Daniel Kennett

This post is included in the iKennd.ac Audioblog! Want to listen to this blog post? Subscribe to the audioblog in your favourite podcast app!

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For well over a year, I’ve been talking about doing a podcast. In fact, in late November 2017 I made a handshake promise with a friend that we’d both get the first episode of our podcasts out “by Christmas at the latest!”, so I’d already been going on ab-out it for far too long a year ago. (She hasn’t released hers either, so we did at least do the same thing!)

The thing is, I have lofty plans for my podcast. It’ll have guests, and a theme that runs through each episode. Hopefully, it’ll carve out its own unique little niche within the rather crowded genre of developer podcasts and will provide some genuine value and interest to its listeners.

The problem with starting a podcast with the goal of having guests, and a central theme, and its own unique little niche, and genuine value and interest… is that it’s a lot of work. Especially if it’s your first podcast. I did make some decent strides — I have the equipment, and I did some work on the first few episodes (even finding guests!).

However, I don’t want to waste my guests’ time by putting out shoddy work, and I want to to start out the gate with a great first episode… and, well, writing this now, I realise how unrealistic my own expectations were, which explains over a year of procrastination.

So, I hereby announce… I am not starting a podcast just yet. (Pause for applause.)

The thing is, I really love contributing to the community. Even though my blog has been relatively quiet for the past couple of years, I’ve been giving talks here and there. In September, I gave a talk at the Swift and Fika conference here in Stockholm entitled Adventures in API Design, in which I mixed some stories of what I’ve been up to over the past couple of years with some useful advice about designing APIs. More recently, I spoke at a CocoaHeads meeting about writing command-line apps with Swift Package Manager, in which I talked about drone photography and some tips and tricks for writing little command-line apps in Swift.

I don’t have any formal training in giving talks, but with each one of these I give, I get better. I still say the word “so” far too much, and I forget to breathe half the time so I end up out of breath, but I’m improving! And, importantly, I’m having a lot of fun! And, most importantly, people tell me they like my talks and get something useful from them.

I really want to get started with my awesome, guest-filled podcast. However, I need to learn and get better at it before I can.

So, I hereby announce… The iKennd.ac Audioblog (Pause for applause?)

In order to get comfortable with my equipment and being behind a mic, with audio editing, and the whole experience of hosting a podcast, I’m starting an audioblog. It’s like an audiobook, but a for a blog! For each post on this blog going forward, I’m going to try to make an audio counterpart that’s of a decent quality and engaging to listen to. I have a couple of really meaty posts planned for the next couple of months, so recording these should give some great practice for when Daniel’s Awesome, Guest-Filled Podcast¹ comes along sometime in 2019.

In fact, this post is on the audioblog! Why not give it a listen? I’m genuinely interested in hearing any feedback on audio quality, how I sound, if I manage to make the listening experience engaging, and so on.

You can subscribe to the audioblog via links at the top of this post.