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Home > News > A Visit to the TWiT Cottage

A Visit to the TWiT Cottage

July 28, 2010 by Chris Christensen

If you ever happen to be in the sleepy little town of Petaluma, California just North of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge then keep your eyes out for a small grey house with a sign outside that says TWiT Cottage. GeekBeat.TV is a part of a greater tech and gadget podcasting / new media space and one of the oldest podcasts in that space is TWiT (This Week in Tech) which is over 5 years old. Cali has been a guest on TWiT numerous times, including this last week (TWiT 258). The TWiT Cottage in Petaluma is the world headquarters for an experiment in new media that is still unfolding. Leo Laporte is the main personality behind what is now a network of shows being produced in this unlikely studio.

The differences between old media and new media are pretty obvious when you visit the cottage. Anyone can email Leo’s sister Eva to ask to attend a show taping (requests@twit.tv). There are no tickets, no security guard at the gate like in the movies, no gate for that matter, and what passes for a green room is a covered porch with free wi-fi, a chess set and a wine fridge. The Cottage is decorated in “Early American Tech” with magazine ads for the Apple Lisa, Microsoft Multiplan and Wang Computers. These ads document how far technology has come since Leo has been reporting on it. It has progressed to the point that the equipment necessary to create a world-wide audience of technophiles can now fit in a small studio and an old kitchen closet.

The cottage has two floors with Leo’s office, and editing room and another office upstairs and an office, kitchen and the main studio downstairs. When there are 4 people in the studio as there were Monday for the live streaming of Tech News Today then there is barely room in the studio for one more chair off camera for a “studio audience”. But within that cramped space are at least six video cameras, 4 microphones, a tricaster, at least 8 flat screens, and more computer power than it took to put men on the moon.

The cottage is a historic building. It was constructed in 1912 originally as the Cavanagh Cottage by a lumber baron  John W. Cavanagh who arrived in town in 1867.   The Cavanagh Lumber Company went out of business in the 1970s, which means it had a run of more than 100 years. Cavanagh’s old cottage is now part of a larger experiment in media. The TWiT network is not even close to that longevity in “internet years”, but if this new media experiment works out perhaps this little cottage will have one more claim to fame.

If you can’t get to Petaluma then you can take a video tour of the cottage.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: podcast, podcasting, social media

About Chris Christensen

Chris is by day a Director of Engineering at TripAdvisor in charge of TripAdvisor.com/Flights. By night he is a podcaster and blogger at sites including his popular Amateur Traveler podcast. Previously Chris had managed a team that ran large social networks since the dawn of the web.

Comments

  1. Zachary TG says

    July 30, 2010 at 10:19 am

    I love the TWiT Cottage! I’ve always wanted to visit, but Canada is a bit far from California 😛 Maybe I should just build my own 😛

  2. Martha aka SwitchingGranny says

    July 28, 2010 at 7:22 pm

    Loved Loved Loved the TWIT cottage video tour (and your pictures are pretty neat too) I would not have known you Cali.. if it weren’t for Leo’s podcasts and he introduced you!!

  3. Daynah says

    July 28, 2010 at 7:03 pm

    I’ve always wanted to visit the Twit Cottage! It looks like geeky fun. Thanks for the tour Chris!

  4. Jeffrey Powers says

    July 28, 2010 at 6:31 pm

    That is cool. I hope to visit the cottage someday soon. It would be a fun learning experience.

    Bruce – Yes. He uses a Tri-caster.

  5. Bruce R. says

    July 28, 2010 at 6:03 pm

    NICE!!! It looks very much like some of the old cottages in West Hampton Long Island, NY… Are they using a Tri-Caster?

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