Welcome to episode 49 of the Stack Exchange Podcast! We are welcoming special guest Matt Grum, as well as usual suspects Joel, David, and Jay. Matt is the top rep user on Photography. He's got 957 answers (and has never asked a question)! He's a photographer and a developer, so his exposure to the Photography site came from his involvement with Stack Overflow
- First, some site milestones! Blender is in public beta. (Matt is way more qualified to tell you what Blender is than any of the rest of us.) Also, the second attempt at a Freelancing site is successfully moving to public beta.
- In graduation news, Salesforce is going to fully graduate after a very quick run through the beta process. Also, Christianity graduated, and its design is beautiful and you should check it out (nice job Jin!).
- And lastly (and sadly), Libraries is closing.
- What privileges does Matt remember getting? He thinks he remembers when he learned he could edit other people's posts, but he's generally stayed away from the management of the site and just focuses on answering photography questions instead.
- The Chicago Sun-Times fired all its photographers and told its journalists to use iPhones. Matt and our hosts have opinions on this intersection of journalism and amateur photography.
- Google Glass is interesting in this context. What if taking a photo is now even more accessible than just taking out your phone?
- Jay wants to ask a question that might be terrible for our site but great for a podcast: if someone had an old point-and-shoot camera and wanted to upgrade, what should they do?
- Speaking of shopping questions… Photography is much more lenient with them than other sites on our network. Weirder yet, it seems to be working.
- Photography exists at the intersection of art and technology. Since Matt is a developer and a photographer, he kind of exists at that intersection too (and so did his thesis).
- Sometimes our sites are difficult to use, but if you want to use our site to learn something interesting, check out Matt's answers. They are extremely high-quality. This one is his most highly voted answer.
- Matt photographs weddings and tells us about some of the coolest ones he's seen. (Costume weddings are classy and fancy, not, like, Darth Vader-themed.) As a wedding photographer, you've got to dress to fit in, and interact and have fun with the guests in order to get great casual shots. Also, don't use a spy satellite.
- We have a user question! @moneywithwings wants to know if Stack Overflow has a rule against editing somebody else's code. Matt says we encourage collaboration and want to make sure we have the best information available; Jay wants to hire him on the spot. (By the way, we're hiring! and also, you can ask your own user questions at s.tk/podcastquestions.)
Thanks for listening to the Stack Exchange podcast, and thanks to our guest Matt Grum and his band Juno for the outro music!