Gear Geeks Live has come to an end. It was a wonderful run and I enjoyed it, but the logistics spiraled out of control. After numerous reboots of my computer, paying for more output on the server end, bringing in an editor, and many other small efforts the mounting issues have made it impossible for the podcast to keep going. As of the end of February I am going to stop paying for the server, so grab whatever you want and download it. On March 1 it will be gone.

But Nick and I still have a desire to do a podcast on gear. We still have an itch to chat about blades. And we really love being enablers. So, in the coming months, we are going to start a new podcast on solid foundations that hopefully will be as fun and as delightful as GGL was at its best. Our hope is that this new podcast will be a bit funnier and more humorous than the mostly fact-based GGL. The plan is to roll it out at the end of spring beginning of summer.

The reality is that the podcast will continue in some form or another, largely because Nick is a really good dude and I miss talking to him. And if I am going to talk to him why not record it? To that end there are some goals for this new adventure.

First, we’d like to keep the podcast shorter. While 2 hours are fun, editing, transferring, and storing all of that data is a bitch. In one of the numerous computer crashes/wipes I did to keep the podcast running, I decided to upload stuff to the cloud. In do that I discovered that the GGL data and the videos and the pics that support the site were nearly 10 TB of data. It took more than three months to upload everything. Videos, pictures, drafts, and audio from the last ten years adds up quickly. All of this is to say that longer podcasts aren’t manageable. It also happens that I am exhausted the day after a marathon session. Finally, despite the length of the podcast and how I write here, I genuinely believe that brief is better. So, the hope is we will tighten things up and hit it and get it so that it will be around an hour long.

Second, we’d like to set up an online community, like discord channel or a subreddit. The feedback I get on the blog is instrumental in helping me continue to do this. It unearths new stuff, helps me see where my blindspots are, and keeps the conversation moving.

Third, I would love improve the listening experience in general. For example, I’d like to do a live broadcast the podcast at least once in a while. Like the online community, a live broadcast would be great. We tried to figure this out before, but it wasn’t doable with our current set up. We’d also like to bump up the production values with bumpers, more music, and the like. A contest may be in order…

Fourth, I would like to have some financial support for this new endeavor. While Blade HQ was awesome, the ad revenue was no where near enough to support the podcast. There was a difference between ad revenue and cost of about $35 a month and I paid that out of my own pocket. I can’t do that anymore. I’d like to find a sponsor (if you run a company that wants to advertise contact me) and Nick and I are still debating a Patreon, but some financial support would be great.

Finally, I’d like to tap into the burgeoning community of funny people online. Between AKB and Cedric and Ada, there is a huge reservoir of talent in the IKC and we didn’t do enough to focus on that before. GGL was more of a late night talk show where guests came to hawk movies and books and less an SNL thing. I want to move it towards the latter. I have learned a long time ago that while knives and flashlights are cool, people that like them are even cooler.

RIP GGL. Get ready for what’s next.

And so, with all of that, its time to close one book and open another. Thanks to Dan, Aaron, Andrew, Andrew, Nick and Nathan for making GGL awesome. Thanks to all of the guests. And keep a lookout for something new. Nick and I will share it with you as soon as we have something concrete.