As of writing this post, the balena IoT Happy Hour is approaching its 14th episode, likely Friday, June 26, 2020. I’m pretty stoked to be a part of the team behind this quirky show.

It’s not that the number 14 is anything special, but it sort of also is. That’s 14 weeks of discussion, fun, laughter, and camraderie in the books. This post celebrates that personal milestone and is a toast to many more episiodes.

What’s the show about?

The balena IoT Happy Hour features balena hardware hackers and teammates, and guests from our international community. We get together, hack, build, and enjoy each other’s company.

Yeah, yeah. I know… everyone and their parent and pet have some kind of podcast or show. Prior to COVID-19 gripping us all, the team and I just wanted a weekly place for folks interested in making, IoT, and edge development to hang out. 2020 played out the way it had so far and it turned IoT Happy Hour from an experimental idea into a weekly haven and hangout for balena and its community.

Every week we tackle some kind of topic, check out what our teammates have been hacking on, and even have intersting guests from time to time. We’ve covered topics like AI, machine learning, putting IoT devices in extreme temperatures, robotics, and more.

I'm even trusted to do technical demos from time to time!

I’m not on camera for every episode, but I’m in the background working on planning, production, and even effects here and there. And when I am on camera, hopefully I’m not too much of a ham.

Learning and growing

Before helping our Developer Advocate team at balena launch this weekly program, the only other video-heavy work that I had done would have been scripts for random agencies or the 24-hour event and separate podcast at Puppet. I’m a huge proponent of video content but always tended to stick to information architecture or content strategy work.

Getting the ability to plan, produce, and manage video content for balena’s YouTube channel is a lot of fun. I’ve even tried my hand at production, leading to one of our most popular videos about balenaSound.

Next steps

I’m definitely looking forward to more of this and am very proud of where we’ve been and where we’re headed. We recently passed 1000 subs which everyone has been stoked about. Onto 2000! :p

As rough practice becomes repetitive, reliable skill, I’m thinking about creating a content strategist’s primer on video as well for folks who might be on the fence of getting into it. No– it’s not about YouTube. There are far more experts out there.

Instead, I’d like to at least write about my own experience on creating and mapping video with where it can live on multiple channels (web, app, knowledge base, etc.). Let me know if that’s possibly helpful and I’ll get to work.

In the meantime, if you’re into building and hacking on edge devices, check out our show. Also, any constructive feedback is welcome! :)