We use live streams as a tool to communicate. We host a podcast style live stream show called ‘Let’s talk about public code’.
Goals
- Become discoverable: create another way for people we would like to know who don’t know that we exist or what we do to discover us.
- Grow our codebase’s community.
- Get in touch directly with key figures of top projects. Possible way in to steward or make them partners of the Foundation for Public Code.
- Get more social media followers since we are going to use those networks for this project.
Formats, length and schedule
- Frequency: Ambition to make it at least monthly.
- Format: Two different formats - one for codebases, one for the Foundation. For the codebases it is an interview made by two codebase stewards - ideally the community ones - with someone relevant from a codebase. For the Foundation, the format is a conversation between two persons from the foundation. This can be theoretical, about ideas and principles or about news.
- Language: English.
- Script: We get several questions ready before each episode. This builds familiarity with our approach and can also reveal similarities and differences between codebases.
- Length and schedule: Minimum 20 minute livestream during business hours - starting at 14.00 UTC if possible. Promise that the podcast will be live by close of business the next day. Aim to hold this on Tuesdays.
Guest selection criteria
Guests have an interesting perspective to contribute on the development of public codebase stewardship based on their experience. They can come from anywhere (including non-public open source projects). The overlap between the guest’s experience and our interests should be clear in the invitation, the question guide and our communications for the podcast.
Target audience
Codebase level:
- Civil servants working on public code codebases (i.e. potential stewardship prospects) and project managers.
- Civic tech people working on codebases in use by public organizations.
- People interested in free and open source software in general.
- People interested by specific types of software.
- Media following up on a particular codebase or use case.
- The codebase being interviewed and its followers.
- Politicians interested in a specific project or city.
- Vendors and technology contractors or subcontractors
- Other people involved in the codebase ecosystem: product managers, designers, user experience, communications, competitors, etc.
Distribution
We use Streamyard as a tool for the live stream, as it can stream to several platforms at once. For the podcast, we use Podbean.
Guides
These guides help us make sure each live stream episode is consistent: