Interview With Jeff Chandler

An Interview by jeff

Considering this will be my last interview published on BloggerTalks.com, I thought I’d take this light hearted opportunity to interview myself. Now, I’m not necessarily interviewing myself considering I asked my followers on Twitter as well as my personal blog to submit questions they would like to have me answer if they had the chance to interview me. So, I’ll be answering those as well as a few questions I have for myself. I want to say that it has been a privilege conducting these interviews and publishing them online for you to learn from. I hope that the interviews I conducted have enabled you to learn a thing or two and also, to discover new people doing great things online. With that said, good luck with your online/offline endeavors and here is the interview.

Conorp – What’s your favourite feature in WordPress 2.7

Tough question. My favorite feature of WordPress 2.7 would have to be the entire redesign of the user interface. When going from WordPress 2.3 to 2.5, I was excited like many other people were. However, after using the new version for awhile, I started to become upset with the functionality that was stripped out of the backend in favor of a static way of doing things. This continued with WordPress 2.6 and it was driving so many people crazy that groups of users began creating plugins which added the drag and drop features back into the backend of WordPress such as the Write Panel. Thankfully, WordPress development for 2.7 took an entirely new look at how to do things and today, we are left with the greatest version of WordPress to date.

Kasper Sorensen – As a practitioner of both, could you talk a little bit about the similarities and differences between blogging and podcasting in terms of style, content, subjects etc.

Well, I’ve certainly learned a few lessons while producing Perfcast for Performancing.com. Initially, I thought the podcast would have a huge audience considering Performancing.com had a huge audience. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way as I learned that podcasting and blogging serves the needs of two completely different audiences. While the site reached thousands of people per day, the podcast reached a total download number of 100 on a good week. When I finally came to this realization, I changed the way in which I produced the show and now that I cater to each audience with only a few intertwining elements, things seem to be picking up. Podcasting is interesting in that, what could take 2-3 hours to write might only take 5-10 minutes to discuss. I will say that producing a semi-professional podcast takes much longer than writing a blog post but the beauty of live, interaction with your audience more than makes up for the effort involved.

Vix – What has been your most memorable experience since you started blogging?

This is an easy question! My most memorable moment has to be when I attended my first WordCamp event in Dallas, TX in 2008 where I got to feel like a rock star. While there, I met Trisha Miller, author of the blog Tech-Kittens. Unknowingly to me, Trisha had become a loyal reader to my personal blog and wanted to get a picture with me. I had the opportunity to talk to a loyal reader face to face about all sorts of things and through this experience, I truly felt like a rock star. It was awesome and I’ll never forget it!

Damn Hairy Human – Do you feel that blogging has helped in your usage of the english language?

Definitely. Thanks to the continous use of Spell check and constantly writing new content, I’ve learned how to properly spell a lot of words. I’ve also rediscovered the importance of Grammar and while I’m still not where I’d like to be, the Grammar police makes a great backup mechanism. But as I continue to write, my use of the English language continues to improve.

Austin – What do you see yourself doing in ten years?

Yet another tough question. I see myself continuing to evolve my online career in some form or fashion. I hope by that point, I’m financially comfortable. Also in ten years, I hope to have made significant progress with one of my life long goals of being considered successful.

Keith – What got you started in PodCasting? Are there any good podcast-startup resources you could recommend to others?

To keep it simple, podcasts got me started into Podcasting. In early 2007, I discovered a website known as Talkshoe.com Talkshoe is a service which takes all of the leg work out of producing and hosting a podcast. The way Talkshoe is setup provides many similarities with AM Talk radio where people can actually call in during a live recording to interact with the show host. After spending hours on the site listening to other podcasts, I began to wonder if I could do one of my own. After listening to the WordPress Podcast produced by Charles Stricklin which only came out once a month, my thirst for more WordPress content in an audio form grew to the point where it forced me to start my own. One that was produced and released each week just to satisfy my hunger. I did it on my own with the help of a few friends and I’m still doing it today (WordPress Weekly). With regards to podcasting startup advice. The most sound advice I could give is to either participate live or subscribe to the Podcaster Training show on Talkshoe hosted by Rob White. The show airs live every Friday evening at 8PM EST and discusses the ins and outs of podcasting. Everything from monetization, to soundboards, to microphones, Rob covers it all. The information that Rob provides could easily be considered premium content.

Lee Robertson – What do you think is the future of blogging?

How ironic is it that I get asked my signature question to everyone I interview. The future of blogging is bright. I believe there will always be a place for long form blogging as well as shortform. The greatest thing about blogs is that you can do so much with them just as long as you have an imagination. For instance, you can have a photoblog, audio blog, video blog, poetry blog, anything you want to publish blog, etc. Ultimately, I believe blogs will eventually be used as the hub for all aspects of a persons status online. Instead of using a third party service which aggregates third party services, thanks to the likes of RSS and other syndication methods, it’s entirely possible to skip the middle man and aggregate all of your online behaviour onto your blog. The blog should be and I believe will be the base of operations for people online.

This Interview was published on January 28, 2009 at 11:25 am • Did you like it? Subscribe!
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