Being someone that got in fairly early (3-digit SO ID#), in my case it came from listening to the podcast. Months before the site went live, Joel and Jeff discu

Being someone that got in fairly early (3-digit SO ID#), in my case it came from listening to the podcast. Months before the site went live, Joel and Jeff discussed the site and how it was being built. You are right, though; the reason why I started listening to the podcast was because I enjoyed reading Joel on Software and Coding Horror, and I've continued to stay because the show is much more casual than any other programming podcast I've come across (other shows I've found tend to take themselves a little too seriously). Anyways, that's just my opinion, but I do think that a podcast is a great way to build buzz for a site, and if you know of any shows similar to Stack Overflow I'd love to hear about them.