If you’ve followed me on social media, you probably have already heard that Beyond Tech Skills, the podcast I co-hosted since January 2021 with my colleague and excellent friend Liron Amitzi, just wrapped up our final episode. While that’s unfortunate – especially for our loyal listeners, whom we appreciate immensely! – we had an amazing journey producing over 50 episodes since early 2021.
Let’s Do a Podcast! So … What Will We Talk About?
Liron and I met up at an Oracle user conference where we were both guest speakers, and we instantly bonded over our similar sense of humor. Our backgrounds couldn’t have been more different: I’m an early Boomer born and bred in Chicago, Illinois, and he’s a Millennial living in Vancouver, BC but is originally from Israel. We’d discussed collaborating sometime when the opportunity arose, so faced with the depths of the COVID pandemic in late 2020 and stuck at home with no in-person events or travel in the foreseeable future, we jumped at the chance to try something different. At least it wouldn’t be boring!
Once we built some podcasting infrastructure, we had to decide what to talk about. We dove into what many people were still struggling with: how to best position their technical skills and – more importantly – their so-called “soft skills” when looking for new employment opportunities. Our podcast’s title materialized naturally from those first few episodes because we wanted our listeners to realize just how differentiating those skills could be in those crazy times. We started simply with discussions on what our combined 60 years of IT experience had taught us: how to prepare a CV or a resume, how to handle trick questions during tech interviews, and even how to do tech interviews when hiring someone.
Let’s Talk to Our Smart(er) Friends!
Almost on a whim, one of us suggested we try interviewing some of our colleagues and friends we’d met over the years at technical conferences and user group meet-ups over the past 10 years. We started that part of the journey rather boldly with an extended and delightful chat with our good friend and colleague Kellyn Gorman about the challenges women still face today in the IT world.
We got such a great response from that interview that we decided we’d continue the conversational tone of the podcast, so we remained on the lookout for interesting guests and topics. We interviewed dozens of people in 2021 and 2022, including some of our more gregarious acquaintances like Connor McDonald, who talked at length about how to give great presentations at conferences, and Rie Merritt, who is responsible for wrangling hundreds of advocates in the Microsoft MVP program.
Along the way, we figured out some secrets about interviewing people. The key thing to remember is that your guest is most interested in talking about their own experiences, so it really pays to research what they’ve done recently, and find at least a few things about them that even their closest friends and colleagues didn’t know.
You Never Can Tell What People Find Most Interesting
Another surprise for us was that it’s often impossible to tell exactly which guest, discussion, or topic will prove to be most popular with our audience. Our especially lively discussion with Mark Horstman, who created the popular Manager Tools(TM) toolset to help managers at all levels communicate effectively with their teams, turned out to be one of our most download episodes.
Was this due to fortunate timing of the imminent diminishment of the pandemic? Were struggling managers at their wits’ end to handle the onset of #WFH / #RTO hybrid work environments? We’re still not sure, but it definitely resonated with a lot of listeners.
And our conversation with our colleague Jessica Sharp – herself an early Millennial – about the differences between Boomers, GenXers, Millennials, and GenZers and our (actually, not so) different outlooks on work was another surprise as a one of our most popular episodes. Was it the title (OK, Boomer. Seriously, It’s OK) or was it our witty repartee? Again, we’re not 100% sure. But it we certainly had an absolutely hilarious time recording it.
How Are You Doing … Today?
It was impossible to ignore how many people were struggling with their personal mental health during the pandemic, so we sought out folks who knew how best to address those issues. We chatted with Dr. Ryan Todd, whose popular Beyond the Checkbox podcast focuses on the stressors that so many of us face even in these post-pandemic times. Another fascinating guest, Rob Stephenson, told us how he created his own mobile app to help himself and others deal with severe depression and manage bipolar symptoms.
Wait … You Know Who?
We were extremely fortunate to chat with Tim Goldstein from Google, who told us the fascinating tale of how he handled his diagnosis of Aspergers late in life and how he actually turned it to his advantage. And our connection with Tim led us to a most unexpected opportunity to talk at length with one of the Fathers of the Internet, Dr. Vinton Cerf, winner of the Turing Award and still active in IT. (You think you have networking issues? Dr. Cerf is actually working on the interplanetary internet.)
It’s Not Over Until It’s Over
Late in 2022, Liron found a new career opportunity that required him to move his entire family to Tel Aviv, Israel – a bold relocation that I cannot ever imagine making! – but we continued to search out guests, schedule interviews, and maintain the quality of our episodes, shifting to monthly instead of biweekly episode drops.
Even with that adjustment, the eight-hour time zone difference made it ever more difficult for both of us to align our schedules, especially when we needed to interview guests in the western USA. We reluctantly agreed to wrap up our podcast, but we were determined to finish on a strong note.
In our last few episodes, our guest Tiffany Teasley related her inspiring story on how she decided to become a data scientist after 20 years as a high school mathematics teacher. And our final episode featured Dr. Douglas Scherer, who talked about how organizations need to improve their employee engagement strategy if they have any hope of retaining key human capital.
Lessons Learned: You Miss All the Shots You Don’t Take
In retrospect, co-hosting a podcast offered me the chance to learn some amazing lessons I would never have experienced had I not taken the shot:
- Preparation is crucial. Podcasting is more than talking to each other or asking the obvious question; the best episode moments happened when we queried a guest about some part of their lives that they are rarely asked about.
- Recording is easy, but editing is hard. Especially under a deadline!
- Finally, listening is the most important soft skill. I had to really focus on my co-host and guest when they were talking, because we often hit upon an unexpected topic or story organically while recording, and some of our most interesting episodes were the result.
