We made this announcement initially on yesterday’s live recording of episode #155, but now I would like to take the opportunity to formally post it here:
Effective on Wednesday, September 1, David and I will be officially ending our affiliation with phpBB Weekly.
While the reasons for our departure is slightly different between the two of us, the core of our decision is based on the fact that we are both finding it more difficult to continue to dedicate our time and effort to keeping this show going. David is becoming increasingly committed towards supporting his busy work schedule, which is making it more difficult for him to focus as much on phpBB as he has in the past. On my end, I’m continuing to pursue a number of activities at university which are going to take up a lot of my time in the fall, making it very difficult for me to continue putting in the additional effort to plan, record, edit, and do the other aspects of producing this show. And since it’s been nearly four years since I MODded or managed a phpBB forum seriously, I don’t entirely consider myself to be qualified to host the show without having any larger purpose of being part of it (as I would if I were taking charge of the production).
We’re going to be winding down the show over the next month-and-a-half with the following schedule:
- Saturday 7/17: No Episode
- Thursday 7/22: Live Episode from OSCONvasion 2010, if we get the technical setup together
- Non-Live Episode with Interviews of OSCON exhibitors
- Saturday 7/24: No Episode
- Saturday 7/31: Regular Live Episode
- Saturday 8/7: Regular Live Episode
- Saturday 8/14: No Episode
- Friday-Saturday 8/20-21: Two episodes from Libertyvasion 2010; one of which might be live (TBA)
- Saturday 8/28: Our final live episode with David & myself
We would like to say that we are both grateful for the tremendous support that we have received from both our listeners, our dedicate group of live chat-room participants, and the phpBB teams. While we are ending our affiliation with the show due primarily to us being over-committed and somewhat low on steam, our listener base is as strong as ever, and we really appreciate that. Speaking personally, while I’m somewhat regretful that i’ll have to further scale back my involvement with the phpBB community, I’m thrilled to be able to end my three-and-a-half year tenure with this show with the opportunity to be a part of Libertyvasion 2010 and get to personally meet most of the phpBB team members for the first time. I’m really looking forward to the next seven weeks that this show is preparing to cover, and hope they’ll help us really end the show on a high point.
Want to Keep it Going?
It is against all odds that we are able to say that, by the time September rolls around, we will have kept the show going for over 160 episodes. Past attempts by other people to start up a phpBB podcast (either unofficial or official) have not even made it to double-digits, much less triple-digits, the way we have. And we’ve still got a dedicated listener base still sticking with this show. And so even though we’re moving on, we’d love to be able to see phpBB Weekly continue to thrive going forward under new management than to see it die completely.
Therefore if you’re interested in hosting or co-hosting the show, or in trying your hand at editing the show (it’s not that hard, just make sure you have a Mac with GarageBand), please send me a private message. We’ve already got our website fully set up, along with templates for show notes, editing the podcast, etc. I’ll even keep hosting this website for free! And if we get a new crew to manage the show early enough, we’ll be able to spend August/September preparing for a smooth transition.
So that’s the official announcement. Both David and I would again like to thank all of you for sticking with us and helping to make the experience of producing this show such a rewarding one.
–Douglas Bell
Co-Host and Producer, phpBB Weekly Podcast
