Contributor Spotlight Podcast

[Max Spevack]

On Sat, 19 Dec 2009, Mel Chua wrote:

> Even easier startup: interview chain. You interview someone, they 
> become the next interviewer and have to interview someone else, and so 
> on down the line. (Note: this only works if it's really easy to set up 
> for making a podcast, so that's something to check.)
>
> This is one of those great ideas that came up once upon a time, and 
> keeps coming up (because it /is/ a great idea), and mostly needs 
> someone to step up and do the first interview. ;)

Here is my idea for the interview chain.  Feel free to adapt, change, 
throw out, or do with as you please.  :)

GUIDING PRINCIPLE: There are a huge number of people in our community, 
and most contributors probably only really work with a handful of people 
each day.  While they may recognize many names, how much do contributors 
really know about what others are doing?  Does someone who writes for 
the Docs Team have any idea what it's like to maintain package $FOO? 
Does someone who participates in Fedora Test Days every now and then 
have any idea of what it takes to produce the Installation Guide every 
release?  How much does an Ambassador in Germany know about what 
Ambassadors in Venezuela are doing?

GOAL: Our goal is to give two Fedora contributors who might *never 
otherwise interact* a reason to have a conversation, and to share the 
most interesting parts of that conversation with the rest of the Fedora 
community.

Rule #1 -- Don't interview someone you have ever met face to face.

Rule #2 -- Don't interview someone who lives in the same country that 
you live in.

Suggestion #1 -- Try to use Fedora Talk, and record the conversation. 
You can edit it a little bit with Audacity, or just post the raw audio. 
It becomes a podcast in which Contributor #1 interviews Contributor #2 
and has a conversation in which the entire community gets to know about 
Contributor #2.  (There is a wiki page that gives some instructions 
about this, but I can't look it up because I'm writing this email on an 
airplane.)

Suggestion #2 -- If audio recording doesn't work, conduct the 
conversation over IRC, so that it is more interactive than simply 
sending a bunch of questions from one person to another over email.

Rule #3 -- Within 2 weeks of the interview, Contributor #1 (the 
interviewer) posts whatever form your interview/conversation takes to 
Planet Fedora, and perhaps to a wiki page that can track all of this. 
We already have an Interviews page on the wiki that we could grow and 
expand.

Rule #4 -- Within 2 weeks of the interview, Contributor #2 (the person 
who was interviewed) starts off a new interview in the chain.

I can see the value in having multiple chains, but I can also see the 
value in only having one chain, making it a Big Deal, and thus having a 
friendly dose of peer pressure on folks to not be the one to break the 
chain.

--Max