Podcasting Comes to the ColdFusion Community

 
Nov 10, 2005

by Judith Dinowitz

Recently, we've had, as Ray Camden calls it, a "podcasting explosion." Two very talented teams of ColdFusion developers have started podcasting on ColdFusion. (Podcasting is creating audio files and publishing them through a blog-type setting that allows people to be automatically notified when a new podcast exists.) The first team, Bryan Kaiser and Michael Haynie, are doing a very newsy community-oriented broadcast. They've taken some of the more interesting blog articles and trends in the ColdFusion world, and they both summarize and analyze the content. They've done three episodes so far. The first focused on MAX and lasted about 15 minutes, while the second went over a half hour and discussed a wide range of subjects, though the main focus of the episode was the rise of AJAX as a technology. (The third just came out this week and I haven't had a chance to review it yet.) I enjoyed their podcasts; they've got a light and entertaining style, though they tend to pull in a lot of material, referring to blogs and online articles which are not accessible via mpeg or ipod. You'll gain more from Bryan and Michael's broadcast if you listen to it in front of your computer, rather than in the car or via your ipod. You'll get a lot from the broadcast in either case, but it helps if you can actually look up the articles as you're listening. They've made the links available on their site. Bryan has also provided some AJAX code to download that allows a developer to take any address and, using Google Maps API, to figure out a longitude and latitude for that address. (You can download the code at http://www.coldfusionpodcast.com/files/cfgooglemaps.zip .)

Hal Helms and Jeff Peters
The second broadcasting team is Hal Helms and Jeff Peters, and you'll find their podcasts at helmsandpeters.com. Hal and Jeff are well-known ColdFusion and Fusebox gurus who have been active in both communities for many years. They're doing a series called Helms and Peters Out Loud, and their podcast is not a news piece at all -- it's a conversation that flows easily, and in the process, teaches a lot about the subject in question. This episode, "Design Patterns," is a step-by-step explanation of what design patterns are and how you might use them in your ColdFusion programs. According to Hal and Jeff, Design Patterns are simply a way to describe solutions to common problems that software developers are going to encounter in their work. I found their use of real world examples and their explanations of specific design patterns very easy to absorb, and I learned a lot. You can enjoy this podcast anywhere -- in the car, at the gym, laying down on the sofa, or on your computer -- because they don't use any online references. At the end of the podcast, they highly recommend Head First Design Patterns as the best book for beginners in the subject.

This is not the first time Hal has used a conversational format. Some of his "Occasional Newsletter" on halhelms.com have been dialogues in written format. Though the subject matter is always interesting, some of those dialogues can be rather dry because the conversational tone does not always translate well in the written word. Podcasting works much better for Hal's style, and it's fun to listen to Hal and Jeff throwing their ideas at each other.

"Design Patterns" is Jeff and Hal's third episode in the "Out Loud" series. The first two have already been taken down. (They replace the podcast every week with a new one in order to encourage repeat visits to their site, and in order to limit the amount of downloading at any one time.)

In addition to the Out Loud podcasts, they've got two other broadcasts up on their site, "Helms and Peters FLiP Out!" and "Tales from the FLiPt!" "Helms and Peters FLiP Out!" was produced for the Fusebox '04 conference, and has been a freebie giveaway in MP3 form since then, on both of their sites. "Tales from the FLiPt!" is this year's "album," so it debuted on helmsandpeters.com. The FLiP Out tracks are also available in audio CD format on ProtonArts.com.

Why Podcast?

Posting audio files with technical topics is not a new phenomenon in the ColdFusion world. About a year ago, someone had posted up an attempt to do a Best of Talk as a podcast. At various points since 2001, Michael Dinowitz has posted various media files in the Houseoffusion.com/media directory, though he never put them in any sort of blog type setup. They were just posted to the mailing lists.

These new podcasts are different from the older audio broadcasts because they meet two criteria: They are published in a blog-type format, which allows people to comment on them, and they are designed as a radio-type broadcast, where the presenter talks to the public rather than to themselves or to no one in particular.

I wondered what drove these programmers to podcast rather than to publish through a more traditional medium.

Michael Haynie said he and Bryan Kaiser found themselves to be better speakers then writers, so podcasting is a better medium for them. "Also, we like to engage in current and emerging technologies, and podcasting seems to be very popular. Furthermore, podcasting allows us to summarize a variety of blogs."

Hal Helms expressed a similar affinity for speaking. "I am more comfortable expressing myself in conversation ... I read enough as it is. I'm tired of reading. I like to HEAR people talk about interesting stuff. So, for example, I love itconversations.com. Often, recordings allow you to get a sense of the person behind the ideas."

Hal also said that podcasting is less inhibiting and than blogging. "When I'm talking with Jeff, I'm primarily talking to him. When I write a blog, I am more conscious of the nasty emails I'm going to get for some perceived violation of orthodoxy. And yeah, I think that inhibits me to some extent.

"Plus the written word isn't very good for providing clues as to its interpretation. If I say, 'Well, I hope everyone will take this opportunity to adopt XP,' am I being serious or sarcastic? I have to write a lot more to get my intentions across. With a recording, I can drip sarcasm and leave no doubt as to what I think."

Jeff Peters added, "Podcasting also allows us to have a free-form dialogue, which sometimes leads to interesting places. Hal and I tend to spend a lot of time talking with one another, and podcasting seemed like a natural way to let interested folks 'sit in' on our conversations. In the past, we've published IM transcripts and such, and audio is just a natural fit for us."

Michael Haynie pointed out that podcasting reaches an audience that you can't reach online. "Most technical people (our core audience) are multitaskers. Reading blogs and articles requires focus on the screen and forces them to be in front of a computer to assimilate the content. Podcasting allows them to listen to a topic and perform other tasks." By podcasting, Haynie said, he can reach an audience of commuters who can still learn while driving.

What Kind of Subject Works Best for a Podcast?

Hal felt that podcasts that discuss more abstract ideas, rather than highly technical subjects, work best. "I don't think a podcast would be a very good medium for showing people how to write SQL, for example. I need to see code for that. But as a medium for talking about the ideas of normalization of data schemas or for talking about how to design a good data schema, a podcast might be terrific."

Jeff Peters said that a good topic should be something the audience could easily imagine while listening to the podcast. "So, for example, 'why Devnotes worked for Client A but not Client B' is workable via podcast, whereas 'learning the Fusebox XML vocabularies' probably wouldn't be particularly good. The subject has to be something the listener can imagine easily."

While I had mentioned earlier that Hal and Jeff did not list any online resources, apparently this is not intentional. "It's just lack of planning," Hal admitted. "Jeff and I pick a topic to talk about and at the appointed time, one of us calls the other on Gizmo and we start recording. While it would be great to offer online resources, I fear that the added planning/coordination it would take would create more friction and we'd start falling behind in doing these. Since we want to do them regularly, it's important that producing them is as easy as possible."

ColdFusionPodcast.com (Bryan Kaiser and Michael Haynie)

HelmsandPeters.com (Hal Helms and Jeff Peters)

Helms and Peters Out Loud Issue 3: "Design Patterns"

Add a Comment
(If you subscribe, any new posts to this thread will be sent to your email address.)
  
Privacy | FAQ | Site Map | About | Guidelines | Contact | Advertising | What is ColdFusion?
House of Fusion | ColdFusion Jobs | Blog of Fusion | AHP Hosting