Tony Whitmore (@tonywhitmore) blogged about The Quest for Originality which got me thinking about the podcast that we make with @ciemon, @daviey and @lauracowen.
Over the weekend at OrgCon there was some discussion of originality. The subject was brought up when talking about the creative business, with original works being “worth” something, perhaps more than a digital facsimile of some work. So for example a concert is a one off live event is worth paying for, whereas an MP3 is “worth” less because in part it’s easily duplicated and thus lacks originality. (I’ve paraphrased and perhaps twisted the meaning of the discussion to suit this post, but I’m sure you know what I mean).
I guess there’s a couple of things that I think of in relation to being original. There’s originality with reference to the ‘competition’ and originality in terms of us not being stale over time. Both require some effort to achieve, and in my mind we should be doing both.
Competition in podcasting is hard to define. People have a finite amount of time in their lives to listen to podcasts, so we’re competing with other things people would rather be doing, like spending time with family, programming .. or whatever else our listeners do in their ‘spare’ time. People also listen during a commute, jog or some otherwise ‘dead’ air-time. So we have to be compelling or people will do ‘other things’ than listen.
People thus have a limited amount of time to listen to podcasts, and will thus only consume a limited number of shows. I doubt anyone listens to every FLOSS/Linux podcast, but I’m sure most people have tried them all to see which they prefer. So we need to appeal to people if we want people to listen to the show.
I do want people to listen to the show by the way. Whilst we do this for fun (and no financial profit), if nobody downloaded the show I think we’d probably stop doing it. The idea of being on stage to the sound of one hand clapping doesn’t appeal (to me at least). Others are happy to continue making a show no matter how many people listen.
There are of course other podcasts which do pretty much the same as us, Tuxradar and Full Circle Magazine are two good examples with a similar format, but with their own style. Then there’s the likes of Linux Action Show, Linux Outlaws and The Linux Link Tech Show who all have their own style and niche. Every podcast is clearly different, with presenters having their own expression, shows of varying duration, different personalities, quality and frequency. None (including ours) are perfect, all are serving a segment of the market successfully.
Within our own podcast we’ve evolved slightly over the 2.5 seasons we’ve been running, but for the most part the format has stuck. We have introduced new segment ideas, and refined various elements of the show, but in general we’ve stuck with a formula that works for us, and gets us some listeners.
Right now each episode gets downloaded about 5K times in the week after release with a long tail of 13 weeks to hit 10K downloads. After a year each episode hits around 18K and after two years each episode hits around 32K downloads. Clearly as with every podcast, we have no idea how many of those downloads translate into listens. We’re not so naive to think they all do, but we don’t know what the proportion of downloads to listens is, and I don’t think we ever will do. On that subject, for the record, I don’t think we need to do any kind of survey or tracking to try to figure that number out. I’m personally happy to know that some thousands of people download it and some of them listen to it.
When we started I think we had some original concepts compared to others within our space. We’re family friendly, (usually) well prepared, not North-American (not that being American is a problem, but many FLOSS/Linux podcasts come from there, so it’s nice to have one with a non-American ‘accent’ in my opinion), (mostly) above average audio quality, (generally) on time with a regular schedule and made by contributors to the Ubuntu project rather than bystanders. Whilst other podcasts had some of those elements, not many had all.
Since then we’ve perhaps stagnated, and whilst we have introduced new concepts and made changes at the ‘backend’ to streamline the way we produce the show, we haven’t had much in the way of revolutionary changes that the listeners would notice. The big question is I guess is ‘should we?’.
We could do as Linux Outlaws and TLLTS do and have a live part of the show. We tried this in the past but technical barriers (like Tony having a crap internet connection) stymed that. It’s also tricky in that we take tea breaks and eat cake between segments, rather than record it in one go. We could open the show up to have callers phone-in now we have a nice telephony setup. Maybe we should drop the ‘season’ system and just produce a show constantly with no breaks. We could change the duration, presenters, format, style or any other part of the content, but again, ‘should we?’.
There is the danger that we could break something that didn’t need fixing. Perhaps it is broken and we just don’t know that. Perhaps we’re in danger of burning out on a treadmill to churn out episodes that we don’t enjoy, if we don’t change. I don’t know. Do you?
First Ubuntu UK Geeknic a Success
Today saw the first Ubuntu-UK LoCo “geeknic” and in my opinion it was a great success. Around 20 people turned up to enjoy fun, food and chat in Hyde Park in London, UK and stayed for about 4 hours.
The event was co-organised by Joe O’Dell and Isabell Long and was discussed at multiple UK LoCo IRC meetings in the weeks leading up to the event. The idea behind it was for people to get together in a social setting rather than the usual geek meets which happen in stuffy rooms with everyone on a laptop and nobody actually talking to anyone in meatspace. People were also encouraged to bring friends and family.
I decided to take my wife and two children along for the afternoon. We packed up some sandwiches and other yummy snack food and headed off to the local train station. There was the possibility we’d miss the train because there was some kind of football event involving people wearing the same coloured top forming long queues at ticket machines. Luckily we skipped the queue and got our ticket on the train.
We met up with Alan Bell and family and enjoyed a packed train to London as the children from both families got on well playing various games, mostly involving shouting loudly. Once we got to London we made our way to Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park and that’s where we had a little hitch.
We’d already arranged to meet others there but the area was pretty swamped with people (as Speakers’ Corner usually is) shouting and jostling to hear one person shouting over another. This was not an optimal meeting place
However after relocating to some grass, and picking up a few likely looking geeks (although none with neckbeards) we used a little technology to announce our location to others.
Eventually everyone found us and we settled down on rugs and broke out the food and toys.
We had lots of fun playing with the various toys Alan Bell had brought along.
The adults spent a lot of time chatting whilst the kids let Joe know what they thought of him.
Finally we headed home, sleepy but content with a fun day in the sun.
Thanks to Joe and Isabell for organising it and everyone else for turning up. I certainly think we need to do this again. Perhaps next time we could choose a different location and make sure we nail down a meeting point before hand. I’d also like to see a venue that had some facilities nearby, so we don’t have to run off to a restaurant when the kids need a ‘bio break’
Other than that there was plenty of room to spread out and play. I call it a success.
Update: I forgot to mention, there wasn’t a single laptop in sight for the whole afternoon!