Building a Developer Recording Haven | Xavier Morera | Ep 3

DevEducate: The Art of Teaching Developers at Scale

What does it take to get started recording professional video content? In this episode, Xavier Morera joins me to share his journey to becoming a full-time Pluralsight author and what ultimately led to building his own recording studio – and what Vin Diesel has to do with it.

Talking Points

• Xavier’s journey from Microsoft trainer to full-time course author
• What the entry-level to pro hardware looks like for recording
• What going from a home office or closet to full-blown studio looks like
• Pro tips on reducing video and audio recording maintenance
• Why hiring a theater actress can improve your speaking
• Ways to improve the quality of your home office right away
• How a studio can be turned into an investment and an asset

Lightly edited for context

“There's always going to be someone in the room who doesn't know what you know. So it's always going to add value when you teach someone something.” – Kamran

“In my earlier courses, my laptop was really noisy. I had to put my laptop on the floor, under the desk, and get some long cables so I could put a monitor and a keyboard on top.” – Xavier

“If you're thinking about doing video recording, you'll have to pay attention to your equipment. And you might have to adjust some of the hardware that you're using.” – Kamran

“I updated a course that was three years old and because I recorded it in that same booth, with that same microphone, when I'm doing the update, I can just drop in new sentences and my voice really hasn't changed so it sounds pretty much the same.” – Xavier

“If you're a business and you're creating video training you also have to maintain it because your software's gonna evolve over time.” – Kamran

“When I close everything, I could do yoga or meditation here without hearing even a pin drop.” – Xavier

“When I was doing earlier courses and I had a full-time job I didn't record during the day cause I was working, but I would just record at night when everybody was sleeping and that was a good time to do it.” – Kamran

“There’s this theater actress I hired a few months ago. I'm like, I'm 40-something, I know how to breathe. And she was like, no, let me teach you how to breathe.” – Xavier

“If you had the means to create your own recording studio for yourself or even for your organization, it could be a shared space and you could even rent it out if you needed to.” – Kamran

“I think the most important thing is… just start. Stop just waiting for the right conditions. Just get a microphone, start recording. It's not like you're releasing something to a hundred million people and everybody's watching what you're doing. Just release something, you'll get someone to like it, then you'll improve it and you get better with time.” – Xavier

Links

Xavier’s Links

• Xavier on Pluralsight
• Xavier’s .NET 6 Big Picture course

Equipment

• Blue Yeti Snowball – a good entry-level recording microphone
• AudioTechnica ATR-2100 – another entry-level mic Kamran uses to record
• Rode Podcaster – a mid-level microphone great for podcasting and voice
• Shure SM35 – a headset microphone (called a “lav mic”) that keeps the microphone the same distance from your mouth
• DBX 286S – high-end microphone pre-amp, helps remove “s” sounds
• Behringer Xenyx-Q802USB – Kamran’s budget-friendly microphone pre-amp/mixer
• Kaotica Eyeball – a microphone isolation shield
• Dragon Pad pop filter – what Kamran uses, attaches to your mic arm or desk
• ATS acoustic panels – 2-3” thick foam panels that absorb sound
• Cheaper foam acoustic panels – Kamran uses these in his home office
• Black Theater boards – drywall-like panels that can be used for studio ceilings
• Whisper Room or StudioBricks – get your very own recording booth for a healthy investment

Other Links

• The Dunning-Kruger Effect – a cognitive bias where low-performers and high-performers-alike tend to overestimate their ability
• Why Incompetent People Think They’re Amazing (TED Talk) by David Dunning
• The Curse of Knowledge: Why Experts Struggle to Explain Their Work (MIT webinar) – what happens to us technical folk when we have deep subject matter expertise?
• Elocution (public speaking) training – talk like a pro with the help of a trained vocal coach