Elixir Podcasts
Elixir podcasts are artifacts created by the Elixir Community. I call Elixir podcasts only those podcasts exclusively dedicated to the Elixir programming language. Of course, podcasts related to software development in general can cover Elixir in one or more episodes. Here you can find a list of some of those episodes.
I think I have heard of Elixir for the first time in 2011 when José Valim recorded a series of three episodes on Erlang for a Brazilian podcast called Grok Podcast. It was probably the first mention to Elixir in a podcast. Four years later, the same podcast had a series on Elixir. Both series are in Portuguese.
Right now (June 8th, 2018), I know of four Elixir podcasts, sorted by last episode published:
- Elixir Talk
- Elixir Mix
- Elixir Outlaws
- Elixir Fountain, whose last episode was four months ago, so it may be inactive.
The Elixir programming language wiki maintains an up-to-date list of Podcasts and Screencasts.
The main roles played by members of the community in podcasts are:
- Hosts: the people that conduct the interviews. Some hosts play other role(s) in the community (library creators, event organizers, etc.).
- Guests: obviously, guests usually play some role in the community so that they deserve to be interviewed.
- Sponsors: companies that give some financial support to the maintanence of the podcast.
- Listeners
The main parts of a podcast are:
- A site
- A podcast hosting service account
- One or more social network accounts
The main parts of a podcast episode are:
- The audio, which you can usually download or stream using a podcast player (sometimes you need the RSS feed for the podcast)
- Show notes, which usually include some additional text, links to resources mentioned in the episode, a transcription (not provided by most podcasts). Elixir Outlaws seems to be the only one that does that.
- A few podcasts (for instance, the Tim Ferriss podcast) share an accompanying video of the recording or just the audio with some image. As far as I know, no Elixir podcast does that.
- Discussions: on GitHub, on the Elixir Forum, on social networks, on the podcast site…
Podcasts seem good for (serendipitous) learning, for knowledge sharing and for strengthening the community.
My question is: what kind of knowledge is amenable to be shared and learned in podcast episodes? What kind is not?
Another questions: what is the real impact of podcasts? how many people listen to the episodes? Are the podcasts relevant to developers?
November 29th, 2018 Update on the status of Elixir podcasts:
- ElixirTalk latest episode is Episode 132 from November 28th, 2018.
- Elixir Mix is on its 29th episode. The most recent one was published on November 27th, 2018.
- Elixir Outlaws is on its 23rd episode which was published on Novermber 15th, 2018.
- The Elixir Fountain podcast remains discontinued. Its last episode was published on January 25th, 2018.
