About

Hello and Welcome to How2Podcast.com. My name is Ben Straw, Podcaster, Blogger, Guru and many more titles that I go by. I currently live in the largest town (POP over 30,000) in Indiana called Merrillville, (which no one can pronounce for some odd reason) I’ve lived here for over 18 Years and and even though the politics suck, I’m loving this town. Born in 1983 to John and Sue Straw and growing/beating up 3 younger siblings was fun. For my 7th birthday my Grandma and Grandpa and got me a Sony table top cassette recorder for my birthday, which was a mistake because it drove my mother nuts. every tape in the house had my voice on it LOL.

I got my first chance to engineer a sound system at the age of 16 with a really small church of eight. I was in charge of making sure that the vocals where level with the worship music that played from a CD. After the church merged with a much bigger church, I inherited the duty of sound engineer for this bigger church, where before I only dealt with cd’s and vocals, here is was all about LIVE. and sounded great.
I learned a lot about the sound system we had at the church and made suggestions for new and better equipment that where implemented with in 6 months of starting the position. A year later We started creating video for a local broadcast station. Recording, editing, mixing and titling was what I learned from that experience.

Six years later, a friend approached me to fill in for a sound engineer that had left a theater company.
The director and board members where impressed so much with the sound engineering I got to engineer 6 other productions. This theater company was different from most, we had to design and tear down the equipment for each and every practice and performance due to the lease requirements. Long hours was a requirement for every production. After my last show some of the board members had left for better prospects and the company fell apart. A shame I loved the shows.
I did have a chance to engineer and work with that first director I ever worked with an event in Highland, Ind. The great thing about this production, it was the last theatrical production and event before a historical gazebo was demolished and replaced with a bigger one. its also so memorable because the director had broken his arm by falling off a semi trailer, trying to get away from his mother as she was spray painting props in the trailer, man that was a fun weekend… outside and in the rain… wet… a 50/50 chance of getting shocked by 110 volts… maybe not LOL.

I started my podcasting career in Early February of 2008, when I discovered Podcasts. I always struggled with over the air radio as it is built around advertising and wanted to get away it. Music that I put on an MP3 player just didn’t suffice. At the time I only had a 1GB player and I would run out of songs for an 8-10 hour boring work day. I found My first podcast after looking for info on computer repair, which is a hobby of mine.

After listening to my first podcast I craved for more and my podcast list grew to over 50 shows with in 2 days. Now I find it hard to find to figure out what I want to listen to, having over 150 shows that I listen to. Some of the podcasts I first listened to, (which I grew to love) had died with in the few months. Sad But life does get in the way.

I started my podcasting career by calling into the podcasts I listened to and then guest or sometimes co hosting some of those shows.
The first podcast I ever created is Ben’s Tech Show. I started this podcast after one of my favorite podcasts went on hiatus for two weeks. and wanted to something to do while it was gone. My first show started with just myself rambling on about technology and found out after the first week that if I had co-hosts it would make the show run smooth and sound better, I kept the show going to this day and loving every time I grab the microphone to do the show.

My second show is also a tech show, Mac Tip Podcast. This show is about tips for the mac. At the time I had just gotten a mac and felt compelled to create a podcast about the tips I find for the operating system. I found that the listener ship was very different then Ben’s Tech Show and the show grew a lot faster by putting out two, five minute shows a week.

After Guest and co hosting a few shows, I felt My calling to podcasting and read, watched, and listened to EVERYTHING I could find on the Internet about Podcasting.
I also felt compelled to Blog and Podcast about what I have learned about podcasting and that is what this site How2Podcast.com is all about.

I am available for One on One Podcast consulting. If you need help with Audio or Video editing, Website Programing, Hosting, Equipment setup, Finding out what to Buy for your podcast, Advertising, or anything else, I’m able to help you.
You are able to reach me at (304) 449-4335, Clicking on the Contact link above, or by clicking the Call Me button on the sidebar.
I look forward to hearing from you