State of the Workflow

When I started podcasting in 2010, my first show was a pseudo-interview podcast. We had guests on each week to talk about themselves and then a little about tech news.

Later, this show became CMD+Space and then Inquisitive. With these iterations, I took the interviewing part more seriously, and it became the sole focus of the show.

Over the six years that I was working on these projects, I became very comfortable with my ability to interview people, prepare good questions, and have interesting conversations. This was how I got my start in podcasting, and I believe that having conversations with new people each week gave me the skills I have now.

That brings me to today. We’ve started a new series on Cortex called ‘State of the Workflow,’ where I’ll be interviewing a variety of guests about the devices, apps, and tools they use to get their work done.

I just published the first episode and was thrilled to invite tech YouTuber Austin Evans to the show. I’ve known Austin for many years and have spent time with him at his studio space, on many occasions. I’m always impressed with the way he creates content, how thoughtful he is about what he makes, and the success he has achieved.

I was confident he would be a great first guest, and I feel like I was right. I think you’ll really enjoy this episode.

I really enjoyed crafting a pure interview outline again—working out the areas I thought the conversation could explore, preparing for every possible avenue. And like all good interviews I’ve done, I didn’t even get through half of my document.

In returning to this format, one thing I’ve noticed is that booking guests is much harder than it was 15 years ago. It used to be very easy to send an email to someone and have them notice it. I think the proliferation of interview podcasts in the intervening years has caused a bit of burnout among potential guests. When I started my shows, there wasn’t as much competition.

But what’s changed for me since then is that my world has opened up more, and I now know many more interesting people in tech and media than I did back then.

I look forward to the upcoming episodes in this series, where I’ll get to talk to more people I admire about what they do. It’s a fun challenge to use all these skills again.