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