My Tech Stack After Cutting the Bloat

When I decided to make this genre change, I wanted to slim down the amount of services and tech I've used. There were a lot of things I had been running, from encoding software to other resources that ran in the background.

Ecamm Live

For live streaming and recording software, I still use Ecamm Live. I've found that this software offered me the easiest workflow of building out scenes that I had used. The downside of it (if you deem it to be one) is that the software is Mac only, meaning you can't run this on a Windows-based PC.

Don't get me wrong, as I've quickly come around on how efficient Apple has made their M Series chips, and using the Mac mini provided a great entry level into the world of Mac.

With Ecamm, I've been able to create some really cool overlays that provided either a casual environment or even that professional look for whatever show I had been producing at the time. Could you get the same results or even more from something like OBS? Sure, as you would need to find plugins that would add more complexity on top of the base install of OBS. I'm not knocking what others have done with OBS, and much of it was quite impressive. For my aesthetic being more minimal, I didn't need or even want all of that visual clutter.

Ghost

Years ago I had been easily swayed by the magic of WordPress. It's a seemingly easy path of finding plugins and themes beyond your wildest dreams that were just a click away. Eventually I grew tired of having to deal with the bloat and consistency of being paywalled for just about anything I would like to add into the site. This was when I found Ghost, a great open source project that offered a much simpler experience. A system in which you could just focus on the creation of the content itself and not have to spend hours searching out problems on your site, basically taking the administration work almost out of the equation.

I think the main reason I switched to Ghost was that I was becoming tired of trying to find something that would do everything. From podcasts, social networking, blogging, image hosting, and more. Ghost did the blogging and newsletter process as its main focus, and that was perfect for me. I quickly realized that all of the other fluff was just eating away my already limited time, and going forward, I would have to focus a lot more on what really mattered to me.

I've experimented with self-hosting Ghost to moving over to Ghost Pro, where the developers of Ghost themselves run the infrastructure of the server and software.

Journey of Organization

This has always been the crux of my existence for being a disorganized mess. Finding a system that would help keep my workflow organized is a constant battle of searching, experimenting, and just trying to stick to one platform.

I believe I've tried just about every consumer system out there, from Notion, Trello, Asana, SmartSuite, Project.co, to using Apple Reminders and Notes. It feels like I'm always trying to find that literal diamond in the rough of productivity software. Perhaps this is going to be my ongoing quest for all of eternity.

For me, it's that I don't want to sit here and get sucked into yet another monthly subscription, especially one that's more expensive than what I really need. I need a system that fits my needs. For what seems to be the vast majority of platforms, AI has become the driving force of what they offer. This isn't what I'm looking for since I don't need this AI assistant scheduling meetings or keeping my projects up to date.

This is probably one area of my stack that will continue to be in flux, but I do hope that one day I can settle down on one system for more than a few months.

Check Out My Podcast

I've always enjoyed this part of being a creator. Setting aside time for creating and producing podcasts had this sort of spark I liked. What set the ball rolling recently in taking a second look at what was to be expected of a podcast tended to be the hosting portion. To be exact, it was the podcast file hosting itself. I've had a great experience using a service called Transistor who offered a decent price that allowed the option of having multiple shows under one account. Unlike other places, you had to pay for each show you wanted them to host, and that could get a bit expensive for someone who is doing this as a hobby.

I tried out Riverside.fm, who offered podcast hosting along with their browser-based recording feature. At its price point, it was very comparable to other providers and offered their studio features along with the ability to automatically create short form vertical videos from your content. I had thought this could be something I would be interested in as it takes out some of the work of doing this myself, but I remembered how short form video, in my experience, wasn't what my style wanted.

I'm still going through the planning phase of releasing a new show that is part of the Maker Dad. Finding a hosting provider that is probably going to be Transistor again or experimenting with something else entirely is still in the very near future.

The Video Creation Process

I've used DaVinci Resolve in the past for creating videos and editing them down. For software that provides what I would call 90% of what many of us would use for free, it's a powerful piece of kit. This part of the process has been something I haven't done much with, and I'm looking forward to getting back into that editor chair to learn. It's going to take some time and plenty of patience on my part, but I'm willing to put in the work.

For the actual recording process, this is where I'll be using my own phone as the camera out in the workshop. The iPhone 14 Pro Max I've had since it was released has been a trusty device. Pairing it with the Hollyland wireless mics I had purchased several months ago should be more than enough in creating the talking head shots and all of the b-roll I could ask for.

I'll still be using my live-streaming setup at the desk for everything else that'll be filmed in the office. I mean, I already have the gear there, why not use it for that purpose?

So that's pretty much where I'm at with my setup right now. It's not perfect, and I'm sure I'll be tweaking things here and there as I go. But honestly, I'm just ready to stop tinkering with the tools and start using them to make stuff. That's what this whole thing is about anyway.

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