Today [Bad Voltage](https://www.badvoltage.org) celebrates our first birthday. We plan on celebrating it by having someone else blow out our birthday candles while we smash a cake and quietly defecate on ourselves.

For those of you unaware of the show, *Bad Voltage* is an Open Source, technology, and “other things we find interesting” podcast featuring Stuart Langridge (*LugRadio, Shot Of Jaq*), Bryan Lunduke (*Linux Action Show*), Jeremy Garcia (*Linux Questions*), and myself (*LugRadio, Shot Of Jaq*). The show takes fun but informed take on various topics, and includes interviews, reviews, competitions, and challenges.

Over the last year we have covered quite the plethora of topics. This has included VR, backups, atheism, ElementaryOS, guns, bitcoin, biohacking, PS4 vs. XBOX, kids and coding, crowdfunding, genetics, Open Source health, 3D printed weapons, the GPL, work/life balance, Open Source political parties, the right to be forgotten, smart-watches, equality, Mozilla, tech conferences, tech on TV, and more.

We have interviewed some awesome guests including Chris Anderson (Wired), Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media), Greg Kroah-Hartman (Linux), Miguel de Icaza (Xamarin/GNOME), Stormy Peters (Mozilla), Simon Phipps (OSI), Jeff Atwood (Discourse), Emma Marshall (System76), Graham Morrison (Linux Voice), Matthew Miller (Fedora), Ilan Rabinovitch (Southern California Linux Expo), Daniel Foré (Elementary), Christian Schaller (Redhat), Matthew Garrett (Linux), Zohar Babin (Kaltura), Steven J. Vaughan-Nicols (ZDNet), and others.

…and then there are the competitions and challenges. We had a debate where we had to take the opposite viewpoints of what we think, we had a rocking poetry contest, challenged our listeners to mash up the shows to humiliate us, ran a selfie competition, and more. In many cases we punished each other when we lost and even tried to take on a sausage company.

It is all a lot of fun, and if you haven’t checked the show out, be sure to head over to [www.badvoltage.org](https://www.badvoltage.org) and load up on some shows.

One of the most awesome aspects of Bad Voltage is [our community](https://community.badvoltage.org). Our pad is at [community.badvoltage.org](https://community.badvoltage.org) and we have a fantastically diverse community of different ideas, perspectives and viewpoints. In many cases we have discussed a topic on the show and there has been a long and interesting (and always respectful debate on the forum). It is so much fun to be around.

I just want to say a huge thank-you to everyone who has supported the show and stuck with us through our first year. We have a lot of fun doing it, but the Bad Voltage community make every ounce of effort worthwhile. I also want to thank my fellow presenters, Bryan, Stuart, and Jeremy; it is a pleasure getting to shoot the proverbial with you guys every few weeks.

## Live Voltage!

Before I wrap up, I need to share an important piece of information. The Bad Voltage team will be performing our very first live show at the [Southern California Linux Expo](https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale13x) on the evening of Friday 20th Feb 2015 in Los Angeles.

We can’t think of a better place to do our first live show than SCALE, and we hope to see you there!