I'm a fan of checklists – they're an intermediate step before automating a process to ensure it's done correctly and consistently. You'll find a number of different checklists on this site. This one is about streaming, specifically for my twitch.tv/ardalis account. I've been meaning to blog about this forever, but it's just been sitting in my OneNote for the longest time while other things have been a priority. But today, at long last, it's going to make it to my blog!

• Run any IDE updates for Visual Studio, VS Code, etc. (but don't do this within 30 minutes or so of your start time)
• Run Streamlabels (if you're using it)
• Silence phone.
• Make sure you have water on hand.
• Take a bio break.
• Adjust fonts to 16-20 in text editors. Zoom browser windows to 125%
• Set show title and tags in Twitch dashboard
• Add "Starting Soon" scene about a minute ahead (if using one)
• Tweet that you're starting
• Add "On Air" Red Circle to Twitter Name: 🔴
• If playing music (Music to Code By for instance) start and set volume to 1-5%
• Launch Chatty (or other chat monitor) in separate monitor
• Verify you're set up to use the correct microphone and sound is making it to your stream!
• Verify your camera (and background) are good to go, too.
• Disable notifications and turn off chat/IM clients (or move to another monitor).
• Close unneeded windows and applications.
• If you want, set chat to "Followers Only" via "/followers 1m" (requires users to have been following you for 1 minute before they can post to your chat). /followersoff to remove.

Big thanks to Carl Franklin for providing me with permission to use Music to Code By in my streams.

Recording Dimensions (ideal)

• YouTube: 1920×1080
• Pluralsight: 1280×720

Promote Your Stream

• Reddit/WatchPeopleCode
• GitHub Awesome Developer Streams (add your name)