Maybe it’s not super obvious from the outside, but one of the things I’m trying to do with this site and podcast is be transparent about what we’re doing. When I started reaching out to potential guests, I wanted to be sure that I knew if there were subjects that they specifically wanted to avoid as well as what they’re excited to talk about. I’m really just a facilitator, after all. The show is about them (or you, because you can be a guest, too).
And you’ll (hopefully) see this on the guest submission page, because ultimately I added that as a question to the form, as well as name pronounciation and pronouns. I want to honor the guests of this show and give them the credit and opportunity to shine that everyone deserves.
But going back to when I first started putting this site together, I wanted to be clear about what the goals were (and weren’t). I don’t have any answers to how to make a great podcast that people will love, but I know what I like and I know the vibe I want to express, and I want to take you on that journey, too.
I was super slow to set expectations for this project, even to the point of not talking about it or naming things. I didn’t want this to be a thing where I put a lot of time and effort into planning a thing and then it just doesn’t happen or falls apart for unforeseen reasons. Even as I was sceduling the first couple recordings, I was holding off on deciding on a cadence or initial release date. That came later as I started to really pull things together.
As I was building the site, I started thinking about design elements and how to express these philosophical ideas through user experience. I’m not a designer…well, not really anymore. I guess some of it is still in my blood, though. So, when I was thinking about a logo, I started thinking about typefaces and accessibility and I knew that I wanted to be pretty minimal but also welcoming. And as I started to come to conclusions and make decisions about how to express that, it became clear that, if for no one else than just for myself, I should have a style guide. And, in the spirit of transparency, why not just make that public on the site?
Later, when I was thinking about what platforms the podcast would publish to, I wasn’t sure if I could or would get email in there or how to get that working but I didn’t want to discount that as a means of getting updates if email is the thing that people want to pay attention to. Since I wanted everything to be built inside WordPress, I started looking at how to run a newsletter that triggered when new blog posts were published to use that as a way to update email subscribers. And when I started thinking about that, obviously there’s the consideration of privacy and that led me to think broadly about codes of conduct.
While the Privacy Policy is pretty generic, I did do a lot of thinking about what I wanted to put into a Code of Conduct. I didn’t need a CoC page. I don’t have any intention of adding forums to this site and there is not (currently) any associated public community for it (maybe at some point I’ll spin up a Discord server, let me know in the comments if that’s something you’d be interested in). But, in the spirit of the goal of inclusivity, transparency and open communication, I created one anyway, because I saw what happened this year at PressConf when the cameras were turned off and phones were put down and, as much as was possible (with cameras actually rolling and recordings being made), I wanted to create the same kind of experience.
So there’s that. And here’s me taking you behind the curtain a bit to explain some of my decisionmaking. I don’t know where this podcast is going to go in the future. But I’m really proud of this site and hopeful and excited for the future of this podcast and I’m glad to have you along.
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