Ep#117 Live Streaming Tips and Tricks in the Build On Live Studio with Darko and Cobus

Host: Jon

All right everybody. My name's Jon Myer. We are here live recording inside the AWS Build on Live Studio. Believe we do with Darko, my man. Aw, dude. And so we didn't get a chance at Reinvent.

Guest: Darko

I thought I saw it was a DC site.

Host: Jon

Yes, it was. And you had the Jeff Bezos shirt on.

Guest: Darko

I didn't bring it right now with that.

Host: Jon

No, no, that's slightly a little disappointing. But this was an improv. Okay. So what we were trying to do is get a little recording going on inside the studio quickly, maybe 15, or 20 minutes, and talk about a couple of things. So first of all, thank you so much for having me. Thank

Guest: Darko

You for having me. Having me again.

Host: Jon

Yeah. Well this time it's life, right? Reinvent. You were so busy live streaming. Sure. And we're trying to get you over to the podcast and things before we talk about it. So your topic today that we want to talk about real quick is live streaming.

Guest: Darko

Is live streaming, literally is live streaming. Yes. Right. Oh. So live streaming is something I've been enjoying for the last three, four years doing it's, it's been just something that I immensely like and I've been doing it, I don't want to say good, there are way better streamers out there, but I do it with passion. So at least that comes for something. So

Host: Jon

I heard you developed your training and you help a lot of people kind of perfect themselves for doing live streaming.

Guest: Darko

So we have this channel called Twitch tv slash AWS where a lot of technical content goes out and a lot of people want to do shows. And one of the thoughts a couple of years back was like, how can we make that more accessible to folks? Let's not get a random person livestream, whatever they think, but let's, how can we enable them to do it better. How can you livestream properly? Hence the training was formed where basically, some amount of folks teach you how to live stream, teach you what not to do on a live stream. Because coming from a traditional technical background, you are used to webinars. You go on a live stream and you take off your favorite PowerPoint presentation and you click it, and it clicks through it. And

Host: Jon

While you're doing that on multitask it's over here because this is a traditional webinar. Exactly. Not engaged.

Guest: Darko

Exactly. So kind of teaching you some of the trip tips and tricks we can do as live streamers to inspire, educate, earn, trust, and sometimes even entertain. So

Host: Jon

I think the earned trust, they educate, entertain, oh, they're all important, man. I'll tell you what I, first of all, and that's what I inspire you to do, and I always say, you're always improving your craft. Right? Right. Every single time that you do one, you learn from what you should have done or done differently. Or you tried to do a joke and it didn't land as well, or you just try to Yeah. But you keep going at it and you try to improve time and time again. I think educating and entertaining build trust. Right? I will pay attention to you more if you are one, engaging me as the audience watching it.

Guest: Darko

And it's also a thing if you ever watch anybody on a media person on YouTube or Twitch, a lot of times you watch your content because of them. So it is important that when you are a person on screen, that you are as human as you can be if you are this corporate identity of a thing. Quin once told me nobody listens to a corporate podcast and nobody listens to a corporate podcast. So being this unique human being and earning the trust of your audience and that way is well the way to go, at least it will increase engagement. Hence, if you're doing stuff live, you need to do it live. I've seen recorded content streamed on Twitch for some reason.

Host: Jon

Wait, that's not allowed it.

Guest: Darko

You can do it. Yeah. People have done it. That's not, technically it's possible to do. But yeah, I always tell people on the training, ask themselves if the stream you are doing was pre-recorded, would it make a difference? And if the answer is no, don't do a live stream. That's it. Just simple as that. Unless you're going to be engaging with chat, unless you're going to be doing it live, talking to the community, throwing questions, throwing back questions, doing polls, or just being a friend of the chat. Yeah, don't do a lot.

Host: Jon

Okay. I got to ask you because I find it, I've done a lot of Twitch right At once, not only I was on AWS Twitch, but we did a deep era over for Twitch. Yes. It is a lot of work to not only focus on what you're trying to do, educate, and entertain but also engage with the audience. How are you able to balance them?

Guest: Darko

I idea. I like,

Host: Jon

Lemme know,

Guest: Darko

I like to multitask. But again, ultimately one of the key things about Twitch is that you have an audience and the audience is the most important part of it. So when I do Twitch, the audience is, I call them to chat, right? That's what you call to chat. And I envision them as a singular blob of humor who are listening to me and I'm just giving, I'm having a conversation. They're sitting with us at the table. So I'm making sure that they can understand what I'm saying. At the same time, I'm following through with the other technical content because I'm not just presenting, I'm talking to chat. And so it would be the same if I was sitting with you in a coffee shop and I was trying to explain something to you and I wouldn't pay attention or forget or something. It's kind of that feeling. So keep them at the table and talk with them like that. So that's kind of one of the ways I do it. But yeah, as you said, there's a lot of stuff you need to do, but always remember it's a two-way discussion. Yeah. Never one way.

Host: Jon

I think that's what makes some podcasts stand out and conversations like Twitch and everything is the human connection. The human conversation. People are going to stay on longer because there's a conversation. They know it's not scripted. They know you're going to mess up. And that's where the trust comes in because they know that, oh, he messed up, he's going to fix it. If he's not, he's going to do a video on how he fixed it and share it.

Guest: Darko

And I always make sure to remember the people who joined the streams. Those are some of the names I know that come to my streams. I don't know them personally, but some of them I. But it's wonderful to see those people come back again. And I always say hi to them. So if you're watching this, hello folks.

Host: Jon

I think that's pretty cool because if you notice, if do like Peloton riding the bike and they're calling out these names, you feel that connection, and it's recorded. So if they go back and watch it, it's like my name was called So pretty. It builds a lot of a relationship with you.

Guest: Darko

Sid Meer. Sid Meyer created a game Civilization among others things. Yep. In his book he wrote, there's a quote, an audience member is just an audience member until you include them in the show. All of a sudden, just like that, they're no longer an audience member. They're a participant. They have a vested interest in the show. They want you to succeed just because their face, their name, their message, and their comment were on screen for a fraction of a second. It means to them, well not to all of them, but I hope it means to

Host: Jon

Most. Okay. I know we wanted to do a quick one. I have a hot topic and this has been a topic for the last, I don't know, couple of years. How long have you been at AWS? Seven and a half years old. Yeah, you have to the badge of everything. This has been a hot topic. There are multiple of you or there's one of you, and there's somebody else. Then a comparison. They can't like you remind us of somebody else. And I'm here to dispel the belief that you're Darko and there's another person named Cobus, right?

Guest: Darko

Not Darko, technically. Yeah, he his name. Non

Host: Jon

Darko. Non-Darko. Okay. So there's a non-Darko and then there's a Darko. Yes, exactly

Guest: Darko

Right. And it's impossible to tell the difference. And we joke, but people have legit confused us. Not like by mistake or as a gag, but people whom we work with have called me Cobus numerous times. His kids even said Call me daddy at one moment. Which is weird, but it's bald, it's the beard and it's the hoodie I guess. So

Host: Jon

I have had you on my show. Yes. I have had Cobus Bernard's show. I've never had you both on my show. I've never had you both in the same room on this. So, everybody, I want to try to dispel the belief that these are two separate people in this community, in this AWS one. And we're not going to confuse either one of them. There's another person in it and I'd love to introduce you, but I'm not sure about it. So dark. What do you think about this?

Guest: Darko

There's only one of us.

Host: Jon

What do you wait for or not? Oh, so are you non-Darko are you or dark? I am.

Guest: Cobus

It depends. What do you want to talk about? If you want to talk about CDK then. Hi, I'm Darko dear. Hey

Host: Jon

On in here. Both of you

Guest: Darko

We're not. We're not exactly. There's that much alike. But yeah,

Guest: Cobus

It confuses people. And Julie, last week we were talking about it and we were talking about an upcoming livestream we're going to do. And obviously, we're coordinating with Darko a bunch of things with. He wasn't on that call and she sends it off and ends up with, Hey, thanks Darko. As in completely like, oh yeah, yeah, sorry.

Guest: Darko

Exactly. There you go. So yeah, we worked together for four years now I think almost four years

Guest: Cobus

Like that. Yeah.

Host: Jon

I think because you guys are on the same team. Yeah, side by side now. Now you are

Guest: Cobus

Me. Then we split for a little bit and then on a break. Yeah,

Host: Jon

You guys took a break. Yeah, he moved to the

Guest: Cobus

Us. I'm like, crap, I can't deal with this. So

Host: Jon

We've talked about his move into us. It's fully documented. But I think with you guys on the same team, you work and collaborate with the same people. It does get you like Twin. You are the same height too.

Guest: Cobus

I don't know. We used to be friends, we are just colleagues. We

Guest: Darko

Come from the same time zone technically, but two different hemispheres.

Guest: Cobus

So yeah.

Host: Jon

Yeah. I don't think it's going to matter, dad. Okay, so I have Darko. We have COVID. You've been on my show. We've talked about several things. And in fact, he once told me that he had a really good time on it, but it was so wild. He was like,

Guest: Cobus

He passed a lot of times. Yeah. I must confess I got more fun I think afterward than you did. It was because I saw the video. I'm like, I need to get off this podcast right now.

Host: Jon

Okay. So a little backstory if you haven't caught it, check out the podcast was, I was going to call you darker to be funny, but Oh, step in here a little bit more into the camera. Everybody got to see it. So we were ending the podcast and all of a sudden his screen lit up. I highlighted his screen lights up and he's like, so I hope you had a good time. Yes, had a great time. Did you, because that didn't sound, I love the recording. Cause he's like, no, really I did. And we talked all about what he was supposed to do a document read and he was getting hit up at the same time.

Guest: Cobus

That was funny.

Host: Jon

The people reviewing that video were hilarious. They loved it. They loved the feedback on it. It was just, it's fun. Those are the things that you can't count for that are on a recording. Those are the blooper reels that make you human behind.

Guest: Cobus

Oh yeah, definitely.

Host: Jon

That engages your audience. They're like, oh my god, that was hilarious. And I added that in the beginning, dropped it around, and used it as a highlight. And in fact, I usually tend to turn on in. That's a fair warning. I tend the turn on the recording ahead of time. And we just have a conversation.

Guest: Cobus

Right. So we told you about that project.

Host: Jon

We're on your NDA. No, but I turn it on and we have a conversation and it's just to loosen you up. Right. And then we have a little bit of fun and then we get, I'm like, all right, you ready? 3, 2, 1. And I kick it off and we jump into the conversation. Most of the mine started off introducing and now I've got a little more prescriptive and have to be right to the point about what we're talking about. Because everybody knows a lot of my audience that comes onto the show. I think that does it. What are your feelings on this, we're going to stay on the livestream topic here real quick. What are your feelings on the live stream

Guest: Cobus

There? I would say it's almost better to make mistakes because of the whole thing that I, for example, disliked about webinars. Because we all know when Covid hit, we suddenly went like we are supposed to be on stage at events talking to people and we can't go anywhere. So we switched over to webinars. And then what you would do is you would rate over just recording the perfect take without any mistakes. Yeah. We're just running through. If something in the background took a long time, all you did is cut out. Oh, that takes three seconds. I promise it's not 30 minutes. You're waiting for your cloud front distribution to spin up or anything like that. I mean it got to a point where there was, I need to do an intro for an event in South Africa. The intro itself was two minutes long. It was prescripted. I had the text there. How many takes do you think they took me?

Host: Jon

I'm going to say 30, 37.

Host: Jon

Oh hey, you want to know why I know the exact feeling? Because here's what I do. I will sit there and I will read something and I'll read it and I'll read it and then probably by the 20th time I've got it so memorized. It's natural coming across. And then I just wanted to go and then I start adding my own. And if I went back and read that text, it contains some of what I'm going to say. But it contained my verbiage in it. And that's where you start to, you kind of get away from the script tell, right? And you want to put your personal. How much do you read now from a script?

Guest: Cobus

Oh, I don't do any anymore. I don't even prepare the scripts. I figure out what the demos I'm going to do, figure out what I'm going to talk about and let's just go. Because especially I think with the live stream if you are busy showing them the amount of bolt something and then you go, well I did something wrong or I forgot a conflict somewhere. And then it's like troubleshooting mode. I think we also own the trust of the audience. Because it's not just, hey, he knows how to parrot back whatever he was told to do. It's like, okay, I understand the topic, I can fix it. And along the way, that's actually how I teach people because I'm an expert because I know how everything can break

Host: Jon

And then broke.

Guest: Cobus

Exactly. Drop the broad database. I've locked people out.

Host: Jon

We talked about the broad database. Yes,

Guest: Cobus

There's one, but that'll require a couple of beers and not today, but

Host: Jon

I'll after this, we will not record that part.

Guest: Cobus

But how Jira got me fired, that'll be a funny story one day. But literally, here's your plane ticket tomorrow. You're going home that up? Yeah. Oh,

Host: Jon

Stay tuned. I can see a future podcast coming in here. Don't worry. We'll put it on there. I want to wrap things up because we got some beers to go to or no, not at all. We're just drinking a duck. Reed. Yes. A dog wrap, ding. Oh yes, I had a great time.

Guest: Cobus

That was good, yeah. Okay, bye.

Host: Jon

Yeah, exactly. But if you were to give somebody advice for doing a live stream, whether they're starting their first time or their 10th time or further on whatever it is, what are some of the advice that you would give?

Guest: Cobus

Yeah, fun. I mean the biggest thing is to pick something that entertains you and you are passionate about. Because if you don't like it, that's going to come across and you're going to come, it's going to be dry, it's going to be boring people on a watch, whereas you know, get excited about something. Even if it's an obscure thing. Trust me, there are a million people. I mean, look at Arco, you put him on a stream talking about old computers, and it comes across. Yeah, I mean you were doing, what are the Sprite things you were doing? Like how to get a Sprite to display on a

Guest: Darko

64?

Guest: Cobus

Yes. Karo 64. I mean, that was a fun stream. I mean I've never coded with that. I never played. I watched it because this is interesting and I don't go to learn anything that I'll use in my job, but

Host: Jon

It's interesting. I'm not using a Combinator 64, but this is fun. I like that. Have a little fun, darker. Come on back over here. We're going to wrap it up. No, you got to stay in because remember there are two of them, so we're going to keep 'em in the same thing.

Guest: Darko

There are two of us. So just right off.

Host: Jon

Yes. All right. So I'm going to ask you the same question as we wrap it up. If you were to give somebody advice starting 10, 15 streams in, or even more, what was the advice you'd give them?

Guest: Darko

Two pieces of advice. All right, two. Two

Guest: Cobus

Piece of advice

Guest: Darko

To you. Two pieces of advice to be consistent. If you do a live stream, just keep on doing it. It's going to suck. It's going to be bad, it's going to give any views. But if you keep on doing it at the same place at the same time, week after week, day after day, whatever you decide things are going to get better. Two no scripts on a live stream. If you script the live stream, you failed immediately. So that's

Host: Jon

It. You got to flick back to that script or read it. By the time you do it, people are jumping off.

Guest: Cobus

Yeah, you joke, we had a streaming session where twice a week we streamed. Yeah. And then one day and we did a regular cadence. Everything was working well. And then I made the joke of saying, yeah, I know a guy for our sponsors like joking and we lost like 20, 30 people to go.

Guest: Darko

So yeah, like

Host: Jon

A dog, not a doc read, they're gone. But marketing read for your sponsors and that's not what Twitch is.

Guest: Darko

I think those things are fine. They can exist, but ultimately you don't come to us a live stream again with a scripted text that you want to read. Because again, it's not the same thing. Yep. It's not the format for that. And that's why as co said, you should take something that you care about. Something that you find interesting and maybe it's something you don't know, but you just find interesting. It's, it's fine. I've been doing, and we'll be doing a couple of live streams where I and a few other folks, just do stuff with zero preparation. Take a blog post from this gentleman here tomorrow. Tomorrow. And I just try to do it without any prep. I may fail, but I'll probably fail. But that's the fun thing. Don't take it too seriously. Have fun. Don't script and be consistent.

Host: Jon

I agree with you and I'm going to give you my two pieces of advice, even though you didn't ask,

Guest: Darko

Give me your two

Host: Jon

Advice. By Jon, first of all, keep doing it. Whatever you do, keep consistency. I agree with you. And what I do for any of my podcasts, and you guys know because you see my document, I got three bullet points or three things. What are the key takeaways? What are the three things? These are the topic we talk about. And in fact, sometimes we never get to those topics because the conversation goes where it just goes and lets the natural stuff happen.

Guest: Darko

Yeah, yeah. From a technical perspective, get a microphone, get a better microphone. You could have the worst camera in the world. You could have the potato camera, you can have the mirror. That camera. There you go. You can have this as your camera if you want. Or

Host: Jon

That or this is a little slow.

Guest: Darko

That's okay. As long as you have a good microphone. Right? So this is not a good microphone, just so you know. Get a better get an apple. No, the AirPods. AirPods are horrible. The apple wired headset is better than this. With an exception of the beard. Yeah, that's a problem. But in general, just get yourself better, mark. That's all you

Host: Jon

Need. People will forgive bad videos. They will not forgive bad audio. No, no, exactly. I have learned it echoes. There was one time, and I know wrapping it up, I was doing a content recording for a training company and my mic changed over from my regular mic to my laptop mic. And there is no amount of editing you could do to make that quality better. It sounded like I was across the room and I had done two hours' worth of recording. I had to redo it all. Oh, of course. Yeah. Nobody's going to watch it. They're, they're going to lose him within minutes. At least the mic's on. Yeah. Yep, yep. Been there, done that. Right. Record for two hours and be like, where's the audio? Yep. Oh, I forgot the, all right. So guys, thank you so much for having me here in Seattle. Thank you. I appreciate it. Appreciate it. This has been a pleasure. Any plugins for you?

Guest: Darko

Thursdays,

Host: Jon

Thursday?

Guest: Darko

Sure. Thursdays. Thursdays at 9:00 AM Pacific Twitch l tv. Special of Bill on a weekday. We the wonderful, Jackie and I do build stuff on the cloud and Twitch,

Host: Jon

As Covid said. I am sure I had a good time on this. Thank you, everybody. My name's Jon Meyer and as always, don't forget to hit that light. Subscribe and notify him. Make sure you watch a show. All right. Later.