February 14, 2025 • 26 mins
Kicking of the Vote in Leander Series for the 2025 Election cycle. Discussing voter turnout, what that means and introducing our guest host for the podcast series, Mr. Morgan Tuttle
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to this the latest episode of Lean
in Leander. I'm your host Andrew now Dean, and we're
going into season four of the podcast, which kind of
boggles my mind at least, I can't believe that we've
continued or been able to continue to do this. It's
definitely a passion project as far as I'm concerned, and
(00:30):
hopefully you as an audience are still finding value in
some of the conversations that we're bringing to the podcast.
I'm hoping that here in season four, we're actually able
to expand a little bit on that and have some
additional people talking about some topics that I think will
be very important to us as we move forward as
(00:50):
a community, and hopefully you'll find some interest and some
value in those presentations as well. One of the other
things that we do here, and I'm sure a lot
of you may know the podcast from that series, is
the Vote in Leander series. Now we're going to make
a slight change to our approach, and we'll cover that
(01:11):
a little bit further into the episode give you the
information related to that particular approach change, but I did
want to start with some information that of course is
pretty much the same type of information that we've presented
before as it relates to voting in your local elections,
but I wanted to cover it in a slightly different
(01:33):
way to give you a little bit different perspective on
what it is that I'm trying to highlight in regards
to voter turnout and also give you some information on
registration dates and things of that nature to help you
along in that process as well. So, without any further ado,
let's take a look at some of that presentation material
(01:55):
and get an idea of exactly what it is we're
looking at here in Leander as far as this next
election cycle is concerned. So we've covered this subject matter
of voter turnout on the podcast in the past, and
what we find is that the voter history in Leander
(02:15):
is one where low voter turnout is the rule, not
the exception. There's an expectation here that we would hope
for a larger turnout, but that just isn't the case.
If we go back to twenty nineteen, we can see
that the population was around sixty seven thousand, but the
(02:35):
voter turnout was about two point nine percent. Now, over
the last few years, it's improved on a couple of
years and then kind of comes back down in twenty
twenty four, which was the last election we had here
in the city, and there we had about four thousand,
three hundred and twenty six folks show up. So what
(02:55):
does that mean at the end of the day. And
this is really what we're talking about here. The budget
for the city of Leanders about three hundred and thirty
eight million dollars. And I've highlighted here a few key
highlights of areas of interest and where money is spent.
But you're talking about, you know, three hundred million plus
(03:16):
dollars being managed by an electorate that is not even
ten percent of the total population. And I just don't
think that is right. You should have more say in
what happens in this city. So here at Voting Leander,
we always kind of emphasize the things that we can control.
(03:38):
Check your registration. April third is the last day to
register to vote. Early voting for this election cycle starts
April twenty second and will go through April twenty ninth,
and then of course the actual election day is on Saturday,
May third, So your process is on that should include
(04:03):
researching those candidates.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
This is a setup episode, if you will.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
We're gonna be doing a few things a little bit
differently here in the coming months, and I wanted to
make sure that the audience was not only aware of,
but also prepared for some of those changes. So with
me here today is Engineer Extraordinary Morgan Tuttle. Morgan has
been working with me on a number of episodes that
(04:40):
we've done in the past year, mostly with the Voting
Leanders series here at Lantern Media Studios, which was a
huge upgrade for me, you know, going from the home
studio to this wonderfully adorned area with all the nice
gadgets and stuff.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Much better than your closet.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Much better than my closet, right, yeah, no, for sure,
for sure, even though this is not much bigger than
a closet. At the end of the day, you can't
really tell with the camera though, you know, once it's
all the magic of.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Video, right.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
So anyway, so I wanted to introduce you again, the
audience here at lean and Leander to Morgan and let.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
You kind of learn who he is a little bit.
We're gonna talk a little.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Bit about what you know brought him here to Leander
and a little bit of the story how we met
and ended up here today. But there's a couple of
reasons that we're doing this, and I'll go into those
as we move forward.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
But so let's start there.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Morgan and I originally met at the Leanderthal Distillery and
you're attending bar right right. My wife enjoys being here
in Scott's a friend and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
So we we do like to come here and support
local business.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
And leanderthals to be one of the one of our
favorites on the list. But Morgan and I I kind
of just kind of struck up a little bit of
a friendship over you know, repeated visits. And I don't know,
I guess it was about what about a year, ye
little bit over a year ago, right, I'm at Leanderthal
(06:15):
and there's a card on the bar and it's Lantern
Media Studios.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
What the hell is this?
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Right?
Speaker 2 (06:24):
And I was like, I don't know what this is.
So I went and picked up the car and I
started asking around.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
It turns out that Morgan had put together this space
right to you know, for engineering, right, you know, audio engineering,
video engineering and whatnot, you know, with the idea, I mean,
maybe some people will come in.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And do a podcast and blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
And you know, that business model was something that I
had personally considered doing, you know, but just never got
around to it. Right. It was kind of one of
those ideas, Yeah, yeah, what made you take the leap?
Speaker 5 (06:56):
Well, I tend to get crazy ideas in my head
and before thinking about it, I just do it. I
got the idea because, you know, I was visiting a
friend of mine in Alaska who has a film production company,
and he has this giant warehouse for his film studio,
but he built a podcast corner in the corner of
(07:18):
his warehouse, kind of set up like this, and I
really loved the setup and I love the idea of it,
and I'm like, you know what I you know, I've
been talking to him about.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Kind of expanding his kind of service down here, and
I was like, you.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Know what, I'm gonna I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
I'm gonna build it out.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
And so I came down, did some research, looked up prices,
and you know, tried to find a space and Scott
was willing to let me use his room here.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
So here, I am, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
And I know Scott does a podcast as well, and
he's recorded a couple of dogs actually stepped in and
like when he was actually a cordner about the start,
I can't remember. And I know you guys have done
some things together in that sense, right, yeah, so you're
not completely foreign to being in front of the camera
and necessarily no, all right, So so he has some experience, folks.
Speaker 5 (08:09):
I prefer to be behind the camera right right when
you know, when I need to, I'll jump in front.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
But so is there like a general like you mentioned
this friend of yours in Alaska and you know, if
he had a movie studio, you know, do you.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Come from that space? Is that something you've done.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Before or yes? And no, So me and him go
way back. You know, we met late nineteen hundred.
Speaker 5 (08:35):
We were in middle school, and he's he's always been
like there's pictures of him when he was even younger,
like filming things with his parents' big camcorder on his shoulder.
And we actually, you know, when we were in high school,
we you know, his little brother was in a pewe
football league and we're like, you know what, let's record
their football games. And so we went to all of
(08:57):
their games and recorded all the games. And then put
together a movie at the end of the year, put
in too music and sold VHS is back, you know
when there's VHS to all the parents and made some
good money. And that was kind of the start of
you know, his career in film production. And you know,
I was more of a follower in that, you know,
definitely doing all the technical stuff.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
He's you know, a very creative person.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
And we ended up going to school together in California.
He we went to the Academy of Art University. He
went into film production and I went into photography to
kind of branched out. But you know, it was very
expensive there, so you know, we were there for about
a year. He went back to Alaska to start his company,
and then I ended up moving to Virginia. You know,
(09:42):
very long journey to come to Texas, but you know,
I kind of moved away from it.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
And now I'm getting back into.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
So did you did you there? I don't make an
assumption here are you from Alaska? It sounds like some origin.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
I mean, so I was a military brat, so from Alaska.
I kind of grew up there.
Speaker 5 (10:05):
You know, I lived there for twelve years, you know,
from seventh grade until.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
The Formidable years, right, when you're really kind of figuring
stuff out.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
That's kind of cool. It reminds me of.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
So I mean for me, audio and production and stuff
like that. I was a musician as a as a child, right,
So you know I was in band. I played trumpet,
and I was in jazz bands and you know, concert
bands and symphony and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
And I did that all through high school.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
And then when I got into college, when I was
attending University UTL Passo, they had an NPR station, right,
And one of the classes that I was taking was
video and audio production, right. And so I had a buddy.
(10:59):
Actually he lived a lot like you. To be honest, No,
it's weird.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
It's weird.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
I'm just because I just thought of it, like as
we're speaking, I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember this.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
His name was Doug, right. My first name is Doug.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Right. So we put together our little production company during college,
and we you know, called ourselves Dug and Doug Productions.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Right. And this was not the little VHS cameras. This
was the full blown, you know.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Channel three news cameras, big heavy, heavy units, right, And
we would go out and we would do these what
are now commonly called you know, common interest stories, right,
you know, just the bartender and you know the dancer
and stuff like that. You know, just we would do
these crazy stories and my professor hated it.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
He absolutely hated it.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
He was like, you call this journalism, this is yellow journalism.
And I'm like, yeah, but they're kind of doing it
on entertainment tonight, Like that's that's what's selling, right, Muffin's
the singing cat needs area exactly exactly. Yeah, he didn't
fail me, but he didn't make it easy, right anyway,
That's funny that that would that would come up. But yeah,
(12:15):
So talking about you know, setting up the studio and whatnot,
how how how has that gone for you so far?
Like I mean, are people becoming more aware of this?
I know part of my efforts in doing things with
Lantern Media has been to you know, hopefully bring a
little bit more attention to it, right.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, I don't know if I've gotten any referral.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
So, uh, no referrals.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
Unfortunately, when I first launched Lantern Media studio, there's a
lot of interest to come and record, you know, people
oh I want to start a podcast, or oh you know,
we should come in and all that, and even had
a couple of people sign up for a time slot
and then they just they canceled, backed out, and people just.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Haven't shown up.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
But it's I get that a lot, like I do,
you know, And I mean this is season four. I
mean I've been doing this for four which is crazy
to me, Like, you know, I honestly I'm like how
to continue to do this? So yeah, this is the
fourth year and I think I'm sixty nine episodes or
(13:19):
something like that, which most podcasts, when you go look
at that data, right, like, they'll they may last, you know,
especially small like this, you know it may last fifteen
maybe twenty episodes, right, And that's been generous.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
So this is always it's always been kind of a
passion project anyway.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
I mean it's just you know, I was I'm hoping
to and trying to fill a gap in what I
think is a piece of the communication and the conversations
that are taking place.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
But that said, it's hard. It's not easy.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Yeah, no, I totally get it.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
And I will say I have not spent a lot
of time, you know, doing the outreach or lead generation
or really advertising in a whole lot.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Just kind of you know, this is a this is
a hobby project. It's not my main business, right I
do you know, web development it is my day.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
Job, right, so I you know that takes most of
my time, right, But this year I'm hoping.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
To actually you know, get some get some.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Traction on the studio, right, which is kind of bringing
us great segue by the way, see you're pretty good
at this. That brings us to the reason that we're
in the studio today, and the reason that we're doing
this particular episode is Morgan is going to step into
a role with the Voting Leanders series this year and
(14:42):
he is going to be the primary interviewer of the candidates.
I'm stepping kind of behind the camera for this series
this year a couple of different reasons. But you know,
what I wanted to be able to do is to
continue what I think is the valuable contribution that the
(15:07):
Voden Leander series brings to the conversations as far as
our local politics is concerned, and that I wanted to
ensure that that vehicle continue to do what it does
without necessarily having to have me in front of the
camera for that, right, because the conversations are still valuable
regardless of who's having the conversation. That conversation with candidates
(15:32):
so that they can express themselves in a more personal
and a casual environment I think is important. It helps
people understand them as individuals and gives a little bit
more flavor as to you know, who they might be
or who they are, you know, generally speaking, you strip
away some of the political posturing and things of that nature,
(15:53):
and you kind of get people to open up a
little bit and be a little bit more personal. So
Morgan's doing me a huge solid by doing It's huge.
It's huge he.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
And and and.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
To his benefit, I hope it'll be a good experience
because I know he has some ideas of kind of
getting his.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Own podcast going here this year, and.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
So hopefully there's a little quick pot quote there. We're
kind of helping each other out, and you know, I'm
really looking forward to being able to to see how
that develops. I don't think it's going to be too
far removed from what we do with the Voting Leander series.
I think it's generally going to be relatively similar, right,
But Morgan's a different person, right, and I think that
(16:39):
brings in that variable of you know, the questions will
be somewhat the same, but what he picks up on
and what I would pick up on might be different,
and I think that's going to bring a nice little
color to that series. I'll still continue to be doing
Lean and Leander, and there's some more information coming soon
(17:02):
that'll kind of clear up some.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Of the things. I'm being a little vague. I'm being
a little veiled. Yeah, that's probably what I'm looking for there.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
I just got over the flu, so the brain's not
one hundred percent quite yet.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
It'll kick in here any day now.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
But yeah, so I'm being a little vague, but you'll
figure that out here in short order.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
And that will actually be.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Our first episode of voting Leander, right, so where you're
going to be taking charge on that one and.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
All secrets will be revealed.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
But yeah, so tell me a little bit more about
your day to day, like you know, the web development
and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And we've touched a little bit on that before.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Actually I've even said, you know, hey, I think you
need to redo my website. I'm horrible at WordPress. Like
I'm terrible, terrible, terrible.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
This is a shame because it's so easy.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Oh, I just can not figure that one out. I
don't know what it is.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I mean it's probably self created blockage, right, but I
just I cannot navigate that at all, like not very well.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Depends on how it's set up.
Speaker 5 (18:05):
I mean, they're you know WordPress, It's it's an open
source project. So now there's so many different themes, plugins
and all this stuff that will.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Change your experience.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
So you know, you might have a setup that is
a little more difficult to work with versus you know,
the way I set things up. You know, because I
have a lot of clients that I want them to
be able to work on their own websites if they
need to.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
You know, of course I'll still support them if they
need me.
Speaker 5 (18:29):
But you know, I try and make it as easy
as possible for them to actually go and make their
own updates, you know, once I build a new website.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Yeah, and and most whizzywig editors that I've used in
the past have that functionality, right.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
But the problem with Wizzywig editors for those of you who.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Are thinking about developing your own website and doing your
own thing.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I mean, there's a few.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
Out there that are that are good, like wix as
a as a you know, self directed editor is it's
pretty decent, it's easy to use, it's fairly simple. A
lot of templated environments, right, I just happen to be
a little bit more dangerous just because I understand CSS.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
I can get into HTML.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Coding and so I can change things, right, and if
the editor allows me, then it's great, right, But.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
When it doesn't, it's a pain.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Then it's a pain, right, I can't figure it out
right because you know what you want to do.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
Yeah, And you know that's the thing with you know
editors like wigs and squarespace is it's very easy to
get started, get your you know, grab a template, you know,
start putting your information and.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
You're good to go.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
It's when you need the additional functionality you're trying to
do something.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
That's a little outside their box.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
Then that's when you know, solutions like WordPress come in
where it's.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
It's very flexible, right, much more flexible, have you.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
I don't know about WordPress specifically from an AI perspective,
any plug ins there or anything that they're doing.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
It's like, yeah, there's a lot of you know, page
builders them builders that are moving in, you know, plugins
that are you know integrating AI into creating your website,
and even AI outside of word Press to you know,
you can there are plenty of services now where you
can use AI.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah, I've actually the resembling that was. I recently did.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
That and I was pretty pretty pleased with the results. Yeah,
I was. I was the initial The initial renderings were
really pretty good, Like they were spot on for what
I was thinking I wanted to do. So once I
had the prompts in, it pretty much produced the website
(20:43):
that I was thinking of, like I visualized it, like
that's what I was wanting.
Speaker 5 (20:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
It took a while to figure out how to edit
from there. Right, that was a little.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Bit probably a little bit more convoluted, just from the
perspective of the way they did it, not necessarily the
tool itself.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
They just have a real good navigation and.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
Yeah, when things like AI, like the way it can
do things. Yeah, it might look nice on the surface,
but it could be a mess on the back end.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, you know, think of.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
You know, your gaming computer.
Speaker 5 (21:14):
You know, it might on the outside it might look
really pretty, but if you pop it open and they
didn't do any cable management, it's a mess. And trying
to figure some stuff out as a pain. Like I said,
it's getting better. And you know a lot of people
are complaining about trying to compete with AI, like it's
going to eat out your business, and you know, yeah,
a little bit. But I don't try and compete with
those low end you know, right solutions and offer more
(21:37):
of a hands on concierge type.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
And I think that's probably again from a business model.
I think that's a good business model. I think something
that people will appreciate more and more going forward. To
be perfectly frank, right, I mean, I am my space,
I'm exposed to AI and I embrace it in many
aspects because I think it's a huge helper, right, I
(22:00):
think it it to me. It kind of starts to
open up some of the creative energy in the process, right,
because you're not having to think about certain things. The
AI is handling that, right, so you can be a
little bit more creative as a result.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
And that's been my experience.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
I Mean, we've done some really cool analyzes where we've
leveraged AI, right, and.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
There's things that it does really well. There's other things
that doesn't do that great, like you know, people and fingers.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
It's getting better.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
It is getting better. It is.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
It's it's kind of scary, but oh yeah, oh yeah yeah.
A lot of what we do at work is like
voice related right, and speak Texas speech is crazy good now.
Speaker 5 (22:51):
Yeah, you know, even AI generated audio using you know,
using AI to fake you know, celebrity voices.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
It's it's getting insane.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Well, you know, it's really fun because this is one
project I've been working on and I actually do some
some animation and some characterizations and stuff like that. It's
it's learning teaching kind of stuff, instructional. And one of
the characters that I've created, I actually voice the character, right, and.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I thought I was pretty good, right, I tend to
I'm a decent public speaker and I can kind of
get into it, right.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
But the the feedback was I created this other character,
it was a female character, right, and I tried to
do her voice like, I played with the pitch and
tind to mess with the rec but I just it
always sounded like mini mouse, right.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
It just never sounded right. So I was like, all right,
let's try a different tact.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And I did use AI Voice generation, right, and the
feedback I got was they liked the girl better because her.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Voice sounded more natural. And I'm like what, and they're.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Like, yeah, no, her voice, you know, the cadence on
the guy is just it's a little slow and it
sounds a little halted, and it doesn't seem as real
as hers.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Hers is very clean.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
And no, I'm like, she's completely AI, like that's made up,
like I told her what he said, but otherwise.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
It sound like, you know, right, monotone.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Right, Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Anyway, Okay, that was a
weird tangent.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
But so.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
I knew this was going to be just more of
like an introduction, but uh, you know, you've given us
a few little personal tidbits, which I appreciate you doing,
just so people have a sense of what you do
and where you're coming from. I'm looking forward to the
partnership for sure. I think it'll be fun.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah, and so you know, so just so you know,
I'll still be around. I'm not going anywhere. I just
won't be in front of the camera for those.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
But you're still gonna have a few drops from the
Lean and Leander outside of this, the Voting Leander series.
We'll keep that strictly to the candidates obviously, And yeah,
no again, thanks for doing the solid Yeah, I appreciate it.
Thanks for inviting me to do this, and I appreciate
you doing this today too, because again it's it's it's
really of a tip. It's a little bit of a
tip of the hat to the audience, just so that
(25:26):
they know you know a little bit about you. Yeah,
maybe they'll like you more than me, doubtful.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
You have just a wonderful personality I just can't quite match.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
I don't know about that.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
But anyway, well this was fun again, kind of a
little bit of a strange episode at the end of
the day, but that's okay. You guys will get the
gist of it in short order. Like I said, so,
thank you again for joining us. Morgan, I appreciate it.
Thanks for the studio.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
This is a great place, and I completely love the toys.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
And you'll be seeing more of him and hearing more
from us in the near term. So thanks a lot
for joining us today and we'll see you in the
next episode of.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Lean and the Thank you so much, all right, you
better now mess it up.
Hello, and welcome to this the latest episode of Lean
in Leander. I'm your host Andrew now Dean, and we're
going into season four of the podcast, which kind of
boggles my mind at least, I can't believe that we've
continued or been able to continue to do this. It's
definitely a passion project as far as I'm concerned, and
(00:30):
hopefully you as an audience are still finding value in
some of the conversations that we're bringing to the podcast.
I'm hoping that here in season four, we're actually able
to expand a little bit on that and have some
additional people talking about some topics that I think will
be very important to us as we move forward as
(00:50):
a community, and hopefully you'll find some interest and some
value in those presentations as well. One of the other
things that we do here, and I'm sure a lot
of you may know the podcast from that series, is
the Vote in Leander series. Now we're going to make
a slight change to our approach, and we'll cover that
(01:11):
a little bit further into the episode give you the
information related to that particular approach change, but I did
want to start with some information that of course is
pretty much the same type of information that we've presented
before as it relates to voting in your local elections,
but I wanted to cover it in a slightly different
(01:33):
way to give you a little bit different perspective on
what it is that I'm trying to highlight in regards
to voter turnout and also give you some information on
registration dates and things of that nature to help you
along in that process as well. So, without any further ado,
let's take a look at some of that presentation material
(01:55):
and get an idea of exactly what it is we're
looking at here in Leander as far as this next
election cycle is concerned. So we've covered this subject matter
of voter turnout on the podcast in the past, and
what we find is that the voter history in Leander
(02:15):
is one where low voter turnout is the rule, not
the exception. There's an expectation here that we would hope
for a larger turnout, but that just isn't the case.
If we go back to twenty nineteen, we can see
that the population was around sixty seven thousand, but the
(02:35):
voter turnout was about two point nine percent. Now, over
the last few years, it's improved on a couple of
years and then kind of comes back down in twenty
twenty four, which was the last election we had here
in the city, and there we had about four thousand,
three hundred and twenty six folks show up. So what
(02:55):
does that mean at the end of the day. And
this is really what we're talking about here. The budget
for the city of Leanders about three hundred and thirty
eight million dollars. And I've highlighted here a few key
highlights of areas of interest and where money is spent.
But you're talking about, you know, three hundred million plus
(03:16):
dollars being managed by an electorate that is not even
ten percent of the total population. And I just don't
think that is right. You should have more say in
what happens in this city. So here at Voting Leander,
we always kind of emphasize the things that we can control.
(03:38):
Check your registration. April third is the last day to
register to vote. Early voting for this election cycle starts
April twenty second and will go through April twenty ninth,
and then of course the actual election day is on Saturday,
May third, So your process is on that should include
(04:03):
researching those candidates.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
This is a setup episode, if you will.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
We're gonna be doing a few things a little bit
differently here in the coming months, and I wanted to
make sure that the audience was not only aware of,
but also prepared for some of those changes. So with
me here today is Engineer Extraordinary Morgan Tuttle. Morgan has
been working with me on a number of episodes that
(04:40):
we've done in the past year, mostly with the Voting
Leanders series here at Lantern Media Studios, which was a
huge upgrade for me, you know, going from the home
studio to this wonderfully adorned area with all the nice
gadgets and stuff.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Much better than your closet.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Much better than my closet, right, yeah, no, for sure,
for sure, even though this is not much bigger than
a closet. At the end of the day, you can't
really tell with the camera though, you know, once it's
all the magic of.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Video, right.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
So anyway, so I wanted to introduce you again, the
audience here at lean and Leander to Morgan and let.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
You kind of learn who he is a little bit.
We're gonna talk a little.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Bit about what you know brought him here to Leander
and a little bit of the story how we met
and ended up here today. But there's a couple of
reasons that we're doing this, and I'll go into those
as we move forward.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
But so let's start there.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Morgan and I originally met at the Leanderthal Distillery and
you're attending bar right right. My wife enjoys being here
in Scott's a friend and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
So we we do like to come here and support
local business.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
And leanderthals to be one of the one of our
favorites on the list. But Morgan and I I kind
of just kind of struck up a little bit of
a friendship over you know, repeated visits. And I don't know,
I guess it was about what about a year, ye
little bit over a year ago, right, I'm at Leanderthal
(06:15):
and there's a card on the bar and it's Lantern
Media Studios.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
What the hell is this?
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Right?
Speaker 2 (06:24):
And I was like, I don't know what this is.
So I went and picked up the car and I
started asking around.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
It turns out that Morgan had put together this space
right to you know, for engineering, right, you know, audio engineering,
video engineering and whatnot, you know, with the idea, I mean,
maybe some people will come in.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And do a podcast and blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
And you know, that business model was something that I
had personally considered doing, you know, but just never got
around to it. Right. It was kind of one of
those ideas, Yeah, yeah, what made you take the leap?
Speaker 5 (06:56):
Well, I tend to get crazy ideas in my head
and before thinking about it, I just do it. I
got the idea because, you know, I was visiting a
friend of mine in Alaska who has a film production company,
and he has this giant warehouse for his film studio,
but he built a podcast corner in the corner of
(07:18):
his warehouse, kind of set up like this, and I
really loved the setup and I love the idea of it,
and I'm like, you know what I you know, I've
been talking to him about.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Kind of expanding his kind of service down here, and
I was like, you.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Know what, I'm gonna I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
I'm gonna build it out.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
And so I came down, did some research, looked up prices,
and you know, tried to find a space and Scott
was willing to let me use his room here.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
So here, I am, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
And I know Scott does a podcast as well, and
he's recorded a couple of dogs actually stepped in and
like when he was actually a cordner about the start,
I can't remember. And I know you guys have done
some things together in that sense, right, yeah, so you're
not completely foreign to being in front of the camera
and necessarily no, all right, So so he has some experience, folks.
Speaker 5 (08:09):
I prefer to be behind the camera right right when
you know, when I need to, I'll jump in front.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
But so is there like a general like you mentioned
this friend of yours in Alaska and you know, if
he had a movie studio, you know, do you.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Come from that space? Is that something you've done.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Before or yes? And no, So me and him go
way back. You know, we met late nineteen hundred.
Speaker 5 (08:35):
We were in middle school, and he's he's always been
like there's pictures of him when he was even younger,
like filming things with his parents' big camcorder on his shoulder.
And we actually, you know, when we were in high school,
we you know, his little brother was in a pewe
football league and we're like, you know what, let's record
their football games. And so we went to all of
(08:57):
their games and recorded all the games. And then put
together a movie at the end of the year, put
in too music and sold VHS is back, you know
when there's VHS to all the parents and made some
good money. And that was kind of the start of
you know, his career in film production. And you know,
I was more of a follower in that, you know,
definitely doing all the technical stuff.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
He's you know, a very creative person.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
And we ended up going to school together in California.
He we went to the Academy of Art University. He
went into film production and I went into photography to
kind of branched out. But you know, it was very
expensive there, so you know, we were there for about
a year. He went back to Alaska to start his company,
and then I ended up moving to Virginia. You know,
(09:42):
very long journey to come to Texas, but you know,
I kind of moved away from it.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
And now I'm getting back into.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
So did you did you there? I don't make an
assumption here are you from Alaska? It sounds like some origin.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
I mean, so I was a military brat, so from Alaska.
I kind of grew up there.
Speaker 5 (10:05):
You know, I lived there for twelve years, you know,
from seventh grade until.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
The Formidable years, right, when you're really kind of figuring
stuff out.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
That's kind of cool. It reminds me of.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
So I mean for me, audio and production and stuff
like that. I was a musician as a as a child, right,
So you know I was in band. I played trumpet,
and I was in jazz bands and you know, concert
bands and symphony and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
And I did that all through high school.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
And then when I got into college, when I was
attending University UTL Passo, they had an NPR station, right,
And one of the classes that I was taking was
video and audio production, right. And so I had a buddy.
(10:59):
Actually he lived a lot like you. To be honest, No,
it's weird.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
It's weird.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
I'm just because I just thought of it, like as
we're speaking, I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember this.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
His name was Doug, right. My first name is Doug.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Right. So we put together our little production company during college,
and we you know, called ourselves Dug and Doug Productions.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Right. And this was not the little VHS cameras. This
was the full blown, you know.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Channel three news cameras, big heavy, heavy units, right, And
we would go out and we would do these what
are now commonly called you know, common interest stories, right,
you know, just the bartender and you know the dancer
and stuff like that. You know, just we would do
these crazy stories and my professor hated it.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
He absolutely hated it.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
He was like, you call this journalism, this is yellow journalism.
And I'm like, yeah, but they're kind of doing it
on entertainment tonight, Like that's that's what's selling, right, Muffin's
the singing cat needs area exactly exactly. Yeah, he didn't
fail me, but he didn't make it easy, right anyway,
That's funny that that would that would come up. But yeah,
(12:15):
So talking about you know, setting up the studio and whatnot,
how how how has that gone for you so far?
Like I mean, are people becoming more aware of this?
I know part of my efforts in doing things with
Lantern Media has been to you know, hopefully bring a
little bit more attention to it, right.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, I don't know if I've gotten any referral.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
So, uh, no referrals.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
Unfortunately, when I first launched Lantern Media studio, there's a
lot of interest to come and record, you know, people
oh I want to start a podcast, or oh you know,
we should come in and all that, and even had
a couple of people sign up for a time slot
and then they just they canceled, backed out, and people just.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Haven't shown up.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
But it's I get that a lot, like I do,
you know, And I mean this is season four. I
mean I've been doing this for four which is crazy
to me, Like, you know, I honestly I'm like how
to continue to do this? So yeah, this is the
fourth year and I think I'm sixty nine episodes or
(13:19):
something like that, which most podcasts, when you go look
at that data, right, like, they'll they may last, you know,
especially small like this, you know it may last fifteen
maybe twenty episodes, right, And that's been generous.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
So this is always it's always been kind of a
passion project anyway.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
I mean it's just you know, I was I'm hoping
to and trying to fill a gap in what I
think is a piece of the communication and the conversations
that are taking place.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
But that said, it's hard. It's not easy.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Yeah, no, I totally get it.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
And I will say I have not spent a lot
of time, you know, doing the outreach or lead generation
or really advertising in a whole lot.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Just kind of you know, this is a this is
a hobby project. It's not my main business, right I
do you know, web development it is my day.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
Job, right, so I you know that takes most of
my time, right, But this year I'm hoping.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
To actually you know, get some get some.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Traction on the studio, right, which is kind of bringing
us great segue by the way, see you're pretty good
at this. That brings us to the reason that we're
in the studio today, and the reason that we're doing
this particular episode is Morgan is going to step into
a role with the Voting Leanders series this year and
(14:42):
he is going to be the primary interviewer of the candidates.
I'm stepping kind of behind the camera for this series
this year a couple of different reasons. But you know,
what I wanted to be able to do is to
continue what I think is the valuable contribution that the
(15:07):
Voden Leander series brings to the conversations as far as
our local politics is concerned, and that I wanted to
ensure that that vehicle continue to do what it does
without necessarily having to have me in front of the
camera for that, right, because the conversations are still valuable
regardless of who's having the conversation. That conversation with candidates
(15:32):
so that they can express themselves in a more personal
and a casual environment I think is important. It helps
people understand them as individuals and gives a little bit
more flavor as to you know, who they might be
or who they are, you know, generally speaking, you strip
away some of the political posturing and things of that nature,
(15:53):
and you kind of get people to open up a
little bit and be a little bit more personal. So
Morgan's doing me a huge solid by doing It's huge.
It's huge he.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
And and and.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
To his benefit, I hope it'll be a good experience
because I know he has some ideas of kind of
getting his.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Own podcast going here this year, and.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
So hopefully there's a little quick pot quote there. We're
kind of helping each other out, and you know, I'm
really looking forward to being able to to see how
that develops. I don't think it's going to be too
far removed from what we do with the Voting Leander series.
I think it's generally going to be relatively similar, right,
But Morgan's a different person, right, and I think that
(16:39):
brings in that variable of you know, the questions will
be somewhat the same, but what he picks up on
and what I would pick up on might be different,
and I think that's going to bring a nice little
color to that series. I'll still continue to be doing
Lean and Leander, and there's some more information coming soon
(17:02):
that'll kind of clear up some.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Of the things. I'm being a little vague. I'm being
a little veiled. Yeah, that's probably what I'm looking for there.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
I just got over the flu, so the brain's not
one hundred percent quite yet.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
It'll kick in here any day now.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
But yeah, so I'm being a little vague, but you'll
figure that out here in short order.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
And that will actually be.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Our first episode of voting Leander, right, so where you're
going to be taking charge on that one and.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
All secrets will be revealed.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
But yeah, so tell me a little bit more about
your day to day, like you know, the web development
and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And we've touched a little bit on that before.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Actually I've even said, you know, hey, I think you
need to redo my website. I'm horrible at WordPress. Like
I'm terrible, terrible, terrible.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
This is a shame because it's so easy.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Oh, I just can not figure that one out. I
don't know what it is.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I mean it's probably self created blockage, right, but I
just I cannot navigate that at all, like not very well.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Depends on how it's set up.
Speaker 5 (18:05):
I mean, they're you know WordPress, It's it's an open
source project. So now there's so many different themes, plugins
and all this stuff that will.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Change your experience.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
So you know, you might have a setup that is
a little more difficult to work with versus you know,
the way I set things up. You know, because I
have a lot of clients that I want them to
be able to work on their own websites if they
need to.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
You know, of course I'll still support them if they
need me.
Speaker 5 (18:29):
But you know, I try and make it as easy
as possible for them to actually go and make their
own updates, you know, once I build a new website.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Yeah, and and most whizzywig editors that I've used in
the past have that functionality, right.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
But the problem with Wizzywig editors for those of you who.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Are thinking about developing your own website and doing your
own thing.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I mean, there's a few.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
Out there that are that are good, like wix as
a as a you know, self directed editor is it's
pretty decent, it's easy to use, it's fairly simple. A
lot of templated environments, right, I just happen to be
a little bit more dangerous just because I understand CSS.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
I can get into HTML.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Coding and so I can change things, right, and if
the editor allows me, then it's great, right, But.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
When it doesn't, it's a pain.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Then it's a pain, right, I can't figure it out
right because you know what you want to do.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
Yeah, And you know that's the thing with you know
editors like wigs and squarespace is it's very easy to
get started, get your you know, grab a template, you know,
start putting your information and.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
You're good to go.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
It's when you need the additional functionality you're trying to
do something.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
That's a little outside their box.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
Then that's when you know, solutions like WordPress come in
where it's.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
It's very flexible, right, much more flexible, have you.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
I don't know about WordPress specifically from an AI perspective,
any plug ins there or anything that they're doing.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
It's like, yeah, there's a lot of you know, page
builders them builders that are moving in, you know, plugins
that are you know integrating AI into creating your website,
and even AI outside of word Press to you know,
you can there are plenty of services now where you
can use AI.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah, I've actually the resembling that was. I recently did.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
That and I was pretty pretty pleased with the results. Yeah,
I was. I was the initial The initial renderings were
really pretty good, Like they were spot on for what
I was thinking I wanted to do. So once I
had the prompts in, it pretty much produced the website
(20:43):
that I was thinking of, like I visualized it, like
that's what I was wanting.
Speaker 5 (20:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
It took a while to figure out how to edit
from there. Right, that was a little.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Bit probably a little bit more convoluted, just from the
perspective of the way they did it, not necessarily the
tool itself.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
They just have a real good navigation and.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
Yeah, when things like AI, like the way it can
do things. Yeah, it might look nice on the surface,
but it could be a mess on the back end.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, you know, think of.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
You know, your gaming computer.
Speaker 5 (21:14):
You know, it might on the outside it might look
really pretty, but if you pop it open and they
didn't do any cable management, it's a mess. And trying
to figure some stuff out as a pain. Like I said,
it's getting better. And you know a lot of people
are complaining about trying to compete with AI, like it's
going to eat out your business, and you know, yeah,
a little bit. But I don't try and compete with
those low end you know, right solutions and offer more
(21:37):
of a hands on concierge type.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
And I think that's probably again from a business model.
I think that's a good business model. I think something
that people will appreciate more and more going forward. To
be perfectly frank, right, I mean, I am my space,
I'm exposed to AI and I embrace it in many
aspects because I think it's a huge helper, right, I
(22:00):
think it it to me. It kind of starts to
open up some of the creative energy in the process, right,
because you're not having to think about certain things. The
AI is handling that, right, so you can be a
little bit more creative as a result.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
And that's been my experience.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
I Mean, we've done some really cool analyzes where we've
leveraged AI, right, and.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
There's things that it does really well. There's other things
that doesn't do that great, like you know, people and fingers.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
It's getting better.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
It is getting better. It is.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
It's it's kind of scary, but oh yeah, oh yeah yeah.
A lot of what we do at work is like
voice related right, and speak Texas speech is crazy good now.
Speaker 5 (22:51):
Yeah, you know, even AI generated audio using you know,
using AI to fake you know, celebrity voices.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
It's it's getting insane.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Well, you know, it's really fun because this is one
project I've been working on and I actually do some
some animation and some characterizations and stuff like that. It's
it's learning teaching kind of stuff, instructional. And one of
the characters that I've created, I actually voice the character, right, and.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I thought I was pretty good, right, I tend to
I'm a decent public speaker and I can kind of
get into it, right.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
But the the feedback was I created this other character,
it was a female character, right, and I tried to
do her voice like, I played with the pitch and
tind to mess with the rec but I just it
always sounded like mini mouse, right.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
It just never sounded right. So I was like, all right,
let's try a different tact.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And I did use AI Voice generation, right, and the
feedback I got was they liked the girl better because her.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Voice sounded more natural. And I'm like what, and they're.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Like, yeah, no, her voice, you know, the cadence on
the guy is just it's a little slow and it
sounds a little halted, and it doesn't seem as real
as hers.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Hers is very clean.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
And no, I'm like, she's completely AI, like that's made up,
like I told her what he said, but otherwise.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
It sound like, you know, right, monotone.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Right, Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Anyway, Okay, that was a
weird tangent.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
But so.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
I knew this was going to be just more of
like an introduction, but uh, you know, you've given us
a few little personal tidbits, which I appreciate you doing,
just so people have a sense of what you do
and where you're coming from. I'm looking forward to the
partnership for sure. I think it'll be fun.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah, and so you know, so just so you know,
I'll still be around. I'm not going anywhere. I just
won't be in front of the camera for those.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
But you're still gonna have a few drops from the
Lean and Leander outside of this, the Voting Leander series.
We'll keep that strictly to the candidates obviously, And yeah,
no again, thanks for doing the solid Yeah, I appreciate it.
Thanks for inviting me to do this, and I appreciate
you doing this today too, because again it's it's it's
really of a tip. It's a little bit of a
tip of the hat to the audience, just so that
(25:26):
they know you know a little bit about you. Yeah,
maybe they'll like you more than me, doubtful.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
You have just a wonderful personality I just can't quite match.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
I don't know about that.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
But anyway, well this was fun again, kind of a
little bit of a strange episode at the end of
the day, but that's okay. You guys will get the
gist of it in short order. Like I said, so,
thank you again for joining us. Morgan, I appreciate it.
Thanks for the studio.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
This is a great place, and I completely love the toys.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
And you'll be seeing more of him and hearing more
from us in the near term. So thanks a lot
for joining us today and we'll see you in the
next episode of.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Lean and the Thank you so much, all right, you
better now mess it up.
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