 As you develop, you learn things. What if you want to share that knowledge with others online? On today's Visual Studio Toolbox, David Giard is going to show us. Hi, welcome to Visual Studio Toolbox. I'm your guest host, Robert Green, filling in for Leslie this week, and it's because I want to talk to my good friend and former colleague at Microsoft, Mr. David Giard. Hey, David. Robert, it's wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. Thanks for coming on the show. David is the creator and star of the YouTube shows, Technology and Friends, and Gcast. He had me on Technology and Friends a couple of times, so now I get to return the favor. But basically, what we want to talk about today is sharing knowledge with other people online. So how do you create a show? How do you do screencast? How do you share what you know and talk to other people and do it in a manner that other people can get to? You're an expert on this, and you're going to show us how to do it and tell us how to do it. I don't know of an expert, but I've been learning about it for a long time. I created the show over 12 years ago called Technology and Friends, and it's pretty similar to the show that you have right now. It's me talking with technologists about technology, something they're passionate about, and it's been going strongly over since. It's a great chance for me to meet people in the community, learn some new things, share some knowledge with other people, and just have some fun. I did that for a long time, and then a couple of years ago, I started the second show called Gcast, which is a screencasting show, and that's G for G-art, my name. Cast for screencasting. Oh, is that what the G is for? Yeah, that's a secret. Don't tell anybody that. Okay. And then that's just me showing really short, maybe 10 minute videos of how to create a storage account in Azure or I'm doing a series on Azure Media Services right now, things like that. Just simple little nuggets of information that are very visual, and you can show how to do them. And that's usually I'm learning them as I'm teaching them. I'm learning them on Tuesday and teach them on Wednesday. And so that's what I'm all about. I've been passionate about learning since I was a little kid and about sharing that knowledge for decades now. I mean, I was a Microsoft MVP largely because, not because I was the smartest guy in the room, but because whatever knowledge I did have, I was happy to share with others, excited to share with others. So this is just an extension of that. So technology and friends is a video interview show and Gcast is screencast, right? So let's take them in that order. Oh, sure. Give us a quick look at technology and friends and then tell us how you do it. Yeah, well, you can just go to technologyandfriends.com and that'll take you to YouTube channel. It's actually, actually, and originally I was going to conferences and user groups and using this audio and visual equipment. I have this camera here and the Zoom recorder and a couple of microphones. And I would sit down with people and actually interview them face to face. And I swore up and down, that's what I would do. Every single time is only do it in person, never do it virtually until 2020. And I decided to try to make a choice, either drop the show or convert it to online. So I'm doing closer to what you're doing right now. So what are you using? Zoom, Teams, Skype? So right now I'm using, usually I use Zoom because it's accessible to me. I'm sorry, I use Teams if I'm hosting it. I don't have a Zoom account but if they have a Zoom account that I'll use that. I use whatever people are comfortable with. It's anything to collaborate that can record information. And that works out pretty well. Then you just record the show and upload it? And then what I do is I, well, no, I don't just record it. I do some editing, I have, I use some software that's from Adobe. Adobe has a product called Premiere Elements. They have a product called Premiere which is professional software, it costs thousands of dollars. But they have a consumer version which is more affordable to me. And I use that, I edit it, I make sure that if there's any awkward moments where we ask a question twice, I might do that, edit that out. I put an intro, I've got some music, some creative common music that I found and some animations at the beginning and the credits at the end, things like that. And then I, oh, and I have a post-credits scene. Just, this is the idea that Marvel comic movies stole from me is that credits roll and then afterwards the guest says something, anything they want to say as long as it includes the word technology and the word France. That's my trick to get people to watch at the end of the show. And so I have to edit that as well, put it after the credits. So I do a little bit of editing, probably spend an hour or two for each show, just getting the thing presentable. And then I upload it, I have a YouTube channel which is pretty easy to create, just sign up to YouTube and click the upload button. Why don't you show us YouTube and show the show and then give us a very quick run-through of how you would upload this stuff. Well, absolutely. Now I've got a channel right here. This is technology and friends. There it is. Yep, there it is. I'm on, what is it? Episode number 645. So lots of things here. And then if you were just to go log in, I think you need a Google account, a Google email account to do this, but I already have one and I'm logged in. But if you do this, you'd see a blank screen because you wouldn't have any videos yet. And this button right here, create, upload video. And from there, either drag from your Windows Explorer or just click on this to select files and grab a video. This is just a random video. And the dialog pops up or you can give it a title and you can give it a description. Blur on whatever. If some, if I properly a description, blah, blah, blah. And then there's some things in here like tags and if your main kid's video, they have extra questions you have to answer. You put tags in to make it a little bit more searchable. And usually I'll put the date in there and then the location of whoever I'm talking to if I'm talking to you or when you're in, where are you in Utah? Is that right? I'm in Utah. Utah. Yeah, so I'd put that in there. And go through this and then it even gives you, I don't use this screen at all, but the opportunity, if I don't want to publish it right away, sometimes I'll record multiple interviews and sell schedules. So you know what, I don't want this thing to go up till next week. Because typically I don't publish them. I don't let anyone know about them until Monday. My goal is every single Monday, I'll just cancel that, every single Monday I want to have a new show available. But you can see that I've got a bunch of shows right here that I've created and published, but I've never, they're still scheduled. They won't come out for a couple of weeks. Okay, awesome. That's no big surprise, looks very similar to how we get Visual Studio Toolbox episodes up on YouTube. Oh yeah, absolutely. It was even more so when I was in person because if I went to a conference, I recorded a dozen interviews there. I don't want to release all 12 of them on the same day. That's not really interesting to people. They'd rather see them spread over time. I think people all binge watch my show as far as I know. And then the other show is G-Cast, which is Screencast. So technology and friends is more interviews with industry luminaries. So you know, the center should have said it. Some of them are, I'll put finger quotes from famous people, you know, the Robert Greens of the world and the Scott Hanselmans of the world, the Charles Petzold has been on my show. I'm honored to be mentioned in the same way as him that there is no in between the two worlds. And some of them are just folks that have something interesting to say that are not really well known. Yeah, it could be colleagues. It could be team members. It could be colleagues. I went to a user group. I heard a really interesting talk. It could be a customer site. They did a really interesting project. Some of them are those. So, but this is all just me, this is the screencast one. And I'm gonna put these little branding things on each episode. I just passed episode 100. So I have a problem. So episode 100 is how you create a screencast. Yeah, this one is something special. I actually, typically I do these with a tool called Camtasia Studio, which is a really good screencasting tool. You can see a little preview here. It just records what you're doing and I can voice over it. But with creating a screencast, I wanted to show how I create this show. And as far as I know, there's no way to use Camtasia to record yourself using Camtasia. So then I want to actually set up a camera and tripod. Okay. And film myself. You might be able to see the preview like that. And this has been a lot of fun. I think if I jump over, I'm gonna sign this with Gcast right now, but I've just now recorded half a dozen shows on how to use Azure Media Services, which is really fun because I just learned how to use Azure Media Services. So this really helped me in articulating it to other folks to do that. And the process for publishing is the same. Sign in as my Gcast account and upload it right now. So how long does it take you to prepare and create a 15 minute screencast, let's say? Oh, well, if it's something that I haven't done before that might take the weeks to learn it. I mean, that's really probably the biggest bottleneck right there is understanding what I'm gonna do. If it's something that I'm comfortable with that I probably run through it a couple of times to get comfortable with it. And then just usually I'll record it either straight through or I may record it in segments if it's something that you have to wait for. You know, like if you in Azure, a lot of times you say, create this resource. There's a five minute delay. And then I'll stop. I'll stop recording and come back and have some visual and audible indicators say. Right. We just five minutes just passed but I'm back through the magic of time travel. And do you wind up doing a lot of editing on these? These ones are same thing. Yeah, I go through, I have an intro and an outro. I don't have a post screen scene on this one but I found some creative common music that I add to it. It was a little animation at the beginning. Just having fun with it. Yeah. Hopefully people are learning something from it. Well, that's the whole reason to do this, right? Like the first, recently I looked at technology and friends, I looked at GCast, I looked at the number of views because, you know, I'm being part of channel nine. I'm trained to look at views. And I look at- Oh, they pale comparison to your views. Well, yes and no. Okay, so there's an episode using the Azure Storage Explorer, 54 views, right? And on the one hand, 54 views. That's not a lot. But at the same time, if three people watch that and now have learned how to use this, that's tremendously useful, right? Yeah, and that's what I wanted to explain. I used to be, I do a lot of public speaking back when I used to get out of the house. Yeah. And sometimes I spoke in front of a large crowd. Sometimes I spoke in front of, you know, 10 people. And it didn't bother me either way. That's great. And if in that, those 10 people, if one or two came up to me and said, your talk really inspired me, it changed the way I'm gonna do my business. Exactly. Boy, that keeps me coming back. And every once in a while, I'll get an email saying, hey, I saw your video. It was perfect. That was exactly what I was looking for. And it got me over that hump. It made me successful. That's just a wonderful feeling. Yeah, I've done conference talks before with 50 people in the room. And I still get emails from people that are playing with the samples. And so, yeah, even if 20 people watch it, if anybody learns, then that's awesome. That's the reason alone to do this, to share with others. So, I mean, I don't know that I even pay that close attention of you is I would much, I would pay much more attention to the comments, questions people might ask. And, you know, whether or not I thought people were learning. But if you did want to get more views, how would you self-promote? I think the biggest way is to get on a popular Channel 9 show with a really handsome host. And then people will see that. That sounded like a setup. In fact, it wasn't a serious question. Quit messing around. I do have, I am part serious. I do think that being on a show like this will help because you have a lot more viewers than I do. I don't obsess about the number of views I get, but I would like to share with more people. I think people would get their folks out there that could benefit from this, that just plain aren't aware of it. What I'm doing now is I'm promoting it on social media primarily. I have Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook. And so every Monday is the day that I essentially tell people, hold this a new episode. It might have been uploaded a couple years before. And I do it that way. And the ones that are successful tend to be retweeted by very popular people. I try to, I have it on my blog as well. And what I'm getting better at is the tags and the titles, making them more searchable. Because a lot of people come through Google and through Bing and making sure that the descriptions and the tags are meaningful so that people that are looking for that thing will find the good match in my videos. That's what I'm working towards now. That's something I'm getting better at. And how important is consistency? Oh yeah, consistency. You need to be uploading every week, once a month. I think it is. I think that this Monday for Technology and Friends, Thursday for Gcast, I think that cadence is really important because then people start to expect it. And I've seen, it also gives me the discipline to keep going with this. I've seen so many podcasts that's fizzled after 10 or 12 episodes. And people start with the best of intentions and then they realize, wow, this is actually a lot of work. And it is, I mean, it takes time. And especially if you're not making any money out of it. So this is just a fun thing that I do. And even if you are trying to make money out of it, it's probably even more frustrating because most podcasters do not make a lot of money. Yeah, I would think that just the ability to share stuff with others and do it often enough that people are coming back and telling other people, get some organic growth from it, that should be where you start. And then if you wind up with something that's tremendously popular, sure, there's ways to make money through ads and whatnot. But I think this is just a great way to just share what you know. Could be tips and tricks. Here's one thing I learned this week. It could be a short video, could be a longer video, but I would recommend folks to just check it out. Look at your stuff, save yourself all I could do that, which is true, and then just start doing it. See where it takes you. If you have any questions, probably Twitter is a really good place to find me. I put in the chat window, I put my Twitter handle there. You're welcome to share that. All right, excellent. Thanks so much for coming on and showing this stuff. And hopefully people will be inspired to duplicate what you're doing. I'm thrilled to be here, Robert, because I am a big fan of your show. Thank you so much for having me. Me too. All right. Hope you enjoyed that. And we will see you next time on Visual Studio Toolbox. Thank you for inviting me to Visual Studio Toolbox to talk about sharing technology with my friends.