We Live in Public
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.
Read MoreHow We’re Doing GeekBrief.TV from Two Locations
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.
Read MoreCali Lewis and Neal Campbell Speaking at Gnomedex
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.”
Take Real Vacations!
When you start a business you love, you may be tempted to put 100% of your time and energy during waking hours into making it a success. Cali and I have done that with GeekBrief.TV. Even when we took time off from the show, we used the time to work on parts of the business you don’t see. We took that quote, “Find something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” to heart.
The problem is, people aren’t designed to only work. We need rest, and we need play.
Yesterday morning I was listening to the audio version of My Life in France by Julia Child and I got a life lesson. She wrote,
In 1963 I was shooting four episodes of The French Chef a week while also writing a weekly food column for the Boston Globe. In the Fall, we were scheduled to take a break from TV work and had planned to visit Simca and John at their rambling farm house in Provence, but as November hove into view, we began to regret it. The quicksand of my cookery work, Paul’s painting and photography projects and all the mini bits of upkeep and improvement that 103 Irving Street required were sucking at our feet.
‘I just don’t know if we have the time for a trip to France right now,’ I sighed.
Paul nodded, but then we looked at each other and repeated a favorite phrase from our diplomatic days,
‘Remember! No one’s more important than people.’
In other words, friendship is the most important thing–not career or housework or one’s fatigue–and it needs to be tended and nurtured. So we packed up our bags and off we went, and thank heaven we did!
Throughout the last five years we’ve produced Geek Brief, we had similar opportunities and intentions to travel, but we always made the other choice. We prudently decided we should use that time to work on the business. Sure it would be great to go to Italy. I want so bad to go to Scotland. Hey, we should go to Japan and see all the crazy gadgets and have real Ramen! Instead, we opted for the more prudent choice. We stayed home and worked on our business.
Rest and play are the other side of the work coin. You can’t just breath in. You also have to breath out. Lot’s of people look at our story and think it is inspirational, but I hope people will learn from what we got right AND from our mistakes.
Take real breaks. Leave the Mac at home or at least in the hotel room. Enjoy life with friends and enjoy the beauty in the world. Otherwise you’ll just wear yourself out and burn yourself up.
Read MoreDaniel Brusilovsky
Having personally done embarrassing things on the Internet, I can imagine what Daniel Brusilovsky is going through right now. According to Mike Arrington’s post on TechCrunch, an intern “allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup.” Cali and I thought of Daniel right away. Then Daniel posted an apology on his blog for a line that “was crossed.”
I can’t remember how long I’ve known Daniel, but I think it’s been since 2006. Before he really started making waves around Silicon Valley, he and I used to chat about new media, school and how he was connecting to big names in technology. I remember pinging him on iChat sometimes when he was up too late and telling him to go to bed!.
If Daniel did, in fact, ask for/accept a MacBook Air in exchange for a post on TechCrunch, that’s a bad thing. If he didn’t know it was bad before, he knows it now. The best part about being so young is that he has plenty of time to redeem himself.
Daniel is probably the best networker, I’ve ever met. I’ve admired his ambition. I’ve watched him go to school, work at QIK, attend tech events and put off sleep to accomplish as much as he could as quickly as he could. Daniel has tons of potential and this doesn’t change that. If he learns from the mistake and continues to pursue his dreams, I still look forward to watching what he’s going to do.
I hope the adults that Daniel has reached out to in Silicon Valley will reach out to him and be there for him. Let’s give him the chance to redeem himself and shine like those of us who admire him always thought he would.
Read MoreHow to Succeed in New Media
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!
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