Brett Terpstra is Tech Lead for AOL Tech (Engadget, TUAW, Joystiq), a coder and a writer. He developsMarked and nvALT, as well as a plethora of side projects.

He lives in Winona, MN with his wife, Aditi. They have 2 dogs of their own (and run a pit bull rescue), as well as 3 cats and an African Grey parrot.

Listen to the show or subscribe in iTunes.

But as a stats nerd, I can't help but think about the numbers sometimes.

So while I'll keep the actual number of downloads per episode to myself just because it's not really about that, here's the top 10 most downloaded episodes in the history of SSKTN. The date in brackets is the release date of the episode.

1. Anthony Stauffer (2011-01-13)
2. Shawn Blanc (2011-12-13)
3. Katherine Regnier (2011-02-03)
4. Matt Rix (2011-03-30)
5. Tara Hunt (2011-02-27)
6. Sheena Summach (2011-01-04)
7. Don McAllister (2011-12-20)
8. Katrina Ham (2010-12-22)
9. Stanley Chow (2011-02-17)
10. Jim Dalrymple (2011-12-06)

My Thoughts on Downloads

As you might be able to tell, the top 10 downloads are all from one show - Welcome to the Internet. It's not too surprising as with that show, the guest brings their own audience along with them which, more often than not, is quite a bit larger than my own meagre internet footprint.

With each guest, it's been interesting for me to watch traffic/downloads to see what happens. Some guests bring an initial wave of downloads due to the amount of people reading their blog, following them on Twitter, etc. Depending on where the guest posted about the interview affects traffic as well. Some guests linked to it on their Twitter account, which while they may have a large following the number of downloads doesn't compare to when a guest posts about it on their blog. From my unscientific observations, a reader of a blog is much more interested in the person behind the blog than someone who follows a Twitter account. Your mileage may vary.

For other guests, it's that the SSKTN interview with them appears among the top search results if you Google their name so the downloads average about the same each month. Or as a guest does something new that makes a bit of news, people start searching for that guest's name and eventually trickle down to my interview with them.

I've slowed down recently on the Welcome to the Intenet episodes simply because it takes a lot of time to schedule, prepare and conduct the interviews. I've also been doing local focused interviews on The YXE for people in and around Saskatoon, the city I live in.

Where to Next?

It's not about the numbers. But it is about the numbers if I want to do something on a sustainable (aka put food on my kid's table) and meaningful (aka be able to justify the time I put in to preparing) level.

It feels a bit like a deadline is looming for SSKTN - either level up or shut it down. It's got to either go beyond hobby status in order to continue producing as many shows as I'd like to be doing or just focus on a one or two as a fun side hobby.

I'm all ears if you have any suggestions, thoughts or questions. I'm optimistically pessimistic about the future of SSKTN and podcasting in general. On my good days, which is the norm, I have no trouble pushing ahead and keeping on going. On my few bad days I'm tempted to throw all the gear on Ebay and shut it down.

It's not about the numbers. It's not about the numbers.

As you can figure out it's a new show but I wanted to have it on it's own site since it's focused on local people from the city I live in, Saskatoon, and didn't want episodes to get lost in all the other content floating around on SSKTN.com. 

I'll be talking with people doing interesting (to me?) stuff in and around Saskatoon.

Episode 1 just went live with local food blogger Megan Lust. I'd love it if you took a listen and then subscribed and/or left a comment on iTunes!

I'm really happy with how this episode came out and can't wait to record and release episode 2.

Listen to the interview.

He's able to do this by charging a membership fee for most of the videos he publishes and then offers a free video once a month to demonstrate what the rest of the content looks like if you become a member.

Promo Code:

As a special offer for listeners and readers of SSKTN - you can redeem the following promo code for a free copy of SCOtutor for Mac (iPad app). The promo code is available on a first come, first serve basis.

Consider it an early Christmas present to your favourite podcast network! Ok, maybe your second favourite?

Colours & Code

Welcome to the Internet

Too Lazy to Blog

Lost & Lemon

Appsession (aka Obsession)

The Google Juice

I'm really proud with how the interview turned out and while that's usually enough for me - it was a nice surprise to see Shawn's post about it include the words: "...awesome podcast..." 

I'll be printing that one out and putting it in my scrapbook. :)

iTunes will stop updating a podcast if you have not listened to at least one of its episodes in five days. This script will batch-update every podcast subscription so you don't have to manually update each one individually.

While I'm partial to using Instacast to listen to podcasts, iTunes does a pretty good job of letting you keep up with and listen to all your favourite podcasts.

And while I like the idea of giving people input into how things happen here at SSKTN, I also realized pretty quickly that if suggestions for people to interview came in and I didn't find the particular person interesting, I probably wasn't going to want to spend much time preparing to interview.

So I've axed that particular board on the SSKTN Trello page. I've kept a copy of the people suggested and will likely follow through on some/all of them.

Like your ex-girlfriend/boyfriend said - it's not you, it's me. :)

Here's a test while recording an episode of Colours and Code.