100 Episodes of SE Radio - Some Thoughts

Recently, Software Engineering Radio has put out its 100th Episode! So I guess it is time to talk a little about the current situation and the future plans.

In the beginning of 2006 I was looking for a podcast on software engineering and didn't find one, so I decided to create one myself. I asked a couple of friends and colleagues to join and we got going. We've put out an episode at least every 10 days, regularly, episodes ranging from 30 minutes to 65. As of now, SE Radio on average has more than 15.000 listeners per episode, which is I think quite nice for an "amateur journalism" kind of thing. The numbers are comparable with other (written, online) publications on software. Of course the reason why SE Radio is so popular is mainly due to the fact that interesting people are willing to talk to us - thanks to all of them :-) ... and thanks to the members of the team. I couldn't do it alone!

So how will SE Radio continue? Here are some topics we are working on:

SE Radio currently has no legal body behind it. We're working on changing that. This will not change the non-commercial nature of SE Radio, but it means it will have a formal "institution" to it.

Thanks to itemis, we are currently getting all our episodes transcribed! See episodes 87 and 89 for examples.

We are talking to conferences to do live SE Radio episodes, with audience involvement. I'll be able to talk about details in a couple of weeks, I hope.

Finally, on a personal note, I need to reduce my workload with SE Radio - it takes up too much time. In the future, episodes will be more evenly distributed among team members, and we're also looking at getting additional people involved to help with some of the "grunt work". We already have volunteers, but feel free to contact me if you want to help out, too.

So all in all I am happy with where SE Radio got in the 2.5 years since it's creation, and I hope you're happy, too.  permalink