When Charles and I started Release Notes, we had one central theme that drove us. This would be a show by independent developers, for independent developers. Not a technical show or a round table of nerd-famous talking heads discussing the latest Apple news. There are already many excellent shows doing that. What we felt we could offer was a glimpse of what it was like to try and make a living on the App Store. It would be a show about the business of app development, from the little guy’s perspective.
And so when the subject of having guests came up, we decided to stay true to that focus. Rather than just inviting the usual suspects of podcast guests (as much as we love listening to them ourselves), we decided that we should also bring on guests who were more like us; small indie developers trying to make a living on the App Store. After all, if people are willing to hear our opinions on these issues week after week, why not have others in the same boat offer their take? Many of us have stories to tell, and many of us have strong opinions. We think our audience will enjoy hearing from other indie devs every now and then.
Traveling around to various conferences over the past few years, both Charles and I have made quite a few friends in the indie dev community. Though we only run into these folks once or twice a year, we quickly become relaxed in conversation with them. We’ve learned a great deal about their struggles and successes. In other words, we have a large pool of guests from which to choose.
And so, this week, the first experiment with bringing on a guest goes live. Shane Crawford of Blue Lighting Labs is a great guy with a very interesting back story. His success in the educational space is testament to the value of perseverance and business savvy. We were lucky to get him to sit down and talk to us. I think you’ll like what he has to say.
This is not to say that we’ll never have any other kinds of guests on the show, or that we won’t continually experiment with other formats. We just feel after this first session with Shane that we’ve found something we really like that works. So we plan to create similar episodes in the future.
You’ll hear from more guests over the coming months. Not on every episode, but maybe once a month or every five weeks or so, we’ll bring on someone else from the indie community. Whenever we can make it work in the schedule and we have someone we want to bring in for opinions. As always, your feedback is appreciated. We make the show for you, so we’d love to know what you think.
