Last week, I participated in a “callcast” on Kevin Fricovsky’s blog, How I Work Daily. A callcast, as Kevin calls them, is a relatively short, laid back, “call,” (performed over Skype) between him and someone else in the web industry that he records and posts. I really enjoyed doing it — Kevin was a great host and had great questions. For a long time, I’ve thought hosting a podcast could be fun, but I was unwilling to make the time commitment required to put together a smooth, well-produced show like This Week in Django or Boagworld. Kevin’s simple idea got me excited enough that I flat out stole it (sorry, Kevin!).
So, In the first of what I hope will be a series of audio conversation with web professionals, I talked to Matt Brown about his experience stepping out of the traditional workforce and into the freelance world, as well as a handful of other topics.
Click play to listen.
The idea for these calls is to be interesting, conversational, and not particularly produced. You won’t hear cute jingles or perfect sound (in fact, in this first episode, Matt is considerably louder than me). I wanted to do this in a way that didn’t require a lot more of my time than simply having the conversation and posting it. I knew if I did something too slick, it would be too much work and I wouldn’t keep it up. I also really wanted to focus most of these conversation on people in our industry that I find interesting but that you may not already be familiar with. For the most part, I’m going to avoid chatting with the really big names in web design — you’ve already heard what they have to say. So, with that out of the way, back to Matt…
Matt is a freelance web designer I first met several months ago at a Refresh Seattle meetup, and also the boyfriend of Tiffani Jones, who recently started working with us at Blue Flavor. I remember after chatting with Matt for a while at the Refresh after-party, I told him, “man, you gotta get a blog.” Several months later, he did. So far, it’s really great.
In the conversation, Matt and I talk a great deal about what it’s been like for him to start freelancing, how he likes it, and what he’s learned form doing it. We also talk a bit about design critique online, some cool stuff he’s doing on his blog, and more.
I hope you’ll give it a listen, and maybe even subscribe to the feed. If they’re well-received, my tentative plan is to try to do these things weekly. Let me know what you think.
001 // Brian McKinney // 08.07.2008 // 10:21 PM
I like the idea, and I especially like that you are planning on interviewing people that are a bit under the radar. I also appreciate that you are very familiar with the person you are interviewing. I think it adds quite a bit for you to have more than a cursory knowledge of the person you are interviewing and their work. But I’m really pissed off that there aren’t any cute jingles.
002 // Jared Rhizor // 08.07.2008 // 10:33 PM
That was really good. Can’t wait for more of them. I agree with Brian, it is nice that you actually know the people. It definitely helps make it seem like it isn’t a formal interview.
Can’t wait for the Steve Jobs interview.
003 // Sara Flemming // 08.07.2008 // 10:37 PM
I liked it! The more structured chats/interviews are cool, but the casual conversation works well giving you a chance to dig in a little deeper when the topic warrants it.
Great first outing, Jeff. Nice to see Matt’s blog get some more play, too. (:
004 // Matt Brown // 08.07.2008 // 11:43 PM
Great to see this up so quick. Thanks again for the inviting me, and I can’t wait to hear the next callcast.
005 // Matt Wilcox // 08.08.2008 // 3:28 AM
Well I’m intrigued, but call me crazy: I can not find a link to the audio anywhere in your blog post. So, without subscribing to the feed - how do I listen?
006 // Jeff Croft // 08.08.2008 // 7:08 AM
Matt Wilcox: There’s a Flash audio player at the bottom of the post. I threw this together quickly and didn’t put up a link for users without Flash. I’ll do that properly here soon, but in the meantime, here’s the direct link to the MP3:
http://static.jeffcroft.com/jeffcroft/audio/matt_brown08072008.mp3
Sorry about that.
007 // Anton // 08.08.2008 // 8:54 AM
Nicely done - very relaxed and interesting. I added the feed to iTunes and am listening as I type.
Thanks for putting this together, Jeff!
008 // Kyle P. Johnson // 08.08.2008 // 10:50 AM
Great job on this. I love the basic format, and the lack of production is actually rather refreshing.
I had seen Matt’s Web site on a number of occasions, and it was great hearing more about him.
009 // kevin // 08.10.2008 // 3:46 PM
Jeff, I’m happy you stole my idea which I “borrowed” from Dave Winer’s (scripting.com) skype call interviews he sends out over on pownce :p
You did a great job and Matt was an excellent subject - lots of good freelance/consulting thoughts in there.
010 // Matt Wilcox // 08.11.2008 // 1:24 AM
Hi Jeff, thanks for the link. I use NoScript, which was stopping the JS from generating the Flash.
Great episode, I subscribed ;)
PS - on my home machine, I can not leave comments on your site even when I’ve allowed all the JavaScript. I hit ‘post’ and it takes me to a new page consisting of the comment form and nothing else. If I hit ‘post’ again on that page it just refreshes the page. I’ve no clue why that’s happening.
011 // Ben Bleikamp // 08.11.2008 // 12:03 PM
I have been a freelance designer for the past 3 months “full time” after graduating college, so this was fun and I can definitely relate to a lot of it.
Fortunately for me I jumped into freelancing part-time when I was in college and had my parents to fall back while I slowly built up my list of clients/work and now I have a number of solid clients that send me regular work.
Even with that, I definitely agree it would probably be good for me (or anyone) to work in a real firm/company at some point to get the experience of contract negotiation and also I think it is important to have other designers/developers around to challenge you to get better and learn new skills.
012 // Jeff Mackey // 08.14.2008 // 6:40 AM
Just a quick note to say great job on the new podcast. I really enjoyed the conversation with Matt Brown, and look forward to future episodes. Keep it up!