Proposal of (another) podcast

[Elena Williams]

Merry Festive season to everyone to whom this is relevant!

tl;dr:

- News Podcast: basically reading blog out loud, hopefully short: ~15mins 

- Aiming for 30-Dec recording/publishing

- Seeking review of script/show notes for the 30-Dec recording

- Seeking file hosting suggestions

In light of the recent new update email (thanks Curtis!) and apparent recent discussions about dispersing news and information, I'm interested in doing a new kind of Django podcast.

This project is intended to target the members of the community who receive their news via podcasts -- to complement the blog, update email, announcements list, twitter, etc.

The aim is to be as short and content rich as possible within reason. My intended format is:

0. Security Advisories
1. Upcoming Cut-off Dates
2. Releases and Release Notes
3. Conferences/Events
4. General News
5. Community Requests
(+ Django Dev email list summary)
(+ Interview with core)

I have mainly prepared the content I'd intend to record and publish on 30-Dec:

https://github.com/elena/django-news-podcast/blob/master/9999_2013-12-29.md

Patches are most welcome for any corrections or additions! Obviously this is my first attempt at this.

After talking to Curtis Maloney (aka FunkyBob) I'd intend to sync with every second email update, the 29/30 December will coincide with that.

A while ago I did an outline of a proposed format, which I've discussed with a few people including Curtis and Russell Keith-Magee: https://github.com/elena/django-news-podcast

To summarise: the format is basically reading out loud the emails (as was gracefully deduced by Russ).

The intention is to be short, say ~15 minutes for the main content and additional/bonus content going on for no longer than 30-45 minutes.

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I'm wary that having seen the podcasts come and go that it's obviously tedious and/or boring and/or problematic in some way as they have tended to expire. This particular factor has been something I've given a lot of consideration to before sending this email.

My solution to this apparent pitfall is to attempt to make it as communal, modular and simple as possible -- with a rigid "fill-in-the-blanks" format, thus easily handed around for multiple people to do, should whatever happens to the other podcasts, happen to me.

At this stage (it's been on my mind for so long) I'm willing to champion this for as long as I can, though if anyone is interested in helping out with helping with any part of this project, eg, preparation, interviews, recording, editing, other segments, journalism/recording advice,  I'll welcome it enthusiastically!

I'm concerned about posting erroneous information, but I think that this is unavoidable and hopefully by making the script/show notes open to patches this will be a tractable problem.

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Ideally I'd love to add interviews to the format.

For example it seems as though it would have been great to have a chat with Aymeric during this time as he's been doing a lot of work and to have him summarise this in his own words would be informative, though perhaps I'll be able to chase him up in the new year when I have real internet back again.

Also it feels like too much to attempt: doing an interview for this first edition (which I intend to record tomorrow). I've been travelling during this time and my internet has been appallingly (un-skype-ably) bad and it's also too much pressure at this early stage. 

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I may still get it all wrong and don't promise anything will come of this suggestion, though have gotten to the stage where I feel confident enough to approach this list.

Essentially this is my own itch -- I'm motivated to scratch it and it seems like a bit of fun.

My final dilemma is where to make the podcast available from (in a hosting sense), but as I don't know the final file size yet I haven't agonised about this. I have plenty of options -- though any advice would be sincerely appreciated.

Any feedback at all would be sincerely appreciated actually! 

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Elena Williams
@elequ