baseball game in a state tournament. As I mentioned at the start, my interviewer seemed to enjoy our conversation.
When we were finished, I asked who would be next in the series. Mr. Rivas wasn’t sure, but he rattled off the names of people he was considering. They all sounded like good choices.
To view a Rivas podcast, look for Du Good Podcast on You Tube.