Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Art of
Network Engineering, where
technology meets the human sideof IT.
Whether you're scaling networks, solving problems or shaping
your career, we've got theinsights, stories and tips to
keep you ahead in theever-evolving world of
networking.
Welcome to the Art of NetworkEngineering podcast.
My name is Andy Laptev and inthis episode, jeffrey Clark is
(00:20):
here.
Jeffrey, you're kind of likealways here.
Like, are we announcing you asa, as a full-time co-host now?
Like, are we going to put youon the website?
Are you in dude?
Are you in?
Like?
That's all.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
They put me on the
spot.
Um, yeah, you know what?
Let's, let's do it.
No, I would say, call me, I'llbe your project.
I'm my wife's project, so I'llbe your project.
Well, I'm my wife's project too.
But no, I would say, call me in.
I'm really passionate aboutwhat A1 offers and I'd like to
(01:00):
be a part of it.
So as long as you'll have me,I'll be here.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I love that you're
here, I mean in full
transparency.
We've kind of talked on theside.
You said you were kind ofinterested in, you know, being a
little more involved in doingstuff.
So I really appreciate thatyou're here and that you're
doing this.
You just got back from avacation so you know we have a
release coming up and we need torecord something.
We're like crap and Jeff comeshome from vacation hey, jeff.
So I really appreciate your,your engagement, because we I
(01:23):
don't think we've done anepisode yet where it's just one
person talking at the camera,like I know people do that.
I've seen other shows whereit's like hey, but we've never
done that and I didn't want thisepisode to be the first one,
because I'm a little under theweather and I don't know how
that would go.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
so thank you for
being here also, I've got a
couple of ideas of things thatmaybe I want to do little side
episodes of my own.
So I just say anybody watchingthis, stay tuned.
We've got some stuff that we'rekind of cooking and some ideas
we're bouncing around.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
So if you've noticed
the beautiful YouTube thumbnails
on the videos lately, Jeff hasbeen the master of that.
I really appreciate that, Jeff,because I'm awful at it, as you
can tell by some of the thingsI said over to you, but so this
is a good segue.
I didn't even plan this, butthis is a good segue.
I didn't even plan this, butthis is a good segue into this
episode.
So this is going to besomething a little different,
but again on the show we're kindof doing different things and
trying them out and seeing.
(02:10):
You know what the listeners,what they like, um, so we were
just talking about, uh,thumbnail.
You know, the pictures on onyoutube videos, um, and, and
that is a, a tool that we useand a thing that we pay for, and
Jeff does that.
So we thought in this episodewe would talk to either the
people who are thinking aboutcreating content as part of
(02:30):
their career Maybe they've juststarted out and this ties back
to so this is going to be.
You know, look behind the scenes, right, like, how does this
show happen?
What is all the behind thescenes behind the curtain stuff
that you listen to this show?
And what is all the behind thescenes behind the curtain stuff
that you listen to the show andit's like, oh, these guys just
show up, they hit record on Zoomand it's done, it's easy.
Well, we're not using Zoom andthere's a ton of planning and I
have to bug Jeff when he's onvacation, like, hey, man, friday
(02:53):
you think we could get together.
So there's a lot of planningbehind the scenes and YouTube
thumbnails and editing tools andnoise reduction, this and you
know a little bit of ai toolingfor, like, hey, help show notes,
microphones, like.
So there's just a ton of thingsand and and.
Really, why should you care?
We have been talking for years,if not from the beginning, that
and, jeff, you said itperfectly right before we
(03:15):
started recording if you don'thave experience, make experience
, right.
So, um, some may call it softskills, but the uh, the power,
that effective communication, um, the impact that can have on
your career is huge.
I would not have my role todayas a senior product marketing
person at a networking vendor ifI didn't have a body of work
(03:35):
showing that I can communicateat a professional level and you
can pay me to communicate aboutyour solutions, right, that
doesn't happen unless there'sfive years of podcasts and a
bunch of blogs and things.
So communication, quote,unquote, soft skills right, they
can be learned.
They're not soft, I wouldn'tsay more important than the
technical skills, but we've allmet plenty of super duper
(03:56):
technical people who can tellyou every little bit in the
header of the thing and whatever, but you can't let them out of
the room they're sitting inbecause like, oh my God, these
people shouldn't talk.
They just don't have thecommunication skills and they
haven't worked on them, theyhaven't practiced them.
So creating content in tech isa wonderful way to practice your
communication skills.
(04:16):
What's the old adage Like?
If you really want to see ifyou understand something, teach
it right.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Exactly that.
That was actually something Iwas going to say is um, you know
, I actually got my start in itby creating it content, because
I ended up getting my ccna thesame as everybody does, got that
, you know, net plus.
When got my ccna and I was like, all right, I'm ready to get a
job.
Now that I've got this cert,they're going to come out of the
woodwork to hire me.
And that didn't happen.
(04:42):
That's what they tell us, yeah,so it didn't happen.
That's what they tell us, yeah,so it didn't happen.
So what I ended up doing was Istarted putting together a show,
which good luck if you can findit it was an old show on
YouTube.
I was doing YouTube well beforeit was like a real popular
thing and it was called Tech TipTuesday and all it was was it
was like a five to seven minutelittle mini episode explaining
tech in plain English so that mymom could understand it.
(05:05):
So when I started applying forjobs, on a whim I put in the
link to Tech Tip Tuesday andthat actually landed me my first
IT job, because I didn't haveanybody to work to show.
I didn't have anything to puton a resume except at this point
, almost six months, a year'sworth, of these little episodes
I've been doing.
So I would say, just like wesaid at the beginning, if you
(05:26):
don't have a body of work, ifyou're a new engineer, if you're
just getting started, you don'thave experience, go make it.
Go create content, even if it'syou're not looking for a job or
you're a communicator, justyour ability to show that, like
you said, I can teach this oryou're watching me learn it.
(05:47):
I think that goes a long wayand I know I do the interviews
here where I work at Fortinet,and if someone sends me a link
to a video, I'm watching itbecause it tells me a lot about
them.
So that's my two cents.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
No, brilliant For
sure.
Even tying it into you remindedme, as you were talking about,
like a home lab, like, if youdon't have experience, make it
right.
When I was interviewing andpeople would say, well, you know
, we really need someone withproduction experience.
Well, you know, with all duerespect, I have a rack of
production hardware.
Okay, it's end of life, but itwas production hardware four
(06:16):
years ago.
Blah, blah, blah, right, sothere's ways, especially when
you're new, to get in the field,to level up, to be competitive,
a competitive candidate, and Ithink and maybe it's just
because I love to communicate,but I think that that's kind of
low-hanging fruit, right.
So I don't know how we want torun through this.
Um, if we run throughchronologically all the stuff
(06:38):
that happens to happen for anepisode, like to me in my mind,
it's like, okay, what do we haveto do to plan an episode?
And we can kind of go throughit that way, unless you have a
different thought on, likethere's a ton of tools, there's
a ton of strategies, like thefirst thing we have to do is
pick a topic.
Okay, and you know, if you'vedone 170 something episodes, it
gets harder over time to pick atopic that you haven't covered.
(07:00):
I think the first 75 or 100episodes were just guests
telling their stories and howthey got in and all that stuff.
So that got stale.
And then we went pivoted totopics.
When I've done so many topics,um, and the more technically you
go, the harder it is like surewe could do vxlan.
We got to find a vxlan expertand we got to talk for an hour
about a very um deep technicalthing and not lose each other
(07:24):
ourselves and put everybody tosleep.
So it's so.
The topics is a whole thing.
Um, I know that we talked aboutthis in a previous productivity
episode, but the show has usedasana, uh, to plan the episodes
and it's just the projectmanagement thing, kind of like
an agile sprint board thing,whatever they call it that you
can drag things across.
But for today, for for thisrecording, I looked in asana
(07:44):
because the first column is abunch of show ideas and one of
them, which you entered in therenot too long ago, was, hey,
what about a behind-the-scenesshow?
So you got to come up withtopics, right?
Fortunately, jeff and I are bigfans of the AI LLM tooling and
if you run out of ideas and I dothis all the time and I keep.
(08:07):
It's not always a perfectsolution, but even yesterday I
went in and I'm like, hey, youknow, look through all of our
episodes.
Here's another.
This is going to keep happening, but all of our episodes don't
have transcripts uploaded to thehosting platform.
So that's another thing youhave to do, because it makes it
searchable by Google and onlineand the LLMs.
So when I ask Chet, gpt, forexample, look over all the Art
(08:31):
of Network Engineering podcastepisodes and help me come up
with I don't know, another 10,20, 30 episode topic ideas.
Like I'm out of ideas, help meout.
Well, only like 20% of ourtranscripts are on the hosting
platform.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Now again, jeff, you
helped me with that other
notebook Because it's Google'stool so it can look at YouTubes
and all those transcripts.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Which was amazing,
because I still don't know how
you did that.
It was kind of amazing.
But when I go into thatnotebook, it's got all the
YouTube videos that we've donemost of them, and I could just
click a thing and there's atranscript, copy and paste it
videos that we've done most ofthem and I could just click a
thing and there's a transcript,copy and paste it.
Now, I haven't done all of thatyet, but point being is, if we
had all of our transcriptsuploaded which you should do,
(09:13):
listener then people can findyou better.
It's a better SEO.
So I don't know.
You go on and you're lookingfor how to do an Ansible
playbook.
Well, if you've talked about itand it's in a transcript and
it's on the web, it'll getpulled in by Google, by all the
LLMs, all that good stuff.
Most of those large languagemodels can only look at text or
translate images into text.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
There are only a few
of them that actually can look
at video content, so if you'renot uploading that transcript as
(09:55):
part of the SEO, what you'rereally missing out on is kind of
the new thing, which is AIoptimization, where you're
really gearing things towards AIviewing this.
So I think that's really animportant piece of this is
understanding that you can pullin transcripts.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
That's a whole thing.
So I want to talk about YouTube, but you just reminded me of
another thing.
We're going to just jump allover the place because this
thing's popping to our heads,but the way people are searching
now has changed.
Right, we would go into Google,you would search something and
then the first page, you knowtop hits I generally scroll past
the sponsored stuff because Iknow somebody's paying for that
placement and then start to lookdown there.
(10:28):
Now, the new behavior customerjourney, if you would call it,
at least in the marketing worldis the AI overview that you see
up top.
So and I've noticed, I do thatmyself now so I'll Google the AI
overview and then I'm just kindof looking through that and I
don't even get down to the nextresult.
So if you're a show, if you havecontent and you want to be
(10:48):
discovered, I mean, yes, youneed transcripts, yes, it has to
be text-based.
But then huh, you know, if youget to the point of like, what's
the next level?
Like, well, if somebody isgoing to find me, but if you're
(11:11):
on youtube, which you should be,um, I don't know if the auto
captioning.
So youtube gives you autocaptioning, it'll just auto
discover and do it.
Whatever.
You can also upload your own,which, uh, I do, um, in my day
job.
Just to make sure it's accurate.
You know youtube might screwthings up it's technical content
and but I don't know if theyoutube closed captioning vtt
(11:33):
files, whatever the heck they'recalled are actually crawlable.
They're text but, like the autogeneration probably is.
Anyway, it's just another thingto consider.
Like I'm on youtube, so I guessthe net here is upload your
transcripts to whatever you'redoing.
I mean, this could even be ablog, right like I started out
with a blog 12 years ago.
It's text-based, it's helpful.
Do people even use blogsanymore?
(11:54):
I don't even know.
You know, do you look at blogs?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
not as much as I used
to, that's for sure.
I'm mostly going to youtube,and actually that brings up a
point.
We are talking about youtube,but, um, but you post the show
in a lot of other places.
Is there a tool that you use,or do you have to go to each one
of those?
Part of the reason I wanted todo this episode is because, as
I'm trying to help out more,there's a lot of this that I
(12:18):
don't know.
As an example Welcome to Jeff'straining.
What are you doing when you goto upload an episode?
Where do you upload it?
How does it work to upload it.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So before we get to
upload, you want to talk about
editing or no, let's jump around, let's do upload.
I am guilty of doing thingskind of old school, manually,
and it's mostly because I eitherdon't know how to automate it
or haven't done what you've toldme a hundred times.
We just spend the time they'regoing to automate it and then
you can rinse, repeat.
So when I upload, I have toupload the audio file to our
(12:49):
hosting, buzzsprout, and then Ihave to upload the video file to
YouTube.
That's a whole other crazybonkers thing that you and I
just went through today.
I spent an hour and a halftoday trying to figure out the
Google AdSense ID thing, becauseYouTube's going to put ads on
your video whether you'remonetizing or not.
So you might as well monetizeif you can.
(13:11):
But because we changed the showover last year from AJ's
company to mine and theownership changed, I had to
figure out like, well, how do I?
That was like an hour and ahalf today.
I was like well, you have to goto Google AdSense, you have to
create a thing, you have to getthe code, you have to put it in
all your webpages and I go toWordPress and I'm like I can't
even see HTML in here.
So, like all these things, keepin mind folks, keep it simple
(13:33):
if you can, because the deeperyou get into any of this and the
longer to youtube it does itsthing.
You can monetize whatever.
And then there's another cool,another tool rather, that we use
, called opus pro or opus clip.
I don't know the exact thing,but you give the youtube url,
(13:53):
once it's published, to opusclip.
It uses ai right, ai everything, and it pulls out short form
video.
So for tiktok, for for linkedinshorts, for um, and what that's
supposed to do is use whateveralgorithm and ai magic.
It has to pull out theinteresting things and it has a
rank, like you know, 100 out of100.
Very engaging, great keywords,blah, blah, blah, current in the
(14:15):
industry, um, and, and that'sthat's hit or miss.
I still have to go in and check.
Like the beginnings will be cutoff, the ends will be cut off,
it'll frame it wrong, like it'llhave half my face, half of your
face, and so it's not perfect.
But if you have an hour longshow and you want to create 25
short form clips because thereis a whole swath of folks.
(14:35):
So I met a woman.
She's a content creator and shetold me she's never been on
YouTube.
Never been on, don't want to beon.
We'll never be on TikTok.
I need everything in one tothree minutes.
That's it.
That's my age, demographic,that's how we grew up.
That's what we want.
So we were never going to doshort form.
But a sponsor came to us andsaid hey, if we give you some
(14:55):
money, will you do some shortform video for us?
Like, all right, great, nowwe're on TikTok and I guess
we'll try to figure that wholeworld and that's a whole thing
unto itself.
Like for you and I to get onhere and talk for an hour and
try to share some cool stuff andupload it that's a ton of work.
But then to try to cut allthose up into little pieces that
make sense on their own, youknow.
And then they got to havecaptions on, like it's yeah,
(15:18):
yeah, yeah, it can be right.
Like there's people who do thisfor a living.
We have jobs and families andresponsibilities and then we do
this, you know, on the side.
So I think I answered yourquestion.
I think there are tools outthere we don't use.
So I remember back in the day Idon't even know if it's a thing
anymore, but like Hootsuite.
So for social media, yeah, thatwas one of those things that
(15:45):
used to bes and it will post toyour platforms for you and you
can schedule them out.
So, again, I'm not great atkeeping up on that.
We just had Lexi on.
We did her first New Glennlaunch network in the thing and
I got really excited about thatepisode because I was super into
it, because it was space, itwas Lexi.
So I've scheduled a bunch ofthose and we have a lot of those
(16:06):
short form things.
But that's another thing youhave to go in and remember to do
and schedule and we used tojust have it on like auto, like
just create stuff, post it.
Who cares?
And the quality wasn't as goodbecause you know you're not
checking and it's like you gotcut off.
You start in the middle, middleof a sentence.
(16:27):
So, anyway, that's the videoportion, the audio portion.
So there's a million differenthosting platforms.
We use Buzzsprout, which Ithink is one of the first ones.
Buzzsprout has this great again, ai right, everything's going
to be AI.
But this I don't know if theycall it co-host AI but for, like
, let's say, it's $11 a month tohost your podcast on Buzzsprout
, for another 11 a month.
You can buy into this co-host,which we do, and when you upload
(16:48):
, it goes.
It creates a transcript, itgives you like 10 titles for
your episode, like it gives yousocial media posts, it gives you
a blog draft.
So it's really it's alltext-based but it's really
really helpful because, okay,here's everything you're going
to need to promote this thingand the transcript.
I think that's well worth $11 amonth.
So that's called co-host AI inBuzzsprout.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Does Buzzsprout post
to Apple Podcast?
Does it post to Spotify, doesit post to Podcatcher and all
the other ones.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
So you have to set
that up.
And again, credit wherecredit's due, in full
transparency, aj set up all the.
So the credit where credit'sdue and full transparency, aj
set up all the um.
So the hosting platform is thenconnected to, I guess, what you
call the pod catchers, whatyou're like.
There's apple podcasts andspotify and whatever.
There's like 15 of them.
So in buzzsprout, yes, you cango in.
You have to create accounts ineach of those.
(17:39):
So we have a spotify account,we have an apple and and again,
each of these are a rabbit hole,like when we move the show over
.
I had to go in and create myown apple id in my own google
email address and he had toremove his so I could put mine
in there.
So now my like, there's allthis weird.
Don't ever start a show and thentry to change ownership.
Don't ever do that because butit's a good way to learn, um,
(18:03):
but, yes, you, you have tocreate all those accounts and
all those different pod catchingapps and then you have to tell
your hosting thing.
To point to it, I believe it'san rss feed.
You would probably be able todescribe what that is better
than I I when I think rss feed,I think blog, like you subscribe
and then you get the new blogstuff.
But I think it's somehow usingyour podcast is an rss feed and
(18:24):
it pushes it via rss to all thatstuff.
Okay, um, if that makes sense Iguess.
So, yeah, and something I meantto tell you that I'll just tell
you in front of all these peoplenow.
But I even saw we got an emailfrom spotify.
So if you're podcasting,there's metrics are really
tricky.
So you, you get total downloads.
I see some podcasters will list, like subscribers, downloads,
(18:49):
streams, but there isn't acentralized place.
So what I wanted to tell you,and I'll just tell you now, is I
saw an email from Spotifysaying like hey, you had like
4,735 streams last month.
Well, there's like 10 podccatchers and there isn't a
dashboard that pulls all that in.
So if you're someone who wantsto get exposure to our audience
(19:11):
and you're trying to figure outwhat the reach is, I mean, I can
tell you we get, you know,8,000 downloads a month across
all episodes.
I can tell you we averagearound 2,700 per episode.
But that's downloads, right,that's not streams, I don't know
how, like.
So even yeah, just tracking themetrics, like that's again,
it's a full-time job.
Someone could probably go inand go to each of those and
(19:33):
figure out what the streams areand pull them in in some kind of
report, but it's very likesiloed and segmented, all the
different podcasters.
If you're on spotify.
You're a spotify person, youpay 10 bucks a month.
You love it, it it's great andthat's what you do your podcasts
on.
I don't know if it downloads anepisode and plays it, which is
what Apple Podcasts does.
I don't know if it streams it,because when we get the emails
from Spotify, there's thousandsof streams.
(19:54):
I don't see downloads, so Ihaven't figured that out.
I don't know how important itis, but I know that metrics are
important for folks who want tospend money and get access to a.
So that's like another layer ofyou know, we're five years in
and it's like, okay, we don'tcount streams.
Should we If there's tens ofthousands of streams a month
that we're not capturing andtelling potential sponsors we
(20:16):
have more listeners than we tellpeople?
Because we don't count streams,because it doesn't come in the
Buzzsprout metrics, the stats?
Speaker 2 (20:24):
We've got tools like
Buzzsprout, youtube.
What do we use to record this?
Because when I came on the showyears ago, I think you were
using zoom, but I was a guest onthe show, uh or I think we were
I think, we started on googlemeet it might have been, yeah,
and I think we were asking eachhost and the guest to record
(20:44):
locally.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
With what was it?
Odyssey, I forget?
Audacity, audacity, audacity,right, yeah, and then everybody
would have to upload those andthat makes for some interesting
editing.
Because of the, you know,latency and internet blips and
stuff like that, it's reallyhard to line everybody up.
So we did google meet, I think,for a while, and then I think
(21:05):
we changed to zoom around covid,because everybody went to zoom
um, and I forget how we cameupon riverside.
I think it's riverside fm,which is what we're recording on
now and what we've beenrecording on for a very long
time.
It's a great platform.
When it was a new product itwas buggy, like all new software
, and we really haven't had toomany problems for quite some
time with them.
(21:25):
So I'm pretty happy with them.
They're not a sponsor.
We don't get any money fromthem.
We actually pay them, um,that's what we use.
What I like about riverside isit captures everything locally
at full, so like if you're on a4k 60 frames per second.
Oh la la, dslr it's going tocapture that locally, um and
then upload it to the cloud.
So even if you have an internetblip because it'll happen as
(21:48):
we're recording you'll freeze,I'll freeze, somebody will go
out, but at the end it's allbuffered locally and then at the
end it just sends up the fileand then, when you download them
, there's actually a featurecalled like download synced
footage or whatever it's called,where it lines everything up
for you.
If there's a screen share,it'll put blank space in the
(22:08):
beginning, blank space at theend, so you can just pull the
files, put them in adobepremiere pro, which is what we
use to edit the show the nextquestion, which is what we do to
edit it, because right nowwe've got riverside fm, we've
got, uh, what's asana?
Speaker 2 (22:21):
what should we do for
the getting the stuff?
We've got buzzsprout, um, nowyou're talking, uh, what was the
editing tool again do you use?
Um adobe?
Speaker 1 (22:28):
premiere down on the
list adobe premiere.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
That's right.
Those are all the show notes atthe end well, there's also all
this hardware stuff.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
I mean we have nice
microphones, nice boom arms you
need.
I think it's called a jack.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
I have a business
right now, yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Okay, that's okay,
but it connects your microphone
to a computer and then thisparticular mic needs an amp
called a Cloudlifter.
So there's a bunch of hardware.
I have two Elgato key lights uphere that I can control
independently.
So if you're going to be oncamera, lighting is very
important.
If you're going to be on audio,I mean if you're going to do a
podcast get a good mic.
(23:02):
And you can get, I know,condenser I forget what these
mics are called, but it's goingto be far and above better than
any of the headset stuff or theBluetooth stuff or the earbud
(23:24):
stuff.
You know, if you want people tolisten to you talk for hours at
a time, right, Help them out,get them.
You know, get that, get them anice.
So for editing that you askedum, there's a bunch of tools.
So I think da vinci resolve issomething I've heard about.
I used to use that all.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yep, I have it.
Okay, that's what I use free.
Yep, that's what I really likeabout it, was it so?
I mean, I used to do, uh,professional video editing, and
when I say professional, Iworked for a non-profit
organization and they paid me todo video editing, so therefore,
I was a professional videoeditor.
But, yeah, I was using FinalCut Pro at the time.
I've used Adobe Premiere, I'veused Sony Vega.
(24:00):
There's a bunch of differenttools that I've used.
Now there's some really decentfree ones, and editing is
important for a podcast becauseyou're going to have time.
You know, I coughed at thebeginning and then you coughed.
You might want to cut that outor you might want to turn the
volume down for that bit.
Um, stuff like that.
That does make a big differencewhen people are watching the
(24:21):
show, uh, and tools likeriverside.
I didn't realize, I wasn'tquite sure how it gave it to you
, but it does give it to you onindividual streams for each
person, which ends up beingimportant and riverside will do
things for you too.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
They'll have like an
embedded editor, like you could
just press a magic button andit'll treat the audio for you,
remove silences, normalize thelevels, create an episode for
you with like a you know, a fourperson panel, like whatever.
There's a bunch of embeddedthings in there.
I don't want to say I'm a bitof a control freak, but I've
been doing this show and editingit long enough that I kind of
(24:53):
like you, know how it looks andhow.
I tried to do it one time underthe gun with uh, with the uh
included, riverside stuff, and Ijust wasn't.
It was very automated.
I mean it's.
It's great that I didn't haveto do all that work, but I
wasn't as happy with it as theother one.
So, um, pull down the files.
I use adobe premiere pro, notthat you have to, but that's uh
it it's.
It's a SAS product, adobeCreative Cloud.
(25:15):
The good part about that is itcomes with a ton of like.
It comes with the audio onAdobe Audition, which you can
sometimes use to treat audio.
I use Premiere Pro.
It comes with Photoshop, whichI don't know how to use.
It comes with Lightroom, whichI use for editing some amateur
photography stuff.
I do so.
Ton of tools.
There's animation stuff inthere.
I don't know how to use, but Ireally like the Adobe Creative
(25:37):
Cloud suite.
I pull down the files, I throwthem in there.
There's this really cool toolthat I'll tell you about and I
have to find what it's calledand I'd have to open Premiere
Pro to do that and that'll takea while because it takes forever
to launch.
But there's this plugin or anextension for Premiere Pro does
multi-cam editing for you.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
So With AI, I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, I don't know
how it's doing it, but you go in
so I'll put like three camerashoot, because I have mine, you
have yours, and then there's agroup shot that Riverside will
capture, like you and I rightnow are side to side as we're
watching.
I don't know what people see athome, but right now you and I
are looking at each other sideto side, so to record that and
that's its own track.
So three camera shoot and thentrack one my name, track two,
(26:20):
your name, track three, group,and then you hit a button and it
takes a couple of minutes butthen it'll make hundreds, if not
thousands, of cuts.
It's almost like having aproducer at the board.
Start with Andy doing intro, goto Jeff Jeff said something.
Go to group shot and it'sreally really good.
It doesn't mess up too much.
So the name of it escapes meand I'll find it.
(26:42):
It's not free.
You buy a license, we have it,but it's well worth it if you're
doing a multicam and it dependson how crazy you want to get
with this.
Then silences in there between,like now and then when we just
said right.
So there is another tool calledtime bolt.
Again, I forget how we foundout about this.
But t-i-m-e-b-o-l-t.
Uh, you throw either the videoand or audio into this tool and
(27:05):
it auto detects your lowestlevels.
Let's say negative 41 db is anexample.
That's what silence, that'swhat it determines silence is in
that track.
It will remove anything underthat threshold.
So you run it through and it'llsay okay, with these settings
and this thing, we're going toremove five and a half minutes
of silence from this video andfrom this audio.
Now, if you're trying to besuccinct and keep it tight and
keep people listening andwatching and not have a bunch of
(27:27):
boring silences like that,right, uh, time bolt is great
because it keeps it.
It keeps it moving.
I find it comforting too, cause, as you and I are talking,
before we were using time bolt,I was much more nervous about
like.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Oh no fill the
silences.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
We can't have gaps.
Now I know in post it's allgoing to be cleaned up and it'll
be fine.
So I run the audio through timebolt.
I run the video through timebolt.
It's tight, it's succinct,there aren't long pauses and if
you need to take a pause andthink about something it'll be
cut out in post.
I think that's it.
Oh wait, one more thing forediting and then ask your
question.
There's a tool that WilliamCollins turned me on to called
(28:01):
Enhanced Speech.
So it's something through Adobe.
It's free, I believePodcastadobecom forward slash
enhance.
So you grab your audio, youthrow it in there and you just
click Enhanced Speech.
I don't know what it's doing.
Again, our two favorite lettersare ai.
But it removes background noise, it normalizes things.
It makes it much more studioquality.
Before we use this, I used togo into premiere power in each
(28:24):
track.
I would do a d reverb on me, mytrack.
I would do a parametricequalizer for vocals.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I don't know any of
that but it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
So an eq to like
boost lows, like okay, I used.
I used to have to use theselike four or five filters on
each track to try to make itsound better and get all the
levels right, and then there's ahard limiter at the end where
you have to mix it all together.
It was a lot of manual stuff.
This tool for the audio thatwilliam turned me on to, what I
do now, is I just I export theaudio first.
(28:54):
Once it's edited, I throw it inhere, I clean it up.
I import this cleaned up audioin a Premiere Pro, mute
everything else and this is theaudio track because it just
sounds so good.
So it's amazing.
Adobe Enhanced Speech V2.
I don't know if it's freebecause I subscribe to the Adobe
stuff, but that's the lastthing I would say for audio
(29:15):
cleanup is it's reallyphenomenal.
What do you want to ask?
Speaker 2 (29:19):
I know I interrupted.
I was going to say a typicalepisode is, I don't know, we'll
call it 45 minutes to an hourand a half, sometimes when we've
got a guest, sometimes we getgoing.
How long does it take to editsomething like that?
Are you editing for hours orhave these tools really taken
that editing process to afraction of time?
Because I get to?
The reason I ask is becausewhen I was doing a five to seven
(29:41):
minute podcast, it would stilltake me over an hour and a half
to edit five to seven minutes.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
If you're editing
manually.
Yeah, it takes forever.
We would shoot an hour showthat would probably take
somewhere around three hours toedit, and we did that for years.
So there's a couple of thingsthat I think can help with that.
Now I don't know if this iswithin your control or not,
listener, but if you can get itright in camera, you don't have
(30:10):
to fix it later.
We've been very fortunate overthe years with our guests, with
our hosts, people like you, thatthey're eloquent communicators,
they're clear, they know whatthey're saying and they don't
get lost too much.
Again, full transparency.
A couple minutes ago Icompletely lost my train of
thought mid-sentence and we'llcut that out.
But as long as you get it incamera and it's really the team
(30:31):
and the synergy and when youhave a good conversation, you
don't really have to remove much.
Now, if we're talking tosomebody who does some cool
stuff and they're like and Isaid the thing I shouldn't have
like that happened to me.
I got a little too open andhonest on one of our episodes
not too long ago and probablysaid one or two things that
weren't the smartest thing tosay, just from like a career
(30:52):
perspective, right, like I hadan opinion on something.
I was having a day and I saidsomething.
I make a note of that like, ohyeah, I need to remove that
because I don't want to, likehave somebody mad at me, you
know whatever right like at work.
Or I said something funny aboutmy wife.
She might not think it's funny,so on the rare occasion I'm
like, oh yeah, I, because wehave a very relaxed vibe here.
I think that's another good.
That's kind of just like a tip,that's not like a tool, but I
(31:13):
find that the more relaxed youcan make your guests and your
co-hosts and just have this bean open, honest chat like this
doesn't feel different to methan when you and I sat in the
comcast knock with a cup ofcoffee and a bagel, just
shooting the breeze, talkingabout stuff, what's going on,
how's the thing?
Oh, that's cool, like how's thekids?
And so I think the more you canfoster that environment and and
(31:33):
it's not easy, remote, I mean,we've been doing it long enough
but in a room together there'skind of this synergy, there's an
energy, sure, if you have anervous guest or somebody.
We've had guests that just don'ttalk Like, hey, I want to come
on your podcast and I'm like, ohmy God, so you're in security,
you work on firewalls at thisFortune 100 company.
Like, wow, what's that?
(31:54):
Like Give us a day in the life.
Like, oh yeah, man, securityit's really good, I know, and it
hasn't happened much, butthere's just been a couple
people like, oh my God, so ifyou can get a good guest that
can communicate, if you have ahost or two that are eloquent
communicators, the direct answerto your question is it used to
take us three hours to edit anhour show.
Now, with these tools and thatkind of almost is a nod and a
(32:18):
tip of the hat to you know, Iused to be like anti-network
automation because like, oh,they're going to take our jobs
and blah, blah, blah, and Idon't want to be a coder.
But oh my God, I have saved somuch time leveraging for lack of
a better term automation toolsand content creation that I
would be a fool to continue todo it artisanally and spend
three hours editing every one ofthese shows when really I can.
Probably I could get it done inunder an hour for sure.
(32:41):
So, like where I, where I getheld up, is like things I'm not
good at.
Like the thumbnail for YouTubeis an example.
Dan used to be on the show.
He was a video um like weddingguy, and he knew how to do that.
He was really good at it.
So we had branded thumbnailsand all that.
Well, then Dan left and wedidn't have thumbnails anymore,
so we stopped for a while.
Now who cares?
How important is a thumbnail?
I will tell you I have metYouTubers that spend an enormous
(33:04):
amount of time on thumbnails,on colors and brightness.
I know a guy who's verysuccessful on YouTube that went
out so he was gracious enough tocome on and talk to us, cause
we're like, how are you?
Like?
How are you getting the numbersyou're getting Like it's insane
.
Like you haven't been aroundlong and you're killing it and
like whole Whole research, likewhat thumbnail would perform
(33:24):
well and then reverse engineerthe topic of the show to what
he's doing.
I'm like you created a showbased on thumbnails.
Now, again, I'm kind of being alittle overdramatic and
underselling his true talentsand what he does.
But it's better to have athumbnail than not.
You know the attention economy.
We're all scrolling right andyou have, I don't know, a second
, maybe two, to capturesomebody's attention Visually.
(33:45):
It's going to be that thumbnail.
So if you can pull them in,great, the title is going to be
the next thing.
And there's different titles youcan do.
I was looking on YouTube theother day and they have like
hours and hours of videos.
You can look at them Like bestthumbnails, best things for
titles, best things fordescriptions.
Like do you want to tellsomebody what you're going to do
?
Do Like do you want to tellsomebody what you're going to do
?
Do you want to ask a question?
(34:05):
Do you want to be compelling?
Do you want to draw in peoplewho are already watching?
Do you want to draw new people?
Again, I don't have time.
You don't have time to like.
This can be a full-time job.
People that do this as afull-time job.
(34:28):
You can go as deep in theamazing with creating our
thumbnails, and what tool is itthat we've been using that helps
with that?
Speaker 2 (34:32):
So we're using Canva
for that it is.
I had just learned about Canva,fairly recently, and I'd heard
it.
It's funny, I heard it in theover the course of about two or
three weeks.
I heard it mentioned by likethree or four different people,
and so I was like all right, letme go check out this camera
thing, and they have a freeversion and there's a paid
version, and that's one of thethings actually, I want to make
(34:53):
sure that we do convey is, youknow, we've talked about a lot
of tools that cost money.
There are so many tools thatare completely free.
There's OBS Studio, which issomething.
If you're just doing your ownthing, look at OBS studio.
You can do a ton of different,your own edits with keyboard
shortcuts.
Canva, though what Canva doesis it?
It makes creating visuallyappealing, like PowerPoint
(35:18):
presentations or thumbnails forYouTube or, you know, even
backgrounds for headshots orwhatever.
Canva does a really good job ofmaking that stuff super
accessible to people like me,who I have zero talent when it
comes to things that arebeautiful.
(35:38):
I mean, it's why you see me inblack shirts and a hat, because
this is the best I can do with awardrobe.
I just don't have that artisticability.
I'm good with work.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
I saw you without
your hat once and I'm like you
have a nice head of hair.
I didn't even know you had it.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
But I mean, I'm not
an artistic person by nature,
but I can look at something andbe like, oh, that looks really
good.
And I think Canva has been justa tool that really, really has
helped with that.
It's really made it easy for meto do things like thumbnails,
as they give you some basicideas.
Then it's just, you'rereplacing elements.
I'll replace that person's facewith my face, or replace this
(36:14):
little picture here with maybeanother, you know, our own logo
or whatever.
So Canva, a free tool that youcan pay into.
Even Riverside studio has afree version and then a paid
version.
Uh, yeah, like I said, obsstudio uh, we've talked, time
all has a free version it'llhave a.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
So it's a very good
point you make.
I and I guess we should havestarted with that up front.
We've been going, you know, foryears and we've we've built you
know quite a bit, quite a bitof of dollars over the years to
to be able to cover these things.
When we started, most ofeverything we were doing was
free and anything that cost,anything was coming, you know,
right out of our pockets.
But, to your point, most ofthis stuff is free, like DaVinci
(36:56):
.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Resolve or.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
OBS for like, yeah,
and I use OBS and I love OBS.
Timeball has a free version.
I think you get a watermark onit.
Same with Riverside You'll geta.
But like, who cares?
Right, like you can, you canuse the tool.
I guess what I would say isjust get started.
You know I could.
I'm glad you reeled us back inbecause I'm thinking like, wow,
you could listen to all this andgo, oh my God, like this is
(37:17):
intense, this is a lot.
And I know Igets instructor ofall time.
When I got to meet him, I thinkhe came on our show.
Well, I knew he came on ourshow, but I think it was during
when we were talking to him onthe show when he said man, andy,
my first 10 to 30 videos that Imade were hot garbage.
(37:39):
Now this is Keith, who makesthe best instructional
networking content that I'veever seen.
But he's like you just have tostart.
You have to know that you'regoing to be a beginner and
beginners aren't going to be asgood as experts.
But you can't get to expertuntil you begin.
So just start.
So I think that's a good callout.
Don't get too hung up on like,I have to be as good as these
people, or that people.
(37:59):
I mean, I've been talking toEthan lately at Packet Pushers.
I don't think there's reallyany art of network engineering
without Packet Pushers.
I listened to them for yearsNow.
It's not like, ooh, let's do apodcast because they do a
podcast.
But podcasting was in my lifein part because they were out
doing it.
They were having theconversations and we're going to
have Ethan on our show.
But one of the things that I'mgoing to tell him when he comes
(38:21):
on is he let me get into roomsthat I didn't have access to yet
.
What do I mean by that?
Like I was a cable guy atComcast who wanted to be a
network engineer, who wasstudying for the CCNA, and my
peers at the time were a bunchof cable guys telling me I was
wasting my time, money andeffort studying for the CCNA.
I went to a career thing outhere.
(38:43):
It was mostly a bunch of likemiddle management people who are
out of work, but it was thisreally cool thing that they had
where you could go out and theywould have speakers and seminars
and resume workshops and allthat.
But the thing I thought wasamazing like well, you can go on
Twitter.
So I got on Twitter because Iwent to this career thing and
they said, if you create aprofile and you start connecting
with people in industry and HRmanagers and network engineers
(39:05):
like you want to get into therooms of these people and start
talking to them and havingconversations, let them know who
you are, learn from them.
So that's what podcasts likeNetwork Collective and Pack of
Pushers and Russ's the Hedge andbefore I was a network engineer
, I was like I kind of felt likea fly on the wall in these
conversations, listening to howthey talk and how they talk shop
(39:26):
and what happened Like, oh,that's really cool, so you might
be that for somebody someday.
I guess is my point of this Likeif you create content, you have
no idea the impact it couldhave.
And I know that when PacketPushers started out they weren't
like we're going to start thisso we can help Andy feel like he
belongs.
But for me, from my perspective, they helped me feel like I
(39:47):
belong, as did you knoweverybody on Twitter that
connected with me and was kindto me and looked at my resume
and helped me with subnettingwhen I wanted to give up, and so
I think creating content andtrying to create a community
around your content is awonderful way to either plug
into a community that you'retrying to be a part of or create
your own.
Create something that doesn'texist Maybe your mindset or
(40:09):
worldview isn't represented outthere and you can go create it
and build a community around you.
We can't end without talkingabout promotion.
I think, because you want peopleto know that you're out there
and to be able to discover you.
I know that the podcatchers.
So I look at the podcatchers aslike a Google of podcasts.
You can go into Apple Podcastsor Spotify and I don't know,
(40:31):
type in anything auto repair orcomedy or network engineering,
and it'll pull up based on thekeywords that you put in when
you created it.
So make sure you're in thepodcatchers if it's a podcast,
what else Our Discord server isawesome's.
That's more of a community thanpromotion.
But social media right, it usedto be twitter.
I know there's a lot of funnyfeelings.
(40:52):
You're on twitter right now, sofind wherever you're
comfortable with.
There's twitter, there's bluesky, there's reddit, there's I
mean, there's probably so manynow instagram um, do people even
go on facebook anymore?
I don't know.
I probably.
I probably sound like a boomertalking about.
Facebook, linkedin, right, yeah,exactly, and there's probably
going to be 10 more by the timethis episode comes out.
But create profiles of yourshow name or your content name,
(41:16):
and so it's even a way, like youknow, if you're going to do
consulting, like I know this guy, tom Lawrence, we're going to
have on soon and he does ITconsulting, but he's got a great
show on youtube that he doesand it and there's a ton of
value there.
Like he does all this, um,unify content and I just got a
ubiquity system at home and Idon't really know how it works
and I don't know how to do it,but I found a ton of videos of
him.
(41:37):
But I discovered him because Iwas trying to look for how to do
something and then I was like,oh, he actually has like a
consulting business and like, ifI I lived in Detroit by him and
I had a business and I neededhelp, like standing up, you know
networking, I would like go tohim.
So he has leveraged.
I think in part, my perceptionof him is he's leveraged content
creation as a way to fill hissales funnel for his consulting
(41:58):
business.
Right, which is brilliant, Iit's.
It's nothing I ever considered.
Um, what else can we talk abouthere?
What?
What don't you know how to donow on the show that we need to
talk about?
Are you fully trained now?
Do you know all the things?
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Not even close.
Now, that's the thing is.
I feel like I'm constantly.
You'll mention some tool, butwait, what Do I have access to
that?
Oh, no, hold on, let me gofigure out how to set that up.
Yeah, I think that Tools faultcould be a problem.
Problem like don't right,there's too many tools, it's,
it's probably ridiculous.
Well, and then again that goesback to get just get started.
(42:30):
Do something you're passionateabout.
I think that it's beginning.
We were talking about that.
The reason that we reallyrecommend or or even encourage
people to get into contentcreation is because it's a good
way to get your name out there.
It's a video or audio resume,for lack of a better term.
(42:50):
What that means, though, isthat, more than anything, what
really needs to be in that isauthenticity.
It needs to be you.
It needs to be you on thescreen.
It needs to be you on the page.
It needs to be you in the audio.
Do something you're passionateabout.
If you want to be a networkengineer, that doesn't mean you
have to do a network engineeringpodcast.
(43:10):
It's something that you reallyknow a lot about is home
automation Podcast, or a YouTubechannel about home automation.
Do it about something you'repassionate about that you care
about.
That really bleeds throughacross the screen and people
they see that, and so I wouldsay, start by being passionate,
(43:32):
pick up some of the basic tools,reach out to people who are
already podcasting, because alot of times I remember when I
first did tech tip Tuesday thatshow one of the things I did at
the time, which you don't reallysee anybody doing anymore, was
I had my email address that Iposted oh, just shoot me an
email here, and I had peoplereach out to me who were nervous
to reach out to me because theysomehow thought, because I was
on YouTube, I was some famousperson.
(43:54):
But obviously that's not thecase.
You can reach out on thingslike Discord to Andy or myself,
or LinkedIn, or if you've gotsome other podcaster that you
really like, take a shot atreaching out.
Ask them what they're doing.
It's a community of people thatreally like to help and it's an
easy barrier to entry.
But then the other thing Iwould say is make sure that the
content that you produce issomething that you can be proud
(44:15):
of, because it is your resume,right.
So I've seen plenty of episodeson YouTube where I'm like man,
that guy's just droning on andon and on, because he did no
editing and all I have is abunch of words.
So those would be my two cents.
And do I have everything pickedup on this?
Absolutely not, but I amexcited about some of the tools
(44:36):
that we've already got.
I'm excited about the directionthat anyone's going.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
So all the
communication channels are
completely open.
We have a link tree.
It's linktreecom art of net eng.
All the things are in there.
You could ping us anywhere.
I have a contact form on mywebsite from at ipandandycom.
We have our Discord server.
We are reachable everywhere.
We are on every social media,on LinkedIn, all over the place,
and I have people reaching outfrequently like hey, I want to
(45:00):
do this, or I want to do that,or I want to come on your show,
or can you look at my resume.
So I really enjoy doing thisshow because I love to
communicate, I love tech, I getto learn a lot of cool stuff,
meet a lot of cool people and,at the end of the day, I get to
help people.
And for me, like our buddy mikeasked me once like, why do you
do what you do?
And you know I'm like well, youknow, I just want to have
impact.
He's like well, everybody saysthat what do you really want?
(45:21):
I'm like well, I want to helppeople.
He's like why?
Like?
He kept pushing me on, like,why do you do what you do?
And like there's this guy,wayne Dyer.
I got turned on two years ago,but his whole thing was like I
just want to feel good andwhatever I can do to like feel
good and honestly, like all themessages I get from people who
either want help and get it fromus, or we're able to make an
introduction or we do a resumereview, or it just feels good
(45:41):
helping the people.
That because I always think ofme sitting in my cable truck
with no community and I didn'treally feel like I had any help
other than the cisco neticat atthe time, the 12 people in my
class and my fiance at the timelike we can do this.
But if you surround yourselfwith a good community of people
and people that'll help you andeven us.
Like it's.
It's funny.
I've had people I'll respond onlike linkedin or dm somewhere
(46:04):
like quickly, oh my God, Ididn't think you'd ever respond
Like this is amazing.
Like hey, man, I'm here.
Like this is what I do.
I I want to create morerelationships and meet more
people in the community.
Like this is why we do it Right.
So, um, no, this has been great.
Right on top and listen.
(46:28):
If if this didn't interest you,I apologize.
We'll be into the super nerderystuff, um, in the next episode,
but I really like the idea ofjust peeking behind the curtain.
Why do we do what we do?
How do we do what we do?
What's all the stuff?
And and don't let it scare you,like you can keep this as
simple as you want.
You can just get on your iphoneand talk into the voice memo
thing and post it up there andit's perfectly fine.
All I would tell you is try tobe succinct because, to jeff's
point, if you start droning onand on and I realize that I'm
(46:50):
just listening to everynonsensical thought you have,
you know, squirrel, um, try tocut out the distractions, but um
, no, this is this has beengreat, um, for all things.
Art of net eng.
I mentioned it before.
You can check out our link tree.
Uh, forward slash.
Art of NetEng.
The podcast is on there.
We have a study group in there.
I am going to work on the merchstore I have.
(47:10):
You know, jeff, there's, like Idon't know, seven different
things that I'd like to do andthere's just so much time.
Like, I want to redesign ourwebsite.
When's that going to happen?
Probably never.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
So we're going to
stay on.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Um, the merch store.
I really want to refresh Um.
Like there's no pint glasses inthere and I like to send some
pint glasses to some friends andfor some reason we had them.
We don't now and I I got to putthat in there.
Um, I've also um.
I've also implemented a coupleof um, like financial support
models, so I started adding someum ads into the show.
(47:43):
So if you hear different adsthat aren't us reading ads, it's
just because we're trying tokeep the doors open, the lights
on the things that we do.
There is an expense associatedwith it, so there's been some
ads in the show lately.
Open the feedback If you'relike oh my God, I hate this.
Every other ad you have is anAI ad and I don't want to listen
to that.
They're short, I think they'remid-show, so it shouldn't be too
(48:04):
bad, but we're just trying somedifferent things out here.
There's also a Support Us linkthrough Buzzsprout.
I'll get it up on the link treeat some point.
But basically, if you'relooking for a way to support us,
subscribe to the show, sharewith a friend, hop in the
Discord, buy us a coffee,whatever, and if it's just
listening and hanging out andbeing part of our community,
then that's great.
Being part of our community,then that's great.
(48:26):
We're happy to have you here.
So thanks so much for joiningus and we'll catch you next time
on the Art of NetworkEngineering podcast.
Hey folks, if you like what youheard today, please subscribe
to our podcast and your favoritepodcatcher.
You can find us on socials atArt of NetEng, and you can visit
linktreecom forward slash Artof NetEng for links to all of
our content, including the A1merch store and our virtual
(48:47):
community on Discord called it'sAll About the Journey.
You can see our pretty faces onour YouTube channel named the
Art of Network Engineering.
That's youtubecom.
Forward slash Art of NetEng.
Thanks for listening.