hpr4174 :: Of the Mic and the Mop

The response to the future of hpr

<< First, < Previous, Next >, Latest >>

Hosted by Ken Fallon on Thursday, 2024-08-01 is flagged as Clean and is released under a CC-BY-SA license.
Tags: HPR, Future, Statistics, peppercarrot. Comments: 6.

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format. Play now:

Duration: 00:44:56

Part of the series: general.

The Future of HPR

In episode hpr4109 "The future of HPR" Knightwise challenged us to look at HPR from the point of view of marketing to a business. His show was prompted by a post we put out entitled Happy new year - should we continue with HPR ?, wherein we asked you to vote on the future of HPR. The vote was a not so subtle redirect to our upload page.

TL;D[R|L]

This is likely to be a long show, so I'm adding the summary here.

Key Takeaways

1. More subscribers does not mean more contributors.
2. In person contact is the best way to get new contributors.
3. Use social media to bring people to HPR and not drive the discussions away from HPR.
4. Our interface point with the listening world is the RSS feed.
5. The Web site is the first point of contact for new contributors.
6. We are losing contributors due to fear of being "guilty by association".

Feed the queue

• Send in one show a year.
• Get one new host a year.
• Don't rush in shows, use the reserve queue.
• Follow the Scheduling Guidelines.

Look for Hosts at every opportunity

• Take every opportunity, work, school, hobbies, social media groups, to ask people to send in a show.
• Volunteer to host an HPR Booth at events, libraries, fairs, meetups, etc.
• Record interviews with interesting Projects.
• Get in touch with older hosts and remind them how much you miss their content.

Get our house in order

To be taken seriously as a project, we need to:

0. Finish the migration of the Back End.
1. Formalize our current implicit Code of Conduct.
2. Refresh the website, emphasizing our norms and values.
3. Enrich the RSS feeds to become more integrated on distribution channels.
4. Start giving talks at conferences promoting HPR, or Projects discussed on HPR.
5. Get HPR Published in Wikipedia, Industry, Tech and Hobby Magazines.
6. Assign dedicated Janitors on Official and Unofficial Platforms.

---

Subscribers versus Contributors

"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." W._Edwards_Deming

All the numbers given in this episode are the most conservative numbers we can give, as we have no financial incentive to do otherwise. We can be confident in the numbers as the rate of subscriber growth mirrors the growth of social media, and the growth of the Internet in general.

There have been 2,446,084 Total unique subscribers since the project began. That is at least 2.5 Million people that have not only heard about HPR, but have also actively subscribed to an HPR feed.

There have been 359 hosts since the project began.

The plots show that the number of monthly subscribers to HPR has slowly increased from 40,000 to over 120,000 between 2010 and 2022. It also shows for the same period the number of new hosts per month. The period between 2010 and 2016 shows a lot of new hosts joining at a rate of about three per month. This was when we were active at FLOSS Events. Between 2016 and 2023 the rate of new hosts drops to one every two months or so.

---

Links

• Pepper and Carrot

Comments

Subscribe to the comments RSS feed.

Comment #1 posted on 2024-07-31 07:29:57 by Knightwise

Posting on behalf of Knightwise, and with his permission.

KnightWise added a comment via the mail list to this episode

https://lists.hackerpublicradio.com/pipermail/hpr/2024-July/004777.html

Comment #2 posted on 2024-08-03 22:51:06 by dnt

A good reflection on what this project is

The point about the listener-to-contributor conversion rate being so small is well put and obviously does not mean that the listenership plays no part, it just turns out to be a relatively small part.

I do think that volunteer projects gain participants mostly by direct invitation, that has been my experience with the small projects I have been involved in, and I have been less patient than you when people have come up to me with their prescriptions for my projects.

Comment #3 posted on 2024-08-04 14:17:46 by Henrik Hemrin

Leared more about what HPR is

Thanks Ken for this show with explanations, facts and thoughts about HPR. As a relatively new listener and contributor (ref this episode https://hackerpublicradio.org/eps/hpr4129/index.html) it was useful for me to better understand HPR.

Regarding the web HPR web site, my usage of is that I first had heard about HPR, then look up "what it is" with assistance of the web site. Possibly listen to some episode at the start, and if going back in time. Reading details carefully before submitting my (esp) first show. Check sometime upcoming shows. Submit links to specific shows eg in e-mail/chat and social media.
It would be helpful for me if all menu items always are available, now menu items depend on which page I am at.

Comment #4 posted on 2024-08-05 07:03:48 by Ken Fallon

@dnt

Thanks for the response. And yes of course we spend a lot of time and effort trying to get "Listeners" (I'm tempted to refer to them as "Learners") to contribute.

We have it at the end of every single show. "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 really is."

Those who listen to this show, (meta reference for the Community News where this will be read out) will know how much time we spend asking people to send in shows.

Comment #5 posted on 2024-08-05 07:12:01 by Ken Fallon

@Henrik

Thanks for the suggestion about the website. Yes I can see how that would be frustrating. We should be able to fix it.

Comment #6 posted on 2024-08-05 10:06:12 by Archer72

Re: hpr4174::2024-08-01 Of the Mic and the Mop and Re: Henrik Hemrin

I agree with what Henrik Hemrin commented. I did learn a lot about HPR and the expectations.

The listener to host ratio was staggering. I was a listener for a while before becoming a host, so am part of the slim statistic. In Ken's words, "You are the exception that proves the rule"

I don't quite remember when I found out about HPR, possibly around 2008. I was looking for podcasts as a new Linux user and I think HPR was one of them. Linux Outlaws was the other that comes to mind. My first show was 2015-12-15, which
was too short, but at least it was a start.

Leave Comment

Note to Verbose Commenters
If you can't fit everything you want to say in the comment below then you really should record a response show instead.

Note to Spammers
All comments are moderated. All links are checked by humans. We strip out all html. Feel free to record a show about yourself, or your industry, or any other topic we may find interesting. We also check shows for spam :).