Leo Laporte
Podcaster, tech pundit, and Chief TWiT
Discussion
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Leo Laporte
@leolaporte
Hi, I’m Leo Laporte. You may remember me from ZDTV or TechTV. For the past 10 years I’ve been attempting to recreate TechTV brick-by-brick on the Internet at TWiT.tv. With the launch of The New Screen Savers I feel like we’re getting close. Is there anything you’d like to know? Ask me anything - I’ll be answering full time for an hour but I’ll come back throughout the rest of the week to see if there are any other lingering questions.
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Jeff Needles
@jsneedles · BI @ Meerkat & Maker of Things
@leolaporte What is the most ridiculous gadget you've ever used and had the reaction... "I spent money on this?"
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Leo Laporte
@leolaporte
@jsneedles actually Jeff, the silliest gadget I ever received was a gift from you! That butter slicer. Wow!
In truth the biggest waste of money was the drone that I flew exactly once. Straight up. I never saw it again.
Jeff Needles
@jsneedles · BI @ Meerkat & Maker of Things
@leolaporte For reference: http://amzn.to/1LMhBFy 😎 It's awesome.
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
If you were 23 in 2015, having the interests + skills + knowledge you have now, what would you do?
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Leo Laporte
@leolaporte
@eriktorenberg My daughter Abby is 23 and I am sometimes baffled as to how I would handle the modern world were I her age today.
Your generation is faced with some incredible opportunities and daunting challenges. You're growing up in the world that is threatened by ecological disaster, faced with new weapons and enemies who are invisible and hard to combat. But we have more tools now than ever before to innovate to create and learn and become actualized.
I would probably be a coder. Computer programming is a true superpower. And it's a hell of a lot of fun.
Jeff Wolfers
@jeffinlondon · Wolmac & Partners
@leolaporte Geez Leo - weapons? enemies? disaster? Quit listening to the mainstream news . They're designed to keep you frightened so big government can control you. In The Morning!
jack rometty
@rometty_ · student
Hey Leo!
Creating for the masses usually means juxtaposing creator vision and audience response. How have you navigated and learned from feedback throughout your career?
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Leo Laporte
@leolaporte
@rometty_ Hi, Jack. I have alway tried not to chase an audience, but to do what most interests me and hope an audience will follow. Chasing an audience is a lot like chasing your tail - you'll never catch them! But I do love now the new Internet powered media has transformed audience into community. The ongoing conversations we have do help me steer our content and my delivery, for sure. It's a very deep, challenging, sometimes frustrating, most often enlivening discussion that makes what I do even more satisfying than the old "I talk, you listen" days.
Jack Dweck
@jackdweck · Product Manager at Unroll.Me
Hey Leo. Really big fan of TWiT and all you've accomplished over the years.
Who has been your favorite guest and why? If you had the chance to interview anyone in the world, who would it be?
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Leo Laporte
@leolaporte
@jackdweck Of course Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt was my favorite guest ever. JK! Actually he was pretty good but I have been very lucky to interview almost all of my heroes over the past 20 years. I have to include Woz in that list, Walter Cronkite, Steve Martin, Linus Torvalds, Larry Lessig, Douglas Engelbart, Larry Wall, Guido von Rossum, and on and on. Actually the list is quite long!
As for who I would still like to interview, I think Larry Page and Sergei Brin would be quite interesting. I met them very early on when Google had just started, But I think they'd have a lot more to say now. With interviewing CEOs is there all fairly cagey and well-trained. They never say anything of real interest.
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
😂here's my interview with @leolaporte if anyone's interested. It was an honor to be on the show:
Chuck Kahn
@chuckkahn · Assistant Editor, Freelance
@rrhoover that interview inspired me to subscribe to the Product Hunt podcast
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
As someone who's been watching you since the TechTV days (and long-time weekly listener of TWiT), I'm super excited to have you on LIVE. 😀
Earlier this year, @kevinrose had you on Foundation (video below). I really appreciate your transparency and in the interview you said, "I don't really want to run a business." You also mentioned many challenges building a company. What's been the hardest part and do you regret any decisions you made building the TWiT network?
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Leo Laporte
@leolaporte
@rrhoover Thanks for the plug, Ryan! And thanks for Product Hunt! Fortunately, I did the best thing possible with regards to running a business: I hired a brilliant business partner who does the stuff I am so bad at (like hiring, firing, sales, taxes, etc. etc), leaving me free to do the stuff I care most about. It's just a side benefit that Lisa, our CEO�, is also my wife! A CEO with benefits!
Mike Coutermarsh
@mscccc · Code @ Product Hunt
@leolaporte How do you think about new shows and the keep/kill decision? How do you measure success? What kind of timeframes do you look at?
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Leo Laporte
@leolaporte
@mscccc There aren't really any hard and fast rules to that.
At this point we know, I think, pretty well what our audience expects from us and we try to give them shows they will like. Of course it's much harder to do that in practice that is in theory, and if the show doesn't develop a sufficient audience to be self-supporting we eventually have to kill it.
We give most shows a year or so to grow before they're on the chopping block, but there have been very expensive shows, like Game On, which we had to axe (much to my chagrin) after nearly 13 weeks because we couldn't afford to continue. Again the discipline of bootstrapping a business forces a certain invigorating thrift.
Martin Couture
@mcduo · IT tech. Gecko Alliance
@leolaporte where do you see the Twit Network in 5-10 years.
Ryan Heldt
@rheldt · Developer
Hi @leolaporte -- 20 years ago, the internet was in it's infancy. Where do you see things at in the next 20 years?
Emanuel Negreanu
@emann56
Hi Leo!!, did you ever get that note 5 fixed? By the way, those are push bullet notifications from your android phone that you see on your laptop.
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Leo Laporte
@leolaporte
@emann56 No, Emanual, I didn't. ATT declined to fix it and I was reluctant to send it back to Samsung. So I just pulled the stylus out as gently as I could. Yes, I did break the pen presence sensor, but that's not a huge deal. The phone, and even the stylus, still work normally. In fact, turning off pen detection seems to have increased my battery life a bit. So it's a lose-win. Still, it is an engineering flaw, and I expect Samsung will address it eventually. But by then, I'll be using a Moto X. Or an iPhone 6s.