Many of us have sat around discussing something with friends, maybe after a beer or a kombucha, only for someone to say, "This would make an amazing podcast!" Everyone says "Yes!" and nods enthusiastically, and the conversation shifts to talking about what to call the podcast, where it should be hosted, and whether recording something to a smartphone is good enough. Everyone goes to bed excited, only to wake up the next morning wondering why a podcast about mushroom varieties in Zelda sounded like such a good idea.

Or not. Sometimes a podcast idea does survive the next-day test, and there's never been a better time to start your own podcast. As a Linux and open source user, your technical skills are already well suited to the task, and as a talking point, knowledge related to Linux and open source technologies is perennial, always interesting, and applicable across a huge range of other subjects, from politics to cooking. This gives you a significant advantage over most other people who wake up with a good podcast idea, and it's an advantage that will help you overcome many of the initial barriers that stop people from making even their first podcast.

Have a Plan

The first thing to consider is a plan, and the first part of your plan should be deciding who should host the podcast. This can be even more important than the strength of the initial idea, because a compelling group of personalities can talk about almost anything. Many listeners will also want to feel like they're listening to friends, or to people who understand them and what they're interested in. It's harder, but you can do this alone too by communicating your passion for a subject, making it infectious enough for listeners to not want to miss an episode. A wonderful example of this is the History of English Podcast [1], started by Kevin Stroud in 2012 and originally intended to last a mere 100 episodes. His idea was to discuss the etymology of English words and phrases, tracking their use from tribes wandering the Iranian plateau through to the Norman conquest of England, and on to the constant language flux of the modern world. Ten years later, Keith has just released episode 168, and he's just made it to the late 1500s. He may never be able to catch up, but his passion for the subject overwhelmed his modest ambitions, and that of his listeners too, which is a great sign of a good idea.

As with the History of English Podcast, it's most likely that you've thought of a subject you know well and you want to share with other people – and you need to break this down into segments that will fit into individual episodes, or work as ongoing segments across multiple episodes. You might want to talk about news stories or things you and your co-hosts have discovered. It helps if these topics fall into predictable category segments, even if you intersperse them with more ad-hoc segments that are specific to their respective episodes. Magazines do the same thing for similar reasons. They too have predictable sections like news, reviews, and tutorials, but also more free-form and adaptable features and interviews that are part of a cover theme.

Another thing to consider is whether your podcast is going to be family friendly. A family friendly podcast will steer clear of swearing and certain subjects. This could limit your scope or spontaneity, or make editing harder if you need to remove segments or certain words, but it can broaden your audience because platforms like Apple Podcasts and YouTube demarcate content that isn't broadly consumable. More practically, it can also help if people want to listen in the car with their families.

Duration and Cadence

Preparing and setting up for a podcast is like packing for a holiday – you pack almost the same for a weekend as you do for a week. In podcast terms, that means it's the same effort to prepare for a 30-minute recording as for a 2-hour recording. But you must resist the temptation to make your podcasts too long, especially with such fierce competition for your listeners' attention from other podcasts. It's much easier to fit a 30-minute podcast into your listening schedule than it is a 2-hour podcast, and a 2-hour marathon session is much easier to skip over in your queue when looking for something to listen to while vacuuming. A longer recording and shorter duration will also give you more editing choices, leading to higher quality content. And as the saying goes, always leave your audience wanting more.

How often you record is closely related to episode duration. It's far better to produce two 30-minute podcasts than a single podcast lasting an hour. Generally, the more frequently you can produce a podcast the better. Once a week is ideal. This keeps your podcast in the minds of your listeners and helps them to remember you. Once every two weeks is another good option, especially to start with, but once a month might be too little. Either way, the more frequent your podcasts, the larger your monthly download figures will be, and this helps hugely if you ever want to sell advertising sponsorship.

It's essential you communicate clearly when a podcast episode is expected – and stick to it. Rain or shine, PulseAudio failure or hard drive crash. It's the one thing that differentiates amateurs from the professionals; professionals understand that listeners need an absolutely predictable routine. Predictable releases are a sign of strength and stability, because no one wants to invest time in something that may ultimately peter out, and the more your listeners need to do to work out which was your last episode and which is your next, the fewer listeners you'll have.

People Power

Three or four co-hosts is an ideal number because it allows listeners to get to know your personalities, and it allows them to feel they're among friends (Figure 1). Co-hosts can help share the burden of being engaged, doing the research, playing devil's advocate, and approaching a discussion from another perspective, or by simply compensating for another host who can't make it. It helps if you already know each other and are already comfortable and relatively unguarded in each other's company. Even for well-planned or scripted podcasts, it's the unpredictable parts that listeners enjoy, and spontaneous, divergent conversations are an important part of this. It's important that differing opinions on topics are reflected by the hosts. A podcast should not become a vanity project for the strongest personality, or worse, the person who puts the podcast together.

Figure 1: The rapport between co-hosts is sometimes more important than the podcast idea itself, although mixing up personalities and opinions is also vital.

The role of the main host is the most important and under-appreciated in the whole podcast enterprise. The main host is the person asking questions on behalf of the listener, sensitive to whether what's being talked about is likely to be understood. This is important whenever you have experts talking – an expert might assume a level of knowledge that you can't also assume of your listenership, and it's the main host's job to ask for clarification on points or challenge an assumption when needed. The main host should also try to make sure all hosts are equally included in the conversation, perhaps by asking a quieter host their opinions, or breaking into the monologue of a verbose participant to give someone else a chance to share an opinion.

Whoever drives the podcast needs to be subtle and transparent. If they're doing a brilliant job, no one will know. This is a thankless task that might even weaken your position within the hosting dynamic as you play more than one role from more than a single angle, but it's essential that someone adopts this persona, and it might as well be the podcast founder.