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On the dawn of our fourth season, your hosts recap their favorite ‘casts of 2023, a live dramatic reading of Unfrozen's 2023 Spotify Wrapped stats, and get on and off the soapbox as we stare down the barrel of 2024. -- Intro/Outro: “Trying Not to Think About Time,” by The Futureheads -- Discussed: - Unfrozen's 2023 Spotify Wrapped Stats: o Most Popular Episode: “Show Me the Bodies” with Peter Apps o Most Shared Episode: “Untimely Meditations, Virtual Repatriations,” with Era Merkuri and Martin Gjoleka + Chidi Nwaubani - After School Newsletter by Casey Lewis - Unfrozen's Favorites of 2023: o Attending the Venice Biennale during previews, including Sir Peter Cook's assertion that, while at their event and on their payroll, NEOM would be less than half-built and eventually devolve into shantytowns o “Moving the Monolith, Speed-Running the Follies,” with Andreea Ion Cojocaru and Nick Kauffman o “The Atlas of Space Rocket Launch Sites,” with Brian Harvey and Gurbir Singh. Greg was channeling Geoff Manaugh's BLDGBLOG o “Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World,” with Alan Mallach o “Renewing the Dream” with James Sanders --- 2024 Doomscroll: o NEOM meets the Metaverse at Aquellum + Zaha Hadid's Minas Morgul tower, Discovery at Trojena o You won't have Charlie Munger to kick around anymore o CES is underway, and so is the metaverse rebranding o Apple Vision Pro o Meta Wayfarer Ray-Bans o Want work? You need to kneel before the PIF o Are architects and engineers really building the future for Saudi's young? Or are they just taking the money and running? --- Half the world's population will vote in 2024 - No election scheduled in Canada, but in 2025, things are looking topsy-turvy: o Canada is “three NIMBYs in a trenchcoat” right now o Households now owe more in mortgage debt than Canada's entire GDP o Pierre Poilievre and the Canadian Conservatives seem to be the only ones taking the housing crisis seriously, and the kids are listening o CHMC can't just straight-up build affordable housing – why? --- But it's good real estate vibes in the US once rates get cut... Freedom Cities California Forever - You can build it – but who will insure it? - Will San Francisco exit its doom loop in 2024? What cities will pull ahead? o Gensler doubles down in its hometown + Shvo to the rescue at the Transamerica Pyramid - Greg draws a picture of the work-from-home, AI-driven, obesity-drug-taking hellscape called America - People are competing for walkable urbanism everywhere because we can't seem to build any new housing - Could consumer branding of residential real estate boost housing construction? o Welcome to the Neighborhood! Wall Street Designed It o Culdesac– build-to-rent walkable urbanism in Tempe, AZ o WeWork's Adam Neumann starts Flow - Dead mall resurrections - Easton Town Center, Columbus - Retrofitting Suburbia, Ellen Dunham Jones and June Williamson -- Engagements Preview 2024: “Don't Believe the Hype: Cities are Alive and Well,” University of Maryland Baltimore, 22 February “Using Augmented Reality to Drive Inclusive City Development,” SXSW, Austin, 10 March Smart City Expo USA, New York, 22-23 May CTBUH International Conference, London and Paris, 23-27 September
UK-based space writer Gurbir Singh, author of the book The Indian Space Programme: India's Incredible Journey from the Third World towards the First, joins the show to help us understand India's growing ambitions and capabilities in space.
The history of India's space program is, in many ways, the inverse of that of the US and Russia. While the two superpowers were outpacing each other in space spectaculars in their early decades, India — which began its space program around the same time in 1963 — prioritized practical programs by developing its own launch capability and launching satellites for weather, communications, and regional positioning systems. It is only in the 21st century that India began embracing the more symbolic feats of spaceflight, first with its launches of robotic spacecraft, including the Chandrayaan series and the Mars Orbiter Mission, and now by establishing its own human spaceflight program. Buoyed by the success of Chandrayaan-3, as well as recognizing increasing competition with China, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced ambitious plans for Indian space stations and lunar missions in the coming decades. UK-based space writer Gurbir Singh, who literally wrote the book on the Indian space program, aptly titled The Indian Space Programme: India's Incredible Journey from the Third World towards the First, joins the show to help us understand the history and motivations behind these achievements and India's growing ambitions in space.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
"The Atlas of Space Rocket Launch Sites" shows all major sites where space rockets have been launched since Sputnik in 1957. Brian Harvey and his co-author Gurbir Singh showcase the steps of space travel as they have never been presented before. We were lucky enough to catch them on Unfrozen. Have a listen and enjoy this unique exploration of the final frontier with us. Intro/Outro: "Rocketship XL-3" by Man or Astro-Man?
The author Brian Harvey and his co-author Gurbir Singh showcase the steps of space travel as they have never been presented before. Detailed maps allow deep insights to places which are restricted to the public. This book offers a unique look at the physical footprints of Earth's launch sites. With most places hidden away in jungles, deserts, or amid the Central Asian steppes, these places exist for the most part out of the eye of the general public.More about this book - https://dom-publishers.com/products/the-atlas-of-space-rocket-launch-sites Book Reviewshttps://www.wallpaper.com/tech/atlas-of-space-rocket-launch-siteshttps://www.raumfahrer.net/dom-publishers-bringt-the-atlas-of-space-rocket-launch-sites-heraus/https://flugundzeit.blog/2022/12/09/atlas-der-abschussbasen/White paper on Indian supplier landscape: “Driving innovation in the Indian space sector using digital technologies”Discover how Dassault Systèmes can help New Space companies achieve fast, sustainable innovation: The New Frontier of Satellite Technology 3D Perspective on New Space, new horizons Support the NewSpace India podcast by becoming a Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/newspaceindiaWant to keep in touch with the NewSpace India community? Do join us on Discordhttps://discord.gg/WRJ8Yagb8TUniverse by Sappheiros https://soundcloud.com/sappheirosmusicCreative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
We welcomed Gurbir Singh back to the program for his new book which is an atlas of global launch sites. During the program we discussed many of the sites in the book plus other launch location information. Read the full summary of this program at www.thespaceshow.com for this date, Sunday, Dec. 4, 2022.
We are joined by Brian Harvey and Gurbir Singh authors of the book The Atlas of Space Rocket Launch Sites. The book is the first of its kind: An atlas of all major sites where space rockets have been launched since the World's first Sputnik in 1958. But it also covers some historic sites, and we get to discuss these and others, as well as where launch sites are built, how they are laid out and some lesser known locations in the world for launching rockets. XTENDED BOOKSTORE The Atlas of Space Rocket Launch Sites buy it here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/11161/9783869227580 This bookstore supports our authors with higher royalties than major internet based superstores, it also supports small local bookshops and pays a small commission to Xtended on a sale. Recorded 28th October 2022 Find everything Xtended on our Link Tree https://linktr.ee/aviationxtended Contact Us: GetInvolved@aviation-Xtended.co.uk Brian Harvey Twitter https://twitter.com/BrianHarveyAut1 Web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Harvey_(author) Gurbir Singh Twitter https://twitter.com/GurbirSingh Web www.gurbir.co.uk https://dom-publishers.com/products/the-atlas-of-space-rocket-launch-sites A limited number of signed copies will also be available directly from the authors, Brian in the Republic of Ireland and Gurbir in England Aviation Xtended Partners • Royal Aeronautical Society https://www.aerosociety.com/ • Global Aviation Resource http://www.globalaviationresource.com/v2/ • XTPMedia https://www.xtpmedia.co.uk/ • Ellie Carter https://twitter.com/dragongirl94 Show Supporters • The Aviation Historian http://www.theaviationhistorian.com/ • Wings Over New Zealand Show http://cambridgeairforce.org.nz/WONZ_Show.html • Aviation Enthusiasts Book Club https://www.facebook.com/groups/359410134220076 • Aircrew Book Review http://aircrewbookreview.blogspot.com/ You can shop through this Amazon link (No cost to you but a small benefit to us): • https://www.amazon.co.uk/?tag=xtenaeroradi-21&linkCode=ur1 For Aviation and Aerospace Podcasts join https://www.facebook.com/groups/FlightAudioandVideo/
Ben and Drew are joined by highly decorated witness Gurbir Singh of Cal Berkeley to break down the NCT field and the prep process, including the challenge of managing burnout and exhaustion this time of year, possible sleeper teams in each division to outperform their TPR, Gurbir's thought on the west coast teams at Nationals (@ u MTCBIAU), who could win the entire tournament, and whether the two divisions are balanced.
Tune In to listen to the third episode of District Administration, Tarn Taran's newest podcast series: SAROKAAR: Connecting Administration to People! In this episode Gurbir Singh, Agriculture Development Officer, Tarn Taran interacts with Kuljit Singh Saini Chief Agriculture Officer, Tarn Taran on the importance of irrigation and useful crop preventive measures during Rabi cropping season. Let us know how you feel about this initiative at dprotarntaran@gmail.com We welcome your comments, queries and suggestions!!! Please LIKE SHARE SUBSCRIBE Find us on Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Podcast Intro & Outro Music: Inspire Musician: AUSHOTOSH --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/adarsh-trivedi/message
Bhai Gurbir Singh Ji Tarn Taran / Waheguru Simran Jaap
Bhai Gurbir Singh Ji Tarn Taran / Sikhi2Go / Shaheedi Dihara Vadde Sahibzade 22.12.2020
We are joined this week by Gurbir Singh, to talk about his latest book on India's very own rocket pioneer at the time of the rocket greats. We chat about some of the week's stories and how venus is on the road to mars. Space Song playlist on Spotify bit.ly/spacesongs If you enjoy the show please go over to www.Patreon.com/Interplanetary and become a Patron or even a producer of the show. If you enjoy why not join the BIS at www.bis-space.com the oldest space advocacy organisation in the world. Subscribe on iTunes itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1097505801 Subscribe on Stitcher www.stitcher.com/podcast/interplanetary-podcast Hosts: Matt Russell and Jamie Franklin Music: Matt Russell / Iam7 Additional Narration: George Russell www.interplanetary.org.uk @interplanetypod
#GurbirSingh, president of #MumbaiPressClub, on the paradox of newspaper managements in India seeking sops from government to wade through #Coronavirus, but blithely playing around with the lives and livelihood of journalists. https://indianjournalismreview.com/2020/04/19/mumbai-press-club-president-on-what-journalists-should-do-to-save-their-jobs/
Check out his book here https://amzn.to/2wVsXrg Gurbir Singh is an independent researcher on space issues. He’s been studying the subject for decades and has spoken to audiences. He also wrote a book on the Indian Space Program which was published … Continue reading →
Nick D'Amelio, Director of CRM at Slice, shares his passion for CRM and pizza! He also gives us look under Slice's martech hood to see how they're creating interactive emails with Google AMP. Search functionality, feedback forms, browsing… all within an email!! TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:18] PJ Bruno: Hello again. Welcome back to Braze For Impact, your MarTech Industry discuss digest. So thrilled to have with me today Gurbir Singh, Product Manager and good friend here at Braze. How are you doing Gurbir? [0:00:31] Gurbir Singh: Good. How good of a friend are we? You still don't play video games with me, so. [0:00:35] PJ Bruno: That's true. Also, he's my Rocket League compatriot that I haven't been able to get a game with yet, but now apparently he's a higher level and I'm a little nervous. To my right, your left, I have with me Nick D'Amelio, client of ours, Senior Manager at CRM at Slice. Nick, how are you? [0:00:56] Nick D'Amelio: What's up guys? It's very great to be here. Beautiful new Braze office,. Very impressive. I need to get in on this Rocket League situation. [0:01:04] PJ Bruno: Oh man. [0:01:05] Nick D'Amelio: If anyone's ever done for some Smash Brothers, I'm definitely the guy to go to. [0:01:08] PJ Bruno: Wow, wow. [0:01:09] Gurbir Singh: You know what? Forget the podcast. [0:01:11] PJ Bruno: We're done. So for all you listeners today, our focus is Google AMP. AMP is accelerated mobile pages. So we're going to talk a little bit about what that means, what that is, how it affects email, and Nick was willing to give us some of his time to show us how he's using it at Slice. So email has been largely the same for the past 40 years or so. People constantly talk about the decline or death of email, but it's still the standard for customer communication. But in the past few years, email has experienced a big level up in terms of interactivity, and no surprise, one of the leading trailblazers is Google as they released Google AMP. Gurbir, you're our resident expert with Google AMP. Can you tell us a little bit about what this is, how it came about? [0:01:59] Gurbir Singh: Yeah. First of all, I hate that I'm the resident expert. I hope I'm not marked that way. But ... [0:02:07] PJ Bruno: You mean a lot more to me than that. You're not ... [0:02:08] Gurbir Singh: Thank you. [0:02:12] PJ Bruno: ... Just an SME. [0:02:12] Gurbir Singh: So Google AMP, as you said, is the accelerated mobile pages. So Google launched this initiative more than five, six years ago. The goal was to have mobile pages render faster, right? So websites that are being shown on a mobile device, just render it faster. One of the big things about this particular initiative was to get rid of JavaScript because JavaScript was viewed as bloat on a website. It caused a lot of loading issues and a lot of server to server exchange of data. So that's how AMP kind of started. Then from there, very recently, I would say in the last two years, Google basically created a AMP for email version of this. So it takes a subset of this overall project. This is all Opensource now and it creates an email version of this. A lot of the functionality that you would normally want to do an email, a lot of that interactivity, which people would do around, that they would want for JavaScript reasons, they now can leverage AMP HTML to do this, right? So that's how AMP email got to be born. Google basically pioneered this. They led the way and made it Opensource, so huge community behind this. Now you're seeing other vendors kind of attach themselves and say, "We also want to support this. This is great." We have a lot of clients who are super excited about it and they see the power that this can have. [0:03:43] PJ Bruno: So the impetus for AMP pages was more about size, I guess, right? But for email it's less about size or ... [0:03:52] Gurbir Singh: It still is about size. So as the mobile device came and people started using more and more of it, it became like, okay, anything I load on a device, the faster it is, the less bloated it is, the better it's going to work on my devices. So we live in a great country where we have fast access to internet, some really powerful phones, but if you think about globally, that's not always true, right? People still have older phones, older 3G systems that they connect to, so Google's attempt was to say I want information spread throughout the world. That's their mission and they want to make sure that can happen regardless of where you are. So AMP was kind of born through their mission statement and said I want to make sure that people can figure out how to get websites loaded on an older phone, things like that. So from their email kind of benefits because email can have a lot more information shown in it, but using this more lightweight newer technology so you can actually send in things like Java forms or carousels and you can have all this interactive cool features that email marketers always wanted to do, but have always been fearful for because it requires a lot more coding, a lot more specialized skills. Now Google's like here's a template. Here's basic components that you can use. Here, just do it. It's kind of cool. [0:05:13] PJ Bruno: Very cool. Also just considering like so many times a blocker is not having the engineering resources to get something done, just putting the power in a marketer's hand, I think it's a beautiful thing. Nick, any hot takes on Google AMP as far as the origin story that Gurbir just gave us? Is it total BS or is it ... [0:05:34] Nick D'Amelio: Lies and forgery, all of it. Yeah. No, 100% correct. Yeah. I only really started paying attention to it when it was announced for email since that's kind of my specialty. But yeah, everything Gurbir said, totally correct. I'm really excited about the speed benefits. You have about maybe three seconds of an email loading before a user just says, "Oh, this is blank. I'm going to close out, delete it." Also the functionality is just going to be incredible. It's a total step change in email. [0:06:08] PJ Bruno: Nick, let's hear a little bit more about your story before we jump into all the facets of Google AMP and the functionality. So you're pretty excited about interactive email obviously. [0:06:18] Nick D'Amelio: Yep. [0:06:19] PJ Bruno: And I read on your LinkedIn passion for CRM and pizza, and I've learned now that you are also a pizza maker. [0:06:28] Nick D'Amelio: That is correct. Yeah. So that actually came before my time at Slice and I think resulted in my time at Slice, but always been a big chef, but pizza I developed a serious love for. I've got a ton of equipment in my apartment. I have a baking steel, which is kind of like an enhanced version of a baking stone. I once hacked my oven to get to temperatures that probably were not safe for a Weehawken, New Jersey apartment. [0:06:58] PJ Bruno: Hacked the oven. [0:06:58] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah, very irresponsible, but all in the name of good pizza. Yeah, and I've always just been really passionate about kind of the craft and artisianry of pizza making. [0:07:08] PJ Bruno: So a passion for CRM, a passion for making pizza, and you play Smash Brothers. Are you single? [0:07:16] Nick D'Amelio: No. [0:07:18] PJ Bruno: See there's the rub. [0:07:19] Nick D'Amelio: I have a very wonderful girlfriend. [0:07:19] PJ Bruno: There is the rub. [0:07:20] Nick D'Amelio: There you go. [0:07:21] PJ Bruno: Well, I hope she plays Smash with you. [0:07:22] Nick D'Amelio: Yep, she does. [0:07:25] PJ Bruno: Awesome. Well dude, why don't you just take us through your journey because it looks like you got a lot of really cool things that you've had on your plate. [0:07:31] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah, totally. It's been kind of an interesting little journey. So I majored in Media Studies and Communications and German in college, so a bit of a weird combination. Where that landed me was a little German medical publisher actually in the same neighborhood my office is in now, Flat Iron District. So yeah, they said basically, "Hey, you're a child and you know about the internet. Why don't you handle our content management system? Why don't you handle our social media and why don't you handle our email marketing?" And not knowing anything about any of these things I said, "Sure, that sounds great." Yeah. So I kind of learned as I went and of those three kind of components I really kind of honed in on email marketing. That was where I saw the most impact. At the time at that company it was really the channel that was most trackable so I could directly see the impact I was having on the business, how many textbooks we sold as I was sending out these emails. So pretty exciting for a young kid. That led to my next role, which was purely email marketing, email marketing specialist at Macmillan Publishers, a little bit bigger of a publisher. They had a really interesting program. I was kind of in charge of the technical aspects. We had a grand total of around 20 users in our ESP at the time, which was exact target, none of whom had any coding experience. So I was on kind of QA duty, cleanup duty, so I got to learn a ton about kind of the ins and outs of email and email coding in particular and really kind of coming to grips with the frustrations that Google AMP, is actually going to address in terms of layout, in terms of functionality, stuff like that. So eventually I got a little tired of dragging a very ancient industry behind me in terms of trying to do new things and digital marketing, so I moved over to the startup world. I was at an ad tech company in the travel space called Intent Media. That was mostly B2B focused, which wasn't quite as exciting to me. I was still kind of longing for that kind of interaction with a customer. So eventually that led me to Casper, the mattress guys. That was a really exciting phase. [0:09:58] PJ Bruno: I have a Casper actually. [0:09:59] Nick D'Amelio: Oh nice. How do you like it? [0:10:00] PJ Bruno: I do like it. Great mattress. [0:10:01] Nick D'Amelio: How do you like their emails? [0:10:03] PJ Bruno: I ... [0:10:05] Nick D'Amelio: Tread lightly. [0:10:06] PJ Bruno: Yeah. You know what? Are they a client? Are they a client? Do we know? They're not. It doesn't matter. You know why? Because I love the branding. It's all over the subway. Simple. Beautiful. Sold me on the branding and sold me at the end of the day, the product. Big fan, Casper. [0:10:21] Gurbir Singh: And if anybody from Casper is listening, you should come join Braze. [0:10:24] PJ Bruno: Yeah, come join Braze. Why not? We'll take good care of you. [0:10:26] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah. Go for it. [0:10:27] PJ Bruno: We'll take your email marketing campaigns. We'll make them beautiful. [0:10:29] Nick D'Amelio: It's funny. We're on a podcast right now and maybe we could get them to sponsor us considering that's kind of what they do. [0:10:36] PJ Bruno: That is what they do. [0:10:37] Nick D'Amelio: This is brought to you by Casper Mattresses. [0:10:40] PJ Bruno: I may or may not edit that out. So from Casper then, I guess how long have you been at Slice now? [0:10:47] Nick D'Amelio: A little over two years now. [0:10:49] PJ Bruno: Okay. So about two years ago made the jump from Casper to Slice. Pizza's your passion. Everything was starting to coalesce. This makes sense. What was the email programming like when you inherited that at Slice? [0:11:06] Nick D'Amelio: Needed a little work. It was at a period of time where they were struggling to find an identity. They had just rebranded from an entirely different experience a couple of years earlier. Slice was formerly known as My Pizza and then kind of brought in some new people and rebranded. Yeah, so still trying to find their identity in terms of the branding, and then in terms of the technical aspects of the email program, very limited. Not much in the way of engaging email templates. Their audience size was incredibly small. They had limited it for effectively no reason. I had the suspicion that the IPs actually had not been properly warmed because we were seeing incredibly low open rates that really shouldn't have been like that. [0:11:58] PJ Bruno: You didn't find out whether it was improperly warmed or not? You just were like, All right, well let's just find a solution. [0:12:03] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah, kind of the assumption based on what I knew at the time about engagement levels and now based on kind of the improvements we've seen, I think there was definitely some behind the scenes stuff wrong with the deliverability. [0:12:15] PJ Bruno: You got got to warm those IPs. [0:12:17] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah. Yeah, Very important. [0:12:19] PJ Bruno: Like a pizza. [0:12:20] Nick D'Amelio: Exactly. [0:12:21] PJ Bruno: You're going to eat cold dough? [0:12:23] Nick D'Amelio: The difference is pizza is still good cold. IPs are no good when they're cold. [0:12:26] PJ Bruno: You've got to preheat. Get those IPs up. [0:12:29] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah, that's true. [0:12:31] PJ Bruno: For those of us who don't know what Slice is, why don't you explain what Slice is for those sad, sad folks that don't have it in their lives. [0:12:39] Nick D'Amelio: Oh yeah. We've got to correct that. So yeah, Slice is basically online ordering for pizza. People have used online ordering platforms for their favorite restaurants before. We are exclusively focused on pizza, which lets us do a couple of things. We can provide an experience that's explicitly tailored to pizza. So a lot of other places, getting half pepperoni and half peppers and onions involves writing out special instructions that the shop may or may not see. We kind of have a little bit of a pizza builder within the app so you can choose which items you want on each half, which is technology that local pizzerias have been kind of slow to adopt. [0:13:27] PJ Bruno: Because that's the charm of the mom and pop set up, right? [0:13:31] Nick D'Amelio: Exactly. Yeah. It's kind of low tech. It's very homey, very local, but the problem is these guys are kind of getting killed in the space by some of the larger pizza players. So we really want to kind of get them into the digital age and get people ordering online because that's where our customers want to be. Yeah. [0:13:53] PJ Bruno: So what's the differentiator for Slice? What makes you guys stand out above the rest? [0:13:58] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah, so there's a couple of things. A lot of the other places you can get pizza online, you've got the big chains and then you've got kind of the, what we call aggregators, kind of the big, big online ordering companies. Main difference between us and the larger chains, you're getting that mom and pop quality, which is really important. Main difference between us and the big online ordering companies is that those companies actually take kind of an enormous cut out of the restaurant's pocket when a user orders online. Basically what we do is provide marketing and technology and online ordering, paid search, a ton of services to these pizzerias for a very small flat fee on every order, which really allows them to grow their businesses and keep local pizza alive. [0:14:52] PJ Bruno: God, I love that. Gerb, you're a pizza guy I've got to assume. [0:14:55] Gurbir Singh: I do. I love pizza. [crosstalk 00:14:57]. [0:14:57] PJ Bruno: What's your type? What's your poison? [0:14:59] Gurbir Singh: I actually just like a nice, good margarita pizza. [0:15:02] PJ Bruno: Oh yeah. [0:15:03] Gurbir Singh: If you can do that well, I'm a customer. [0:15:05] Nick D'Amelio: Oh yeah, absolutely. Did you know that yesterday was the official birthdate of the margarita pizza? [0:15:11] Gurbir Singh: I did not know that. [0:15:12] PJ Bruno: What year was that? [0:15:15] Nick D'Amelio: 1889. Queen Margarita of Italy visited a small Focacceria in Naples and he kind of adorned the pizza with the traditional tomato sauce, but also basil and mozzarella to represent the colors of the Italian flag. She apparently wrote a letter kind of praising this creation and yeah, that was the birth of the margarita pizza. [0:15:38] Gurbir Singh: I'm surprised you didn't order some margarita pizza today for this podcast. I'm kind of disappointed now. [0:15:43] PJ Bruno: Well, you know what? You guys just ruined the surprise because when we wrap up, guess where we're going? [0:15:48] Nick D'Amelio: Oh man. [0:15:48] Gurbir Singh: Margarita pizza. [0:15:50] Nick D'Amelio: Nice. [0:15:50] Gurbir Singh: Or is it just Margaritas? [0:15:52] PJ Bruno: When was the birthday of buffalo chicken slice? [0:15:54] Nick D'Amelio: Oh, I do not know that. [0:15:56] Gurbir Singh: It was like 10 years ago. [0:15:57] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah, probably. [0:15:58] Gurbir Singh: It doesn't matter. It's not real pizza. [0:16:00] PJ Bruno: Not my slice, man. Not my slice. [0:16:02] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah. Yeah. [0:16:04] PJ Bruno: All right, cool. Let's jump back into your time at Slice because you take the reins. You had to clean house a little bit with IP, with deliverability. Obviously you have to create some of kind of like your first onboarding user journey things. When did interactivity become a priority for you? [0:16:23] Nick D'Amelio: So yeah, we've always wanted to provide kind of a delightful experience to the user because pizza is inherently delightful, so we explored some other vendors for interactivity a couple of months into my time, but none of them were really a great fit. But now with Google kind of putting this out there, basically giving it away for free, we're really excited to start jumping into it again. [0:16:49] PJ Bruno: It's just free then. [0:16:51] Nick D'Amelio: Pretty much. I mean, Gurbir, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no charge to use it and yeah, it's just ... Yeah. [0:16:58] Gurbir Singh: Yeah, AMP's free. You just have to basically register with Google right now. But I believe that's also going to change in the long run as it becomes a more community-focused initiative. [0:17:10] PJ Bruno: Of course. They're probably looking for champions and then eventually it's like ... [0:17:12] Gurbir Singh: Yeah, I think right now it's like you get registered so your email can render within Gmail, but as soon as some of the other ISPs like Yahoo and Outlook who have signed on make this change on their end, I think that process is going to slightly get updated as well. [0:17:30] Nick D'Amelio: Right, makes sense. [0:17:32] PJ Bruno: Let's get into the nitty gritty details. How is Slice leveraging Google AMP for email? [0:17:37] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah, so we've got a couple of use cases lined up. We have a working prototype of our AMP emails right now, which is awesome. We have an email coder out in Macedonia on my team. His name's Arso. Arso, if you're listening, you are the man. He basically was able to ... [0:17:53] PJ Bruno: Shout out to Arso. He is the man. [0:17:55] Nick D'Amelio: He is the man. He was able to put this thing together in no time flat. So we are ready and raring to go once we have everything in place for him. But yeah, there's a couple of use cases that we've gotten really excited about. One as we've kind of alluded to is just the layout and design options that you get. Anything just as simple as an accordion menu or a sidebar or an image carousel, who doesn't want to scroll through a bunch of images of delicious pizza? It just kind of gets people in the mood. [0:18:26] PJ Bruno: I'm starving right now actually. [0:18:28] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah, I know me too. [0:18:29] PJ Bruno: Just talking about it I felt my salivation gland just start going insane. [0:18:33] Nick D'Amelio: This is my life every day by the way, is just stock imagery of pizza and photo shoots from pizzerias just constantly on my screen. Oh, it's torture. [0:18:44] PJ Bruno: All right, so what else? Other functionality. [0:18:47] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah, other stuff that we're incredibly excited for, gathering customer feedback just directly within the body of the email. So Google AMP will have form submission available for emails. I would love to just have a user review a pizzeria just right in their inbox. Just make it incredibly easy so we can surface that data up to all our other users and continue our mission of just being the authority on pizza. [0:19:11] PJ Bruno: That's exciting, man. You guys are on that. That front wave. [0:19:14] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah, exactly. It's exciting times. As we've talked about email hasn't changed in, you know, basically since the inception of HTML email. So this is the first real turnabout in a very long time. [0:19:27] Gurbir Singh: I'm curious how this change for you guys, because I've heard this comment from other email marketers where a lot of the attribution they do today is driving traffic towards a website and a lot of the functionality you're actually talking about right now will allow customers obviously to remove that friction and just do it within the inbox, but now you're not going to be able to track website traffic. [0:19:48] Nick D'Amelio: Exactly. [0:19:49] Gurbir Singh: Email budgets when they're handed out at corporations, they're typically on what can you drive to the website? Now all of a sudden you're going to lose that. I'm wondering does Slice have a strategy for that or any thoughts on that area? [0:20:04] Nick D'Amelio: We have not gone into it yet. You're right, just because this is such a step change, it's going to be kind of difficult to explain this to a lot of folks, especially when there's money involved. But if we can prove out the ability to kind of interact and eventually hopefully even transact in the body of an email, I think things will start to change slowly over time. [0:20:29] Gurbir Singh: Cool. [0:20:30] Nick D'Amelio: So no plan yet, but thank you for putting that in my head because I'll probably need to plan for that. [0:20:36] Gurbir Singh: I just want to make sure Arso gets paid. That's all. [0:20:38] Nick D'Amelio: Oh yeah. [0:20:40] PJ Bruno: Well guys, this has been awesome. Nick, thanks so much for coming in. [0:20:42] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah, absolutely. [0:20:44] PJ Bruno: Gurbir, thanks for giving me some of your time, bud. Always appreciate it. [0:20:46] Gurbir Singh: Anytime. [0:20:47] PJ Bruno: And Rocket League. [0:20:49] Nick D'Amelio: Yeah, let's do it. [0:20:50] Gurbir Singh: Rocket League and pizzas? [0:20:51] PJ Bruno: Rocket league and pizzas. [0:20:52] Nick D'Amelio: Boom. [0:20:53] PJ Bruno: Thanks for listening, guys. Come back again and see us. [0:20:55]
Email Product Manager Gurbir Singh and the Deliverability Godfather himself Andrew Barrett sit down to talk ISPs (Internet Service Providers), ESPs (Email Service Providers, and how they factor in to your emails making their way into the inbox. TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:18] PJ Bruno: Hi there, this is PJ Bruno. Welcome back to Braze for Impact. I'm very, very excited to have with me today, two of my very good friends, special guests. One, Gurbir Singh, who's a product manager here at Braze, and he owns email. Hello, Gurbir. [0:00:33] Gurbir Singh: Hey, PJ. How's it going? [0:00:34] PJ Bruno: Pretty good, man. Also with us, Andrew Barrett, our director of email deliverability in the house. How's it going, buddy? [0:00:41] Andrew Barrett: It's going well. It's going great. I'm so happy to be here in the same room with you guys for a change. [0:00:45] PJ Bruno: I know. Andrew's usually in D.C. Doing the remote thing, but we see them all the time on Slack, the deliverability dojo. He is the Sensei. He's there answering all the questions. Today, I wanted to get these two email champs in the room. Just talk a little bit about deliverability, but also more specifically ISPs and ESPs. What are they? What are they responsible for? Let's pretend I know nothing except a small amount of information. Right now, that is, correct me if I'm wrong, ISPs, they provide the internet, they can leverage spam filters and blacklists to protect people from unwanted mail. Examples, I guess would be Comcast, AT&T, Verizon. Is that accurate so far? [0:01:33] Andrew Barrett: Absolutely. [0:01:33] PJ Bruno: Okay. Jump in and stop me as soon as it's inaccurate information. [0:01:38] Andrew Barrett: No. Everything you said right there is absolutely true, but you take it one step higher. What they really are are businesses. They're businesses that are in the game to make money. Same as anybody who's actually sending mail to users of the inboxes that they provide. One of the big questions out there in deliverability land is, how do you make money off of an inbox that you're not charging anybody to use? Right? It turns out that everything we say about delivering email has everything to do with, not just the business model that we're in as marketers and senators, but also what's the ISP's business model here? Once you understand how the ISPs are making their money, all kinds of light bulbs start going off in your head around deliverability. What you find is that when you align your email sending program to the ISP's revenue requirements, what their business model is, all of a sudden, bang, deliverability happens. [0:02:39] PJ Bruno: It's magic. [0:02:41] Andrew Barrett: It is magic. You can't avoid it. It is an inevitable outcome of aligning your business model with the ISP. The great news is, is that everybody wants the same thing. Right? [0:02:53] PJ Bruno: Right. [0:02:53] Andrew Barrett: Email recipients want email that they love to read. ISPs want to be able to put that content in front of their users of the free inboxes. That's because the more often those recipients can engage with the email, the more and better opportunities the ISPs have on making money, because their customer is not the inbox user, their customer is the advertiser that's putting contextually relevant advertising alongside the email that we're sending. If we're sending mail that users want to read, the recipients are happy, the ISPs are happy, we're happy, everybody's happy. [0:03:37] PJ Bruno: I mean, and that's the dream state is making everything happy. But I guess does it mean that traditionally, ISPs look out for the email receiver, while ESPs prioritize the email sender? Is that, not at all? [0:03:53] Gurbir Singh: No, I mean I think ISPs definitely do look out for the users, but as Andrew said, they definitely look out for their own business model as well. Then, ESPs are really focused on working with the brands. Right? These guys are the delivery agents. They're the ones sending out massive amounts of emails on behalf of various brands around the world. Their goal is to say, I want to get you in an inbox. I want to make sure you're successful. It's kind of hand in hand a little bit. The circle of life is really, if you make the ISPs money, you're going to be good. [0:04:27] Andrew Barrett: That's right. I mean, anytime our business model is in conflict with the ISP's business model, we lose. All right? [0:04:34] PJ Bruno: Gotcha. [0:04:36] Andrew Barrett: It's important to understand that the users of those free inboxes are not the ISP's customers. Right? The users of the inbox are the inventory, and it's an inventory with a super short shelf life. The ISPs, their job is to create a pleasant and curated email experience for the users for their inventory, so that they'll last long enough to show them some advertising. [0:05:04] PJ Bruno: Right. [0:05:06] Gurbir Singh: That's a good point. [0:05:06] Andrew Barrett: If you can just keep that in mind, that relationship between those three parties in this little love triangle that is email- [0:05:15] PJ Bruno: Email is a love triangle. Don't kid yourself. [0:05:17] Andrew Barrett: That's right. It's very tightly interwoven. [0:05:21] PJ Bruno: Okay. Let's take a step back. In the beginning, ISPs showed up materializing out of basically nothing. Right? [0:05:31] Gurbir Singh: Well, I mean a lot of the original ISPs were just the people who provided the internet. Right? Like AOL. They allowed you to connect to the internet, and then they were like, look, there's this thing called email and you can get it. We'll provide you an inbox where you can receive all your email. Same with Yahoo. [0:05:48] PJ Bruno: At some point along the way, there were abusers. Is that right? Because this has got to be kind of, I'm talking about- [0:05:56] Gurbir Singh: Anywhere there's volume, there's to be people looking to game the system. Right? There's going to be abusers, there's going to be people who are going to say, "Click here and get 10 free and ringtones," and you know that takes you somewhere else where you don't actually think you're supposed to be going. There's always going to be people gaming the system, and the ISPs, that does not jive with their business models, so they created a spam folder, and they put these guys in the spam folder, and they got really sophisticated at tracking who is a spammer, who's not. That distinction is really where ESPs, I think, really help along with keeping marketers honest and saying, look, if you put this subject line in, that's spammy, don't do that. Here's some best practices. Here's how you should create your content. Here are the people you should target. Things like that. [0:06:44] PJ Bruno: Right. It doesn't stop at best practices. Right? We got here, the Gmail Promo Tab, which launched I guess, 2013, when Gmail announced the creation of different inbox tabs, including the promotions tab. Now, initially, it was said that Gmail is killing email marketing. Was this the notion that was kind of felt across the board by marketers that this was a tough pill to swallow? [0:07:08] Andrew Barrett: Well, marketers definitely felt that way. In fact, we saw a lot of ... A couple of guys I remember back at that time were proposing a class action suit against Gmail, forgetting for the moment that Gmail, at the same time was also providing them for use of this infrastructure that they could use to reach their intended recipients. Nevermind that. Right? They're putting us in the fake inbox. I can understand the frustration. It's hard to have something taken away that you had for so long. But the other side of the coin is that way of thinking that, oh, you're putting me in the promotion set. I think that's wrong thinking on behalf of marketers. I think that that assumes a model of advertising that is more interruptive. Right? Like TV and radio, which is very linear. You're watching your story, and wait a second, wouldn't you like to buy some soap? No? Okay, well let's get on with the story then, and so on like that. Right? Email and other digital channels are not linear. Right? I think that marketers are best served when they can get their message in front of the recipients when they are their most receptive to it, and they are most receptive to marketing messages, not when they're reading email from grandma in upper Poughkeepsie. If you interrupt that, right, you're way more likely to get exactly the wrong kind of attention from the recipient in the form of a spam complaint. On the other hand, if you're enjoying strong placement in the promotions tab, people will turn to that tab when they are ready to see the promotions. I'm not a regular guy because I like email, but I like to see what winds up in there, mostly because I'm curious about the content and- [0:09:12] Gurbir Singh: Right. It's research for you at that point. [0:09:14] Andrew Barrett: But I do a lot of buying out of that promotions tab. [0:09:18] PJ Bruno: The most relevant things are pushed to the top of the promotions tab. That's pretty much how it works. Right? [0:09:24] Andrew Barrett: It can be, especially with some of this newer stuff that Gmail is rolling out, especially on the mobile side. [0:09:30] Gurbir Singh: Yeah. It's like the new Gmail promotion tab does that. It groups up your messages based on industries, based on relevant, for when the offer is expiring, things like that. There's a number of variables that Gmail has introduced, but the traditional promotion tab was just if you got there and it's at the top of your inbox, it's there. Right? I think that's what was frustrating for marketers is that they spent all this time learning to get into the primary tab and now they're being asked to say, by the way, we redid the promotions tab and we give you all these new levers to pull and play with. Now, go back into the promotions tab, and people are rightfully so, kind of upset because it's just being thrown at them. [0:10:10] Andrew Barrett: Well, they're are only upset if they don't remember what marketing was like before. [0:10:14] Gurbir Singh: Yeah. [0:10:15] Andrew Barrett: Right? They have this beautiful one-to-one direct channel to ostensibly engaged recipients that never existed before in the history of the planet, and nobody writes a check to Gmail to send email to Gmail's users. It's a gift horse. To get angry about that seems a little disingenuous to me. [0:10:36] PJ Bruno: It feels very human. [0:10:37] Andrew Barrett: Well, okay fine. They're human beings. [0:10:42] PJ Bruno: You get something you want and then you get it taken away, you get pissed off. But no, I mean, they've been optimizing that promotions tab. Right? It's card based. It's like, you know what? We know you want to be in the inbox, but let's create something great in the promotions box that actually optimizes for what you're trying to do. [0:10:59] Gurbir Singh: Yeah. I think it's a really good push by Gmail. One, they're going to collect way more data around what the message really is. Two, they're going to collect, are people actually interested in these offers, or are we going to push people down? You can see the business opportunities there for Gmail to say, similar to ad, you can pay to be at the top or you can pay to be at the top of your own industry bundle. If I'm Nike and Adidas, I could theoretically page email and say, "Put me always above Adidas." Right? [0:11:31] PJ Bruno: Wow. [0:11:32] Gurbir Singh: I don't know if they're actually thinking things like that, but I just see a bunch of different opportunities that they kind of opened, that other ISPs don't even have the luxury to even think about right now. [0:11:43] Andrew Barrett: Yeah, they could do that, but I think they have a longer game in mind. Right? If they do something that appears to inhibit, in any way, the user's engagement with the inbox in its totality, I think they're not doing themselves any favors. What I think that we'll continue to see, and I'm guessing here, too, is that the kinds of changes we'll see in the promotions tab are those that award senders who are doing a better job at sending content that appears to be more engaging to a preponderance of recipients. That is awarded a better placement in the inbox. [0:12:25] Gurbir Singh: That's true. I think they also, or actually the first ESP in my opinion that's actually adopted a mobile phone. This update to the promotion tab is directly for people who use the Gmail application. Right? They've acknowledged desktops are going out of time and we are getting switched to a mobile only world, and they're one of the first that are actually adopting. It's like this card that's coming out, it's a static image, but future iterations allow you to scroll and tell different cards and have different images and different links. [0:12:58] PJ Bruno: Right. That's what AMP is, right? [0:13:00] Gurbir Singh: No. AMP is completely something that's just interactive email. [0:13:04] PJ Bruno: But within the email you can actually kind of scroll and click in and see different. [0:13:08] Gurbir Singh: Yeah. It's like having a website right in your inbox so you don't have to leave, which is another pain point I think for marketers because the behavior is always been, I want to drive traffic to my website, and now all of a sudden, when this thing comes out, it's still in beta, but when it does come out, you're basically telling your customers you're living within the Google ecosystem. Right? You're browsing within the Google ecosystem, they're going to do some actions. You have no insight, no way of knowing what they're doing outside of the parameters you provided them. That's it. You can't dynamically change the workflow on your website as you typically do. This is a bigger change than people think it is, in my opinion. [0:13:56] PJ Bruno: Gurbir, you're a big part of what we do here with our email at Braze. Obviously, you helped push our content blocks live, email preference center, all this stuff, optimizing the crafting and sending of emails, a big part of what you do. How do you overcome that resistance to change? Do you guys give a lot of thought to that when you're like- [0:14:16] Gurbir Singh: Yeah. First of all, I mean, I work with a really talented engineering and design team that kind of put all these things together. [0:14:22] PJ Bruno: Shout out. [0:14:23] Gurbir Singh: Yeah, shout out. I might be at the face of it when it comes down to external, but there are some true heroes back there. But yeah, I mean, we do a lot of research when we're looking into new features. The content blocks is a great example, right? Content blocks, typically known as the email only feature, with other industries. When we looked at it we said, well, wouldn't it be cool if you could use it in Push, if you can use it on web? The same exact offer being tied to a user across every channel you want. You can have that consistency easily as a marketer, without having to replicate and create these over and over again. That operational cost is what we looked at a lot. Right? The cost of a marketer sending up four separate messages, setting up four different channels, and then ensuring, is the QA right on all four of them? Testing that and then sending it out. Right? If we can reduce the time for you to create all of that, those are the things we look at. [0:15:24] PJ Bruno: Right. [0:15:25] Gurbir Singh: But yeah. [0:15:29] PJ Bruno: Andrew? [0:15:30] Andrew Barrett: Gurbir is the expert there. Every day, I will defer to his expertise there. I like to keep my head down in the inbox. That's where I'm most comfortable. [0:15:40] PJ Bruno: That's where he belongs. [0:15:41] Andrew Barrett: Right. [0:15:42] PJ Bruno: That's good. I'm trying to get all these things straight in my head. Do we see, traditionally, ISPs, they do want to protect the receivers of mail, right? I mean, obviously they want to protect their bottom line, but will be under the guise of this? [0:16:00] Andrew Barrett: Well, no, I mean it aligns very well at times perfectly with their own business model because if they're putting their own customers at risk to third parties, they're not going to keep coming back to their inboxes just to get shot at again. [0:16:14] PJ Bruno: Gotcha. [0:16:14] Andrew Barrett: They want to keep them around. Keeping bad things, malware, spam, other types of things, out of that inbox, speaks directly to the longevity of their business model and the longevity of their inventory, the users. [0:16:33] PJ Bruno: Launched back last year, in 2018, you guys know about this, the BIMI. I don't know if they call it BIMI, or if it's just brand indicators for message identification? For those of you who don't know, it's a standardized way for brands to publish their brand logo online and lets logos be easily incorporated into messaging and social media applications. It does this with built in protections, which is building off of D-Mark. [0:16:58] Andrew Barrett: Right. [0:17:00] PJ Bruno: I mean, I guess we could say at this point D-Mark is starting to catch on more and people are using it more. [0:17:06] Andrew Barrett: Absolutely. Gmail has been kind of a kingmaker in that regard. I mean, if you ask Gmail, they would prefer that everybody use D-Mark for everything all time, which is fine. For the longest time, it was really a tool for high value targets like financial institutions, insurers, banks, things like that to keep bad guys from trying to spoof their brand in order to capture login credentials and things of that nature. D-Mark, at its roots though is an authentication protocol, or a platform standing, a reporting mechanism that stands on top of authentication. The timing is really kind of interesting because Google Plus business pages are going away. Right? That whole Google Plus social media experiment is going to get killed off here in a couple of weeks. That was how you got your logo or your picture in the inbox next to your subject line was through validating a business page and [crosstalk 00:18:25]. [0:18:25] PJ Bruno: That was the only way to get it in there? [0:18:27] Gurbir Singh: Well, you could do it through their promotions tab now, too. You can just pass in a logo and it works. That's why I don't get why? [0:18:34] Andrew Barrett: Well, yeah, but I don't think they would pick up that logo unless they had some kind of assurance that you were using that logo, that you were an authorized user of that logo, which means- [0:18:47] Gurbir Singh: You can just pass in any logo when you use the promotions tab. We've tested. I can pass on anything, which is why I find it really funny where- [0:18:54] PJ Bruno: That's crazy. That's nuts. [0:18:54] Gurbir Singh: Right, but it's Google, right? Look how big Google is, how many teams did they have? Clearly somebody's not talking to somebody. [0:19:04] Andrew Barrett: Well, I think BIMI will replace that functionality. [0:19:08] Gurbir Singh: Probably. [0:19:08] Andrew Barrett: You've got this authentication standard backing up the presentation of this logo, and suddenly you don't have to rely on Google Plus anymore, and align in the header of your html to prove that you actually own the domain, so that the logo or the picture can turn up in the subject line. It comes at a good time and it helps to enhance this message around adoption of D-Mark. [0:19:33] PJ Bruno: You said Google is really a big advocate of D-Mark. Do they have a vested interest in D-Mark? [0:19:41] Andrew Barrett: I don't think that they do. I'm not sure why they're so hot and bothered over D-Mark above and beyond the other authentication protocols, SPF and DKIM, which are sort of prerequisites for D-Mark. D-Mark is just the reporting thing. The question I think that's on a lot of people's minds these days that pay attention to this kind of stuff is, does a more restrictive D-Mark policy get you better inbox? I mean, you can publish a D-Mark policy that says, if it fails, don't do anything. Right? Or you can have a D-Mark policy that says if it fails DKIM, reject it, or quarantine it, or do something with it. Do you get more inbox if you say, if it fails? Yeah, don't do anything. [0:20:30] PJ Bruno: Or if it passes, is there some sort of reporting? If it passes and D-Mark is present, then you could have some sort of reward? [0:20:37] Andrew Barrett: Maybe. [0:20:38] Gurbir Singh: Like positive effect, like a scoring system, goes up or down? [0:20:42] Andrew Barrett: Do not know. Don't know. [0:20:44] Gurbir Singh: Black box. [0:20:46] Andrew Barrett: I think it's still working itself out. I'm not at all sure why Gmail is championing D-Mark. [0:20:53] PJ Bruno: I mean, this thing, the BIMI thing, it was created by [Authenticators] Working Group, which was led by cybersecurity firm, Agari, and then also representatives from Comcast. Failmail, right? Microsoft. [0:21:07] Andrew Barrett: Well, Agari is in the D-Mark reporting business. Right? So that's their vested interest in participating, but I don't know what Gmail's is other than having a handy replacement for the death of Google Plus. [0:21:24] Gurbir Singh: Yeah. I mean, I could see if you can be a better inbox provider and essentially wipe out spam, which is the majority of volume that these guys ever see. Right? It's like 90% plus or something. That's a lot of storage costs. Right? ISPs have to keep every email around. They just do. Right? You can scroll back years and years of your Gmail inbox and you'll see, you can still find it, you can still click it. That's sitting somewhere. They're paying for that cost. If they can wipe away 90% of that somehow with a better authentication system, that's a lot of money for somebody. I can see that being a really big beneficial ad for them. [0:22:05] Andrew Barrett: I agree with you to an extent. There's a lot of spammers out there who are signing their stuff with a DKIM and SPF and that are publishing a D-Mark record. [0:22:14] Gurbir Singh: Well, I'm assuming with BIMI, it's another level, essentially. That's why they're working towards that one, and hopefully that one solves it. Like anything, there's always- [0:22:24] PJ Bruno: There's always counterfeiters out there, man. [0:22:26] Gurbir Singh: Yeah. Someone's going to break it. [0:22:28] PJ Bruno: Catch me if you can. Moving on, what's the future, what are the big things on the horizon that email senders should be looking for, as far as feature specific, as far as, I mean, legislation affecting anything? [0:22:48] Andrew Barrett: Well, I think we can call the legislation one absolutely dead and cold now. The Federal Trade Commission recently completed a two year review of the 16 year old CAN-SPAM federal law and decided it was all good, man. They spent two years looking at that sucker and decided, wow, it just can't get any better than how it is, which is really, really frustrating. I was at the Federal Trade Commission in the spring of 2003 for two days of testimony from a bunch of different groups, and there was five different versions of anti-spam language. It's five different competing versions pending in the lower house in Congress. They were trying to merge all those disparate versions of the language together in what would eventually become CAN-SPAM, and they were taking all this input from nonprofit anti-spam, watchdog groups, senders. They actually had a couple of spammers on the stage talking about why they do what they do, and that sort of thing. [0:24:02] PJ Bruno: Interesting. [0:24:02] Andrew Barrett: It was all in. Everybody scrubbed in on this thing. What came out in 2003 act, which was largely the [Burns Widen Act 00:24:14] was terrible. I mean, not only did it fail utterly to advance a definition of spam, which I don't blame them for because that is problematic on its face for a whole bunch of reasons, but where they really fell down is that they failed to advance a meaningful definition of email. Right? [0:24:37] Gurbir Singh: They left it as a digital communications? [0:24:39] Andrew Barrett: For the purposes of this statute, email means "an electronic message," period. Full stop. [0:24:48] PJ Bruno: Great. [0:24:49] Andrew Barrett: What? Really, really bad. Ideally, the definitive quality of email would have been transit via SMTP. [0:25:02] Gurbir Singh: Right. [0:25:02] Andrew Barrett: That's what was needed there. You can never look to lawmakers to predict the future. It's not the law we wanted, but it was probably the law we deserved. It was just that, and so I was really astounded when they decided that they weren't going to make any changes. [0:25:22] Gurbir Singh: Didn't California, or aren't they evaluating their own special law just for the state of California? [0:25:29] PJ Bruno: Leave it to California. [0:25:30] Andrew Barrett: Yeah. Well, they had one before 2003. California is great at passing really restrictive laws, only to have them be superseded by federal legislation months and years later. The California anti-spam law was very restrictive and it was in place for only a couple of months before the federal law came in and eviscerated it, superseded it. [0:25:55] PJ Bruno: All right, guys, we're at about time. Before we close up shop, any last words of advice to email sender's, email receivers? It can be simple to something you want to go out on. What's the big takeaway? [0:26:11] Andrew Barrett: Just remember that business relationship between those three parties, and if you can keep that in mind, that relationship will inform every decision you ever have to make as a sender. If I had to define deliverability in one sentence, it would be, how not to look like a spammer. That's it. But there's a whole lot underneath that that can keep folks talking for days, and hours, and careers. [0:26:36] PJ Bruno: And podcasts. [0:26:37] Andrew Barrett: And podcasts. [0:26:38] Gurbir Singh: Andrew's going to write a book. [0:26:39] Andrew Barrett: And career long podcasts. [0:26:40] PJ Bruno: I have to make this a whole series. Gurbir, you got some final thoughts? [0:26:44] Gurbir Singh: I mean, I circled back to Andrew. It is a business. Understanding the motivations of each of these guys will help you, and make you successful. [0:26:56] PJ Bruno: Absolutely. I'll say to spammers out there, if you're looking for alternative forms of revenue, check out the speaker circuit, because apparently, they'll be willing to have you on stage. Thank you guys so much for coming to hang out with us. This is PJ Bruno, Gurbir Singh, and Andrew Barrett. You guys take care. [0:27:14]
This is version 2 - as 1st version had a tech error. This week features Part 2 of Gurbir Singh who's book The Indian Space Programme: India's incredible journey from the Third World towards the First - available with a discount of 30% through this link astrotalkuk.org/shop/. Use the code "ATUK" -GET IT!!! Jamie and Matt bring you the week's space news Space Fact of the week - Crystal White Dwarfs Space Song playlist on spotify bit.ly/spacesongs If you enjoy the show please go over to www.Patreon.com/Interplanetary and become a Patron or even a producer of the show. If you enjoy why not join the BIS at www.bis-space.com the oldest space advocacy organisation in the world. Subscribe on iTunes itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1097505801 Subscribe on Stitcher www.stitcher.com/podcast/interplanetary-podcast Hosts: Matt Russell and Jamie Franklin Music: Matt Russell / Iam7 Additional Narration: George Russell www.interplanetary.org.uk @interplanetypod
This week features Part 1 of Gurbir Singh who's book The Indian Space Programme: India's incredible journey from the Third World towards the First - available with a discount of 30% through this link https://astrotalkuk.org/shop/. Use the code "ATUK" -GET IT!!! Jamie and Matt bring you the week's space news Space Legend of the week - Tycho Brahe - Birthday Space Word of the week - Gravitational Redshift - Galileo Space Mission of the week - Chang'e 4 - Indian Rivals Space Fact of the week - Moonshakes Space Song playlist on spotify bit.ly/spacesongs If you enjoy the show please go over to www.Patreon.com/Interplanetary and become a Patron or even a producer of the show. If you enjoy why not join the BIS at www.bis-space.com the oldest space advocacy organisation in the world. Subscribe on iTunes itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1097505801 Subscribe on Stitcher www.stitcher.com/podcast/interplanetary-podcast Hosts: Matt Russell and Jamie Franklin Music: Matt Russell / Iam7 Additional Narration: George Russell www.interplanetary.org.uk @interplanetypod
Attorney General Grewal is the highest-ranking Sikh public official in the United States since Congressman Dalip Singh Saund, also the first Asian American Congressman, who served in the late 1950s.In the hour-long interview, the Attorney General shares his childhood struggles with bullying & harassment, his motivation for pursuing public service and law enforcement, and his unlikely path to the heights of New Jersey politics. Attorney General Grewal also details his policy agenda for the state of New Jersey on items such as public corruption and police-community relations, and his thoughts on the state of our turbulent federal politics. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Gurbir researches and writes books about his passion - space travel
Gurbir researches and writes books about his passion - space travel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/self-publishing-journeys/message