EVENT
Hosting FLOSS Weekly
- During the MacMania cruise in 2004, I met Leo Laporte. At first, he didn't recognize me and assumed I was just a dude helping Neil Bauman out with the cruise.
- We struck up a conversation during one of the cruise's scheduled "Ingenious Bar" meetups—a dedicated time where attendees brought their laptops to get hands-on advice from the onboard experts and speakers.
- Sitting together, Leo asked me, "So, what do you do?"
- I replied simply, "I wrote Learning Perl."
- Leo was stunned and replied: "I'm reading that right now!"
- This hilarious revelation broke the ice and instantly started a dialogue of deep mutual respect between us.
- This meeting got us talking about the brand-new medium of podcasting. Shortly after, I launched the Geek Cruises Newses podcast to cover upcoming speakers and past seminars.
- In 2006, I was invited as a guest on Leo's new open-source show, FLOSS Weekly, for Episode #9.
- After a brief "podfade" period for the show, I stepped in and took over hosting duties starting after Episode 17, first as a co-host and quickly becoming the primary showrunner—running the show for an incredible 13 years.
- Over those 13 years, I taped hundreds of episodes (reaching well past Episode 258 and beyond), interviewing major figures across the entire free and open-source software ecosystem and keeping the flame of open-source journalism burning bright.
- Ironically, as the years went on, I became more widely recognized in public for hosting FLOSS Weekly than for writing my bestselling Perl books!
- Although I stepped down as the regular host in 2020, I have returned to the show:
What links here
These facts are as Randal recalls them, but much time has passed for most of this. If you find a factual error, please email realmerlyn@gmail.com.