About the podcast
The idea of Beyond the Code podcast is simple. We would like to focus on different sets of skills that might be useful for software engineers, which are not coding/programming/prototyping, etc. You can expect new episodes, around 30 minutes long, every second Wednesday.
Why soft skills? The world is changing rapidly, most people might soon know coding to some degree. On the other hand, we can constantly hear about machine learning & systems that won’t require the manual work. We need to evolve. And there is no better way to do it than understanding business, people around you and yourself.
Our podcast is here to help. To guide you how to deal with all the communication struggles, finding the best way to learn new things by yourself, how to keep focus while receiving endless notifications or how to understand the business you contribute to.
Our target is also to create a community that shares with each other new ideas, experiences & interesting findings.
Brainstorming & first decisions
This is our mind map, although we blurred it to not spoil a surprise for future episodes.
Everything started with establishing the core group, involved in the key decision making. In the beginning, we decided to record in Polish – to improve the flow of discussion. On the other hand, we know that the external guests are refreshing for a podcast – you can expect occasional foreign guests in English recorded episodes as well!
The most challenging task was ahead of us – narrowing the theme of the podcast. Our first thought was concentrating on technical topics, but very soon the soft skills theme started to look more promising. The last step was to create a mind map. After numerous changes to the grid, the 4 main topics managed to cover all more specific ideas. These are people, business, productivity & personal growth. After the meeting, we’ve converted the post-it based mind-map to the cloud, using https://www.mindmup.com, which is a Google Drive based extension.
First recordings
Szymon, Robert & Damian
After the microphones were delivered to our offices, there was a time to set up everything technically-wise. Find the best room, check out the set up a million times, etc. To avoid the initial stress, for the first recording we decided to have fun together. We were sure that it’s not going to be published, so we could focus on the hardware. After some time we were ready to record the first episode, which you can hear today!
One of the biggest challenges of this project was the name. Maximum of three words, resonating with the soft skills theme. The word “soft” was a trap, a dozen of ideas concentrated on that word, but none of them was good enough. Some of the names were promising but would be hard to pronounce in a Polish recorded podcast. Finally, in a completely random moment of the day, the idea of “Beyond the Code” came to my mind. We hope you like it as much as we do :).
We won’t bother you with technical aspects of establishing the podcast, but if you can read those words, it means that the biggest challenges are behind us. The great thing about it is that we had great fun together by recording this podcast. Now the question is if you will like it as much while listening. We are still learning a lot of new things, so any constructive feedback will be much appreciated!
The first episode – Why are you talking to me?
Beyond the Code cover
Have you ever wondered why there are so many e-mails in your company or why, even by using Slack, you still can struggle with communication? When it’s the best to come to your buddy’s desk and what’s the best indicator that you should schedule a meeting? The first episode concentrates on choosing the best form of communication for a number of scenarios we are facing every day in STP.
You can read the full description of the first episode here. Happy listening!
We would like to give a huge thank you to the main core of the group:
- Michał Apanowicz
- Magdalena Górecka
- Damian Petla
- Przemysław Potocki
- Kacper Sieradziński
- Szymon Skórczyński
without you this podcast wouldn’t be possible.
Don’t forget to subscribe!
