As you've probably noticed, we at BikeRod&Kustom encourage our readers to contribute editorial material to our mix. We love having lots of different voices making up our choir. In addition to the how-to and documentary articles we always want, an important part of our editorial package is interviews with people our readers would like to know more about and learn from.
.
Interviews are really great learning tools for new people in our activity. After all, the people who've been doing interesting and creative things in our field for a relatively long time are ideal mentors for our beginners to absorb experience and technique from, and they are usually interesting people in other ways.
.
Everyone in our gallery has an E-mail address for receiving kudos, comments and questions. But, by being interviewed, they can propagate their knowledge and experience much more efficiently than by answering individual questions from various people. Not that they wouldn't answer those individual questions anyway, even with an interview already out there on the web, of course. One attribute distinguishing those making up the crème de la crème of our activity is their willingness to share their knowledge with others; with none of that paranoid secretiveness regarding technique you sometimes find in other endeavors, such as music, for example.
.
I like doing interviews very much, as I'm a curious guy; and conducting an interview is great for people like me, as it gives a good excuse to ask what might ordinarily be annoying questions of others. It's not quite as effective as a badge and truncheon, but it works pretty much as well, while leaving the interview subject in a much better mood than would be the case with interrogation by torture. Also, an interview is a great way of making friends. I feel a personal bond with everyone I've ever interviewed, since I end up knowing them so well. And, it works both ways, since the subjects end up knowing me pretty intimately, as part of the process. An interview is something created by two people, after all, and having that shared experience in common promotes friendship, assuming it was successful.
.
My biggest influence as an interviewer was The Playboy Magazine Interviews. Yes, it's a standard joke to say that one reads it for the quality interviews, fiction, and articles, but after I became a mental adult, rather than a chronological one, that's mostly why I'd buy the magazine. The things I learned from studying years of Playboy Interviews have served me well. What follows is a synthesis of everything I've learned or developed for effectively interviewing people.
.
The Best Medium For Interviews:
.
For BR&K's purposes, E-Mail is the very best medium for interviewing people. This probably isn't necessarily so for other media. Doing it on camera works very well for the kinds of interviewing done by the 60 Minutes reporters, but they're frequently trying to trap crooks and corrupt politicians. Seeing the subject sweat adds to the experience of the audience. We at BR&K don't really do that kind of interviewing, though. Yeah, there are probably a few charlatans and outright crooks in our milieu, but we don't find them particularly interesting, and they usually do a fine job of catching themselves, through their actions.
.
Telephone interviews are favored by some journalists, if it isn't practical to do it face to face; but let's face it, most people's spontaneous speech is pretty terrible- littered with "uuhs" and "you knows" and other stalling devices which subconsciously give them time to think ahead. This stuff obviously needs to be weeded out when preparing a transcript of the interview. The transcription part adds a whole other amount of tedious labor to the process, as well. Anyone who's had to laboriously transcribe a tape recording will know what I mean.
.
E-Mail is the ideal medium for our sort of interviews, for several reasons. First, it allows the subject to really think about the question and its answer for as long as required. The result is that the subject comes across much more intelligently than if the answer involves speech. The people we interview are pretty much all intelligent and creative, otherwise we wouldn't be bothering with them; but being smart doesn't necessarily make them erudite, unless they communicate through the written word. Sure, they may have lousy spelling and grammar, and quite often do, but that's what editors are for. We don't re-write their dialogue, but we do correct little things that would potentially make them seem silly or dumb if it went onto the page with no tweaking. While useful, it's not necessarily the interviewer's responsibility to do this copy editing, either. Many interviewers are no more skilled at spelling and grammar than their subjects, so a modicum of copy-editing by someone else makes them also seem more intelligent and erudite than their normal written communications might suggest.
.
Another advantage to the E-Mail medium is that we automatically start out with a text file which is easily put into web-page form, without the labor of transcription. This is very important if the publication doesn't pay its interviewers, or Editors.
..
Coming Up With Questions and How To Present Them To the Subject:
.
When preparing for an interview, you should always do some background research on your subject. Google and other search engines are the ideal tools for this. Using Google, you can find out everything about the subject to be found on the web. Lawyers have a saying, "Never ask a question in court you don't already know the answer to". This is a pretty good rule of thumb for interviewers as well. By having an idea of the sort of answer the subject is likely to deliver on a particular topic, you can decide whether that question is worth asking in the first place. If there's no bio information available on the web, I usually ask the subject to send me a short bio/curriculum vitae. Our interviews are meant to be informative, but we also try to make them entertaining and interesting. Also keep in mind that you are asking the questions for the benefit of your audience, who haven't done the research. A question you might find too likely to have a boring response, based upon your research, might not be as un-interesting to your audience as to you. So don't automatically reject a potential question, just because you aren't particularly interested in the answer; someone else might very well be.
.
We also aim for questions that will elicit fairly long and thoughtful answers. Yes or No questions can get pretty boring very quickly, so we avoid presenting them as much as possible.
.
I usually start an interview with a list of likely questions I'd like responses for. However, I don't present that list to the subject in one big chunk. One question at a time is the best way to go, as one answer can provide the basis for a follow-up question you hadn't even thought of. We like our interviews to have the feel of a conversation between two intelligent people. Having a natural organic flow, with an answer to one question leading to the next question is how this is accomplished. This is impossible when handing the subject a laundry list of questions. Often, the subject's answer will lead to commentary from the interviewer, which leads up to the next question, which is fine as it adds to the conversational feel of the interview. This can be overdone, of course, and I've been guilty of contributing more of my own thinking and commentary to an interview than is good, on more than one occasion. But, as it frequently elicits a more interesting response from the subject, I continue to do it, and just edit out any excess verbiage on my part.
.
Another reason for avoiding the presentation of a laundry list of questions is that, invariably, the subject will find some of them interesting and deserving of a lengthy response, while finding others less so, and skimping on the responses to those. It never fails. So presenting only one question at a time results in a much more consistent interview, with all the questions answered in an equally thoughtful manner. I usually check my in-box very frequently during an interview, and so does the subject; so interviews can go pretty quickly, even with only one question at a time. A typical interview takes a couple of days, although, in the case of an especially interesting subject, some have taken longer.
.
Since BR&K is pretty much about bicycle design and construction, that's the natural basis for most questions, and what our audience is mostly interested in. However that's not the only thing we're interested in. Our subjects are mostly creative people who do interesting things, so there should be questions which give indications as to the subject's personality and other interests which have led them to what they do, and the philosophy behind their doing of it. Quite often, doing one thing well has led to others. Those other aspects can be just as fascinating as the main topic, so, ideally, you should delve into them as well.
.
Sometimes, asking a really stupid question can be a good way of making an interview more effective or entertaining. The way a subject deals with it can be very informative. A really good subject with a sense of humor will deal with it as thoughtfully as they did the "smart" ones, and sometimes even more so. If it flops, you can always just leave it out, which is the beauty of the process. We control the reality, after all, when it comes to the written word.
.
How Long Should A BR&K Interview Be?
.
We have no set length for interviews. The rule of thumb is that it continues as long as it stays entertaining and edifying. While knowing when to wind the interview up is largely a matter of experience, in most cases it's pretty obvious- you simply run out of things to ask. However, quite often I'll think of another question a day or so after I thought it was over. For this reason, I usually make the close a bit tentative to allow for this possibility. I tell the subject, off the record, that we've probably covered everything, but that I'd like the chance to go through the interview a few times at leisure to see if anything else suggests itself. Sometimes nothing does, in which case I let them know, thank them on behalf of our readers and give them an opportunity for some closing remarks.
.
Since the subject might have something to share I haven't thought of, quite often I'll simply ask them if there's a question I've missed. This can possibly lead to something quite interesting, so it's always a good idea to ask.

Getting your first interview assignment from BR&K:
.
Simply think of someone you'd like to interview and ask us if we'd be interested. In the case of someone not generally well known within our circle of activity, tell us who they are, what they do, and why you think the interview would be worth consideration. We often have numerous interviews already lined up, or on our tentative list, and maybe one of them is the subject you want, so it's always good to ask. If the interview hasn't yet been assigned, or it's with someone we haven't thought of, you'll probably get the go-ahead to do it. Once you've done one interview for us, and we know how you handle them, you'll probably get requests from us to interview others we, or you, may suggest.
.
Hardly anyone has ever turned down the opportunity to be interviewed by BR&K. Actually, I can't think of anyone who wasn't up for it. After all, it's pretty flattering to be considered that interesting, isn't it? And, rightly or wrongly, in this field of interest, being a BR&K interview subject is usually considered a benchmark of having "arrived".
.
Interviews are usually fun to do, for both the interviewer and the subject. I recommend that you give it a try, to see how you like it. Who knows, you might show real aptitude for it, and become known for it within our circle of activity or others. Most of my interview experience is within the world of bike creativity, of course, but the experience of doing those has equipped me for doing interviews with people in other areas of interest. I recently interviewed a photographer, using pretty much the same techniques, and both of us agreed that it was a very good piece of work, on both our parts. It does help to know something about the subject, however, no matter what it is.
.
Further Reading To Become An Effective Interviewer:
.
Aside from what you've just read, which is a pretty decent place to start, I recommend reading interviews by other people, in BR&K and elsewhere. Just doing a Google search using the term "Interview" will find you lots of them to study. Some will be bad, of course, but many of them will be great, with much to learn from. Learning from both is my recommendation. You will also find many pieces written on the subject of interviewing, which is always worthwhile to study. Here is an informative article on the subject, by Bill McAuliffe, a journalist, but there are many others out there.
By Jim Wilson, Editor-In-Chief
ON INTERVIEWING FOR BIKEROD&KUSTOM
By Jim Wilson, Editor-In-Chief
As you've probably noticed, we at BikeRod&Kustom encourage our readers to contribute editorial material to our mix. We love having lots of different voices making up our choir. In addition to the how-to and documentary articles we always want, an important part of our editorial package is interviews with people our readers would like to know more about and learn from.
.
Interviews are really great learning tools for new people in our activity. After all, the people who've been doing interesting and creative things in our field for a relatively long time are ideal mentors for our beginners to absorb experience and technique from, and they are usually interesting people in other ways.
.
Everyone in our gallery has an E-mail address for receiving kudos, comments and questions. But, by being interviewed, they can propagate their knowledge and experience much more efficiently than by answering individual questions from various people. Not that they wouldn't answer those individual questions anyway, even with an interview already out there on the web, of course. One attribute distinguishing those making up the crème de la crème of our activity is their willingness to share their knowledge with others; with none of that paranoid secretiveness regarding technique you sometimes find in other endeavors, such as music, for example.
.
I like doing interviews very much, as I'm a curious guy; and conducting an interview is great for people like me, as it gives a good excuse to ask what might ordinarily be annoying questions of others. It's not quite as effective as a badge and truncheon, but it works pretty much as well, while leaving the interview subject in a much better mood than would be the case with interrogation by torture. Also, an interview is a great way of making friends. I feel a personal bond with everyone I've ever interviewed, since I end up knowing them so well. And, it works both ways, since the subjects end up knowing me pretty intimately, as part of the process. An interview is something created by two people, after all, and having that shared experience in common promotes friendship, assuming it was successful.
.
My biggest influence as an interviewer was The Playboy Magazine Interviews. Yes, it's a standard joke to say that one reads it for the quality interviews, fiction, and articles, but after I became a mental adult, rather than a chronological one, that's mostly why I'd buy the magazine. The things I learned from studying years of Playboy Interviews have served me well. What follows is a synthesis of everything I've learned or developed for effectively interviewing people.
.
The Best Medium For Interviews:
.
For BR&K's purposes, E-Mail is the very best medium for interviewing people. This probably isn't necessarily so for other media. Doing it on camera works very well for the kinds of interviewing done by the 60 Minutes reporters, but they're frequently trying to trap crooks and corrupt politicians. Seeing the subject sweat adds to the experience of the audience. We at BR&K don't really do that kind of interviewing, though. Yeah, there are probably a few charlatans and outright crooks in our milieu, but we don't find them particularly interesting, and they usually do a fine job of catching themselves, through their actions.
.
Telephone interviews are favored by some journalists, if it isn't practical to do it face to face; but let's face it, most people's spontaneous speech is pretty terrible- littered with "uuhs" and "you knows" and other stalling devices which subconsciously give them time to think ahead. This stuff obviously needs to be weeded out when preparing a transcript of the interview. The transcription part adds a whole other amount of tedious labor to the process, as well. Anyone who's had to laboriously transcribe a tape recording will know what I mean.
.
E-Mail is the ideal medium for our sort of interviews, for several reasons. First, it allows the subject to really think about the question and its answer for as long as required. The result is that the subject comes across much more intelligently than if the answer involves speech. The people we interview are pretty much all intelligent and creative, otherwise we wouldn't be bothering with them; but being smart doesn't necessarily make them erudite, unless they communicate through the written word. Sure, they may have lousy spelling and grammar, and quite often do, but that's what editors are for. We don't re-write their dialogue, but we do correct little things that would potentially make them seem silly or dumb if it went onto the page with no tweaking. While useful, it's not necessarily the interviewer's responsibility to do this copy editing, either. Many interviewers are no more skilled at spelling and grammar than their subjects, so a modicum of copy-editing by someone else makes them also seem more intelligent and erudite than their normal written communications might suggest.
.
Another advantage to the E-Mail medium is that we automatically start out with a text file which is easily put into web-page form, without the labor of transcription. This is very important if the publication doesn't pay its interviewers, or Editors.
..
Coming Up With Questions and How To Present Them To the Subject:
.
When preparing for an interview, you should always do some background research on your subject. Google and other search engines are the ideal tools for this. Using Google, you can find out everything about the subject to be found on the web. Lawyers have a saying, "Never ask a question in court you don't already know the answer to". This is a pretty good rule of thumb for interviewers as well. By having an idea of the sort of answer the subject is likely to deliver on a particular topic, you can decide whether that question is worth asking in the first place. If there's no bio information available on the web, I usually ask the subject to send me a short bio/curriculum vitae. Our interviews are meant to be informative, but we also try to make them entertaining and interesting. Also keep in mind that you are asking the questions for the benefit of your audience, who haven't done the research. A question you might find too likely to have a boring response, based upon your research, might not be as un-interesting to your audience as to you. So don't automatically reject a potential question, just because you aren't particularly interested in the answer; someone else might very well be.
.
We also aim for questions that will elicit fairly long and thoughtful answers. Yes or No questions can get pretty boring very quickly, so we avoid presenting them as much as possible.
.
I usually start an interview with a list of likely questions I'd like responses for. However, I don't present that list to the subject in one big chunk. One question at a time is the best way to go, as one answer can provide the basis for a follow-up question you hadn't even thought of. We like our interviews to have the feel of a conversation between two intelligent people. Having a natural organic flow, with an answer to one question leading to the next question is how this is accomplished. This is impossible when handing the subject a laundry list of questions. Often, the subject's answer will lead to commentary from the interviewer, which leads up to the next question, which is fine as it adds to the conversational feel of the interview. This can be overdone, of course, and I've been guilty of contributing more of my own thinking and commentary to an interview than is good, on more than one occasion. But, as it frequently elicits a more interesting response from the subject, I continue to do it, and just edit out any excess verbiage on my part.
.
Another reason for avoiding the presentation of a laundry list of questions is that, invariably, the subject will find some of them interesting and deserving of a lengthy response, while finding others less so, and skimping on the responses to those. It never fails. So presenting only one question at a time results in a much more consistent interview, with all the questions answered in an equally thoughtful manner. I usually check my in-box very frequently during an interview, and so does the subject; so interviews can go pretty quickly, even with only one question at a time. A typical interview takes a couple of days, although, in the case of an especially interesting subject, some have taken longer.
.
Since BR&K is pretty much about bicycle design and construction, that's the natural basis for most questions, and what our audience is mostly interested in. However that's not the only thing we're interested in. Our subjects are mostly creative people who do interesting things, so there should be questions which give indications as to the subject's personality and other interests which have led them to what they do, and the philosophy behind their doing of it. Quite often, doing one thing well has led to others. Those other aspects can be just as fascinating as the main topic, so, ideally, you should delve into them as well.
.
Sometimes, asking a really stupid question can be a good way of making an interview more effective or entertaining. The way a subject deals with it can be very informative. A really good subject with a sense of humor will deal with it as thoughtfully as they did the "smart" ones, and sometimes even more so. If it flops, you can always just leave it out, which is the beauty of the process. We control the reality, after all, when it comes to the written word.
.
How Long Should A BR&K Interview Be?
.
We have no set length for interviews. The rule of thumb is that it continues as long as it stays entertaining and edifying. While knowing when to wind the interview up is largely a matter of experience, in most cases it's pretty obvious- you simply run out of things to ask. However, quite often I'll think of another question a day or so after I thought it was over. For this reason, I usually make the close a bit tentative to allow for this possibility. I tell the subject, off the record, that we've probably covered everything, but that I'd like the chance to go through the interview a few times at leisure to see if anything else suggests itself. Sometimes nothing does, in which case I let them know, thank them on behalf of our readers and give them an opportunity for some closing remarks.
.
Since the subject might have something to share I haven't thought of, quite often I'll simply ask them if there's a question I've missed. This can possibly lead to something quite interesting, so it's always a good idea to ask.

Getting your first interview assignment from BR&K:
.
Simply think of someone you'd like to interview and ask us if we'd be interested. In the case of someone not generally well known within our circle of activity, tell us who they are, what they do, and why you think the interview would be worth consideration. We often have numerous interviews already lined up, or on our tentative list, and maybe one of them is the subject you want, so it's always good to ask. If the interview hasn't yet been assigned, or it's with someone we haven't thought of, you'll probably get the go-ahead to do it. Once you've done one interview for us, and we know how you handle them, you'll probably get requests from us to interview others we, or you, may suggest.
.
Hardly anyone has ever turned down the opportunity to be interviewed by BR&K. Actually, I can't think of anyone who wasn't up for it. After all, it's pretty flattering to be considered that interesting, isn't it? And, rightly or wrongly, in this field of interest, being a BR&K interview subject is usually considered a benchmark of having "arrived".
.
Interviews are usually fun to do, for both the interviewer and the subject. I recommend that you give it a try, to see how you like it. Who knows, you might show real aptitude for it, and become known for it within our circle of activity or others. Most of my interview experience is within the world of bike creativity, of course, but the experience of doing those has equipped me for doing interviews with people in other areas of interest. I recently interviewed a photographer, using pretty much the same techniques, and both of us agreed that it was a very good piece of work, on both our parts. It does help to know something about the subject, however, no matter what it is.
.
Further Reading To Become An Effective Interviewer:
.
Aside from what you've just read, which is a pretty decent place to start, I recommend reading interviews by other people, in BR&K and elsewhere. Just doing a Google search using the term "Interview" will find you lots of them to study. Some will be bad, of course, but many of them will be great, with much to learn from. Learning from both is my recommendation. You will also find many pieces written on the subject of interviewing, which is always worthwhile to study. Here is an informative article on the subject, by Bill McAuliffe, a journalist, but there are many others out there.
.