The narrower the better 

Pro:PHP is a podcast featuring interviews with developers of LAMP stuff. I don't think I'd listen to it every time, but it's neat to get to hear conversations with these guys whom you wouldn't ordinarily hear from. Of course they're guys, because have you ever heard of a female PHP developer? Me neither.

The cool thing about podcasting, I think, is the same thing that's cool about the internet in general: you can find an audience for a very narrow and/or esoteric topic. And then the people who are drawn to the content have a natural affinity for each other and it makes a virtual community.

I can't think of a more thrilling time in my life/work (same thing to me) than in mid-1996 when I started the precursor to The Republic of Pemberley. It's a Jane Austen discussion site that used to be the biggest author site on the net. I'm not sure if it still is or not. I started it and ran it for years, but have not had a hand in managing it for 4 or 5 years.

You know why I lost interest in it? Well, frankly, it's partly because I just tire of most anything once it's up and running! But I also lost interest because of the very thing I'm talking about here. I loved it when it was narrow and esoteric because the community was so like-minded.

As the subject matter broadened from discussion of one film adaptation to all things Austen, the user base broadened too. The thrill of connecting with people like Hil, wa a a a y across the globe, but so much like me -- it vanished. I was proud that the site was so popular and so huge, and that it had spawned scores of spinoff sites, and even spinoffs of spinoffs, but my passion for the community was dead.

So. Reel this back in to podcasting. It's awesome that we get to have a talk show with a topic as narrow as PHP developer interviews, or a comedy show about gamers! When critics of the production values of podcasts stick up their noses at us, maybe their disdain is something like what I felt for my high school radio station.

I'd walk past the big picture window to the studio off a school corridor and see these geeky guys, earphones on, sitting in front of turntables -- the same type of kids who were "A/V boys," you know the guys who rolled the film projector into classrooms? I'd think "don't they know how bad and ridiculous they sound, pretending to be DJs?"

Well, see, part of the problem was that they were pretending to be DJs. They were spinning records and introducing them, doing the same job the pros do. They didn't take advantage of the opportunity to "get small" (as Steve Martin used to say) -- go narrow, go local, go interactive.

Today, podcasters on the net are getting small. The goodness of our specialized content makes up for the badness of our home recordings. I think so, anyway.