---
aliases: ["Podcast Season 1 Launch"]
Is A: Project
Belongs to: "[[24q1]]"
Advances: "[[responsibility-podcast]]"
Status: Done
Owner: "[[person-luca-rossi]]"
---
# Podcast Season 1 Launch

## Overview

This project launched the Refactoring podcast — a long-form interview show focused on engineering culture, technical leadership, and the human side of building software. The idea had been brewing for months, but the decision to actually ship was driven by [[2024-launch-podcast]] as a key goal for the year.

The strategy was to batch-record 6 episodes before publishing anything, so that the launch would have a backlog and a consistent weekly cadence from day one. This meant spending most of January and February on guest outreach, recording, and editing, with the public launch in mid-March. [[person-sara-ricci]] joined as editor toward the end of the project to handle post-production, which proved essential for maintaining quality while keeping up with the newsletter schedule.

## Goals

- Record 6 episodes before public launch (buffer for consistent weekly releases)
- Secure guests with strong engineering leadership backgrounds (CTOs, VPEs, Staff+ engineers)
- Set up podcast hosting, RSS feed, and distribution to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube
- Design cover art and episode template graphics
- Establish [[procedure-podcast-recording]] and [[procedure-podcast-editing]] workflows

## Key decisions

- **Interview format, not solo.** Considered doing solo episodes or co-hosted commentary, but interviews leverage guest audiences for cross-promotion and are more engaging for a new show with no existing listener base.
- **Season model, not continuous.** Adopted a seasonal structure (8-10 episodes per season) with breaks between seasons. This prevents burnout and allows time to plan each season's theme. Season 1 theme: "Engineering Culture."
- **Audio-first, video as bonus.** Recorded video but optimized for audio quality. Video clips are used for social promotion, but the primary distribution is audio podcasts. This reduced production overhead significantly.

## Notes

- Guest booking was the hardest part. Sent about 40 outreach emails to get 8 confirmed guests (6 recorded, 2 cancelled). Cold outreach to high-profile CTOs had about a 5% response rate. Warm intros from [[person-matteo-cellini]] and [[person-david-kim]] were far more effective.
- The first two episodes had noticeable audio quality issues — learned the hard way that remote recordings via Zoom are not sufficient. Switched to Riverside.fm for episodes 3-6, which was a significant improvement.
- Launch week saw about 1,200 downloads across the first 3 episodes, which was above the initial target of 500. The newsletter cross-promotion was the primary driver — [[measure-podcast-downloads]] tracked closely with newsletter send days.
- This project created the foundation for [[24q3-podcast-season-2]] and all subsequent seasons. The workflows established here, particularly [[procedure-podcast-recording]], have remained largely unchanged.
