Ever since I started working at Current I’ve been badgering the powers that be to let me do a show of some kind. And either they’ve finally recognized my sheer creative genius, or they’re just tired of saying no. Doesn’t really matter, because I’ve won!
It’s true, my friends. “Current.ly with Sarah Lane” is coming to the Current webwaves soon, and I couldn’t be more excited. It’ll be a live streaming, interactive, weekly show covering everything that’s new and cool in technology and the web. The premise is simple: I digest this stuff all day every day and I know most of you do too, so why don’t we all share and discuss what we love together?
Here’s the thing – even though I got my very own show (hurrah!!) greenlit, it won’t be easy for me. I won’t have a team of producers working behind the scenes. In fact, I won’t even have ONE SINGLE producer to help me out. Having worked on a variety of tech-based TV and web shows over the years, I know that having a solid team that works together well is crucial to creating solid programming that the audience will enjoy. But this project is literally going to be a one-woman-show, from start to finish. Honestly, I’m a little intimidated by the whole thing. And that’s why I’ll need all of you to help me pick good content and guests each week. Are you up for the challenge? You better be, because I can’t do it alone. 
“Current.ly with Sarah Lane” will be going live in a few weeks, so I hope to start picking your collective brains now. What kinds of segments do you want to see? Who do you want me to invite onto the show, and what kinds of questions should I ask them? What type of content are you tired of seeing on tech shows? Anything overdone and stale that I should avoid? Be honest, because your frankness will only help me. I promise I’m listening.
In the meantime, start voting on every Current Tech story if you aren’t already. Is it a good addition to the channel? Vote it up. Does it suck? Vote it down. Your input will weigh heavily on the types of stories I cover each week, and my choices will come directly from the Current Tech community itself. Don’t see an important story anywhere on the channel? Submit a story yourself, tag it “Tech”, and keep Current Tech up-to-date and relevant!
Like I said, I’m really excited and optimistic about “Current.ly with Sarah Lane”, but I can’t do it alone. So let ‘er rip and let’s make great show we all can be proud of.
Thanks, and see you online!
Sarah
June 27th, 2009 at 11:31 am
yay! I’m always happy when you get to do a show, Sarah! I’ve always enjoyed your many tech shows. Anyway, I guess, imo I’d like to see less random internet videos (cause I feel like some tech shows end up doing entire sections on random internet videos, which have nothing to do with technology). Also, is there any way you could fit gaming into your show? Regardless, I’m looking forward to watching this show, can’t wait!
June 27th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Congratulations Sarah!
If you can give us an idea of how long each episode will run, that might assist us in deciding what we would like to see from the new Current.ly with Sarah Lane.
June 27th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
YEAH!! we get to see more Sarah!! YEAH!!!
June 27th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Gr8 so Glad for You) Congrat’s!
June 27th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I think an obvious first guest would be Martin.
June 27th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Im excited. Nice logo too!
June 27th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Yes what CC said
yes to co-producing
green tech love-it!
June 29th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Congratulations! I’ve noticed that a lot of the non-tech stories have been getting filtered out of the Tech section since you’ve been moderating. I would like to see segments about Linux/open source, and music related tech.
June 30th, 2009 at 11:54 am
true story, im thrilled to pieces about this. i would love it if you could get moujan to be a guest, and as for stories, i dont think you have too much to worry about. they pretty much just write themselves these days.
June 30th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Sweeeet! More Sarah equals more FUN.
June 30th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Good luck, Sarah! I’m sure it will be great.
June 30th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
I would really like to see you have guests that are clueless about tech on the show and have you ask them questions their policies or about how they feel about tech stories/angles.. People like government officials, ceo’s, farmers, fisherman. I want to see how tech effects everyone else. I know how all the tech freaks feel about stuff, how does your mom feel about the iphone ? Is 3g changing lives for cab drivers ? that kinda stuff
June 30th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Sounds great sarah! I look forward to seeing it. Can you talk about it on TWIF? We need some warning to catch you, or tweet it I guess
June 30th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I’d like to see something different. Not the tech news and not the most popular stories. There’s plenty of shows already doing that. Nor games reviews – again, already well covered.
Don’t be a carbon copy of stuff that’s already out there.
I like the analysis of tech by non-techs, but moderated by a tech (you). That could be interesting. Talking to CEOs and middle-managers from both large and also small business as to how they use tech, and what they’d like to be able to do and what they’ve already changed/implemented recently.
Don’t talk to the IT guy. Talk to the customer service supervisor at city hall about the new mapping system or complaints/requests system they’ve implemented and how it’s changed their customer service role. Talk to the architect that can now lodge building plans electronically with city hall. Or the fire services using twitter and google maps to track fires in real time during Black Saturday when half of Victoria (Australia) caught fire in late January. Or use Germans who now sell electricity to the grid from solar panels all over the country and along the roadsides, thus leading the world in solar even tho they’re not a particularly sunny country.
A magazine-style show, with a weekly theme or special guest. Not yet another Diggnation or TWiT or CrankyGeeks or Cnet Loaded. Something different. This will make it more mainstream without dumbing it down too much, thus appealing to a wider CurrentTv audience.
Looking forward to it.
June 30th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Just be yourself.
June 30th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
congrats sarah! what does this mean for TWiF and Net@Night?
June 30th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Thanks SO much, everyone. I always get nervous before new projects because I really want to succeed and make people happy. The good thing is that you’ll have a lot of say in the final product, so it’s very much a “we’re in this together” show.
Taylor- TWiF and net@night are healthy and happy and not going anywhere! I’m just a workaholic.
June 30th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Will you be doing this with Marty or also keep doing the other show with him.
June 30th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Congrats Ms. Lane, can’t wait for the show!
-KR
(dr.b)
June 30th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Sarah,
Can’t wait to see it and glad TWIF is NOT going away. I agree with some of the other comments, do something different. Love to see a tech game like True or Poo or TweetBeat. Maybe get Martin thinking about it. I don’t see this written, but I love your voice and expressions. Very fun to listen to on a long trip (car or bike). Good Luck, break a leg (and not a bouncy ball).
June 30th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Hello Sarah and Congrats on the new show. As for ideas, since your other endeavors are going to continue, just off the top of my head, it would nice to see something different if it was something like the Tonight Show or Letterman, but interviewing the movers and shakers in the tech industry on a personal level as well as spotlight something they might have going on or coming up. Probably no more than a 1/2 hr. Just my $0.02. Good Luck!
June 30th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
First off, Way To Go! A show I’d like to see would be one with Twitter in mind. It’s Hot, It’s Now. haha And you could start with the guy that invented Pocketwit for the mobile. I like and use it. But not just because he’s in Houston and so am I. But because he works really hard at keeping it running. Personally, I don’t know him. But it’s a good app. Good luck.
June 30th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Cool! This might be the bump we need to really get everyone involved with the Tech portion of Current. I know a lot of people visit, but don’t interact here. Let hope this changes that!
June 30th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
This is very cool news indeed! But you have made my life even harder since I barely have time to keep up with all the webshows I watch as it is! But this is definitely a must see
June 30th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Make it global!
Consider talking live to people in other countries (like me
) about how IT news is perceived at their location, or about developments in their countries.
Report on IT events in those countries, such as CeBIT in Germany. Perhaps as reports from those countries rather than live interviews? (similar to “From Our Own Correspondent” on http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4)
How do I audition?
P.S. You can hear my weekly thoughts on tech in Germany at http://www.computius.net – albeit in German!
June 30th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Sarah!!!!!
Finaly!!! We are all happy to help!!
Hugz
Rene
June 30th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
I always loved Big Thinkers from TechTV back in the day. It might be worth considering including some of the same kind of coverage and content coming from the same kind of leaders in the areas of science/tech covered in that series. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Thinkers_(TV_series)
July 1st, 2009 at 12:06 am
Congrats’ Sarah!
Here’s a segment idea for your show – Top iPone\Android\Palm Pre apps of the week – have users submit they’re picks and each week or two show the top 5 or 10 apps for each device.
Hope this helps,
G.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Hi Sarah, I am excited you are back – I really have missed Pop Siren. My favourite part was always the review of new online tools. I still use some of those tools I found out about first on your show. I love being able to keep up with new tools I care about. I would not watch a show where people are droning on and on about lynx and new programming languages.
Thanks for helping to keep me current. A new music review thrown in would help sweeten things a lot for me.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:20 am
[...] of the week: Sarah Lane talks about Twitter2Flickr. Also, Sarah’s starting a new show: Current.ly, and she chats with Leo and Amber about [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:20 am
Congratulations! You’ve apparently put your time unemployed to far better use than I did.
I’ve been sitting here blinking at my screen for a long while now, wondering. . . well, how best to make myself useful for ya. Putting on a one-woman tech show sounds absolutely daunting to me . . . only, you’ve had a brilliant idea in your plan to enlist volunteers from wherever you may find them.
Ask your readers/viewers what’s going on out there that they find to be amazing or what have you, pick from what feedback you get and follow up on gathering what information is to be had, further focus your team of volunteers to do some digging and background research and hey, you’ve grown yourself a news story.
Now, it occurs to me that you can’t really count on people to be staggeringly amazing at all times, Maybe the feedback you get is. . . well, not the most helpful. Talk about it anyway. I’ve been (and I’m sure I’m not alone here) wandering by your blogs and sites ever since you were on a certain cable network and on my TV every weekday. If you didn’t write well, and your ideas, opinions, and general style didn’t fascinate and entertain, I would’ve forgotten about you a long time ago.
The show can be a fluid thing, an editorial technology news column about whatever tickles ya that week, fueled by information gathered by people who are simply Interested. You could be giving some lime-light to fascinating information/people/discoveries and the like who otherwise don’t get enough attention in mainstream media.
Current is no slouch in tech news, so you could simply track people down who’re behind those stories and get more than just the facts, put human faces on them and let suppositions and stories and anecdotes fly? Sounds like a lot of fun to me. In any case, I wish you nothing but good fortune in this endeavor and I’ll be rooting for ya.
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:19 am
Congrats Sarah! I’m really looking fwd to your show. If you need help with anything just give me a buzz..
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:40 am
Congratulations Sarah, I’ve been loving your contributions on net@night. I guess much of the work will be around the actual production though as a lot of the content will, I believe, come fairly naturally. We run a podcast called Dogear Nation and one way we get contact for that is by having listeners tag stuff for us on del.icio.us – we’re always discovering cool new stuff that way, and via net@night and Current Tech and other sites of course.
Really looking forward to following – are you hoping to get your show published as a video podcast as well? That would be great for those of us outside the US who might find it more difficult to tune in live.
July 3rd, 2009 at 5:46 am
[...] http://blogs.current.com/tech/2009/06/27/big-announcement-currently-with-yours-truly/ [...]
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:24 pm
[...] Also, Sarah’s starting a new show: Current.ly, [...]
July 6th, 2009 at 7:59 am
Did somebody else snatch the http://www.current.ly domain, or is this your placeholder?
July 7th, 2009 at 6:29 am
Sarah –
I think there should be a segment on the future of devices, or what direction should a device(s) take. It can be as simple as,”Wouldn’t it be cool if my iPhone could also replace my Tivo?
Convergence has always been a fun buzzword. Maybe if we could dream up what kind of devices would converge together there could be a lot of back and forth between you and the fans.
So here is how I would envision it. You start off (maybe through fan comments) which devices would work well together. You have some discussion about it, and when all is said and done, there is a vote cast to which one your viewers/listeners.
I’m not sure what you could do after the voting. Maybe a shout out to the person who thought of the idea? A t-shirt? Or maybe the idea is presented to one of the two companies? Who knows what might come of it.
What do you think?
Seth M
July 7th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I like the ideas of talking to non-techs about how tech influences their work/life. Also I think it’s always good to have a call-in section where viewers can ask questions, or write-ins, if call-ins are a concern.
Is this planned to be a weekly show, or multiple times a week?
Also it might be good to get news of the show out there on social sites…creating a myspace/facebook page specifically for the show (either by you, or a fan I’m sure would be hapy to care for the page).
I will certainly be watching your show! And of course who wouldn’t want to see guys from the old tech tv as guests
July 22nd, 2009 at 6:42 am
Great Job! I’m so excited to see the new show.
July 31st, 2009 at 10:32 am
I’m so happy for you that you have your own show, Sarah. I miss the old TechTV days, and of course, AOTS. It just hasn’t been the same since you left. I have a suggestion for you guest-wise. How about you getting the Kevins (Rose and Pereira), and a few others of the old TechTV cast like Patrick or maybe even Leo, and you all discuss just what’s going on in your lives, and how it relates to tech? I know I’m just reaching here, but it would be nice to see you all reunited again for a show. Good luck with your new show, I wish you all the best!
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:47 am
Hi, if you are interested in current.ly please let me know
December 15th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Can anyone recommend the top performing Managed Service tool for a small IT service company like mine? Does anyone use Kaseya.com or GFI.com? How do they compare to these guys I found recently: N-able N-central script distribution
? What is your best take in cost vs performance among those three? I need a good advice please… Thanks in advance!
January 3rd, 2010 at 9:54 am
Good to see you are going back on the air.
It will be good to have a tech show to watch again.
Best wishes and best of luck and I will be checking Current (channel 229) regularly to see when you are on.