Posted on by John White

One-Hundredth Episode – Reflections on Career Podcasting

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Welcome to episode 100 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_), two Pre-Sales Technical Engineers who are hoping to bring you the IT career advice that we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we discuss making it to 100 episodes.

Original Recording Date: 12-06-2020

Topics – Episode 100

1:02 – Reflecting on The Beginning

  • John pitched Nick on the idea to start a podcast right before he began working for VMware (November / December 2017).
  • The original thesis was following Nick through the transition from IT Operations to a Technical Pre-Sales role at a vendor.
    • Thinking back, this was probably just a couple of podcast topics and not an entire podcast thesis.
  • John had been the co-host of the VMware Communities Roundtable Podcast for a while and had thought about ways to improve his VMware social footprint.
    • He had maintained a blog and frequented the Spiceworks community with some measure of success.
    • Nick’s transition to VMware reminded John of his transition from IT Practitioner to Pre-Sales and made him think of those in IT who might need some guidance on where they could take their career.
    • In a roundabout way, this eventually helped form our mantra to give people the career advice we wish we had been given earlier in our careers.
  • Some of our first topics were going to be
    • SE tools
    • Tech opinions and news (VMware and other industry news)
    • If you’re thinking about expanding your sphere of influence, starting a podcast is a great way to do it!
  • Being part of this podcast has allowed John and Nick to meet and learn from people they otherwise likely would not have. Doing this together has also strengthened their friendship.
  • John started attending a podcasting meetup and heard about the concept of pod fade.

10:41 – Fun with Statistics

26:24 – Lessons Learned from 100 Episodes

  • Set a dedicated time each week to do planning and recording.
    • We can sometimes put content together independently, but we often need to collaborate and finalize.
  • The launch comes back to John’s mind.
    • It took us a long time to launch…probably much longer than we wanted.
    • Many of our practice episodes were WAY too long and had to be chopped up into small pieces.
    • Some of our "segments" didn’t fit the topic we landed on for the podcast.
    • We learned that 90 minutes is way too long. We probably still skew a little on the long side (kissing an hour regularly and should probably be 30-45 minutes).
    • The barrier to launch became a mental block for John. He knew editing wouldn’t be too bad, but the technology platform selection turned into a rabbit hole.
      • None of that stuff really mattered to the podcast. We really needed to own the domain and the RSS feed.
    • John’s podcast meetup group talked through the editing process and different ideas on that. Some encouraged not editing at all.
      • John didn’t want editing to be a 40 hour per week job.
      • We still struggle with not using filler / weak words during our dialogues.
    • We wanted to sound more energetic and decided on less scripting for the show.
    • Most people starting a podcast ask about the technology platforms, microphones, etc.
      • We use some pretty inexpensive ATR-2100 microphones that are good enough.
      • We use Squadcast.fm for recording our shows and Audacity for editing after the fact.
      • We publish to WordPress with the Blubrry plugin.
      • Our issue has been more process than technology.
    • Will we ever run out of ideas? No way!
    • Do you have an idea for a guest whose point of view we need on the show? Please tell us.

40:55 – The Next 100 Episodes

  • It’s all about the stats…not! Are we being helpful to our listeners? That is the ultimate measure.
  • Nick really likes recruiting people to be on the show and listening to their stories, their perspectives, and their reasons for changes in career.
  • We need more diversity on the podcast (need more female guests – only 3 so far but more in the can).
  • We want to ensure we have enough quality episodes in the can to hit weekly releases. If you have an idea for an episode or a guest, please let us know!
  • John has noticed there are some podcasts in a similar / related genre that might be nice to revisit.
  • There are many people out there who don’t know they have a story to tell. If you’ve changed jobs a few times, you know something that can help the rest of us. Don’t be shy!
  • John’s favorite show formats…
    • He’s always interesting in learning other perspectives (speaking with guests about their journeys).
    • Discussing books with Nick and our different perspectives, even discussing articles
    • We have not done a career click bait article lately. Maybe it’s time to reboot that!
  • Nick’s all time favorite episode is Episode 9 where John goes into a rant on how to dress for an interview.
  • Nick wishes we had tracked episodes with stingers. Check out the stinger tag search for the full list.

Contact us if you need help on the journey.

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