If you’re planning to do a PlusOne interview with me, here’s some of the things you should do to prepare:
Listen to a couple of other podcasts. They are very short. Get an idea of what kind of things I ask.
Think about what you’re going to say. Yes, I know, that sounds obvious, but most people I interview expect that I’ll drive everything, and don’t prepare much. Think about what message you want to send, and about who your audience is.
Think very intentionally about how you are going to invite people to get involved in your project. In addition to the obvious requests for coders and documentation writers, think about how you might invite non-coders to participate. Do you need help with social media? With your website? With running events? Make a list.
Get headphones and a decent mic. If you try to record a podcast without headphones, everything either one of us says will echo, and I’ll have to throw it out. Your laptop mic is usually ok, but if you have a standalone USB mic of some kind, please dig it out and use it. Find a quiet place. Put the dog in a different room. Turn on a movie for the kids. Silence your cell phone.
During the Interview:
Here’s some tips for what to do during the interview:
Relax: You sound great, and I’ll be editing afterwards to remove anything where you don’t sound great.
Say it again: If you make an error, tell me that you made an error, take a deep breath, and start again. I’ll edit out the error, and nobody will ever know it was there.
Tell me what I missed: Tell me what you want to say, and I’ll craft the interview to include those things. If we get to the end and I missed something, just tell me, and we’ll edit it back into where it should go. This is a platform for your message.
What I’m going to ask you
If the interview is about a project, say, Apache Foo, here’s what I will ask:
- What does Apache Foo do? Give an example of how one might use it in practice.
- Tell me a story about a company/organization/person that is using Apache Foo to make the world a better place.
- What’s new in that latest release, and what are you working on for the next one?
- How do I learn more about Apache Foo, and get involved in the project? Don’t assume listeners know how to find your mailing list, Slack channel, or Discord. Tell us.
If you cannot answer these questions about your project, then you have some work to do. Every project should be able, at a bare minimum, to answer these questions. New projects get a pass on case studies, but everything else is a must, even before you do your first release.
Other possible questions include:
- What (commercial?) products/projects are in the same space, and what makes your project better/different?
- What other (Apache?) projects do you depend on and/or integrate with?
- I want to get involved. What should I work on?
What I do afterwards
After the interview, I will do everything I can to make the interview sound good. At a minimum, this means removing the ums, ahs, y’knows, and so on, that make the interviewee sound less certain of themselves. And I will often rearrange questions and answers to make them flow better, and remove questions that you didn’t have a good answer to. My goal, as yours, is to promote your project.