The BBC had a radio show called Chain Reaction. The idea was that someone from the entertainment world begins the series interviewing a person of their choice. The following week the interviewee becomes interviewer and choses their own person to interview. And so it goes on. The series wrapped up with Alan Moore interviewing Brian Eno. Would anyone like to do the same here for Irish bloggers? Since we all got on so well at the Blog Awards and chatted with people we previously only engaged with online and from meeting them in personlearned a good deal more, I’m sure now there are a load of new people we’d like to talk to and find out more about. To me it’d be a nice way of humanising this Blog O’Sphere too. I’d like to kick it off by nominating two people who would then go off and ask people to be interviewed. That way we should see about two new interviews every week or so. Are people interested in taking part in this?
Few rules:
Interview someone that you don’t know really well already otherwise it’s a bunch of mates telling each other how great they are.
Try and mix it up too by interviewing someone outside the sphere you normally blog in. Techs interviewing techs is going to be boring as are Republicans interviewing Republicans.
If you interview someone so they can just talk up their business then you will ruin the spirit of this and I’ll call you names on this blog. Maybe even rude names.
Be civil to the person you interview. Don’t interview someone just so you can get a load of digs in because you have totally different political views. I think Tom Cosgrave’s open letter to Richard is probing enough without being antagonistic.
Email the person first if you want to interview them besides saying on your blog that you want to because they should be under no pressure to accept.
Not a rule as such but a suggestion – Don’t lay out a set of questions and let it at that. Send a few follow-up emails to clarify some points or dig deeper into certain areas.
Oh, just seen UI’s piece on Damien Blake. Nicely done.
Update: 16 March 06
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I agree that this is a great idea and I hadn’t seen Tom’s open letter until you linked to it just there. What an excellent idea. I’d be up for this.
I was actually contemplating doing some more of them. Fiona, you’re next 😉
Interesting idea. The lads from Disillusioned Lefty were doing something similar a while back, interviewing one blogger a week.
Ditto what Fiona said on both sentiments. Well done Tom.
Hey! 47 Hours is going mainstream at last lol! Great idea…and if anyone mentions gender I am going to spontaneously combust!
Hey! 47 Hours is going mainstream at last lol! Great idea…and if anyone mentions gender I am going to spontaneously combust!
Also, is this just confined to the Irish blog world?
Surely not just confined to Irish blogs?
[And if I get chosen I think I shall have to pick that girl and ask her incessant gender-based questions… I’ve always wanted to see a little spontaneous combustion ;)]
The whole point of this project is that it is to build on the relationships being formed in the Irish Blogging community. If you ask a person from outside the Irish Blogs to pick someone to interview what are the chances they are going to pick someone from the Irish blogging community? If the idea is to learn about one another then moving the conversation outside of this community would be fruitless.
There’s no issue with starting the same meme without the Irish blog restriction but I’m more interested in the Irish “us” more than the global “us”.
Great idea. I’d be on for this, but being at least partly tech I’d have nothing interesting to ask / say 🙂