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Hello everyone.
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That's pretty good for Thursday! Welcome to the shortest talk title at the conference: Start Your Ruby Podcast Today! No Experience Required. This is the first time I've given a talk with more than one person, let alone three people.
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This is also the first time Andrew's giving a talk. Is this your first in-person talk, Chris?
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Would you believe that Chris has given hundreds of talks?
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Thank you all for being here. As I said, it’s Thursday afternoon of a three-day conference, and I’m surprised anyone is here who isn't Chris's wife.
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Today we're going to talk about podcasting. The goal is that if you've ever thought about podcasting or if you're not quite sure you could do it, hopefully we can change your mind and inspire you to start.
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Before we get started, let me introduce myself. I’m Jason, this is Andrew, and this is Chris. Andrew and I both work at a company called Podia, which is an all-in-one platform for creators. We help people create courses, digital downloads, and more. I like to say we’re a Ruby on Rails palace. If you want to learn more about Podia, you can just add a .com to that.
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I'd also like to talk on Chris’s behalf about GoRails, which Chris started. GoRails provided Chris the opportunity to be here today. Also, thank you to Hatchbox and all the other community resources that Chris has dedicated time to.
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The three of us are excited to be here. Chris and his wife, Brooke, came to Portland a few days early; they were so excited. I was excited too! When I landed on Monday, I downloaded the Hilton app to look for my stay at the DoubleTree that I booked two months ago.
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Unfortunately, I realized I had booked for the 2020 conference instead of 2022. I ended up at the DoubleTree, suitcase in hand, worried that I was going to have to sleep at the convention center.
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Thank you to the couple of people who helped me find a room. If it weren’t for my friend Andrea, who had a place to stay, I might have had some troubles. The real hero of my story is my wife, Shannon, who found me a hotel in ten minutes.
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Anyway, enough about my travel woes. Let's talk about Remote Ruby. Tomorrow will mark our 180th episode of Remote Ruby, and over the last three years, we've learned a lot.
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Is anyone here familiar with Remote Ruby? That’s still pretty wild!
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I wanted to quickly share how this talk came about. On February 28th of this year, which may have been the last day to submit proposals, I saw this track and mentioned to Chris that I had this talk idea. I asked him, 'Do you want to do a multi-speaker talk?'
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He thought that was a good idea, and we figured it would be cool to talk about podcasting. Not because we think we know what we're doing, but because we want to show that anyone can do it.
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There was one issue, though: there are three of us, and I had only spoken to Chris. I thought, 'It’s cool; I don’t have to tell Andrew about it because surely, the talk won’t be accepted.' Then I got the email saying we were approved, and I thought, 'Well, this is uncomfortable.'
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So I waited for the right moment, which happened to be during a Zoom call at work. I casually mentioned to Andrew that he was giving a talk at RailsConf. So, as I said earlier, we’re a podcast that talks about Ruby on Rails, and now Elixir. We used to talk about JavaScript, but with Rails 7, that kind of faded away.
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Let me share how the podcast came to be. In 2017, Chris and I chatted every week. We mostly talked about Ruby, Rails, and building products because that was what we were doing.
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We’d often joke that we should start a podcast, but I thought, 'Nobody wants to listen to this; we’re just chatting!'
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But in 2018, I started an online Meetup called Remote Ruby, where we would have virtual meetups once a month to discuss Ruby.
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At the time, the local Ruby community in Memphis was fading away, and there were only a few of us left. Our first meetup occurred in February 2018. I opened a Slack group and even initiated a Google Hangout, inviting Chris to give a talk on building a hosting platform with Ruby.
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If you're unfamiliar, that’s Hatchbox. The talk Chris gave was fantastic, and it gave me hope for building a real community. After that, I put out a call for more speakers, but no one responded. I thought maybe I was being too ambitious.
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I decided to keep doing the Meetups. In the second event, I prepared a talk on calculations I did in a Ruby program to figure out the best way to get out of debt. I was happy with it, and once again I asked, 'Who wants to speak at the next one?' But again, no one volunteered.
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At the next meetup, I decided to share my screen and we worked through Ruby Koans together. If you’re unfamiliar, Ruby Koans is a fun exercise where you download a repository, run the specs, and make the tests pass. It teaches a lot about the Ruby language.
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Over the next few weeks, Chris and I kept discussing the discouraging lack of engagement, and we realized that we wanted community content. When I first got into Ruby in 2012, there were podcasts and blogs. Gradually, that has become less common.
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Chris said, "Why don’t we just podcast ourselves?" I thought that was a fair idea. So we set out to record a podcast with one rule: to do it as simply as possible.
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This rule kept us engaged beyond the first few episodes. We realized we needed good audio quality, but also that both Chris and I were not audio experts. We didn’t want that to become a massive burden, so we recorded on Google Hangouts at first. It may not have been the most professional approach, but it was simple.
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We didn’t have an RSS feed either. Initially, all we did was update our website to link to our YouTube videos and see if anyone listened.
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We realized that we could always improve but wanted to keep starting as low-maintenance as possible. We quickly focused on the most basic aspects: just talking about Ruby and Rails. We avoided fancy intros and sponsors.
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If you want to start a podcast today, I suggest starting small. Find a topic that excites you, such as Ruby, and maybe partner with a friend or co-host. Use whatever microphone you have at first; modern smartphones can suffice.
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If you have to record alone, opt for applications like QuickTime to keep it simple. When we record now, we typically use Zoom for our calls, as it benefits the overall audio quality a lot.
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Focusing on good audio helps maintain engagement and will save you a lot of post-production headaches. Remember that editing takes a lot of time and should be done sparingly. This brings us to how we've adjusted our process to stay simple yet professional.
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After recording a few episodes, we realized this podcast was something we wanted to continue. We began to take podcasting more seriously.
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Now, we transitioned to using Transistor, a podcast hosting platform, which provided us with the necessary tools for organizing and sharing our podcast.
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In general, our learning experience evolved. From working with Ryan, we also learned how vital audio quality is.
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Finding ways to keep our production straightforward and avoiding overly complicated setups was key.
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Also, bringing on guests was pivotal. Initially, we found it hard to come up with topics for regular episodes. So, to keep things fresh, we started inviting guests.
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We'd send out a few invites, and to our surprise, guests like Richard Schneeman said yes.
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That episode with Richard gave us a big boost in downloads compared to previous episodes, hitting a hundred more downloads in the first 30 days.
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Inviting guests allowed us to have meaningful discussions and gain insights into important topics.
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We realized that preparing for guests and holding engaging conversations requires practice and effort.
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Over our journey, we maintained a balance of interviews and casual chats to keep our content engaging.
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We continued to expand our guest list until we had over 16 episodes, many featuring people we admired.
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Preparation, familiarity, and good questions made for dynamic conversations that kept the audience engaged.
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As with any podcast, it’s important to know when to pass on guests who might not be a good fit. We’ve refined our skills along the way.
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But the most vital advice we have for anyone thinking about podcasting is to stay consistent. It’s easy to get sidetracked, but sticking to a consistent schedule is the key.
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To build an audience, focus on being reliable. You can adjust your schedule, whether it's weekly, biweekly, or monthly, but stick to it.
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Having multiple hosts can help keep the podcast running when one is unavailable. It’s less stressful and keeps things moving even when life gets complicated.
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As we wrap up, we want you to know this is your turn to join the Ruby podcast community. There’s room for more voices. We can share experiences on building businesses with Rails or learning something new.
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If you’re considering starting a podcast, reach out to us. We’ll assist you in getting started. Just tweet us, and we’ll be happy to chat.
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Thank you for your time, and as always, happy podcasting!