I have done some interviews to create a podcast and have hesitated to launch the feed and share it with the world. There are many reasons for this hesitation and most of them are not logical. I have finally gotten over myself and made the feed public. The blog site with references, show notes, and links to the feed and other stuff is here. The feed is here. Please subscribe and please let me know what you think.
I describe in Episode 0 what the podcast is all about and my motivations. To give another medium to learn about it, here is a short description:
Developer On Fire with Dave Rael is a podcast with frequent, short interviews with successful and awesome software professionals. Most of the time it’s developers and architects, but I’m thinking I’ll sprinkle in some other perspectives as well. The intent is to inspire and entertain in commute-sized chunks. My goal is to get geeks with stories to have conversations with me and to share their stories and get philosophical about delivering value. Ultimately, the focus of the show is on delivery and on gathering perspectives on what it means to do things for people and for businesses that makes lives better. Improving the quality of existence of someone somewhere is how I define success. I want to find out what my favorite geeks think of that same questions (and a set of supporting questions) and let the conversations flow from there.
The genesis of this show came from my stumbling upon a podcast with stories about successful entrepreneurs and their journeys and how they got there. It’s called Entrepreneur On Fire. John Lee Dumas is the creator and host of that podcast, and he uses a standard set of questions to tease stories out of people who have had success in business. It’s engaging and personal and very appealing. At first, I had just a fleeting thought about how I’d like to hear that type of format for software developers. I thought it would be cool if somebody asked those types of questions of geeks and had those types of conversations. It didn’t occur to me until much later when I heard John as a guest on my favorite productivity podcast that I’m somebody and I could be the somebody to turn my desire for Developer On Fire into a reality. I felt inspired by that interview that I needed to be a podcaster and that this was the format for me. I got in contact with John and asked him about his thoughts on the idea and if I he would be ok with me ripping off his template to put it to use for another audience. He responded with enthusiastic approval and I decided to start seeking interviews.
Using this format, I think, is something different from the existing developer podcasts out there. There are a lot of good ones. I wanted to start podcasting myself, but didn’t want to do just the same thing with talking about tech. I think I have figured out something different and worth hearing. I’ll look forward to finding out if my fellow geeks agree.
I like the idea of taking a template shown to be successful in one place and applying it in a different way. It reminds me a lot of a television advertisement for IBM from years ago that really made an impression on me. Its memory has stuck with me after all this time.
Please check out my podcast tell me if you think it’s something with the potential to deliver value to you. Please let me know if there are questions, ideas, format tweaks, or something else missing that would make it better (or things there of which absence would make the product better). This is something both thrilling and terrifying for me.
Also, I appeared for the first time on an existing developer podcast last week (I have done appearances on productivity and technology podcasts before) with my interview on .NET Rocks. Please check that out too and let me know what you think.