LincolnBlogs

  I don’t even remember where the idea came from, but it was decided that after 365 shows, that’s one for every day of the year, folks, that we would consider that “season 1” for the LinuxLink TechShow, and we would then, finally, start on “season 2”. Those 365 episodes comprise 7 years of weekly recordings and add up to roughly 30 days of continual audio, day and night. I guess you could say we have been doing this for a while….

  Since last year’s Ohio Linux Fest we have had a few TLLTS Elders meetings to decide upon what we saw as the problems of the first TLLTS season, what we could do to fix them and what kinds of things we wanted to pursue for season 2. We tried to take into consideration the things we had positive and negative comments on from our listener base and years of our beloved “hate mail” 🙂

  First and foremost we needed to address our constant audio issues. Long have we had complaints about our audio so we needed to make that a priority. We do have a very complicated setup in that area due to our arrangement of multiple hosts and guests in multiple locations, local and remote, not to mention the extra issues caused by being a live show, which causes us to add even more audio sources. You see, we don’t postprocess audio and dub things in later like promos and intro/outros. They happen as we roll along live, just like everything else. As it turns out though, a lot of our audio issues were actually caused by NOT using the Linux built in goodies. They were caused by our analog setup (mixer, compressor, cabling, etc..) Once we identified that we actually could remove that mess all together and just go digital, things got a lot better pretty fast.

  Other and maybe minor things we needed to address had to do with the loose format of the show, the show and guest planning and general preparedness, the timing of things during the show, regular guest hosts, the website and things of that sort. Boy, there sure were lots of things to work on!

  We decided that we needed to tighten things up a bit with the show format. We settled on trying hard to keep the show times from 8:30pm to 10pm (and no longer). We want to try and divide the show into sections, giving time to any interviews we may have while still sequestering some time for us for a little discussion as well. We decided on using some music as a separator, much like we did early on in the show – an intermission. An exciting addition here would be the possibility of also adding in some “shorts” or short topical audio segments dealing with our hosts specialty subjects. These would be not only a way for us to facilitate an important break in the show, but a way to generate some interest in a recurring topic and also provide a possible stepping stone into the hosts discussion on the second half of the show.

  We decided we would like to get not only some more good new guests, but also to revisit some of our wildly interesting past guests to see what they have been up to. Luckily, the ones I have contacted thus far have not only remembered us, but have also agreed to stop by again to say hello 🙂 Make sure to check the calendar for who’s coming up and send along your suggestions of people you would like to hear from!

  One of the major things I was tasked with working on and updating was the website. I thought the old one was fantastic, mostly because I designed and coded it, but the other hosts assured me it was time for something new 🙂 I pursued the great and famous Richard Querin who graciously came up with a great looking front page and theme and sent it to me. A little php work and content by Dann and I and you have the masterpiece you see now.

  I have to say that I really enjoyed doing the show for the last seven years. I get to talk shop with my buddies every week. I get to talk to really cool linux/open source celebrities. I get to meet and make a lot of geeky friends from all over the world, people who I have come to consider as almost family ove the last 7 years. It has been a helluva fun ride and I am eager to put a good start to the next 7, so make sure and head on over to http://tllts.org and join in the fun. The prelude to season 2 was recorded and put up for distribution right at the end of OLF 2010 and the official start happens 9/15/2010 @8:30pm EDT. See ya there!