Hello all, sorry about the over abundance of meta items on this week’s front page, but we’re adding one more item regarding changes to the podcast. The show has seemingly proven quite popular with viewers but Thom would prefer to switch to a fortnightly (every two weeks) schedule as we’re finding the show difficult to do with a lack of news some weeks and Thom needs more preparation considering his schedule and that he has to talk to someone he can’t see, in a foreign language. I’d like to keep the show running each week so we’re looking for feedback and ideas of how to fill a show every other week with content not related to news items on the home page.
One idea of my own was to have a single topic to discuss, chosen by interest or by suggestions from the listeners; for example: “Adobe: Discuss.” (much like when we did the Apple show) with guests from the community phoning in to contribute.
I could field answers from voice-messages sent in by users, or users could contribute their own recorded excerpts and a number of them joined together to make a show like some user-generated web 2.0 buzzword-laden mash-up. The canvas is as wide as it is tall.
We’d also like to know how you’ve been finding the regular format show now that we’ve made a good number of episodes, and if you’re finding the regular format show ‘just right’.
Should we change how the shows should be numbered? (Make odd numbers the experimental shows and even numbers the regular format—’stable’—shows?) or increase by halves (such as when we did Episode 23.5?
Thanks in advance for your participation!
I think the podcast would improve a lot, if there was only one big topic on discussion per episode. This topic can then be spiced up with related news.
For example now an entire episode about the Amiga would be great: a little history, Amiga OS and successors today, why is it special from a UI and tech perspective?
Other topics could be: window management, portability of OSs, the BSDs, what made BeOS special in the late 90s?
The German podcast Chaos Radio Express http://chaosradio.ccc.de/chaosradio_express.html could be a model.
Edited 2009-10-20 10:15 UTC
I am in favor of shows every two weeks, each limited to a particular topic. The way we’ve been doing the shows so far is difficult for a variety of reasons.
If we have a dedicated topic, we can target who will be invited (this assumes Thom and Kroc are present each episode). We can also give guests time to research the topic ahead of time, providing a more informed discussion. I know that I did lots of research after hearing the episode on X Windows. Hopefully I used it effectively in the following one (sorry Thom, but you needed it!). ^_~
I think episodes should be numbered conventionally as well. No “.5″s even if the following episode expands on the previous episodes topic. See the AstronomyCast podcast for examples.
Have users record their questions via the “voice recorder” in the their iphone (or other similar app/device) and email them in. Easy peasy integration.
We could setup skype voicemail, so people can call anytime and leave a message using either Skype or a real phone.