The Studios: History Repeating

So you know what is hard?  Like holy hell what did I just get myself into hard?  Trying to produce a podcast from the ground up on a regular schedule is hard. Between the fact that I got a real life with a busy enough schedule as is, and next to no technical expertise regarding anything internet related, I really should have given up before I started.  I blame the Origins interview with Brent Evans for my desire to try and do Arbitration year round.  He and I were chatting and he told me he thought it was really cool I was trying to create something from nothing in the name of Battletech.

So I had an idea, and the ability to produce that idea, and no way to get it to the people.  Media content and creation is easy, particularly since as a Mac user, my OS comes with more content creation software then the average user will ever need.  the biggest problem is that no one teaches or provides plug and play tools for the creative but technically inept.  At first it was looking like I would rely on the same method I would use to get my annual shows out there.  With all respect and love to the Solaris Virtual Arenas, it was mostly ClickWarrior oriented, which by that time was long dead.  I still got a handful of downloads, but it was clear something else had to be done.  I did not stop recording and posting shows while I was searching for answers though, and the archive of every show I have ever done (THAT I STILL HAVE) will be eventually ported to ourbattletech.com

So in the meantime I went back to a bunch of podcasts I liked listening to.  2-Sense, Your Mac Life, Sidescrollers, and Radio Free Cybertron to name a few.  Each gave me ideas on content and style to emulate, and you can see bits of each in my show. Some survive to this day, others like those music breaks, did not.

In the end I had to bite the bullet and figure out how to generate my own website.  Buying the URL and making it through HTML was not gonna work for me, after all I failed that class in college.  But not being a total ignoramus, I saw places like GoDaddy, Squarespace, and even so called environmental hosting (which was overly expensive to alleviate my nonexistent conscience.)

In the end after touring a dozen services, Squarespace was chosen because it was about as plug and play as I could hope for, though RSS is a nightmare I still do not understand.  And by Gencon 2011 I was ready to launch.  I got a nice early publicity boost thanks to the blog Scrapyard Armory, whose author could not make it to Gencon that year.  So I took some notes and photos from him and he gave me a shout out or three.

And the rest was history.  I advertised on whatever forums I could find, posting on Facebook and through healthy word of mouth.  Slowly but surely the podcast was growing, but my lack of technical expertise was a humongous impediment.  It was then that a Knightmare in rusted over armor came with a solution.  That solution was pretty much “Dude, all that stuff you do not know how to do, I got it, just bring your work over here.”  Seriously dude, twist my arm a little okay?

The rest, as they say, is history.  With Gencon around the corner Mrs Arbiter and I are really excited to say hi to the Catalyst crew and throw down some awesome. So look for us there.

In the next article we will talk about voice, and tone, and how to build it and how to screw it up at times.