Niche Communities

A combination live podcast and book launch event on Friday night in Atlanta had nothing to do with Open Source Software, but it put on full display the power of community.

The event featured a group who have endured multiple rounds of corporate media layoffs together and are now thriving.

The Shutdown Fullcast crew gathered to support Jason Kirk's launch of his self-published book.

Jason told the story of his frustrating experiences trying to sell the book to the traditional New York publishing houses. Each time he was given many words of praise for his project followed by the dreaded "but...", and in one instance what followed was "it's too niche."

The word "niche" is a trigger for the Fullcast crew, and rightfully so.

In 2020 Vox Media laid off the group and said their successful podcast was "too niche" and "nobody knows who Nick Saban is."

Cut to Friday night:

The line to get in went out the door and down the sidewalk. The majority of attendees wore clothing from a podcast sponsor. Jason reported more than 7,000 book sales prior to its official launch and a donation of more than $50,000 to The Trevor Project from the sales and the event.

The group has found its niche: building an amazing community through their creative talents.

A growing wave of creators use modern tools including Open Source Software to find their own niche and build their communities. Two from the Fullcast crew publish their site Channel 6 using Ghost, the Open Source alternative to Substack upon which this site is also built.

On Sunday another example popped up. A group who also recently experienced the Vox Media hatchet launched a new independent venture to cover local soccer team Atlanta United. In the podcast to introduce the site, Sam Jones, Joe Patrick and Rob Usry described how the community they have developed helped make it possible.

Community is at the core of things everywhere: sportsball teams, book clubs, alumni chapters, volunteer efforts, neighborhoods, etc. Find a successful team or project at work and you will probably find a healthy community that has developed around it.

In the early 2000's I found my way into Open Source via Joomla and then Drupal to run my school's local alumni chapter web site. Then I brought Drupal to my day job at Turner Broadcasting and fully joined the local community. Through that community I found my way to Mediacurrent and organizing local Open Source events, user groups and serving as a track chair for national conferences.

This site's mission is to help support and build Open Source Software communities in the Atlanta area. We will start with a weekly newsletter focused on Open Source. Next comes recurring meetup events to explore and support Open Source projects, and we'll see where it takes us from there.

Join in, we hope to be niche.