HN, Remember you said go out and talk to people? I did: InsidersTalk.com | Hacker News Reader

HN, Remember you said go out and talk to people? I did: InsidersTalk.com

insiderstalk.com

138 pointssnitko53 comments

Would be nice if there was an rss feed to download the interviews. Probably be prohibitively expensive for just one person to handle though. I love the idea, I'm just sort of afraid I'll forget about it.

Actually, audio podcasts would be really awesome. Love to be able to listen to them while I walk to work.

Fantastic approach. Love the simple, easy-to-read layout.

Idea: Maybe you could make certain interviews "open" where you invite your users/readers to submit their own follow-up questions during the next few days after it posted to the site. These follow up questions will spur discussion, your interviewee might agree to answer these questions after the deadline, and you'll create a "stickier" site that readers can enjoy until your next interview posts. ;) Great work.

If I understand your suggestion correctly, then it's already done. It says [name] is also answering your questions in comments and all interviewees so far agreed to answer the audience questions in comments. So go ahead and ask them.

Sorry, I noticed this when reading more thoroughly through the site. (I get over-excited with suggestions sometimes.) Looks beautiful, still! Thanks again.

EDIT: A few suggestions while finishing your most recent interview (Space Shuttle Engineer).

- The video puts you pretty far from the camera and makes it feel very distant. You might "engage" your audience more if you filled more of the frame by being physically closer to the camera or zooming in. I suggest having your head fill the top 3/4ths to 2/3rds of the frame instead of dead-center as Douglas sat.

- You cover your mouth a few times while listening to the response. Try to avoid this, you seem anxious.

- Smile. A LOT! It makes you charismatic and puts your viewers and interviewees at ease.

Hope this helps.

Covering the mouth looks weird indeed. I wasn't anxious, but it definitely made me look so. Oh, well, I'm new in that television business. Learning. Thanks for the tips.

Good job Roman, I enjoyed Mallette's interview. I'm not sure if having a completely heterogeneous set of guests is a good idea, rather than focusing on smaller niches. This way I feel like there are low chances that I'd be interested inyour next guest. On a positive note, the simple layout looks really effective to me.

P.S: I know it's a bit off-topic, but knowing Roman is Russian, I'm impressed by his american accent, I wonder how he got to achieve that. I'm Italian, I have lived a bit in UK in the past, and now when I speak English I sound like the Queen on crack, and there's no apparent way to fix my pronunciation.

I think you never know what you may find interesting. I don't really want to find a niche. Mixergy covers founders, but for me it's more exciting to talk to just different people, not necessarily entrepreneurs. That's the point.

About the accent. As you can see in some of the interviews, it's not always perfect. But in my opinion the thing that matters is that people understand you perfectly and enjoy talking to you. That's what I'm trying to achieve. Having a nice accent is nothing if you say stupid things. So, don't worry about it?

I agree with you. A lot of folks are doing niches. But few go talk to the guy who is walking to his 5pm gas station job. I'd love if you focused across high-end and low-end jobs.

I get tired of hearing about nothing but startups. Maybe talking to someone who's awesome for other reasons, like an ultramarathon runner, would be refreshing and just as inspiring.

I agree. People that have achieved something that takes a lot of skill or plain dedication and determination, but aren't in the technology startup crowd have just as much to say about overcoming obstacles as anyone else.

It's a lesson for the audience to abstract the ideas and apply it to themselves if they wish to use this as an educational tool.

How this 20-something kid made millions!!! Next on Mixergy.

I'd love something like TED but more informal.

NPR - fresh air

Brilliant idea! Now if you can add content indexing (i.e. a sort of ToC) for each interview, that will be just purely awesome!

That's a very good idea, thank you. I think I'll do it.

Keyword tagging can be great for SEO if you do it right.

Well done Roman, keep it up and you'll have something great. To make it more intimate, what about filling the whole screen with the subject? Tarantino does that, he keeps the dialogue going in the background with the camera fixed on the subject.

Love the concept. Looks like Ask Me Anything from reddit - yet better.

I would replace the blog description immediately, though; it might have been five years ago when the internet was new and everything, but "things" and "stuff" in descriptions is like nails on a blackboard to me.

In fact, IAmI is where I found 2 of the 3 interviewees so far. Any suggestions on description?

Hmm, when I first saw the website, I thought something along the lines of being at a dinner party sitting next to the most awesome guy with a story to tell. It also reminds me of how David Foster Wallace overcame his phobia of going to parties; he used his love for learning and told himself that there is something to be learnt from everyone.

On another note, you should create a separate Twitter feed specifically for news and updates pursuant to the siate.

That reminds me of a show, where in each episode, the host interviews a celebrity in an upscale dinner setting. Beside the very enticing gourmet meals, the topic also focuses on various aspects of the interviewee's life.

I think a good way to fix the I'm-not-sure-I-want-to-watch-the-next-episode-because-I-might-not-care-about-the-topic problem is to have one aspect of the talk focused on a specific theme, so that people can have expectations.

InsidersTalk - Meet people with stories to tell.

How often will interviews be posted? Weekly? Bi-monthly? As often as you can get content? In any event, I've subscribed to your RSS.

For now it's weekly. The next one is scheduled for Friday and I'm going to post it on Monday. Hopefully, I will be able to do it even more often.

Make sure you always have two or more interviews ready, before you decide to publish more often. In case of the likely event that you run out of mojo for a while, or force majeure.

With a loose schedule (once a week), you may risk losing viewers who forget to return. What about scheduling something relevant for almost every day of the week?

  e.g. (and just making this up as an example)
  Monday - new video goes up
  Tuesday - you moderate/seed/encourage some commentary and follow-up questions
  Wednesday - interviewee responds in a specific follow-up entry (bit like Ask Slashdot or whatever it was)
  Thursday - maybe a text-only interview by email/IM, or a guest spot/entry?
  Friday - three curated links of similar about-my-job articles or links (e.g., Reddit)

Admittedly, that does impact the simplicity of what you have now, but I do think a finer schedule could help your stickiness.

I don't have much to lose yet, with all the success on HN I have only 2 feedburner subscriptions so far. But your advice is good, I will definitely give it a thought.

I gave your site a plug on Twitter. Not the sort of thing I would return to (I don't really like video on the web), but I like the idea and effort. Would definitely keep an eye on it if there were transcripts but, to be honest, it's not a service I'd pay for. (Same goes for Mixergy though I barely remember to skim those transcripts and usually just read some bullets/highlights if available.)

You could look at paid spots though, especially if you had more than one interview a week. A tech company might pay your hosting bill for the month if allowed to feature one of their developers?

Another thing might be trying to complement a HR service and make yourself valuable there. Can't think of anything off the top of my head, but a bit of brainstorming might uncover something.

Thanks for the plug on twitter. I definitely don't mean viewers to pay me for watching interviews, that's absurd. Also, my current hosting bill is $20 a month and I see no reason for me to ask anyone to pay it. What I'm interested in is growing the project to the level when I will be able to make something even more interesting out of it. That requires some established audience.

i'd love to see some hacker news ppl being interviewed

Awesome project! It will be great if you can provide text version of interview under video version!

I just remembered something important regarding the use of Vimeo. From the usage guidelines (http://vimeo.com/guidelines):

># Do Not Upload Videos Intended for Commercial use

>* Businesses may not use Vimeo to externalize their hosting costs. Vimeo (including Vimeo Plus) is not a business service.

>* You may not upload videos containing ads before or after the video, unless given prior written permission from an authorized member of the Vimeo staff. Videos with any advertisements in them, including links to commercial sites, regardless of content, will be removed.

>* We reserve the right to allow certain commercial content for those businesses who have coordinated sponsored advertising campaigns or direct partnerships with Vimeo.

To which extent this applies to your project in its current and future is debatable, but I would make sure it doesn't catch you by surprise, in case you haven't already. :)

It does not apply to me for now. I'm not using Vimeo for commercial purposes yet. If I ever want to place ads, I'd probably switch from Vimeo to my own hosting.

I know, but you are externalizing your hosting costs by using Vimeo, and I haven't seen anyone use it like you do. I was just wondering how their rule applies.

I pay for the vimeo account, so I'm not exactly externalizing costs.

Insider stalk? That sounds no fun.

That was the first thing I thought when I read the headline. Ranks up there with Who Represents (www.whorepresents.com) and Pen Island (www.penisland.com).

Edit: I still think it is a good idea, but the domain name lends itself to obvious jokes.

I thought everyone learned this lesson after expertsexchange.com... That has to be one of the oldest running jokes on the net.

Not being a native speaker it never occurred to me and all my native speaker friends to whom I mentioned the domain name never said a word. I think maybe it's not all that disastrous.

Totally agree that this case isn't that bad at all. Just thought that most people were familiar with the running joke about expertsexchange.com.

and Powergen Italia (powergenitalia.com)

I watched one of the videos. Great Job, Roman!

Thanks, I appreciate that.

Wow... I'm sitting here, mentally mapreducing the HN RSS, barely awake, and then this news item pops up, I load the page and I'm like: "...ee... WHAT?". Then I got flooded by the wave of excitement and pleasant emotions. Awesome idea! :). Though I'm too excited to go to sleep now :(.

Very interesting content!

Maybe do what mixergy does and have some info about the interview and a transcript?

Really cool - reminds me of a book I still enjoy picking up from time to time called 'Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs at the Turn of the Millennium'

It was spun out from a column on word.com back in the .com days.

Made me think of http://thestory.org/

Needs interview transcripts.

I really enjoyed the Air traffic controller interview..

Me too, I think Airon is a great person. It was a great pleasure to interview him.

nice concept. what's your biz model if you have one?

I would suggest the podcast model that Dan Carlin uses with his podcasts.(http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hh) I also really recommend the podcast if you want something interesting to listen along to.

The lastest 10 are free...and then you can download previous seasons for a price.

The business model is to get some traction with an interesting content, then figure out the business model.

Fusion Ads or The Deck Network might very well want to place their ads on his site.

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