Dishing on Data: Interview With Chris Pirillo
This is the first in an occasional series of audio interviews we’re doing with tech gurus and alpha geeks. We’ll be talking to them about how they manage their digital life, where they store all of their virtual stuff and related geekery.
You can listen to the interview, or read the transcription below:
Darren: So we’re talking today for PutPlace. We’re recording a series of conversations with tech gurus and productivity types about how they backup and manage their digital life and tonight we have Chris Pirillo. Chris, tell us who you are and what you do.
Chris: Well I think the easiest way to explain it is if you go to Google and you type in the word “Chris” I should be the first one there at least at this moment in time. I’ve been online since 1992 in one sense, well, except when I sleep but that’s not very often. So, I enjoy the world of psychology and creating content and sharing information with the world.
Darren: And we can watch you right now at Live.Pirillo.com, right?
Chris: Yeah, it’s kinda scary, I’m doing life-casting so all the time it’s always on and I’ve set it up so that even if I’m there I’ve got chat room, and the chat room’s always lively and interactive and you know just a bunch of geeks hanging out.
Darren: Aren’t you ever worried that someone might see you picking your nose?
Chris: Uh, no, although they definitely caught some interesting moments.
(Darren laughs.)
Chris: Uh, yeah… uh, yeah (Chris laughs.)
A Very Complicated Digital Life
Darren: Uh, OK, well uh, we wanted to talk you obviously because I know you and you’ve obviously been online for a long time and have alot of technology and you have probably a very complicated digital life– (Following overlaps with Chris’ comment below:] so… how many computers do you currently - have?
Chris: - No, not really…
Darren: — No…? How many computers do you currently have?
Chris: Well I do have alot of computers but, you know, I tend to be a minimalist as far as my digital lifestyle is concerned. I don’t want to you know be overwhelmed and that’s what can happen really easily. So if you ask me how many computers I have I don’t know if I can name them all. For me it’s been trying to find the right grooves so that everything integrates and it’s been difficult. Especially in relation to content, whether it’s my own content or consuming other people’s content. For years I had to rely on tradition media means and mechanism and I don’t really want to rely on tradition channels and delivery anymore so I‘ve been looking for ways to integrate that older type of consumer lifestyle with the digital world with whether I am today and the way content is distributed today. So… it’s… when you ask how many computers I have… I think I’ve got alot but they wouldn’t necessarily be termed as PC or Mac but anything that could be connected to the internet I would consider a computer these days.
Darren: Right.
Chris: Because if it doesn’t connect to the Internet, it’s not a computer.
Darren: So how many do you think you touch in a day, like, how many is in your active network of electronic devices.
Chris: Oh, 2 or 3. There’s some that are run pretty regularly but any moment in my office I’ve got access to 3 computers and it ebbs and flows but I do try to keep it at a minimum just to give, I don’t want to clutter my life with things that I’m not using on a regular basis.
Darren: Right, right. OK. So, how do you backup right now? How do you backup all your content?
Time Machine, Rhapsody and Moxy Fruvous
Chris: Well I’ve been very, very lucky in the sense that Mac OS 10 has Time Machine and I’ve had that running on my primary system but I’ve also have, at least right now, one [network attached] storage [mass] device and I’m likely going to be switching to another one here in the near future. It’s local but I know that I’m just looking for an easier way to get it online without having to worry about it. I know that there are a variety of programs and services out there. My fear about using them is that I’ll have to pay for them indefinitely and never know whether it’s going to be there or not. And the ease of access - and when I say that I mean like completely ubiquitous the more platform neutral a service is, the happier I am because I never know how I’m going to be accessing that data. Especially if it’s platform neutral data like PDFs or JPGs, MP4, just stuff that I’ve had collecting in my documents directory for the past God-knows-how-long…
Darren: One of the concerns I have about online backup is I have like 50 GBs of music and I want those close at hand, right? It’s no use having the only copy in the cloud somewhere certainly
Chris: See, to me, I stopped tracking music a few years ago. I mean, I did have and I still do have a collection and a lot of my MP3s are on the network but I’ve kind of gotten away from that just because I’d much rather consume my music “a la carte”, well I guess, in the subscription format “a la carte” so I subscribe to a variety subscription services. I was with Napster for awhile then I went to Urge and have now been with Rhapsody. I’m pretty happy with the Rhapsody service, by and large. I’d see no true reason to switch away. It’s pretty good. Because that the way I consume music. Why would I want to keep track of an album digitally? [ ] It’s taking up space and I have to administer. I’d rather have it sitting in the cloud because it’s the same album.
Darren: Yes—
Chris: –Unless that, you know — go ahead…
Darren: I was gonna say that : except if you’re driving in your car
Chris: Uh, that’s the exception to the rule. There are very few occasions where I’m in the car and I say: “oh - I’ve really got to listen to Moxy Fruvous right now!”
(Darren laughs)
Chris: And, yes, I’m a Moxy Fruvous fan.
Darren: Oh, that’s funny.
Chris: But there’s a clear cut case of the MP3 that I had to track for awhile. Moxy Fruvous was recording songs for their fans - apparently they had these Fruvous points or something, where if you went to a certain amount of their concerts they make the MP3. Well I saved those MP3 because they really haven’t been updated on their web site and I think the band has pretty much disbanded which is pretty unfortunate in some ways for me.
But those are the MP3s that I still do have to track, it’s just the music that I don’t have to track, I don’t want to. It’s getting to the point where I’ve got an iPhone and I’m taking to you over the iPhone and with a service like Pandora, Last.fm, AOL Radio, I can get access to just about any music I want beyond my satellite radio subscriptions. Unfortunately with the car is not on demand. I would long for a day where Rhapsody type service in conjunction with satellite connectivity could bring me on-demand content. Until then it’s an absolute kludge - and that’s where we are with content so the less I have to track, the happier I am.
A Data Disaster-Free Life
Darren: I wanted to ask you can you tell us about a disaster where you lost some data, like a hard drive meltdown or something along those lines - have you ever experienced that?
Chris: No… I’ve been lucky, I’d say. Over the years I’ve had some failures, but nothing where my data was absolutely just … I couldn’t get to it. And it’s largely because of redundancy, local redundancy. Just copying, backing up and having these copies floating around whether they’re in a safety deposit box or on an older hard drive I have. And so having that there has been a, sort of, a saving grace. But I haven’t had too many hard drive failures.
The only time I remember losing a lot of my emails, some of the first emails I ever sent I lost them to a think it was a catastrophic mistake with Outlook. It had nothing to do with hard drive, it had to do with the limitations of Microsoft Outlook which I’ve since abandoned for alot of good reasons. I’m still using an exchange server but I’m using Mac OS 10 mail app to connect to that and I’ve been really happy with it. And that’s another thing, I can’t really think of one that’s happened to me personally - certainly to my parents and they were a little dismayed - but, you know, for me, I look for redundancy, and as much as I can push out to this cloud of data, I will. So my email sits on an Exchange server, I don’t have to worry about it anymore: I have a copy of it, indefinitely, from all angles. It’s not quite that way with all my digital photos and all my documents but, over time I’m sure it will, with all the right means and mechanisms in place, and again, the right pricing. So disaster for data, it’s going to become… it’s still a worry today… but it should become less of a worry over time.
Having Time Machine, the Time Capsule in Mac OS 10 Leopard, and I’m sure beyond - it’s been… nice. Just because I don’t have to worry about it – it like “Oh, it’s getting backed up.” Granted it’s a local backup, and I’d be so much happier if it was an offsite backup – but it’s getting backed up. And you just turn it on and you’re done. So for me, the disaster mode has never really happened in a data loss capacity and I count myself very lucky for never having to have been through that
Darren: So lots and lots of people don’t backup. Why do you think that is?
Chris: Yeah… Cause it’s a pain in the neck!
Darren: Yeah…?
Chris: I honestly do not blame people. I mean, I’ll say, “You better backup, you better backup” - I couldn’t tell you the last time I backed up – And I know I need to do it, but it’s one of those things you better do it before you need to do it. You should do it. And I always explain to people that the easiest way to backup is just keep it all in one directory. I say, you don’t need the programs cause those can always be reinstalled - unless you have a certain directory where you download stuff. I’m talking specifically about your data. I always have it in a certain documents directory.
The things that I want to keep and I want to backup and I want to know are there, I keep in that directory and sub-directories - I should say “folder” – no one says directory anymore – shows you my age. The reason why they don’t do it is because software is a pain in the neck, services tend to be overpriced – I’m not saying that they’re all too much, that they’re not worth their money but it’s just storage is becoming a commodity, the prices are going to continue to decrease, it’s going to become easier and easier to backup and that’s where I’ve been really happy.
People are going to label me as a “fan boy” but I’m going to say it again: the reason I wasn’t backing up before was because it was never as easy as it has been with Time Machine on Mac OS 10. And that has made it easier to do it locally – but the bigger concern, and I think the larger concern for most people is, it’s got to be easy, invisible and when I say “invisible” I mean process-wise, you don’t know it’s doing it, and it’s doing it so you don’t need to worry about it until you need to worry about it and then, hey, it’s there. But I think that what trips most people up is that they don’t know where to start and it tends to be a kludge – it tends to be a series of hoops and there’s no degree of understanding that has gone on between the user and the software that they’re trying to use.
Darren: Right, yeah, yeah. I totally agree. One more question, and I’ll let you get back to the debates. This is kind of a fun question, I suppose. What is the oldest digital file you have, you currently own?
Chris: I figured you were going to ask something like that. I have to say that I saw some files that I created when I was in Word Perfect 5.1 in DOS back at – no wait - I think I may even have files older than that. I had a, there’s two programs, I had a doc, there’s a program it’s like a paint type of program for DOS. It was called “Doctor Halo”.
(Darren laughs)
Chris: And it made like three objects in that. I loved that program – oh, that was a great program. And I think I saved some Doctor Halo files and I believe I have also Deluxe Paint files. Deluxe Paint was even more awesome, another DOS program that you could do like, it was rich graphics inside of DOS - it was amazing. And you could do animations and everything. It was so cool, so much fun. I loved that program. Deluxe Paint was the name of that. And I know I’ve got files from that, I’m pretty sure. And then I know I’ve got files from college when I used WordPerfect 5.1 - the blue screen…
Darren: Yes, I remember the blue screen. And you’d hit Scroll Lock and the cursor would get fat – I think, I don’t know… Remember that? There was some button you would hit and the cursor would get fat-
Chris: I…I just barely remember that. I mean, I just remember having these keyboard templates that you had to keep on your keyboard.
Darren: (Laughs) Oh yeah, yeah…
Chris: ..to remind yourself of you know, like, what’s the, what’s the… I think “Save” was F11
Darren: Yup…
Chris: … and don’t know why that, I don’t know why that, sticks out in my mind… And I think, was “Spell Check” like, F7…?
Darren: Uh…? Yeah.
Chris: I know that “Spell Check” in Word now – Microsoft Word, at least in Windows, and I think on Mac OS 10 still has a WordPerfect mode where you can switch the background to blue.
Darren: Right. (Laughs)
Chris: I mean for some people they just can get over that. That’s why it’s there.
Darren: Right.
Chris: Anyway I, that’s, I believe my data would go all the way back to the early 90s.
Darren: Early 90s. Excellent, excellent. Well, thank you for taking the time to do this, Chris. Please enjoy the rest of the debate and I’ll send you a link to it when we post it.
Chris: So cool.
Darren: OK, take it easy.
Photo by Kris Krug.
Tags: chris pirillo, digital life, interview, Moxy Fruvous, WordPerfect
October 21st, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Good interview. It’s nice to see Chris from another angle. Being online and a poster himself, he controls all the content and the flow of his videos and posts. Thanks for this!
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I just recently ran across a stash of CD backups that I had burned with “all my files” from about ten years ago. It was kind of funny, because now I’ve got a 500GB external drive that gets an automated backup written to it every evening, and I copied all the stuff on the CDs there just for the heck of it.
Came to a little over 3GB. Nowadays a complete data backup is in the 300+ range, and that doesn’t include everything on all the websites, blogs, and corporate projects.
One of my secrets of backing up what I do is publishing things to the cloud. If I have it on YouTube, SlideShare, somebody’s blog or a company’s website that’s my “emergency backup” location.