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so this is kind of a fun tradition that we've started with the podcast panels so
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we're gonna all on the count of three we're all gonna yell Minnie and we're gonna clap together so that way my
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editor knows that our audio is all synced up all right on the count of three
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one two three mini nice recording live from Providence
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Rhode Island is the rubyconf midi podcast panel welcome everyone thank you so much for being here today I'm going
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to start by introducing each of our panelists I'm going to ask each of them to share a phrase if they commonly use
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on their podcast so that way the listeners know their voices from the bike shed we have Joelle quenvel hello
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everyone from Ruby for all we have Julie J
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from chats in the cupboard we have Andy Kroll hello from code and the coding coders who code
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it it's Drew Bragg hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Code and the code encoders who code it and I'm
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your moderator Brittany Martin from the Ruby on Rails podcast and for me what is your developer origin story and because
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I am delightfully type A before we dive in today let's cover a few things first
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we are super grateful that we'll be able to take the audio feed from this recording and post it as a podcast this
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is a love letter to our listeners who cannot be with us today second I plan on aiming most questions
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initially to a panelist but panelists if you want to chime in please raise your hands we get a clean cut of the audio
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speaking of we are taking questions today from you in the rubyconf mini slack Channel under the channel podcast
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Dash panel Dash questions I know just an elegant name there please post your
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questions there so the panelists can volunteer to answer and lastly this is the first time a podcast panel has been
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a part of the main agenda for the conference I am seriously so grateful to Gemma Emily and Andy for making this
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happen all suits who are editor Paul who works really hard and uses a lot of magic in order to make these panels
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sound great thank you so much Paul and with that let's do this question one
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Julie as our newest podcast on the panel can you tell us why you started Ruby for all
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and how the community reception has been so far thank you for the question Brittany
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I wanted to start Ruby for all because as a junior I was listening to a lot of the Ruby podcasts which are fantastic
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however a lot of them were going over my head as the concepts were more
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challenging than what I was ready for and I wanted to do something to help the
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Juniors into the community and so that uh railsconf what I was at railsconf
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when I met up with Andrew and he offered to co-host with me and
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Ruby for all got created I believe that the
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what was this like a part of the question no worries how has the community responded to your podcast so
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far I think it's been I think it's been great we've had a lot of feedback saying that they really enjoyed it and it's
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been helpful to some of our listeners and again we
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accept feedback so if anybody has been listening uh thank you and also please
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let him out let me know how we can improve Joelle as someone who has taken over hosting duties of a podcast myself
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can you give us an inside view as to how that happened so uh Steph bakeri who is the former
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host along with Chris Tumi um was looking to transition off of the
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podcast she and I were working together on a client project pretty closely and I
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was feeding her a lot of ideas for uh potential topics to talk about on the
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bike shed it got to the point where I got invited to the bike shed Trello board and I could just directly add
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ideas onto the board and so when it came time to bring on a
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new host um I had a little bit of an inside track there
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um and so I was really excited to to come on so I've got a follow-up question for you
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that's a little unfair and pretty hard but how will this era of the bike shed be different and maybe a little bit the
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same I think one thing that's unique about the bike shed is that it's a
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conversation show it's not quite so much an interview approach so it's just two people talking about interesting topics
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and the audience gets to be a fly on the wall and that is something that's part of I think the identity of the show that
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I definitely want to keep moving forward something that will be maybe a little bit different uh I am really passionate
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about uh visuals and diagramming and so I will definitely be referencing things
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like that uh recent listeners of the show will know that I have been hyping
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up dependency graphs a lot uh and so if you have been interested to like come up
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and talk to me and you don't know like oh what do I say to him come in and ask me a question about dependency graphs
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and we will be talking until late in the night okay noted so dependency graphs the rest
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of your questions will be about depending no I'm just kidding Andy what is your goal for chats in the cupboard
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uh chats in the cupboard was an excuse for me to have a chat with vaidahi so she lives in Portland and I live in
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Brighton and the time difference is horrendous so um and it's one of these you know it's like
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a conference friend like you know there are loads of people here who are like people who I see like once a year or once every six months and like that's
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I wanted to have that feeling more often and so that was a reason for chats in the cupboard and like she's really
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really smart so I wanted to know what she thought about stuff and it was literally as simple as that well we love a good crossover here so
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Andy why are you personally sponsoring Ruby for all uh because the community of response to it has been excellent Julie
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is the answer um I think it's an example of
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something that I feel like I do quite a bit which is just like okay I'll just take responsibility for that like there's no reason why I on a developer
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salary can't pay the editing bill for Ruby for all for a month well we could all do it and it's the same with
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conferences and events and stuff this event exists because Gemma said I want
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this event to exist and then she made it happen so like that is something that I would challenge everybody who's listening to
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this or who's in the room of course you can do this like it's not hard I'm just an idiot with a microphone
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like here and when I'm giving talks and when I'm running conferences like it's just it's
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true we need to settle on a nickname for your podcast so I sound really cool can you please help me I swear a real
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question is coming your way soon I mean I think you have already given the podcast the nickname code encoders all
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right it's actually the Twitter handle now so fancy artificial so your first episode was in February of
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this year what lessons have you learned over the past year oh how long do you have
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um so much I need a co-host um bad I I can't uh keep being the only
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idiot on the call going huh what um I need uh
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I need a better process for getting guests I've gotten extremely lucky that most of my guests have either approached
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me and said I'd like to be on the podcast or have said like on Twitter I
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want to start going on podcasts who has a podcast and wants me on and I can go oh me I do
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um but I need a better process that I have learned and have not done anything with uh it's fine it's only been a year
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and it's uh it's simultaneously harder than I thought it would be and easier
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than I thought it would be um I still get very nervous before each episode but once we're rolling I have
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enough structure that I know I will just get through it just fine I'm having a great conversation with a great person
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uh but there's always those nerves so yeah I've recorded over 200 episodes and I am
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nervous constantly I'm nervous right now so do not be concerned and that's one thing that I want to make sure that all
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of our listeners know now you were talking about finding a co-host and I saw Joelle nodding nodding your head why
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Joelle so I just recently uh got a new co-host on the bike shed it's Stephanie
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Min I'm super excited to have her joined and so I definitely recommend getting a
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co-host okay so this is a question for all the panelists so please raise your hand for
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those who want to answer if someone were to ask you to describe the brand of your podcast what would you say
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brand uh horrible uh um it's it's an it's two people just having
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a chat there's lots of podcasts like that and in this case it's you know it's it's not a traditional podcast which is
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you know three men talking about Apple technology so that's um so that's a win uh yes I think I would say that all of
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our podcasts are just they're quite conversational and I know Brittany yours is more interviewee but you have the
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episodes of that conversation on and those are the ones that I like to listen to like I particularly like listening to podcasts where it's I like to sort of
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invest over a period of time to like people's Journeys and then you sort of have that weird thing where you think
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you're friends with them uh that I'm guilty of that but yeah like does the conversational thing is the
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most important for me Julie you probably agree with me one approach that I take with my podcast is
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I like to go in themes and it's something that I might be confused by and so I just bring somebody on who can
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teach me things and so really it's selfish but then you know everyone can learn from it so like a recent episode I
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had with one of my co-hosts Brian I had him really explain to me like the the mechanics of a layoff because I didn't
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truly know and so it was a really good selfish reason to record an episode but now I can point to it as a piece of
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Education that I have actually I told Andrew if we had zero
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listeners then he would at least be helping one person I love that that's amazing
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so Julie would you agree that our community still has room for more podcasts and why
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there's always room for more podcasts and I believe that we need more content out there and
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I also I mean I'm extremely nervous right now and I'm able to sit here in front of you every
00:11:04.260
time I'm doing a podcast with Andrew I tell them I'm nervous every week I'm nervous
00:11:09.420
um but if I can do it then anybody who wants to can do it so if you have something to say we want to hear it and
00:11:15.360
you do have something to say absolutely Joelle I know you'd like to tackle technical topics on the bike shed
00:11:22.019
do you have any advice on how to do that over an audio format that is definitely challenging
00:11:28.320
um because code is a textual or a visual medium um and so I think going back to uh the
00:11:36.899
session right before about communication uh know your audience know the point
00:11:42.300
you're trying to make and try to understand why they would care uh and work backwards from there
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have you ever considered doing anything creative around show notes in that regard like almost like a prerequisite homework before you stop it you know
00:11:55.800
pull over to the side of the highway and please read my show notes before you listen to this episode I've considered
00:12:01.560
it before I've thought about it a little bit because I would love to do an episode on
00:12:07.560
dependency graphs and they're inherently very Visual and I I can't I haven't found a way to make that episode yet uh
00:12:15.240
but I'm considering it okay so now dependency graphs are the brand of the bike shed have we agreed to this yes
00:12:20.880
okay cool I'm glad we're on the same page on that front Andy talk to me about hiring a junior developer a coverage
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book right yeah so I'm currently in the process of hiring a junior developer so this is part of the thing that I sort of
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kicked off in my head with the first Ruby friend mentorship thing um we've decided that the thing that we've
00:12:39.600
been telling ourselves that our team wasn't big enough or we would do a bad job or maybe we're not the best place to
00:12:45.060
be hiring a junior we decided that was um and as a result our hiring people
00:12:50.220
from uh boot camps in the in in London with the idea that it's a year-long
00:12:55.620
fully paid job it's not an internship it's a fully paid job for a year and at the end of that as we know there are
00:13:01.260
many many hundreds of um three to five year experience jobs that you could totally get if you've got 12 months
00:13:06.600
experience so my plan is to keep generating those people and by doing
00:13:12.060
that as an example then wrap up how I'm doing that we're a team of three Ruby
00:13:17.579
Engineers one front-end person and a designer in the product team so if we can do it then pretty much anyone can do it and I don't think
00:13:24.540
I don't think it'll be that hard in like kind of like not in that kind of impossible Hardware like it will be hard
00:13:30.000
obviously because hiring people is hard and teaching people is hard but in a good
00:13:35.820
and positive way and hopefully in a way that will let others do the same thing even with small teams
00:13:42.060
I love that tell me about the stats like how many applicants did you get like I can imagine just you know because you
00:13:48.899
know the world of hiring Junior developers is such a Hot Topic right now and by the way it should always be odd topic but um not like the store but
00:13:58.200
I do I am curious you know I I imagine you just had an onslaught of applications we had quite a few but
00:14:04.560
primarily the role is not fully remote we are like part of me exploring this as
00:14:10.560
a hiring manager of a junior person is that I want someone face uh some in-person time for them to come down to
00:14:16.920
Brian for a couple of days a week like it's not fully fully in person because I'm not in the in the office fully but I
00:14:22.139
think increasing that bandwidth particularly given that it's a Time limited thing is something that we're trying to do
00:14:27.720
um so we've had like 30 or 40 candidates but mostly from where I went to find the
00:14:33.540
London boot camps and I went in there and I talked to them about Ruby because they're learning Ruby because Ruby's a great teaching language and that's one
00:14:40.500
of the that's one of our community benefits and then I go in there and I'm friendly and I'm personable and I'm
00:14:46.079
being the best version of myself to represent all of us in those in those rooms and that's something that anyone
00:14:51.779
could do like you can find your local boot camp you can go and talk to them and represent for us and convince
00:14:57.720
yourself that you like that person so yeah like 30 or 40 but like primarily from in person going and doing the work
00:15:04.500
of finding them rather than randoms from the internet because obviously people who aren't programming Ruby have got no
00:15:10.440
idea who I am so therefore me yelling about it on Twitter actually doesn't help that much
00:15:15.600
all right we're going to move to some listener questions I'm going to start with Mina Slater uh and I'm gonna aim
00:15:21.180
this one to Drew but I want to hear from everybody in case you have a good story if a recording of a plan obviously if a
00:15:27.480
if a recording of a planned episode doesn't go well how did you manage that oh that's like every episode for me
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um if it's a pull he fixes it well I need an editor too that's another thing
00:15:39.120
I've learned just add it to the list um I actually I had a an experience like
00:15:44.339
this uh my recording with Kevin Murphy the first time we recorded uh something happened with zoom it kept
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crashing there was audio in and out and it just it was terrible I
00:15:58.800
spent I don't know hours trying to get it right and I eventually just reached
00:16:04.320
out to him and said hey can we do that again because it was it was bad um if it happens only a little bit Yeah
00:16:12.120
like Andy said I'll try and take care of it during the editing process but uh
00:16:17.880
yeah you can always just reach out and say hey can we try that again most people are happy to talk more so I'm
00:16:23.880
curious was that version of the episode actually better it's hard to say better uh we we sort of
00:16:31.800
knew what topics we wanted to talk about uh I remembered I wanted to ask him
00:16:36.959
about hockey but it there is something nice about having that natural
00:16:42.180
conversation with someone so when it's hey let's redo the thing we just talked about you'd lose a little
00:16:48.180
bit of that but um I don't think that happened too bad with the the second round episode I
00:16:55.560
think it's a really good episode so does anyone else have any other episode stories go for it Julie
00:17:01.980
so all of our episodes are not planned but we were receiving feedback that I needed
00:17:09.360
to speak more and so there was one episode it was the Imposter syndrome episode where as I was editing it was
00:17:17.040
like Andrew talking 95 of the time and me five percent so I said Andrew can we can we re-record
00:17:25.620
this and we actually had a plan in place for me to talk more in that one and I
00:17:32.160
think it turned out really well Julie I'm curious you said that you got a lot of feedback about speaking more where are you getting that feedback from
00:17:39.419
so I posted a tweet from Ruby for all requesting feedback and a lot of the
00:17:45.120
public ones were really great and I got one dm
00:17:50.340
which was kind of like a hamburger feedback so it was like really nice and then one little
00:17:55.919
feedback and I think Andrew had retweeted give me all of the because I I
00:18:02.940
asked for people to be nice in the feedback and I don't remember what Andrew said but he said like he wants
00:18:10.260
like real feedback it was more than that but um yeah so he he received a couple
00:18:15.419
of DMs I love that because um before I had Paul as an editor my
00:18:20.820
editing was absolutely atrocious and I'll own it right now because I took over the podcast a couple years ago I
00:18:27.360
was doing the editing on my own I was not even using a microphone folks I was recording with just my laptop like it
00:18:34.020
was not good like but I learned a lot of lessons along the way and you know I did
00:18:39.539
have a guest on the show at one point that was so incredibly nervous that we would get a couple minutes into the
00:18:45.059
episode and then the nerves would just take over and they would stop and so we maybe recorded the episode three times
00:18:51.240
in a row and at one point I said you know what tell you what why don't we just practice the episode but little did
00:18:57.299
they know I I was recording the whole time I think we all saw that coming right first place they didn't see that coming
00:19:04.200
they did not actually and so we ended up getting a pretty good episode out of it but I think this is a good question
00:19:10.080
because there are a lot of times that things don't go the right way I've had Wi-Fi go out I've had you know emergency
00:19:15.840
Sirens going the back I actually um I she might be here today I had a
00:19:21.419
guess where a cat broke into her uh her recording space and so at one point
00:19:26.580
she's like there's a cat outside my my closet and I was like cool and then I heard purring and she's like the cat
00:19:32.039
broken that's cool I mean like as long as the cat noise is consistent you know we can
00:19:37.980
edit it out you know you're just looking for consistency um okay anyone else have any uh episode
00:19:45.360
episode stories okay it's all very controlled when you're an account I know we've got one coming up that's got really really terrible audio quality but
00:19:51.720
there's nothing we can do about it so yeah I just have to apologize about that one okay I like a pre-apology I like the
00:19:57.960
honest this sounds rubbish enjoy so um Daniel Coulson we we talked about
00:20:03.960
this a little bit but I want to dig into it more do you all get nervous before or during a recording or before an episode
00:20:09.840
airs so the good first question is do you listen to your own episodes anyone
00:20:14.940
yes I edit my own episodes right now so unfortunately I have to I don't know how
00:20:20.100
Andrew Mason listens to every episode of Every podcast he records I don't know how he does that I cannot listen to my
00:20:26.700
own voice but I have to because I'm currently editing and it's horrible
00:20:32.400
anybody else you all listen I do listen to every episode particularly uh before
00:20:39.480
I had a co-host and I had guests I made a point of listening to every episode and then reaching out to the guest and
00:20:46.200
highlighting some aspects of the final episode that I appreciated about their call because you know this is oftentimes
00:20:52.919
their first time on a podcast they're often feeling very nervous and so I want to tell them what I appreciated about
00:20:59.100
the final product oftentimes they don't dare listen to themselves and so they'll never know like they went on this recording and then they just they don't
00:21:05.400
know so I want to be that person that follows up with them and said hey I listened to our episode it was great
00:21:10.500
here are three things that stood out to me um and yeah sometimes I cringe it myself
00:21:16.260
I love that you mentioned that for a lot of the times it's the first time someone has been on a podcast why is that the
00:21:21.900
case Joelle um I reach out to people who I think have uh interesting things to share and
00:21:29.760
in particular I was reaching out to a lot of uh colleagues or former
00:21:34.980
colleagues uh people had a close connection with so that if they hadn't bid on a podcast they would feel
00:21:40.260
comfortable with me doing that for the first time um and so yeah sometimes it's they've
00:21:47.100
never done it and some people it took a little bit of a little bit of coaxing like conversation back and forth and say
00:21:52.980
hey here's the thing that I see that you are an expert in that I would love to have you talk about and the person says well
00:22:00.419
I'm not sure I'm not comfortable it says that's fine I'm not giving you a date uh
00:22:06.059
but maybe we can have a conversation about this over the next few weeks and see if you're maybe interested in coming on and so uh I had to
00:22:15.539
like prep some people and then also afterwards I want to make sure to really thank them encourage them for what
00:22:22.200
they've done and the episode has turned out great that's really great I feel like I'm a selfish egomaniac
00:22:32.820
one like I listened back to make sure I haven't said anything stupid because we don't plant anything so I just want to make sure that everything I've most of
00:22:39.600
the stuff that I've said is fine and I haven't like gone off the deep end and saying something that literally I
00:22:45.059
disagree with half an hour later um but yeah like yeah egomania basically that's why I listen I'm kind of split
00:22:51.240
there because I'm not even subscribed to my own podcast which is terrible please subscribe to the Ruby on Rails podcast
00:22:56.400
to drive up you've got to do it because you've got juice the numbers I know I gotta juice the numbers folks but um
00:23:01.799
sometimes I'll listen I will listen back when I'm putting the episode together and I do love that Joel that you are
00:23:07.559
following up with like great points that they made because you know I have to listen the episode anyways you grab
00:23:12.659
those show notes which are so important and so I think that's a really great way to make people feel included one thing
00:23:19.320
for me is that when I reach out to someone and ask them to be on the podcast a lot of times I'll get no if they've never been on a podcast before
00:23:25.620
but my getcha is I tell them that I will send the questions ahead of time and a lot of times and this is my my little
00:23:31.919
spoiler and I'm just going to confess this now we often you know go off the deep end and we we don't ask those
00:23:37.320
questions because they some they say something really interesting and we just go down that path and you know what the
00:23:43.020
thing that was interesting is something that they care about and they're knowledgeable and they can talk about it and so that ends up being a really great
00:23:49.500
episode and usually my goal halfway through is they forget we're recording like that's always the goal right you
00:23:55.320
want to feel like you're just listening in on some friends just chatting in the hallway at rubyconf mini right that is
00:24:00.900
the ideal situation for the for the podcast so a question for all panelists
00:24:06.480
um how does your podcast help and promote the Ruby community
00:24:11.700
uh one thing mine does maybe it does I I don't know like that's that's taught
00:24:17.100
for the people listening I actually don't I was joking about juicing the numbers I've got no idea who how many
00:24:22.620
people listen to my podcast because I that I don't care is it Ruby specific like what what's the end goal it's kind
00:24:28.860
of like it's kind of like seniorish people talking about single topic that they find interesting
00:24:36.000
and exploring what the other person thinks about it you know it's it's a chat and he's in a Cupboard hence the
00:24:42.780
clever naming um but yeah like it's not Ruby specific it's more sort of
00:24:48.120
human being specific I suppose it's like human beings doing the sorts of jobs that we all do that's an interesting
00:24:53.580
question right we have five podcasts represented on this panel and two of them have the word Ruby in them and three of them do not so is that a good
00:25:00.960
or a bad thing it's an okay thing
00:25:07.140
a mine does not have Ruby in the name mostly because I didn't want to
00:25:13.020
necessarily be exclusively Ruby I wanted it to be about anything related to code
00:25:18.900
or coding or being a programmer whether it's the actual technical details or
00:25:24.000
it's a day in the life or a Junior trying to break into it and bringing their experiences from their
00:25:31.620
previous job a lot of us especially boot camp grads had a career for a while
00:25:37.440
prior to becoming a software engineer and that's a a really important part of
00:25:43.320
what we bring to the table so I didn't when I was trying to come up with the name apart from just not being clever
00:25:48.779
enough to come up with anything with Ruby in the name I just I didn't want it to be like yeah this is all we talk about is Ruby and
00:25:54.960
you have to be in the Ruby Community to listen you can be part of any community and listen hopefully hearing how cool
00:26:02.039
some rubyists are you come over to the dark side and start programming in Ruby does anyone else have any thoughts on
00:26:08.279
that I think for the bike shed it's about um more than just the code element
00:26:16.740
um as software developers uh a lot of our day-to-day life is is definitely more than code so we'll talk about
00:26:22.919
things like uh working iteratively that applies to many different languages we
00:26:28.500
might talk about process we might talk about git we might talk about learning and career in addition to
00:26:36.120
things like object oriented design or particularly Ruby topics I had an
00:26:42.720
episode recently about class methods and when they are useful and so these are
00:26:49.020
all things that as Ruby developers we hit multiple times in our day and some of
00:26:54.299
the aspects are technical tied to the Ruby language and then some of them are more broadly true for people across many
00:27:02.640
different languages so well it's like he knew that Mina was going to give you a follow-up question on that one so have you ever considered
00:27:08.760
streaming the bike shed on Twitch or YouTube I have not considered it
00:27:14.520
um I have considered doing uh occasionally maybe like a live live show
00:27:19.980
version but not of the consistent thing okay has anyone considered ever doing a
00:27:38.100
right now so it's actually what I liked about being on yours was uh there is no
00:27:43.140
video when I'm recording via Zoom there's you can see the other person and
00:27:50.059
there's a small distraction element that comes along with that so I'm like nah
00:27:56.159
we're not going to stream well that's a good question we can ask each of the panelists like how do you record I I
00:28:01.679
record over a piece of software called cast Studios I do record Zoom for only
00:28:06.960
one special person in my life and that is Gemma israth but everyone else you know I record without any sort of visual
00:28:14.159
piece because to me it's less stressful not being able to see but I can see
00:28:19.860
there being some help you know in being able to see facial expressions so how about you Julie we use zoom and actually
00:28:27.000
I noticed the difference because I was on the Ruby on Rails podcast one week before I was gonna one week after I did
00:28:33.600
it with uh Andrew and I could see Andrew's face so I could see his expression I could see if he's
00:28:39.720
paying attention um but I probably wasn't really and you
00:28:45.960
know I was how about you Joe all right uh so yeah
00:28:52.320
so it's it's via Zoom cameras on I I let the guests decide if they want to keep theirs on I just I keep mine on because
00:29:00.299
I've been told by multiple people that it is helpful to see a face when I'm
00:29:05.460
listening to say a screencast like a go rails episode I really appreciate seeing Chris I have no idea why
00:29:12.600
but I know I do so it's there if they wanted me personally I I feel like I can
00:29:17.820
focus on the content a little better if I'm not looking at a person but if someone wants to have their camera on I
00:29:24.299
can still record fine I sort of want to be off camera but the
00:29:29.640
other person on camera so I can get there that's above world I love that how about you Joelle uh we record using a
00:29:37.080
software called zencaster which has a mode where it will do video but not
00:29:43.500
record it only record the audio I like the video because you get all of the sort of non-verbal cues which I
00:29:50.159
think allows for more natural conversation the goal of this would be like what would it be if uh Stephanie and I were
00:29:57.360
just hanging out getting coffee and chatting about a Cool Tech topic where we do see each other's face we get to
00:30:03.299
you know use our hands or emote uh and so can we recreate that a little bit
00:30:08.580
while recording online yeah I'm the same like video all the way but we don't save it like it's they said
00:30:15.600
we Squad cast it's very similar to dencaster but like it's yeah we have video it's basically because I'm training my friend and I want to see my
00:30:21.539
friend so that's part that's part of the thing love that question from Brandon Weaver for the the entire panel who
00:30:28.799
would you love to have on your podcast one day and what would you ask them do you have that one special guest that
00:30:35.940
you would love to have on the show hey they might listen to this episode
00:30:41.520
and say absolutely go for it I want to have Aaron Patterson on okay yeah that is I I want him on the
00:30:50.220
podcast and just I don't have necessarily a specific question for him other than what are you working on
00:30:57.539
um but I just feel like that's that would be an amazing episode and a very special one to me well I think there are
00:31:04.020
people here that can help you make that happen so let's let's make dreams come true people okay and then I can also
00:31:11.159
extend that question out like are there any of the shows on this on this panel or other shows in the community that you
00:31:17.820
would love to guest on that maybe you've grew up through the Ruby Community listening to that you haven't been on
00:31:28.020
I mean I for one would love to be on Ruby for all but I would have to have the perfect topic ready to go so like
00:31:35.700
definitely not an immediate thing I wanna I wanna earn my way into a guest spot on Ruby for all we can't wait to
00:31:41.399
have you I love this podcast matchmaking
00:31:46.740
um okay so we talked about visual podcasts we talked about twitch or
00:31:51.840
YouTube a question from Kayla what are the unexpected legal and business things
00:31:57.720
you have to deal with as someone running a podcast I love this question so much does anyone consider legal and business
00:32:04.799
things no anyone I'm just an idiot in a Cupboard of course I don't think about that stuff
00:32:11.820
like what goes into actually producing a podcast what goes into starting a podcast and is anyone actually thinking
00:32:18.539
about sponsors merchandise trademarks logos like all of that stuff
00:32:24.299
anyone I was concerned that our logo because it's AI generated we had to get
00:32:30.840
a patent or something on it but I had no idea it was AI generated that is so cool I love that about that
00:32:38.940
one thing that's interesting uh is that on the bike shed we often talk about
00:32:44.899
things that happen at work and uh both Stephanie and I are Consultants with
00:32:52.080
thoughtbot we've worked with clients and so if we want to talk about things that we've done we have to figure
00:33:03.600
something that was challenging and you don't want to throw a client under the bus uh that's that's not cool
00:33:09.419
um not really so much a legal thing but just I think you know professionalism and being a nice person
00:33:15.419
who has sponsors on their show does anyone have sponsors oh me okay I mean the Ruby on Rails
00:33:22.140
podcast is sponsored that's how we pay for our editor I got lucky in the fact that when we took the podcast
00:33:27.240
independent I ended up partnering with mere placement and they handle all the business things for me so they handle
00:33:33.659
like talking to sponsors they handle pain Paul which is important and one thing that we do is when we have guests
00:33:40.260
on the show we send them a thank you package in the mail and that includes like merchandise that we have put together
00:33:45.620
we recently came out with a store of merchandise to like promote a non-profit that we cared about I I enjoy the legal
00:33:53.220
and business stuff but that's because I'm a secret MBA that just turned into a developer so I like that kind of stuff
00:33:59.580
because in some ways you need to think of your podcast as a business because that's how you keep it sustainable
00:34:06.419
and Ruby for all recently got sponsorship we had discussed Andy Kroll
00:34:11.960
and one of the questions was do you listen to your podcast and I had
00:34:17.220
to because I was editing them but once we started having an editor I don't listen to them at all
00:34:25.020
you're welcome thank you you're welcome I'm so jealous so so jealous welcome to the good life
00:34:33.240
um okay question for ufu what keeps you motivated to keep on producing new episodes week in week out and what stops
00:34:40.200
you from saying yourself oh maybe we'll just skip it this week well that's why I'm monthly
00:34:52.200
how do you do you do podcasts yeah we're not quite sure it's more than like
00:34:57.660
neither of us can totally commit to the weekly thing okay and so like we'd sort of get like like we've been recording
00:35:03.119
season three for uh like the first one we did in September and then we did another one like two weeks later and
00:35:09.540
then vardy he had some home improvement work done that went from being like 10 days to six weeks so we've just done a
00:35:16.260
third one and if I can get like a fourth one done by Christmas that would be great but yeah like we're massively
00:35:21.720
disorganized um but the benefit is is that we're sort of not trying to do like you
00:35:27.839
know the whole point of the book is it's the excuse to chat so like finding a reason to do it it's not hard it's finding the time to do it you know
00:35:34.980
how about you Julie do you have a standing appointment with Andrew to get your podcasts recorded I do but also Andrew did a talk with Chris and Jason
00:35:43.140
at railsconf and one of the main points was you have to be consistent so I think
00:35:49.980
Andrew is keeping us consistent I love that how about you Joelle uh so we release weekly
00:35:56.820
um and so we do have a sort of standing appointment to record I've found that with content uh the more you create the
00:36:05.099
more you also generate ideas and that the hardest part is often starting uh
00:36:10.380
and so this is true I think for blogging it's true for giving a talk up here and it's true for podcasting as well it's
00:36:16.920
really hard I have a goal this year which I haven't ever done and that is to produce 52 episodes of the Ruby on Rails
00:36:22.920
podcast and I'm currently on pace which is great I'm ahead of schedule on recording thank you
00:36:29.880
it's hard you know I really I have the three co-hosts that I rotate through I book those interviews but there are
00:36:36.180
times where I'm really cutting it down to the wire and then I will have a guess that I have perfect perfectly prepped
00:36:41.460
will have an emergency come up and they won't come and so then I'm scrambling for another guest just in order to hit
00:36:47.339
that deadline and that deadline is fake in my mind but like to me Wednesday at eight o'clock Eastern there is a new
00:36:53.880
episode coming out no matter what and sometimes I've recorded that episode sorry Paul Tuesday morning and so uh
00:37:01.320
thank goodness for Paul that he can turn those episodes out but it consistency is everything
00:37:18.480
oh I've been listening to dead eyes what's that about it's the story of an actor who was cast in a very minor role
00:37:25.260
in the Band of Brothers TV show and got fired by Tom Hanks allegedly for having dead eyes
00:37:31.619
but it's more of an exploration of his career and the yeah it basically sent
00:37:38.099
him into a tailspin obviously like he's a young actor and he was trying to do this but he sent him to an interesting like tailspin of a self-examination and
00:37:43.500
now he's like a improvisational comic and it's quite it's like it's kind of a produced e podcast but it's
00:37:49.560
I've you know I've already looked ahead in the fee because I picked it up it's been going for like three years I can already see that at some point he does
00:37:55.079
get to speak to Tom Hanks so um yeah it's like it's just like this really fascinating journey and it's not about that thing it's no longer about the hurt
00:38:02.220
that he felt at the time but I was just it's a really interesting story I love the drop out as well the um Elizabeth Holmes thing where they reveal hyperbole
00:38:10.500
in the well I mean the lady's going to prison now so um spoilers sorry
00:38:18.000
anyone else have any non-tech related podcasts that they love we die hard tech okay
00:38:24.119
um I I'm concerned that we're going through this whole podcast panel and I haven't mentioned that I do CrossFit so let's just make sure I get that in there
00:38:29.940
I do CrossFit no I'm kidding um I do listen to a podcast called scale and bail and the idea behind it is that
00:38:35.280
anybody can do CrossFit so like how can you scale it back so it's accessible to everyone I really love that podcast because it's just listening to two good
00:38:42.420
friends as I'm driving the gym I enjoy that a lot um I also listen to a lot of like just random comedy podcasts they make me
00:38:49.140
happy but the tech related podcasts are really important to me that is like my time in the car like that's where I
00:38:54.540
catch up on the latest news I miss Ruby five so much can someone bring back Ruby five does anybody remember what ruby 5
00:39:01.079
was anyone hands up okay Ruby five was this amazing podcast where it was just
00:39:06.480
five minutes of Ruby news it came out like twice a week right I love that if someone could bring that back I I will
00:39:12.540
sponsor you so I'll just quote you right there it's great podcast
00:39:18.900
um Jordan do you have any habits or rituals you always do before hosting an interview or a podcast freak out
00:39:25.880
have a way okay you're gonna have a way before you can't just you can't break a bike I went
00:39:31.140
and I just went for a way you can't have a you can't break a podcast I'm terribly sorry we're having
00:39:37.619
an interesting conversation I've got Netflix you can't do that it's rude no you really can't um is there anything that you say to a
00:39:44.160
guest before you start recording Joelle I have a whole Spiel I love it let's
00:39:49.260
hear it so first thing uh we're on zencaster uh just to let you know we're
00:39:54.900
showing video but that's just so that you and I can see each other get more of a human connection it is not recorded don't worry uh it's going to be Audio
00:40:01.560
Only this is recorded uh we have an editor so if at any point you feel
00:40:07.079
uncomfortable or you want to resay something that you've said that's totally fine if you want to uh
00:40:14.880
say something that you've said a little bit differently or you need to collect your thoughts I ask you a question and
00:40:21.180
you don't have an answer that's fine you can pause uh wait a little bit and say
00:40:27.420
something and our editor will cut it all up together and it will sound perfectly
00:40:32.520
smooth and intelligent so you're all good I love that I always tell guests as
00:40:37.800
they're coming on like I explained to them that they need to have headphones in that Paul will make them sound so
00:40:42.839
good and that we will start with their developer origin story and they can absolutely lie to me and I'll have no idea and that is a great way to start a
00:40:50.040
podcast with an absolute lie it gets people to be comfortable because you're starting with an opinion and then you're
00:40:55.500
going into like their own fact and so that that is definitely one of my rituals now um Jeremy asked a great
00:41:03.300
question how much pre-post Chit Chat is there on your podcast and also how much
00:41:08.400
content from each recording session actually makes it into the final episode so I'll aim that one to Julie
00:41:14.280
so we have a weekly scheduled meeting for one hour our podcast is 30 minutes
00:41:20.700
we'll probably talk for about five minutes with guest or without just to
00:41:25.800
kind of plan out what what are we going to talk about today we usually pick the topic that at that time
00:41:31.260
and we usually end early so
00:41:36.540
there's not too many chatter I guess I mean a good follow-up question Julie how do you know when it's
00:41:42.660
over like sometimes that's hard right how do you know when you know the content is there and you're ready to hit
00:41:48.900
cut good question Andrew has a timer so that about 30 minutes he'll say like
00:41:55.079
okay it's time to wrap up but we also got feedback that on one of the episodes they wished that it was longer because
00:42:01.079
of the content and so we're not strictly to 30 minutes but I'll try to be more
00:42:06.660
mindful if there's a lot of good information we'll we'll go over I think the lesson there is the listeners are very greedy and they want more content
00:42:12.660
so let's produce more content friends Andy uh yeah I mean the really fun Stuffs the
00:42:19.680
stuff you don't hear uh the you know the uh because I'm finding our friends are like it's you
00:42:25.500
know catching up on family stuff at the beginning or whatever it is and then like obviously
00:42:31.680
horrendous spicy hot takes that I've not for broadcast
00:42:36.720
one of my co-hosts Nick schwader and I have like a very specific format so the first five minutes is just personal chat
00:42:42.420
like how are you doing like physically and mentally then we'll hit record we'll record for 30 minutes and then we hang
00:42:47.640
up and then we gossip for oh yeah 15 to 20 minutes yeah it's all about the
00:42:53.640
gossip podcast but no the concern is always that we're still recording and that I
00:43:00.119
won't have listened to the episode we've learned that lesson today right folks I won't have listened and Paul will have thought it was great and so he'll keep
00:43:06.359
the gossiping and then my reputation is ruined so I'm kidding it's never that spicy but it's a lot of fun I I love
00:43:13.079
having that recording sandwiched in the middle there how about you Joel I think when there uh have been guests a
00:43:22.560
lot of the sort of pre and post is um providing reassurance making them
00:43:27.599
feel comfortable um and so that's not the kind of things that make for interesting bloopers I
00:43:34.560
think now that we're in the era of uh co-hosts um
00:43:40.020
Stephanie and I are getting more comfortable just being silly around each other and so there will definitely start
00:43:46.200
to be more interesting outtakes that we will probably release at some point in a blooper episode
00:43:51.300
didn't the bike shed used to start with bloopers they did yes okay and so you think you might bring that back I would
00:43:57.720
love to bring that back okay you heard it you heard it here folks bloopers are coming back on the bike shed that's
00:44:02.819
exciting um how about for you drew
00:44:08.520
it depends uh the very first episode was with Andrew Mason I think the episode is
00:44:15.420
about 50 minutes long and the recording's about four hours long
00:44:21.780
because ADHD um we both have it pretty bad and we play off each other's like really well
00:44:28.260
it was it was a lot of fun it was a great episode to record it was just no one's going to listen to it well
00:44:33.960
actually I don't know if you want to listen to a four-hour episode and let me know dogs can get walked right I mean
00:44:39.180
that's the yeah uh Chris Oliver I couldn't like I never wanted him to stop
00:44:45.660
talking he had so much interesting stuff to talk about except another really long episode but on average there's about 10
00:44:52.380
to 15 minutes of just getting to know each other if we don't know each other or catching up if we do
00:44:58.140
and then there's the bulk of the recordings about an hour to 45 minutes
00:45:03.500
or 45 minutes to an hour and that comes down to about a half hour 45 minutes and
00:45:09.180
then there's however long you can stay on because we can just talk all day but
00:45:14.819
yeah there's usually about 15 minutes get cut from every episode just because it's a lot of me going off on a tangent
00:45:20.520
and then trying to come back and I just cut that part out okay well speaking of a tangent as we start to wrap things up
00:45:26.280
we're going to eat at we're going to ask each of the panelists you know why is important that you are here at Ruby
00:45:31.560
complementing I'll start with you Julie sorry what's the question
00:45:39.060
why was it important for you to come to Ruby complimenting
00:45:44.520
can I go last absolutely Paul cut that yeah
00:45:51.240
well I mean be a bit rude to sort of bail on General and Emily at the last minute wouldn't it
00:45:59.099
um no I'm super glad to be here even though I'm spending a load of spousal points
00:46:04.920
um on another conference this year um yeah it's it needed to exist
00:46:10.980
Gemma brought it into being I helped a little bit so I'm glad it's happening
00:46:17.819
I'm giving a talk come see it on Thursday
00:46:25.800
I am also giving a talk on Thursday um it's one of the reasons but I I was
00:46:32.160
happy that I got selected for many because I want to learn more about the challenges
00:46:38.040
that the community that this particular conference is for
00:46:43.260
and I think this is a great place to learn fill in gaps in my knowledge so I'm
00:46:48.540
happy to be here and learn I'm also giving a talk on Thursday
00:46:56.339
I'm really tempted to title this podcast episode instead of the rubyconf mini talk it's going to be I'm giving a talk
00:47:01.619
on Thursday that might be the title of the episode
00:47:08.420
you can find me staring into the middle distance on the reception table I love that for you what
00:47:16.260
all right well I want to thank you all so much for being here today thank you so much for the audience participation we appreciate you so much it is so easy
00:47:23.700
for us to just record and just release Into The Ether and have no idea if people are listening so thank you all so
00:47:29.400
much for supporting us as content creators and so I'm going to wrap up by quoting Barbara Tanenbaum who just gave
00:47:35.460
an amazing keynote we need your voices we need people who care thank you all