Jason Calacanis tweeted about a documentary called, We Live in Public. The title sounded relevant to my life, so I looked it up on Netflix and watched it today … gotta love the Netflix iPad App. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant film to watch, but there are lessons anyone participating in social media can learn from it.

The film is about Josh Harris. Harris made a lot of money in the early .com days. He had a vision for Internet TV back when most of us were still on dial-up. He started a company called Pseudo.com and when his personality made investors uncomfortable, he moved on to invent lifecasting. He and his girlfriend lived in a loft with cameras and microphones everywhere until the experiment cost them his money, their relationship, and maybe some sanity.

For about a year before we launched GeekBrief.TV, I studied attention economics in an effort to understand how to share information people can get from a wide variety of sources in a way that is special enough that they would want to get it from us. As a shy, retreating, bookish couple, we had to stretch outside our comfort zone in order to accomplish our goal. It helped immensely that Luria has that special something when she’s on camera. Stretching beyond what felt comfortable enabled us to accomplish what I thought we could.

Tools of social media give us all access to the world any time we want it. It’s then up to us to choose how much we live in public. As Luria and I walk through the pain of ending our marriage, it feels improper to talk about the personal stuff and disingenuous to say nothing at all. Our goal is to make it through this gracefully. I’m inclined to share my personal pain because it has helped me to read other people’s stories. Anytime I do that though, I have to do it in a way that is respectful of Luria’s desire for privacy. It’s tricky so my default is now set to Not Share.

Everything we’re going through is new. I’m sure we’ll both make mistakes. I’m more sure I’ll make more mistakes than she will. I’m not convinced it was the right thing to announce this on our blogs. I just don’t know, but one thing she and I both believe is that the geek world is better than the cool world because geeks are concerned about perfecting our tech while accepting one another just as we are. Beyond that, living in public is a tricky proposition, so if you choose to do it, it’s probably best to proceed with caution.

I’ve said all I’m going to say about the personal part of what’s happening, but I thought it would be kind of cool to share how we’ve been producing the show from two locations.

Writing the show hasn’t changed much except that Luria writes much more than she did when she was here. It’s been interesting to see the different types of stories she chooses than me. I tend to write about gadgets. She tends to write about tech news and Web services like Google Docs. The Brief we will release today is about stuff we both wanted to cover. I wrote some of today’s show yesterday, some this morning and she wrote some to. Because of Google Docs, it’s always been easy to collaborate on a script.

After the script is done, Luria shoots it herself. She has our lights and the camera and the teleprompter. She shoots in front of a green screen in one take with one fixed shot and then she transfers one HUGE file to me, via FTP. The uncompressed footage is typically 4-8GB per episode. Sometimes it takes five hours, and really, that’s the biggest downside of the setup.

I have all the editing gear. As I download the file, I do preproduction graphics that will be used in the episode. When I have the file, I drag it into Final Cut Pro. It usually takes less than an hour to edit. Occasionally, when there are unusual graphics or video features in a particular episode, it takes longer.

I compress the show into three formats using Sorenson Squeeze. It does an excellent job, but it’s slow (and expensive). Then I upload the four formats to Mevio and post to the GeekBrief.TV Web site.

Except for news that needs to be more timely the workflow has worked well. It’s always fun to trouble shoot our way through new challenges.

This video isn’t in HD so it’s more fun to listen than to watch, but it’s our speech at Gnomedex in 2007. We kind of tell our New Media story and encourage anyone with an idea to “just start.”

I ended my last post with a question: What can I do for you? Shamir Katsu asked what he could do to reproduce the “Geek Brief miracle.” If you already know the GeekBrief.TV Story, jump down to the last paragraph.

My wife and I used to do Web design and development during the time Internet culture was starting to bloom (before the dot com bubble popped). Tech TV was a cable channel about technology that drew geeks together, and for the first time, geeky people started to feel like we could be cool too.

After the bubble burst, we kind of burned out on tech. We stepped away completely and took a job in the glamorous world of self storage. The company we worked for was called Extra Space Storage and although we thought it would be a temporary job, they treated us well and let us open new stores so we could move around the country. Before we knew it, we had been there almost five years. That was 2005, the year podcasting started to gain attention.

We loved the idea of podcasting for the same reasons we were drawn to the Internet. We listened to Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code, then Dawn and Drew and the list just kept growing. When Dawn and Drew quit their job to Podcast full time, we decided that would be our goal.

Around the same time, Steve Jobs announced the first iPod with video. It seemed like there was room for new content. Everyone always said podcast about what you love. The thing Cali and I love in common is technology. We loved Engadget and Gizmodo so we decided to create a gadget video blog.

My idea was that Cali Lewis would be the International Head of the Geek Intelligence Agency and she would issue regular “Briefs” about gadgets and technology. We had no experience with video production, but we were laser-focused. We wanted to make the best looking show we could make and improve it every day. We also wanted to make it a business that would succeed.

It has been very successful, from our perspective, but it has been hard work. The first two years, as we were really learning how to get the show done, we often worked 14-16 hours a day at least six days a week. Mevio, our partner for distribution and advertising, has been an unseen force in what we’ve been able to do too. They made it possible for us to do the show full time and have connected us with advertising dollars that have kept Cali in T-Shirts and both of us in gadgets. It’s been good.

To me, three things all successful new media projects have in common is compelling content, professionalism and a sense that they all just keep doing it and doing it and doing it. Constant content production plus laser-focus is what seems to work.

UPDATE: Shamir Katsu asked two follow-up questions…

(1) How did you get hooked up with Mevio?

It’s easy now. Anyone can sign up for an account and launch a show on the network. They look at shows that perform in terms of audience growth and they reach out with advertising opportunities. Jeff McCord, the host of the Moxie Mo Show is a perfect example. He watched GeekBrief.TV, wanted to do a show of his own, asked us for advice, launched his show and he’s making extra money from it.

(2) How do you maintain that focus and drive to keep going when things are not going well?

There are two different ways to go with that. Some pursuits aren’t worth the effort. If you start something and it doesn’t ever start clicking, it’s probably best to let that go and move on to something else. If you start something with merit, you’ll see some signs of success and you’ll want to focus on what works and abandon what doesn’t.

When things aren’t going well it’s time to be as objective as possible. Sep back and work to understand the problem. Make adjustments a pay close, close attention to the things that bring positive results and do more of those things!

Our littlest dog Zoe woke me up early with a request to go outside. When I got back to the room, I couldn’t fall back asleep. We’re on a road trip from Dallas to Chicago because a couple friends who own a restaurant in Highland Park, IL are having a BBQ emergency and we decided to be spontaneous and support the meat.

Laying in bed, trying to go back to sleep, I was thinking about the next episode of GeekBrief.TV. It’s episode #400. Cali and I think celebrating round numbers is arbitrary. We’d much rather celebrate the episodes that are good–the ones that inspire funny comments and make people smile or laugh. The 400 number isn’t even accurate because we haven’t always given every episode a Brief number, and if you’re pedantically minded, like we are, celebrating 400 is celebrating an inaccuracy and it doesn’t compute.

The restaurant we’re traveling to is called Bluegrass. It was opened in Highland Park at the same time Cali and I opened a self-storage facility for Extra Space Storage next door. Jim Lederer and Chef Dave Teichman fed us well. In fact, when we were saving money like crazy to get out of debt and buy production equipment, Jim and Dave made us honorary Bluegrass employees and gave us an employee discount. The bar manager when Bluegrass opened, Brad Davis, introduced us to all manor of martinis. Brad was so charming and funny (and generous with his pours) that when Cali’s sister Ariane decided to move to Chicago from Atlanta, we looked forward to introducing Brad to Ariane. We fell in love with martinis and Brad fell in love with Ariane. She fell in love with him too.

So far about 30 people have RSVP’d for the Emergency BBQ Meetup, and it just hit me! Brief 400 is going to happen back where Brief 1 happened!

It’s the place where we lived when we first heard Adam Curry on NPR talking about Podcasting. Adam inspired us with his idealism about the indie nature of Podcasting. It’s where we lived when we first heard Dawn say “Get ready, baby! Get ready! It’s The Dawn and Drew Show, ohhh!” It’s the place where we coined the phrase, “Tyranny of the Day Job” because no matter how well we were treated by Extra Space, the day job was getting between us and our driving desire to podcast full time. It’s the place where we spent a whole weekend with Cali’s whole family the Summer before Curtis Safford, our brother-in-law died of cancer. It’s the place where I interrupted Cali’s shower one morning in October 2005 and told her our next goal was to start a podcast that’s good enough and popular enough that we’ll be able to do it full time.

About a week before our last day at the day job, our Curtis passed away. We packed up the truck fast, dropped off our stuff in Dallas and headed to California for the funeral. Curtis was an IT guy at USC and he’s the person who converted us to Mac. He’s also the father of our most awesome 3-year-old nephew, Loki.

Friends of the Brief (FotB, pronounced FothBas) who come will be able to see where we started, where we lived and taste how good we ate when we WEREN’T eating Ramen Noodles. It really feels like we’re going home.

Spending money in new media is a tricky thing. Everything we do costs much, much less than antique media, but it isn’t exactly cheap. Lighting for the Big Trip cost just under $6000. That’s a lot, but it’s a choice that will make sense for the next several years.

Usually when we buy something for production, I expect a pretty quick return on our investment. That doesn’t feel quite as true for the streaming stuff we’re experimenting with. Live streaming is where podcasting was three years ago, months before we started GeekBrief.TV. Money wasn’t exactly flowing into podcasting then and it isn’t quite flowing into live streaming now.

So, I’m thinking about buying a Tricaster so we could go live for a portion of each day with two or three cameras. I’m not sure the investment would be returned for at least a year, but I really think being an early mover is extremely important. Leo gets it. Chris Pirillo gets it. I HOPE we get it.

It’s a big expense, but I’m thinking the long-term return is massive.

Twitter friends MAY, and I do mean may, want to listen to TNS #4, but only because @Jeffmccord (aka, Moxie Wine) stopped by for some conversation. If you are NOT a twitter friend, my regular advice that you not listen to this show still applies.

I was using the Heil Classic Pro. It’s a mic I love, but without a shock mount option, it is too impractical for me. I take back what I said about liking the way it makes my voice sound.

Instead of wasting 7 minutes listening, you COULD just go read Jeff’s Blog.

It’s interesting that TNS #3 is exactly the same length as TNS #2…EXACTLY!

Beyond that, it was nice to have William the Graduated Geek Brief Intern (aka, Dr Pepper) join us to talk about the Dallas WordPress meetup this Saturday.

Details are on William’s Blog.

I still cannot recommend listening to this, but here’s the link.

The show should be available in iTunes within a couple of days.

I really think anyone who listens to this is sweet, but could probably spend their time in a better way. Oh well.