[Capitole du libre 2024] Projets Libres! : behind the scenes of an independent podcast dedicated to free software

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Behind the scenes of the podcast Projets Libres!

Hello to you. Thank you for being here to listen to this 25-minute talk on the Projets Libres podcast!, which is the podcast I do about free software that I’m going to tell you about. Before I start, who already knows the podcast? Okay, fine. Super. I’m going to explain what it is and why I do it and how I do it.

Presentation of Walid and the podcast Projets Libres!

So just to introduce myself, my name is Walid Nouh and I got to know free software in 2001 when I finished my studies. And in a distant time, I was a developer and I was lucky enough to be a Free Software professional, that is to say, to make a living from it. It was my job for 12 years and later I moved away from it a bit. And since 2018, I’ve been working in different startups, which allows me to stay young and see the IT of today, and to have a sometimes quite critical look at free software, that’s what’s cool. And my way of informing myself is podcasts, and if possible, long podcasts, that explains the length of the episodes. And another thing that’s interesting is that I like the story, and very often, when I’m preparing episodes on podcasts, I look at the history of the projects, and I can’t find it. And so, that’s also why I make episodes, it’s to tell the story of the projects.

So the podcast is available on a site called projets-libres.org. So that’s the site where the episodes and transcripts are. I’ll talk about the platform that hosts the podcast later. So it’s a personal and voluntary project, that is to say that there is no money, there is no advertising and I do this alongside my work. And I’ll explain my motivations right after.

I started in 2023. In fact, it’s a project that I had been maturing since the end of 2022. And I went for it, it took a few months before I got started. And currently, I’ve done about 32 episodes. So now, I’m on a frequency of about two per month, something like that. And with episodes that are more or less an hour long. The last two, here, on Framasoft (part 1 and part 2), the one that was released, there, it lasts 1h20. And the next one, it lasts 1h50. So there you have it, it’s quite variable. There are podcasts that will last more than 55 minutes, 50 minutes. But overall, we are still around these surroundings. That doesn’t mean I won’t make shorter ones. There are series that will come out where I will do shorter episodes, about thirty minutes long. But on the current format, it’s not bad because it gives the guests time to be able to tell things in a little more detail.

The podcast is hosted by a platform called Castopod. It is a free podcast hosting platform. It’s done by French people, including Benjamin Bellamy, who is the founder, will be there to give a conference this afternoon on his own podcast. So I host him in their home. And why did I choose this platform? In addition to the fact that she is free. Initially, I was on a platform that was not free. This is also because this platform is connected to the Fediverse, that is, there is an account that you can follow on Mastodon, on any other platform of the Fediverse. And so, in fact, you can interact directly from your Mastodon app, for example, with the posts that are made. So, as soon as I publish an episode, automatically, there is a post that is made on the podcast address. And there you have it, you can follow it. It’s a platform that I really like. Plus, I’m lucky enough to know the people who do it and to be able to chat with them, so it’s pretty cool.

And the podcast, I organize it with another tool that is more or less free, which is called Anytype , part of which is free and part of which is open source. It’s the tool that allows me to organize my podcast: I fell into it, I got caught up in this tool and I wouldn’t see using anything else. It’s a pretty crazy geek tool, I do everything with it and I love this tool. And that’s how I organize all my episodes: when do they come out, when do I do it, all the sources, the links between the sources, etc.

The motivations for making the podcast Projets Libres!

Why am I doing this podcast? The first thing is for me. It’s because I’m very curious and when I listen to episodes of other podcasts, at the end I’m like: “but they didn’t ask this question, they didn’t talk about that”, etc. So often I take already existing episodes, French or English, and it serves as a basis and then I build behind my own plots and my own episodes.

The other thing is that I love human stories. And so, in fact, Free Software is just human stories. And so, in fact, the idea is to tell the stories. And I particularly like what happened before, that is to say what happened 15 or 20 years ago, on which we have hindsight. And it’s still very nice to do that.

And then, from the beginning, one of the things I wanted to show was the diversity that there is in free software. Between people who are purely free software, people who do business, all the different models, licenses, etc. I thought it was really great. And I’ll explain, I thought I knew the subject well but in fact I didn’t…

And the last thing that’s something that wasn’t a goal at the beginning but actually that it has become, is to make a knowledge base of the ecosystem. I notice over time when talking to people… that often there are people, they have problems and I tell them “but in fact I’ve already dealt with this, go see this episode”. And so in fact finally I find it quite interesting to have to document all this in one place and to be able to make links between the episodes and that it follows each other.

The themes of the podcast Projets Libres!

So the themes, for those who have listened, we find more or less that. For those who don’t know, the three big themes that I deal with are more professional themes, it’s everything that revolves around financing, governance, economic models. After that, I love the Fediverse, so we try to talk about it a lot too. And everything that is digital commons too. And ERP, because it’s a subject that I like a lot too. There are many other topics that we will talk about in the future. Typically transport, which is my other great passion. And it will come in the weeks and months to come. So that’s it, it’s subjects, it’s episodes that I’m preparing, but it’s also people who contact me to tell me, you should talk about this or I know someone who could be interesting. And that’s cool.

The podcast business model

My economic model is very simple, it’s that I’m an employee and that’s the best status, in my opinion, to do what I do. Because it means that I’m not under pressure from sponsors or I’m not subject to the fact that they have views made and that they always produce more so that the platforms have referenced well. I do it at my own pace. It doesn’t cost a lot to make a podcast. And so, I make the episodes that I want to do. And not if I had to, for example, be an employee, well, make a living, be a professional content creator: I’d only do episodes on /e/OS, on Fairphone and then maybe one or two other subjects, but that would be it because it’s the stuff that brings in the most money, at least in my audience. So for me, it’s really great to do that because I have a job that I love and besides that, all my free time, I spend it doing that. I meet a lot of people and it’s cool.

The genesis

How did I create all this? Before the first episode, I thought I knew the free software world very well. I said to myself: “well, I worked in it for 12 years, I know a lot of people, it’s cool”. And I had a lot of people around me, colleagues, work-study students and everything, who were saying, like, “how does it work? How do you make money with free software? And why do you publish your sources, etc. ?”. And I explained to them. And at one point, I said to myself “it would be cool to explain it”. So initially, I had started before the first episode with the idea of making a podcast for the general public, a bit like what April does, for example. So that was before the first episode. And after the first episode, I realized that in fact, first, I didn’t know the industry very well, that I had a lot of preconceived ideas and that it was very incomplete. And two, I realized that during the first episode, it wasn’t possible to do a mainstream podcast because I had too many technical questions. Basically, these are not the subjects that interested me in the end. And so, I went on a podcast that is rather… I start with the mainstream podcasts that exist. And me, behind it, afterwards, I make podcasts that are a little more technical, a little more professional, well a little more focused on the professional side. That’s it, and that’s what interests me more actually.

The Podcast Factory

And so how do I make podcasts? First of all, the first thing is to find the ideas. So finding ideas, I’ll come back to that, it’s a daily job. It’s coming to conferences, listening to replays, reading articles, talking to lots of people. Once I’ve found the ideas, then it’s time to contact people. So they have to respond, they have to say “ok, we have to organize”. Sometimes it takes a year, a year and a half. Sometimes it takes 10 minutes. It varies greatly.

Then, afterwards, you have to write a framework. I will come back to this later. The plot is very important. Then you have to register. After that, you have to do the editing. After that, you have to do the transcription and the automatic translation. And then you have to publish the episodes.

And all that, on average, is about 10 hours. Which, roughly, compared to other podcasts I listen to, is about average. There are some who do more than 15 hours per episode, others a little less. But overall, 10 hours seems to be about the right time. So, I do two a month. So, there you have it, about 20 hours on that.

Building a Grid

So the plot is really a very long process and what takes me the most time is… And I always create a framework. That is to say, when I ever plan an episode before sending a plot to a guest, I ask him if he wants to modify the plot, complete it, amend it, etc. Unless explicitly requested, typically the two episodes I made with Framasoft, it’s a request from them, they told me we don’t want a plot, we want it to be an informal discussion between us. So in fact, my main sources are the videos of the confs. So here (Editor’s note: the Capitol of Free Software), the JDLLs, the RPLLs, the FOSDEMs, etc. Anyway, there you have it, all these confs. I spend my life watching all these confs and re-watching them. And from there, that’s what I mainly feed on. And then the discussions with other people who bring another point of view. Or sometimes I go to the speakers, I ask them afterwards “can you explain to me a little what you meant”, etc. And for that I use a tool called Cryptpad, which allows me to make encrypted pads that I share with the guests. Since I don’t share Anytype with guests, it’s for me, for technical reasons of Anytype. So that’s it, I’m using this tool.

Episode production

Then the production, I do editing, a lot of editing. So here I remove all the uhhh, I remove all the blanks, I try to make it listenable and fluid. All this because it saves useful time. So in fact, if I record 1h20, at the end, it makes maybe 1h10 of useful episodes. And so, it allows you to potentially record more and have a better rendering. 1 hour of recording is about 2h30 of editing, something like that. It depends on the time. So that’s it, I’m using Audacity. I don’t need more. Audacity suits me very well. I should try Ardour, but I must admit that I procrastinate. The most annoying thing to do is the transcription.

At the beginning I didn’t do the transcriptions. I started doing them because when I started I didn’t know anything about audio. At the beginning when I started, it took me a long time to make my episodes. And so the further I went, the more I started looking at the transcript. This is something I was sometimes asked about on LinuxFR or elsewhere. I was told “but you don’t have a written transcript?”. And so I actually started making transcriptions. Currently what I do is I take the transcription, I pass it on a transcription platform that sends me text. I’m trying to do it with Whisper locally, the result isn’t great yet. So I’ll explain it at the end, it’s one of the things I would like to do, is to be able to do it locally. And so at the end in fact I have a transcription, this transcription is diarised so the voices are separated by users. And then I rework this transcription, I correct it, I put the external links etc. And that’s for an hour of interview, it could be 4 hours of work, 3-4 hours of work. It’s super annoying to do, but on the other hand, I’ve realized over time that in fact, even around me, there are a lot of people who don’t listen to the audio and who read the text. And above all, the text, we can put anchors, we can refer to it, etc. It’s really interesting. So, it’s not just for accessibility, it’s also because in the end, to my surprise, there are plenty of people who prefer to listen to text than audio. And so, that’s why I’m doing it and I’m redoing all the past episodes.

Communication

And how do I communicate? I mainly communicate on Mastodon, then LinkedIn too, BlueSky and on LinuxFR. I don’t do the other platforms for many other reasons but for the main reason being time and I don’t have or I no longer have an account on the other platforms. So I rely on word of mouth from people and guests to share things. Mastodon is the platform on which I contact people first. That’s where I have most of my exchanges. For those who are not on Mastodon, it’s on LinkedIn. Or, if not afterwards, it’s like here, at the fairs. Mastodon, it’s very cool. I’ve always had positive responses and people are always quite benevolent. And people, by the way, contact me to tell me “Hey, if you want to talk about such and such a subject, I have contacts, I can get in touch”, etc. It was through the use of Mastodon that I discovered the Fediverse and that I started to make episodes about the Fediverse. Which, for example, is interesting, because initially I wanted to do an episode on “What is the Fediverse?” and I listened to episodes of other podcasts, and by the end, I still hadn’t figured it out. And so, I said to myself, “I’m not going to do that, I’m going to interview French speakers who work in the projects that are part of the Fediverse, and I’m going to ask them to explain what the And how do I communicate? I mainly communicate on Mastodon, then LinkedIn too, BlueSky and on LinuxFR. I don’t do the other platforms for many other reasons but for the main reason being time and I don’t have or I no longer have an account on the other platforms. So I rely on word of mouth from people and guests to share things. Mastodon is the platform on which I contact people first. That’s where I have most of my exchanges. For those who are not on Mastodon, it’s on LinkedIn. Or, if not afterwards, it’s like here, at the fairs. Mastodon, it’s very cool. I’ve always had positive responses and people are always quite benevolent. And people, by the way, contact me to tell me “Hey, if you want to talk about such and such a subject, I have contacts, I can get in touch”, etc. It was through the use of Mastodon that I discovered the Fediverse and that I started to make episodes about the Fediverse. Which, for example, is interesting, because initially I wanted to do an episode on “What is the Fediverse?” and I listened to episodes of other podcasts, and by the end, I still hadn’t figured it out. And so, I said to myself, “I’m not going to do that, I’m going to interview French-speaking people who work in the projects that are part of the Fediverse, and I’m going to ask them to explain what the Fediverse is and how it works, for example (Editor’s note: see this category). So there you have it, this whole federated network of social networks, of which Mastodon is a part…

I must admit that I’m not at all good at publishing, it pisses me off I don’t like social networks at all, publishing there so I do the minimum so I really rely on people to do word of mouth. I think that if I was much better at communication, the podcast would be better known but it’s not necessarily my ultimate goal so that’s pretty good.

The challenges

And the big challenges… The main challenge is diversity. If you listen regularly, you will see that there are mostly men. And that’s a big problem. I have episodes with women who are going to arrive, but not as many as with men. And that’s my main problem. In any case, that’s what bothers me the most. Because by default, one, when I go to talk to people I know, it’s men. And two, in the projects, the leaders or the people I interview, a good part of them are men. So, it’s also a job to go and see people, to discuss with them, etc. And compared to other French-speaking podcasts, I’m not very good. So, there you have it. So that’s really my big topic.

The second subject is time management. My problem is not money, it’s time. So in fact, the goal of what I do is to try to be better at producing my episodes, not to produce more, but to spend less time on it and therefore spend more time doing other stuff. Typically, my family, sports, other stuff. And by the way, one every two weeks, I personally find that it’s even too much and that I’ll maybe go for one every two and a half weeks, or even one every three weeks, because in fact, we just have a lot of requests. And actually, an hour or an hour and a quarter episode every two weeks to listen to, it’s pretty hard. Myself, there are podcasts that I love that I ended up not listening to anymore because, when people become professional, they end up doing three episodes a week and after that, I listen more. because there is too much. The goal is not to do more, it’s to make better quality and maybe less. On the other hand, the disadvantage of this is that I already have three episodes recorded. If I do one every three weeks, the next episode will already be far away. It’s a balance between the two.

The last point is what I call local first. It’s how I can run as many things as possible during production on my computer (Editor’s note: it’s quite approximate, see here to better understand or the conference of the founder of the movement). So the assembly, I do it on my computer. I do the management on my computer. But for example, I don’t do transcription on my computer. There are plenty of things I could do on my computer, on which, one, I would better control the consumption. And then two, it’s also more fun to run models on your computer and to master a little bit of everything you do. So that’s one of the third big issues I want to work on.

And then the last thing I didn’t write is that I’m not alone. Around me, there are friends with whom I do this or former colleagues. So there’s one called Raphaël Semeteys with whom I do all the interviews around everything that is more of an economic model, governance, etc. There are others who will come on other subjects. And so here too, it’s a bit like how to federate, find people who are interested in coming to speak on given subjects from time to time, or even why not people who want to give help. I don’t know, we were talking about the… I was talking about the fact that I wasn’t very good at publishing. Why not, if there are people who are interested, to discuss how we could do better around this. There you go. I don’t know… I’m done.

This conference was recorded on November 16, 2024 at the Capitole du libre in Toulouse.

License

This podcast is released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license or later.