And then suddenly,
I start hearing about the boost, man. The boost just started coming into his show, and I'm like, what what is this all about? And then suddenly, I start listening to podcasting 2.0 directly
with Adam and Dave, and
I thought, you know what? This is what I've always kinda looked for is that direct engagement
Mhmm. With the audience in the most frictionless way.
Welcome to about podcasting,
a show for podcasters.
We talk about podcasting practices, tools, successes, and failures
mixed with interviews and music,
hosted on podhome.fm,
the most modern podcast hosting platform.
Welcome to another episode of About Podcasting.
This week, I'm speaking with Eric Nance,
host of the Our Weekly Highlights podcast.
We talk about why he started the podcast and how he is still able to keep it going after many, many years. We talk about his workflow,
his setup, and also about podcasting 2.0
and how that reinvigorated
him.
So without further ado,
here is Eric.
Is that a wall? What is that?
Yeah. That's actually a, blanket that I put on a green screen behind me.
This was a gift from one of my friends at a, at an industry conference years ago when we were creating content about the r language and and such, and we want something kinda clever to put as a backdrop. And he's like, you know what? We got this hex sticker blanket. Why don't you take 1? I'm like, sure.
So I've been using that as part of my, visual appeal with my, video content. It's been been a big hit.
Yeah. Okay. So you do, you do video as well?
Oh, oh, on the side. Yeah. Definitely not as much as the audio, but,
it was a few years ago I got
kind of the, streaming bug with, development kind of projects and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was a lot of fun.
Okay.
And so that's separate from the podcast, or do you do also video for the podcast?
Yeah. There was, a podcast I did for but it was mostly a video form of it for the, Shiny framework in the R language to build
web applications.
And we thought, well, with that kind of content, you definitely want a visual
for the audience to see kind of the code, the app in real time. And I had a a few guests much like what you do on this show.
So it's a mix of interviews, but also hands on coding with some live streams and and other fun tutorials. Yeah. Yeah. Especially when you do, coding and stuff. I need to show something
on video. Absolutely. Exactly.
Yeah. And,
I'm I'm not a perfect coder by any means. Boy, did I have a lot of flubs along the way, but sometimes that's the best way to learn. Right? Is when things go haywire, how do you debug that and how you solve it? Yeah. And that's,
it can be a daunting thing to do,
even for some people to, like, push to, an open source GitHub repository because then it's all open in the open for everybody to see your flaws and your style and, you know, how critical software developers can be.
So Absolutely. And sometimes you have to get over that initial hump of, well, you know, guess what? It doesn't have to be perfect the first time. You know?
Just learning there was a phrase that one of the people I used to watch named Jesse came up with of, like, learning out loud.
And,
and I was like, you know what? That's a that's a great way to say it because I am learning as I do these projects. I'm never perfect. I have to look up things, try trial and error kind of of different approaches like like anyone else. So Yeah. Exactly. To kinda humanize that a little bit. I like that learning out loud. Yeah.
And, you know, nobody learns from success. The you don't learn nothing from success. You only learn from your failures.
Yes. And, sometimes my commit histories will definitely show that. But you know what? I'm okay.
Yeah. That that's what it's all about. Right? So especially when you do it all in the open, everybody can learn
from from your mistakes, and so,
we can all be better. Right?
Exactly.
As we're talking about, podcasts,
as well,
what what brought you into
the audio space? And,
why did you start to create a podcast?
Yeah. It's, I have a long history with this, and it actually dates back all the way to when I was in graduate school here in the US for my, master's degree,
in statistics
where as part of my stipend to get, you know, funding for my
education, they actually put me as one of the administrators for their computation lab, which was
a whole mix of Linux servers. Or at the time, I had barely any idea what Linux actually was, but it was,
a healthy mix of, Linux servers with, like, Ubuntu
and and at the time, the early days of Fedora. And then
get this, even on the UNIX side, the Solaris platform,
which is going way back. Yeah. I'm I'm an old timer as I say, but as I'm getting into this, I'm trying to learn kinda how all this works. And then I discovered some really awesome podcasts in the Linux space.
And I was thinking, you know what? Hey. These these guys, they're doing a great job of teaching me some of these
concepts.
You know what's missing? There isn't any real podcast about, you know, performing statistics or data science
with the r language, which I use,
which I use for my dissertation,
actually.
And I'm learning the r language. I have a professor who's teaching me a very basic time series course of it, but I'm kinda googling things along the way and trying to figure out the best way to navigate the language.
And over time, I kinda get over that initial hump, but then I realize
there's an unmet need here. If I could learn a lot from the Linux audio podcast space,
why can't I try that out with the r and data science space and then making it, you know, obviously, completely open. A podcast by its nature is completely open and free to everyone
to listen to. And I thought, what a great way to kind of bridge these concepts that have, you know, really enabled me to progress
to the next level. And that's when, 20 in 2012, I started.
I literally called it the r podcast because at that time, there was no other podcast about r, so I got dibs on the title. But,
yeah, I figured, you know, if I could learn that well in the audio form, why not why not help others in the in the same space too?
Wow. That's been a long time.
Sure has. Yeah. It's had some stops and starts along the way, but
it was and it was nerve wracking at first. I mean, we were just talking about putting your code in the open. This is me, like,
distilling my knowledge, and, frankly, it wasn't even that great of knowledge yet. It was kind of another way for me in preparing these topics to kinda deep dive into things that maybe I wasn't as familiar with, but more importantly, see what the audience really wanted to learn about too. So it was great to get feedback in the early episodes and really start to dive deep into topics that I never had in school and my early part of my day job. And
over time, it kinda morphed into,
you know what? I'm starting to connect with some of these people in the community
and some of these really great people that made these great, packages in the community,
these great resources.
I wanted to give them a platform to showcase their their stuff, but also
showcase kinda who they are and what motivated them to build these
great resources. So over time, I started bringing in guests much like what you're doing on this awesome show. And
I cannot tell you how valuable that's been even just to me personally, just hearing their stories,
hearing their, approaches to development, approaches to teaching, and approaches
to data science in general. And that that was kinda like the the next win for me was really connecting with this community in a way that at the time no one else is doing. And I thought, you know what? I think I found a niche, and I'm gonna I'm gonna lean into it.
Yeah. That's great.
And it is quite a niche,
subject, of course, the r language. So are there now many shows about the r language or around the r language?
There's been a couple that would stop and start a bit, but I not most of the content is about data science in general, so not so much about r itself. So I still feel like we've
we fill that niche pretty well.
And I say, wait. It's really me on that on that show. But it sounds it feels like you're multiple personas when you watch this yourself. You got Yeah. The person, like, the actual host, when you gotta edit, you gotta, you know, put it in production and all that. So you you wear multiple hats when you when you do the solo.
Yeah. Definitely.
And and so
you've been able to do this for now well over a decade.
What kept you going? Like, the what was it a success for you, and what is success for you in this case for this show?
Yeah. So what's interesting in this particular show I'm talking about, I've actually had to put it on hibernation for a bit in the recent years. But back then, when I had
more time to dedicate to this particular format, I think the success for me
was
when we got into that real community involvement aspect when I brought in those
additional voices to really, you know, help me learn, but also help the audience learn.
In fact, some of my best segments were probably recorded on location at industry conferences where I would meet these practitioners,
these developers
face to face, and I'd bring my little portable podcasting setup, these,
2 ElectroVoice RE 3 20 microphones with a little Zoom HD recorder plugged in, and we would just record on the spot in a in a side hallway or a room, and then I'd edit it and put it out there, you know, in the next couple weeks. But,
I've met some really brilliant people for that. And to me, that was some of my most successful,
episodes were connecting
with the community, but also it would bring in connections even amongst the community themselves
where they realize, oh, I didn't know that person was making that package. I didn't know Yeah. They had that resource. And it would foster some networking that, hey. At the time, I wasn't really thinking of it that way. But, hey, more that that was just gravy on top, so to speak, to bridge those connections with different specialties in data science, but all unified by what we do in the our language. And that to me, was
really, really awesome. And then
over time, you know, like I said, I had to put that our podcast show in hibernation a bit, but then I got involved
in another community effort
called rweekly,
which is basically a weekly newsletter type format
where we curate the best resources from the community themselves, whether it's blog posts, new packages or updated packages
or tutorials and whatnot.
And at the time, we're we do still release it every Monday morning, and it's a volunteer effort. There's no commercial backing. It's really just us and the community passionate
about sharing these resources for those in data science,
learning with R and trying to figure out the best way to navigate their their journey.
But at that time, it's all just been in written format. There I thought, you know what? Let's put a voice behind this like what I've learned with the previous show. So then I started a weekly show
called our weekly highlights a couple years ago.
And at first, it was just me, but, again, I think I built that
good rapport with the community for people to start listening to this new show. And in about probably episode 55 or 60 ish, I put a call out for somebody to join me on the show because I thought, you know what? I've done this solo for so long. What if I had a cohost to join me and kinda bounce ideas off of? And now I've got a cohost since about a year and a half ago named Mike Thomas who I think has been another way to keep me going is that
I have a buddy to help me speed along and also to share perspectives with even though we're both in different industries per se. He has his own company. I'm working a life sciences company.
But at the same time, we're both very passionate about what the r language brings.
Mhmm. And I think bringing him on the show has really taken that
effort to another level,
much like how I see the awesome collaborations
and podcasts I listen to these days
with, say, the Jupiter Broadcasting Network and how, say, Chris Fisher has his cohost, and they have a great rapport, great relationship.
I wanted to bring that atmosphere to what I do. So Mike and I do that show every week, and it's been it's been terrific to have somebody join me on that side of it. Yeah. And I think that has multiple,
benefits. Right? So for the listener, it's it's fun to listen to people.
It doesn't get so boring quickly
for the host of obviously, it is easier because you get to bounce off of somebody else,
and you get that, stick behind the door where you actually have to do it because you you have to show up because you you arranged to meet up together and actually do the thing. So that could be
The accountability
is massive in this space because,
both him and I, and I think many in this podcasting world,
there are some that are lucky enough to do this as their full time gig, but I'm not one of them. I have a I have a very high demanding job than my day to day work. And and like I said, my cohost runs his own consulting company. So when we
sit down to record, we we don't have a lot of time to prep per se over in a little show note doc that we put together the weekend of. And then
and then the other thing is is that the what we talk about is from the our weekly issue itself. So we don't necessarily come up with the content. The community comes up with the content.
And then we get about a day to kind of look through that together and figure out what do we wanna showcase from that post, what do we think the main
takeaway is, and where can the listeners really benefit from.
So it is a unique show where that we aren't really driving the content, the community is. But at the same time, we've been in this industry for as long as we have. So we kinda see similarities of things that we've encountered from, like,
a data science or statistics side, but also from the our language side. And I'll throw in my anecdotes of, you know, things at the day job that I've encountered that are similar to this. How I've learned from, you know, these approaches and how I might use a new approach I learned in my in my day job and also in my
open source work. So I think that human aspect of
not just showing that there's content out there, but then relating it to what what we do in our day to day work. I think that's been a a great help to the show as well. Yeah. That probably makes it stick more for people. Right? Where it actually clicks in the real world and and what they do in the day to day world.
And Yeah. That context, I think, is sometimes missing when you just see something in written format that you're just reading on the side while you're doing your other day to day stuff. But then when you get that human element to it and
saying, you know what? What this person wrote about this struggle with version control, oh, I've been there. I've done that. I've nuked many get repos by accident or sometimes on purpose. I mean, all those things that just jog so many
memories, but also so many adventures that both Mike and I have had in our work. And it it's just fun to talk about it too, like I said, with another person instead of me just running on my own all the time. Yeah. Yeah. It's nice and relatable, of course. And,
so throughout the years,
have you,
done anything with monetization
or something like that?
Well, I'm glad you mentioned this because I think what's happening with podcasting 2.0 has definitely
reinvigorated
me even more than before.
In the early days of that previous show,
I basically had just set up a little PayPal account, and I'm I'm I'm gonna be honest. I didn't exactly get a lot of contributions through that. Not that I expected it, but I threw it on there. I just said, hey. If you like the show, you know, you can consider giving it to me a little bit, but
never really took off. And
I never really pushed for it a lot either, but then,
honestly, it was, what, a year and a half or 2 years ago that,
one of the Linux unplugged,
programs that Chris Fisher does for his podcast, he had Dave Jones on from, of course, podcasting 2.0.
And this the I did not really understand it at first. I I it took me a little bit to digest it, but
then over time, I heard Chris really
show
what he was enthusiastic
about with this movement. And then suddenly,
I start hearing about the boost, man. The boost just started coming into his show, and I'm like, what it what is this all about? And then suddenly, I start listening to podcasting 2.0 directly
with Adam and Dave. And
I thought, you know what? This is what I've always kinda looked for is that direct engagement
Mhmm. With the audience in the most frictionless
way
at that at this time as compared to, you know, the traditional, you know, compensation type platforms,
albeit, you know, there's still some hoops to jump through for a listener per se. But, listen, with the modern podcast app ecosystem, as long as you get that wallet set up, you can send a boost to gram right in the app, and that was something we never had before. So
I once I got my head around it, once I really started to figure out what does value for value really mean Yeah. To me as well as what I heard Adam and Chris and Dave and others
talk about. Now my our weekly show is is very much podcasting 2 point o compliant.
And, you know, I've I do mention that I've you know, we'd we'd love to have boost in the show. We've gotten a few of them, but I will say in the data science and especially in the r space,
this is still a really new concept to a lot of people. So I'm not
expecting
a lot right now,
but I'm hoping that as I start to show good content and I don't push for,
like, oh, you must give me, like, $10 worth or whatever or not. It's about what does this mean to you? What are we giving to you? What do you think that's worth? You know? And I'm not gonna dictate that. I want the audience to to show that, and and, fortunately, there have been a few that have been showing that. But it's still, I would say, early days in this space, and so I'm always looking for ways of
trying to maybe increase that engagement without sounding too overbearing. But
I think it it mirrors a lot of my ideals of
I'm very much big into open source,
open collaboration,
you know, sharing of knowledge.
But I feel like this is an evolution of that for the relationship that you as a host
can have with your listeners. So I'm extremely excited about it, and hopefully, we see more growth in in the communities that I'm part of too.
Yeah. Definitely. And and so as you alluded to already, it's not only,
just the, the monetary value that you get from, from here subsets or whatever it is, but also more the, the, the comments that comes to you, the, the messages that they send. Right. And the fact that you actually see, Hey, people are actually listening to this and they are interacting with me. I think that's probably even more important than than the sense.
Honestly, yeah. I think getting that getting that engagement,
and, honestly, most of the time, we get that engagement through the, little social media posts I put on for each show. We'll get we have we have a handful of what I'll call really dedicated listeners. I'd love to chime in with their responses. But the other thing I try to do in those posts, which I hope can, in the future, translate to the to the, you know, the boost and boostogram methodology,
is that since, like I said, the the content of each episode is not driven by me, it's usually written that from what we call the highlights that are in each issue, and that could be anybody in the community. So we often will try to tag them in each of the posts so that they get that little nudge that, hey. Guess what? You know, Barry, you were featured in episode 1, whatever, of our weekly highlights, and it's just a little little fun thing I do to try and give them recognition. And that's been much appreciated. It's a good way for them to feel like, oh, you know what? That resource was helpful to somebody. And I I'm hopeful that we can translate that into, like, the other,
you know, the value for value mind mindset as well because
let's face it. I would love a future state where those people contributing that content could benefit
as, say, a split in a boostergram Yeah. Just like you would for, say, a cohost because I think, hey. If we don't have that content, then our our show doesn't exist because it is based on the community. So maybe someday we'll get there. I don't know. But that's always been something I've been thinking about. Yeah. That would be fun. And, you know, it's not only a podcast that can have,
a a a value recipient, but then anything can. Right? Also a blog post, which is,
like, one of the resources that you then use in your your show.
So it could be.
Yeah. There could be a future state. Who knows? But I think,
what I hope is that everything comes organically, so to speak. I don't want it to sound like I'm
pushing it onto the audience. I'm really just giving a gentle plug at the end of each episode, and then whoever takes it, that's that's terrific. I'm I'm in it for helping other people. And at the same time,
if we get that engagement with you know, from our listener to us, but also even amongst the listeners, like, we've we've started some interesting threads based on topics we talked about with people responding back to each other on various issues in data science and the like. And I I love that collaborative
aspect of this whole experience.
Yeah. And that's something I hope to keep going for for years to come. Okay. Awesome.
So maybe we can go through,
your workflow.
Like, how do you how do you do it? How do you make a show? What do you do for recording? What type of gear do you use? What kind of software
up until it is listenable in the app?
Yeah. I've been through a few evolutions of this back in the you know, as anybody has. Right? But in the very early days when I was just starting out,
I would record with Audacity
with, a little USB mic,
and then I would put the m p threes on the Internet archive of all places because
one of the people I listened to in the early days of podcasting,
Larry Bushey, who does the Going Linux podcast, they would use the Internet archive
as their host provider. So then I would record in Audacity, do the editing in Audacity,
render the MP 3, put it on the archive, and then I had a WordPress site that was basically the
the the media or the web portal of the r podcast.
And that was working fine for a while. And then I, like many others, kinda hit limitations with the WordPress platform.
And around this time,
I learned about these, static site generators,
Hugo in particular Yeah. Because there was an r package
called bloggedown by a good friend of mine named Eway that let me
from write in markdown format and then publish through a blog
with
compiled by Hugo. And I thought that was just amazing stuff, but also it gave me more control of what that content looked like with the theming system
and everything like that. So then I morphed into publishing
the episodes still on the archive, but then
using Hugo as the presence of the site. And I still have that,
to this day on my R podcast site. It's all written in Hugo, all the sources on GitHub. It's just really been really fun to work with.
And then over time, I, again, started listening more to Chris's and Jupyter Broadcasting's production workflow.
And now, especially for,
the art weekly show,
when Mike and I hop on to do an episode, guess what? We're using the same platform you're on right now, SquadCast,
to connect with with each other, and then we bring the m p threes into the Reaper software, the digital audio workstation software.
It's a lot to digest, but thanks to a few tutorials online and
some advice from Chris. And, like, many years ago, I was able to kinda get a workflow for editing the podcast together. And now it's hard to go back to something else after I've been at Reaper for a few years now. So
that's that's been really helpful. And then once I get that compiled,
and then I now, of course, use,
I'm I'm happy to say this is not a this is not just a plug for the sake of plugs, but what you're doing with POD Home has been very helpful for me on our weekly, so or we're gonna be highlights. So I publish that, and then lo and behold, I'm I'm all set. Do a little social media post after the post is, after the episode is published,
And then that's that's kind of it. And then we use,
for the show prep, we use the hedge doc online markdown editors so that we can just take the markdown
with, like, each topic, and then Mike and I will just put little notes in there. We'll pull that up during our recording. We'll put links in there. We'll put other stuff,
and then I use that as the basis of the show notes that I put for each episode as well. So,
luckily, most of the tooling, with the exception of Reaper, is all open to me. And then, luckily, it's just easy to compile that with the workflow.
It just takes a lot of discipline to get there because I've been through quite a few things over the years, but I think I settled on something that works pretty well for us at this point.
Yeah. It it takes a while to,
narrow down a good workflow. Right? Take can take years, I suppose.
And it's not perfect. There's always some things I wish I could automate a bit better or maybe not spend as much time on, but I think I think we're gonna get there. I think what what you're doing with Pod Home and I see other
other things in the podcasting 2 point o ecosystem and other web resources,
I think we're gonna get to the point where we can really just concentrate on the content
and then let some, you know, friendly helpers, whoever is driven by, you know, large language models, AI, or just more automation tools
to help us get over that hump of,
okay. I finished the recording. Now I gotta spend even more time doing the rest of the production setup. So I I think we're gonna get there. It's just, you know, like anything, just takes time to get there.
Yeah. Yeah. That's the goal, isn't it? Just record, upload, and that's it. Just publish, and and you're done. And all the metadata is created and all the things that you wanted to do afterwards, that's all done for you. That that's kind of the goal. Yeah. I I hope we yeah. I hope I get there more easily. I I'm I think I'm I'm doing some things pretty well, but then there are other things that I'm kinda trying on the side just to get to know kind of the back end of the technology a bit more
because I had done kind of a one off kinda show just to experiment with things.
I called it residual snippets. It was literally just me
with,
a little mic on my phone
just when I, on the wind, thought of a topic, just to record on there.
And then another person I've listened to over the years named Alan Pope, who's now part of the Linux Matters podcast. He used to do the Ubuntu podcast,
with Martin Wimpress and, and others.
He he had a funny little setup where he would record little audio snippets
on his phone. It would go to Telegram
with a bot, get the m p three out, and then he would just throw the m p threes on some of his static hosts and with a little RSS feed. And lo and behold, he's got a makeshift podcast setup.
Well, I kinda wanna take that idea, but then figure out ways that I can generate the RSS feed to be
podcasting 2 point o compliant.
But I wanna use r to do it with a little Python on the side. So I'm I'm about
80% there,
and I just wanna just see how far I take it because I think
maybe you as a as a developer will appreciate this. When you really get to know the fundamentals of the tech you're trying to, you know, put abstraction layers on top of and making it easier for your users to leverage,
it's great to know kinda what's really happening behind the scenes. And that that side project I have going is my way of trying to get to know the best ways of producing this RSS feed, the tag you know, how the tags are related. And that's been quite a quite a learning journey, even though I haven't published anything with it yet. I'm about 85, 90% of the way there. So I'm really looking forward to pushing that through to see how far I can take it. Yeah. And especially as developers, you want to, completely
understand the things that you are using. So even if you're using a hosting company like Pod Home, for instance, you still want
to kinda build it yourself. Right?
So you kinda wanna
create a a feed yourself, see what it what it does,
how to do it, how to do it in the best way.
That's how you learn. That's a fun thing.
I think so too. And I've I've used that approach in my, data science, you know, tooling for for years years, especially at the
at the day job where we'll use some packages in r that are abstractions over other technologies.
Like, there's r packages that deal with Python, the way you bring Python code in the r and be able to run that in real time. But in this web development space that I'm I'm involved with quite a bit with the Shiny package,
it's an abstraction on top of JavaScript.
Different frameworks of JavaScript are exposed via different packages. So I've been trying to get better with web development
technologies as it is. So I'm trying to take that mindset into what I'm doing on this, podcasting
production
workflow standpoint. And like I said, I'm still still got a ways to go, but it's been enlightening to see how all of it kinda comes together.
And then, of course, I'm totally geeked out when I see other tools in this podcasting 2 point o space, like sovereign feeds and another awesome tooling where it's like, how in the world did they do that? And then I start to look at the GitHub, and I'm realizing, yeah, this is this is quite complex, and it's not like they came up with that overnight, but I'm inspired to see where I can take certain tools in this space.
Yeah.
And talking about tooling, you have also created a dashboard, right, for,
of or over or using the podcast index.
Can you That's correct. Yeah. Can you talk about it? That's been
yeah. That's been really fun because I remember
it was, probably back in December of this past year.
I, of course, was listening to podcasting 2.0 on a weekly basis, and I heard
David kind of,
bemoaning the fact that,
yeah, that podcast index, we got this duplicate feed problem. There's just so many entries. I mean, it it's millions of entries. Right? And some of these are either outdated or completely nonsensical
duplicates. And I wondered,
you know, there's gotta be a way we can help illuminate some of this in a more automated fashion.
And I I am a data nerd after all. So, of course, they release the database on a weekly basis on a SQLite
kinda database dump. And I thought, you know what? Let me ingest an r. Let's explore it a bit.
And then I started researching these, duplicate algorithms.
One's called the fuzzy
matching duplicate algorithm.
And I thought, you know what? If it works for, you know, these kind of messy,
you know, human type data,
maybe it could work with RSS feeds and other metadata that they've said were gonna be the most
susceptible to being duplicates. So then I thought, well, it's one thing for me to explore this. Why don't I
find a way to kinda run this algorithm on a weekly basis just as that database is updated
so that I could give anybody in the community a a lens into seeing
what kind of groups of duplicates are forming here and then let them explore
and see if that's a legit thing or if that is something they need to look at the database and maybe clean up a bit. So I was able to leverage r
as well as a, new technical publishing
framework called Quarto,
which is a way to use markdown to compile either R, Python, or Julia code
inside what's now a dashboard, which is all written in markdown basically with some
code chunks inside. And then
through,
an a set of R scripts that I run on GitHub actions actually perform the analysis,
that's then ingested into the dashboard, and the dashboard itself is then published of a GitHub action
every Sunday evening or Monday morning.
And then it's just on GitHub Pages. I don't have to do it. I don't have to lift a finger now. Just all happens automatically, and then it's got the duplicate analysis as well as kind of a database quality analysis
where
then Dave and others can see
with the logical rules or constraints that a database should have, are they really being met here? Like, do we have unique Itunes IDs? Do we have unique podcast GUIDs? Do we have, you know, populated RSS feeds of that nature? So there's a nice little
tab in the dashboard to let, you know, the user explore those different
assertions and see which records are failing and be able to post process that on their own if they wish. So I thought that was a cool way to, again, give some value back to the podcasting 2 point o space and this time using my kinda data science and our skills to do it. So it's just another testament.
Hey. There's more than one way to give value back. Right? Doesn't always have to be monetary.
It's us contributing our skills to help, benefit the community. So
that it took a long time to build because it was always, like,
late at night after the kids go to bed just kinda hacking away for a couple hours, and it took about, you know, a good 2 and 2 and a half months, but I'm really happy with what I'm seeing so far.
Okay. Yeah. Awesome. I I am still, hoping that they will discuss it tonight. Probably, it's Friday, I think.
They've been, talking about this a couple of weeks,
that they will discuss it. So they won't mind discussing this week. And we're recording this, by the way, on,
what is it now? 12th
April.
It will come out, a bit later.
But I'll clip this and put this on the Mastodon,
like, in an hour or so so that they can hear a little bit about it.
Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. I appreciate that. But, see, that's another great feature of this ecosystem. Right? It's the concept of
easy ways to clip these these, you know, sound bites and share it with with the broader community.
All these things that we just never had before
in the earlier days of podcasting without really bootstrap and everything ourselves
very manually, but now we're, oh, it's just it's such a great time to be in this space. That's why I do feel invigorated
with what we're seeing in the podcasting 2.0 movement. Yeah. And me too. And in, technology and and podcasting
in general, I think,
because, you know, PodHome
was not possible
2 years ago, technology wise.
I couldn't do it,
not for the prices that I do now, for instance, and and the the features that I can do now. But now I can do it. So things move extremely quickly, and that enables us to
do more,
and better work, which is great.
Absolutely.
Absolutely. And and, really, I think, also, these back end platforms are able to leverage, whether it's like object stores,
mechanisms,
or ways of hosting our web content
with more, you know, resources under our control, but then be able to leverage automation,
feel like GitHub actions or get lab runners or whatnot. There's lots of ways to take out a lot of the manual stuff that we would have to do
all the time. And and, again, that dashboard project was another
learning journey for me on, like, how to best debug these automation routines because it can be daunting
if you're new to it. But once you get a hand on it, you realize, you know what else I could automate? Yeah. I'm gonna do this pipeline, or I'm gonna do this pipeline. I'm even taking those concepts into my day job. So it's, like, it's organic for me, and that's what I really like about it. I'm I'm enthusiastic
about learning, but then I can see ways that, you know what? That's gonna solve a real need at work too. So I'm gonna try that out and see what happens. Yeah. Well, there you go. It works in all ways.
Yes. Alright. So,
maybe we can
wrap up with, the following.
In all your years now of podcasting,
you you you've run into all sorts of things and including,
motivational issues, I suppose.
What would be,
a good tip for podcasters now or for aspiring podcasters
to keep going and to have success in the way, whatever they define as success?
Yeah. It's always an excellent question. It was over the years. I've had different answers to this. But I think what I've iterated on, especially the last few years,
it's really embracing the fact that
you do not have to be perfect. You are not giving some, like, formal
presentation every time you do a podcast. Right? This is it should come from you in the authentic sense. And whatever your
unique voice is, really embrace that.
Yes. I've been inspired by many and say the Linux podcasting space and the data science space
to help, you know, give me inspiration
for certain ideas or certain things I try to address. But in the end, I'm me. I'm not trying to imitate them. I'm always just kinda taking bits or pieces and then putting it into my words.
And I think in the early days of my previous show, I did probably try to be too perfect. I was pretty self conscious about, oh, did I say that right? Did I do that? Now it's just kinda like, I go with the flow.
I'm me. And if you don't like it, so be it. But if you like it, you know, you're getting authentic Eric one way one way or another in my,
our weekly highlights show. There are definitely parts where I'm like, previous me probably wouldn't have said that, but now it's like, you know what? This is I need to voice this in my voice. Mhmm. And if I have to say it in ways that really
might you know, I I I'm always careful not to be offending anybody, but at the same time, if I
experience an issue or I got a a development story a year ago where
a collaborator
somehow
committed
confidential
AWS
access keys to a GitHub repo in the public,
Like, oh, yeah. No. Those are those are rough things, and then I had to fix it. I had to fix a lot of that. And I'm like,
these are things that probably pass me probably like, I probably don't wanna say that. But at the same time, this happens everywhere. There are always mishaps in development, and I wanna I think, being authentic to myself has made it much more natural for me to
be motivated and not feel like I have to be perfect, but just speak from the heart, speak from my experience, and embrace that mindset. So and I would say, you know, don't try to get the perfect setup right away.
Just get something that works because in the end, the content is what really drives the engagement.
You don't need to have the fanciest microni. You don't need to have the fanciest setup. But if you have a story to tell, just get that out there
as frictionless as possible so that you're not dreading
that, like, whole pipeline
of producing a show. It's you want to produce a show because you wanna get it out there as fast as possible.
So I think that human element cannot be understated. The be yourself.
Don't try to be perfect, and then really bring along the community with you. Ask for feedback
and
engage with the audience. I think that's what helps motivate me quite a bit too. K. Beautiful.
So and where can people go to find the our weekly podcast?
Yeah. So, the best way to discover that, first, we are, of course, probably on the podcast index. You can search for our weekly highlights highlights there, but also
on the our weekly site itself. It's our weekly dotorg.
We have a link to the podcast right on the page there so you can easily get to it from our weekly itself. And then I'm also
we have Mastodon accounts on if you get me, I'm on Mastodon as well.
I'm at our podcast at podcast index dot social. That's probably the best place to find me. My host, Mike, is on there as well.
We we give that contact info in every episode as well. So so we love to engage the audience on that space. And,
yeah, we're looking at ways to even getting more engagement down the road, and, hopefully, we'll
a couple years ago in the height of the pandemic was a show called the Shiny developer series.
That's at shinydevseries.com.
We had lots of great interviews and also my,
coding adventures that were recorded off of Twitch streams back in the day. Now I put them on YouTube for prosperity, but,
honestly, that is something I wanna really get back into is that kind of that
coding on the fly
mindset and that that setup. So maybe I'll get back into that someday, but there's some good content on there as well. Okay. Awesome. I'll put all of that in the show notes so that people can find that easily and, go listen to that.
Well, thank you very much, sir.
Oh, it's a pleasure to be here, Barry. And, again, kudos to you for everything you're doing with Pod Home and your contributions
podcasting 2 point o. It's been fun to learn from you. Excellent.
Alright. Thank you.
Thanks for tuning into the show. For more episodes, go to about podcasting dot show, and remember to host your podcast on podhome.fm,
the most modern podcast hosting platform.