It was a little over five years ago in Sandusky, OH. I was attending Codemash - a conference that had yet to become as famous as it is today - and I had brought a video camera with me. My plan was to interview conference attendees on camera - asking them about a favourite technology or a project of which they were particularly proud. The first person who agreed to an interview was Steve Smith. Steve was delivering a talk later in the day on performance and scalability, so we talked about that. It went really well and gave me confidence to interview a few more people. I discovered that John Kellar also brought a video camera and was involved in a similar project. He had already released a couple episodes, so I interviewed him about his strategies for producing his show. It took me almost a month before I was able to edit the videos and produce something worth sharing. Originally, I posted them to my blog; but within a year, I had registered the TechnologyAndFriends.com domain and moved all episodes over to that site. 

I elected to make John’s interview Episode 1 because that served as a good intro to the show.

I’ve made a few changes to the format over the years: The show tends to be a little longer now than the first few episodes, some of which were under 5 minutes; I’ve created a couple different intros and outros for the show over the years; and I’ve experimented with the show’s music, now settling on an open source song recorded by DJ Cline, which I like and which won’t tempt copyright lawyers.

Last week, I published Episode 300, which featured clips from the previous 99 episodes. I marked episodes 100 and 200 with similar montages.

I’m proud to see the show last as long as it has; I’m proud that people still watch and tell me they enjoy it; I’m proud of the outstanding guests I’ve been able to persuade to appear on the show. I’ve learned enough over the years to improve the quality of the show – I’m better able to think on my feet and ask follow up questions, and I’ve bought much better audio equipment and become more proficient at my editing tools. One thing I’m particularly proud of is that I have released a new episode every week for the last 2 years. I believe this consistency is important in order to maintain a regular viewership.

I can’t predict how long I will continue this project, but my hope is it will be at least another 5 years and at least another 300 shows.

If you are a regular viewer, I thank you. If you are unfamiliar with the show, I welcome you to check it out at http://technologyandfriends.com.

TechnologyAndFriends