Yes, that’s right – I recorded a podcast with Scott Hanselman 😀 There’s a story behind it too…

I bumped into Scott at NDC Sydney. It was the evening before the main conference started, and we were both helping out with the Kids Code Club. We started chatting about what I was presenting on Thursday – video transcoding systems, cloud services, various price points, why our new system was worth building.

Scott: “Hey, would you like to do a podcast? It’s just a really casual chat, just like this.”
Me: “Sure! Sounds good.”

Just to make sure I was prepared, I wrote some notes about video transcoding, AWS services, and reviewed bits we’d built in our system. A couple of weeks later, we caught up via Skype:

Scott: “Great, thanks for doing this! It’s usually best to talk about something you’re really passionate about. What would that be?”
Me: “Um…” thinking: video transcoding is pretty awesome, but it’s not my #1 super-fun-happy-thing. But now I have to come up with thirty minutes of content I haven’t prepared…

I’m not really good at impromptu. That’s why formats like my blog (where I can draft things), and public talks (where I can prepare), work okay for me. So doing a thirty minute discussion flying blind was a terrifying prospect.

However, Scott was really, really supportive. After some back and forth, we came up with a blend of topics that include continuous learning, becoming more social, finding your tribe, and making it work for you. You can listen to the podcast here.

I’ve got a healthy respect for Scott’s work now that I’ve seen how much time, effort and support he puts in to the things he does.

If you haven’t heard Hanselminutes before, give it a try. There’s some great slices of developer life in there. And now I’m one of them. 🙂