Company History

In the fall of 2004, Mike Harper, a professor at Utah Valley State College asked a simple question to his assembled students. “Who can tell me what Podcasting is?”

I was one of the students that sat there pondering the question, not quite sure what this “pod-thing” might be.

We were working on our group projects in Mr. Harper’s Immersive Authoring class as part of the school’s Multimedia Communications Technology program. Together, we represented a fairly tech-savvy group of individuals with years of experience in web design, audio and video editing, and CD and DVD authoring. Many of us were carrying full-time jobs in some aspect of multi-media in addition to our studies, yet none of us had ever heard of Podcasting. Mike has always had a passion for technology, (think of Kip’s wedding song in Napoleon Dynamite) and always seemed to be on the cutting-edge with newsworthy topics. That day, we learned about the next generation of digital media, although in all honesty I can’t say that I really understood at that time the true potential of the medium.

Two years later, I had the opportunity to travel with Mike to the 2006 Podcasting and New Media Expo in Ontario, California. Looking around at the attendees, I was reminded of a Star Trek convention – people dressed in costumes, wearing wigs or funky hairdoos, and just having fun with the experience.

In that moment, I understood the essence of Podcasting. Here was a whole segment of society that was cut-off from main-stream media, clamoring for a niche of their own, free from editorial oversight, free from network program directors, and free to produce whatever content their imagination could deliver. How liberating!

That event finally convinced me that Podcasting was not only here to stay, but that we were witnessing a whole new approach to the way that people created and consumed digital media. As Mike and I compared notes, we also recognized that things wouldn’t stay so innocent for long.

By the 2007 Expo, the attendee demographic was amazingly different. Instead of having the feel of a Star Trek convention, it looked and felt more like a Human Resources convention. Corporate America had arrived. It seemed that the entire conference could be condensed to a single word – Monetize. The sessions were less about producing and distributing content, and more about how to turn your hobby into a revenue generating resource.

On the second night of the expo, Mike, Chad Clark, (another of Mike’s recently graduated students) and I decided on the spur of the moment to go to a Dodgers game. As we sat there enjoying the warm fall night, the Podcast Tune-Up idea was born. We realized that there was an opportunity to create a company that specialized in helping Podcasters take their work to the next level.

The problem, we realized was that most independent Podcasters are likely experts in web design, or audio, or video, and may even be well versed in a few other disciplines, but they may not possess all the skills necessary to produce a truly professional production. We realized that if we were to tap into our network of extremely talented individual content experts, we could create a learning library of sorts that would enable a single content creator to integrate sound concepts in a wide range of subjects. We set to work organizing the team immediately upon our return from the Expo.

One key aspect necessary for us to develop the content we envisioned was the creation of our own studio. Fortunately for us, we had an ideal space at our fingertips. In December of 2007, my wife and I moved into the home we had just built. One aspect to the floor plan was a provision for a home office. The office had a deep walk-in closet, with an empty storage room on the other side of the wall.

The storage room, the closet, and the home office were ideal for our needs. In January of 2008, we started work on the studio build-out. We worked mainly on weekends and soon saw steady progress as we relied on Podcast Tune-Up board member Mike Wisland’s experience in studio design.

We made sure to document each stage of the build-out so that we could offer a step-by-step guide to building your own studio. Be sure to take a look at our Studio Photos on the podcast-tuneup.com website.

While this was going on, we were working on recruiting the development team, securing consulting contracts, and creating the website. We began working with Tim and Emile Bourquin (The Podcast Brothers) early in the process, letting them know what we were building, requesting their feedback, and negotiating our sponsorship of the New Media Expo. Tim and Emile have been wonderful to work with, and have been instrumental in helping us reach our current state of readiness.

Now, just four weeks away from the Expo, we’re quickly putting the final touches on our content, putting the final touches on the website, and getting ready to welcome our new customers and corporate clients. We’re looking forward to your feedback as we launch our education division at the Expo and in interviewing potential content creators. Be sure to stop by and say hello. Who knows, you might be the next member of the Podcast Tune-up team!