Announcing Shot Of Jaq

Some of you will know Stuart ‘Aq’ Langridge. He was one of my fellow presenters on LugRadio, a show that we did that took a loose, informal and irreverent take on Open Source and Technology. He was the other longest standing presenter on the show which lasted four years and had over 2million downloads. We wrapped the show up in the middle of 2008.

LugRadio was a huge fun, but we wrapped it up because we felt that it had reached the end of it’s natural life. All four of us were conscious to not flog the ‘ol proverbial dead horse, so we wanted to go out while we felt show was on a high. While none of us have looked back, Aq and I have both talked about how LugRadio has left a gaping vacuum in our lives, but we were conscious to not resurrect the show for all the reasons I have just shared.

So, today Aq and I are announcing our new podcast Shot Of Jaq, and we are both rather excited about it. Many of you are likely to draw parallels to it and LugRadio, and while there is undoubtedly a LugRadio vibe there with us both being on the show, I wanted to clarify that it is not LugRadio 2.0 due to some key differences.

Shot Of Jaq is going to be something of an experiment. It is a new type of show, at least for us, and the first time we have both done a format such as this.

This is how it works. Aq and I are going to record a series of bite-sized shows which we are referring to as shots. Each shot will be about 10 minutes long and cover a given topic. We will release each shot at www.shotofjaq.org where you can listen to the juicy nugget of fun right from your web browser or alternatively, download the show in MP3 and Ogg format. We will also have podcast feeds.

A key part of Shot Of Jaq will be encouraging discussion when a show is released. With LugRadio we did this by releasing a show and creating a thread on the LugRadio Forums, and the community would discuss the topics there. With Shot Of Jaq, the discussion takes place right there on the website where you can listen to and download the show. This makes it a doddle to listen to the show and get involved in the discussion.

We have already recorded a few shots and aside from the different format, Shot Of Jaq differs to LugRadio a little in terms of feel too. It still focuses on frank, honest and entertainment-infused content, but it feels fuller in terms of material and focus. When we did LugRadio it was based on the kind of the discussions we had in the pub, and Shot Of Jaq is a bit more journalistic. As I said earlier, this is still something of an experiment and if you compare and contrast LugRadio Season 1 Episode 1 with the last studio show we did, we did a lot of learning and made a lot of changes to refine the show. This is almost certainly going to happen with Shot Of Jaq, and who knows what kind of changes we will make. Then again, friends, that there, is the nature of experimentation.

The countdown has begun at www.shotofjaq.org and you will be able to hear our pilot show on Tuesday 3rd November 2009.

In the meantime, follow the show on Twitter and identi.ca and join the #shotofjaq IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.