Guests on WB-40

We’ve been having fascinating conversations with wonderful guests on WB-40 since we started the show back in 2016.

WB-40 is essentially an excuse for us to have a chat with interesting people

WHo are we?

WB-40 is a labour of love from Matt Ballantine (currently Head of Technology & Transformation at London housing provider RHP) and Chris Weston (an analyst and advisor to CIOs at IDC). We set the show up back in 2016 to find our what would happen. What has happened is that we have spoken with dozens of fascinating people about things mostly related to how technology is managed in 2020 and beyond.

We have an audience of about 500 people for each show, and a vibrant WhatsApp community running alongside. Most of the listeners appear to be broadly in the world of tech, but we haven’t asked them that question directly.

The name WB-40 comes from the hosts’ initials, and their often flawed goal to make each show about 40 minutes long. It is in no way associated with any oil-based lubricant. The dolphin is called Blocky, for reasons that are lost in the mists of time.

Who are our guests?

All sorts of people have been on WB-40. We’ve had technologists, social scientists, artists, consultants, recruiters and even someone who trains people to be better managers with a stable of horses. We are just interested in hearing people’s perspectives on the world, and the world of work.

The show is conversational. Neither Chris nor Matt are trained media professionals, but both have dabbled over the years. Matt probably takes his microphone set up a little too seriously.

What’s involved in being a guest?

We try to record on a Monday evening from 8.30pm UK time for about an hour. Matt then does his editing magic and we usually have the show published by 11pm. If you’d like to be on the show but Monday evenings are a problem, we can almost certainly find a time that suits you.

We use a recording platform called Squadcast. To take part you will need a PC or Mac running the Chrome browser and a reasonable internet connection. You’ll also need a pair of headphones. Ideally a headset with microphone. Or even more ideally a nice condenser mic with a pop shield (We warned you about Matt and his microphones).

Squadcast allows us to see each other through video, but none of the video is recorded. Matt and Chris have both got to an age where they realise they have faces for radio. If there’s anything in the recording that you’d rather not get published, just let us know and we’ll edit it out. Swearing on WB-40, however, is big and clever.

I’m In! How do I get involved?

Just drop Matt a line at matt@stamplondon.co.uk

Anything else?

If you do come on the show, then we ask one favour of our guests – to record the show outro.

It’s not hard – you just need to say something along the lines of the following:

Thank you for listening to WB-40.
You can find us on the Internet at WB-40 Podcast Dot Com,
on Twitter at WB-40 Podcast,
and on all good podcasting platforms.”