2021 Streaming Kit

Future of Work, Personal

My streaming setup post last year got an amazing reception — there are similar setups being used by executives across the board, from companies fundraising to several I know of with 100B+ valuations. Since that original setup, I’ve updated my own usage of hardware and software combinations to achieve similar or better results for about a quarter of the cost. So here’s the latest and greatest, and below I’ll talk about why the changes.

Elgato Cam Link 4K

Micro HDMI Cable

Glide Gear TMP100 Teleprompter

Sony α7C Camera & kit lens

Reticam mini tripod

Elgato Key Light Air LED panel (2x)

Video: Camlink, cable, and tripod are still the same, but the camera goes from an A7R IV and a separate lens to an A7C with a kit lens, which saves about $3,000. You also don’t need the dummy battery because the A7C runs great off USB-C.

Lighting: More is more, so I usually use two Key Light Airs (linked above) instead of one. If I’m on the road I’ll pair two Aputure RGB lights with two Lume Cube monopods.

Audio: My best audio advice is to upgrade to an M1 Macbook Pro so your computer is fast and the fan is never on, and position the laptop out of camera view but close to you so the built-in three-mic array picks up pretty good audio from you with no cables or earpieces. (Here’s a singer recording a song on the pre-M1 16-inch version, and note she has to remove fan noise in post-processing.) For bonus points add Krisp.ai ($60/yr) so you get background noise and room echo magically eliminated in real-time.

Teleprompter: The Glide Gear is much easier to set up and way cheaper than my old recommendation. Instead of an external monitor, I use an iPad and the MacOS Sidecar feature. I still don’t have a great way to reverse the screen; in the comments, I’ll share some of what folks have recommended to me.

The above setup removes 75% of the cost without sacrificing any quality.

I’ve gone through every permutation on audio, including using a MixPre-3, NoiseAssist plugin, and a MKH416 shotgun mic ($2k+ total), but I never use that setup unless I’m recording a fancy audio-only podcast.

Why am I using the Sennheiser SC30 in the above photo? Well it was an unusual situation…I was on the side of the road, next to an RV, with logging trucks rumbling by. Sometimes you don’t always know where you need to do a broadcast. 😄

Behind the scenes! We were recording what became this panel.

2024 Update: Everything still stands but if you can find an Elgato Prompter it really helps. I’m using these RGB lights for lighting more now. And BetterDisplay is a great MacOS utility for rotating screens and such. I’ve dropped Krisp.ai because the built-in “Voice Isolation” feature on MacOS is pretty good.

WordPress & Techmeme 100

WordPress

Whenever I visit a site I can usually tell whether it’s WordPress or not within an instant — there’s just something about a WordPress site that is distinctive. Super-clean permalinks are usually a dead giveaway. One thing I’ve been noticing a lot lately is on my guilty pleasure for tech news, Techmeme, it seems like almost every link I click is to a WordPress-powered site. Fortunately Techmeme provides a leaderboard showing both rank and % of space a site has taken up in headlines in the past thirty days.

The list changes almost every day but went ahead and took a snapshot of the top 100 as of January 16th and ran down the platform for each one, here’s how it ended up:

techmeme-100-cms

WordPress comes in at 43%, custom or bespoke systems at 42%, and then the others. When you take into effect Techmeme’s “presence” factor WP jumps to 48.8% of presence in the top 100 and all Blogsmith, Drupal, Blogspot, Tumblr, and Typepad combined are 8.4%. If you curious of the raw data, here’s the spreadsheet with the platforms.

This is just a snapshot, it’d be interesting to see how this evolves over time. It’s a small slice of the world of websites, but a very influential one. I’ve actually reached out to Gabe Rivera a few times to sponsor the leaderboard page, putting a W logo next to the ones that run WordPress in the table, but nothing has come of it yet.

Thanks to Krutal, Paolo, and MT for help with this.

30 Boxes

Birthday, Review, Travel

I’ve been really digging 30 Boxes, as reviewed by Mr Hawk here and Mr Malik here, I’m moving all of my calendaring (online and off) into it. They’re doing some neat stuff with profiles and sharing that I think will take people a while to fully grok. The only thing I think it needs is better timezone handling (I travel a lot). Check out their blog. (Powered by WP.) Update: I keep finding cool features like it automatically detects when you enter a birthday and offers to repeat it every year. The whole site is like a giant easter egg.

Imposter

Personal

There is some joker wannabe hacker pretending to me and asking others for sensitive information. Here are some tell-tale signs: IMing from a misspelled version of my IM addresses, like “saxmat02”; emailing from a gmail account with my name; using bad English (more than I normally do); asking for passwords, etc. These are all things I’d never do. If you ever have any doubt that the person you’re talking to might not be me, just call me on my cell or use one of the other contact methods here.

It’s Only Right

Meta

Friends don’t let friends do Livejournal. If you or anyone you know wants help setting up a blog, let me know. I’m trying to help as many people I know as possible get online and blogging. It’s the Right Thing to Do. Plus I have this big ’ol dedicated server running at less than 10% capacity.

El Pais Interview

Events, Press

There has been a ton of media attention here at the blog conference in Spain. Friday and Saturday were a whirlwind of TV and newspaper interviews. The most in-depth, I believe, was from Pablo Fenandez in El Pais and is now available online in Spanish. There is something really special going on here in Spain with blogs, the people are full of such energy and passion that it’s definitely going to be a space to watch over the coming years.

WP20 & Audrey Scholars

Audrey, WordPress

Today is the 20th anniversary of the first release of WordPress. None of us knew what we were getting into when it started, but we had a shared conviction that the four freedoms of the GPL combined with a mission to democratize publishing was something worth spending our time on. There will be celebrations in cities around the world, please join if there’s one happening near you.

Twenty years later, I am proud and humbled by what the community around WordPress has created, and jazzed about what we will create in the coming decades.

I’m also excited to mark this milestone by publicly launching the Audrey Scholars program. It is, like all things, an experiment, but I’m curious to see how it unfolds and perhaps one day an Audrey Scholar could even take the responsibility of leading WordPress, when my capacity to do so has passed.