Welcome to episode 44 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_), two VMware Solution Engineers who are hoping to bring you the IT career advice that we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we discuss the one year anniversary of our podcast launch, a review of topics we have covered, and where we plan to go from here.

* Check out Nick’s one year reflection post for more insight on what the past year co-hosting a podcast has been like.
* Check out John’s one year reflection post for his additional thoughts on the origins and evolution of the podcast.

Original Recording Date: 06-01-2019
Topics – The First Anniversary Review
1:33 – One Year Since Launch!

* Did you notice the change to the intro?
* Reflecting on the launch

* John tells the story of how the podcast came to fruition and how it morphed into having a career-centric focus.

* This was an attempt to give advice and speak to some of the things we heard others in the industry saying about the need to progress but feeling like they have reached a dead end.
* Until we stepped out of IT operations, neither of us understood all career path options for those in IT operations.

* As John says, when you start doing something, you will definitely be bad at it. We decided to just start podcasting. Listen to how many episodes we needed for practice before releasing.

* Can you find the episode Nick mentioned having "release candidate" mentioned in the intro?

* The opening has evolved from its humble beginnings. John discusses specific changes and the reasons for them.
* Fun Facts

* The Nerd Journey logo was created by Nick’s wife. What two cities form the skyline in our logo? Tweet us the answer for a chance to be on the show!
* The intro and transition music was created by John’s wife (who happens to be a musician).

* In the beginning, we had some concerns.

* Could we sustain a weekly cadence?

* John went to local podcast meetup groups for ideas on this. Would it have been best to release a season at a time?

* Many of our ideas were the result of life experience and continuing to doing the podcast regularly.

13:56 Episode Retrospectives

* Our most popular episodes by topic

* Interview topics seemed to resonate with listeners.
* The generalist / specialist episode Episode 26 caused a lot of interaction on social media.

* We’re not always sure how episodes will be received by our audience.

* Managing current job career focused tasks

* Episode 28 – Asking for more Money
* Episode 12 – Effective 1-on-1s with Your Manager
* Episode 5 – Sales Skills for IT
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