Holiday wishes

Thanks to everyone for making 2014 look bright! Best wishes to you and yours.

YouTube: 7 Questions with Tom Merritt

I took a little time to make a quick casual video answering a few questions left over from the brainstorm hangout last week. You can watch the video or read the answers or both. Thanks!

Q: Will you continue doing a Frame Rate show? -Multiple people

A: Yes. Some kind of show about the ability to watch what youw ant, where you want and how you want it on any device you please is in the works.

Q: How are we paying for all of this? I really dislike the host endorsement style of ads on a number of podcast these days. Are there viable alternatives? – @rosscbrown

A: Good question. Host read ads have a weakness, especially when the host isn’t directly plugged into the sales process. But it has so far proven to be the most reliable way. However, I’ve had some good success cord funding smaller shows, and lately a bigger show like Sword and Laser. There’s also something like patron, and of course merchandise where you actually get something solid for your money besides the programming. So yeah, looking at all of those.

Q: Can we crowdfund a new background / studio for you in the new year? A break from the twit mise-en-scène might be nice. – anonymous

A: Maybe? I love the fireplace. Maybe change the shot a bit though so it isn’t exactly the same. All options open there. Now that I’m allowed, I’d like a second camera too for guests and such.

Q: Are you looking to do anything outside of the podcast / webcast realm? Like public speaking gigs, etc. ? – @Xanthus

A: Yes, a little. I want to keep writing and self-publishing my silly little books. Maybe someday I’ll get good enough to send one off to a real publisher. And I’ve talked to a guy about booking speaking gigs at colleges and conferences. We’ll see how that goes. I’ve done a little of that before, so I’d like to see what’s available, what works, and what I seems valuable to do.

Q: Long form interview show? – @jccalhoun

A: Possibly! It kind of depends on what I do with the daily tech news show, but it definitely could be an element of that. We used to that as supplemental episodes of Buzz Out Loud.

Q: Is Leo still on your Christmas Card list? – @millgroup

A: Ha ha. If I ever get it together enough to have a Christmas card list, Leo will be on it.

Q: How many webcast / podcast shows would you be interested in doing at any one time? – @Xanthus

A: Honestly no more than I have. TNT and Frame Rate together, the way I did them, were a full time job. Then I do Sword sand Laser every other week, although that’s been becoming weekly. Plus Current Geek will be a weekly. The other shows I do are all seasonal. If anything I need to cut down and focus on fewer.

YouTube: TWiT and back again

Yesterday I flew from LA to San Francisco to do This Week in Tech from the studio in Petaluma. It was an amazing episode with Molly Wood, Natali DelConte, Jason Howell and Justin Robert Young. After the show I flew right back to LA. I took some video along the way. Here’s my day yesterday coimpressed into one hour.

You can get the awesome episode of TWiT here, or embeded from YouTube below.

YouTube: Q&A, AMA, 5 word or less questions

In my continuing experiment of doing videos on YouTube and messing about with iMovie, I took some questions from Twitter on Saturday and answered them in the following video. Hope you enjoy!

YouTube: How I prepare for Tech News Today

I documented the prep I go through for a typical episode of Tech News Today last Friday. It’s long, but if you’re interested feel free to watch and skip through if you get bored. I won’t be offended.The episode we did after this prep is available here.

YouTube: 10 questions – 5-word answers

Still messing around with YouTube and took to Twitter this morning to get 10 questions that I promised to answer with only 5 words. Take a look and let me know what you think?

YouTube: Tom answers 20 questions

So I decided to maybe use YouTube for something. I have a channel. Might as well do something with it. So I took to Twitter and asked people to ask me questions. I answered the first 20 of them on a video just as an experiment. Take a look and let me know what you think.