The Green IO podcast : Season 1 wrap-up

“I will survive!” ?

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And a bit more actually. Green IO ?️ will start its second season next week after reaching 22 episodes, 34 guests and … 10K listeners ?. Time for another transparency exercice about its audience, its guests, our failures and what to expect in season 2 ?️.

The audience ?

The followers ?

Green IO now has 700+ followers (Spotify, Apple podcast, Google podcast, mailing list, …) and shows no sign of slowing down. ?Cherry on top of the cake, our Linkedin page also passed the 1K followers milestone with minimalistic community management, to say the least ?

The listeners ?

This summer the Green IO podcast reached its 10K listener milestone (downloads following IAB v2 standard + Spotify streams), with 0€ ads budget! ? But wait… Isn’t it a vanity metric? In some ways yes, because these podcast metrics are not at all reliable. It's the wild west out there! Just as the web metrics were 20 years ago. ? But overall, the audience is going up whatever the platform being used to track it ?.  

Geographics ?️

Green IO aims to connect responsible technologists all over the world and … it works! Green IO listeners come from more than 40 countries on 5 different continents ???. Europe has provided 75% of its audience overall, but its share is decreasing over time, and we have regular listeners from Singapore, Argentina, Australia, India, etc. And of course the trend is definitely upward in the USA and Canada. 

2 alerts ⚠️

• Frequency ?

In April, we reached 1000 listeners per month … and never did it again ?. Because I could not keep up the pace of 2 episodes per month without jeopardizing either the quality of each episode or the quality of my consulting activities, as well as my other volunteering activities ( Digital Collage, ClimateAction.tech CIC, Climate Fresk, …). On top of that, our production pipeline was too much “just-in-time”: a couple of reschedules with our guests, and we missed deadlines. 

What did we do about it? I’ve now decided to release an episode every 3 weeks  and I used the (Northern-hemisphere) summer break to pack an incredible roster for the next 10 episodes!

• Under-performing episodes ?

Some episodes, despite the quality of their guests, did not find their audience. Perhaps a weak online presence of some guests explains part of it. More generally, the battle for attention fought by any content provider is fierce and the algorithms are usually not that friendly with new content aiming to reach a diversified audience.  

What did we do about it? Eventually, I had to acknowledge that organic growth is excruciatingly slow (to quote my friend Mathieu Maréchal) and I have to be a bit more proactive. 3 main actions were considered: 

I decided to renew Green IO media partnership with apidays for their sustainability track. And I could work with other conferences as long as they have the same commitment and impeccable track record in greening our software industry. 

I started to reach out directly to people on LinkedIn when I saw someone who could truly benefit from the podcast (you might be one of them reading this article, thanks for accepting the invite!). I will not disclose my acceptance rate because sales folks will hate me for that. ?

I will invest a bit more in advertising on professional newsletters (like Claudia Guerreiro's or Dr. Milan Milanović 's). Actually, it will depend on how many public conferences I sign until the end of year because sponsorship doesn’t come cheap. ? 

The guests

What worked well ?

To put it simply: almost everything worked well!

Great thought leaders and doers in Digital Sustainability have a lot to share and are willing to do it in the show. I reckon less than 20% of the people I contact decline. 

The double guest format got highly positive feedback (good rhythm, better understanding, thanks to the variety of point of views, etc.) and is now the default rule. On top of it, I’m always trying to have guests from different countries, as well as gender parity. ♀️♂️ 

By the way, gender parity was an alert in my last wrap-up … not anymore. Green IO’s cruising speed is now 50/50 since the beginning of 2023. ?

Another alert was the geographical & diversity bias ?️. With guests from Singapore, Rwanda and soon from Columbia, Mexico and Japan, the share of the guests based in Europe and North America is slowly decreasing. 

Cherry on top of the cake, I think 80% of my recordings over the past 9 months ended with the co-guests saying “it was great meeting you. Let’s stay in touch to talk more about ”. Connecting responsible technologists around the world, once again.  

1 alert: clarity ⚠️

I have to confess something about myself… I’m too curious ? And I’m also too keen on systemic approaches to focus solely on a specific topic. A podcast is a journey, and when I meet great people, I want to share it with the listeners. Plus, the - much-welcomed - blossoming of specialized podcasts ( SUX - The Sustainable UX Network, Digital Responsibility, This is HCD, Environment Variables, …) strengthen Green IO’s positioning as a generalist Digital Sustainability podcast. But to help you navigate its episodes, Green IO will be structured around 2 specific goals, starting in season 2: 

• The 1st goal is training our systemic sustainability muscle ? where we feed the curiosity of responsible technologists by exploring various environmental topics like carbon accounting, electronic waste, impact business model, anthropological studies, greenwashing, new legal frameworks, focusing on specific regions, etc. Whether you work with IT, you work within an IT company or you’re simply curious about the relationship between Digital and Sustainability, this is the right place to be. 
• The second goal is about craftsmanship ? "Sharpening our green skills" where we empower responsible technologists to reduce the environmental footprint of their daily activities, providing the latest tools and hands-on insights on focused topics such as impact measurement, Greener Data science and data engineering, Sustainable Design, Sustainable Digital Product, Green Software development, Sustainable Cloud or Data center Operations, etc. In this track you can expect a technical episode perfect for sharing with your peers and opening the discussion!

We also created the Green IO Season 1 Podcast Guide where all episodes are listed across several areas: Website & apps sustainability, Cloud & hosting sustainability, Sustainable design and environmental impact, Environmental impact of AI and Data, Deploying sustainability in IT and Exploring sustainability beyond Tech. 

What to expect in Season 2? 

Yes it’s teasing …I know, I’m a bad person.? Until EOY you can expect candid discussions about: 

• Greenwashing with Harriet Kingaby and Mathieu Jahnich, 
• Sustainable IT in SaaS provider with Niklas Sundberg and Tereze Gaile 
• Digital Sustainability in LATAM with Catalina Zapata R. and Ismael Velasco ?♻️? , 
• Human centered and planet-centered design with Gerry Scullion and Sylvie Daumal , 
• and also Greening digital marketing, Sustainability using AWS, The Green Software Foundation toolkit, API green score, Sustainable data for good, …

With a little help from my friends ?

More than ever, Green IO’s success relies on its listeners. To empower the millions of workers in the IT industry with knowledge in sustainability and greener skills, we need to leverage 2 tools: platform visibility and referrals.

• Platform visibility ? 

When someone searches a Sustainability podcast on Spotify or Apple, Green IO rarely appears in the top results. The only way to overcome this is reviewing and rating - 5 stars of course! Once you’ve done it, ask your colleagues and friends to do the same! A simple ratio comparing highly successful youtubers and podcasters: 1 vote on Spotify equals 1K likes on a YT video. Your rating has tremendous weight! ?️

• Referral ?

Spontaneously, in 2022, some listeners started to share episodes which they enjoyed via social media (mostly LinkedIn). It attracted many new listeners. So if you enjoy an episode, proudly share it to reach out to more responsible technologists, like you ? 

…

One last thing … Green IO will announce its move into other media in September! ?

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