Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. I have a special treat a beloved
Speaker 1: friend peer peer is doing injustice. She does so much
Speaker 1: more than I do. I have a dear friend who
Speaker 1: has agreed to give up her precious time to agree
Speaker 1: to my whim of appearing on one of the final
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff I'll ever be hosting. It is
Speaker 1: Shannon Morse. Welcome back to tex Stuff.
Speaker 2: Shannon, Hello, Jonathan, how are you?
Speaker 1: I am? I'm great. Like the closer I get to
Speaker 1: the end, the more i'm I got a little spring
Speaker 1: in my step. Not that I not that I hate
Speaker 1: doing stuff, but I'm looking forward to what comes next.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm always excited to see what's coming next.
Speaker 1: Yeah. For Shannon, what comes next is that before too
Speaker 1: long she's going to be packing for Las Vegas to
Speaker 1: head off to CES.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In a whole like I'm counting down the days
Speaker 2: right now. I think I have ten days. I'm in
Speaker 2: panic mode where I'm like scheduling the last minute sponsorships,
Speaker 2: last minute schedules of like booth tours, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh god, oh god, I have to make sure that
Speaker 2: I leave enough time in between all these meetings so
Speaker 2: that I can, you know, get down the Las Vegas
Speaker 2: Strip from one one hotel to another, because you know,
Speaker 2: it's an entire maze.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, No, it used to. When I first started,
Speaker 1: it was the majority of the stuff I wanted to
Speaker 1: see was actually in the Sands Expo Center before before,
Speaker 1: like I mean, like for a while, I was like,
Speaker 1: oh wait, there's a convention center too't even I was
Speaker 1: such a nube. And it's funny that I that were
Speaker 1: even starting off about this because honestly, like our story,
Speaker 1: like the first time I met you in person was
Speaker 1: at a CES. It's probably two thousand and eight or
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, Yeah, somewhere around then.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and nine, I believe was my very first CES.
Speaker 2: And that's right after I started working with Hack five.
Speaker 2: So we went down there as a crew and I
Speaker 2: believe that year we recorded like forty something segments at CES.
Speaker 2: It was insane. It was bonkers, No wonder I got
Speaker 2: sick every year after that.
Speaker 1: I'm getting sick just thinking about it. I was there
Speaker 1: by myself, and I was largely directionless. Because while you
Speaker 1: are talking about strategizing and planning things out and having
Speaker 1: you know your schedule and making sure one of the things,
Speaker 1: By the way, if you ever do get into the
Speaker 1: world of covering ces, one of the most important things
Speaker 1: you can do is make sure you have built in
Speaker 1: time between different appointments, because, yes, getting from point A
Speaker 1: to point B is never straightforward, even if it's the
Speaker 1: same convention center. It can carry to you half an hour.
Speaker 2: The casinos are huge, and it takes forever to get
Speaker 2: like an uber or a lyft or even a shuttle
Speaker 2: or one of the monorail transportations if you can do
Speaker 2: the monorail between the different places. So you always have
Speaker 2: to like plan that into your schedule to ensure you
Speaker 2: have time for traffic and for all the people, because
Speaker 2: CEES ends up bringing in over one hundred thousand extra
Speaker 2: people into that city, and almost every single person is
Speaker 2: on the strip or at the convention center, so it
Speaker 2: ends up being crazy, crazy packed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to the point where like they moved all the
Speaker 1: press events. At least the last time I went, all
Speaker 1: the press events were down toward like the Mandalay Bay side,
Speaker 1: So that's that's about as far on the strip as
Speaker 1: you can get from the Convention Center. Obviously there are
Speaker 1: other parts of Vegas besides the Strip, but that's like
Speaker 1: the heart and soul of where Cees happens. Anything that
Speaker 1: happens off the strip, that's a huge commitment to have
Speaker 1: to go off because you know it's going to take
Speaker 1: you quite some time to get back. But my first
Speaker 1: memory of you, Shannon, is that I remember being I
Speaker 1: think it was like maybe Convention Center North at the
Speaker 1: Las Vegash Convention Center, and I see you and I
Speaker 1: had never met you before in my life, and for
Speaker 1: some reason our paths had crossed and we introduced each other,
Speaker 1: and then you gave me a hug, and I was like,
Speaker 1: you have no idea how badly I needed that, because
Speaker 1: I felt so directionless and so out of my element. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is not one of the reasons I wanted
Speaker 1: to have you on from one of my final shows.
Speaker 1: Is this is not me blowing smoke. You are one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that I wanted to stick with podcasting
Speaker 1: because I had only been doing it for about a
Speaker 1: year at that point. Oh my gosh, And you know,
Speaker 1: you start feeling like you're you're talking into a void
Speaker 1: if you don't have a lot of audience feedback right away.
Speaker 1: Let's have the method, right We didn't want to give
Speaker 1: out our personal emails on the show, and we didn't
Speaker 1: have a show email for a while, so, but having
Speaker 1: someone who was also working in communication tech communication and uh,
Speaker 1: trying to synthesize complex ideas and then communicate them in
Speaker 1: a way that's easy to understand and to digest. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, meeting a kindred soul like that who not
Speaker 1: only was a kindred soul, but someone who is outwardly
Speaker 1: just welcoming and friendly was a huge impact on me
Speaker 1: and was just an enormous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, made me cry. That's really sweet.
Speaker 1: And y'all have to remember too that I'm approximately seventy
Speaker 1: years older than Shannon is.
Speaker 2: That's a lie. We're the same age.
Speaker 1: We are not the same age. We're both Okay, I
Speaker 1: like okay, I like your version. I like your version
Speaker 1: a lot. So, but that's that's that's getting way too
Speaker 1: far ahead in your story. That's just where our friendship began,
Speaker 1: and we would typically reconnect at cees pretty much like
Speaker 1: that was the one time of year. I think I
Speaker 1: met you at a dragon con. Once it came to
Speaker 1: one dragon con I did.
Speaker 2: My friends got married down there, so I flew out
Speaker 2: for their wedding because I was one of their bridesmaids
Speaker 2: or something I don't remember.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was cool, though seeing you like on the
Speaker 1: other coast was neat. But let's talk about your journey
Speaker 1: into becoming what you are today. So let's just start, like,
Speaker 1: can you tell me kind of your earliest memories of
Speaker 1: even being interested in technology as a concept, let alone
Speaker 1: as this is something I want to pursue as a career.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, I would love to.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: I grew up in a military household. My dad was military,
Speaker 2: and I think that's why I'm so friendly with people,
Speaker 2: because I had to force myself to make friends every
Speaker 2: single time we moved somewhere new or I would be
Speaker 2: walking into a new school with apps no friends. So
Speaker 2: that was always a thing for me, is like, I
Speaker 2: want to surround myself with friendship, and I forced myself
Speaker 2: into it. But when I was young and a nerd,
Speaker 2: my dad would always watch like Star Trek and X
Speaker 2: Files and like all those nerdy shows after work, So
Speaker 2: I would always like sit in the living room with
Speaker 2: him and watch those and eventually I think he noticed
Speaker 2: signs that I was into the same things he was,
Speaker 2: so he would invite me to eventually build a computer
Speaker 2: with him, and I think that was around eight years old. Wow,
Speaker 2: I do have photos. I don't remember it personally because
Speaker 2: I was way too young to remember this, but I
Speaker 2: do have photos of me sitting on his lap and
Speaker 2: banging at his keyboard on an old like IBM type PC,
Speaker 2: like something that he had built in the eighties, way
Speaker 2: way way before my time. When I was just a
Speaker 2: little teeny, tiny toddler. I had no idea what I
Speaker 2: was doing. I have pictures of me playing on this
Speaker 2: computer and not really knowing what I was doing. But
Speaker 2: I think him inviting me to do that as a
Speaker 2: little baby influenced my direction as a child and gave
Speaker 2: me that interest in PCs.
Speaker 1: So when he.
Speaker 2: Gave me the opportunity to help build the family computer
Speaker 2: when I was, you know, a little eight year old kid,
Speaker 2: I was like absolutely So I remember building this computer,
Speaker 2: having this huge tower, huge motherboard, the ramsticks were gigantic,
Speaker 2: like everything was big back then. We had a floppy
Speaker 2: disc reader like all that stuff, putting all that together
Speaker 2: on the dining room table, and we had this old,
Speaker 2: like wooden nineteen nineties dining room table, like very quite
Speaker 2: ugly nowadays, but very very you know, classic nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: I just remember how proud I was when we plugged
Speaker 2: it into power and it powered on and it worked,
Speaker 2: and he let me install video games. So I learned
Speaker 2: so much through him. I really have to thank my dad, Like,
Speaker 2: even though we don't necessarily have a great relationship now,
Speaker 2: back in the day, like, I have to thank him
Speaker 2: for so much of my nerdiness and my interests that
Speaker 2: I kind of delved into as just a little kid.
Speaker 2: I think it really influenced what I do today.
Speaker 1: Wow, I'm hearing a lot of parallels of my own experience.
Speaker 1: I mean, granted, for me, my first computer was a
Speaker 1: Texas Instrument trash machine. But then I went to Apple
Speaker 1: to E and then eventually got my first IBM competible.
Speaker 1: When I say I, I mean the family I didn't
Speaker 1: have it. It was the family computer. My dad writes
Speaker 1: science fiction. In fact, he's written books in the Star
Speaker 1: Trek series, so there's a lot of overlap here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wrote in the young adult Star Trek series. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Brad Strickland, look it up. Brad Strickland. He wrote several
Speaker 1: books in the young adult Star Trek series, which was
Speaker 1: like Starfleet Academy talking about you know, Spock and Kirk
Speaker 1: when they were students at Starfleet that kind of stuff. Yes, cool, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So I grew up going to these science fiction conventions
Speaker 1: and meeting the various people who were in the shows
Speaker 1: and the movies and stuff amazing, you know. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so many great stories, running into people like George
Speaker 1: de Kay and it was fantastic. Yeah, oh wow, it
Speaker 1: was great. But same sort of thing where my dad
Speaker 1: kind of instilled in me this joy of geekery and
Speaker 1: technology as well as literature. Like Dad taught American Lit,
Speaker 1: which I thought was respectful, but I ended up majoring
Speaker 1: in English Lit because I had to do one better.
Speaker 1: But so similar stories there. So were you drawn to
Speaker 1: any classes or anything when you were going through school
Speaker 1: in the field of tech, Like when I was in
Speaker 1: high school. Well, first I was going to high school
Speaker 1: in rural George, so yeah, our resources were somewhat limited,
Speaker 1: but I seem the closest, the closest for me was
Speaker 1: a data processing class, which was essentially learning to type
Speaker 1: on keyboards and do spreadsheets and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Nothing particularly, you know, nothing close to coding, but that
Speaker 1: was as close as I could get in school.
Speaker 2: Luckily, the schools that I went to were either on
Speaker 2: military bases and they generally had pretty good financing to
Speaker 2: have a lot of computers and stuff like that, or
Speaker 2: I was going to school right off of a military
Speaker 2: base once my dad retired from the military. So every
Speaker 2: school that I went to, even though it was in
Speaker 2: Missouri and our educational system was not the best in
Speaker 2: the United States, we still had a lot of access
Speaker 2: to technology. So I don't remember what year it was,
Speaker 2: but I do have really early memories of having a
Speaker 2: typing class where, you know, we played Oregon Trail and
Speaker 2: we played mathematical games, and we had typing days. And
Speaker 2: I noticed that when I was in those classrooms, and
Speaker 2: then I would go home and be able to practice
Speaker 2: typing at home too, because I was playing on that
Speaker 2: computer I built with my dad, I noticed that I
Speaker 2: was one of the fastest typers in the class. So
Speaker 2: it ended up being a passion for me where I
Speaker 2: was like, I want to play on computers more because
Speaker 2: this is something that I can tell that I'm good at.
Speaker 2: And it was weird because not a lot of girls
Speaker 2: were into that when I was growing up, a lot
Speaker 2: of the girls in my classes wanted to do other
Speaker 2: stuff like play instruments and band, which I never got into.
Speaker 2: But I was really into singing and acting, so I
Speaker 2: really wanted to do that too. So it was like
Speaker 2: all the little electives I got very passionate about, but
Speaker 2: I had no interest in literature. I had no interest
Speaker 2: in math sciences. I was like, I was okay at science,
Speaker 2: but I didn't really want to do it. So I
Speaker 2: just really wanted to focus on like the media side
Speaker 2: of the electives as well as the technology sides because
Speaker 2: those were the things that I found were things that
Speaker 2: I was very interested in.
Speaker 1: Wow. So that yeah, like literally at an early age,
Speaker 1: it's the components that make up what your career is today.
Speaker 1: The community, you know, being able to communicate. There's a
Speaker 1: skill to that that I think goes largely unappreciated until
Speaker 1: you see someone who perhaps is early on in their
Speaker 1: journey into becoming a communicator, where you can see the
Speaker 1: sausage being made a little bit more. They're not as
Speaker 1: not quite as as polished. Perhaps they might have a
Speaker 1: great perspective, they might be have great insight, right, but
Speaker 1: maybe their communication skills need a little more work. Nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with that. Actually I prefer that to the people
Speaker 1: who are very polished but have nothing to say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are the ones that I'm like, well, that's kind
Speaker 1: of unless you have a teleprompter feeding them the stuff
Speaker 1: they need to say, they aren't going to communicate anything
Speaker 1: particularly useful.
Speaker 2: That's kind of how I feel, like, kind of awkward,
Speaker 2: a little bit weird, but at the same time, like
Speaker 2: I want to share things that I'm learning with people.
Speaker 2: I think part of that might be because I'm the
Speaker 2: oldest out of three kids, So my little brother and sister,
Speaker 2: they would come to me if they had a question
Speaker 2: if I wasn't beating them up at the time, So anytime,
Speaker 2: like they wanted to learn, you know, how to plug
Speaker 2: in and play the new Mario game on the Nintendo,
Speaker 2: or if they wanted to learn how to play a
Speaker 2: video game on Dad's computer on the family computer in
Speaker 2: the family room, like I would, I would be the
Speaker 2: one that would be teaching them how to do this
Speaker 2: stuff since my dad would be at work until you know,
Speaker 2: five or six PM. So I think part of part
Speaker 2: of the reason why I'm you know, have this nerdy
Speaker 2: representation of like awkwardness, and I'm totally fine with sharing
Speaker 2: that on camera because we're all a little bit weird
Speaker 2: and I think that's perfectly fine, but also wanting to
Speaker 2: educate people and wanting to share things that I have
Speaker 2: learned and gotten excited about. Like, I'm sure part of
Speaker 2: that is because my little brother and sister, like I
Speaker 2: wanted them to be nerds too, So I was like,
Speaker 2: let me show my nerdy things to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that you were teaching them both how
Speaker 1: to interact and interface with technology as well as how
Speaker 1: to take a good left hook. Yeah, it's I mean.
Speaker 2: Too when they go in your room and try to
Speaker 2: overwrite your safe game on the Lion King or something.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Oh oh yeah, that's crut back in the day. But no, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we're actually finally getting back into a realm.
Speaker 1: Not finally, it's happened over the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: but like a lot of independent games, they're being made
Speaker 1: by the people who grew up playing those Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: incredibly challenging, unforgiving games. And so now you get things
Speaker 1: like UFO fifty or even older ones like super Meat
Speaker 1: Boy or whatever, where it's clearly pulling from that ethos
Speaker 1: of let's make this game brutally hard and okay't save well,
Speaker 1: then where do we go from there? So you're going
Speaker 1: through the elementary, middle school, high school. Yeah, you're developing
Speaker 1: this interest in media as well as in technology. What
Speaker 1: happens next?
Speaker 2: I ended up doing like a lot of plays when
Speaker 2: I was in high school. I got really into theater
Speaker 2: and got into choir. I ended up finding a really
Speaker 2: good talent for those, so by the time I was
Speaker 2: a senior, I got in a word best actress for
Speaker 2: a class out of three hundred people. So that's quite
Speaker 2: a bit.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, quick favorite play? I got to know your
Speaker 1: favorite play?
Speaker 2: Oh, I would say Into the Woods.
Speaker 1: Okay, excellent.
Speaker 2: I love Into the Woods. I played Cinderella, so I'm
Speaker 2: kind of biased there. And I had such a blast
Speaker 2: doing that because it was my first, like really major
Speaker 2: role when I was in high school. So I loved
Speaker 2: it so much. It was incredible for me. And it
Speaker 2: was incredible too because it kind of took me out
Speaker 2: of my shell quite a bit because I was a
Speaker 2: nerd I didn't have a lot of friends, so that
Speaker 2: show and the fact that my drama teacher was really
Speaker 2: he wanted to see me succeed and he really trained
Speaker 2: me to be really good on stage. He was like,
Speaker 2: you're going to train yourself. You're going to learn these things,
Speaker 2: and you're going to go on stage and you're going
Speaker 2: to blow everybody's minds, Like people are going to cry
Speaker 2: when you sing this song. And I was like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, okay, and it worked. Like it really helped
Speaker 2: me get out of my awkward, like self conscious shell
Speaker 2: when I was in high school, and that was one
Speaker 2: of the big turning points for me going into this
Speaker 2: career later on, you know, after college days. So I
Speaker 2: was doing that on the like artist side, and then
Speaker 2: on the technical side, I was trying to get into
Speaker 2: classes like JavaScript. I learned that I was building websites
Speaker 2: at home, like in HTML, and eventually I learned a
Speaker 2: little bit about C plus plus. So there was some
Speaker 2: programming involved in a lot of self teaching that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff because we didn't have all of those types
Speaker 2: of classes available. We just had a few here and there.
Speaker 2: And I took some classes on journalism because it was
Speaker 2: something I was kind of wondering if I should dip
Speaker 2: my toes into so I tried to learn about journalism
Speaker 2: and see if it was something I would be interested in.
Speaker 2: So once I got into college, my agreement with my
Speaker 2: dad was if I go to college in the state,
Speaker 2: he would help me with my tuition. I would cover
Speaker 2: everything else, but he would help me with my tuition.
Speaker 2: And this is way back in the day when tuitions
Speaker 2: were not super expensive. They were much much cheaper than
Speaker 2: what they are today, so we're talking not too bad.
Speaker 2: I still had three jobs when I was in college
Speaker 2: to afford living on my own, buying my books, buying
Speaker 2: meals and stuff like that. So I worked at like
Speaker 2: a Domino's Pizza so I could get free pizza every day.
Speaker 2: Not the best diet, but you know what I survived.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's admirable already, because, like, as you
Speaker 1: point out, like even though it's not as astronomically expensive
Speaker 1: as it is today, I mean, it's still a big
Speaker 1: chunk of change. Oh yeah, and you know, going out
Speaker 1: and being able to hustle so that you can.
Speaker 2: I had to, Like I bought my first car, and
Speaker 2: I remember one time a tire blew out while I
Speaker 2: was on the highway driving home so I could do
Speaker 2: my laundry at my parents' house, and I didn't know
Speaker 2: what to do. I had to pay for a new tire,
Speaker 2: and like little things like that, those little emergencies you
Speaker 2: run into. You don't realize how expensive that stuff is
Speaker 2: until you're living on your own and you're in charge
Speaker 2: of those expenses. So that was a major growing pain
Speaker 2: for myself, is just moving out of my parents' house
Speaker 2: and becoming very independent and learning how to take care
Speaker 2: of myself. It was tough, but you know, those were
Speaker 2: the college days. It was hard. But I'm glad that
Speaker 2: I had so many jobs and I'm glad that I
Speaker 2: did it, and I'm glad I learned even postage was expected.
Speaker 2: I remember like having to mail a check for something,
Speaker 2: and I remember how how I was just like what
Speaker 2: the stamp price went up? It went up from like
Speaker 2: thirty nine cents to forty one cents or something, and
Speaker 2: I was just like, what this is more expensive now?
Speaker 1: Like I didn't budget for this.
Speaker 2: I did not budget for this two cent increase on
Speaker 2: a stamp, Like what the what the I do not agree?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean, like like to your point, like
Speaker 1: those emergency things Like I remember when I first got
Speaker 1: out of college, I was living so close like it
Speaker 1: was literally paycheck to paycheck. Yea, where you're living so
Speaker 1: close to what you're making that anything that happens out
Speaker 1: of the routine is.
Speaker 2: It really screws up everything.
Speaker 1: It's monumental, Like yeah, like even if you've saved up
Speaker 1: to do something, if something unexpected happens on top of that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Because I'm thinking, I'm thinking about how I found out
Speaker 1: I was severely allergic to lobster, which was aboard a
Speaker 1: cruise ship docked it. Now saw that you don't want
Speaker 1: to be you don't want to be docted at Nassau
Speaker 1: when you're having a medical emergency. Uh. But you know,
Speaker 1: my partner works for in the travel industry, so we
Speaker 1: were able to get this cruise ticket for like a
Speaker 1: severely marked down price, which is the only reason we
Speaker 1: were able to go. This was like a luxurious vacation
Speaker 1: for us. And then I have a medical emergency on
Speaker 1: board that literally doubled the price of the cruise. Uh,
Speaker 1: because we had to pay so I wouldn't die. And
Speaker 1: so because that's how that's how healthcare works in our country,
Speaker 1: but I did that. I did not die, and you know,
Speaker 1: we were able to recover. But yeah, it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where it's a tough life lesson.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is very hard. So I can I completely
Speaker 1: empathize with your tire story. Hey, y'all, it's Jonathan from
Speaker 1: the Future here too to tell you we're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick break with this interview with Shannon Morris
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsors. We'll be right back. I'm curious
Speaker 1: at what stage, what were you still in school when
Speaker 1: you were starting to experiment with using the Internet as
Speaker 1: a communications delivery mechanism, because when I was in school, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's cool, because like when I was in school, the
Speaker 1: web was brand new. Yeah, and there certainly was no
Speaker 1: like streaming element, Like everything was message.
Speaker 2: Boards, like it was all text based. Oh, I remember
Speaker 2: message boards. I was in a chat room called bras
Speaker 2: Chat from Space Ghost Coast to coast, and it was
Speaker 2: just a bunch of strangers chatting with each other, which
Speaker 2: was probably not the smartest thing to do when I
Speaker 2: was a young girl, but I had no idea what
Speaker 2: I was doing, so I was just chatting with people
Speaker 2: about Space Ghost and Brack like it was pretty nerdy stuff,
Speaker 2: so I'm pretty sure I was fine, but not necessarily
Speaker 2: a recommendation I would give these days. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: was doing stuff like that when I was in school.
Speaker 2: I was building websites again, like geocites, angel fire, stuff
Speaker 2: like that. I was the perfect age for that. And
Speaker 2: I was also into anime and nerdy things as well,
Speaker 2: like Sailor Moon. So I was building like Sailor Moon websites.
Speaker 2: And then journaling came along on the Internet, so I
Speaker 2: was able to use some of my previous journalism classes
Speaker 2: to understand how to write efficiently and how to write
Speaker 2: in a way that people would understand. And it was
Speaker 2: journal It was like this is what I did in
Speaker 2: school today, but it was still being able to post
Speaker 2: like little articles that people could read. They don't exist
Speaker 2: to this day. I don't know what happened to those websites.
Speaker 2: They're all long gone, thank god.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well yeah, if you look at things like the
Speaker 1: story of live journal alone, yeah, live journal. Live journal
Speaker 1: went through a time, y'all. Like there, It kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of Tumbler too, Like these these sites that
Speaker 1: got even if they weren't large communities, they were very
Speaker 1: devoted communities and very and then and then stuff goes wrong,
Speaker 1: and obviously it's like any invested community of stuff goes wrong,
Speaker 1: you're going to have a lot of people upset about it.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's that's putting it lightly. Both for live
Speaker 1: journal and for Tumblr.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got into those, and eventually, when I was
Speaker 2: in college, I discovered online media, like video media, whether
Speaker 2: that was flash media like homestar Runner, websites like that
Speaker 2: that just posted funny flash videos or I also got
Speaker 2: into a show called Pure Ownage, which was based in Toronto, Canada,
Speaker 2: and it was a series of online episodes, real life
Speaker 2: episodes about these these characters. These this series of like
Speaker 2: I think three or four different people. It was three
Speaker 2: guys and one girl, and they were all really into
Speaker 2: gaming and I was into gaming two so I found
Speaker 2: a lot of their inside jokes to be hilarious. Eventually
Speaker 2: they did It was like probably my junior year of college,
Speaker 2: but they did a live show in Toronto, and me
Speaker 2: and my friend in Missouri, we were going to college
Speaker 2: in Missouri. We were like, let's drive to Toronto just
Speaker 2: we randomly decided this, let's drive to Toronto just for
Speaker 2: their live show. We won't rent a hotel or anything.
Speaker 2: We're just going to drive up see the live show,
Speaker 2: and then drive back home. And this is like a
Speaker 2: sixteen hour drive or something. It's ridiculously long. But we
Speaker 2: were in college. We were like, we could live off.
Speaker 2: We'll get White Castle in Saint Louis while we're driving
Speaker 2: up there, which is disgusting, don't recommend. It was really cross.
Speaker 2: So we got White Castle because that was the thing
Speaker 2: to do. You drive to Saint Louis and get White Castle.
Speaker 2: And we drove on like Coca cola and coffee and
Speaker 2: just drove the entirety overnight to Toronto. We saw this
Speaker 2: live show, got to meet the actors that were in
Speaker 2: this show, and then we drove all way back home.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: We ended up building this wonderful friendship with the guys
Speaker 2: that were in this show in peer ownage, and we
Speaker 2: developed this friendship over the course of a few years.
Speaker 2: So we kept on traveling back up to Toronto to
Speaker 2: hang out with them. We did little like a vacation
Speaker 2: in the summertime one time, and that was my first
Speaker 2: like introduction to live entertainment that you could post on
Speaker 2: the internet, like live videos you could post on the Internet,
Speaker 2: and it was fun and it was funny, and the
Speaker 2: community was all nerds and into video games. So of
Speaker 2: course I fell like deep into this rabbit hole of
Speaker 2: like what else is on the Internet. And that was
Speaker 2: when YouTube was created, right around the time I was
Speaker 2: in college.
Speaker 1: Wow yeah, see gosh again, so many parallels. First of all,
Speaker 1: I had the Home the Brother's Chap who made Homestar.
Speaker 1: I've had them on the show and Strong Bad actually
Speaker 1: gave me a great outro for time.
Speaker 2: I love them so much.
Speaker 1: It was they were so funny. It was a ridiculous conversation, y'all.
Speaker 1: If you if you want to just laugh at people
Speaker 1: being silly, you can search the archives for when I
Speaker 1: had The Brother's Chap on on on tech stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I uh, for me, it was Red, not regular media
Speaker 1: that would come much later. Rooster Teeth. Rooster Teeth was
Speaker 1: like that was those were the online creators that I
Speaker 1: because I found Red Versus Blue when they were maybe
Speaker 1: there were maybe three or four episodes into the very
Speaker 1: first season. That was back when you had to download
Speaker 1: the episode to watch it because there wasn't a streaming player.
Speaker 1: I remember that. Yeah, yeah, But so I'm curious then,
Speaker 1: so you're you discover the online media part. It's kind
Speaker 1: of the world's coming together for the stuff that you're
Speaker 1: already interested in. Uh. Was it kind of a natural
Speaker 1: evolution for you to move into that space where you
Speaker 1: started to work there or was there anything in between?
Speaker 2: It was natural. I feel like the universe kind of
Speaker 2: brought me to the right people at the right time.
Speaker 2: Because I was about to graduate from college. I had
Speaker 2: no idea exactly what kind of career I wanted to
Speaker 2: go into because I had so many different interests. But
Speaker 2: this YouTube thing was brand new. I didn't understand how
Speaker 2: to upload your own videos. I didn't know how to
Speaker 2: record them, how to edit, nothing like that. I was very,
Speaker 2: very new to that whole idea. I understood like written
Speaker 2: publications because I had the journalism classes, and I understood
Speaker 2: being in theater, and I understood how to like do
Speaker 2: technical computer stuff, but bringing it all together, it hadn't
Speaker 2: quite clicked. So there was this one moment when me
Speaker 2: and my friend again, we went in to see one
Speaker 2: of these live Piana shows in Toronto, and I made
Speaker 2: friends with a couple of people that worked on G
Speaker 2: four tech TV way way back in the day, and
Speaker 2: some of those folks just happened to be the crew
Speaker 2: of Hack five five. They were there too, and they
Speaker 2: were recording shows, and I had kind of made friends
Speaker 2: with them online too because I had discovered their stuff
Speaker 2: from pure ownage and I was like, ooh, hacker channel.
Speaker 2: That sounds neat, that sounds really interesting, Like am I
Speaker 2: interested in hacking?
Speaker 1: Maybe?
Speaker 2: So I started watching their stuff too, and I was like,
Speaker 2: this is very advanced knowledge, Like I kind of want
Speaker 2: to learn more. I ended up meeting them at one
Speaker 2: of these shows in person, and I was like, hey,
Speaker 2: let's be friends online. So eventually we became really good friends.
Speaker 2: And right after college, I moved from Missouri to Virginia
Speaker 2: and I moved into the hack house.
Speaker 1: I took.
Speaker 2: I took a gamble. My mom was like, you're crazy,
Speaker 2: but I decided to do it. I was like, no,
Speaker 2: these are trustworthy people. They're really good guys. There's a
Speaker 2: girl living there, like she's boyfriend or girlfriend with this
Speaker 2: other guy, so like, we'll be fine, it's fine, everything
Speaker 2: is fine, Mom, don't worry about me. So I moved
Speaker 2: out to Virginia and that's when I started my very
Speaker 2: early career where we were not getting paid much at
Speaker 2: all whatsoever, and we all still had full time day jobs.
Speaker 2: As a YouTuber. Wow, my earliest videos were so awkward.
Speaker 2: I was so nervous because being in front of a
Speaker 2: camera is completely different from being on a stage. When
Speaker 2: you're presenting yourself on camera as yourself. It's very different
Speaker 2: from learning lines and acting as a completely different character.
Speaker 2: And that was something that was really hard for me
Speaker 2: to kind of integrate into working with hack five. So
Speaker 2: my very early segments, which are still online on their channel,
Speaker 2: are so awkward. But I'm still proud of it because
Speaker 2: I could go back and look at those and then
Speaker 2: see where I am now and be like wow, like
Speaker 2: I have completely changed over that series of time, and
Speaker 2: you can see, you can see how I've matured as
Speaker 2: a content creator in front of a camera, from this
Speaker 2: little awkward I don't know what I'm doing girl to
Speaker 2: what I'm doing now right. So hack five taught me
Speaker 2: a ton about being in front of a camera, about
Speaker 2: being a camera person and walking around and shooting on
Speaker 2: the fly, like on the street or at a coffee
Speaker 2: shop or in our own home. I learned about lighting
Speaker 2: and audio and so many other things by just living
Speaker 2: in this household and basically breathing content creation day in
Speaker 2: and day out, even though we weren't making any money,
Speaker 2: like it was just a passion. It was a passion project.
Speaker 2: So we would come home from our full time day
Speaker 2: jobs and be like, hey, let's have some dinner and
Speaker 2: record a hack five video. Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean people might not remember that in the
Speaker 1: early days of YouTube, there was no way to monetize.
Speaker 1: Contact was directly on the platform, right, Like you could
Speaker 1: get a sponsorship if you were really big, I mean eventually,
Speaker 1: but even the YouTube ad partner program it was extremely
Speaker 1: selective early on. Yes, and yeah, it was very hard
Speaker 1: to be considered for that in the early days. And
Speaker 1: there were also the restrictions on video length, like for
Speaker 1: the longest time, you couldn't upload anything longer than ten minutes,
Speaker 1: which is why, like I mentioned Red Letter Media accidentally earlier,
Speaker 1: but like I remember, the first thing I ever saw
Speaker 1: them post was the infamous mister Plankett review of Star
Speaker 1: Wars Episode one, the Phantom Menace, and I think it's
Speaker 1: nine ten minute long videos because they couldn't at the time,
Speaker 1: they couldn't upload it as one thing. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: now it's same now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tack five, Like, we couldn't upload really long videos.
Speaker 2: We were still recording to tape too, so we had
Speaker 2: to digitize tapes and then put them on the internet.
Speaker 2: And it was so complicated, it was so so much work.
Speaker 2: Like kids these days they have no idea how hard
Speaker 2: it was to upload videos to the internet when you're
Speaker 2: recording on like old cassette tapes.
Speaker 1: Yes, hard, we didn't. Like these days, you can be
Speaker 1: you can be a good, a great content creator just
Speaker 1: using like a smartphone and maybe a separate microphone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's and then some some decent lighting and then
Speaker 1: that's all you need. But back in the day, it
Speaker 1: was recording to one medium and then digitizing it so
Speaker 1: that you could you could then spend the incredibly long
Speaker 1: time it takes to upload that digital content to whatever
Speaker 1: platform that's hosting it. Yeah, because like we're talking about
Speaker 1: a time where digital cameras were pretty limited, right, Like,
Speaker 1: like you wouldn't typically have a smart card that could
Speaker 1: hold enough, especially if you wanted to record at a
Speaker 1: high enough resolution. You weren't going to get very much
Speaker 1: content on a on a single smart card. So also,
Speaker 1: I think it's fascinating you're talking about a time where
Speaker 1: these very small groups of content creators essentially have to
Speaker 1: learn everything because you don't have the budget to have
Speaker 1: necessarily a dedicated camera crew or a dedicated lighting crew. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like everybody has to learn how all of it works
Speaker 1: to be able to chip in and help out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean all of us. We were not paid
Speaker 2: when we started doing this work, so this was completely
Speaker 2: a passion project. And I think that really comes across
Speaker 2: with a lot of our earlier videos, like there's no
Speaker 2: way I would have put that stuff online if I
Speaker 2: didn't feel comfortable with it because I was so awkward
Speaker 2: and so new to it. But even just delving into
Speaker 2: new information like hacking and DIY and being able to
Speaker 2: modify your own computers and understanding programming and code and
Speaker 2: all those interesting little things that we learned on Hack five,
Speaker 2: and then also going behind the camera and wanting to learn, Like, hey,
Speaker 2: to our camera guy who never wanted to be on camera,
Speaker 2: I was like, how do you do the cameras? Like
Speaker 2: how do you set up the lighting? I wanted to
Speaker 2: learn everything that was involved because I found it so interesting.
Speaker 2: I'd always been on stage for theater and like doing
Speaker 2: choir and stuff. So being able to go kind of
Speaker 2: behind the set and be able to understand how it
Speaker 2: was all put together before I ended up there in
Speaker 2: front of the camera was so interesting to me. I
Speaker 2: just wanted to learn everything I could.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to me, like, if you ever want to see
Speaker 1: someone who's really dialed in to what they're doing that
Speaker 1: ties into performance, watch any videos that show like a
Speaker 1: stage manager, particularly if you're talking like professional theater level
Speaker 1: stage managers, and see them at a control board and
Speaker 1: also calling out cues to the other crews in the
Speaker 1: theatrical department. Because like, I watched that and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: I can't even like I know that your job is
Speaker 1: like you have to be hyper focused for about three
Speaker 1: hours for the duration of this show, but like it's
Speaker 1: it's it's so intense. Learning all that, to me is
Speaker 1: also fascinating. I love that part of your drive is
Speaker 1: literally you love to learn, and that's kind of what
Speaker 1: fuels into everything else. So I assume then that we
Speaker 1: get to a time where, like it starts off as
Speaker 1: a passion project and sometimes it's hard to put your
Speaker 1: finger on these sort of things, but at some point
Speaker 1: or another, as Tibolt decides to chime in on our conversation.
Speaker 1: You know, Hack five starts to actually make some money.
Speaker 1: How did things change at that point?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was around the time that we met,
Speaker 2: because that was around the time period when I started
Speaker 2: going to cees and started going to conventions, mostly to
Speaker 2: get the word out about Hack five, but also because
Speaker 2: we really wanted to get on board with a network.
Speaker 2: So we ended up going to some live show in
Speaker 2: New York. I think it was like Live Dignation.
Speaker 1: I want to say, wow, wow, that that just gave
Speaker 1: me like all the flashbacks go ahead.
Speaker 2: So pre pre us signing on board with a network,
Speaker 2: we went to a live show of Dignation and we
Speaker 2: met the CEO of Revision three, which was a multi
Speaker 2: channel network on YouTube, so they were in charge of
Speaker 2: like selling ads against all these different shows, and we
Speaker 2: talked to the CEO. We were like, we would love
Speaker 2: to bring our show on board with your network, and
Speaker 2: he agreed, so we signed a contract with them, and
Speaker 2: that was our first introduction to this is how you
Speaker 2: make money on YouTube, because this was still the early
Speaker 2: days when ad revenue was very hit or miss when
Speaker 2: it came to, you know, having commercials on your videos.
Speaker 2: So we had to sign on board with a network
Speaker 2: in order to bring in sponsorships so that we could
Speaker 2: get our name out there. We could get connected with
Speaker 2: different sponsors who were working with creators at the time,
Speaker 2: and I think back in the day we were still
Speaker 2: called vloggers or video bloggers. I don't remember.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think either would be that or video blogger, blogger, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it was video blogger. So we did
Speaker 2: end up signing on board with them. We spent a
Speaker 2: couple of years in Virginia just building up our repertoire
Speaker 2: of videos, connecting with other content creators who were on
Speaker 2: the same network as us. We started doing a little
Speaker 2: bit more in terms of like collaborations and going to
Speaker 2: events and doing interviews stuff like that, and we also
Speaker 2: started bringing in more sponsors. So about two years into
Speaker 2: working with Hack five, I was finally able to leave
Speaker 2: my day job and go full time with Hack five.
Speaker 2: So Hack five ended up getting a really good contract
Speaker 2: and all of us different creators who were working with
Speaker 2: that channel, we were able to move eventually to San Francisco, California,
Speaker 2: which was where Revision three was located. So we really
Speaker 2: wanted to get you little Hines out to San Francisco
Speaker 2: so that we could start working in person more with
Speaker 2: other content creators. And I'd also opened up a ton
Speaker 2: of opportunities, like at that point. Over the course of
Speaker 2: like the early twenty tens, I started working with all
Speaker 2: the different channels. On Revision three. There were a bunch
Speaker 2: of different shows on that channel, like tech Zilla, tech
Speaker 2: Buffalo I think was one of them, Dignation of course.
Speaker 2: There were a bunch of different shows, totally rad show
Speaker 2: and I was able to, you know, get introduced to
Speaker 2: a bunch of these different channels and sometimes come on
Speaker 2: as a guest host or sometimes do little one off
Speaker 2: interviews or what have you. What we do here.
Speaker 1: That was cool because you know, at the time, I
Speaker 1: mean I've often said I've worked at the same job
Speaker 1: for coming up on eighteen years, but the job company
Speaker 1: has changed like five or six times. But at that
Speaker 1: time it was how Stuff Works, and like the Vision three,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works was also part of the Discovery Digital.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, we were both part of the Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Revision three did get purchased by Discovery and it
Speaker 2: turned into Discovery Digital Networks, and I think there was
Speaker 2: some name they changed the name like three different times
Speaker 2: while I was there.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was on there, Yeah, because because how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works was creating how Stuff Works videos. Then at one
Speaker 1: point we were creating test Tube videos. And I was
Speaker 1: so jealous of your team and the other teams out
Speaker 1: there in San Francisco because you could collaborate and you
Speaker 1: could have this kind of melting pod of ideas. And
Speaker 1: we were in Atlanta, and you know, great people, fantastic coworkers,
Speaker 1: the best I've ever had the pleasure to work with.
Speaker 1: But we didn't have the collaborative opportunities because we were
Speaker 1: on the other coast, and so it's really rare.
Speaker 2: And now I'm in the same position as you now
Speaker 2: because I live in Denver, and other than myself and
Speaker 2: maybe two other tech content creators, there is nobody else
Speaker 2: here in Denver. So I don't get those collaborative opportunities
Speaker 2: anymore like I did in San Francisco. But that was
Speaker 2: a choice I had to make.
Speaker 1: Hey all, it's Jonathan from the Future. You know what
Speaker 1: this means. Yep. We're going to take another quick break
Speaker 1: and then we'll have the conclusion of my interview with
Speaker 1: Shannon Morse. Fascinating though that your journey and my journey
Speaker 1: have so many common points in them. I'm very curious.
Speaker 1: I have been somewhat critical of the Discovery years because
Speaker 1: I felt that I felt that a lot of the
Speaker 1: quote unquote strategy Discovery had was let's acquire existing content
Speaker 1: creators and use them to artificially build out a digital
Speaker 1: domain for Discovery and then slowly tried to transform them
Speaker 1: into something they're not. Yeah, I don't know to what
Speaker 1: extent that happened for you guys. I know that we
Speaker 1: started noticing it, particularly as we were heading toward the
Speaker 1: end of that relationship.
Speaker 2: I did notice that as Hack five gained notoriety in
Speaker 2: the tech content creator space and especially like the hacker
Speaker 2: and cybersecurity space, our channel grew and it felt like
Speaker 2: we had there was less interest in like selling sponsors
Speaker 2: against our channel as opposed to just using it to
Speaker 2: grow a portfolio, which is very similar. I would say.
Speaker 2: I also noticed that I started getting invitations to be
Speaker 2: a guest host on other shows, but we never saw
Speaker 2: anybody be invited to be on Hack five or anything.
Speaker 2: It was it almost felt like we were a little
Speaker 2: bit ignored the larger that we got, and maybe it's
Speaker 2: because they were having trouble selling ads or something. I
Speaker 2: have no idea. I really don't like, I have no
Speaker 2: idea why, but it did feel like we were a
Speaker 2: little ignored. So eventually we decided to cut ties, so
Speaker 2: we weren't with DDN anymore. And that was a wonderful
Speaker 2: turning point for me because I had more opportunities just
Speaker 2: as a content creator to not only work with Hack five,
Speaker 2: which was like the best job I could have gotten into,
Speaker 2: but I also started working with other shows too, Like
Speaker 2: I was doing who was I working with way back
Speaker 2: in the day Alien where I want to say I
Speaker 2: was working with them Sony. I started working with Signal
Speaker 2: by Sony for a while, and I started developing shows
Speaker 2: for twit. I was working at twit for a little
Speaker 2: while up in Pataluma, California. So I did that for
Speaker 2: like two years, and all of those ended up being
Speaker 2: really good opportunities because I was growing my own portfolio.
Speaker 2: It almost felt like in the back of my mind
Speaker 2: and maybe it was just like a gut feeling where
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, I feel like this multi channel
Speaker 2: network is not going to last forever. We're going to
Speaker 2: have to figure out how to sell our own ads.
Speaker 2: We're going to have to figure out how to hire
Speaker 2: our own people and do our own hosting and get
Speaker 2: to the events that we need to get to and
Speaker 2: all that stuff on our own. We need that independence.
Speaker 2: And I was learning that independence just kind of naturally
Speaker 2: because I had that gut feeling, and my gut feeling
Speaker 2: was right. Eventually, we didn't have that MCN anymore.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no Discovery even before we could see the
Speaker 1: writing on the wall because different channel were getting shut
Speaker 1: down or we're migrating away from the network. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: to your point, like, one of the benefits of being
Speaker 1: part of that network is that you have a whole
Speaker 1: team dedicated to things like sales and marketing so that
Speaker 1: you don't have to stress about it so much and
Speaker 1: they take care of things. But then the downside of
Speaker 1: that is like, if a relationship starts to go sour,
Speaker 1: you got to you have to take on all those responsibilities,
Speaker 1: or you've got to find someone else who will do
Speaker 1: it for you. Yeah, is for sure pretty tough.
Speaker 2: And I feel like none of it well from my perspective,
Speaker 2: I never felt like anything went sour, went bad. It
Speaker 2: was just like things were changing, and we felt that
Speaker 2: change happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think.
Speaker 2: It was just the industry as a whole at that point.
Speaker 2: A lot of content creators were finding that you have
Speaker 2: more opportunities if you're independent rather than being with an
Speaker 2: MCN and we did figure that out. Eventually, We figured out, like,
Speaker 2: we can make you know, full time incomes if we
Speaker 2: are independent, and we really had to strive for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It was all so an interesting time because that's
Speaker 1: around the same time that the infamous pivot to video
Speaker 1: move was going on in like established media companies, where
Speaker 1: where people who had been dedicated to writing you know,
Speaker 1: you know, text based content for the web were being
Speaker 1: pushed to create video because one platforms like Facebook were
Speaker 1: We're promoting video over text based content. Briefly, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, that was a rug pull situation. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had like an entire editorial group essentially laid off,
Speaker 1: and the people who were left behind were all folks
Speaker 1: who were like in the podcasting side and the video side,
Speaker 1: and that was kind of an eye opener over at
Speaker 1: House Stuff Works. Yeah, you were also mentioning the fact
Speaker 1: that it was easy to get on other shows and
Speaker 1: hard to get people on your show. In my case,
Speaker 1: it was the other way around, because I was given
Speaker 1: essentially full creative control of tech stuff, which was nice,
Speaker 1: but getting permission for me to be on someone else's
Speaker 1: show was a nightmare. And our mutual friend Tom Merritt,
Speaker 1: yeah to tell you that it was harder for him
Speaker 1: to get me on his tech news show than it
Speaker 1: was to get the Chief Information Officer for the United
Speaker 1: States of America.
Speaker 2: What Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yes, he had to jump through more hoops to get
Speaker 1: and I said, Tom, I'm not worth it, man, just
Speaker 1: give up, and I ever know we're going to have
Speaker 1: you on the show.
Speaker 2: I remember that early show because that was one of
Speaker 2: the first guest hosting opportunities I had. Is when I
Speaker 2: was on one of his tech shows way back in
Speaker 2: the day. And it was easy for him because under
Speaker 2: our contract with Revision three, we were still independent creators,
Speaker 2: so we were allowed to take on whatever guest hosting
Speaker 2: we wanted, So it was easy for me to go
Speaker 2: on like Techzilla and do a show with Veronica and
Speaker 2: Patrick Norton, or go on tom Merritt's show back in
Speaker 2: the day, whoever it might have been. Eventually in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: I remember a big turning point was when I went
Speaker 2: on my honeymoon and Twit canceled my job position that
Speaker 2: I had with them and tech which show was it.
Speaker 2: I was on Texxilla as a host. Eventually they took
Speaker 2: me on as a full time host for Texxilla and
Speaker 2: they were canceling Techzilla. I think just because like one
Speaker 2: thing a lot of channels learned over time was that
Speaker 2: internal shows where you have a producer, cameraman, editor, blah
Speaker 2: blah blahlahlah blah blah, they're very expensive to produce, and
Speaker 2: if you don't bring in enough on advertising, then those
Speaker 2: shows end up being very costly. So they canceled a
Speaker 2: lot of internal shows and Techzillo's one of those. So
Speaker 2: I didn't have Texxilla anymore. I didn't have that job
Speaker 2: at twit, and I was panicking because I had just
Speaker 2: gotten married and marriage is expensive. So it was around
Speaker 2: that time that I became more independent as a tent
Speaker 2: creators started a show with Patrick Norton called tech Thing,
Speaker 2: and we did that show as well as Hack five.
Speaker 2: I was still doing Hack five pretty much every single week.
Speaker 2: I was doing like four or five shows per week
Speaker 2: for those two different channels, and that was a lot
Speaker 2: of work and we had to understand how to do
Speaker 2: crowdfunding on Patreon, so we brought on board membership style
Speaker 2: Patreon memberships, so people could sign on, donate a few
Speaker 2: bucks a months, and they could, you know, back our
Speaker 2: show basically, so we didn't have to have a sponsor
Speaker 2: on every single episode, which was great as a new
Speaker 2: channel when you're starting to develop and starting to mature
Speaker 2: that channel as something that's brand new that a lot
Speaker 2: of networks, brands sponsors don't necessarily have familiarity with yet
Speaker 2: that is one way to get those shows off the ground.
Speaker 2: So I was doing that for a few years.
Speaker 1: Fascinating, Like, it's blowing my mind that you're you became
Speaker 1: acquainted with and used the major forms of funding content
Speaker 1: creation online, like everything from advertising to sponsorship deals to
Speaker 1: branded content to count funding. Yeah. Yeah, I mean again,
Speaker 1: it's a hustle. Like when I talk to people who
Speaker 1: have done the more independent approach, I've always had the like,
Speaker 1: I have to face it, I've had the luxury of
Speaker 1: working for a big company. The company kept changing, but
Speaker 1: I kept working for big companies so I never had
Speaker 1: to hustle like that. And whenever I talked to people
Speaker 1: like you or to Veronica, Veronica Belmont, or you know
Speaker 1: folks who have had to do that independent like figure
Speaker 1: it out approach. I've always been impressed and wondered, where
Speaker 1: the heck you find your energy to be able to
Speaker 1: do all the things you have.
Speaker 2: To do what you do. That energy was lots of caffeine,
Speaker 2: Lots and lots of caffeine, lots of sugar. It was
Speaker 2: to it was a lot of It was like just
Speaker 2: searching for health and understanding how to stay healthy while
Speaker 2: we were doing so much work, while we were traveling
Speaker 2: to conventions, while we were doing fan meetups, like everything
Speaker 2: involved with being a content creator, it's hard work and
Speaker 2: it definitely is grind for sure, especially if you're trying
Speaker 2: to start something new and get it off the ground.
Speaker 2: And I've done that over and over and over in
Speaker 2: my industry. As the industry has changed over the past
Speaker 2: like fifteen years, I've had to kind of pick up
Speaker 2: the pieces and start fresh. Whether that's because a network
Speaker 2: has canceled my show, or a different host has to
Speaker 2: come on board, or maybe I just want to start
Speaker 2: something new, Like there's always a reason. So that's been
Speaker 2: a big I feel like something that I've had to
Speaker 2: repeat throughout the time that I've done this content creation
Speaker 2: career is just understanding how to start new and understanding
Speaker 2: how to divert fire income. And that's really tough.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It makes me think of like the challenges that
Speaker 1: doctors face and that they constantly have to be learning
Speaker 1: the latest in medicine, and that if you stop doing that,
Speaker 1: you stop being a responsible and good doctor, right like
Speaker 1: you're not. If you're not keeping up with the latest
Speaker 1: in methods of treatment or whatever, then you start to
Speaker 1: become a you know, kind of a drag on all
Speaker 1: your patients. And similar to that, not that I'm saying
Speaker 1: that content creators are as important as doctors, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, but that as content creators, like you constantly
Speaker 1: have to be learning how to maximize the return on
Speaker 1: the investment of your of your effort and your tact
Speaker 1: because other otherwise you're just going to be spinning your wheels.
Speaker 1: I mean, discovery has always been a challenge in our industry,
Speaker 1: and I think it just gets harder because, especially if
Speaker 1: you are creating content for a specific platform, whether it's
Speaker 1: YouTube or Twitch or whatever, if they change the way
Speaker 1: algorithms recommend content, it could be that you're putting the
Speaker 1: greatest stuff in the world out there, but no one, nobody,
Speaker 1: It's not getting in front of anyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And I think that kind of brings us
Speaker 2: to the next piece and kind of the final piece
Speaker 2: of my story of learning how to be a content
Speaker 2: creator when YouTube is brand new to now is. Eventually,
Speaker 2: after tech Thing and Hack five, and I was also
Speaker 2: doing a show on Hack five called threat Wire, I
Speaker 2: decided to move away from every show and every co
Speaker 2: host that I had and move from San Francisco to Colorado.
Speaker 2: And a big part of that was because I really
Speaker 2: wanted to go Inde Pennant and I wanted to build
Speaker 2: my own studio, and that was just not financially possible
Speaker 2: in the San Francisco Bay area at the time because
Speaker 2: for the space that I needed, which is like the
Speaker 2: space that I'm currently working in now, I would have
Speaker 2: to buy a house and on a content creator income
Speaker 2: in San Francisco, that was not going to happen.
Speaker 1: Unless you're unless you're one of the co founders of PayPal,
Speaker 1: you ain't buying the house in the Bay area. Uh,
Speaker 1: no way, man.
Speaker 2: And I was even looking like outside of San Francisco
Speaker 2: City proper. I was looking at like the suburbs the Burbs,
Speaker 2: and I just could not find anything that was big
Speaker 2: enough for a studio, had the kind of like internet
Speaker 2: connection that I would need, and also would give me
Speaker 2: the ability to record in a quiet space, because like
Speaker 2: the Bay Area is not a quiet place to live.
Speaker 2: So I did end up moving out here to Colorado,
Speaker 2: and I had to start really focusing down on what
Speaker 2: shows I needed to do to grow my career and
Speaker 2: what shows I needed to let go of, And unfortunately
Speaker 2: I had to leave Tech Thing, I had to leave
Speaker 2: Hack five, and I left threat Wire last year in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, so that was my last like show
Speaker 2: on another channel that I was doing, and I went
Speaker 2: fully independent in twenty twenty four, once I had built
Speaker 2: the studio and had this house that I could record in, Like,
Speaker 2: I feel like every single little piece of my story
Speaker 2: has kind of developed up to this point where I'm
Speaker 2: now a fully independent content creator. I have my own channel,
Speaker 2: I'm doing all my own work, from thumbnails and editing
Speaker 2: and post and pre production, every single little bit, and
Speaker 2: I'm getting to the point where I'm like, maybe I
Speaker 2: need to start hiring people. So I hired an editor
Speaker 2: that was huge, Oh totally like a huge, huge difference,
Speaker 2: and I started reaching out to brands myself and selling
Speaker 2: my own channel, And the last couple of years have
Speaker 2: been the first times ever in my life, in my
Speaker 2: career that I have sold a brand for the entirety
Speaker 2: of a year. So I have like a channel sponsor
Speaker 2: as opposed to just one that has been brought on
Speaker 2: for one video, And that astounds me that I've gotten
Speaker 2: to the point where I can do that now, and
Speaker 2: it makes me incredibly proud, and it makes me grateful
Speaker 2: that I've gotten to that point, and it makes me
Speaker 2: really happy to see what happens next, because obviously that
Speaker 2: story is not finished.
Speaker 1: It's it's clearly a testament to your talent, your dedication,
Speaker 1: your work ethic. Like you know, I would say congratulations,
Speaker 1: but I always feel congratulations feels like you're saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: the universe lined up for you, which is not the case.
Speaker 1: You freaking put in the work to make this happen.
Speaker 1: You clearly you planned everything out, You were very methodical
Speaker 1: in your approach, and so I'm just going to say
Speaker 1: great job, because like the hard work paid off. Thanks.
Speaker 2: Now, I just got to figure out the algorithm. Every
Speaker 2: couple of months. Yeah, that's always changing.
Speaker 1: That's always that's always tough. Like I remember, speaking back
Speaker 1: to rooster Teeth, I interviewed Bernie Burns, the one of
Speaker 1: the co founders of rooster Teeth, a lifetime time ago,
Speaker 1: and one of the things we talked about that, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the lessons he really took home, which served
Speaker 1: rooster Teeth for a good long time. But even rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth ultimately kind of fell apart, like it dissolved I
Speaker 1: think last year. But but he was he always said
Speaker 1: the biggest lesson he had was if it's possible to
Speaker 1: have your own platform, host your stuff there, put it
Speaker 1: other places too, But you're always going to be beholden
Speaker 1: to whatever the other platforms out there do in order
Speaker 1: to serve content to users, because they're going to do
Speaker 1: whatever works best for the platform, not necessarily what works
Speaker 1: best for the people who are making the stuff that
Speaker 1: goes on the platform. But but that's hard too, because
Speaker 1: getting traffic to an owned and operated site is incredibly hard.
Speaker 1: Everyone just wants to go to the fire hoses that
Speaker 1: serve up all the content.
Speaker 2: So have changes like Google is using AI to create
Speaker 2: little summaries when you use Google search and that has
Speaker 2: really killed off a lot of blog viewership traffic for
Speaker 2: a lot of different websites. We also have a lot
Speaker 2: of websites, like journalistic websites are going towards paywalls now
Speaker 2: because they can't afford with the lower amount of viewership
Speaker 2: that they're getting. Because of that, they can't afford just
Speaker 2: using advertising like those basic, you know, banner advertisements on
Speaker 2: their channels anymore or on their websites anymore. And then
Speaker 2: we have TikTok, which might get banned in January at time,
Speaker 2: or recordings. So you have all these things that are
Speaker 2: currently happening in the technological you know, ecosphere that are
Speaker 2: really affecting content creators, and this is going to be
Speaker 2: future change that we're going to have to consider.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't see this being like you were saying.
Speaker 1: I don't see this being something where we're going to
Speaker 1: arrive at a point where everyone's like, ah, this is
Speaker 1: where we are now and we will forever be here.
Speaker 1: I know it's always going to be. It's always going
Speaker 1: to be the case where you know, the people who
Speaker 1: succeed are the ones well, if people who are consistently
Speaker 1: successful will be the ones who are the most flexible. Yes, now,
Speaker 1: there will be people who are successful on one platform,
Speaker 1: but when that platform changes, their success may waiver or
Speaker 1: even just go away. So yeah, I think the lessons
Speaker 1: you've learned have served you very well so far. But
Speaker 1: I think they're also the ones that any content creator
Speaker 1: really needs to take to heart if they want to
Speaker 1: be successful in that space moving forward.
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the reasons why I've been
Speaker 2: able to be successful, like I would say, mildly successful,
Speaker 2: Like none of my channels have gone viral. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't own a fancy car or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Like I'm quite modest when it comes to that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. But if I compared this to the previous
Speaker 2: shows that I worked on, a lot of them used
Speaker 2: like classic G four television style productions, like really long
Speaker 2: thirty minute videos to post those They still were posting
Speaker 2: those kind of videos on YouTube, and a lot of
Speaker 2: those shows did not want to change over time. So
Speaker 2: you saw them fail or you saw them end up
Speaker 2: getting canceled or sunset or just just I don't know,
Speaker 2: ghost the internet.
Speaker 1: So fizzle out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they would fizzle out. And I look back at
Speaker 2: that and I think about how much time I put
Speaker 2: into learning how the algorithm worked and learning what was
Speaker 2: changing on these different platforms, and I always tried to
Speaker 2: integrate that into my shows. And if somebody who I
Speaker 2: was working with, whether it was a channel or a network,
Speaker 2: told me no, I was more inclined to start my
Speaker 2: own channel so that I could make those changes happen.
Speaker 2: And I think that's one of the reasons why I've
Speaker 2: been able to grow my channel on my own is
Speaker 2: because I've been accepting of those changes, and I've always
Speaker 2: taken those to heart and said, Okay, well let's try this.
Speaker 2: Let's experiment. An experimentation when it comes to being a
Speaker 2: content creator, because this is still such a young career
Speaker 2: path is extremely important.
Speaker 1: Well, Shannon, I think it's just a matter of time
Speaker 1: before you hit the stratospheric level of success and next
Speaker 1: thing I know, I'm going to be on a food
Speaker 1: delivery app ordering a Snubsburger because you're going to be
Speaker 1: like the new mister Beast.
Speaker 2: Given that, given that I previously had a major in restaurant,
Speaker 2: restaurant and hospitality administration, I can promise you that it
Speaker 2: will be safe and sanitary whenever you do purchase those items.
Speaker 2: And I will run that business quite well and efficiently.
Speaker 1: It won't it won't be like, Hey, it turns out
Speaker 1: that there's one physical location and all the other ones
Speaker 1: are run out of some guy's closet. Yeah, I am
Speaker 1: pleased to know that. I mean, honestly, you know, anytime
Speaker 1: I avoid food poisoning is a day I think. Well, Shannon,
Speaker 1: first of all, thank you so much for being such
Speaker 1: an incredible friend and supporter from the first day I
Speaker 1: met you, like you didn't know me from anybody, and
Speaker 1: like I know, I can get especially when I'm in
Speaker 1: a situation where I don't really know a lot of people.
Speaker 1: As extroverted as I am, I can get kind of
Speaker 1: shut down if it's that overwhelming, like it's the es
Speaker 1: And I know I can also become a little bit
Speaker 1: parasitic and that I'll just latch on to people who
Speaker 1: are friendly to me that I won't leave them. So
Speaker 1: the fact that you never complained I greatly appreciate because
Speaker 1: it was a huge comfort to me.
Speaker 2: You are sunle.
Speaker 1: Hey, That's what I'm cam for. I was. I was
Speaker 1: Barnacle number three in the community theater production of SpongeBob
Speaker 1: the Musical Oh My God, not true, Not true.
Speaker 2: You having friendships like yours has been crucial to me
Speaker 2: staying in this career path because it can be hard.
Speaker 2: You can get a lot of criticisms online. And having
Speaker 2: the friendships that you developed through this career and having
Speaker 2: people that understand what you go through is so important.
Speaker 2: So that's been really, really big for me.
Speaker 1: It's also wild to me that I don't know how
Speaker 1: it is in other areas of content creation, but in
Speaker 1: the tech space in general, like some of the most
Speaker 1: generous people I've ever had the pleasure to meet work
Speaker 1: in that space and have been incredibly welcoming. You know,
Speaker 1: people like you, people like Tom Merritt, people like Veronica,
Speaker 1: like just folks who were eager to share what they
Speaker 1: had learned to have you on to share perspectives like
Speaker 1: I never really expected that. Again, I felt so so
Speaker 1: isolated out in Atlanta that I didn't even know that
Speaker 1: was a thing. But whenever I reached out to anybody,
Speaker 1: they were always so kind and welcoming, which to me
Speaker 1: is very special. Like that's one of those things. It
Speaker 1: speaks back to the theater side, right, like if you
Speaker 1: are in a show, you have a show family, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that show family is like the closest, tightest group
Speaker 1: of friends until the show's over and then it dissolves.
Speaker 2: It's so true.
Speaker 1: But uh yeah, it's kind of like that, like the
Speaker 1: at least in the tech content creation space, the old
Speaker 1: schoolers anyway. I don't know about any of these young
Speaker 1: folks out there, but all the old schoolers they always
Speaker 1: dread so much.
Speaker 2: Trying to befriend these youngins today that are doing tech
Speaker 2: content creation is pretty hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got to go through like agents and managers
Speaker 1: and stuff. It's super weird.
Speaker 2: I'm like, who can I actually talk to you?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Is this a bot that you've hired to be
Speaker 1: like your representative in negotiations.
Speaker 2: I've made a few really good friends in the newer
Speaker 2: generation of tech content creation, and they have been They've
Speaker 2: also been crazy helpful because they have taught me things
Speaker 2: that I didn't know coming from my old school.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh no, it's really valuable. Like again, I don't
Speaker 1: wanna I don't want to be dismissive and to suggest
Speaker 1: that the people who have been through the trenches since
Speaker 1: the mid two thousands, they they're the ones who have
Speaker 1: it all figured out, because obviously every jo down comes
Speaker 1: with changes no, yeah, no, we don't know what we're
Speaker 1: doing now.
Speaker 2: I'm still trying to learn how TikTok works and it's
Speaker 2: about to go away.
Speaker 1: So like, yeah, yeah, I don't know how to get
Speaker 1: it to go all in on reels, I guess, but
Speaker 1: uh oh boy, yeah. Uh for those who for those
Speaker 1: who want to seek out your work, what's the best
Speaker 1: place for them to go? To?
Speaker 2: YouTube dot com slash Shannon Morris spelled just like my
Speaker 2: name is or you can find me on the new
Speaker 2: threads in Blue Sky. How exciting. This is the first
Speaker 2: time I've done a guest hosting where I can tell
Speaker 2: people that I'm on threads in Blue Sky and what's
Speaker 2: my name?
Speaker 1: On those?
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure it's just Shannon Moore, So you can
Speaker 2: find me if you just type in my name.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If you can't find her, fine be because I'm
Speaker 1: following her so you'll see. Yes, yeah, each other too,
Speaker 1: we do, we do. Yeah, Like it's so nice to
Speaker 1: have a place that, uh, because I haven't been on
Speaker 1: I left X a couple of years ago because I
Speaker 1: don't want anybody anyone stealing your name. Yeah, I I
Speaker 1: was like, you can take my name. The only it's
Speaker 1: not going to do you any good because there's this uh,
Speaker 1: this uh politician out in Texas named Jonathan Stickland who
Speaker 1: has done some done some things that I am one
Speaker 1: opposed to morally, ethically, philosophically, Like we could not be
Speaker 1: more different, and I would get hate messages meant for him,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you need to look at my bio
Speaker 1: because you'll realize I am not the guy you think
Speaker 1: I am, because I'm like, I am so much more
Speaker 1: inclusive than this dude is. But like I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: good luck. If you want, if you want my old username,
Speaker 1: if you were if you've got a high tolerance for abuse,
Speaker 1: go for it. Because I I ejected, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: totally get the idea of protecting the brand. Like that
Speaker 1: makes sense. But since I'm getting out of the content
Speaker 1: creation game, I guess it's all It's all fine for
Speaker 1: that lucky you. We'll see, we'll see how I go.
Speaker 1: Maybe like in like six months, I'll think, what a
Speaker 1: huge mistake I got to launch a new show, and
Speaker 1: it'll be.
Speaker 2: Oh, then I can invite you on to be a
Speaker 2: guest host on my channel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, I'd love that. I mean, I'm still gonna
Speaker 1: do content creation once in a while, but it's not
Speaker 1: I don't have plans for like a new show that
Speaker 1: I'll be launching anytime in the near future. It'll probably
Speaker 1: be things like the occasional guest spot or maybe a
Speaker 1: branded show that we have decided to do with a partner,
Speaker 1: something like that, but it would be like a limited
Speaker 1: run kind of show as opposed to on going. So
Speaker 1: my listeners are taking notes. I'm sure all about this.
Speaker 1: But Shannon, thank you again for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: It has been a pleasure and I learned so much
Speaker 1: about you and just for I love you.
Speaker 2: I love you too, man, You're awesome and I always
Speaker 2: really appreciate that we have a good friendship and we're
Speaker 2: able to do this stuff like.
Speaker 1: This me too. There's no better way to end this
Speaker 1: than just like that. So it's over now. By I
Speaker 1: hope y'all enjoyed that conversation I had with Shannon. She's
Speaker 1: always such a pleasure to chat with. She has incredible
Speaker 1: insight into tech, into content creation, into just how to
Speaker 1: be like a good person who can easily collaborate with others.
Speaker 1: Like I said, she's younger than I am, that I
Speaker 1: learned so many valuable lessons from her. If you are
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with her work, I highly recommend you go and
Speaker 1: check out her various stuff. She does reviews, she does
Speaker 1: deep dives. She's got a ton of content under her belt,
Speaker 1: incredibly accomplished, and like I said, just a nifty human being.
Speaker 1: She's just great. So check out her stuff and come
Speaker 1: back to listen to the next couple of episodes of
Speaker 1: text Stuff. We've got a few more before I hang
Speaker 1: up my spurs and go walking off into the sunset.
Speaker 1: I look forward to chatting with you then, so as
Speaker 1: I like to end all of my episodes until whatever
Speaker 1: I end up saying in the last one, I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.