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Episode: 4109
Title: HPR4109: The future of HPR
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4109/hpr4109.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 19:42:31
---
This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4109 for Thursday 2 May 2024.
Today's show is entitled The Future of HPR.
It is hosted by Nightwise and is about 25 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Nightwise talks about the sum of the changes HPR could embrace to become
future proof.
Hey there, Hacker Public Radio.
This is Nightwise from the Nightwise.com podcast checking in.
I was doing a show quite a while ago.
Here it is.
I'm going to walk and I'm going to take you through a beautiful forest at 7 a.m.
In the morning, I decided to pack up my things and go for a little stroll.
A little morning hike in the fields and the woods behind my house, behind where I live.
So judging by the bird song, you'll probably know that you can hear I'm closer to the wood.
So I'm going to take you on a little stroll through the vineyard's forest, the Veingardbus,
which is a forest located on a hill behind my house.
And as the name says, it used to be a vineyard for the east of Belgium, which is pretty high up north from France,
which is a vineyard country.
That's rare, but there used to be vineyards here.
And one of the reasons this was during the Polians' time,
that production of wine on this hillside shut down,
was because of a meteor strike that occurred somewhere around 1800s,
and that triggered a fairly long set of longer winters.
They said there was snow up until May, and this for two or three consecutive years in a row,
which of course decimated the local vineyard, the local wine production, and they turned it into a forest.
That was 200 years ago today, and I wanted to talk about not the past, but the future of HPR.
I've been an IT for about 25 years.
In the last five years, I've kind of specialized in digital communications.
I've my own company, and we help entrepreneurs, small businesses, get their voice heard online,
so they can via their website, newsletter, social media advertising, draw customers towards their shop.
And every day, I sit across the table of entrepreneurs, and I ask the same questions,
because those questions prompt answers that entices strategy.
What do you do? What does your customer want?
Or who's your customer? What does he want?
What's your customer's problem? How do you solve that problem? And what is the end result?
Those questions, those four questions, are basically the cornerstone of every marketing strategy.
And I hear you say, marketing, well, everything's marketing.
As Seth Godin says, everything's marketing.
If you want to change the world, if you want to convince people of something, you need to do marketing.
And might sound like a dirty word to some, but it is.
You're trying to convince people of an idea.
In order to do that, we have to market that idea.
So let's take those questions and put them in light of the recent discussion in the beginning of the year,
around the future of HPR.
We're dipping into Reserve, we were dipping into the Reserve Q, as we are now.
And the question came up, does this project need to continue?
That's a good question.
Ken was very honest in supposing that, because if not, then after X,
amount of shows, we see the project come to an end.
So there was some discussion going back and forth about, you know, what does HPR need?
So in order to put that discussion into a different light,
I'll shine my digital marketing torch on it and pose those questions to you, the community.
So let's start out by question number one. What do we do?
What's our product?
Our product is a list of podcasts, speaking about the use of technology.
It's a niche podcast about niche topics, but mostly it's centered around free and open source software,
or at least talking about alternatives to the main closed corporate platforms,
internets that are out there.
Okay, good.
Who's our customer? Who's our audience?
Well, we have two.
One of them is, one part of our audience is the geeks.
The geeks are into these things who are, you know,
took them around with a raspberry pie and, you know, making their own board game
and thinking up creative stuff, creative ways to use technology.
Those are, you know, one part of our audience.
They're the ones that are into the scene,
and that might also want to contribute to the show by recording one.
But there is another audience that we need to reach,
which is the people that don't know about all of this stuff,
that don't know how to set up a raspberry pie or stuck on their iPad,
and don't know that there's a whole new world out there of open source software.
Then the question is, what does your audience want?
What does our audience want?
Well, the contributors or the ones that we try to let contribute.
Well, they want to find like-minded souls to share ideas
and find people that are just into just the same geeky things that they are
and stuff like that.
So they want to find a sense of connection, a sense of community.
The other audience, well, maybe they just want to discover about
all of this alternative technology and approaches that are out there.
We'll discover a new world that is not as commercial as the one that they're used to.
There's not ruled by influencers, but by people who have inside and knowledge and passion
about what they're talking about that are not into the views and the likes,
but that are into a genuine sense of engagements and passion about technology.
Okay.
What's their problem?
For the hosts, well, we need to bring them together.
They have a niche interest and are looking for people who are like-minded.
And it's hard to find.
You can go to a million different websites, about a million different topics,
but it's hard to find inspiration about niche technology.
So you need niche channels where you can be inspired.
And there are other audience.
Well, people don't know that all of this exists.
Well, they don't know all of this exists.
They are inundated with the corporate internet.
They are ushered into the big silos and think that,
well, if software X doesn't let me do things, you can do things.
I have to buy subscription XYZ.
I have to get into cloud XYZ.
There is no other way.
How do we solve that?
Well, we solve that.
Well, for the community of nerds, well, we create just that community
podcast that you can listen to and contribute to.
And you can find engagement and connection with others.
And that's the same thing for our audience that doesn't know
that there is a free internet out there.
We give them a podcast to listen to and to contribute to.
Okay.
What's the end result?
Because at the end,
the end result is what people buy.
They don't buy your product or your services,
or they don't even buy into your ideas.
They buy the end result.
And the end result is, well, for our hosts and skis,
a community is sense of family, sense of togetherness,
of belonging, of sharing ideas, of learning things, growing.
And for the people that are still out there in the corporate internet,
well, they find a new community they can join.
They find an alternate use for technology.
They also grow their knowledge and their insight.
So that is, that is great.
That is fine.
But when we take a look at the way hacker public radio works right now,
there are some answers,
there are some questions out there posed by the people we are trying to reach
that we are not answering.
And there are some responses that we have that we don't give.
We fail to complete the marketing question.
I've tried to diplomatically scale or diplomatically mold my responses
into something that doesn't upset people.
But at some point it's time that we need to face the truth.
To be very honest,
we are old fashioned, stuck in our ways,
and are so focused on the goal of insisting on technology
and philosophy that we stand behind,
that we fail to reach the audience of listeners and hosts we need
in order to survive.
We are becoming nostalgic dinosaurs.
I'm sorry if it shocks you, but it's true.
One, what does our audience want?
A sense of community.
They want to interact with each other.
They want to find connections.
And in a world of millions of social media platforms, chat applications,
forums and what have you,
what does hacker public radio have as an engine for community?
Well, you can record a show.
Great, but for many of those,
that is still quite a big step to take.
Okay, fine.
And if you want to engage with that content, what do you do?
Well, you have to come to the website and file a comment.
Well, wow.
That's nice.
Our website has a little bit of an nostalgic feel about it.
But judging by the number of comments that we get,
it doesn't seem to be a very effective way of interacting.
Or if you don't agree, you record a response.
How many responses statistically are we getting?
Also, big step.
We want to draw in other people to engage
with those new alternate views of technology that we have.
People who are not part of it, not in the fold yet.
So where do they go?
Well, we are on some of the social media platforms, but not actively.
But no, they can come to our website and listen to our show.
We have, oh, yes, we haven't.
Well, we have a poorly maintained,
unofficial IRC channel over at IRC.liberer.net.
Is that it?
Yeah.
Or chat, I'm not sure anymore.
IRC, really, an outdated technology that you will have to explain
to anyone who hasn't seen the moon landing live on TV.
It's nostalgic, it's nice, but it's no longer relevant.
If we really want to insist on using outdated technology,
as nostalgic and free and open as it is, well, please,
let's bring up our own BBS.
It would be nice to teach the young kids how to use it.
One of the things that I always say to my customers is,
you need to go where your customer is.
And that means that we need to go on the platforms
where our new audience is.
Why don't we have a discord?
Well, because it's corporate.
Well, I'm sorry, kids, but the world is corporate.
And if you want to pull in corporate technology geeks
that are stuck in corporate silos, well, go there and pull them out.
But we just stand at the side of the road.
And we go like, we don't like discord, it's corporate.
It's part of the big silos.
We got our IRC.
You can come to us.
They don't know what to consist.
We need to bring them in.
And for our own community, we also need to think beyond
an IRC channel that is also filled with nice content,
but very, very sparse.
We stick to the old ways.
And we see that there is no engagement there,
but we refuse to change.
As I said, we are in danger of becoming dinosaurs.
Then, the other thing that we need to think about
is the way we format things.
I love the way Ken puts shows together.
The automated way, it's fantastic.
I'm recording this.
I can send it in.
It will have the little bumper added at the beginning of the end.
And it's out there.
And the quality might vary.
You know, I record as I'm walking through the fields,
you can hear the birds.
You can hear me panting.
I'm going on 50 as well.
But it's great.
And I love the fact that the quality is different every time.
I love the fact that we are no radio style podcast
with ads and predictable ways.
I absolutely love that.
But the way it is performed,
the way it is presented,
might need some polishing up.
The opening tune,
as iconic as it might be,
it's old.
It's, well, may not old,
but it's slow.
Take a look at the attention span that you have.
You have an attention span online.
When you want to reach a customer,
when you want to reach the attention of a follower
on a social media feed,
and you have like an Instagram reel or a midi video
or something like that,
you have three seconds to get their attention.
In the first three seconds,
you have to engage them somehow.
What do we have?
We have a beautiful guitar intro that's less about 30 seconds.
Keeps going.
And it needs a little bit of more,
it needs more pizzazz.
I'm more than happy to help.
I'm not a composer,
but I am somebody who is looking for ways to commercialize,
but at least make it easier to consume an episode.
And for that, we need speed.
It needs the intro needs a faster pace.
The outro needs a faster pace.
We need to get into the meat of the matter sooner.
The same goes for the website design.
Yes, I know it's a self-hosted,
maybe self-made, completely free and open source website.
It's beautiful for 1996.
I'm sorry, I'm crude,
I'm not the one maintaining it,
I haven't been the one building it,
and I'm not criticizing it,
but I am stating it the way it is
for the modern day times
where we need to attract new people.
Doesn't look very snappy, does it?
The logo, you know,
explain to a kid that this is a microphone.
What's this? Why was this ovoid?
Why is this a little crown?
This is what a microphone used to be like in the 50s.
Our entire image is one that is stale.
I'm sorry, it is.
I'm probably getting hate meal by the bunch for this,
but it is.
It's time that somebody takes a look at it.
These are the things that we can fix.
We can set up a discord
and try to see if we can be more active
on modern day social platforms
where the young kids are.
We can't,
and even if they are corporate,
we can polish up the intro,
maybe revamp the website.
We can,
but there's one thing that we need to fix
and that may be the most
hard thing to fix of all.
And that is our mentality.
We have to be very, very aware of the fact
that our alternative view
of the way we look at technology,
or we criticize the big platforms,
or criticize,
or at least are aware that they're alternatives,
and, you know,
the danger of putting our entire digital life
in or ecosystems in the hands of four big companies,
and that's a good thing.
That will keep us from dystopia,
turning into a Gibbons novel.
But we have to be aware of the fact
that not everybody thinks like we do,
and the fact that they disagree
means that we have to convince them
and not lock them out.
We still have the mentality,
sometimes that I compare to
the good old news,
the news servers,
all dot blah blah blah,
where you would go on as a kid,
and you would ask a little question,
and then they would flame you
because you didn't know how to use the command line.
This kind of literism,
you know what I mean?
This kind of high mighty nerd,
I know, but you don't.
Attitude is no longer relevant.
Take a look at the Linux scene
that used to be command line all the way.
Now we have more graphical user interfaces
than is possible.
And it is that that has helped Linux grow,
not sitting in your corner and saying like,
no, you don't do it the way we do,
so you're not cool.
We have to open up,
we have to pull people who think different,
and we have to pull them in,
and we have to convince them.
But right now,
we are sitting in our little corner,
talking amongst ourselves
about the things that we believe in and agree on.
And we don't go outside,
we don't go to the other platforms,
we don't go to other communities,
we don't pull them in.
Well, what is the end result?
Just like the dinosaurs,
we are literally dying out.
We've lost a couple of hosts over the years,
and I would like to do a poll
on the average age of an HPR host,
but I don't think that we have a lot of them
in their 20s and below.
So we have to be aware of that,
that if we want to survive,
we have to rejuvenate,
and it's all good to be preachers,
and it's all good to be missionaries,
and it's all good to try to convince the internet
that yes, there is an alternative way
to approach technology
that doesn't adhere to the corporate culture.
And that's great.
But in order to be a ministry,
or in order to be a missionary,
you have to leave the convent, okay?
Right now, we're just, you know,
furiously pounding the table,
and talking about ourselves that this is the way,
and we don't go outside,
to convince people that it is,
because they think differently,
and we don't talk to them.
And I say this before you gather the wood,
set it a light,
and decide to burn me alive on the stake.
I say this with love.
I've been an HPR listener since 2005.
Since day one, this has been the show that I have been subscribed to,
and that I have enjoyed listening to,
because every day it was something different.
I enjoyed 5150 shows about God knows what.
I enjoyed Lord Drachem Blutz,
God rest his soul shows.
I enjoyed Kladu shows about, you know, Urban Camping,
which, oh, wow!
There is no other place on the planet
I can get content like that,
aside from HPR,
and I love it.
I want to have this little tap
that I can open up that brings me content,
that I don't know what I'm going to get,
but it's going to be something new and something exciting
and something I didn't know about,
because it's not a door to commercialism,
and it's not a door to the big platforms.
It's about something different.
And we are,
this is valuable people,
this is really, really valuable,
and we need to find ways to sustain it.
The power to do so is in our hands,
and as I say to my clients,
using the technology to get your message out is easy.
But reconfiguring your mindset
to push out the right message,
to start talking about what your customer,
what your audience wants,
to go to the places your audience is,
and convincing them and pulling them in,
is sometimes more of a mindset change.
That's the hardest one to make.
But if you can,
if you can get up from behind your counter,
and go outside and take a look at your shop,
through the eyes of your customers,
and tell it as if it were their story,
from their point of view,
you will have success.
I am more than happy to help.
I am more than happy to do what I can do,
but I do hope that HPR survives.
And for that, our mindset is the first thing that has to change.
Godspeed to us.
Nightwise out.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio
at Hacker Public Radio.
Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast,
click on our contribute link to find out how easy it means.
Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by
an honesthost.com,
the internet archive, and our sings.net.
On the Saldois stages, today's show is released
under Creative Commons,
Attribution 4.0 International License.