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As everyone is (hopefully) aware, we're now several episodes into the re-launch of the Stack Exchange Podcast. We're also focusing on having more guests on the show to keep things interesting, so we need your help!

Let us know who you want to hear on the podcast — as usual, please give only one suggestion per answer and vote on your favorites so we can see who the most popular is.

People who have been guests on the podcast after being suggested here:

  • Sam "waffles" Saffron, SE team member (#7)
  • shirlock holmes, DIY SE superstar (#10)
  • Patrick McKenzie (#12)
  • Jin Yang, SE designer (#13)
  • Miguel de Icaza (#14)
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  • 5
    Yao Ming
    – user1228
    May 13, 2011 at 15:08
  • 8
    My English.SE finger is itching on the edit button for that 'see'...
    – Benjol
    May 18, 2011 at 13:25
  • 1
    Puppies! In all seriousness, run the community ads instead.
    – Moshe
    Jun 2, 2011 at 4:03
  • 2
    Now that it's been a few months, this poll is feeling kind of stale. I suggest moving the names of everyone who does appear (or declines to appear) to a separate list. In fact, I'll edit the question body with this right now; it certainly seems like it'd be useful information for anyone planning on writing an answer. Feel free to roll back if I'm out of line. I'll need a mod or small group of 20k-ers to delete the obsolete answers, though.
    – Pops
    Aug 25, 2011 at 16:49
  • Jon Skeet or Eric Lippert.
    – Yuck
    Aug 25, 2011 at 17:07
  • @Yuck, Jon Skeet has already figured on a podcast. Twice
    – Benjol
    Aug 26, 2011 at 5:00

15 Answers 15

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It would be nice to get a roundtable with Robert, Rebecca, Dori, and Shog9 (or some subset), and hear their thoughts on community growth and management.

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  • 3
    +1 thought of this as well. It would be nice to hear from the community managers, their work, how things are going.....
    – Pekka
    May 13, 2011 at 18:30
29

I think it'd be great if periodically, we invite moderators and power users of our Stack Exchange community sites on the show. I'm very interested in hearing their POV of our sites: what they love about our network, and what we can improve based on their critiques. From my experience working with some of the communities on their designs, I find that every site is different and has a unique subculture.

So far I feel our podcast is still very "tech/programmer heavy." It'd be great if we reach out to a more diverse crowd. My wife would love to listen to a podcast about cooking and sci-fi.

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  • 5
    Maybe we need to encourage other communities to start their own podcasts :)
    – Kyle Cronin
    May 13, 2011 at 20:54
  • Test comment for new beta theme.
    – Kevin Montrose
    Mar 2, 2012 at 16:58
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Steve Yegge; the podcasts with him were great. Also, it would be nice to sit down with people that work on some of the open-source stuff that Stack Overflow uses (although not limited to them); it would be a nice way of promoting their projects.

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Matt Cutts

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  • Is he a member of the community?
    – Kyle Cronin
    May 13, 2011 at 18:27
  • I think SO needs to hire Matt for a 1-month stint so he can give a canonical answer to all those "Will xyz hurt my SEO?" questions.
    – Pekka
    May 13, 2011 at 18:32
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    Aha! I get it now, @Pekka! 1) Create Google 2) Profit 3) Move all your most famous employees to the new Google Consulting beta program 4) Profit even more!!!
    – Pops
    May 13, 2011 at 18:50
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    @KyleCronin: No, but he kinda is a Stack Overflow frontend dev :)
    – balpha StaffMod
    May 13, 2011 at 19:44
  • @kyle do guests have to be from the community?
    – Tony_Henrich
    Jun 3, 2011 at 7:10
  • @Tony Not necessarily, I was just wondering
    – Kyle Cronin
    Jun 3, 2011 at 7:11
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I would like to hear Matt Grum (perhaps on the same podcast with shirlock homes)

He is the Photo SE rep leader, his answers are always incredibly insightful. I think it would be interesting to hear a few "Civilians" (in Joel's words) talk about how they got started and hooked on SE. What are we doing well? What could we be doing better?

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Kevin Montrose - our API developer. It would be nice to hear what he's up to and how version 2.0 of the API is coming :)

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15

How about Jared?

Maybe it's just me, but as a programmer the thought of losing my sight freaks me out completely, so it's awe inspiring to learn that blind people can code.

It would be interesting to hear his take on usability too.

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12

Would Grace Note be willing?

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  • it would be hard for him to hide her gender on a podcast, and everyone else on the podcast would have to be careful to switch gender with each pronoun that refers to him so she isn't revealed
    – Kip
    Sep 12, 2011 at 19:13
  • @Kip Is that an argument for or against the prospect of the guest?
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Sep 20, 2011 at 19:45
  • @GraceNote: neither really, but my upvote on this answer is an argument for the guest! :)
    – Kip
    Sep 20, 2011 at 20:10
  • Here's the relevant blog post for anyone who doesn't get the joke...
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Oct 13, 2011 at 12:53
  • @GraceNote could do a rather cool podcast with a decent TTS program, and change 'genders' on the fly :) I'm assuming she types fast enough, and I'm sure he could ask Alex to edit out any delays.
    – Tim Post
    Jan 10, 2012 at 15:49
  • @Tim IRC trivia champ, and if I did a text to speech, I wouldn't switch voices.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Jan 10, 2012 at 15:54
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I would like to hear users talk about their experience with Stack Overflow, what they've gained from it. Joel did say that the gamification is a waste without a "higher purpose". Let's hear how Stack Exchange is doing from users firsthand.

(Perhaps a short slot could be a 20k privilege or something?)

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Jack Ganssle to talk about embedded software development for us firmware guys. You spend plenty of time on web development, this could provide some balance. And be challenging to Jeff for his lack of C knowledge, always amusing!

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  • I think it would/could be very enlightening for a lot of developers to take a peek at what is involved in embedded development and how it differs from traditional PC/server development.
    – Pollyanna
    Jun 15, 2011 at 15:18
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Raymond Chen of The Old New Thing recently joined and has become pretty active. I would enjoy hearing his thoughts on StackOverflow.

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Dave Cutler.

As talking to software engineers goes, you can't get much more impressive than the guy who lead the Windows NT development team initially, then worked on porting NT to the AMD64 architecture. It would be interesting to hear from him on two counts:

  1. He wrote the OS you're using, right now, to power stack exchange and the OS on most of the world's computers. If he doesn't have a thing or two valuable to say about software development, I need another profession.
  2. It would be very interesting to know what he thinks of the Stack Overflow / Stack Exchange model. After all, writing a kernel is about providing services for developers - not in the same way, of course, but there's a strong common element.

Jeff has blogged about Mr Cutler before and notes "Cutler keeps an incredibly low profile today, which is strange for an architect of his stature". So he may not wish to appear, in which case fair enough, but if there is any possibility he might be willing to appear on the podcast he'd be a great guest I reckon.

Anyway, Jeff and Joel can make anything happen, right?

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I would interested in hearing from a top user of one the non-English language sites that have been opened.

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Jane McGonigal.

I'm actually surprised that she wasn't mentioned in Jeff's recent blog post on gamification.

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