On today’s episode of Application, the TYPO3 Community Podcast, we bring you a bonus episode where the tables are turned. Our usual host, Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire, is interviewed about how the podcast has been going, how we got where we are, and where Application, the TYPO3 Community Podcast is heading next in Season Two!
Read the full post and transcript, and catch up on all our episodes on typo3.org.
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Application, the TYPO3 Community Podcast by the TYPO3 Association, Open Strategy Partners, and Jeffrey A. McGuire is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
On today’s episode of Application, the TYPO3 Community Podcast, we bring you a bonus episode where the tables are turned. Our usual host, Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire, is interviewed about how the podcast has been going, how we got where we are, and where Application, the TYPO3 Community Podcast is heading next in Season Two!
Read the full post and transcript, and catch up on all our episodes on typo3.org.
Listen, like, subscribe:
Connect:
Thank you:
License
Application, the TYPO3 Community Podcast by the TYPO3 Association, Open Strategy Partners, and Jeffrey A. McGuire is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Welcome to Application the TYPO3 community podcast. One, two. Welcome to Application, the TYPO3 community podcast. I'm Jeffrey A. McGuire. You can call me jam. And this is where we celebrate the TYPO3 community, sharing your stories, talking about your projects and the difference you make in around and with TYPO3 CMS. It is my great pleasure to bring you a sort of a bonus episode for application the TYPO3 podcast today with me is Carl Richards, friend and colleague from Open Strategy Partners. And we're going to turn the tables a little bit in that Carl is going to interview me about how things have been going on the podcast, how we got where we are and where we're going next. So large virtual round of applause everyone for Carl Richards all the way from Ontario, Canada. Take it away, Carl.
Carl Richards:Thank you. Jeffrey A. McGuire, I can call you jam. Okay, so I how do you do this interview thing again? Okay. Let's talk about TYPO3 first season jam of podcast.
Jeffrey A. McGuire:You'd never believe he worked in radio, ladies and gentlemen.
Carl Richards:This is for the outtakes real correct?
Jeffrey A. McGuire:Oh, no, I'm not adding anything. You kidding.
Carl Richards:Alright, let's talk about let's talk about Season One of TYPO3. How did the podcast get started? What's what? What was its inception, so to speak,
Jeffrey A. McGuire:in my in my open source community of origin and in one of my past jobs, I had the great privilege of running a podcast, and I did a couple 100 episodes of that. And most of them were interviews. And I really believe that open source communities live and breathe from the individual people in them. And not just the famous, quote unquote, important ones. But everybody's got something to say, and everybody's got something to contribute. So it's a format that I love. And in my daily life, anytime that I've had a commute or a regular exercise routine, I love listening to podcasts. And since 2017, or so I had been out of the podcast game. Someone in the TYPO3 community approached me last year in 2020, and said, Hey, I know you like those things. And seems to me like it could be a good time for TYPO3 to have a podcast again, why don't you think about that? And I thought about it. And I proposed it to the TYPO3 association and there's an official channel and official way to propose budgets and projects. And the idea was taken on and Well, I mean, 2020 was really challenging. We got there in the end. And and yeah, I'm really happy to say that we wrapped up a 13 episode season one.
Carl Richards:So what did you hope for, for application, the TYPO3 community podcast what what goals did you have in mind for it?
Jeffrey A. McGuire:Open source software is the product of years of collaborative effort, and 1000s 10s of 1000s of people working on it, that software wouldn't happen without those people and those people wouldn't know what to do or how to do it or how how important at any given thing is without without this community around it in the community is such a complex web of relationships. And and of course, it's highly technical. And when you talk about all the technical ways to contribute and pull requests now in get and, and roadmaps for the core and features and functionality and all of that stuff. Still, the individual people are what make these communities and the digital people are what the you know, they're the ones who create the software in the end and improve it and refine it in the case of TYPO3 since about 1999. There's been this powerful, interesting collection of individuals making this stuff compared to some other long term successful open source projects. I had the feeling that not everyone within TYPO3 knew each other as much as I would hope. And I have a side mission. I feel that it's time that TYPO3 really comes back out into the world back beyond Central Europe, because it's great open source software because it's great community software. It has a lot to offer. It's it's very up to date and very relevant for today's web. And a lot of my efforts and a lot of the things that we've done it open strategy partners since 2017 have been building towards TYPO3 coming out, coming back out into the world being a relevant, obvious choice. He North America, in Asia and, and and Australasia and wherever. I think my theory is that if we know people better we know who we're working for and who we're working with. And I think, especially in a time when it's really hard for us to have a beer together, I even have a conference together. I think that hearing people's stories is really, really powerful. I love meeting the people behind this stuff. I love finding out what motivates them. My entire technology career has been about the humans behind the technology, and about connecting humans with each other, and with opportunities, and so on. So I thought that it was a really, really good time to sort of reintroduce people from the community to the rest of the community. And I'm loving it so far. And I hope people out there are too I, I have gotten wonderful genuine compliments, and the thing seems to be going well enough. We, we never promoted it much. In season one. That's something else that we're changing, I guess coming up,
Carl Richards:it's funny that you mentioned getting the word out or the coming out of TYPO3, because I live in the Western world where I'd never heard of TYPO3, until I until I joined Open Strategy Partners. So I certainly have learned a lot about it along the way. And we had some great guests as well. For our first season of application, the TYPO3 community podcast, Rochelle fukada, car, for example.
Jeffrey A. McGuire:Yes, that was my that was the first episode that we released. And the first interview that actually did kicking this thing off again, and she's a long term member of the community and now a member of the Association Board and frankly, pushing out into new territory, the TYPO3 president in France, but it's, it's not, it's not as present as it could be. So I had a lovely conversation with her. Featuring, among other things have large glass of red wine on her side of the camera, which was
Carl Richards:let's talk about some of the other guests that we had fellow Canadian boy, Patrick Gaumond.
Jeffrey A. McGuire:Now, this is when we can prove that it's a small world here. Because you say you have no connection with this stuff. You don't know anything about TYPO3. And yet, Patrick's brother
Carl Richards:20 minutes. And I found that out shortly. I guess it was about about a few months in with open strategy partners and introducing myself to Patrick Omar. And he says, Oh, yeah, my brother lives just up the parkway up the, what we call the 1000 Islands Parkway. And he says, Yeah, I haven't been there in a few years. But I know he's, that's the one that they named this element in it. That's right. That's a very famous, right. But yeah, literally, he's up the road and Petra golmaal, about probably about two and a half hours for me. So small world, for sure.
Jeffrey A. McGuire:And Patrick is the webmaster of quebec.ca and runs a bunch of really important government infrastructure. And he's sort of a shining lighthouse outpost of TYPO3 in, in, outside of Central Europe. And he he's actually the reason why TYPO3 is really strong in Quebec. And and there's a couple of agencies there. It's really it's, it's he's, and he's also just straight up funny. He's got a standing joke that he tries to work into every conversation and I don't think it's going to work very much longer. The first few times I called him as I was getting to know him. He'd always end up saying, Oh, you know, I am sorry, but I only speak English about a week and ear. And but Patrick is joining the TYPO3 Association Board, meaning that he's going to have to speak English a lot more. So good luck with that, Patrick, you can always call me.
Carl Richards:What's funny is I'm speaking with him myself. And maybe it's because we're literally within a few 100 kilometers of one another, but I had no problem understanding his English. So it's not an issue at all. And then we wrapped up the season with what I think what started out to be a regular recording. But it got so deep into conversation that we had to dedicate three episodes to this, and it was a great conversation you had with Volker grow bomb.
Jeffrey A. McGuire:I don't know whether the conversation with Volker was an epic or a saga. But I booked 90 minutes with him like I book with everybody in the hope that I can get 30 to 40 good minutes. And basically, three or four hours later, I was like, Where are we? It was. He's so interesting. And he's such a deep thinker and he's got great ideas and his job now as Chief Product Officer of TYPO3 CMS is also really, really interesting. And he's working for this community product itself and coordinating with Benny on On the theme based roadmap, and I'm so impressed, and I'm so impressed with his thinking about something that I say a lot, but I'm channeling the wishes of the community channeling real agency needs real client needs and turning them into software. And, and from our perspective at open strategy partners, folker said something that I think is brilliant that I think we should probably quote on our own website. But product communication should be part of the product itself. It's not an afterthought, but spreading the word about your product is essential to that success. Right. So that fits perfectly with our mission and with our investment in TYPO3 and everything, and I am. Yes, so it was an amazing, amazing and long conversation spread out over episodes 11 and 12. And 13. I really enjoyed it. I hope everyone else has enough patients to cope with it. But you know, it's out there now. So
Carl Richards:we did actually see the lighting in the windows changed from noon to afternoon to evening to overnight. No, it wasn't, it wasn't that long, but it was certainly was a great outcome that that you that you had. And in hearing it back, I was blown away by by the content, actually, I was blown away by all of it. Because as I said, as I'm walking through, and, you know, cutting these up and piecing them together, I'm learning about all of the aspects of TYPO3 and how it is. And again, it's learning it's technology. But it's it's understanding that this is something that is that affects us in ways that we don't even understand that we don't understand in our daily lives and obviously more an integral part in in Europe than it is in North America. But certainly, the application, so to speak of TYPO3 has phenomenal impact on how we live our daily lives.
Jeffrey A. McGuire:I'm flattered to to hear you say that I think that helps. Another part of the mission for the podcast, which I think is if people from the outside see a healthy happy community to hear a few examples of these interesting people contributing to things. It's another gateway to getting more people using TYPO3, it's another channel where people could discover it, learn more about it. And and and have a chance to jump in. So the fact that you feel that you have no connection to the web, or CMS per se, historically, and yet you find these conversations interesting. That's a good sign. So you know, nice.
Carl Richards:Alright, so other guests that you spoke with, I wanted to see if you could narrow it down to one, they all had great content, by the way, and all great ways that they're using TYPO3, and we found out through application, how they're using it, but of the guests you spoke with who had the most creative way in which they're using TYPO3,
Jeffrey A. McGuire:this is a tough question. And I could say, I could slice and dice this group. And I think in the end, what's maybe the most interesting is is the range of different relationships they have with it and the things that they do. I like to ask people what a cool project was. And you know, Fokker talked about a really groundbreaking project, or, you know, more than a decade ago, that sounds very much like how things work now and what have you But to be honest, like shell and Tomas and Louisa and Benny worked for agencies that do client projects. So to some degree, they're involved with building websites. Shell and Patrick are involved with the TYPO3 association and contributing their time and and thinking to the well being of the community and the relationship with the world that Mateus Schreiber is this almost unique representative in the world presenting this commercial support options and enhancements to an open source community product, which is fascinating and folker is technically employed there, but also like working in a really unique role, thinking about the product itself. And this multiplicity of relationships highlights the really strong community that TYPO3 has around it. Um, you could also say that Andrei, you know, he just sticks around running the infrastructure because he loves the community and he doesn't really do anything with it in his day job anymore. Even though in his past he wrote Oh, you know, he was pretty cool because some code that he wrote as a as a student or as an intern or something is still running on a on a ad on a website. I think he talked about that. That was pretty cool. But you know, Louisa volunteers and runs marketing for the project Felicity, through being at OSP helped make this new, amazing book, but she also had no background in TYPO3 before she joined over 30 Partners now and now she's a official volunteer. And on a couple of the community teams and sheets, it's all I think this I think this web of relationships is is overall the most fascinating part out of that if I'm if I'm allowed to cheat that way,
Carl Richards:of course you are. It sounds like they all get a gold star though in some capacity for, you know, their contributions and how they're using TYPO3 and some of the most they're all their creativities are different, but they're certainly using it in some capacity and bringing it to their not only what they do, but how they're helping others as well. Absolutely, yes,
Jeffrey A. McGuire:yes. I do have a favorite story from season one, though. I do have a favorite.
Carl Richards:Okay, from let's hear one.
Jeffrey A. McGuire:Patrick Gaumond crazy person in a wonderful way. Quebec WA, also in a wonderful way and type of... very deeply enthusiastic a out TYPO3. I was interviewing him and he was on camera and his his home office, his home of ice studio is actually a stu io, okay? And behind him, whe e I could see there was a sitar and an upright bass, and ome guitars and stuff. And I ust asked sort of like casua ly, like, Oh, hey, you, musician Do you play that? You know, I t ink it was a sitar, maybe in the back. And he's like, Oh I lay all of this. And he picke up the camera and panned thr ugh cellos and multiple elec ric guitars and acoustic bass and keyboards and all this st ff. It's like, but actually, hat I'm doing right now is I'm building custom guitar ped ls. And then we started a huge m sic geek outage. This is the conversation and I'm musi ian myself. And, and it's exa tly the sort of passionate gee ing out about something, you k ow, that everybody does in, in his world of open source, right. But you know, everybody's also got their thing that's not the ode or whatever. It was really un. And he's really, he's really it was just so much fun. And al ost as a joke, I'm like, So hey we don't have music for his podcast yet. Are you gonna w ite the theme song? For me? t's like, Oh, um, is it okay, f I do it next weekend, because I'm really busy right now. An so the origin story for our t eme music is Patrick's interv ew, and he sent a few demos, and one of them I liked and I though it was just so quirky and stra ge. And I put it straight on epi ode zero. And then he's like, Oh, that was my demo. It was terrible. Why did you put hat on there? And it's like, No, no, it's awesome. Now record the production one, and we'll ave like a raw outtake version a d a production version. So we h ve, we have about three version of that. And we have some, ome some of the source files and things. We're, we're gonna mix it up a little bit more with his music in season two, I hope but the, you know, the music for the podcast came from a commu ity member. And I didn't know I ust think I think that's a re lly beautiful. That was a re lly beautiful mom
Carl Richards:Certainly one of the memorable ones too. I remember seeing that video and seeing all the instruments and I'm thinking, am I in a music store? No, I'm looking at some ody's office. What did you l arn from season one, the good .. And certainly the areas o opportunity moving forwa
Jeffrey A. McGuire:I hoped to find all these stories. And every conversation I have gone into has been wonderful in its own way. Everyone gets excited about something different. And as long as I remember to listen, and notice, I think the conversations have gone some really interesting directions and with the goal of introducing these people to to the community and, and sharing these stories, I think that's gone, as well as it could have so far, I think I'm very happy with it. There have been no problems. Oh, and frankly, having these conversations at times has been a tonic for me in the the year of the pandemic and the year of the lockdowns and the chance for me to make quite meaningful connections with people and have long, deeper conversations with people over over an hour or so has been a real blessing for me. And I think that's that, I'm really grateful for that chance. Frankly, the challenge has also been figuring out how to do this best remotely. In my quote unquote, old days, I did 220 or 240 episodes. And you know, of those, probably to at least 200 were interviews and of those 200 interviews. 180 probably were in person with a microphone in someone's face. And I liked that vibe. And I like that personal energy and the remote thing has come together remarkably well. However, we have tried three, four, or five or six different platforms for recording these things. And, you know, respectfully, some people I speak with only want to be on a free and open source platforms and using and that's presents its own set of challenges and the commercial platforms that we're familiar with and less from it. With each of them seems to have advantages and drawbacks, and it's been a real, that getting the technical side right has been really hard. And I've lost interviews with people, I've lost one entire half of an interview. So I have one person speaking and then silence in the gaps, which isn't very much fun for the listeners. And I'm happy had incredibly varying video quality. I like to have a video version because I think people enjoy seeing, seeing seeing someone else's expression when they're when they're when they're excited about something, for example. So the technical side has been a real challenge and and coming up with a with a workflow that makes sense and sort of figuring out the promotion. And that's coming together. Mostly, I'm not sure that we're ever going to get the bugs out. But I but um, yeah, I think we're I think we're settling into, I think we're settling into a zone, I think we've got most of the bits covered as long as the like, on the days that the graham had,
Carl Richards:let's face it since 2017, I think you said was your last Inception into into podcasting. Technology has evolved, there's almost an expectation. And I'm recognizing this too, as somebody who has a podcast as well and helps other people prepare their their podcasts. But there's almost an expectation for not just audio, there has to be video and part of the marketing ends up being also audio grams and transcription. So it's not just about cranking out something that is in one format. It's multiple formats. And that evolved, as you said immensely in the last 12 to 18 months, for obvious reasons.
Jeffrey A. McGuire:I also noticed that not only the technology landscape has changed, and the devices have changed, but the there's an incredible service ecosystem around podcasting now. So happily, we're in the second renaissance of the podcast and all of that do not consider it a disadvantage that there's that there's a million podcasts out there, I don't mind I think people get to listen to what they want to in many cases. The the service landscape was overwhelming for me to come back to and say, you know, I could because so many of the things that I used to have to do by hand are completely just a given now, and there's all these news. Yeah, it was, it was pretty interesting stepping out. But um, the fundamental truth of having your voice in someone's ear is a privilege. And I think that we need to talk about things that people care about. And and I think we can have an effect, I think we can make a positive difference in the world. And that's what
Carl Richards:it seems like we've had a positive influence in the TYPO3 community, how has it changed the TYPO3 community and the outside world for that matter?
Jeffrey A. McGuire:I am not going to make a big claim about that. I will say that we've gotten compliments about the podcast. And if people have contacted me about contents of a couple of the podcasts in a positive way with questions or wanting to know more. That's great. I know that we have a couple of real fans out there. And that's fantastic. That's really flattering. And I think like I said, I think we are introducing people to more of the community. And I'm I'm very, very glad about that. You know, but when you ask if we're making a difference in the outside world, right. I don't know if we are yet. And we kept sort of a semi low profile in terms of promotion, because I wanted to get a few episodes out before we before we push it too hard. The really good news, and maybe this is a good spot to shift gears. So the good news about Season Two and going forward now from mid 2021 onwards is that the application the TYPO3 community podcast is now really officially part of the TYPO3 community family in that we will promote ourselves through the app TYPO3 Twitter channel, our videos are now integrated into the official TYPO3 presence on YouTube. So we become part of the information program and it could it could come to pass that the podcast will include other formats and other hosts and I'm and I think that's pretty exciting. And I think that's a real interesting opportunity. And I think if people have ideas for an episode or a conversation or or a mini series or something, but don't want to go and make the investment of starting their own podcast, we have the infrastructure and that the potential to be a channel for you if if you've got that idea, so I'd love to hear about those ideas. And I think it's a really really interesting opportunity to be even more of a committee that's really exciting. And, and certainly
Carl Richards:a good segue into into what what what else can we expect from season two, what's new, what's different? Obviously being in the the official TYPO3 channel is is part of it, and that's a great place for application to be. What else can we expect?
Jeffrey A. McGuire:I'm hoping to zero in on consistency and quality. Now, I already said that the Gremlins make that impossible some days and I know that some of the things that we've already got in the can, we're challenging days, so there's never gonna be a perfect episode. But like I said, we're getting our tooling straight and our process straight. And that's gonna be, we're gonna make it as good as we can. And as fun as we can. And I, I'm hoping to have a regular feature maybe once a quarter or twice a year where we bring in different internal community leaders and have conversations about the state of the project. For example, we could talk with Benny about the core folk or about the roadmap. We could talk with Daniel Homer Rodin, about the expansion committee and how things are going to bring TYPO3 to Africa to Asia, to North America, and so on. We might talk with someone like Mateus. Lesniak about mentoring and the state of that and what we might do more. So I think that there could be some theme based episodes or like a quarterly or or twice yearly check in about the project. I'm quite excited about doing that. And then yeah, and then we'll see what people want. I've been trying to do a suggested guest list. And just with the guest suggestions, I think I've already got more names on that list than then we have slots in season two, and I have my own list of about 30 more people that I wrote down that we still haven't talked, so I don't know. So, if you're enjoying this podcast, um, yeah, let's let's make it happen. Let's keep it keep it rolling. Because um, yeah, I'm enjoying
Carl Richards:Do you want to spill the beans of who we can expect. As far as who we're interviewing for season two, we have a few names already that are on the Hot sheet so to speak.
Jeffrey A. McGuire:Alright. Okay.So, coming up in season two, in no particular order. We will be talking with Annette Yay. nition. Danielle z man, Stefan Boozman adhan simmerman will share his obsession with TYPO3 and snowboarding with us. It's a pretty fun conversation. And Daniel homodyne. And I had a really nice conversation as well about what he does about TYPO3 in Romania and Eastern Europe and about international expansion. And I'm really, really excited to get that one up soon, too. So yeah, very, very cool. Carl, thank you for thank you for turning the mic on me, and grilling me about what we've been up to thank you also, for your help. Carl is part of our behind the scenes production machinery. And he is apart from being a wonderful human being. He's helping us with this production. And he's the sort of person if you've got an idea about a podcast, or if you want some speaking coaching or some other things, those are some of the things that Carl does, in his own time. And I would be very happy to hook you up. And and, you know, get in touch with Carl, call shameless plug. what's your website? It's what's your
Carl Richards:website is Carl speaks.ca. Carl with a C. Carl speaks.ca. And yeah, I'd love to have a conversation with anyone who's interested in finding out more about that. And yeah, thanks, Jim, for this opportunity. And I'm looking forward to an amazing, amazing season two. And I think we talked about this for roughly I just one final question. And I'll throw it back to you to do the wrap up. overall goal mission for season two, can you narrow down to one thing,
Jeffrey A. McGuire:I want to do more of what we started in season one, and then make it better?
Carl Richards:jam again, thanks so much for this opportunity. I'll throw the mic back to you.
Jeffrey A. McGuire:Okay, be gentle though. It's expensive. Alright, so this was our, I'm not sure if it's an interregnum or interstitial episode, I'll have to go and look up the words properly. But this wraps up completely and totally Season One of application, that TYPO3 community podcast, and then takes us into starting season two, very, very soon in a podcast app and YouTube, in your neighborhood. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for your time, Carl. And for everyone out there listening. I hope this was at least reasonably interesting, informative, and see you all soon. Thanks to the TYPO3 Association for sponsoring this podcast. Thank you, b 13, and Stephanie coisa for our logo. Now Siebel Cooper three comma TYPO3 developer and musician x tall, the noun for our theme music. Thanks again to today's guest. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe in the podcast app of your choice and share application that TYPO3 community podcast with your friends and colleagues. If you didn't like it, please share it with your enemies. Would you like to play along and suggest a guest for the podcast? Do you have questions or comments? reach out to us on Twitter at TYPO3 podcast. You can find show notes, links and more information in our posts on TYPO3.org. Remember, open source software would not be what it is without you. Thank you all for your contributions.
Carl Richards:Thank you.
Jeffrey A. McGuire:All right, okay. All right. Okay. All right now, I'm going to hit stop. And we're going to hope that all of this thing uploads and compiles and does its thing. Here we go. Do not close this tab, do not close this tab.