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Here's a site I've been working on for over a year now. Actually posted to HN asking for feedback on the idea [1]. So far, it's been a slow road, no over night

Here's a site I've been working on for over a year now. Actually posted to HN asking for feedback on the idea [1]. So far, it's been a slow road, no over night success or anything, slowly building the site and releasing new episodes as I have time. Personally, it has been a major growing experience, and showed me the power of the internet. People from all over the world are emailing me out of the blue (and it's not spam!). Almost jaw dropping to think about it. If you have an idea, work on it, release it, refine it, and see where it goes. I had always just sat on my ideas. Happy to answer any questions, comments, or concerns. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5828603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5828603

rakoo 12y ago
That is excellent material, not only for sysadmins, but for anyone interested in diving in the UNIX world. Great work ! I see you have direct download for videos, really good. It looks like the video controls are not shown by default, and I don't think it's my browser because other non-flash videos have them; is it on your side ?
- WestCoastJustin 12y ago
  Interesting, I can see the controls (ubuntu firefox/chrome), but I have had reports that adblock/flashblock is doing something. I'll need to investigate this further. Thanks for reporting it though!
incision 12y ago
Great work, the content looks solid and I love that you've already covered several frequently omitted, but very useful features (transcripts, mobile usable video downloads, notifications, rss). My only request would be to come up with a way to provide content more regularly. It looks things are pretty sporadic as is. Personally, I wouldn't mind a weekly digest type email that contains perhaps a blurb on an great book, a short list of select links and a preview of an upcoming cast. Keep it up.
- WestCoastJustin 12y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I totally want to put more episodes out, just a juggling act right now. Hopefully, I can figure out some way to work on them full time.
  - pchristensen 12y ago
    Easy, charge $$ for them. This is great stuff, and people value it highly. You will have more time to work on them if there's income coming from them, and your customers will benefit from you covering more topics, more quickly. Everybody wins! Three ideas: - Make them all access free for the first week they're up, then charge for access to the back catalog. See CreativeLive[1] for a good example. This way everyone can measure the quality of video, audio, transcripts, etc so they know what they're getting, and the people who need to learn a specific topic will have a strong incentive to pay. This will encourage you to cover evergreen topics to make your back catalog more valuable - Flip it and make the new videos available to subscribers for the 1st N months, then free afterwards. This will bias you towards covering the newest, churniest stuff that is causing people pain right now - Do like RailsCasts and alternate between free and paid videos. Paid subscribers get twice as many videos, everybody still gets something free for marketing etc Personally I think the first one is your best bet. [1] https://www.creativelive.com/ https://www.creativelive.com/
    - WestCoastJustin 12y ago
      Thanks very much for your feedback! You have several very good points that I will explore, specifically the various models that might work. Ideally, I'd like to keep the site free and maybe have a couple key sponsors or something, still exploring the idea.
      - joshdotsmith 12y ago
        Please charge money for this.
        12y ago
haxxorfreak 12y ago
Really nice and easy to follow, I love the clear audio and well cropped screencasts. The transcripts and documentation is just the cherry on top. Might I ask what you are using for the screen recording and editing workflow? I'm doing some end-user training videos and having mixed results.
- WestCoastJustin 12y ago
  First, I get the idea. Either through suggestion or something I'm working on. Then the workflow looks like a storyboard with some research. For the videos, I'm using ubuntu as my desktop, then use kazam for desktop recording [1], then Audacity [2] for voice recording, and finally kdenlive [3] to edit the audio/video together. Along with gimp for all the graphics. [1] https://launchpad.net/kazam https://launchpad.net/kazam [2] http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ [3] http://www.kdenlive.org/ http://www.kdenlive.org/
h1fra 12y ago
Very nice, as a casual sysadmin I find it very interesting. Videos are cool and very well edited. Good job !
peterwwillis 12y ago
Comment: There are thousands of guides, HOWTOs, forums, mailing lists, etc out there to teach you how to set up basic tools in Linux. To me this doesn't constitute being a sysadmin and is only a small part of the job. It would be really neat if you interviewed a bunch of sysadmins with long resumes, maybe people who give talks at LISA, NANOG, etc. People from different industries probably have vastly different work environments. Ask them if they have any noteworthy experiences, lessons learned, or tips that work towards developing the career versus just Linux-literacy. There's a lot of knowledge out there that isn't written down anywhere.
- WestCoastJustin 12y ago
  Very interesting idea! Thanks, I'll explore this.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jordan0day 12y ago
  I'll counter with the fact that I think consistent, accurate, and up-to-date "basic usage" information is still really hard to come by for a linux newbie. The thousands of guides, HOWTOs, forums, mailing lists, etc just means that in addition to trying to learn the system, they also have to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff, information-wise. I've known plenty of people who are very good programmers or Windows admin-types who would make very good linux sysadmins, but for the huge hurdle of not learning linux, but learning how to learn linux. That's not to discount your suggestion around expert tips/war stories/etc., though.
Nux 12y ago
Good job! Watched a couple of your videos, well done; I like the style and the fact you offer files for download as well as text descriptions.
- WestCoastJustin 12y ago
  Thanks ;)
Naushad 12y ago
Would just say Thanks for such simple casts which explain concepts from scratch and using visual illustrations and not just voiceover and commands. A boon for someone trying to master CLI.
larrys 12y ago
I wonder if you could post on your "about" page more about yourself (or detail it here). In particular what your expertise is and how much experience you have in what you are writing and doing screencasts about.
- WestCoastJustin 12y ago
  Will do. Briefly, been a sysadmin for 11+ years and worked my way up the ladder. Have various certifications but honestly most/all of this can be learned on-line nowadays. Working at a mega corp looking after High Performance Compute (HPC) infrastructure. Think labs across the country + scientists needing HPC to do their research.
  - larrys 12y ago
    You definitely need to put that on your "about" page.

rakoo 12y ago

That is excellent material, not only for sysadmins, but for anyone interested in diving in the UNIX world. Great work ! I see you have direct download for videos, really good. It looks like the video controls are not shown by default, and I don't think it's my browser because other non-flash videos have them; is it on your side ?

WestCoastJustin 12y ago
Interesting, I can see the controls (ubuntu firefox/chrome), but I have had reports that adblock/flashblock is doing something. I'll need to investigate this further. Thanks for reporting it though!

incision 12y ago

Great work, the content looks solid and I love that you've already covered several frequently omitted, but very useful features (transcripts, mobile usable video downloads, notifications, rss). My only request would be to come up with a way to provide content more regularly. It looks things are pretty sporadic as is. Personally, I wouldn't mind a weekly digest type email that contains perhaps a blurb on an great book, a short list of select links and a preview of an upcoming cast. Keep it up.

WestCoastJustin 12y ago
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I totally want to put more episodes out, just a juggling act right now. Hopefully, I can figure out some way to work on them full time.
- pchristensen 12y ago
  Easy, charge $$ for them. This is great stuff, and people value it highly. You will have more time to work on them if there's income coming from them, and your customers will benefit from you covering more topics, more quickly. Everybody wins! Three ideas: - Make them all access free for the first week they're up, then charge for access to the back catalog. See CreativeLive[1] for a good example. This way everyone can measure the quality of video, audio, transcripts, etc so they know what they're getting, and the people who need to learn a specific topic will have a strong incentive to pay. This will encourage you to cover evergreen topics to make your back catalog more valuable - Flip it and make the new videos available to subscribers for the 1st N months, then free afterwards. This will bias you towards covering the newest, churniest stuff that is causing people pain right now - Do like RailsCasts and alternate between free and paid videos. Paid subscribers get twice as many videos, everybody still gets something free for marketing etc Personally I think the first one is your best bet. [1] https://www.creativelive.com/ https://www.creativelive.com/
  - WestCoastJustin 12y ago
    Thanks very much for your feedback! You have several very good points that I will explore, specifically the various models that might work. Ideally, I'd like to keep the site free and maybe have a couple key sponsors or something, still exploring the idea.
    - joshdotsmith 12y ago
      Please charge money for this.
      - 12y ago

haxxorfreak 12y ago

Really nice and easy to follow, I love the clear audio and well cropped screencasts. The transcripts and documentation is just the cherry on top. Might I ask what you are using for the screen recording and editing workflow? I'm doing some end-user training videos and having mixed results.

WestCoastJustin 12y ago
First, I get the idea. Either through suggestion or something I'm working on. Then the workflow looks like a storyboard with some research. For the videos, I'm using ubuntu as my desktop, then use kazam for desktop recording [1], then Audacity [2] for voice recording, and finally kdenlive [3] to edit the audio/video together. Along with gimp for all the graphics. [1] https://launchpad.net/kazam https://launchpad.net/kazam [2] http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ [3] http://www.kdenlive.org/ http://www.kdenlive.org/

h1fra 12y ago

Very nice, as a casual sysadmin I find it very interesting. Videos are cool and very well edited. Good job !

peterwwillis 12y ago

Comment: There are thousands of guides, HOWTOs, forums, mailing lists, etc out there to teach you how to set up basic tools in Linux. To me this doesn't constitute being a sysadmin and is only a small part of the job. It would be really neat if you interviewed a bunch of sysadmins with long resumes, maybe people who give talks at LISA, NANOG, etc. People from different industries probably have vastly different work environments. Ask them if they have any noteworthy experiences, lessons learned, or tips that work towards developing the career versus just Linux-literacy. There's a lot of knowledge out there that isn't written down anywhere.

WestCoastJustin 12y ago
Very interesting idea! Thanks, I'll explore this.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jordan0day 12y ago
I'll counter with the fact that I think consistent, accurate, and up-to-date "basic usage" information is still really hard to come by for a linux newbie. The thousands of guides, HOWTOs, forums, mailing lists, etc just means that in addition to trying to learn the system, they also have to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff, information-wise. I've known plenty of people who are very good programmers or Windows admin-types who would make very good linux sysadmins, but for the huge hurdle of not learning linux, but learning how to learn linux. That's not to discount your suggestion around expert tips/war stories/etc., though.

Nux 12y ago

Good job! Watched a couple of your videos, well done; I like the style and the fact you offer files for download as well as text descriptions.

WestCoastJustin 12y ago
Thanks ;)

Naushad 12y ago

Would just say Thanks for such simple casts which explain concepts from scratch and using visual illustrations and not just voiceover and commands. A boon for someone trying to master CLI.

larrys 12y ago

I wonder if you could post on your "about" page more about yourself (or detail it here). In particular what your expertise is and how much experience you have in what you are writing and doing screencasts about.

WestCoastJustin 12y ago
Will do. Briefly, been a sysadmin for 11+ years and worked my way up the ladder. Have various certifications but honestly most/all of this can be learned on-line nowadays. Working at a mega corp looking after High Performance Compute (HPC) infrastructure. Think labs across the country + scientists needing HPC to do their research.
- larrys 12y ago
  You definitely need to put that on your "about" page.