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!
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.