Open Source Creative

We're talking [Nodevember](https://nodevember.io) in this episode! Jonas and Luca explain what Nodevember is, how it started, and how you can be a part of it yourself. These two are great fun to listen to... and while you listen, you can make your own burst of node-y goodness.

This week we have a great talk with Greg Zaal about his website, [HDRI Haven](https://hdrihaven.com), a place where you can freely get high-quality 360-degree HDR images under a CC-0 license. We also talk about the process of making a good HDRI as well as the "sister sites" to HDRI Haven, [Texture Haven](https://texturehaven.com) and [3D Model Haven](https://3dmodelhaven).

In this episode, we talk with user interaction designer, Máirín Duffy about her work, the process of designing user experiences in software, and best practices for engaging open source communities. She's been doing this for a while and is super knowledgeable on the topic, so it's certainly worth a listen.

This week we get to talk with Pat David about [PIXLS.US](https://pixls.us), GIMP, and a whole host of other topics around open source software, art, photography, and communities.

This week's guest is Marcin Jakubowski from the [Open Source Ecology](https://opensourceecology.org) project. They're making some really cool things and have a plan for giving people the tools (creative and otherwise) to build their own civilization.

Solo show this week! In response to a listener's feedback, I talk about a ring carving mount that I designed in Blender and produced on my 3D printer.

And now the show is back! This is a little re-cap episode where I try to catch you up on all the interesting things that have happened since the last episode of the show. More importantly, however, I have questions for you. I'm not recording while driving anymore, so that opens us up to a world of possibilities.

After three long years, the Open Source Creative Podcast is returning from podfadery!

We're talking this week about conferences. Events, shows, gatherings, meet-ups... whatever you call them, they're incredibly valuable to attend, both personally and professionally (if you do it right). This show has me talking about why these events are so great, the conferences I like to attend, and a tip (two actually) on how to get the most out of them.

This talk in this show is all about file formats. Yeah, probably not the most super-exciting topic you might think to talk about, but it's an important one. Closed file formats are how proprietary vendors lock users into only being able to use their tools. Quite frankly, I'm not sure why we put up with that crap.

Wheee! We made it to 40 episodes! Pretty cool. In this week's show, I detail my hunt for a new mind mapping program. Freemind has been great to me over the years, but I needed something more. And... I think I've found it.

This week's show is a workflow episode! This go-'round I'm talking about writing process... specifically my writing process. I cover the process and the applications that I use to do my writing, both in the non-fiction and fiction arenas.

In this episode we're talking about naming. In particular, I'm interested in trying to hash out whether or not the name of a software application is important as it pertains to user adoption and what not. I wasn't sure where I sat on the matter at the start of the episode. I think I have a better sense of it now, though. I think.

The rant engine is fired up this week! This go-round we wind ourselves down the well-trodden and completely absurd path of people who believe that there's a single monolithic "computer graphics" industry and that everyone in that industry does everything the same way... and of course, none of those people use open source software. Yeah. That's wrong. And stupid.

Open source software development isn't a meritocracy. It's something different, and it's got a lot more in common with creative collaboration than you might initially think. *That's* what we're talking about in this episode.

Yes, my little bonus episode from the end of last week was indeed an April Fools joke. However, I think it's worth taking a moment and having a bit of a larger discussion.

I'm starting a crowdfunding campaign!

It's been a while since I've spoken about software licensing. If you've been in the community for any appreciable amount of time, you'll see that there are two licensing-based brainworms that tend to crop up on a regular basis. The first is the fear that some company might swoop in and buy our friendly little open source program and put it behind a wall. The other is the notion that free software licenses like the GPL are harmful to the program. Although there's a rational background for either of these positions, I think that they're both ill-founded.

Software developers, especially those who write open source software, are not beholden to us. They're not there to do our every bidding. And more importantly, as users, we have to remember that we're not always right. It's a topic that comes up regularly, but it's also one that's important to address just as regularly.

Woohoo! Opensourcecreative.org is up and alive for your listening and browsing pleasure. Bathe your earballs in its magnificence! Also... let me know if anything isn't quite working right. This week's show is all about the site's migration, what I used to make it, and hopefully an option or two on what you should do if you need a website of your own. Use the cool listen-y widget thing to hear all about it (unless you got this through your podcatcher, in which case, use that).

This week's episode is about some critical stuff: making sure that the digital data that we produce doesn't get lost. So we're talking back-ups, passwords, and encryption. It may not sound like as fun and exciting of a topic as other things we've discussed, but it's monumentally important. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

This week we're talking about social media networks and the kind of love/hate relationship we have with them. We're often at odds with the privacy policies of a lot of social media platforms. Furthermore, the level of discourse that people have on these sites isn't always all that great. But at the same time, as people working in the creative fields, we have a need to get our work in front of an audience. Social media has the largest audiences. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

A fun little meta show this week. This one's a nuts-and-bolts, step-by-step walk-through of the process I go through each way to deliver podcasty goodness to your earballs. And I do it all with free and open source software. The following is a quick breakdown of each step in the process. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

This week we have a more positive (I hope) follow-up to last week's rant. We're talking about comparisonitis... that feeling of "I can't do *that*" when you see the incredible work of another artist or find out about another person's level of success in a field similar to yours. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

Missed last week, but the show is back! And boy, oh, boy... this is a ranty one. Short version: we need to change the way that we discuss the new releases of open source software tools. There's this propensity for wanting to discuss other software or, worse, make gross generalizations about the viability of a tool based on our own limited experiences and uses cases. It's not entirely specific to the open source community, but we do see it a lot... I daresay more than in other circles. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

This week's show is really a nuts-and-bolts kind of thing. As the title says, it's how a person would go about making his or her living as an open source creative... a person whose primary creative software tools are open source. I still run into people who swear it can't be done. In a way, this is my rebuttal. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

This week's show is all about open content. I've thought about this topic a lot and I have a lot to say on the matter. I have so much to say, in fact, that I ended up needing to cut myself off a bit before I really wanted to because I'd gotten to the end of my commute. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

Happy New Year! Short introduction this week, folks. This episode is all about goals for the coming year. What are your creative goals for the year? What do you want to get done? Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

This week's show is all about making the time you need to produce your creative works. Well... it's mostly about that. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

Hi there! In this episode I talk at length about another little distraction that I've had over the last year... a little feature request site for Blender called [Right-Click Select](https://rightclickselect.com). But, that's just the launch point. What this episode is *really* about is the best way to make feature requests in an open source software community (like the Blender community). I also make a few flubs, but hey... that's pretty much on-brand for me now, right? Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

This week's episode is a barrel of questions and curiosity. I spin myself in a circle when I realize that I might not actually have a single medium that I can call "home". Is that a problem or is that a requirement of being a creative person in the modern era? Or has it always been like this and folks just get known for one of the many kinds of things that they do? Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

Short episode this week! And good thing, too, because this one is all about the stuff I've been up to recently. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

I told you I'd be making it a point to keep up with this show again. Well, here's another episode. This one is a bit of an archive one. I actually recorded it a year and a half ago before the podcast went dormant. I just never got around to editing it and making it fit for sharing with you. Now I have, so here you go! Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

**Finally!** At long last, after way, *way* too much time off, the podcast is back in action. Huzzah! This one is a little bit different from previous episodes. It's a walking commute rather than a driving one. In this show, I talk about this year's [Blender Conference](https://www.blender.org/conference/2016) and all of the development going on with Blender there. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

Yay! Another Open Source Creative Podcast episode. In this one, I have a long conversation with myself about the nature of art and open source software as it pertains to selfishness. Is art inherently selfish? Is it not? Is that a bad thing? And likewise for Free Software. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

At long last, another Open Source Creative Podcast episode is here! Sorry for the long gap between episodes, folks... it's been a crazy month. In any cast, this episode was recorded back in March and in it I talk about doing spec work (that is, speculative work) as a creative producer of things. Episode 15 really helped me nail down where I think my position is on this, so in a way, it's an extension of that. It's a bit of a contrast to the folks at [nospec.com](http://www.nospec.com). Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

I have a strange feeling that this episode is going to get me into a bit of trouble. Maybe. We'll see. I get into details and backstory in the actual episode, but it all started with a question (or, better, replies to a question) regarding the resale of "used" digital content---specifically ebooks---in an [episode of the Sell More Books Show](http://sellmorebooksshow.com/episode-46-digital-resale-vas-and-shorter-books), a podcast that's pretty prevalent in the indie publishing scene. This episode is a bit of a rant launched from that premise. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

So this episode turned out to be a really long one. The bulk of it is a topic that comes courtesy of [@3pointedit](https://twitter.com/3pointedit) on Twitter (thanks for listening!). That is, the costs of choosing to use free and open source software tools to produce your creative works. We often hear (or read) the benefits, but those of us on this side of the fence are less vociferous when it comes to the costs and consequences of this choice of ours. I run through those costs... at least in as much as how I see it. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

The first episode of 2015! Hi folks. This week (yes... this is still supposed to be a weekly podcast) I talk about ways to get started and get inspired on creative projects. It's the start of the year and folks tend to think about what they want to do over the course of the coming year... but sometimes get stuck right out of the starting gate. Maybe, just maybe I give some suggestions that can help thaw out that paralysis and get you moving on your projects. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

This episode is a week late... or I just skipped last week. I suppose it depends on your perspective. In any case, I cover a lot of news in this episode since two weeks of it happened since the last one. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

Though it's a bit scatterbrained, this is a fun episode talking about knowing your audience. When you produce creative work, it's a good idea to have a notion of the people for whom you're producing it. And amazingly, this is something that a lot of creatives sometimes overlook or forget about. I know I do on occasion. So I talk about it here as it pertains to writing and commercial TV (and yes, also how it relates to Free Software and the UI episode from last week). I also have a bit of a mini-rant about small business owners and their friggin' dogs. I still don't get it. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

In this episode I talk user interfaces. Specifically, I try to crack the nut on why it seems that the user interfaces for open source tools appear to get higher scrutiny and more anger thrown at them than their proprietary contemporaries... and if that's really a problem at all. Sadly, I'm not sure that I have any real solutions, but maybe we can use this as a means of launching a discussion that's actually meaningful and productive. Maybe. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

This week's episode talks about tutorials... well, specifically how we tend to treat tutorials. There seems to be an overarching trend toward replicating the process in a tutorial verbatim without actually learning how to apply those techniques elsewhere. People learn how to push a specific series of buttons in a specific way to produce a known result... and it's lame. I take a bit of time during this episode to try to sort out whether the responsibility for fixing this lies with the tutorial maker or the person following the tutorial. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

You may have noticed that I skipped a week in airing the podcast. That's because I was at Blender Conference 2014 in Amsterdam. I mentioned this in the last episode with a question asking how I should cover the conference. I should've realized that you, the wonderful audience, would ask me to interview everyone there. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get to everyone... partially because there were over 250 people there and partially because, well, I'm a bit shy. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

This episode of the Open Source Creative Podcast covers a topic that we see all over the place in the creative world, but it seems to be especially prevalent in the web communities of open source creative projects. I'm specifically referring to the topic of collaborative projects or community projects. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

In this episode, I respond to a topic that was brought up here in the comments of an earlier episode, as well as on Twitter. Namely, the notion of selling extensions, add-ons, assets, and so on for open source tools. Specifically, this was brought up as it pertains to the [Blender Market](https://cgcookiemarkets.com/blender), a site by the folks at CG Cookie with the purpose of letting Blender users sell these kinds of things to other Blender users. It turns out that this is a pretty interesting topic to talk about (I should know... I did it 3 times). Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

This episode is a bit more of an update (well... it's the first one, so I suppose "announcement" makes more sense than update) on the personal projects I'm working on through at least the end of the year... a lot of writing going on in there. I also touch a bit on the new sleep schedule I've been testing out for a couple months now. And I ponder an overall structure for this podcast itself. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

In this week's episode I get a bit ranty about a few topics. Not only do I expand upon a bit of a fired-up digression I made in last week's episode (regarding the nature of how people think about the computer graphics industry... especially people who have been in and around it for a while), but I poke at a few other things like clickbaity headlines from the uniform school of web marketing and the meaninglessness of the term "professional". All in all, I'd say it's great fun. Hopefully you think so, too. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

This focus on this week's podcast was more on the business side of things; talking about licenses for creative work and relating that to crowdfunded projects. And I end the episode with a direct question to you because, well... I'm not sure what I think about it. This one went a little long and got a little bit rambly. Sorry about that. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

A pretty short [and kind of late] episode this week as my commute has been a bit different. I was traveling for work to a much different kind of conference than the one I talked about in last episode... though there were still a very high population of artists and designers at this one, so that was refreshing. In any case, I talk in this episode about building, developing, and maintaining creativity by doing something (anything) creative each and every day. And, at the end of the episode, I issue a challenge out to you! Let's see how many of you take me up on it. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).

This is the real first episode of the Open Source Creative Podcast! And it's a bit of a weird place to start: version control systems. It's not something that many creative folks think about when producing their work... and that's a mistake. Originally posted on [monsterjavaguns.com](http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast).