| Cali Lewis | |
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Cali Lewis |
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| Born | Luria Petrucci January 25, 1981 Dallas, Texas, USA |
| Notable works | GeekBeat.TV, Geek Brief |
| Political party | Libertarian |
Cali Lewis (born Luria Petrucci on January 25, 1981[1]) is an American podcaster and Internet personality best known for her podcasts GeekBeat.TV (video),[2] GeekBrief.TV (video) and Wealth Nation (audio), and her guest host role on Call for Help. In 2007 she was featured in a TV commercial for GoDaddy.com which aired during the Super Bowl. In 2010 Cali became one of the founders of Opencamp,[3] a live and streamed gathering of bloggers. Opencamp grew out of Wordcamp but includes blogs of different formats including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, and .NET. Cali Lewis' social media presence include a variety of platforms including Twitter[4] where over 150,000 individuals are signed up to follow her tweets.
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Lewis hosts GeekBeat.TV three times a week on the Revision3 network. She talks about technology and gadgets in a short format, aimed at a broad audience ranging from geeks to tech newbies.
Along with ex-husband, Neal Campbell, Lewis hosted GeekBrief.TV. The video podcast was released four days a week, with occasional special episodes. It provided news about technology and new releases in the consumer electronics industry. As part of the backstory for the show, Lewis was cast in the role of the International Director of the fictional Geek Intelligence Agency (the G.I.A). The show was part of the Mevio network. In June 2010, after 800 episodes, Lewis ended her partnership with Mevio,[5] which resulted in Geek Brief TV airing its final episode on June 25.
Along with John Pozadzides, Lewis currently hosts the Wealth Nation audio podcast. The show focuses on entrepreneurial and personal finance matters and is released once a week. Husband Neal Campbell hosted the show as well until early 2010, when their separation[6] occurred. The show is produced by Dave Moyer.
Lewis also produced The Crappy Christian Show.[7] 35 episodes were made, the final episode was posted on November 10, 2005, just 13 days before Geek Brief TV was launched. The show was an audio podcast available on iTunes, but it has since been removed.
In April 2007, Lewis launched a tech advice blog called Dear Cali.[8] On the site, she answers tech questions in the style and tone of a newspaper advice column. Geek Brief TV periodically broadcasts entire "Dear Cali" episodes as well.
Lewis has also appeared on Ustream. She records the show while sometimes broadcasting a live show on Ustream, so people can interact using the chat room. She also sometimes answers questions this way. On April 29, 2008, she began doing a weekly show on Ustream covering a wide variety of subjects. On June 10, 2008, at 17:00 GMT she appeared on Ustream to provide live coverage of the Worldwide Developers Conference 2007 (WWDC) and on January 6, 2010 she covered the CES 2010 keynote by Steve Ballmer.[9]
On June 29, 2007 Lewis waited in line for the long awaited iPhone from Apple. Once using it, she and her husband Neal decided to launch another podcast series dedicated to the cell phone, and iCali launched on July 14, 2007.[10] After the release of the Amazon Kindle, Lewis decided to change directions with the iCali feed, and use it as her blog for all tech-related news. Following the release of the iPhone 3G, she again focused the blog on the iPhone, focusing on app reviews.
On February 14, 2009 Lewis raised the issue of a global warming controversy with a post on Twitter. "It's so sad that smart people don't pay attention to the science that proves global warming is a hoax."[11] Her comments were sharply criticized, notably by fellow radio host and podcaster Leo Laporte who said her statements were inconsistent with overwhelming scientific opinion on climate change. Lewis later reinforced her statement via her blog.[12] On February 1, 2010, her husband posted a public apology,[13] in which he claims that the original message on Twitter was in fact written by him, as was typical throughout the production of GeekBrief.TV. The referenced post on her blog and the original tweet have been removed. Neal Campbell has claimed both on his blog several months ago (removed) and more recently on Twitter that he is the author of all of her words stating most recently on Twitter on August 29, 2010 that "Cali is as much me as it is Luria...." "Everything Cali said, I wrote. Cali is my thoughts + her spirit." [3]
Lewis currently resides in Dallas, Texas. She married Neal Campbell on her eighteenth birthday, on January 25, 1999.[14] On April 13, 2010, Lewis announced on her blog, that she and Campbell had separated in early 2010 and were in the process of a divorce. On November 2, 2010, Campbell announced on his blog that they were officially divorced.
In an aside, she once said during an episode of GeekBrief.TV that she is a Libertarian.[15]