Not an April Fool

Honestly, no messing about, the Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo is back! We're trying some new things in this season which we hope will improve the show. One of the biggest problems for us last season was the workload. I know many people will say that it's easy to put a podcast together, "get ...

Honestly, no messing about, the Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo is back!

We’re trying some new things in this season which we hope will improve the show. One of the biggest problems for us last season was the workload. I know many people will say that it’s easy to put a podcast together, “get a mic and audacity and start talking”, and whilst that’s true, we like to put a bit more love into the show.

One change we made was to get people involved during the recording of the show. Previously we got together and were somewhat insulated from the audience as we sat and chatted into the mics. Sure we get email and we pick out the best ones and read them on the show, but that always made us feel a little insulated and less connected with the audience.

What we did was quite simple. We ask questions via twitter and identi.ca microblogging platforms. People respond quickly and we’re able to incorporate their feedback into the show right there and then. That makes for a very interactive show I think, and certainly shows off a use of microblogging for all those nay-sayers

We also decided to try to record more near-live segments with minimal editing. In season one we found that after we recorded around two hours of content, it was quite a chore to cut that down to the target duration of 40 minutes. Audio editing is one of those tasks that requires a lot of focus to get it right and needs some level of precision, so it’s not something that you can easily do in a noisy environment or somewhere moving like a train.

In season two we plan to record less material, so there’s less to cut out, but the by-product of that is you’ll hear more mistakes. Mistakes that in season one we would have chopped out, truncated or otherwise hidden from your delicate ears. We know there are mistakes, and we’re choosing to leave them in. We hope you won’t be too upset by that.:)

Finally we’re setting aside a fixed day to record the podcast, a fixed maximum duration and we’re going to at least try for a fixed release day. We start recording every other Monday at 9pm local time in the UK and aim to finish at 11pm, no later. Whether we achieve this, time will tell, and so will our listeners.

As always we welcome feedback. Details at the link above.