Like a lot of folks, I’m thinking about giving PodCasting a try. There’s really three reasons for wanting to do so:
- While I’m not sure about it yet, it looks like I could do twenty minute podcast two or three times a month without disrupting things too much.
- It would be easier to cover "short take" items like answers to questions, community events and what’s going on in my life in that format that writing blog posts about it.
- All the cool kids are doing it: I’ve always been impressed with Dr. Greg Low’s SQL DownUnder and have just flat out enjoyed Wally and Paul’s ASP.NET PodCast.
Some of the parameters I’m thinking about:
- No, this would not be a once-a-week thing. More likely than not, it’d just be whenever I’m on the road with a couple of hours to kill.
- Each episode would probably have regularly occurring parts like:
- Check this out: A quick rundown of techie-blog postings that I think you might be interested in (ala Take Outs, if you remember that.)
- Since You Asked: Questions and Answers about SQL Server, XML, .NET or my non-technical interests -- mainly food and beer. Questions would come from you, the reader/listener, my students o from the newsgroups.
- Read of the Moment: This would be an informal review of whatever book I’m reading (or audiobook) that I’ve most recently been reading, and I think is good and/or not-so-good about it and why this book might be of interest to you -- or not.
- Five Questions For: As the show gets rolling along, I’d like to do interviews with folks who share my passions and interests. If I can figure out how to bridge the audio, I probably will. If not, I’ll just read you their answers to my questions.
- Where We At?: Since I do travel a lot, I’d talk about where I’m at, my trip there and anything that happens to strike me as interesting about getting from point A to Z.
- Potpourri for $100: Most this will be just talking about non-techie stuff like, well, beer. And... Food. And maybe movies and books. But probably mostly beer. And life in Omaha, etc. etc.
Not every episode will have each part. The first three and "Where we At" will probably occur in every episode. "Five Questions For" really depends on who I get to play along with it. Potpourri will run whenever I feel like I’ve got something for it.
- Your input matters! Look, I’m not interested in doing this just to hear my own head rattle, so I’ll looking forward to your feedback as to what you like and don’t. If I do it at all. Which brings me to the last questions...
Would you subscribe?
Of the list of five topics, which one(s) interest you the most? The least?
Feel free to answer with a comment below or by sending me a message using the Contact link at the left.
A big thank you to the Kansas City SQL Server Users Group for giving me their time and attention last night. Despite getting confused as to where the meeting was being held and thus being late (DOH!), I had a great time talk about the XML features in SQL Server 2005. The presentation download is here. The extra bit of code for loading a file directly into an XML column of table follows:
create table dbo.xmlDocs(pkid smallint identity(-32767,1) primary key,doc xml)
go
insert into dbo.xmlDocs
select * from openrowset(bulk 'c:\tmktx\Great BBQ joints in Kansas City.xml',single_blob) p
go
I'd especially like to thank Bill Graziano and Troy Schuh for making the arrangement and the nice gift. While we do this kind of stuff for the community, its really nice when a group goes out of their way to say thanks like these guys did. Also thanks to the nice folks at Idera for giving that group a license and 1yr of upkeep on their SQLSafe product and providing the pizza. I can't believe I missed a chance to snarf down pizza... next time, I'll double check the address.