Podcasts about HipChat

Send us a textIn this engaging podcast, Shelly Morales, founder and CEO of Morales HR, takes us on an inspiring journey—from her early days working at her family's hot dog stand, “Sandy's Happy Hot Dogs,” in the Bay Area to holding influential HR leadership roles in top tech companies and ultimately establishing her own HR consulting firm. Shelly shares how grit and determination fueled her path from a receptionist manually tracking resumes to impactful HR leadership positions at companies like LinkedIn, Quantenna, Atlassian, and Cadence Design Systems. Reflecting on her growth from an HR generalist to a strategic business partner, she discusses how her dedication to connecting people with meaningful work, improving employee experiences, and advocating for flexible employment practices has shaped her career.A pivotal chapter of her career was at Atlassian, where she saw firsthand the power of technology in building connectivity and engagement within remote teams. Atlassian's early commitment to remote work, long before the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighted the essential role of tools like Confluence, Slack, and the now-retired HipChat in fostering team cohesion and a strong company culture across continents and time zones. These tools not only allowed dispersed teams to stay connected in real time but also encouraged personal storytelling that bridged physical distances. The onset of the pandemic accelerated the acceptance of remote work and highlighted how blending work and personal life could enhance productivity and work satisfaction, shifting companies' focus from rigid office hours to outcome-based performance and helping establish a more human-centered work culture.Through Morales HR, Shelly aims to create a supportive network for professionals seeking roles that align with today's flexible and dynamic work environments—from remote and fractional engagements to gig work opportunities. Her firm connects members across industries and roles, from CHROs and CFOs to customer support, without relying on traditional job postings.Kindness is at the heart of Morales HR's intake process, where prospective members engage in a personal interview to ensure alignment with the company's values. Shelly firmly believes that kindness and inclusivity are essential yet often overlooked qualities for creating a supportive workplace. By working with companies that value these principles, Morales HR builds relationships that uphold professionalism and empathy, benefiting both employees and employers.Shelly also highlights Morales HR's role in the expanding gig economy, a trend she has championed for years. While not all early predictions around the gig economy and digital currency came to fruition, Shelly notes that the demand for flexible, project-based roles has steadily grown. Shelly Morales's story is one of resilience and transformation. Her career represents the evolution of HR from administrative support to a people-centered, strategic practice that embraces flexibility, kindness, and the power of technology. Her mission is clear: to build connections between employees and employers that prioritize human connection, work-life balance, and mutual respect, setting a foundation for a thriving future in HR.Learn more about Shelly:Shelly's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shellymorales/MoralesHR's webpage: https://moraleshr.com/

Tanguy Crusson is the product lead for Jira Product Discovery at Atlassian. In his more than 10 years at the company, he has been instrumental in taking several new products from zero to one, including HipChat, Statuspage, and Jira Product Discovery. In this episode, we dive deep into the struggles of innovating and building new products inside a large company. Tanguy shares candid stories about what worked, what didn't, and his many hard-won lessons learned about how to successfully build 0 to 1. We cover:• Why large companies with so many advantages still fail at creating new products• Lessons learned from building HipChat• How to avoid common pitfalls like competitive myopia and premature scaling• Lessons learned from the acquisition and integration of Statuspage• Insights from the success of Jira Product Discovery• Tactics for protecting your “ugly babies”• The power of “lighthouse users”• The importance of having a “why now”• Much more—Brought to you by:• Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security• WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs• Coda—The all-in-one collaborative workspace—Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-0-to-1-inside-atlassian-tanguy-crusson—Where to find Tanguy Crusson:• X: https://x.com/tanguycrusson• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanguy-crusson-99832a—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Tanguy's background(02:30) Tanguy's journey at Atlassian(07:03) The challenges of innovating in large companies(10:42) Atlassian's high bar for excellence (12:58) The HipChat story: successes, failures, and lessons learned(20:47) Lessons learned from building HipChat(33:49) Statuspage: a journey of perseverance(39:48) Acquisition challenges and lessons(47:22) Strategic decisions: build, buy, or partner?(48:17) Learning to articulate "why now"(54:08) A quick summary of lessons in this episode(55:40) The success and pain of launching Jira Product Discovery (58:10) Incubating new products: the Point A program(01:00:13) Failure is the most likely outcome(01:04:15) Atlassian's four-phase approach to launching new products(01:09:20) Breaking rules without breaking trust(01:16:16) Early success and team autonomy(01:17:22) Innovating without disrupting existing customers(01:23:17) The Lighthouse Users program(01:30:00) Protecting and nurturing new ideas(01:36:14) Balancing innovation with personal well-being(01:38:17) A reminder to look after yourself(01:42:06) Lightning round—Referenced:• Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/• HipChat: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Hipchat/ct-p/hipchat• Stride: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Stride/ct-p/stride• Statuspage: https://www.atlassian.com/software/statuspage• Opsgenie: https://www.atlassian.com/software/opsgenie• Jira Product Discovery: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/product-discovery• HipChat billboard: https://x.com/HubSpot/status/654696998126272512• Announcing our new partnership with Slack: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/announcements/new-atlassian-slack-partnership• Slack shows it's worried about Microsoft Teams with a full-page newspaper ad: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/2/13497766/slack-microsoft-teams-new-york-times-ad• What Is ‘Dogfooding'?: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/business/dogfooding.html• Jira: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira• Confluence: https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence• PagerDuty: https://www.pagerduty.com/• New Relic: https://newrelic.com/• BigPanda: https://www.bigpanda.io/• Transparent Uptime: http://www.transparentuptime.com/• Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/vision-conviction-hype-mihika-kapoor• Figma: https://www.figma.com/• Lessons from Atlassian: Launching new products, getting buy-in, and staying ahead of the competition | Megan Cook (head of product, Jira): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-atlassian-launching• Noah Weiss on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahw/• Tanguy's LinkedIn post about “lighthouse users”: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tanguy-crusson-99832a_lighthouse-users-one-of-the-pm-techniques-activity-7176654510801502210-hWNi/• Pixar Chief: Protect Your ‘Ugly Babies' (Your Unsightly Ideas): https://www.forbes.com/sites/andyboynton/2014/03/17/pixar-chief-protect-your-ugly-babies-your-unsightly-ideas/• Atlas: https://www.atlassian.com/software/atlas• Point A: https://www.atlassian.com/point-a• Scott Farquhar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottfarquhar• Who: A Method for Hiring: https://www.amazon.com/Who-Method-Hiring-HC-2008/dp/B004C79SRS/• Hakim's Odyssey: Book 1: From Syria to Turkey: https://www.amazon.com/Hakims-Odyssey-Book-Syria-Turkey/dp/1637790007• Living with the Earth, Volume 1: Permaculture, Ecoculture: Inspired by Nature: https://www.amazon.com/Living-Earth-Gardeners-Permaculture-Ecoculture/dp/1856232603/• INRIA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Institute_for_Research_in_Computer_Science_and_Automation• How a Hydrofoil Works: https://web.mit.edu/2.972/www/reports/hydrofoil/hydrofoil.html• What Is Kitefoil or Foilboarding?: https://www.whenitswindy.com/wp/?page_id=534• Freediving: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freediving• Tanguy's freediving stats: https://www.aidainternational.org/Athletes/Profile-00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000a45• Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.com/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

In this episode of Content Briefly, we've interviewed Sara Yin, Senior Editor at Slack, and discussed her content marketing journey at major tech companies, the unique challenges and strategies of developing content at Slack, and more.************************Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:27 Sara Yin's career journey from journalist to senior editor at Slack.07:50 Lessons from Intercom: The human element in content marketing.11:51 Unpacking content strategy at Shopify .15:27 The lifecycle of content at Slack.17:47 Slack's evolution from HipChat rival to market leader.20:11 Slack's content evolution post-Salesforce acquisition.21:33 Content strategy lessons from Jeff Bezos.23:09 Keeping content creative in an SEO-driven world.25:51 Enhancing content strategy with AI.27:10 Building a rich content library from diverse voices.28:05 How Slack's content strategy empowers writers.29:22 How Slack's copy editors shape its voice.33:56 Content production in large organizations.34:37 Learn more about Sara and Slack and get in touch.35:31 Outro************************Useful Links:Website: https://slack.com/Sara on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarapyinSara on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yinsara/************************Stay Tuned:► Website: https://www.superpath.co/► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@superpath► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/superpath/► Twitter: https://twitter.com/superpathco************************Don't forget to leave us a five-star review and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

What's it like when a 23,000-person organization uses Slack? If you're curious about all of the communications and change management issues, listen to this episode.  Support the showMore about Conversations About Collaboration: Support the show via Patreon. Contact Phil Simon.

This Week in Startups is brought to you by… Squarespace. Turn your idea into a new website! Go to Squarespace.com/TWIST for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Supergut is the only nutrition brand clinically-proven to improve digestion, balance blood sugar, sustain energy, and manage weight. Save 25% on their delicious shakes, bars, and prebiotic mix at Supergut.com with code TWIST. Miro. Working remotely doesn't mean you need to feel disconnected from your team. Miro is an online whiteboard that brings teams together - anytime, anywhere. Go to https://miro.com/startups to sign up for a FREE account with unlimited team members. * Today's show: Atlassian Co-CEO Scott Farquhar joins Jason to break down how he and his Co-Founder bootstrapped Atlassian to an IPO (1:34), his lessons from acquiring, growing and eventually selling HipChat (13:43), thoughts on product-led growth (29:27), generative AI tools for the enterprise (39:43), and more! * Time stamps: (0:00) Atlassian Co-CEO Scott Farquhar joins Jason! (1:34) Atlassian origins, bootstrapping to IPO (12:22) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://Squarespace.com/TWIST (13:43) Lessons from HipChat: Acquiring and growing the service, selling to Slack, what Scott would do differently (19:39) Atlassian's two playbooks: bootstrapping and aggressive growth (27:57) Supergut - Get 25% off with code TWIST at https://supergut.com (29:27) How product-led growth leads to a sharper product team, how Atlassian is thinking about LLMs and generative AI (38:20) Miro - Sign up for a free account at https://miro.com/startups (39:43) Remaining flexible re: AI tools, utilizing customer data, when to expect major knowledge work breakthroughs in AI (47:27) How Scott thinks about AI, remote work, and efficiency (1:01:39) Staying motivated in Atlassian's third decade * Check out Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com FOLLOW Scott: https://twitter.com/scottfarkas * Read LAUNCH Fund 4 Deal Memo: https://www.launch.co/four Apply for Funding: https://www.launch.co/apply Buy ANGEL: https://www.angelthebook.com Great recent interviews: Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland, PrayingForExits, Jenny Lefcourt Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis * Follow Jason: Twitter: https://twitter.com/jason Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis * Follow TWiST: Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin * Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.founder.university/podcast

 Tom Humphrey is an Investor with Blackbird Ventures, a venture capital fund supercharging Australia and New Zealand's most ambitious founders. Prior to Blackbird, Tom was a partner with Access Ventures based in Denver USA and was on the management / founding teams of two successful startups. Tom was COO of OurDeal, a “group-buying” ecommerce website in Australia that over 12 months scaled to a team of 80 and a successful exit to News Corp, and then became COO of Kanopy, a B2B video streaming platform that he guided to an exit in 2018 delivering a 14x return to investors. In this episode #138 w Tom Humphrey, learn about:Tom's sunrise in Sydney, Australia being the youngest of 4 siblings, with his mother a high school teacher and then business executive and dad an architect. I loved his reflections on how his older sister, stayed up at night and sometimes missed school because she was looking after Tom, and then their journey later in life building Canopy for nearly a decade to now being one of the top 10 M&A exits for a tech company out of Australia. 14x return on investmentI asked Tom about the key differences between Australian and US culture given his 10 years living, studying and working in the US, his reflections on his time in Bhutan and learning about the economics of happiness, his insecurities and how he manages them, how he's learn what good looks like in sales and go to market for startups, the concept of deposits in the care bank to be a great manager and his balancing act on decision making with analytics and gut feel. We also cover his transitions from consulting to a a startup at a time when startups weren't the buzz they are today and his reflections on what he would change if he could start his career today.It's now time to explore your curiosity. Please enjoy!(Timestamps below)***Follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn or TwitterContact us via our website to discuss sponsorship opportunities, recommend future guests or share feedback, we love hearing how to improve! Thank you for rating / reviewing this podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, it helps others find us and convince guests to come on the show! ***

Archana Agrawal started her job as CMO of Airtable on March 18, 2020 — the same week that the US began to “shelter in place” as cases of the novel coronavirus rapidly rose. With kids who would be staying home from school and Airtable's San Francisco office closed, everything was changing at once, so she switched into what she calls “problem-solving mode.” And, crucially, she discovered how to use family time to de-stress.In this episode, Archana and Joubin discuss how she made her way from Africa to Asia to America; operating without a full night's sleep; why her former coworkers made a game of trying to stump her; the secret power under the hood of Airtable; starting her current job right as “shelter in place” kicked in; whether she would stay at Airtable if the founder was no longer CEO; and how she views her responsibility on the boards of MongoDB and Zendesk.In this episode, we cover: Staying in place & doubling down vs. moving on to bigger things (03:03) Moving from Liberia to India to escape civil war (07:13) Archana's unusual grad school roommate: Her father (11:33) The value of breadth over depth, and following your passions (17:35) Cold-emailing her way into a job at Atlassian and the ridiculous job title Archana almost received (21:38) Understanding a team's strengths and weaknesses — and her own (27:05) Her lowest point at Atlassian, the sale of HipChat and exit from the messaging business (34:33) Why it matters that Airtable looks like a spreadsheet, but is powered by a relational database (37:52) Going into “problem-solving mode,” and the most important outlet for escaping from stress (42:42) Working for founder-led companies (49:53) Being heard as a quiet person on advisory boards full of louder people (55:27) Links: Connect with Archana LinkedIn Email: archana@airtable.com Connect with Joubin Twitter LinkedIn Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com  Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

Check out Hammerstone! http://hammerstone.dev/Michele Hansen  0:00  Michele Hansen  0:00 Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/When you're bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you're spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don't pay?Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.Hey, everyone. So you may remember a couple of weeks ago, Colleen was facing a big decision about whether she should join an exciting project that some of her friends had started. So I'm here to tell you today that Colleen did decide to join that project. And we thought that you should hear about it from her and the team she's joining. So she is joining Hammerstone with our friends, Aaron and Sean. And you may remember Shawn from our episode a few months ago, where he was helping me learn how to market a book. So we thought we would let you listen to the episode that Colleen did on the Hammerstone podcast recently, where she's talking about joining the team. And after you listen, make sure to go subscribe to the Hammerstone podcast to get more updates about that really exciting project.Unknown Speaker  1:54  All right, we are recording. And we have three people here with us today. So the third person you want to introduce yourself.Colleen Schnettler  2:03  Hello, everyone. My name is Colleen and I have been working for Shawn and Aaron for about six months now. And this is my debut appearance on the Hammerstone podcast.Unknown Speaker  2:14  Welcome to the show. Thanks. So Colleen has been working, she said for us. But now Colleen is working with us. Colleen is a part of the Hammerstone team now. She's the third partner.Colleen Schnettler  2:29  Yes, I am super pumped. Super excited to join the team.Unknown Speaker  2:34  Yeah, so I guess we've been talking about this client for like, a year or more. And we've mentioned Colleen several times, I don't think it's been a secret. And she's the one that's been doing. She's the one that's been doing the rails side of the Refine product. And so, Shawn and Colleen have been working on this client for a long time. And the client has kind of been like, hey, what if we just keep doing this for a long, long time, we're like, great, we, that sounds good to us. And so Colleen is gonna continue working. But this client for they just, they just love Colleen, they just can't, they can't get enough of you. So, yeah, she's coming on as a partner and Hammerstone and she's gonna own the rails side of things. And I own the Laravel side of things. And Sean owns basically everything else. Kind of kind of a huge change, you know, in a whirlwind the past couple of weeks, but welcome.Colleen Schnettler  3:41  Thanks.Unknown Speaker  3:43  Yes, super cool. So speaking of owning all the other things, actually, can you guys hear me the sound just cut out weirdly for a second? We're good. You're okay. Yep. Yeah, so we, since there's three of us now, Aaron, and I have been, as I put it on the call with the lawyer yesterday, just yoloing it for the last year with our sort of like, operating agreement. So we got to hammer that out, you know, and actually do that properly given there's three of us, and that's an extra level of complication. So, the, the thing that we talked about with the lawyer, which I wanted to bring up with you guys was so first of all, I brought on my lawyer, Dalia who's awesome, and the best lawyer that I know. And I was like, Oh, yeah, I definitely want dahlias represent Hammerstone that Dalia immediately brought up that it's a conflict of interest of her because she's representing me. I'm planning for aliens. And I was like, Oh, well, I'll just find another lawyer for planning for aliens. And that's when I realized like last night, I was like, do I want to do that? Like it's, I want Dalia to represent Hammerstone but I also like kind of still want to have Dalia around for other shit for me. So I think that she had mentioned this as a possibility where like, she could represent us both. And then if there's a conflict of interest step aside, and it would go to me by default, I think is what she said. And then Hammerstone would have to find another lawyer. How does that sound to you guys?Colleen Schnettler  5:18  Yeah, so what I took from that conversation was exactly that, like, she can represent you, she can represent Hammerstone. But if the three of us as Hammerstone have a problem, she would then have to step back and then all of us would, like, if we're at the point where we all need our own attorneys, like something has gone terribly wrong, right? Like, we're probably just gonna want to Anyway, when we're talking about attorneys, that's all we're talking about is these horrible situations, right. So that is what we're talking about right now is a horrible situation that, you know, potentially could happen in the future. Get it? I'm not putting anything out of possibility. Like, I'm fine with that. I don't know, she had said something about how someone has to wait, like waive the conflict of interest. So you can ask her what that means. But I mean, I have no issues with this, because I just, I know, no one ever sees themselves in these situations, but I just cannot imagine a situation where that would happen. And if it did, then, I mean, you're so far gone by that point that, you know, I'm okay.Unknown Speaker  6:29  Yeah, I think I think I understand the same thing. So she'll represent planning for aliens, which is your holding Corporation. Shawn, shall represent planning for aliens shall represent Hammerstone. And should, Shawn Colleen and Aaron ever need representation against each other not as Hammerstone against each other as individuals, then that's when we have to say conflict of interest, or, you know, Colleen, and I get our own lawyers or whatever. Does that seem right? That's exactly it. Yeah. Yep. I'm on board with that. That's fine.Colleen Schnettler  7:02  Yeah, I'm totally fine.Unknown Speaker  7:03  She'll give us whatever papers to sign about that. And then Alright, cool.Colleen Schnettler  7:07  Sure. What I didn't understand from that call was the accountant thing. At the election, yeah, way into some tax law with a vesting schedule. For me, and that was kind of Whoosh. SoUnknown Speaker  7:24  So you got to talk to our accountant, like, so this is what we're talking about. We have our accountant, you could you could have your own, or you just use Aaron, I'm like, pushing, we just use the one accountant for all the stuff. I mean, it's not. He's an accountant. So I don't know if there's like, there's not like a conflict of interest, right? He's just gonna tell you like, what's the optimal thing to do?Colleen Schnettler  7:43  Right? This is how you should structure it. Yeah.Unknown Speaker  7:46  Yeah. And, and my understanding, I never thought about this before, I guess, because it's gonna be like a taxable event, that you could decide, take the taxes now or take the taxes later. And I think that'll probably all depend on your whole personal, you know, finance situation plus, like, what you think's gonna happen with Hammerstone, etc. So,Colleen Schnettler  8:06  right, so you guys have a Hammerstone accountant, who is also Aaron's personal accountant. It's my it's my personal accountant, but his name is Aaron is Aaron. Oh, hence. Yeah. Okay, so Shawn, you have an accountant named Aaron, who has been doing Hammerstone taxes and your personal taxesUnknown Speaker  8:30  and planning for aliens. Correct. And he's gone. Hammerstone he hasn't done Hammerstone taxes yet. We just had no money last year. So we just write ourselvesColleen Schnettler  8:39  and then Aaron, not you Aaron not accounting there. You then have your own accountant for your own stuff for your LSIUnknown Speaker  8:47  I Aaron am an account I forgot. Yeah, yeah. So it makes it worse. I'm a CPA, however, I'm not our CPA, and I'm not my own CPA. I have my own personal accountant. For Jennifer's and my taxes. And I have a I have an LLC called bits and things. And so she does, she does bits and things she does our personal stuff. She does. And I've recently switched because my old one was terrible. So yes, I have my own personal one as well.Colleen Schnettler  9:15  Okay, because I have an accountant, but I'm not totally crazy about him. So I don't know if it's easier to just switch like we're, I'm cool with that. We can talk about that more. But yeah, okay.Unknown Speaker  9:26  I think I felt like the advantage for me if having Aaron jado match to my@aol.com do my personal and LLC or an S corp actually needs the one that set that all up is that he knows like how to optimize both and they both writer and they both come into play and otherwise there's going to be a communication point between the two of you have two separate accountants or find like DIY, my personal account my personal taxes. So just for him to optimize things and be more, you know, fluid in that. It was easier to just have him do it. And then like as far as my recommendation of Aaron, like, I feel like I have a lot less problems with there. And then anybody else that I've ever talked to about their accountants and like I have, he saved me automatically a lot of money the first year that I hired him, and I have not been audited. I was audited prior to this prior to hiring him, and hadn't been audited said so. Anyway, that's, that's my pitch there.Colleen Schnettler  10:28  Yeah, not a pitch. It's really up to you. Yeah. But just not to get like two businesses. So like, my first accountant, had all these like, cool. I don't know if they're cool ideas, but he had a lot of ideas about how I should structure my LLC for like tax benefits. And then his wife died. And he retired and it was kind of dramatic. And then my new accountant who I've had for two years now, he's just not into that stuff. Like he doesn't provide recommendations. He like, I think he just puts everything in TurboTax and tells me what I owe. That's why old accountant Yeah, exactly. Nice guy. But I'm like, I can literally do that myself, like you are, you aren't advising me on like, structure anything. So I'm open to trying something new.Unknown Speaker  11:07  Yeah, so with Aaron, I do have to, like, I gotta push a little, like, if I do nothing, he'll just do what he's got sort of squared away from me. And I think he makes by default, good choices. And he's not just doing plug it into TurboTax stuff. Like he's thinking through all the various implications. And if he thinks there's something we need to talk about, then he'll generally bring it up with me. But like, I do have to, like, I wish he would provide me with like, a prompt of like, here are all the things that you should tell me, because these are the things that are gonna like impact, you know, the taxes or whatever. But I've had to kind of come up with my own list. Well, that sucks. But generally, if I'm doing something that's potentially having a tax implication, yeah, I mean, I've reached out to him, like we sold our house, I have this money sitting around from selling the house and like, what do I What do I need to do with this? etc? He's good at all that stuff? Yeah. Very cool. I still feel like space in our in our community for like, a really good accountant that like, actually does their job, like high level high touch could charge probably twice as much, you know, as mine does. And like they would be so busy. It would be ridiculous.Unknown Speaker  12:16  I agree. I think any any accountant that wants to book using savvy cow, I think you'd have a million customers. bootstrap customers, right? Oh, you you savvy Cal. You're not you're five years old. Colleen, is this accountant, the one that sent you like a 40? page? Yeah, organizer right here. Fill out all of your documents. And I said, you should just tell him No, I'm not going to do that. Is that this one?Colleen Schnettler  12:42  That's the that's the one. Yeah, I was like, What am I paying you for? Like, and again, he's a nice guy. But it was just like, like, I pay you. So I don't have to fill out the 40 page document. Like I might as well just do it in TurboTax. If this is what we're doing, yeah, yeah. SoUnknown Speaker  12:59  yeah. Any other accounting lawyering? So one sided? One thing? Yeah, the one thing that the lawyer was saying we need to talk to the accountant about is the 83 b election, which I think determines when the taxable event, like when you recognize the taxes of your new part of Hammerstone. So I think, you know, just for context, that's what she was talking about. But I don't know too much else about that. The other thing she mentioned, which I thought was interesting, is his colleagues portion of the company coming from Sean's and my portion, or is the company somehow magically expanding to have more shares? And that's something we'll need to figure out because I have no clue. I think that's also a tax base decision, basically. I think it is.Unknown Speaker  13:52  Yeah, but yeah, we're gonna have to explore all that cuz I totally get it either. Yeah, even though there was another Oh, go ahead.Colleen Schnettler  14:00  I was gonna say even stuff, like invoicing. Like we invoice the customer, the client? Do I invoice you guys? Ask us guys, US people, US people? Or do I from my LLC? Or do I take a distribution? Like how youUnknown Speaker  14:14  just did you just destroyed our bank account to yourself? Yeah. So we'll just invoice Amazon, you can just pay yourself?Unknown Speaker  14:22  Yeah, I think that's right. But I don't know, actually, we need to check because I don't know if, you know, Colleen takes that as an owner distribution. That doesn't. That doesn't offset our revenue. So like if Hammerstone makes, you know, let's say Hammerstone makes $10,000 but actually 9500 Oh, call is a good point. We need to recognize that as an expense otherwise, hammer stones pay $1,000 Yeah, so not an owner. Just contribution. No, we shouldn't do it that way. That's right. So let's not do accounting live on air because this is something that's definitely definitely one we'll need to get sorted. I don't think anything changes. You've been invoicing us, and we've been paying you and I don't think anything changes but wanting to double check that. Yeah, fun stuff.Colleen Schnettler  15:25  I know. It is like surprising. I'm sure we will be happy. We hashed all this out. But like at this point in the business, it feels frustrating, right? Because it feels like it's slowing us down. We have to have meetings, we haven't talked out lawyer to like, Oh my gosh, can we just do our work? Like, IUnknown Speaker  15:40  don't want to write tests. I just want to write the products like, this is this is the testing of business. You have to do all this stuff you don't want to do. Yeah, that's funny, though.Unknown Speaker  15:50  I don't mind it at all feels absolutely necessary. Really great. Yeah. That's wonderful. Oh, that gets a job that we have to do. I mean, got to do it.Colleen Schnettler  15:59  That's interesting. Yeah, I just I don't know. I'm just like, let's just skip all this. It's fine. But it's good to do it. You're absolutely right.Unknown Speaker  16:07  That's why we have you, Sean. So I think, you know, we have all this context. And this is actually a podcast, not just a Hangout. So I think it would be interesting to talk just quickly about how the three of us like how we ended up here. Because like Sean said, he and I have just been yoloing it and just like, yeah, we own 50% of the company. Let's shake hands. And that's because Shawn and I didn't just meet on the internet yesterday. And you know, bringing in a third partner is a big deal. But we didn't just, you know, meet Colleen off the street. So, Shawn, do you want to talk about how you and I met? And how long ago that was?Unknown Speaker  16:52  Yes. Before Isaac was born, so probably eight years ago. And I was I just quit my job to start writing sketchy CSS and I went to the bacon biz conference, right? Is that what it's called? bacon bits. Yeah, yeah. Amy hoy. And yeah, anyway, now pixelmon. The other thing. The first one, actually, right. wasn't the first one. Yeah. So yeah. And you shared a room with Josh Pigford on that.Unknown Speaker  17:18  Yeah, I did I share it with Josh Pigford. Because the way that I knew Josh Pigford was cuz I shared a room with him at micro comp. He was on. So micro comp and bacon bids were the same year that year, and he had posted on the micro comp thing like, Hey, does anybody want to share room I'm normal. That's like, I doubt you're normal. But I'll look you up. And I looked him up. And we had like a zoom call. And I was like, Yeah, sure. I don't have any friends there. And I need like, you know, when you when you go into a conference, and you don't know anyone, and it's terrifying and like you're in high school with no friends. That's how I felt. So I was like, Yes, I'll share a room with this guy. And then he went to bacon business. So we shared a room again. It's so funny that you remember that?Unknown Speaker  18:06  Yeah, I met you. I met buckbee. I met Barry. Hmm, I think there was there Pete was there. I was not there. No, no, no, Pete wasn't there. He wasn't there. He wasn't. No, no, I didn't meet Pete in real life for a few years. Oh, wow. Yeah. But Pete was working on his stripe book around that time. And then and then Andrew had. So Andrew had a company called churn buster, Andrew Culver, a mutual friend of ours. So he had this company called churn Buster and turn Buster had a HipChat support channel, which he just had it so he would invite people to hang out with him in there. And then every now and then, is it chat customers or be his churn Buster customers would pop in and ask questions. And we'd be like, well, Andrew is not here. But like, have you tried blah, blah, blah. troubleshoot the problem?Unknown Speaker  18:58  It was such a scam. We did all this support for him.Unknown Speaker  19:02  Yeah. And there was also briefly, same in that same HipChat room, there was Patrick Collison a like yeah, that's right. It was in the HipChat room with us. forgot about that. Yeah. We've had people graduate out of Yeah. Yeah, but that's what we all met was that room like buckbee invited us from that conference. And then we started hanging out together there and then meet in real life every now and then, you know, it's making this conferences etc. So we just have this little community which has been growing and changing over the years. Now, it's a Slack channel. It's not Andrews. How to intercept or gel anymore.Unknown Speaker  19:47  Yeah, eight years ago, and then Colleen, you met Andrew first. Is that right? Are you met Michelle?Colleen Schnettler  19:54  Andrew? No, I met Andrew first Sean actually. Put Michelle and I Touch I believe. So I met Andrew, I was going to the Ruby on Rails meetups in Virginia Beach. And there were like three people that attended these meetups like it was not. They were not well attended. But Andrew came to speak at one. And this was maybe four or five years ago, I don't remember. Andrew came to speak at one. And afterwards, we all went out to get drinks all four of us, because he and one of our mutual friends knew each other really well. And so Andrew told me so this is like back when I'm in my just want to launch a product phase kind of that, you know, in the beginning when you like have that really strong desire, but you're aimless because you don't have any contact salutely Yes, yeah, that's back in those days. So Andrew and I were talking about business ideas. So he told me about the slack group. So then I joined the slack group. And then I started having weekly lunches with the Virginia Beach people. And that's kind of how I got to know everyone. And then I met you guys will show that I had worked on and off together. Occasionally we were on the same contract. But we never really worked together. I feel like we were always we didn't really know each other, even though we kind of worked together. And then I met you two, what, two years ago, in real life. I think it was two years ago in the dc, dc. DC was the first time so before that I had never met Aaron and you were really active Aaron in the Slack channel. So I like didn't even know who you were. And Sean I kind of knew because he was like the React guy that worked on the same contract I worked on, but we've never really worked on together. Yeah. And then I met you guys IRL, as they say, yeah.Unknown Speaker  21:39  And we have another so obviously, we skipped the retreat last year. But we have another in person retreat coming up. Yeah, hopefully.Colleen Schnettler  21:49  Hopefully. Yeah. We'll see. I'm nervous. I'm nervous about it. Yeah, same. I will say though, good.Unknown Speaker  21:59  Saying that I feel nervous about it, too. I wasn't even thinking about it. But until recently, when all the sudden I've had to start having new, like, bubble conversations with my parents about like, Who's gonna watch Isaac if like, he has an outbreak in his class? And like, should we do the after school care for him where you guys want to commit to it? So he's not like with all these other kids? And I'm like, Oh, no, this is a retreat even gonna happen?Colleen Schnettler  22:22  Yeah, I hope so. We'll see. But I would say like going back to the three of us working together, we never really got to know each other. Well, I would say until we started working together recently, about, what, eight months ago now. I mean, I think that I don't think I any of us, and I can just speak for myself, you guys would not have invited me in to this company eight months ago, right? Like, we didn't have that relationship. I mean, we had no context on each other, we had never worked together. So I think like us forming a partnership has really grown over that working together almost every day, you know, over the extended period of time. Definitely.Unknown Speaker  23:00  Yep. I would absolutely agree. Yeah, I think. So. I think, just from my perspective, like the thing, the problem that we're working on, and maybe we should describe it, because I don't know that everyone has listened from Episode One, which you should. So the thing that we're doing is, it's like a visual Query Builder. So you know, when you go to, let's use ecommerce, because that's an easy example, when you go to an e commerce website, and you're like, I want shoes that are Nikes, in size 11, or 12, and are black and are under $100, and ship in two days. So like, you can build up your, you know, your perfect filter, just kind of like on the fly. We're building that as a component. So you can just drop it in to your Rails application, or you can just drop it into your Laravel application. And then the application developer can say, here are all the conditions that I want to offer my users, I want to offer them shoe size, and shoe color and price. And then Hammerstone, y'all figure out how do you show that on the front end? How do you do validation? How do you apply that to the database? How do you store that so that they can like, you know, generate a report and send it later. So that's like, that's the product we're building. And it's called refine, and that's what we've been working on for a long time. And I think, from my perspective, one of the reasons that I was like, Yes, we absolutely have to have Colleen is because you've spent like eight months or a year getting your head around this problem, which it takes that long, and I think you have an extremely good grasp on the problem space and it's like a very complicated problem. And you've got, like, you've got ideas on how to make it How to make it successful in the rails world, which I don't have, I don't have the context, I don't have the knowledge, I don't have the experience. And so somebody that has the whole problem set loaded into their mind and is really excited about it and wants to make it a Rails thing. I was like, Yes, let's do it. Bring her on. Absolutely.Unknown Speaker  25:23  Yeah, I think it makes sense. Because it makes sense. If we're, if we're just doing like a really small, like little project, that's gonna make a couple 1000 bucks a month. First of all, Aaron, you should just launch that without me. And then, but we're not like I think we have, I have at least a larger sort of thesis in mind for building a lot of different types of components like this. And we realized that like, we can build front ends that are compatible with different back ends, and we could build a Rails version level version of Python version, like, there's a choice for how we could like, expand our market, we could do, we could go down that route. There's other ways to do it. But like, that was a possibility. And here we are, we were presented with the opportunity to build a Rails version paid for by a client. And now we can have somebody take over that piece and own that, that's a no brainer for me. So it kind of commits us to the strategy of like, we're going for two different markets. And that's how we're going to, you know, like, increase our market size. But I also think that makes sense, long term. And it makes sense that Coleen run the run the rail side.Colleen Schnettler  26:38  I think so I have listened to your podcast, I think you guys are really, like, I feel like your excitement, I don't know, I know, you can kind of see the potential. But literally everyone I have ever worked for could use this query builder. So it's just I mean, when you describe it, Aaron, I think it's hard to describe it. Because someone asked me, he was like, What is this thing you guys are building that you're so excited about. And I was like, I don't know how to describe it concisely. But the power like when you guys first, when we first talked about this, I literally thought it was just going to be, you know, a couple scopes, right? Like, you're just like, Oh, I'm going to scope the model, and I'm going to send you the string. And you're just going to scope the model on it. And that's not what it is at. All right. So I just think, I think we can grow this business with just this product to, you know, larger than any of us have done before, like, This product is really spectacular. I mean, it's just so cool. And I think it'll be cool to like, approach it on different fronts, it'll be really interesting to see how it does in Rails versus, you know, Laravel, and just kind of see the growth trajectory. And both of those ecosystems. Yeah, it's gonna be cool.Unknown Speaker  27:47  Yeah. To get there, though, like, there's, there's some problems. You know, like, it's not, like, Yes, I definitely could, every entrepreneur could see how their product could be used everywhere. Like, that's 100% true of every entrepreneur who creates a product, like everybody should use this. But like, I think that for us, there's the obvious, like, low hanging fruit of, we're gonna get some sales from on the site, like you and Aaron are basically gonna do like dev rel, you're going to do like a little bit of content marketing, you're going to be building up the those relationships, and we'll get a few sprinkles of sales there. And those are going to be people that are going to buy it like because they're like, Oh, yeah, I was gonna build this, but instead, I'm going to buy it right. So they're already at that build versus buy decision point, then, and they already know, like, they need the thing. They already know, they need a query builder that they probably already, like, use that word or phrase even. So they're pretty far along in the process. In order for us to get out further and deeper into the market. That's where we have to start doing some convincing or pointing out to people that like, Look, you can, you could drop this into your product. Now you don't even see the need for it. But like, I could we then show can show the need for it. And I think that's a that's like another harder problem. So there's like, how far can we get on people that are going to make build versus buy decision? And how, how can we figure out systems to get in front of them right then? And then what's the next step, the next layer, like pulling in these other people that like you could add this into your app now. And it solves pains You didn't even know you had kind of situation, which is a lot harder. That's like a lot harder. A thing is possible. I mean, I've already had conversations with somebody who's interested, like they're just what are you doing? And I explained it to them. And then I explained it in the context of their app. And they were like, Oh, I need it. Right. So I know it's possible. But it's very hard. Which that's gonna be my job. Yeah, seriously.Unknown Speaker  29:48  Yeah. And I think like, Colleen, you've worked on a bunch of different clients. So you're not just looking out and being like, oh, the world needs this. You're looking back on your clients and being like, no, the people That I did work for in the app, they need this. Is that right?Colleen Schnettler  30:04  Yes. Yeah. And since they're my clients like I would, I mean, that's the nice thing about consultants. Right? I'd be like, you all need to buy this immediately. And they would. But yeah, to Shawn's point we how do we expand past our existing networks? Right? Like, that's basically, you know, we have we have pretty good networks of people in our community, people in the indie SAS community. How do you expand beyond that?Unknown Speaker  30:31  Huh? Yeah, exactly. That's, that's the hard part. But if we do that, then we definitely have a business. But that's like one of these things that we have to that's, that's the hard part. Yeah. My my movies a coupleUnknown Speaker  30:44  years, my move so far has not been expanding beyond my personal network, it's been expanding my personal network. So like I'm trying right now, to gather up more and more Laravel like connections and eyeballs. And the way I've been doing that, as you know, putting out either open source projects, or blog posts or torchlight is another great example, something that something that's not gonna make us rich, you know, independently, but is getting a lot of traction within Laravel the ecosystem of people saying like, Oh, this is really cool, let me you know, follow the story, follow this guy who's doing it or sign up and use it myself. And so that's been my move so far. But obviously, that only scales, that only scale so far, but it's definitely like, it's definitely step one, I mean, might as well start with the inner circle. SoUnknown Speaker  31:45  I think there's been me is another benefit of having Colleen was, like, takes it I was gonna have to do what Colleen is doing now, like on the rail side, like what you're doing in Laravel, I was gonna have to do that. And I am a Rails developer, but it's, I'm not as well connected in that community. And it's a bit of a stretch, I could get there. But like the learning curve was going to be large. I was trying to figure out ways to like hire contractors to like, kind of get me there and like, So this takes that off my plate entirely. And then like, focus on the hard problem. Which is like where I've been, I have gotten to the point where I have a business that is selling products, paying my bills, doing what you're talking about Aaron doing the devil stuff. And like having doing content marketing and that sort of thing. I've been there getting past that is a whole other thing that I want to figure out and do. And that's, like, that's the goal for me at least.Unknown Speaker  32:43  Well, I've never gotten to the point where I have a business paying my bills, like a product paying my bills. So I'm glad we have you beyond that, because you've been there I have not calling you haven't either, right? You have simple file upload, but it doesn't pay bills. And so to have your mind working on that issue, well, Colleen and I are doing other stuff, I think I think it's gonna work out quite just knowUnknown Speaker  33:10  for everyone. Like, I could just get you guys ahead of you and tell you how you're gonna feel a year from now. You're gonna be like, how do I make more money than this? I'm like, right on the cusp of like a real business. What do I do? Yeah. It's just the next step. Yeah. Well, hopefully you've got it all sorted out by then. Yeah, we'll have it all figured out. Yeah, perfect. I'll just have buckbee tell me what to do. Seriously,Colleen Schnettler  33:35  that usually works. Yeah, that does usually work. Alright, what else? Nobody, nobody, nobody. I'm good.Unknown Speaker  33:51  So we're gonna do, we're gonna do three people from now on, right? calling your game to join all of Yeah, yeah. Hope, right. That's great. Some, some weeks you and I can just talk technical the whole time. I think that's gonna be one of the fun things is, like, I've already picked up a lot of good stuff for the lair Val product from, like working with you. And I think that is going to expand beyond just the Refine, like, refine is the name of our product just beyond refine, into other, like, either open source packages or other products be like, hey, what? what exists in Laravel that doesn't exist in rails and vice versa. I think that'll be a fun, like cross pollination opportunity, either for content or for products. But I'm thinking right now, especially for content. Yeah. So, all right, well, so we just call it there.Colleen Schnettler  34:57  Sounds good. All right.Michele Hansen  35:00  Michelle again. That's all for software social for this week. You can go to Hammerstone dot dev to learn more about that project and listen to their past episodes. We'll talk to you next week.Transcribed by https://otter.ai

In this episode we cover:Building Renaissance and the great programming with UnDemo Day and HotList as ways to expose top VCs to the startup talent in the midwestThe Fund of Funds model and how every MSA could benefit, including the impact they can have on a city/state/region Resources & People MentionedHerokuNew Albany, OHOne of the original investors in GitHub, Jim Goetz from SequoiaAlex Timm at Root InsuranceGitHub acquired by Microsoft in ____AstronomerSlack, Microsoft Teams, HipChat, CampfireMark Kvamme and Chris Olsen at Drive Capital Connect with JasonConnect with Jason on LinkedInTwitter: @jasoncwarnerRenaissance Venture Capital Fund Website Connect with TimFollow Refinery Ventures on Twitter: @RefineryVCConnect with Tim on LinkedInFollow Refinery Ventures on LinkedInSubscribe to Fast Frontiers

Let us take you into a ride through our main apps that help us organize, communicate and operate our businesses. We suggest and describe how we use different softwares to run our business, this is gold!   Get Straight To The Value:  A clear process [0:24] XMind [1:05] Trello [2:13] Gliffy [4:40] HipChat [6:30] Gotomeeting & Uberconference [7:04]   Quotes to Remember:  “It’s about, hey are we doing this right now? And quick communication.” (Los) “If you don’t have a mac you should probably just, well you should get a mac.” (Los) “What mind mapping software allows you to do is kind of work that stuff out right on your screen, right? Think of it as a white board.” (Kent) “Take the idea and actually put it into a process and then assign those processes to people and watch them move through the system.” (Kent) “Go to trello.com and you’re welcome” (Los)   Next Steps After Listening: Use the tools you need to have your business in check all the time, there are a bunch to choose from. Make the most out of your team by never missing a step. Make sure you map out the entire process and enjoy a lifetime reward of a system that performs well. Always know that you have to put in the work to get everything together, nothing comes easy. If you got value from today’s episode do us two favors before you go: 1. Subscribe to get notifications on when new episodes are released. 2. Tell us what you thought of the episode and what you want to hear about next by leaving a review.    How To Stay Connected Los Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/LosHustle/ Kent Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/kent.clothier/ Los Instragram - https://www.instagram.com/loshustle/ Kent Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kentclothier/ Los LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lossilva/ Kent LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentclothier/

We continue our discussion with Jens Schumacher and Justen Stepka, long-time Atlassian vets who have seen the software sector inside and out. We take a broader focus in this discussion, looking at SaaS competition, the importance of integrated cloud stacks, and the broader COVID and macro set-up. This leads to us diving in on Atlassian, on PagerDuty, on Zoom, and on Snowflake, among other topics. Topics Covered 2:30 minute mark - The onset of competition - Asana for Atlassian, Microsoft for Twilio, and writ large 10:00 - The market's roving eye, excitement over IPOs or hot tickets vs. steady growing behemoths - Zoom vs. Cisco, Snowflake vs. Box vs. Salesforce, and the ongoing runroom for cloud growth and small/mid-caps like PagerDuty 14:00 - The value of having multiple revenue streams, and the importance of Rundeck to PagerDuty as a first step 17:00 - Microsoft's power move and Zoom's taking advantage of their position 20:00 - The commitment to your cloud stack for a decade, and the challenge for incumbents of diversifying - Hipchat vs. Slack and Bitbucket vs. GitHub 26:00 - Data Center redundancy and setting up your network 32:00 - Snowflake dive, and the echo with VMWare; its competitive position vs. Redshift, Teradata, etc. 46:15 - COVID-19 Status update around the world

Chat systems have been a part of software development for decades. Older systems like Pidgin and Yammer were surpassed by newer systems like HipChat. And when Slack was created, it quickly became a part of most software companies. But Slack does not fulfill the needs of every company. Mattermost is an open-source chat system. Mattermost The post Mattermost with Ian Tien appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Chat systems have been a part of software development for decades. Older systems like Pidgin and Yammer were surpassed by newer systems like HipChat. And when Slack was created, it quickly became a part of most software companies. But Slack does not fulfill the needs of every company. Mattermost is an open-source chat system. Mattermost The post Mattermost with Ian Tien appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Chat systems have been a part of software development for decades. Older systems like Pidgin and Yammer were surpassed by newer systems like HipChat. And when Slack was created, it quickly became a part of most software companies. But Slack does not fulfill the needs of every company. Mattermost is an open-source chat system. Mattermost The post Mattermost with Ian Tien appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

While Derrick is away, Ben welcomes Don Goodman-Wilson, who was the first hire at Screenhero in 2013. Don shares his version of Screenhero’s incredible journey, its migration to Slack, and Tuple coming to the rescue. Better late than never! Today’s Topics Include: Work Ethic/Culture: Doctorate in philosophy requires logic and dedication Engineering Challenges: Learning low-level C/C++ code in Screenhero product Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac: Harmonizing code bases Web Application Programming: User interface (UI), reliability, latency, quality, and billing Product/Market Fit: Quick growth, adoption, and implementation of Screenhero Pair Programming: Personal and professional sharing and collaboration Second Day at First Expo: Atlassian’s interest, followed by Slack’s acquisition Platform of Choice: Who’s the best partner to work with to achieve Screenhero’s goals? In and Out of the Sandbox: Screenhero’s prone to crashing and uses private APIs Slack destroyed Screenhero: Expectations and compromises created culture clash Heartbreaking, Rational Reality: Removal of remote screen control in Slack calls Maintainerati’s Mission: Understand challenges and offer solutions for maintaining open source software Links and resources: Don Goodman-Wilson (https://don.goodman-wilson.com/)  Don Goodman-Wilson on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/degoodmanwilson) Maintainerati (https://maintainerati.org) Screenhero (https://screenhero.com/) Y Combinator (https://www.ycombinator.com/) Slack (https://slack.com) The Screenhero Story - The Screenhero Blog (https://blog.screenhero.com/post/109339022326/the-screenhero-story) Removal of remote screen control in Slack calls (https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/360022908874-Removal-of-remote-screen-control-in-Slack-calls) Atlassian (https://www.atlassian.com/) HipChat (https://www.atlassian.com/partnerships/slack) WebRTC (https://webrtc.org/) Redis (https://redis.io/) Python (https://www.python.org/) Stripe (https://stripe.com/) Ractive.js (https://ractive.js.org/) Ruby-Grape Rack (https://github.com/ruby-grape/grape) Ruby on Rails (https://rubyonrails.org/) Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/) Google Hangouts (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/hangoutplugin) Art of Product on Twitter (https://twitter.com/artofproductpod) Derrick Reimer (http://www.derrickreimer.com) Website Derrick Reimer on Twitter (https://twitter.com/derrickreimer) Ben Orenstein (http://www.benorenstein.com/) Website Ben Orenstein on Twitter (https://twitter.com/r00k?lang=en) Maintainerati on Twitter (https://twitter.com/Maintainerati) Tuple (https://tuple.app/) Tuple’s Pair Programming Guide (https://tuple.app/pair-programming-guide) StaticKit (https://www.statickit.com/) Level (https://level.app/) Level Retrospective (https://www.derrickreimer.com/essays/2019/05/17/im-walking-away-from-the-product-i-spent-a-year-building.html) Level Manifesto (https://level.app/manifesto)

Welcome to The epDate, where we bring you the latest in podcasting for podcast people! World Podcast News   Top Growing Podcasting Countries   A new data report by VoxNest has revealed the top growing podcasting countries, based on their month-to-month listenership growth, with four of the top five countries being Spanish-speaking. Chile topped the chart, with a month-to-month growth of 83.95%, while Argentina, Peru, Mexico, and China rounded out the top 5.       Luminary, A Subscription-Based Podcast Service Has Been Released   New podcast platform Luminary, which provides a subscription-based service for premium podcasts, has been released. While Luminary can be used as a regular podcast app, the company also uses a similar subscription model to popular streaming service Netflix, whereby listeners can pay a monthly fee to access exclusive and add-free programming. Luminary has faced some backlash within the podcast industry following its strong marketing pitch based around subscription - while facing the early issue of being without some popular podcasts including The New York Times’ ‘The Daily’ and Gimlet Media shows such as ‘Reply All’ and ‘Homecoming’ with competitor Spotify withholding their shows from the platform.   Another Social Media Podcasting Crossover Joins The Growing Industry   Following the popularity of social media podcasting hybrid, Breaker, another new addition to the budding platform has emerged. Swoot, co-founded by HipChat founders, Pete Curley and Garret Heaton, aims to solve the problem of podcast discovery. For non-listeners of the epDate, finding new shows can be a troubling task. With Swoot, listeners can not only use the podcast app much the same any other podcast player - but they can also see what shows their friends are listening to, what they recommending, and can follow their favourite podcast artists. It’s all about discovering new artists and finding your next new favourite podcast. Swoot is available now on all the app stores.   YouTube star PewdiPie To Live Stream On DLive   With the impending pod wars - the inevitable battle of top corporations to secure exclusive podcasting rights - a spanner has been thrown into the works of podcasts distant relative YouTube. PewdiePie, the 2nd most subscribed YouTuber in the world, with over 94 million subscribers, has joined forces with an alternative streaming platform, DLive - to stream live content. The move by such a high profile and controversial figure in the industry could foreshadow some of the future challenges facing the podcast industry and the impending battle to secure talent within platforms. That’s the podcast news from around the world this week. Now we’ll take a look at 5 podcasts you should be checking out this week. New Releases:   Drilled (Critical Frequency)   With Earth Day being recently being held on the 22nd of April, the first podcast to check out this week is ‘Drilled’. Hosted by Amy Westervelt, Drilled provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the secret history of climate-change denial. The latest episode looks at the crabbing industry in 2015 and Amy assesses the effect of climate change on crab fishermen. Check it out on your favourite podcast app.   Running From Cops (Topic / Pineapple Street Media)   A brand new podcast from Pineapple Street Media, Running From Cops, examines the hit reality TV show Cops, delving deep into its role in culture and specifically, how it has served up a distorted reality of law enforcement. In the first episode, host Dan Taberski asks the question: just how real is the longest running reality show in TV history? Two episodes are out now of the six-part series.   The Badcast (Auscast Network)   The Badcast on the Auscast Network, a podcast about crazy questions, tall stories and bad jokes, return after over a month absent from the podcast scene and are joined by special guest, Rohan Harry. In episode 99, Liam and Big Al share stories with creative communicator, actor and podcaster Rohan about a variety of topics, including getting old and the experience of staying in the ICU.   The Dunc’d On Basketball NBA Podcast (Nate Duncan)   If you’ve been enjoying the sporting excitement of the NBA playoffs, be sure to check out The Dunc’d On Basketball NBA Podcast with Nate Duncan. Duncan and co-host Danny Leroux delve deep into basketball minutia and provide you with in-depth playoff analysis including detailed game breakdowns, interviews and news. All the stats and info you’ll need to be an NBA expert these playoffs.   The Anxiety Hour (VICE)   A new podcast focusing on the subject of anxiety and featuring celebrity guests is out now on all podcast apps. The Anxiety Hour, hosted by VICE’s Wendy Syfret has 3 full-length episodes available now. On the latest episode, Wendy is joined by artist Celeste Mountjoy - better known as filthyratbag - to explore the topics of partying, drugs, depression and relationships. iTunes Top 3 podcasts from a specific genre: Now it’s time for our genre spotlight. Each week we’ll focus on a specific genre available on iTunes in a different country and look at some of the top podcasts from that genre. If it’s not your usual genre that’s OK!  But if you’re looking to try something a bit different - this will help highlight what the masses are listening to. This week, we’re taking a look at the hottest podcasts in the Games & Hobbies genre in the United States iTunes charts. Critical Role Car Talk The Joe Gardener Show If your hobby is tech...check out Apple Slice on the Auscast Network - a fresh Apple Tech news podcast from an Australian perspective. Get the latest news, rumours, and reviews on Apple iPhone, iPad, watch, Mac and more! Catch it on the Auscast Network.   And that’s it for the epDate, make sure you subscribe for free to Auscast Network Extra for plenty more great podcasts. The sponsors for this weeks epDate are: Pushpull Media, Got the Merchandise, and Cartel Media. Send us your stories and cool podcast facts at AuscastNetwork.com.     Podcast Resources: https://podnews.net/   https://blog.voxnest.com/top-growing-podcasting-countries-march-2019/?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2019-04-19   https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/22/18510897/luminary-podcast-app-launch-the-daily-gimlet-media-spotify   https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/21/18508015/swoot-podcast-player-share-friends-listeners   https://www.newyorker.com/culture/podcast-dept/three-podcasts-to-listen-to-in-april   https://www.fastcompany.com/90338425/new-podcast-digs-into-all-846-episodes-of-cops-and-its-distorted-reality-of-crime   https://mumbrella.com.au/vice-releases-new-podcast-series-the-anxiety-hour-572835   Music from Free Music Archive in order of appearance Computer Music All Stars - May The Chords Be With You Nctrnm - Absum Nctrnm - Qeue

In this first ever recording of the Remote Show, It was my privilege to chat with Zack Onisko - CEO of Dribbble. In this wide ranging conversation we discuss his career in design and growth, the progression of Dribbble as an online community and tips for hiring and managing remote workers. Zack had some great insights about culture building in remote teams, hiring/retaining top talent and the importance of Emojis. For those who don't know - Dribbble is an online community for showcasing user-made artwork and serves as the go to resource for networking and feedback for web designers. They're constantly looking for ways to showcase top talent from around the world and help great designers with employment opportunities, support and much more! Please check out Dribbble.com and follow them on social media! Also follow @zack415 to see what he's up to. Thanks for listening! Transcript: Matt H.: Hello, everyone. My name is Matt Hollingsworth, and it is my great pleasure to welcome you to the first episode of The Remote Show. On this show, we will talk to professionals in a variety of industries in positions around the world about their experiences working remotely. The pros, the cons, and everything in between. Along the way, we hope that we can provide some unique insights that will help you on your remote work journey. The Remote Show is brought to you by weworkremotely.com, the number one place to find and list remote jobs. Without 220,000 unique users per month, it is the best place to find your new qualified candidate. [00:00:39] My first guest on my show today is Zack Onisko. Zach is the CEO of Dribbble, which is an online community for showcasing design work from some of the best designers in the world. It has grown to become an inspiration destination for hundreds of millions of people, now a go to resource for discovering and connecting with designers and creative talent around the world. Check out dribbble.com, that's D-R-I-B-B-B-L-E.com if you haven't already checked that out. [00:01:07] Previously, Zack was Vice President of Growth and interim VP of Product at Hired, Inc. Dribbble is now a 100% remote team with over 40 employees. With all that said, Zack, thanks for being on the show today. I'm not sure if you're aware, but this is the very first recording of The Remote Show. [00:01:24]Zack Onisko: Well, cool. I hope to make it worth it. [00:01:26]Matt H.: Yeah, I'm sure it will be, for sure, and we're super excited to talk to you today, so that's great. Thank you so much for being on. [00:01:33]Zack Onisko: Thanks for having me. [00:01:34]Matt H.: I'm sure most of our listeners have heard of Dribbble or know about Dribbble, but why don't we start with what you do at Dribbble and how things are going, and we'll go from there. [00:01:43]Zack Onisko: Sure, yeah. So Dribbble is a global community for designers. We're gonna celebrate 10 years this summer, so we've been around for a while. It's a global brand. We have designers all over the world who come to Dribbble for inspiration, exposure, feedback, job opportunities, and yeah. I took over as CEO about two years ago. [00:02:08]Matt H.: Nice, nice. So were you part of the community before you came on as CEO, or were you- [00:02:15]Zack Onisko: Yeah. [00:02:15]Matt H.: Yeah? Okay, cool. [00:02:17]Zack Onisko: Yeah, I mean, so just a quick background on me, I started my career about 20 years ago as a web designer. I started a little freelance business for a couple of years, and then got a formal design degree and thought I was gonna go the agency route. Was really into Flash and motion design at the time and really loved that stuff. Then ended up taking a job at a startup and then my role kind of quickly moved out of design into product management and to more of a growth, executive roles at numerous startups over the course of the last two decades. [00:02:54] Along the way, for one reason or another, my career trajectory has landed in companies that were either in the recruitment space or the design space, and so Dribbble's kind of in the middle of those two worlds. So anyway, kind of full circle. [00:03:11]Matt H.: Yeah, that's great. I think it probably helps with getting the jobs in the executive and marketing and growth that you had, the background that you did. Correct me if I'm wrong there, but it seems likes these things tie all together, so. [00:03:24]Zack Onisko: Yeah, I mean, when I met Andrew Wilkinson from Tiny, that was kind of how he found me, where he's like, "Hey, I found, I have this opportunity to run by you that I think is a perfect meld of your background and so forth." So far so good. I took over the company. We were eight people. We're 47 today, fully remote. The company has grown kind of all of KPIs are up into the right. Our traffic is up 100%, our users are up, user growth as community is up 300%, and revenue's up 400%, so. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun, yeah. [00:04:05]Matt H.: Nice. So since you came out, or since you've been part of the community for so long, how have you seen the Dribbble community change, because it was my understanding that it was invite only originally, and it was sort of a core group of designers that were wanting to show their work. Then it's morphed into what it is today, so where, from a business perspective, how has it changed since you've been on and over the course of the eight years? [00:04:29]Zack Onisko: Yeah, so it's still invite only. The community was really borne out of our co-founder. Dan Cederholm was writing a lot of books on web design and speaking in a lot of conferences, and he was really leaning over the shoulders of people at these conferences and saying, "Wow, that looks really cool. What are you working on?" That's really kind of the inception of Dribbble was this premise of being able to share what you're working on with a handful of designers. It was a closed community to start, just kind of a handful of top designers. Then the opened it up to the world via an invite system, and that was really just because Dan and Rich, the co-founders, were really just the two of them for many years. They were growing the business, so they had to be mindful of server bills and things like this. [00:05:22] So it was partly to kind of restrict growth and then partly was quality control, right? They just wanted to make sure that the company, the platform had a high bar in terms of the quality of work that was being shared. That's still true today. It's been this exclusive community for a long time, which has been great for the people inside, but for the people not inside, we have designers all over the world now. They might not know somebody in their personal network to be able to invite them to Dribbble. So we're starting to look at ways that we can move away from an exclusive community and be more inclusive as we grow and mature. Part of that is looking at our invite algorithms, how we can be more inclusive to geographies that are not representative today. Then also just by working on partnerships with different organizations who have populations of designers who are not necessarily familiar with the Dribbble brand yet. For instance, design conferences in other countries or design schools. Things like this. [00:06:33]Matt H.: Nice. Yeah, so it seems like what's so unique about Dribbble from my perspective is it has a long history and it still has the reputation, a very high reputation amongst the community that maybe other sort of forum style communities online haven't been able to sort of maintain. It seems like everybody still points to Dribbble, even though given your growth, things can potentially dilute, I guess, is the right word in terms of the quality and that sort of thing. So it's been really cool to see Dribbble maintain that. So how have you been able to do that outside of typical quality control? [00:07:06]Zack Onisko: Yeah, so the way we're looking at it today is that we want to solve quality control with technology and not by people gating. There's just a ton of amazing designers, like literally hundreds of thousands of amazing designers out there doing really interesting work, and there's a ton of designers who are doing lesser quality work, but a platform like ours has the ability through social signals to be able to rise the good work and bring that work to the homepage so it gets more exposure regardless of if you've been on the platform for ten years and have 400,000 followers or if you're brand new to the platform and have 400 followers. [00:07:47] So that's really the effort, how we're looking at the future is kind of this evolution and how do we grow the community. The community itself, like we have an internal kind of north star mantra, and it's that we'll be successful as a platform and as a community and as a business if we help designers become successful. So a lot of our focus over the past year has been around work opportunities and getting freelancers leads for projects, helping designers who are looking for full-time gigs get gigs. That's really delivering just a ton of value back to the community, and in turn, that's fueled out growth. [00:08:25] As we look to the future, we're very interested in investing in education with hundreds of thousands upon millions of up and coming designers visiting the site every month. Today, unless you have an invite, there's not really a product for you on Dribbble other than an inspiration destination. So we want to look at, okay, how can we help these designers get jobs, right? How do they get the education to at least get the baseline so they can start to grow and become better designers over time? There's a design shortage right now, so we're in a very interesting time where technology has flattened the competitive landscape, and it's more easy than ever before to be able to start a new business and compete globally. [00:09:07] The change, just as kind of a quick case study, there were about 150 SAS products in the martech space five, six years ago. Today, there's over 7,000. So as a consumer, as a business owner, to look at that landscape of potential marketing solutions, like its paradox of choice is super real, right? There's just all these different, discrete products. So the way that business owners are now looking at how they differentiate and how they compete in the market is by building better products, a better user experience, and that all stems in design. The old adage was just go throw more engineers at your product and build more features, and today it's really about just let's build a better product that will attract customers and retain them from leaving to go to a competitor that could have feature parity with your product. [00:09:56] So really, companies are looking to win on customer experience and quality. We've seen this in Silicon Valley for years, right? Dropbox and Airbnb and Lyft really doubling down and building this design centric culture, but now we're starting to see this in Fortune 500. We're starting to see this across all industries, not just the Apples or the Nikes who you think are design led on within the F500, but companies like McDonalds and Kohls and Ford Motor Company. [00:10:26] A great case study to illustrate the change in demand is IBM, old big blue, which you might envision being kind of a cube farm and they're actually innovating at a crazy pace. The ratio of engineer to designer at IBM has changed in the last five years from 72 engineers for every one designer to now it's eight engineers for every one designer. On their mobile teams, it's actually 3:1. So they're making mass investments, and we're seeing this kind of all across the landscape. There's just not enough designers in the market to facilitate the need. People used to talk about this demand problem and now there's companies who are raising their series A series B and a design manager has basically 20 job openings that they need to fill, and they just have difficulty finding talent. [00:11:13] So anyway, to kind of backtrack, so education is definitely a huge focus for us as we move forward, because we see that there's a lot of ambition, people who are very interested in design. There's just a lack of education and training available at a professional level. [00:11:29]Matt H.: Right. Right now, it seems like Dribbble is in a pretty unique situation to be able to offer those education resources given your region and given who is already on the platform. What would be the typical channel of a designer that wants to get the education and professional resources that you mentioned right now? Is that available easily for these people, or is it sort of, whether they go through the typical channels? [00:11:53]Zack Onisko: Yeah, I mean, there's design schools, right? That's the typical path that you go down. You go and you spend 50k a year to go to one of these top design schools, RISD, Parsons. These are great schools, but not everyone can afford it. Not everyone is in the states. There's quite a bit of barrier to entry for a mass population to be able to get access to this education, this kind of baseline education for the craft. So yeah, so that's where we see a big opportunity for us is if we can help facilitate that and bring this skillset to a much wider audience. [00:12:29]Matt H.: Interesting. I think just to circle back, so you mentioned that Dribbble is fully remote for the team. Is that correct? [00:12:36]Zack Onisko: Yeah, yep. [00:12:36]Matt H.: Nice. So for you, were you working remotely in your previous job, or is this the first one? [00:12:42]Zack Onisko: So I have, right? So to go back to when I was running growth marketing at Creative Market, we had part of the team in San Francisco. I'm born and raised in San Francisco, so just as the nature of the beast of so many companies being here, I just didn't have the ambition to work remote. I think going back to early days, like the mid 90s, there's this Sandra Bullock movie, The Net. She's like hacking on the beach, and I'm like, oh, she's like in her bathing suit and with her laptop open. I'm like, "That's what working on the internet is like!" [00:13:14]Matt H.: That's the dream. [00:13:14]Zack Onisko: But fast forward to reality, my last job at Hired, I was commuting two hours a day. I have a young family, so we moved out into the suburbs, so I was taking the train in to San Francisco every day. I had to work ten hours at the office, and then commute back home. So I was literally leaving the house before my kids were awake and coming home after they'd gone to bed. I just wasn't seeing my family during the workday. So that bummed me out. When I was at Hired, we were a 280 person team. There were about 100 people in San Francisco and the rest of the team was spread out all over the world in 17 different cities. [00:13:56] Of the people I managed in San Francisco, I would get people hitting me up every day saying, "Hey, can I work from home? Can I work from the coffee shop? Hey, I don't want to commute to work today." My stance was, we hire great people. We do great work. As long as you get your work down, I don't care if you work from the office or from the beach. That was kind of my stance on it, and it worked really well. It was kind of just this trust in our employees and they got the work done. [00:14:24] Of the folks who were in the office, the funny thing is is that there's a limited supply of conference rooms, and everyone has meetings all throughout the day. So we'd fight to get into these rooms and then we'd just flip open our laptops and hop on Zoom to talk to our remote workers. So it's funny. I mean, we were playing six figures a month for rent. Hired shared the same building with Uber and Square, so super expensive. So when I joined Dribbble, the team of eight were all remote, and so I had just done a remodel on my house and built out a home office, which I'm in right now. [00:15:02]Matt H.: Yeah, it looks great. [00:15:03]Zack Onisko: Yeah, thank you. I have a bunch of guitars here, like you have behind you. Kind of just built my perfect little work den, and the original plan was oh, this is gonna be a place where I would work a day a week as I commute to the city the rest of the time. So when I joined Dribbble, I'm like, you know what? Let's just do this remote thing. I'm friends with the team at Envision, the team at Automatic, and I saw them successfully grow their 100% remote teams into over 500 employees nearing like 1,000 employees now. For me, it was a huge mitigation of risk, right? If these companies can do it successfully, if they can figure it out, we can figure it out too. [00:15:49] So that was a pretty big decision early on. I think when I first joined, I was like, okay, should we get a WeWork? Then we started throwing some job reqs up and started to get these really great applicants from all over the place. So it just kind of snowballed. It was kind of on purpose and kind of accidental, to be honest, but we started to hire some really great people from all over. We had some folks in Canada, in BC, so we spun up a Canadian entity and we have a US entity, so I payrolled both countries. We literally had people spread out all over North America. We have a developer in the UK as well. [00:16:31] So we started to get folks coming in, and also coming from just areas that weren't super expensive to live in. You can live off of a national average salary, right? Our pay is actually very competitive. We're in this, everyone's kind of between the 75th and 90th percentile, but way less than hiring people from San Francisco and New York who demand 3x national averages. So it's given us this freedom and (inaudible) we don't have this crazy, two and a half million dollar lease on a fancy office space in San Francisco. That goes back to our bottom line, and it's allowed us to build a fast growing, profitable, and bootstrapped business. [00:17:23]Matt H.: Yeah. Something that I've come across quite often with companies that are starting out fully remote is that it wasn't necessarily their intention to go remote right off the bat. It was something that just sort of came naturally as you mentioned with the realization that there's all these benefits that come with having remote workers and just create a pool of applicants to pull from and this talent that wouldn't necessarily come across your plate. [00:17:44] So that's definitely a trend. Is there an area of remote work that you've had difficulties with in terms of team building? Is there some separation between the fully remote team and people that are in an office together, and how has that affected sort of the culture building at Dribbble? [00:18:01]Zack Onisko: Yeah, no, not to pat ourselves on the back too much, but we haven't had too much pain, mostly because we've gone in eyes wide open from the get go. So from the early team, we started to instrument kind of best practices in management, operations, organizational dynamics, these kind of management one on one stuff. Things like we weekly one on ones, so every direct report has a one one with their manager. No one feels like they're on a lonely island. They're not out of the loop in communication. [00:18:36] One of the things that we saw fall down at my last company was that because there were 100 people in San Francisco, there were a lot of decisions being made, a lot of communication was happening that was going undocumented, and the remote folks were just out of the loop. So they're hearing about this stuff secondhand, and they're like, "Okay, well, why wasn't my voice being heard? Why wasn't I part of this decision?" Or "Why wasn't I even told this thing happened with the company that's this major thing?" So kind of learning from that experience, we knew we didn't want to do a hybrid approach. We wanted to go completely, 100%, and that was gonna force us to, one is to over-communicate, and two, and to over-document. [00:19:16] So like I said, we do weekly one on ones. We do a team call, like an all hands call weekly, which gives every functional team an opportunity to do a deep dive into what they've been working on that week. We try to focus in on actual, visual demos of the feature versus going into bullet points where people can zone out and space out if they're not familiar with the project. So that's really brought us together as a company. At the end of that call, we open it up for personal stories. We just leave 15 minutes at the end of this call just for us all to interact as a team and as people. [00:19:51] We have also evolved our culture a bit. We really want to invest, because we don't have these crazy line items in our P&L, we can reinvest that back into the team and do some really fun things for culture. Our perks, our Canadian employees, we do an upgrade on benefits. With the US folks, we try to have some of the best plans out there. We pay for most plans 100% of not only the employee, but their entire family's medical/dental. We have three month maternity leave. So there's some interesting things to do, education funds, gym funds, coffee funds. There's a bunch of cool things we do just to kind of make sure that people are comfortable in their job. [00:20:31] But one of the interesting things we did recently is that we invested in a conference, and the idea here is that we knew we wanted to have FaceTime. As a remote company, we wanted to get together at least twice a year to just hang out and be able to bond as people in the same locale. So we made up a design conference, and it's called Hang Time. We bring in some of the top design leaders in the world to come share their stories and give workshops. We travel to a different city each time, and so we get the chance to invite the local community out to experience the conference, but also to meet our entire team, because the conference actually covers the T&E expense to fly out and put everyone up in hotels for a week. [00:21:17]Matt H.: Nice. [00:21:18]Zack Onisko: So that's an interesting thing that we do that's been a side effect of going fully remote. [00:21:24]Matt H.: One of the things that I wanted to ask you about was as a fully remote team, how has the hiring process changed for Dribbble or evolved as a fully remote team? Do you look for something specifically in the people that you hire that you wouldn't normally look for elsewhere? [00:21:40]Zack Onisko: Yeah, we do. So we try to screen for obviously skill set. We try to find people who are A players, top of their game, functional experts. We have a really high bar for culture, so it's a cliché of the no asshole rule, but we're kind of silly and goofy. We make a lot of puns and dad jokes and a lot of crazy emojis and gifs and that kind of stuff. It just makes work fun and so we want to find people who have that similar spirit. We look for people who have an affinity for the design community or have a creative background of some sort. A lot of us are musicians or have come from some other type of arts background, which just kind of helps you just hit the ground running and just understand our mission and our vision for what we're trying to build here. [00:22:30] The fourth thing is really just trying to weed out people who just aren't geared for remote work. We've only made a couple hiring mistakes, pulling people out of big companies where there's just a lot of, you come to work and you sit around, you do a lot of meetings and you play a lot of politics, and that's really the job is, in some of these larger organizations. For us, we're a startup. We're still a roll up your sleeves, get shit done type of an organization, so that type of vein doesn't really work in a remote environment or really any small company environment, but especially a remote, right? It's just a huge red flag culturally when you see just see people not pulling their weight. [00:23:19] So we're really just trying to find, trying to suss out that. We also want to suss out people who are just naturally just not into remote. There's kind of two types of people. There's people who working from home, they're like 3x more efficient and effective than if they were at a desk. In Silicon Valley, the wisdom is to have this open office with all the desks are doors on filing cabinets, and everyone, it's just this sea of people of clatter and people working. But if you go to one of these offices, everyone's wearing noise canceling headphones and they're just desperately just trying to focus on their work without being interrupted by their peers. [00:24:00] So we believe that's kind of a broken model, but there's a lot of people, they just need to be around people and in an office to be able to get work done. So we try to avoid those hires. They're people who, when they work from home, they can't help themselves, but they have to, they get distracted by the sunshine or they have to turn on the TV or they have to go clean their house. That's just not gonna, that's not gonna work for us. We try to suss out for those types of signals. [00:24:30]Matt H.: Right. Speaking of distractions and that sort of thing, is there anything that you do personally or you've seen sort of widespread across the Dribbblers to maintain focus and to make sure that they're in the most efficient workspace possible? [00:24:41]Zack Onisko: Yeah, I mean, for a lot of us who are either former entrepreneurs, former founders, former freelancers, consultants, that type of experience, you're working solo a lot and you're responsible personally to get your job done. So the way we've structured the company is just, people have responsibilities and they sign up for work to be done, and it's really kind of up to that person to find their sweet spot, whether that's a coffee shop, whether that's their home office, their bed, or if they need to go to a WeWork. [00:25:27] It just comes down to getting your work done. From our perspective, as a leadership team, the whole relationship's just built on a foundation of trust, and so if you have the skillset to do the job that you signed up to do, we trust you to go do it. If you don't do it, then we'll have a conversation about it, but for new people looking to work remote, to answer your question, I think it's really about finding your quiet place to be able to focus in and get good work done. [00:25:59] We've also been very mindful of building best practices for Dribbble. I have an HBR subscription. I read all these best practices from other companies, but it rarely works where you can kind of copy and paste from somebody else. So we've been very mindful of trying to develop best practices for Dribbble and working remote at our company as we've grown. So a couple things we've been very mindful of. Time zone, so we try to get people as much overlap as possible. We try to hire, we try to solely hire in North America whenever possible so that we maximize the overlap, right? There's about a three hour gap between east coast and west coast. We ask our east coast folks to, if they can, can they start later in the day? We ask our west coast folks to start early in the day, just to maximize the overlap. [00:26:56] What we don't want and where we see inefficiencies is if we have people working odd hours and someone on the team just can't get ahold of somebody and there's a whole day, 24 hour cycle passes before a project is unblocked. That's just an inefficient way to work. Another way is that we've, what we've been very mindful of is meetings and the number of meetings people are in. That's just a huge time suck, and so we developed a couple rules internally. One is that we have a no meeting Thursday and Friday policy. So that gives ICs time to go heads down and just focus on their work uninterrupted. People are free to close Slack and just go and plug in. [00:27:42] The other thing we do is we have a no agenda, no meeting policy, and so that means that whoever's spinning up a meeting needs to write an agenda ahead of that meeting and share it with whoever they're inviting. There's time to actually do the research and dig into whatever decisions need to be made and to help minimize the amount of meetings that people have. So anyway, just kind of, these are just a couple examples of ways that we started to just evolve and come up with strategy for us to work more efficiently as a remote team. [00:28:17]Matt H.: Did you find that when you first were starting to work remotely or when you first came on with Dribbble that there was a difficulty separating work from your private life? Was it just a matter of shutting off at a certain part of the day or turning off Slack or that sort of things? Was there a process that you had to put in place to make sure that people were getting their own time? [00:28:37]Zack Onisko: So people are pretty good about it. I wish I was actually better at it. I'm self admitted a workaholic, and I have a hard time turning it off, but this year in particular, I've been better at, this is silly, but carving out time to eat. So actually taking a lunch break, and I take the dog for a walk. I carve out time at the end of the day to go to the gym and actually, and just having a routine pulls me out of work mode and gets me to think about other things. But most days, around 6:00 o'clock when my family kind of comes home is when I turn everything off and like to spend at least a few hours with my wife. Helping my wife in the kitchen and helping the kids get ready for bed and all that stuff. Baths and that's super important to me. Then yeah, usually after the kids go to bed I hop back on online and do a couple more hours. [00:29:38] But for the most part, the team's really good about that work/life balance. One thing that we also have is just, again, just built on this foundation of trust. We provide everyone with a pretty flexible ability to plan their day however they choose. So we have no strict hours where you need to be in seat. We've had an employee who went half time to travel around in her van and live in her van for six months and camped and spent half of her day working and half of her day rock climbing. [00:30:17]Matt H.: Nice. [00:30:17]Zack Onisko: That was her jam. We have another employee who is a coach for his kids' sports teams, so he typically logs off at 3:00, goes and does that a couple days a week, and then comes back and makes up some time at the end of the day. So we want to provide these opportunities for people. It's a luxury of life to work remote, really. We can actually take our kids to the doctor or go get groceries or go do normal life stuff whenever, at a moment's notice. So that's cool. [00:30:49] We also want to make sure that people are always kind of recharged and have time to do great work and aren't burning out. So we have an unlimited PTO policy. People can take extended vacations and come back and we just ask the people to do great work and we're pretty open and flexible outside of that. [00:31:09]Matt H.: Yeah, it sounds like for you, and I think for a lot of other fully remote teams, it really comes down to trusting your employees and the people that you work with to be able to get their work done. [00:31:19]Zack Onisko: I mean, it's the way it should be, right? I mean, if I'm a manager in an office, there's no guarantee that just because somebody's sitting at a desk that they're doing work. Most of my employees at my last company were just spending most of their day on Facebook and Twitter anyway, so. [00:31:33]Matt H.: Yeah. So within the community of leaders in tech, it seems like it's definitely moving in the direction of sort of being open to remote work and flexible work and that sort of thing. Is there a common thread or a common theme of reasons why you wouldn't within the CEO and tech leadership community? What's something that you hear a lot for that? [00:31:54]Zack Onisko: Yeah, I think there's a lot of knee jerk reaction from investors, and from the mindset of an investor, they're just looking for a return on their investment at some point in the future. A lot of these funds are seven, ten years and they have to pay back to the investors in those funds. So the way that these portfolios are built are positioned to flip these companies and sell them to larger acquirers. I think the fear with investors is Google or Apple or Facebook, are they gonna want to acquire a remote team or are they only gonna want to acquire teams that are willing to move to Mountain View? [00:32:43]Matt H.: Right. Interesting. [00:32:45]Zack Onisko: So I think that's the big hesitation is really coming from the venture world. For us being bootstrapped, it's just not a problem. We have the investors, and so again, the landscape is quickly shifting. The ease to be able to start a company is becoming more and more easy and efficient to get something off the ground. So I think the entrepreneurial landscape is gonna shift as well, and less companies are gonna require seed funds and angel funds to get something going and more people will be able to work with talented people all over the world and not have to move to companies, to San Francisco to attend YC or whatever. [00:33:34]Matt H.: Right. It seems like something that I hear or come across quite often is that fear but in a different context of more aligned with how do I know my people are working when they should be working? How do I know? It just seems like it's more difficult to micromanage a fully remote team, and maybe I'm wrong in that, but it seems like that's something that people fear of letting go at least of the control a little bit there. [00:34:01]Zack Onisko: Yeah, honestly, I think that's just an immature management mindset. To be honest, I think any seasoned manager, you have goals that are set. You have milestones. You have weekly sprints. You have daily standups. It's really easy to see if work's not getting done or not. [00:34:23]Matt H.: Right, of course. Yeah, yeah. [00:34:26]Zack Onisko: So again, it's about hiring great people who are great at their functional skillset and just trusting people to do great work and do it on their terms and it works out. [00:34:37]Matt H.: Right, now what would you say to somebody who is maybe going to transition or is starting a company and wants to go remote or is part of a leadership team that maybe are thinking about considering remote work. What would you say would be something that you would want to start right away as your team disperses in terms of processes and practices and things like that? [00:35:00]Zack Onisko: I mean, I would say focus on efficiencies and unblocking inefficiencies. So kind of starting at the bare basics. Time zone is gonna be the big one. With Slack and Google Docs and Zoom, those tools would help facilitate some of the blockers that people complained about years ago. So it's much easier to get set up and running off the bat. Then it's really just about common tools for working as a web company, right? It's project management. It's Asana or JIRA or whatever your flavor is. It's having some kind of realtime collaboration, so chat, whether that's Slack or HipChat or whatever your jam is. [00:35:55] So anyway, there's all these tools, and that really is the biggest, that has been the biggest roadblock, I think, historically from allowing, except for bandwidth, right? To allow this type of work to happen. So I think that when you're small, there's just not a whole lot of process needed. There's not a whole lot of heavy lifting needed to get this going and to work effectively. As you grow and the teams get bigger, then you just need to lay down some best practices and processes, but we take a very light stroke to those sorts of things. [00:36:42] But it just keeps people on the same page. What you don't want is people feeling like they're out of the loop or not plugged into what's happening, so it just comes back to over-communication, over-documenting, just doing a great job of bringing the team together. [00:36:56]Matt H.: Yeah, and I think one of the things that you mentioned before that's super important is to try to make sure that you're getting the conversational interactions that aren't necessarily related to work and just making sure that you have that as a priority, your people and you work at a company and just to make sure that that's a priority. Because I think that kind of gets lost a little bit sometimes when you're only communicating about work related things. A lot of that stuff can get forgotten about, which I think is important. [00:37:25]Zack Onisko: Yeah, I mean, culturally for us, we try to prioritize fun. We try to prioritize a sense of humor and just keep work as light as possible. We have Chloe who heads up our people ops. She runs virtual happy hours, virtual book clubs, virtual movie clubs, virtual book exchanges. So we try to do a lot of fun stuff. We do remote gaming. [00:37:52]Matt H.: Oh really? Nice. [00:37:53]Zack Onisko: Role playing games, so yeah, there's just different ways that we try to connect and have fun. We're not over Zoom and video chat. Then that kind of fills the blanks before we get to see each other in person twice a year for Hang Time. That work is really kind of laptops down. We just spend a week just hanging out and eating and drinking, going to museums together, that sort of thing. [00:38:18]Matt H.: Nice. I can attest to the Dribbble team's use of emojis and things like that. Over Slack, you guys are real experts there, so kudos to you. [00:38:29]Zack Onisko: Thank you, thank you. [00:38:29]Matt H.: So I want to be cognizant of your time, Zack, and I really appreciate you being here with us today. I have a couple more closing questions for you. You kind of touched on one of them, but what is your favorite tool that you use for remote work, and you can take it in any direction you want to. [00:38:47]Zack Onisko: It's emoji, definitely. [00:38:49]Matt H.: Of course, that's right. I knew the answer already. [00:38:52]Zack Onisko: No, I mean, we're really big into Slack and Zoom, of course, but we use Bonusly, which is a plugin for Slack. We award each other points that can then be cashed out. Dribbbpoints, all one word. Three Bs. They can be cashed out for various things, whether it's Amazon gift cards or if you want to actually donate your points to charities. So the team really enjoys that. It's a lot of fun. We use a daily standup plugin for Slack that I am spacing on the name of right now. Is there a robot in it? Anyway- [00:39:32]Matt H.: Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about. [00:39:33]Zack Onisko: I'm drawing a blank, yeah. Sorry. But yeah, so we look at things like that just helps automate a lot of processes and make work a little more fun. [00:39:43]Matt H.: Nice. So my last question here for you is not related to work. What is your favorite unplugged activity? [00:39:52]Zack Onisko: Well, I do have some acoustics, but most of the time I plug in. [00:39:56]Matt H.: Oh yeah. [00:39:57]Zack Onisko: I like to turn up my amp here in my office and piss off my neighbors at least once a day. I don't play any bands anymore, but just kind of fiddling around helps release a lot of tension and helps me relax. [00:40:11]Matt H.: For sure. [00:40:11]Zack Onisko: Outside of that, it's just really just dad mode, taking the kids to soccer or ballet or whatever is super rewarding for me. [00:40:18]Matt H.: Nice. Well Zack, I really appreciate this. This is, I think, a pretty successful first recording of the show, so thank you so much for being here and we really appreciate it. [00:40:26]Zack Onisko: Yeah, thanks for having me. [00:40:31]Matt H.: Thanks. [00:40:31] Thank you so much for listening to the show today. Check out weworkremotely.com for the newest career opportunities and so you can start your remote work journey. We're looking for guests on the show, so if you have someone in mind you think we should talk to, please send us an email at podcast@weworkremotely.com. That's podcast@weworkremotely.com. Also if you have any tips and feedback, we welcome that as well. Just be nice, because this is my first time, so go easy. [00:40:59] Also make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn as well, and thanks again for listening.

At Atlassian, openness is core to everything the company does: employees can access most information on Confluence; "open company, no bullshit" is one of the company’s five values. But it can be risky. Atlassians knew the company was going public four months before it filed. The entire company was told about Atlassian selling its chat products Stride and Hipchat to its largest competitor in the space, Slack, four days before the news went out. Some would say that that level of openness is unnecessary, but Atlassian believes that trust and honesty are essential to maintaining the culture its worked so hard to build.   Missed the session? Here’s what Jay talks about: What is driving growth in the cloud? Does collaboration help founders drive growth forward? How do you scale an open culture? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin SaaStr

Welcome to Season 5 of the BUILD podcast! Today's episode is all about virality. In this episode, we'll hear from Oji Udezue, VP of Product & Design at Calendly. Oji previously worked at Atlassian where he was the product owner for Atlassian's communication products like HipChat. Oji discusses the story behind Calendly and how they built virality, network effects, and viral loops into their product. He also explains how to add virality to a product that isn't inherently viral, how to prioritize building out the core product vs. product enhancements, who should own the growth function in a product led growth business and more.

In this episode, Brenda, Matthew, Ryan and special guest Stephen "El Queso Grande" Cheesely discuss: Portfolio for Jira 2.22: https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiraportfolio/portfolio-for-jira-2-22-release-notes-962356904.html#PortfolioforJira2.22releasenotes-expand The demise of Hipchat and Stride: https://developer.atlassian.com/blog/2019/01/30-days-stride-hipchat-eol/ Atlassian Community: A Beginners Guide to Logs and Logging in Atlassian: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Compliance-articles/Seeing-the-wood-for-the-trees-how-to-deal-with-Atlassian-logs/ba-p/980949 A Scientific Approach to Developing Work/Life Balance: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/work-life-balance-tips Thanks for listening! Please follow us on social media @Adaptavist, and be sure to visit Adaptavist.com

Sadiq and Cristian talk about Fortnite on Android, Google Smart Displays, the App Store affiliate program shutting down, a new round of chat app discourse, and a rumored Xbox streaming device. Content Warning: Food, Sex?, Chat App Discourse Show Notes: 00:00:00 - Fortnite On Android Not In the Play Store00:07:42 - Sorry, Only Two Notches Are Allowed On Android00:10:50 - Google Smart Displays00:17:23 - Apple Shuts Down Affiliate Program For App Store00:23:15 - WARNING: CHAT APP DISCOURSE00:31:05 - Xbox "Scarlett" Streaming Device00:42:10 - Sadiq Now Talks About The Overwatch League00:48:38 - Ending00:49:06 - WAIT A MINUTE, Roll it back Fortnite for Android will ditch Google Play Store for Epic’s websiteSupporting display cutouts on edge-to-edge screensLENOVO SMART DISPLAY REVIEW: THE GOOGLE APPLIANCEApple shuts App Store affiliate program, imperiling recommendation sitesSlack buys HipChat with plans to shut it down and migrate users to its chat serviceA Few More Details About Microsoft’s Xbox Scarlett Game Streaming ServiceOverwatch League Contact: Cristian OnlineCristian on MastodonSadiq on MastodonSadiq Online Subscribe on: Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Overcast| Pocketcasts | RSS

We follow up on the new iPad Pro. We discuss Apple's stellar Q3 results. Apple is shutting down the affiliate program for the Mac App Store and App Store for iOS. We debate the merits of implicitly unwrapping optionals. Picks: RenoRun, Hacking my shell prompt so I make fewer mistakes working with Xcode projects, RESTed. After Show: We discuss the merger/shutdown of Slack and Hipchat. Between 47:00 - 15:00 Tim discusses meeting Justin Trudeau

Sadiq and Cristian talk about Fortnite on Android, Google Smart Displays, the App Store affiliate program shutting down, a new round of chat app discourse, and a rumored Xbox streaming device. Content Warning: Food, Sex?, Chat App Discourse Show Notes: 00:00:00 - Fortnite On Android Not In the Play Store00:07:42 - Sorry, Only Two Notches Are Allowed On Android00:10:50 - Google Smart Displays00:17:23 - Apple Shuts Down Affiliate Program For App Store00:23:15 - WARNING: CHAT APP DISCOURSE00:31:05 - Xbox "Scarlett" Streaming Device00:42:10 - Sadiq Now Talks About The Overwatch League00:48:38 - Ending00:49:06 - WAIT A MINUTE, Roll it back Fortnite for Android will ditch Google Play Store for Epic’s websiteSupporting display cutouts on edge-to-edge screensLENOVO SMART DISPLAY REVIEW: THE GOOGLE APPLIANCEApple shuts App Store affiliate program, imperiling recommendation sitesSlack buys HipChat with plans to shut it down and migrate users to its chat serviceA Few More Details About Microsoft’s Xbox Scarlett Game Streaming ServiceOverwatch League Contact: Cristian OnlineCristian on MastodonSadiq on MastodonSadiq Online Subscribe on: Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Overcast| Pocketcasts | RSS

Chris and Ian discuss Fibre and 5G, Apples $1 trillion dollars and the future of Xbox https://www.digitaloutbox.com/podcasts/episode338/DigitalOutbox-338-180803.mp3 Download iTunes MP3 Shownotes UK sets out plan to spend billions on fiber and 5G broadband for all Superfast broadband could get cheaper as BT cuts charges to rivals UK report highlights changing gadget habits — and our need for an online fix Apple apologizes, issues update for MacBook Pro thermal throttling bug Apple becomes world's first trillion dollar company Atlassian’s HipChat and Stride to be discontinued, with Slack buying up the IP Dixons Carphone says millions more customers affected by 2017 breach Facebook and Instagram now show how many minutes you use them Microsoft is building low-cost, streaming-only Xbox, says report EA launches premium subscription with latest Battlefield and Fifa

In the thrilling conclusion to our three part epic miniseries, "Apple doesn't make the laptops we want," Nilay, Paul, and Dieter discuss how nothing really even matters because Apple is a phone company worth $1 trillion. Samsung, Amazon, and Tesla earnings are also discussed, along with Farhad Manjoo's "Frightful Five" thesis. Then, in "The Bezel Wars," our hosts discuss the Surface Go, iPad rumors, and the Windows 10 S life Dieter has been living. Paul's weekly segment about "Wireless Vapes" is as poignant as ever. Ultimately, the final question is something like, "How many notches can you fit on the blockchain?" 02:19 - The race to $1 trillion 05:25 - Phones, not Macs 14:18 - Amazon's cloud power 24:53 - Dieter's Surface Go impressions 26:41 - Can you name ten Windows 10 S apps? 34:20 - #donglelife 38:44 - Paul's weekly segment, "Wireless Vapes" 44:35 - Two notches, max 46:31 - Pixel 3 leak 47:54 - Mergers and acquisitions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's edition of the podcast, Brenda, Matthew, Ryan, and special Fisheye/Crucible correspondent Jonny Carter discuss: Atlassian and Slack announce partnership, Hipchat to expire: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/announcements/new-atlassian-slack-partnership Adaptavist CEO Simon Haighton-Williams ressponse: https://www.adaptavist.com/blog/atlassian-partners-with-slack-discontinues-hipchat-and-stride/ Fisheye/Crucible updates: https://confluence.atlassian.com/crucible/crucible-4-6-release-notes-954257440.html https://confluence.atlassian.com/fisheye/fisheye-4-6-release-notes-954257406.html Cloud updates: https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/blog/2018/07/atlassian-cloud-changes-jul-23-to-jul-30-2018 Bitbucket 5.12 released: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucketserver/bitbucket-server-5-12-release-notes-952058612.html Adaptavist Learn completes end-user training development: https://www.adaptavist.com/blog/demystify-scrum-and-kanban-with-adaptavists-new-jira-software-courses/ If you've got a suggestion for the podcast or want to be a guest, email us at learn@adaptavist.com Thanks for listening to Adaptavist Live!

Detta är avsnitt 176 och spelades in den 29 juli, och eftersom du har fler bakterier i munnen än vad det är människor på jorden så handlar detta avsnitt om: FEEDBACK OCH BACKLOGG:* Alla är tillbaka. * Mats har varit i USA, åkt buss i öken och köpt en Nokia banan-telefon. För övrigt så rekommenderar han att Microsoft Edge finns på iOS och Android * Johan ger kommentarer kring de tidigare två avsnitten (elon musk brainfart, Kvalificerat hemligt poddasten, att man får vad man betalar för, och MacBook Pro Core i9 efter patchen) * Twitter tappar 19% i värde, men säger att det är fel. * Björn är arg på wish och dålig reklam * Mats gillar också att Google, Facebook, Twitter och Microsoft vill dela info med varandra    * BONUSLÄNK: Vi pratade om det också lite i förra veckans avsnitt * NSA har inte riktigt hunnit med att fixa säkerhetsproblem internt * Nu kan du köpa en Tesla-surfbräda    * BONUSLÄNK: En massa coola filmer om hur man bygger Tesla) * Halo kommer att komma som TV-serie på Showtime MICROSOFT:* Slack köper Hipchat från Atlassian    * BONUSLÄNK: Microsoft säger att Teams är at ”feature parity” med skype for business online * Microsoft kommer troligen att börja hantera devices. Länk 1, Länk 2 * Microsoft kommer höja priser. Länk 1 till info från juni om Prishöjning i Sverige, Länk 2 om höjningen. Och Länk 3, som även innehåller en ruskig massa bra extra länkar    * BONUSLÄNK: blogginlägg från Microsoft som bland annat har en FAQ med vanliga frågor * Azure Advisor har fått lite nya funktioner * Outlook får ”dark mode” * Public Preview på Exchange 2019, Skype4B 2019, Sharepoint 2019, Project server 2019 * Xbox scarlet rykten Länk 1 och Länk 2 APPLE:* MacBook Pro T2 processorn kan skapa problem * Det skall komma stöd för att ringa med HomePod GOOGLE:* Google får smisk (fortsatt diskussion från förra veckan) Länk 1, Länk 2, Länk 3 * Hårdvaru-donglar från Google    * TIPS: Authy för att hantera 2-faktor * Google Assistant kommer nu på Holländska    * BONUSLÄNK: karta över vilka länder som får språkstöd (Svenska är med) * TIPS: Vad i Chrome är det som drar minne * Google ändra sina utvecklaravtal ÖVRIGA NYHETER:* Dags att patcha Samsung Smart-things * Pixel 3 och Pixel 3 XL har ”läckt” PRYLLISTA:* David: Wii-U trådlös kontroller * Mats: en blåtandsgrej till Nintendo switch * Björn: Drick-coster för att kyla drickan * Johan: ett extra Super-tangentbord för att kunna köra kortkommandon DELTAGARE I AVSNITTET:* Björn: @DiverseTips* David: @dlilja * Mats: @Mahu78 * Johan: @JoPe72 FRÅNVARANDE DELTAGARE I AVSNITTET:Alla var med!! EGNA LÄNKAR:* En Liten Podd Om IT på webben* En Liten Podd Om IT på Facebook LÄNKAR TILL PODDEN PÅ OLIKA SPELARE:* Apple Podcaster (iTunes)* Overcast * Acast * Spotify * Sticher

In the news of Atlassian folding HipChat customers in to Slack, we complain about how Slack isn’t responsive and how Microsoft Teams’ notifications aren’t native yet, again. Following Andrews recent investment in his office we discuss how we like our workspaces to be, what we need and like including lighting conditions, the arm-status of chairs, the troubles of charging and so much much more.

前々回に勤務先にGitLabを自前サーバーで導入したハナシをしましたが、そのときにMattermostも導入しました。簡単にいうとオープンソースで自前サーバーに導入できるSlackクローンです。 なぜSlackではなくてMattermostにしたのか、導入してよかったのか、導入するときの注意点などをお話しています。 関連リンク: 新番組「ゲゲゲの鬼太郎」-東映アニメーション 一般社団法人 お寺の未来 The only single product for the complete DevOps lifecycle - GitLab | GitLab Mattermost: Open Source, Private Cloud Slack Alternative よりシームレスなチームワークを実現する、ビジネスコラボレーションハブ | Slack MattermostのMySQLで日本語の全文検索に対応する方法 | Step On Board Mattermostの日本語メッセージ全文検索対応まとめ(MySQL編) チャットワーク（ChatWork） | ビジネスが加速するクラウド会議室 システム開発の内製化を支援する株式会社ライジングサン・システムコンサルティング 2018/06/18 フリープランの内容変更のお知らせ – サポート | チャットワーク（ChatWork） Slack、Microsoft対抗でAtlassianのHipchatを買収　Hipchatは来年2月に終了へ - ITmedia NEWS Microsoft、「Slack」対抗の「Teams」を無料で提供開始　日本でも - ITmedia NEWS Microsoft Teams - グループ チャット ソフトウェア Smallchat — Connect with your visitors. アズシエル ウチはMattermostを導入してこれ成功だな、と思っていますけどね Music From: Light Years Away / earthling (License CC-by) Room To Breath / earthling (License CC-by) Moment by Moment / earthling (License CC-by) その他リンク:  Twitterアカウント Facebookページ Google+ページ YouTubeチャンネル

In today's Minutes: Walmart ends its two-decade store-card partnership with Synchrony, Slack will buy Atlassian's Hipchat, and Amazon hits record profit despite lower than expected revenue. Plus, how does Facebook's bloodbath affect your personal finances? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/watercoolesthq/support

Last September, the software company Atlassian launched a new workplace chat app called Stride, aimed squarely at taking on the similar app Slack. “We've been thrilled by the excitement we've seen from the tens of thousands of teams who have adopted it as their communication platform,” the company gushed in a March blog post. Now, less than a year after the launch, Atlassian is pulling the plug on the product, along with its earlier workplace chat app HipChat.

Bu bölümde Alphabet, Facebook ve Amazon 2018 yılı 2. çeyrek finansal tablolarını, Slack'in HipChat satın almasını ve Google'ın kurumsal çözümlerine odaklanan Cloud Next 2018 konferansında duyurulan yeni servisleri ve özellikleri konuştuk.

jQuery(document).ready(function($) { $('#wp_mep_184').mediaelementplayer({ m:1 ,features: ['playpause','current','progress','duration','volume','tracks','fullscreen'] ,audioWidth:400,audioHeight:30 }); }); Please find some links and notes from the 2 Regular Guys Podcast. We welcome back to the show Don Copeland from ColDesi to give us an in-depth review of the UV Printing technology available. We will discuss where this technology fits in our industry, what markets it is changing and what the future holds for UV Printing. Sponsored by: SGIA.org Our regular listeners know this, but 2 Regular Guys are all about garment decorating, a bit of fun, and no rants or lectures or selling. We are not doing this for our employers, but rather for our industry. Since February 2013, The 2 Regular Guys have been the first and the most listened to garment decorating industry podcast on this planet! We are humbled by all of you tuning in each week. We work hard to bring you information that will make your business better, and our industry better. Take a look at our incredible weekly guest list and you'll understand where this industry goes for news, interviews and the heartbeat of garment decorating. Thanks for listening! News Transfer Express Hosts Aug. 9 Webinar on Placement Techniques Transfer Express hosts an Aug. 9 webinar on placement techniques for heat transfers. The company says the session helps decorators boost profits by “streamlining production and reducing rejects.” The live, interactive class covers numerous placement approaches such as full-front, left-chest, sleeve, and leg transfers. The event also discusses the pros and cons of four transfer-positioning tools and explores unique positioning options to help shops stand out from the competition. The free session runs from 2 p.m.–3 p.m. EST. Office Messaging Wars are Over. SLACK HAS WON. LAST SEPTEMBER, THE software company Atlassian launched a new workplace chat app called Stride, aimed squarely at taking on the similar app Slack. “We've been thrilled by the excitement we've seen from the tens of thousands of teams who have adopted it as their communication platform,” the company gushed in a March blog post.  Now, less than a year after the launch, Atlassian is pulling the plug on the product, along with its earlier workplace chat app HipChat. Atlassian said it will discontinue the two products by Feb. 15, 2019, and exit the communications business. Everything You Wanted to know about UV Printing Terry: Start us off with a quick rundown of what UV Printing technology is and it's benefits to a decorator.-UV printing technology is inkjet printing that uses special inks – UV inks dry through a photochemical process. Basically, when ultra-violet light hits the inks they almost immediately turn to a solid. For our sake we generally speak about flatbed, UV-LED printers. Flatbed printers allow for the printing of dimensional items like cell phone cases, golf balls, acrylic awards, boxes – the list goes on and on, basically more than just flat, thin materials. Standard depths on small to mid-format, flatbed, UV-LED printers range from a couple of inches up to nearly a foot, with some optional depths to as much as 18”. “UV-LED” because the lamps used on the most current UV printers are LED instead of the mercury vapor lamps previously used. LED lamps use much less power and are far more durable, lasting on average 10-12 times longer than mercury vapor lamps. As an example, the expected life on our Compress UV printers is 20,000 hours of illumination, as opposed to less than 2000 on most mercury vapor lamps.So, the advantages of UV-LED printers to the end-user are extensive, and often limited to the imagination of the individual. Typical applications would be in signage, identification (name badges, nameplates, door signs, ID cards, etc.), awards, plaques, novelty items, customization of manufactured items, custom box printing,

Slack is buying HipChat, the first Google Smart Display is out, and Amazon may be Apple to a $1 trillion market cap.

In this episode we are talking about our remote work tools that enable our distributed team across the world to collaborate, design, and build software. Throughout the episode, Todd, Ken, and Jamon touch on their favorite tools—from Slack, Zoom, and Google Sheets—why they chose them, and the ways they have added custom features to really make the remote experience special. Show Links & Resources Slack Zoom G Suite BlueJeans Screenhero RealtimeBoard InVision Trello Airtable Shush Dropbox Bigscreen VR Taking the Pain Out of Video Conferences by Ken Miller Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: The topic at hand today is remote tools, and all of the different ways that you have built a remote company. Where do you even start when you're thinking about what tools to pick when you're going remote? KEN MILLER: This is Ken Miller, by the way. It happened very organically for us. To be honest, I don't know that we could've done this company this way before Slack. Because the tools that came before, Hipchat and IRC and Yammer, even though I worked there. Sorry, Yam-fam. They just didn't quite do it. Right? They didn't quite create the online atmosphere that we need to work the way that we do. Does that sound accurate to you, Todd? I feel like once we found Slack, we were like, "Holy crap, this is epic!" TODD WERTH: I think there's a few alternatives. Hipchat, at the time, wasn't good enough. There were a few alternatives we investigated. I would like to mention at the beginning of this ... This is Todd Werth, by the way. I would like to mention at the beginning, I imagine that a lot of companies in this podcast will need to be paying us an advertising fee. Like Slack. JAMON HOLMGREN: We actually adopted Slack before we were remote. We had ... I think we were using Google Hangouts or something. Or whatever of the myriad Google chats there are out there. They have like 12 apps. We were using something else in person, and then we started using Slack organically right when it first came out. TODD: Sorry about that noise you all heard. That was me throwing up a little bit in my mouth when you said "Google Hangouts". (laughter) KEN: We'll talk about video-chat in a minute. JAMON: By the way, this is Jamon Holmgren. It was ... Initially, we jumped onboard. They did a really good job marketing themselves. We had used Hipchat a little bit, but it just wasn't what we expected. We started using Slack. That was in early 2014, I think it was? I don't think it's a coincidence that within a year and a half we ended up going remote. I think that was one of the enabling tools. We got used to it in the office, but it enabled remote work. TODD: To talk about chat apps or chat services is important, but on a more general standpoint, I would say how you approach it is actually try 'em and do it. A lot of companies seem to just use whatever is available and not look for optimum solutions. If trying three or four different chat systems is too onerous for you, that's probably the wrong attitude, in my opinion. KEN: You think, "don't settle". Don't assume that the first thing that you try is the only thing, and then conclude that remote isn't gonna work because the tool that you tried sucks. JAMON: We tried a lot of tools at ClearSight, before the merger. We tried ... I can't even name them all, to be honest. Part of it is because I like ... I'm a gadget guy, I like to try new things and see how it goes. There was actually a lot of skepticism around Slack because they're just yet another tool that they had to log into and pay attention to. "We already had the email, so do we really need this." It was kinda funny, when I went back and looked at our inner-company email, just tracked ... I think I used the "everyone@clearsightstudio.com" or something email address to track how often we were using it for company communications. It just dropped off a cliff after Slack. The amount of email, the volume of email that was flying around went way, way, way down. In fact, I remember we used to send GIFs in the email threads, and stuff. There were elements of the culture that we have today in Slack going on in email threads. Slack was just so much more well-suited to that. That actually came about very organically. We had tried a bunch of different things. We tried Slack, and it just picked up steam, picked up steam, picked up steam. TODD: I don't ... I'm not even exaggerating, I don't believe I've ever sent an email to anyone at Infinite Red internally. I don't think so. KEN: Unless it's a forward from someone external. TODD: Correct. I think there's people on our team who probably don't check their email very often because they don't have a lot of -- KEN: Yeah, if you don't do sales or any kind of external outreach -- TODD: Yeah. That was a sticking point a few times, when people were sending out the emails, and we had to ... They were wondering why people weren't responding, it's because the variety of people never check their email. JAMON: It is funny, because email does still, it is still a tool that we use for remote communication with outside clients, especially people first coming to us. But as soon as we can, we get them onto Slack because we've found that that level of communication is the least friction, it's very seamless. Slack is definitely featuring very centrally in our remote-tool story, for sure. TODD: Rather than just ... I'm sure a lot of people out there use Slack. If you don't, give it a try. But rather than just gushing on Slack, I do wanna say that the important part here is we did go through a lot of different chat services. You have to give 'em some time. At first, for example ... We do love Slack, but at first it didn't seem that different. There wasn't a bullet list that's like, "Oh, this has feature X", it was a bunch of little, subtle things that made it work especially well for us. KEN: Part of the meta-point there, is you have to treat your tools really seriously. Right? Google and Amazon and all these big companies, any well-funded start-up, whatever, they're gonna lavish a lot of attention on making an office that works for them. Right? TODD: Mm-hmm (affirmative). KEN: They're gonna create an office environment very thoughtfully. I've been to a lot of these offices. A lot of them are very thoughtfully considered. Right? They're designed to create a certain atmosphere. For example, I was at the Square offices once. Huge, cavernous room designed to create a sense of energy. That's the open-office mantra, that sense of energy. They had these little cubicle ... nicely designed cubicle things where you could go if you wanted quiet. Clearly, noise was the default. That architecture creates a culture. At least it reinforces a culture. As a remote company, your tools are your architecture. You either need to buy them from people who design them in a way that works for you, and Slack seems to work for a lot of people, or you build things that work for you, or you create norms about how they're used that do the same thing. We've done some things on Slack, we've done some things on Zoom, to create that sense of being together. Todd? TODD: I would like to add emphasis to what Ken just said. Imagine a time that someone puts into an office: architecture, the layout, the furniture. Rearranging it multiple times, placing stuff. Now think about the time that companies you've worked for put into remote tools. Anyone out there with their hands up saying they spent about 30 minutes on their remote tools -- KEN: Ever! TODD: Yeah. It's not surprising that one is superior to other in those organizations. I would pile on, like Ken said, and take the same amount of effort and consideration of your tools as a remote company as you did with everything else in the physical space if you're a commuter company. CHRIS: I'm interested, too, because as you're talking, you're talking about the difference between physical architecture and the architecture of your tools that allow you to do remote work, and if everyone's using Slack, and it looks and functions the same way, what brings the sense of uniqueness to a company that's using the same tools? TODD: Me. Just me being around makes everything unique, wonderful, and amazing. To answer the real question, you have to take Slack ... One of the great things about Slack, 'cause it's highly customizable, you can add plug-ins, you can add all sorts of integrations. We're gonna talk about other tools than Slack. They literally just pay us a crapload of money just to talk about this. JAMON: I wish. KEN: I wish. TODD: You don't take the vanilla. The point of a tool like that is you take it and you make it your own. JAMON: I did see someone tweeting about switching remote companies. They quit one company and they got hired by another. They did mention, actually, how similar it was. You go into the same place; you sit down at the same chair; you have the same computer in front of you; you log in to a different Slack, and you start working. Right? There is some level of consistency there. In a way, that's a very good thing. You can be comfortable very, very, very soon. There are plenty of things to learn about a new company without having to also learn new office layout, new office norms, policies about who can put their lunch in the fridge and who can't. I don't know what else. It's been so long since I've been in an office, I don't even know. I think there is some level of normalcy there because people do use similar tools. Like Todd said, you can customize Slack to work the way that your company needs to, and you can customize other tools as well. Since we're programmers, since our team has a lot of programming capability on it, we do actually build a lot of glue code in the scripts and things that will help tie all the tools together. KEN: In most organizations that have adopted chat tools, whether it's Slack or something else, they are usually billed as an internal supplement replacement for email. It is great at that, don't get me wrong, but I think something that gets lost in the way people talk about in the way we communicate now is that ... Let me tell a little story. I used to be a big fan of Roger Ebert. Rest in peace. Brilliant writer, right? Super enthusiastic. He was very critical of the way people write online. Very critical of things like emojis and emoticons. I think, while I respect him a lot, I think he completely missed the point on that. The point of that is, although, yes, we type to communicate online, it's not really writing. Not in the way our English teachers taught us. Right? It's typed speech, really. Right? It's a register of communication that's closer to the way that we talk than it is to the way that we would write if we're writing an essay or a blog post. One of the things that I really like about, Slack for example, is the rich way that you can communicate without it looking junky. It doesn't look like something awful or 4chan or some of the other really junky-looking message boards that have that level of expressiveness. It gives you the level of expressiveness so that you can substitute for the lack of facial expressions and body-language, but it's not writing. You don't write ... you don't type into Slack the same way you do. It's much closer to the way that you talk. For a remote organization, where we're not on Zoom all the time, although we are a lot, it's super important that you have that level of human expressiveness in your medium, in the medium that you're using to replace spoken word. TODD: Three comments. One: Zoom is the video conferencing tool we use, and we'll talk about that in a second. Two: I don't spend much time on 4chan, Ken, so I'll take your word on that one. (laughter) Three: just to give an example, talking about customization and you might be asking yourself, "Okay, Todd, I've used Slack. I've used chat. What're you talking about?" Just give you a few flavors. The simplest is creating your own channels that have some sort of cultural significance to your organization. One of ours is called "Rollcall", where we ... It's the digital equivalency of walking in and out of the office. "I'm here this morning." "I'm gonna go get my car worked on." "I'm back." It's not just status, it's also ... not just whether you're working or not, but it's a way to communicate basic, little life things in a short way. We have another one called "Kudos", where we give kudos to people. Which, at first, I thought, probably, wouldn't take off, but it actually did. It's where you give kudos to people for things that they did well, and I'm really shocked how many people give kudos and how many people respond. That's obviously just using the base tool and choosing what content to put on there, and how to organize. There's other things, too. Obviously there's things like code-repository integration, a code bug-reporting integration. We integrate with other companies' Slacks. They have a Slack channel, we have a Slack channel, and they connect so that we can do that with our clients. All the way to we have a custom Bot we wrote for Slack. Her name is Ava. She does a variety of internal processes for us. She's kind of ... In the old days, you'd have a database and you'd have a Windows app written to connect your database for your company, you'd do things in there. We have a lot of internet SaaS-tools. And then we have Ava that integrates a lot of them together. JAMON: Todd, can you give an example of something that Ava does for us? TODD: Yes. There's some basic things that a chatbot might do. For instance, you might wanna ask her where Jamon is, and she'll tell you the information she knows about Jamon. It's a lot of operational stuff. For instance, our Project Manager, Jed, has to produce weekly reports for clients. Ava produces those for him. Stuff like that. Stuff that you would normally do, like I said, in the old days, in a desktop app personally. JAMON: Todd came up with Ava quite a while ago, actually. It was sort of a toy to start with, just playing around with it. He had some ideas where it might go, but over time we've actually invested more and more resources into this internal chatbot and it's proven to be quite valuable. It's saved a lot of time, reduced the amount of overhead that we have to have tracking things because it's able to do a lot of process things. KEN: So far, she has not escaped and murdered us. (laughter) TODD: Not so far. I'm working on that. JAMON: That's a win. TODD: There's some tiny things. She's just a way for us, if we need to program something that we have a sticking point like, here's a very simple thing that took me five minutes to ruin. We do a lot of things on Mondays, and constantly wanna know what last Monday was, or Monday three weeks ago. You can literally just say, "Ava, what was Monday two weeks ago," and she'll tell you. That's a very tiny thing. Generating project PDFs or generating project reports is a bigger thing, obviously. JAMON: Another tool we use to communicate, non-verbally in Slack, is "Reactions". Someone'll post something and we react to it. I think this is pretty common in Slack teams and this is something that Slack did a good job of coming up with a cool idea. Usually you think of up-voting and down-voting, but when you have the whole range of emojis, including custom ones and animated ones and things like that, it can be a very cool thing. One interesting example of this: we have an integration with ... Ken, what's the service we use for Chain React tickets? KEN: Zapier. JAMON: Zavier. Zapier, yeah, and it connects with Eventbrite, and that basically will post any time someone buys a ticket to Chain React, which is our React Native conference, of course, happening in Portland in July. You should buy a ticket. (laughter) We get a notification, and it pops in there, says who's coming. When we're getting down there ... We were getting down to the last few advanced workshops that were available, someone started putting a number emoji underneath it. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, like that. You can see then, at a glance, how many were left. It was very cool how we were all collaborating on that. When someone would buy the advanced workshop, Kevin VanGelder, who's our resident Windows guy, he would put a little Windows emoji on there because that's part of the advanced workshop. It was just a cool way to communicate and collaborate without even using words. TODD: I think the important part of using reactions or emojis or Slack Responses ... Reactions, if you're not familiar, Slack is ... It's simply, someone posts a message, and instead of responding to it, you can post a little image on it, like heart, or a thumbs up, or a vote-up, or whatever. Slack Response is an automatic system that, when you say X, it outputs Y into it. One Slack Response that Jamon hates is that when you say "I'm not a big fan", it posts this picture of this really, really small fan. It's hilarious. I love it. (laughter) JAMON: Really hilarious. TODD: Every time someone put ... We had some that we had to remove, 'cause they just came up too much. Every time you'd say "founders" it would show the Three Stooges, which is "Accurate", but... KEN: It was "founders' meeting". TODD: Oh, whatever. KEN: But still, yeah. TODD: It was accurate but a little too much noise. The point is, it's very important. We've probably added a huge number of Slack Responses, a huge number of our own emojis, and the emojis you can use for Responses. A lot of them have become very cultural. Just to give you a few examples: my cat, Calle, that's short for Calle Berry, I took a picture of her paw. And, of course, cats, if you just do the front part of their paw, it looks like they have four fingers instead of five because their fifth one's back further. We came with this emoji and this thing where, if someone does a really great job, they get a "high-four", instead of high-five, and that's Calle's Response. JAMON: I didn't actually know that was Calle's paw. TODD: Oh, yeah, that's Calle's paw. JAMON: That's cool. TODD: So that's a cultural thing that I created one day, and it just kinda stuck. It became a "high-four"; it is an Infinite Red thing, you get a "high-four". We have other things like that, too, that are very specific to our culture, where you have to explain to people who come in what that means. I would definitely customize it, make it fun. We don't worry too much if clients see it. We're not doing anything inappropriate. At first, there was discussion, "Is it professional if they accidentally trigger one of the Slack Responses?" "No, but does that really matter?" "No," in my opinion. KEN: It depends on the Response. (laughter) TODD: Of course. KEN: There were some that were a little over the line and that, without context, could be a little startling. We removed those. TODD: Yeah, that's true. KEN: But for the most part, yeah, just something that's quirky. Hopefully, we all have clients that, at least the people who are in the Slack room are able to appreciate that. TODD: Another one that's totally part of our culture is, there was this early picture of me looking into the camera with a stern face. That became the "shame" emoji. That's been used ever since. Every time someone wants to throw shame upon someone, my face is there. I don't know if that's good or bad. JAMON: There's another one that's quite disturbing, of you, Todd. TODD: Oh! When you say yes "yis", Y, I, S, yes that is disturbing. JAMON: "Yis dream." TODD: You have to work here to ... KEN: You had to be there. KEN: Some of the things that came from my experience at Yammer, where a lot of the company was run internally on Yammer, there's a couple of really big advantages to that. Especially, at an all-remote company, where the vast majority of conversations happen there. One is that there's very much less pressure to include people in meetings just because, just in case they might have something to say about it. Because if you've having a conversation in Slack, you just pull 'em in. Right? After the fact, and they can catch up. But the other was, there was an ethos at Yammer that was, there was this pat question which was, "Why is this private?" "Why did you make this group private?" "Why is this in a private chat?" Making closed conversations justify themselves, rather than being the default. Particularly when we invite other people into Slack, I notice there's a little period of training, where people will instinctively start DMing, 'cause it's like "Well, I need to ask Ken this question." Say we brought our bookkeeper in, right? They would ask me 'cause I was the contact. I'm like, "Ask this question in Finance." Right? "Ask this question in the Finance channel." Which happens to be one of the private ones, for a variety of fairly obvious reasons. By asking in the channel, then the other people who might be interested can just observe. That's one of the ways that you compensate for the lack of that serendipitous, overheard conversation that people are so fond of in a office. CHRIS: In Episode Two, we talked about the philosophy of remote work. Todd, you actually made a comment that was really interesting to me. You said, "When the leadership uses the remote tools, they immediately get better." Why do you think that's the case? TODD: Human nature. I'll answer your question with a little story. I worked for company ... This is circa 1999. I don't know. I didn't work for 'em; they were a client of ours. For many, many years they were very much a Microsoft shop. They had no interest in testing anything on other platforms like Mac or whatever. We worked for them for nine years, something like that. So this is all through the 2000s. It was frustrating for people who wanted to produce websites that were universal. If someone opened 'em on a Mac, it would actually look good and not look horrible. One day, one of the VPs who was above the software group bought an iPad. I think, about a year later, he bought a MacBook. Once he had that iPad, all of a sudden, it'd become very important that things look good on his iPad, which is funny and horrible at the same time. It is just human nature. If you use something, it's much more front of mind than if you don't. Even the best of people suffer this. If you have a mixed company, meaning you're part remote, part commuter, one of those groups is gonna be a second-class citizen. Period. If 10 people are in a meeting, and eight are remote and two are in the office, the two in the office are gonna be the second-class citizens. More often, it's the vice versa, right? Getting everyone on the same page gets rid of second-class citizens. If you wanna make the best remote environment, either getting the majority or getting the people who have more power in the remote situation will increase your tools' quality big time. JAMON: That's for sure. We've seen that internally at Infinite Red, as well. When we use the tools, which we do, leadership team is probably the heaviest user of the remote tools in a lot of ways. There are situations where they're just not good enough, and we make sure that they get changed, for sure. Zoom is a good ... Zoom, the video chat, video call system, is really an interesting one because it has worked the best for us in terms of video calls. We've used a whole bunch of them. We've used everything from Google Hangouts, Skype, Appear.in, which is pretty decent. Pretty frictionless, actually. I like Appear.in for how fast it is to jump into it, but the quality is still a little bit sub-optimal. A few others as well. The nice thing about Zoom is that it allows you to put everybody into a grid pattern. It has a gallery view, which is really cool because then you feel like you're having a meeting and not doing a presentation. That's something that came out of us doing sales calls and internal meetings where we kinda felt like, "I don't wanna be the person on the big screen," right? Feel like your giving a presentation. "I wanna feel like this is a meeting with everybody in an equal place." It makes people feel more comfortable. That was a situation where we were using the tools for various things and found the one that, I think, has worked the best 'cause, as a leadership team, we needed it. TODD: Yes, as far as video chat or video calls ... We actually need a name for that. What do you say if ... It's not really video chatting. JAMON: Video conferencing? TODD: I don't like ... KEN: It's not exactly "conferencing". TODD: I don't like the term. JAMON: Video meeting? KEN: Video meeting. TODD: Yeah, there needs to be a term for that. We need to coin a term for that, at least internally. CHRIS: Zooming. TODD: Zooming. Well that's ... That's not tool-specific. KEN: Slack as a tool is much stickier, in the long term, probably, than Zoom is. At the moment, Zoom is, by far, in our experience, the best quality. JAMON: Mm-hmm (affirmative). KEN: But that could change. Slack ... there's a lot we've invested in customizing and it would be harder, but ... Although, we have invested some in Zoom, which we can talk about a bit. TODD: I would say Zoom is our favorite for our situation. One of our clients is BlueJeans.net, which is not really a competitor, but they do video conferencing. BlueJeans is really great for many things. One thing is they do every platform well. KEN: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yep. TODD: Which, Zoom, and a lot of the other ones don't necessarily do. Now, we're all mostly on Macs, and it works really well on that, so that works out well. Also, BlueJeans.net has a lot of additional features. Where we basically just need video conferencing; Zoom is so superior. Google Hangouts is horrible. Please, please stop using Google Hangouts. KEN: Don't use Skype. Don't use Google Hangouts. TODD: Well, Skype -- KEN: Skype has gotten better, but -- TODD: Skype's quality is great, but it does a max of six people. We have 26 people. KEN: I disagree that they're quality is great. TODD: I was being ni -- KEN: Even domestically, I've had problems with it. (laughter) JAMON: We have Microsoft people listening. TODD: I was being nice, Ken. JAMON: It crashes a lot on Mac. KEN: The point is, here, you should demand rock-solid video 99% of the time. TODD: Yeah. KEN: If that's not what you're getting, look at another tool. JAMON: This extends to the internet bandwidth that you have available at your place of work, too. Some people that were really scraping by on 20Mb or something connections, and it was impacting video quality, and -- TODD: On what tool? KEN: No, their connection. JAMON: Their internet connection, yeah. That was something that we, overtime, got everybody to upgrade to faster and faster internet. I think that was a success for, pretty much, everybody. They have pretty acceptable internet, now, at this point. TODD: Some aren't as much. We have a person who's a nomad and travels around. We have someone who's in extremely rural Canada, up above Toronto, Tor-on-toe, I'm told is the proper way to say that. Zoom does very well in bandwidth, so the people that do have limited bandwidth, that works very well. We actually have meetings, 26 people in Zoom, which before would have been crazy. Skype limits you to six, which I'm not sure how useful that is for most meetings, but good for you, Skype. KEN: The only thing it's not so great on is battery-life, if you're using a mobile device. JAMON: It sort of trades CPU time for bandwidth. KEN: It does, yeah. JAMON: One of the things that Zoom doesn't do, that we've sort of built a system on top of, is permanent conference rooms. We've found this to be very useful to say, "Hey, let's jump into this 'conference room A', or 'conference room B'." We have better names for it. We name them after rooms in the boardgame Clue. TODD: Trademark Milton Bradley. (laughter) JAMON: There's a billiard room, there's a conservatory, there's a study, kitchen, et cetera. We have different uses for those different rooms. Some are for sales calls; some are for ... One is called Kitchen, which we use for the kitchen table, it's basically where people just jump in there, and work together in relative quiet. It's a cool little concept. We actually built an online, like a website, as well as a desktop app that shows a Clue board with the different rooms that light up when people are in them, and then it puts avatars of who's in that room, including guests, which is very cool because I can go in there and say, "Hey, look! Chris and Todd are having a meeting over there. I'm gonna jump in and see what's going on." I can just click in there, and it opens a Zoom window, and I'm in their meeting. TODD: For example, currently, Chris, Jamon, Ken and I are in Study. We have Kevin and Ryan in Library, and we have Jed in the Billiard Room by himself. I'm not sure what that's about. Maybe playing a little pool. KEN: This goes back to the notion of tools as architecture. Consider the experience of being in an office, and you want a meeting. You say, "Hey, let's meet in Fisherman's Wharf." I was in an office where they named things after San Francisco neighborhoods. "Let's meet in Fisherman's Wharf." Everybody, after they've been oriented into the office, knows where that is and they just go. That's it, right? That's the experience, right? Furthermore, if you wanna know where somebody is, you walk around the building, look into the rooms, and see that so-and-so is in Fisherman's Wharf, so they're in a meeting, they're busy. Now let's look at what it's like to be remote, without a tool like this. "Where's the meeting? Okay, I gotta ask somebody. Oh, okay. Oh, did someone start the meeting? Oh, no, no, okay, somebody needs to start the meeting. Alright, gimme a second, I'm gonna start the meeting. Here's the Zoom URL." TODD: Oh, God! KEN: "Okay, you gotta invite somebody." "Do you remember the Zoom URL?" "I don't remember the Zoom URL." "Okay, hang on. Okay, I got it. Here you go." That's the UX, right now. JAMON: Yes. KEN: Of the base ... TODD: Oh, jeez. KEN: ... video conferencing tool, and it's no wonder people hate that! JAMON: Yep. KEN: Right? TODD: Can you imagine? KEN: Yeah. It turns out ... We've had to increase the number of rooms over the years, right? But how many do we have now? Eight? TODD: Eight. KEN: So we have eight rooms now? TODD: Eight current rooms. KEN: That's pretty much fine. TODD: Mm-hmm (affirmative). For a team our size, that works well. JAMON: We usually don't fill all of ... I think, yesterday, I looked in there and there were six in use, which was kind of a anomaly, but ... KEN: In an office, we can keep adding those as long as we need to. JAMON: That's right. KEN: This is a case where I think we've created something that is actually better than what people who have an office have. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: Right? Because you can, just at a glance, see where people are. Nobody has to even tell you what room they're in. They just say, "Hey, we're meeting." You go look at the Clue board, and you see where the people that you're meeting with are, and you join the room. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: It's just one more little piece of constant friction that we've eliminated. I love it. I think it's a fantastic tool. TODD: Yeah, I keep the Clue desktop app open all day long while I'm at work. It's also cool to see the little avatars and stuff. Makes me feel like I'm at work. When we first started, you did have to push ... This is a very common interaction. "Hey, Todd, I need your help with X." And I'm like, "Let's have a meeting" or "Let's jump in Zoom" or whatever. "Which one?" "I'm already there. I joined a room as soon as you said it." "Which one?" "Open Clue. (laughter) Look for my name. Click on it." JAMON: Yeah. TODD: That only took a few weeks, to be honest, of constantly just needling that to the point where, when someone says, "Hey, I wanna jump in a room," they look and they see where you jumped in. KEN: That brings back the importance of having the leadership on the tool. TODD: Yes. JAMON: That's right. This tool actually came out of a side-project. I think Gant and AJ, two of our engineers, came up with the idea and built a prototype, and put it out there. It was ... I remember being, initially, a little bit skeptical that it'd be useful and it's turned out to be a really key part of our remote experience. TODD: That's actually an important point. No one asked anyone to make that tool. No one asked for permission to make that tool. They made it. They turned it on. Now, we've had tools that people've made. For instance, my tool Ava, which, now, is very useful, originally was Dolores, which is from HBO's great TV show, "Westworld". Dolores never caught on. She didn't do enough important stuff, and so she just kinda died. Later I resurrected her as Ava, which is from the movie "Ex Machina". Excellent movie, by the way. KEN: It's still kind of a disturbing allusion, though. TODD: It is, but it's ... It's a great movie. And then the next movie he did, which was "Annihilation", was fantastic as well. Anyways, not important, obviously. The point is, no one needs to ask for permission. They can make tools. They do. They put 'em out there, and they live or die based on whether or not they're actually used. We do sunset things that just never really took off. CHRIS: You're mentioning a lot of tools that enable remote work, that enable productive work. What are some tools that you're thinking about or are in place that help with focus and eliminating distractions? 'Cause sometimes, people new to these environments can look at these tools going, "Man there's so many distractions. How do I work?" JAMON: I actually think that's one of the biggest benefits of working remotely, which is kind of counter-intuitive. You think, "Oh, there's so many distractions when you're working remotely." Actually, you can turn off Slack. You can turn your screen to "do not disturb". You can shut off Zoom. You can turn off you're email. You can close all of those applications and just have the app that you're doing the work in, you're writing a blog post, you're writing code, you can just have that open. You can turn on a "do not disturb" mode in Slack that'll actually tell people that you're currently away. If you use the tools that are available, remote work can actually be much better, because what happens in an office? Someone can't get a hold of you on email or Slack, so what do they do? They hop up and they walk over to your office, and they're like, "Hey, did you get my email?" (laughter) "Okay, I will check my email, eventually, here. Is this really important?" One of the things that we do is ... This is kind of funny, but we'll actually say "I'm going offline for three hours, 'cause I'm gonna focus on this thing. If it's really important, text me." Our phone numbers are there, right? Nobody's gonna text you, 'cause that just feels like a complete intrusion. Right? KEN: It does happen. Like, if it's a genuine emergency. JAMON: It does happen if it's like an emergency. But that is so rare. That is awesome, because you're adding a ton of friction, but you're still giving them some way to get to you. I think that's a good property of remote work, that you can actually focus more in those situations than you can in an office. TODD: Yeah, try to turn off all the noise in an open-concept office. Good luck! KEN: Yeah, an office is distracting by default. You have to use technology to get some focus. I can't think of any tool that we use just for focus. Right? It's about human habits around how they use the tools that are already there. TODD: I think there are some, Ken. I don't personally use them. KEN: Yeah, yeah. I mean there are things, but there's nothing we use as a company. TODD: No, but there are people here that use, for one thing, they'll use the various timer apps that tell them to stand up, or if they set a timer for focus -- KEN: I've used the Pomodoro timer. TODD: Yeah, there are things. What's cool about remote work as opposed to depressing cubicle work (laughter), is you can set up the environment -- KEN: Soul-crushing commute work. (laughter) TODD: Soul-crushing commute work, SCCW, I like it. In those situations, you have to go to the lowest common denominator. If 50% of the people are very productive and get focused with music, and 50 can't at all, you're gonna have no music. When you're sitting in your own environment, whatever that environment is, whether it's your home, or a café, or co-working space, or whatever it is that you've chosen to be most efficient in, when you're sitting in that environment, you can control and make it perfect for you to be able to focus. Personally, if I'm doing design work or visual work, I play music. It gets me in the groove. If I'm programming, I cannot have any music. Or if I do have music, it can't have any lyrics in it. That's a focus thing. I tend to like to work more in the dark, strangely. I love light and I live in a very sunny place, and a very sunny house, but I have noticed that I tend to get more in the zone in dark and often late at night, for me personally. CHRIS: I'm the same way, Todd. I have to fake my brain into thinking it's late at night by closing all the blinds and turning the lights off. And it actually helps productivity. TODD: Yeah, that's interesting. I used to have this problem at every company I worked at. Even, say, I shared a room with four other people. One office, and four. I would wanna have all the lights off and have a desk lamp so I could see. No one liked this. Having the fluorescent lights on ... I didn't take cyanide, but I do believe I shopped online for cyanide, just saying. (laughter) KEN: So this is in your browser history, now, forever, man. (laughter) There's a FBI file on you. TODD: Oh, there's been a FBI file. Come on. If you don't have a FBI file on you, what are you doing with your life? (laughter) JAMON: At the old ClearSight office, we had some fluorescent lights, and one by one they would burn out. Nobody would tell the maintenance guy because they just liked that they were burning out. (laughter) Eventually it got quite dark in there and everybody, they just wouldn't even turn on the light. TODD: I would like to make a confession. I have purposely broke some lights in offices. KEN: "True Confessions with Todd Werth." (laughter) TODD: You don't want true ones. No, that actually -- CHRIS: That's Season Two of the podcast. (laughter) TODD: That actually is very true. Sometimes you just have to ... KEN: Civil disobedience? TODD: Yes, I like the way you phrased that. Makes things more noble and less selfish. (laughter) KEN: Yeah, right. Guerilla productivity. JAMON: We have some other tools to talk about, too, right? TODD: Oh, yeah, we have other tools to talk about. JAMON: Should we talk about some of them, or ... TODD: Yes. KEN: But enough about Todd. (laughter) TODD: I'll be here all week. Do not eat the veal. JAMON: One of the tools that has been really helpful for us is Google Sheets. Obviously, that's the spreadsheet program in Google Apps. We ... We're having trouble ... Again, this is pre-merger. We're having trouble figuring out how to schedule people. It was just a real pain. Eventually, my Project Manager at the time, came up with a system that involved sticky notes on a board that were, across the top were weeks, and down the left side were the names of people. We could just put sticky notes. My wife went out and bought a whole bunch of different colored sticky notes. We'd put the same project as the same color across the board. You could, at a glance, see who was working on the same project. You could see how long it was going to be, as far as number of weeks, and every week we'd move 'em over to the left and add another column. That eventually migrated onto Google Sheets, 'cause, of course, that doesn't work so well when you're remote. The collaboration tools on Google Sheets are extremely good. It's very, very responsive to having multiple people on it. When we do our Friday scheduling meeting for the next week, and beyond, we'll all pull open the sheet, and we look at it, and we can all update it ... If we see something that's wrong, we can update it. We can change colors of the backgrounds. It's worked really well for, now, two and a half years. I think that's a remote tool that has actually been quite useful for us for quite some time. Not only does it give us forward-looking data, but it also gives us backward-looking. We can look at previous years and see what projects were we working on at the time, who was working on what, all the way throughout. It's been a very cool tool. We're just repurposing Google Sheets to use as a scheduling tool. TODD: Another tool we used to use ... Jeez, I can't remember what it's called. What was the [inaudible 00:43:17] tool we used to use? JAMON: Screenhero. KEN: Screenhero? TODD: Screenhero, yes, of course. I remember when Screenhero was ... It was eventually bought by Slack and is being integrated into Slack. We used to use that a lot, but truthfully, the tools in Zoom for screensharing stuff became superior and so I think almost everyone pairs with each other Zooming. TODD: Another tool we use is RealtimeBoard, which is a sticky board analogist tool; the designers -- KEN: Designers love it. TODD: The designers used it a lot, but we also use it in leadership and the developers, I think, are starting to look into it. It's great for brainstorming. It's a real-time tool, kinda like Google Docs or Google Sheets, where everyone can use it at the same time, and you see everyone using it. That's been really great. The designers use the heck out of InVision, which is a wonderful tool for showing designs, getting notes, and collaborating with clients, collaborating with the rest of the team, and that kind of stuff. Another tool we use for project management a lot is Trello. If you're not familiar, with it, it's a great project management tool. It's a Kanban board, if you're familiar with those. Not only do we use Trello, we also integrated ... Ava connects to Trello, produces reports from ... Ava connects to Airtable, which is another interesting mix between a database and a spreadsheet. We use Airtable and Trello. Those are some other tools we use. KEN: Something to mention, also, is that between Slack and Zoom we have some redundancy, because Zoom has rudimentary chat and Slack has video conferencing. It's not as good as Zoom's, but it's there, and we already have it. For example, when Slack is down, we have Zoom channels that we can all do basic communication in. That provides a certain amount of resiliency for the work environment, and that's very helpful. TODD: Yeah, it does go down every so often. It's funny because our company comes to a screeching halt when Slack goes down. KEN: Yeah, and that's a valid criticism, I think, of remote working. We do have the redundancy so that people can at least, basically, keep going. TODD: We all know now, if Slack's down ... It was, actually yesterday, coincidentally. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: If Slack is down, we go into Zoom chat. That took a while to get people ... It's funny 'cause we don't use email and stuff, and we use that so much. We could jump into a meeting. We've done that in the past, before we had this redundancy we would just jump into a meeting room and kinda like, "Hey, what do we do?" It was like the lights went out and everyone was confused at what to do. It's actually kind of amusing if you think about that. A bunch of virtual people wandering around in the dark wondering what to do. JAMON: We have a lot of redundancy of internet connection. Someone might be having internet issues, but not everybody is having internet issues. That's a pretty big deal. I remember the office internet would stop working and, even though we were all in the same place, yes we could collaborate, no we couldn't work 'cause we couldn't access -- KEN: Couldn't get to GitHub, can't get to... JAMON: ... Dropbox, whatever. Which, we do use GitHub, we use Dropbox. There's a little tool that I use that, I would say, about a third of the company also uses. We're on video calls a lot. When you're on a video call, sometimes it's nice to have a cough button: you hit a button and it mutes you for just a second, so you can cough or whatever. This one's called Shush. It's a Mac app. You can buy it for three bucks or something. It turns your function key into a mute button, so you just hit that button and it will mute you for a short amount of time. Or you can double-tap it and it turns into a push to talk button, which is nice when you're in a big group. TODD: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I don't use Shush, because I use a hardware version of that. I have quite a lot of audio equipment and video stuff. Pretty sure, in the remote podcast, we talked about the importance of having good equipment and spending a little money on good equipment. You cheap managers out there, stop doing that; you're horrible people. (laughter) JAMON: Also the background of your video call is really important. That was actually something Todd really emphasized when we first started. I will point out that he has the messiest background of all of us, right now. TODD: Well, to be clear, I have two cameras. One is a wide angle which I use for the team so I can move around and stuff; and I have a tighter angle I use for clients, in which case, what's behind me is very specifically chosen to be a background, and I keep that incredibly clean. JAMON: I just say that to tweak Todd, because he's the biggest champion of having a good background. TODD: Yes. Jamon's horizon, right now, is extremely tilted, and it's been driving me crazy the whole time, but I'll get over it. (laughter) KEN: I know. I can't unsee that. TODD: In my 46 years on this planet, I've learned not to mention that, even though I really, really want him to straighten his camera. KEN: It doesn't help, Jamon, you've still got a vertical line that is -- TODD: I'll tell you a funny story about backgrounds. Poor Ken. Ken had this very nice ... I don't know what it was. What was it, Ken? KEN: It's a bookcase, right, (laughter) but it's IKEA furniture, so it looks -- TODD: It's IKEA? KEN: It looks like a dresser. Yeah. TODD: This whole time it was IKEA? We thought it was important. We felt bad for making fun of it. 'Cause it looks like a dresser. It was right behind him, and it looked like Ken was sitting in bed (laughter) with his dresser behind him. KEN: Yes, reinforcing every stereotype about remote workers. (laughter) TODD: Right. We kept on bugging him, and he said, "It's a really nice bookcase." I didn't realize it was IKEA. KEN: I didn't say it was a really nice bookcase. I said it was a bookcase. (laughter) TODD: It looked like a dresser. JAMON: It really did, in fact. KEN: That's because it's IKEA furniture, so it's looks like that. TODD: I guess the point is, how things appear is more important than what they actually are. This is something a lot of people aren't familiar with. We have different people with different levels of quality of what they produce as far as visually or audio. I think the general takeaway is take some time. You are almost doing a mini-television broadcast, and you wanna be ... I wouldn't say the word "professional", because it's not stuffy, it's fine if you're wearing your tie-dye and your shorts, but you should make it a pleasant experience for the viewers. KEN: Yeah. You should look inviting, and it should look intentional. TODD: Mm-hmm (affirmative). KEN: And kept. JAMON: We have some other tips for remote video meetings that, I think, are on a blog post that we created. Was that you, Ken, that wrote that post? KEN: Yeah. We could do a whole podcast, frankly, on how to have a good video meeting. JAMON: We can link to that in the show notes. KEN: We can link to that for now. TODD: That is a podcast I wanna do. I do wanna point out to the audience who can't see us now, we're recording this for your listening pleasure, and I put pleasure in quotation marks 'cause I don't wanna oversell it. But, we are actually on Zoom, so we can see each other. Jamon, thankfully moved his camera so we can't see the horizon any more, which is crooked, but right over his left shoulder is a door-line that's incredibly crooked. I appreciate the effort, Jamon, but come on. Have some dignity. JAMON: I will point out that I'm moving out of this rental in a week because I had a house fire, Todd. (laughter) TODD: Oh, jeez. You can't pull a house fire out every time there's a criticism. KEN: The only thing in my background is my Harvard diploma (laughter) because it's all that anyone cares about. JAMON: Yes, exactly. Over my shoulder, I'm thinking about putting my not-Harvard diploma. KEN: "Narvard". JAMON: It'll just say, "Not Harvard." TODD: Sometimes we just invite Ken's Harvard diploma, instead of Ken, to meetings. (laughter) KEN: Yeah, I just put it in frame and then I walk out. (laughter) I'm like, "I'm just the janitor." CHRIS: I do have one final question, as we bring this episode to a close: Is there any tool that you use outside of remote work or in your daily life that you wish existed as a remote tool. KEN: Blow torch. (laughter) CHRIS: Elon's got that for ya. TODD: Not a tool, completely, but here's something ... I have ideas for tools that'd be cool in the future. We have the concept of "kitchen table". This is a real quick story; please, bear with me. The three of us ... I don't know if Ken was, but there was multiple of us of the company who were speaking at a conference in Paris. We rented a large Airbnb apartment in Paris, and a bunch of us were staying there. It had a very large kitchen table. When we weren't doing stuff individually, we'd all sit around the kitchen table, and we'd work together. We would just sit there, like you would at a library in a university or something like that, and work. We wanted to recreate that in ... virtually. The simple solution is we dedicated one of our Zoom rooms, the "Kitchen", to the "kitchen table" and you can't use that for anything else. If you just wanna be around people, but you're working, you're not really saying anything, as if you're in a library ... I guess we should do the library, but whatever ... you'd go in the kitchen table and just be around people. Sometimes people say things and have little conversations, like you would in an office, but typically you're just sitting there working together. That's cool. It's missing a few features which I'd love to see. For one is, if you're not ... Say there was a group of people working in an open office, and they're in the center and you're on the perimeter of the office. You see them working together there, the "kitchen table", now we have that, with our tool, we can see who's in the "kitchen table" and they're there. Great. But you can also, even if you're far away and they're dim enough ... not dim, but the volume's low enough that it's not disturbing, you can still hear them, and sometimes you'll pick up on little words that may interest you. They'll mention a project you're on, or they'll mention a personal interest that you're interested in or whatever, and you can choose then to go walk over and join them, because of that kind of low-noise but informational thing you're getting by being in the perimeter. I would love to somehow integrate that into our tool, where you could have a low-murmur of people in the background of the meetings that you're not in, and listen for things that might be interesting, something like that. KEN: I don't really know how to think about that question. TODD: I find it very interesting that none of us can really come up with a tool that we wish we had. That's a fantastic answer. KEN: I mean ... JAMON: I think there's probably tools that, eventually, we'll get that will be like, "How did we live without this?" But I don't ... I can't think of one. KEN: I can imagine in the future, basically a VR setup. JAMON: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes. KEN: If VR gets to the point where it feels natural; it's comfortable to wear the equipment, it's not a burden just to have the stuff on your head, and the resolution is to the point where you could have a virtual monitor in space, and you can have that feeling of actually being next to people. Then you could, in theory, have the best of both worlds, where you can drop out and leave the space if you want to. You can also be in the space and be available for that. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: I think that would be pretty nice, but ... JAMON: There is a tool out there that's ... I think they're, maybe, in beta right now. It's called Bigscreen VR, it's by a guy that I know, Darshan Shankar, who's on Twitter. I met him on Twitter. He's doing this Bigscreen VR system. It's very much what you described, Ken. Right now, it's only on Windows, and of course the VR headsets are still evolving. But apparently the new Oculus Go or Oculus Now, or something, is apparently quite good -- KEN: Yeah, they're getting better. JAMON: It's also likely, they said that within the next year, that it'll come to Mac 'cause they're working on it. KEN: I think another threshold, though, is the quote-unquote "retina" threshold, to where the resolution of the headsets is such that you can't, in terms of resolution, anyway, you can't tell the difference between that and something that you're looking at. JAMON: Yep. KEN: You could actually make a projected display without any compromise. JAMON: Yes. TODD: I agree, in the future that's gonna be wonderful. I do have some current ideas on how to add spacial stuff to our tools to give us proximity information of each other, virtually. Kind of what you would get if you were in a VR situation, but without having VR. Anyways, there's some interesting things there. KEN: Yeah, we've talked about making an ambient audio device, something like that, that can just sit there and ... Kind of like "kitchen table", but without the video. There's a bunch of things we've talked about, but not of them are things that exist today. They're just things that we've thought about creating or ... yeah.

It's a Potluck episode - you bring the questions and we turn them into tasty treats. DeployHQ - Sponsor DeployHQ is the easiest way to deploy websites to your servers. Invite your team and set up automated deployment processes to: Compile a production build of your assets Deploy securely to servers behind VPNs and firewalls Execute SSH commands Manage and upload your config files Preview and schedule deployments Track and monitor your deployments in real-time Deploy to multiple servers at the same time, whether that be your own server via FTP/SSH, or an Amazon S3 bucket. You can even start deployments automatically whenever you push! Instant setup for repositories hosted on GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab and Codebase, plus realtime notifications in your favourite chat services like Slack or HipChat. To get 50% off your first 6 months, head on over to deployhq.com/syntax. The first 25 listeners to deploy successfully will receive a FREE branded mug or t-shirt! Fluent Conf - Sponsor Developers, software engineers, designers, and web performance professionals flock to Fluent in pursuit of a common goal: building a better web. That means delivering fast, secure, accessible experiences to users and customers. Fluent covers a broad range of technologies and topics to provide web programming professionals with the skills, connections, and inspiration needed to build better online and mobile experiences. Fluent is this June 11-14 in San Jose, CA. Save 20% today with code: SYNTAX Submit Your Questions Here Show Notes 02:44 What are your thoughts on Vue.js? VuePress Nuxt 6:20 What are your thoughts on Typescript and Flow? Typescript Flow 10:45 What was your biggest breakthrough in Programming? Nude.js 20:00 Any tips, tools and tricks to avoid procrastination The productivity episode Sort by anxiety Eat That Frog Todoist 25:00 Thoughts on CMSes? Headless? Database Driven? Static Site Generator? Headless WordPress Gatsby 34:00 How can I start creating and selling courses? 40:00 How did you two become renown in the developer community? We don't think we're renown :) YouTube Ad Revenue is poor 46:00 Server Side Rendering with JavaScript Apps 53:00 Is Yeoman still a thing? ×SICK×PICKS× Scott: Eat That Frog Wes: DevDocs.io PWA Shameless Plugs Vue.js for Everyone Wes' Course SMASH that Subscribe Button on Wes' YouTube Tweet us your tasty treats! Scott's Instagram LevelUpTutorials Instagram Wes' Instagram Wes' Twitter Wes' Facebook Scott's Twitter Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets

Derrick continues to talk with customers and gain insights about a team communication and management tool he is developing called, Level. Derrick is developing personal connections with people interested in his mission, and his conversations with customers is reinforcing patterns. Today, he shares the main problems with “Chat” functionality and why people are frustrated with the tools they use today. He is exploring possible solutions for Level to replace Slack and other tools. What issues do you experience? Today’s Topics Include: False sense of urgency; Derrick’s tool would allow you to filter notifications on whether they are urgent or not; and let users view messages at their own pace Chat is like a conveyor belt; if you don’t pick things up, they are going to fall or you are going to miss them Lack of Decent Threading: People do not find threads useful and difficult to encourage appropriate use of them No Mechanism for Tracking State of Conversation: Everything needs to be reviewed to find information and decisions; should offer Open, Closed, Request Review, and On Hold, and other statuses 3 Ways to Structure Messages: 1) Subject and body; 2) Body; or 3) Very small message in infinite timeline Derrick is clear on problems with existing tools, but less clear on exact solutions Simple nuances can make a tool friendlier and easier to use - it’s all in the details Derrick kicked off the Building Level series Ben and Derrick strategize on the best approach to getting teams to try Level Derrick is trying to make the barriers to using Level for low Level will most likely be an open source product with a commercially hosted version to generate revenue Ben and Derrick discuss when it is the best time to start developing Level publicly Ben decided to say “No” to speaking at MicroConf this year; saying “No” to something, is saying “No” to one thing, saying “Yes” to something is saying “No” to everything else If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Ben Orenstein Website (http://www.benorenstein.com/); Twitter (https://twitter.com/derrickreimer) Derrick Reimer Website (http://www.derrickreimer.com/) Building Level #1: Idea Validation (http://www.derrickreimer.com/posts/building-level-1-idea-validation/) Twist (https://twistapp.com/?lang=en) Drip (https://www.drip.com/) HipChat (https://www.hipchat.com/sign_in) Startup Stories Podcast (http://www.startupstoriespodcast.com/) Stripe (https://stripe.com/) Clearbit’s Reveal (https://clearbit.com/reveal) Derek Sivers (https://sivers.org/) MicroConf (http://www.microconf.com/)

What sort of work do you do day-to-day? - A range of things, find out what Mike Schmitz works on [here (http://mikeschmitz.me)]. What is your daily to-do list tool? And why? - OmniFocus 2 (https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus) (iOS/Mac) (For Personal Items) - Jira by Atlassian (https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira) (iOS/Android/Web) (For Team Tool) How do you go about taking notes? - Drafts (https://agiletortoise.com/drafts/) (iOS/Apple Watch) (For capture notes) (Runners) - NvALT (http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/)(Mac) (For quickly note-capture on Mac) - GoodNotes (http://www.goodnotesapp.com/) (iOS) (For sketch notes) - Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/6rstvn/goodnotes_5/): GoodNotes 5 rumours - Drafts (https://agiletortoise.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202187234-Use-Siri-to-Create-Drafts): How Siri and Drafts work What do you use when it comes to organising your calendar? - BusyCal 3 (https://www.busymac.com/) (Mac/iOS) (Week views, no natural language) - Fantastical 2 (https://flexibits.com/fantastical) (Mac/iOS) (For Mac, uses the menu bar + iOS full time) Do you use a certain tool for tracking projects? - Jira by Atlassian (https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira) (iOS/Android/Web) (Uses SCRUM method) - OmniFocus 2 (https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus) (iOS/Mac) (For Personal projects) - Asana (https://asana.com) (iOS/Android/Web) (For family goals/planning goals) What hardware do you use for work? (phone, laptop, pc) - 15-inch MacBook Pro (https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/goto/macbook_pro/15_inch) (late 2017) with Touch Bar - iPhone X (https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone-x/) - iPad 10.5inch Pro (https://www.apple.com/uk/ipad-pro/) (with Apple Pencil) - OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock (https://www.owcdigital.com/products/thunderbolt-3-dock) - Shure Beta 87 A Microphone (https://www.shure.co.uk/products/microphones/beta_87a) - Heil PR 40 (https://www.amazon.com/PR-40-Dynamic-Studio-Recording-Microphone/dp/B000SOYOTQ) Microphone What are your 3 favoured apps for getting the work done? - Logic Pro X (https://www.apple.com/uk/logic-pro/) - SoundSoap 5 (http://www.antarestech.com/product/soundsoap-5/): (For cleaning audio files) - ScreenFlow (https://www.telestream.net/screenflow/): (Screen-recording technology) - Ulysses (https://ulyssesapp.com/): (Beautiful, markdown editor for writing) - Blog (https://ulyssesapp.com/blog/2017/08/ulysses-switches-to-subscription/): Ulysses Premium announcement: - SetApp (https://setapp.com/): The netflix for app subscriptions What are your team communication tools? - HipChat by Atlassian (https://www.atlassian.com/software/hipchat) (Used alongside Jira and Confluence) - Slack (http://slack.com) (More for communities) - Zoom US (https://zoom.us): Video Conferencing Tool (We used this for the recording) - Shush (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/shush-microphone-manager/id496437906?mt=12): Mutes background noise (perfect for cafes + home offices) What app do you use for handling emails? - Escape your Email (http://www.asianefficiency.com/announcements/escape-your-email/) (Asian Efficiency) - MailMate (https://freron.com/) (Mac): (integrates with most productivity apps) - 6.3 Hours inside of Email (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/check-work-email-hours-survey_us_55ddd168e4b0a40aa3ace672) (Huffington Post source) - Dispatch (http://www.dispatchapp.net/) (iOS): (Email Manager) How do you plan? How do you plan for the week or month ahead? - 12 Week Year (https://12weekyear.com/) (For both personal/professional) - Calendar + to-do list app planning — around 12 Week Year Any of other notable apps you do like to mention that you use to get things done? - MindNode (mindnode.com) (For mind mapping, book notes, brainstorming) - Tapes (https://usetapes.com/) (Mac) (Records like CloudApp, screen recording demo) Do you use any analog/offline processes? - Baron Fig (https://www.baronfig.com/pages/confidant) Notebook Confidant - Morning Pages (https://medium.com/the-mission/3-pages-every-morning-why-i-started-a-daily-ritual-and-how-i-stuck-with-it-b19f7c659fd7) (For morning approach to journal) - Rhodia Notebook (https://rhodiapads.com/) (Quality of pages are good for sketching) Find Mike - @BobbleheadJoe — here (https://twitter.com/BobbleheadJoe) - Website — here (http://mikeschmitz.me/) - Asian Efficiency Blog — here (http://www.asianefficiency.com/) - The Productivity Show — here (www.asianefficiency.com/podcast/) Special Guest: Mike Schmitz.

In today's episode of The Art of Passive Income—Round Table edition, Mark is joined by: Erik Peterson Aaron Williams Mike Zaino Scott Todd This week's discussion is going to help you move the needle in 2018! Listen in as we dive into: Bootcamp Takeaways—Whether you're a newbie or a seasoned professional, Bootcamp has something to offer at every level. The guys all share their thoughts and big takeaways. Barriers To Execution—Things that stop you from achieving your goals. Join us now as we whack through the weeds to those barriers that stop you from achieving your goals! Plus, stick around after that long awkward pause—post, Let Freedom Reign, bonus material!  *Star Wars spoiler alert!  TIP OF THE WEEK Mark: When you know your WHY you can endure any HOW and the power of purpose in your WHY. Scott: Check out, FakeSpot.com to find out if a review is fake or real. Also, be prepared for your accountant by going to, ScottTodd.net/accounting and sign up for the 2018 accounting for land investor's class! Erik: A chrome plugin: AFS (Advanced Facebook Search)—a search tool that allows you to perform specific Facebook graph searches.  Aaron: Check out the app, MeetFranz.com to combine chat & messaging into one application. It supports Slack, WhatsApp, WeChat, HipChat, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Google Hangouts, GroupMe, Skype and many more. Mike: Slow down and enjoy the process because this is a moment to moment process and we only have so much time allotted to us, so enjoy it! Also, to achieve your goals, surround yourself with people that are like minded. Isn't it time to create passive income so you can work where you want, when you want and with whomever you want?

Let's start this story at the end: You can't kill email. Attempting to do so is a decades-long tradition of the tech industry, a cliché right up there with "Uber, but for" and "The Netflix of X." AOL Instant Messenger tried to kill email. So did MySpace. Then Facebook took up the mantle, followed by Slack and Symphony and WhatsApp and HipChat. Through it all, email persists—always dying, never dead. Except email isn't dying. There are 3.

Welcome to our third episode of Product to Product—a podcast for / by product people. In this episode we have Evan Michner, Principal Product Manager at Atlassian—specifically for their chat tools, Stride and HipChat. Evan is one of those product managers who, as he describes it, stumbled into product. He went to school for creative writing and started his career in ad copywriting. After a few years of feeling meh about copywriting, he got invited to do “product-y stuff” for a new startup. Despite not fully understanding what that meant, he said, “Sure, why not?” and his career as a PM launched from there. My colleague Eleni, who’s also a former-writer, was curious about Evan’s transition from writing flashy headlines to working in product at a massive tech company. But more specifically, how he applies his creative background and writing skills in his day-to-day at Atlassian. With such a need for product managers to be ‘world-class communicators,’ Eleni and Evan’s chat makes the case for why writing isn’t just a nice-to-have soft skill for PMs, but a necessary tool for them. Plus: Evan’s experiences offer some concrete ways for PMs to keep scratching any creative itches they may experience. You can subscribe to Product to Product on iTunes, Google Play or Spotify, or get the latest episodes delivered to your inbox by subscribing here.

Cómo Gabriel Paizy hace dinero enseñando Español | Episodio 010 Acaba y Emprende es el podcast conjunto entre Tuko Alberto, experto y educador del mercadeo en redes sociales, considerado un representante del mercadeo en Puerto Rico, y Madame Paizy, empresaria especializada en estrategias de comunicación. Acaba y Emprende es un podcast de entrevistas y preguntas a distintos invitados que se enfoca en el emprendimiento y el aprendizaje de experiencias de dichos invitados. Luego de una pequeña introducción de lo realizado la semana pasada y la entrevista a la Shoppinista, la invitada del capítulo anterior, Madame habla de la aplicación que trajo para el capítulo de hoy, siendo esta Slack, aplicación que, según Madame, es una aplicación que junta lo mejor de la mensajería instantánea y el correo. Esta aplicación, disponible para computadoras, iOs y Android, es ideal para pequeñas y medianas empresas o equipos de trabajo, bien sea de negocios o hasta trabajo para la universidad o colegio, que necesiten una comunicación constante. Además, Madame habla un poco de las alternativas que consiguió para Slack llamadas Hipchat, Rocket.chat y Twist app, que cumplen con las mismas funciones, a pesar de que Slack resalta entre todas esas por su popularidad actual y sus características. El invitado de este capítulo es Gabriel Paizy, profesor y creador de En Buen Español, página que responde dudas del idioma y habla de distintos temas del mismo como la ortografía, la gramática, las reglas impuestas por la Real Academia Española, y curiosidades. La fama de En Buen Español no se debe solamente a que Gabriel enseña sobre el idioma español sino que habla de la historia que envuelve este idioma y las razones por qué ciertas cosas se escriben o se dicen de una u otra forma. Además de hablar un poco de su página, Gabriel cuenta cómo surgieron sus ganas de querer trabajar con el español y dedicarse a ello, desde su gusto en el colegio por la materia de castellano, haber estudiado todo lo relacionado a la comunicación, y la creación de En Buen Español como un pequeño grupo en Facebook. Gabriel habla un poco sobre los distintos ingresos que posee relacionados a su marca y su persona, donde se encuentran seminarios, talleres, sus clases, su página, su programa de televisión, su libro llamado Habla y redacta... en buen español, que, al igual que su página, está enfocado en las reglas gramaticales y ortográficas del español, y se encuentra disponible en distintas librerías y en internet; y su trabajo en la estación de radio La Mega, donde mantiene la educación a través de chistes y comedia. En las preguntas recurrentes que se hacen todos los episodios, Gabriel Paizy deja distintas enseñanzas a la audiencia emprendedora como la importancia de saber administrar el tiempo, también cómo con tan solo tener una pasión y/o una afición es posible crear un negocio, y, por último, que si se tiene un gusto es necesario adquirir cualquier libro o material que te pueda enseñar y cultivar en ese tema. Los episodios son parte de un podcast al cual puedes acceder en iTunes con el mismo nombre: Acaba y Emprende. --------------------------------------------------------------- Preguntas del episodio: 2:24 Slack 11:12 ¿Cómo empieza En Buen Español? 15:45 ¿De dónde salió el concepto de En Buen español? 23:24 ¿Cuántos libros has realizado? 25:09 ¿Cómo es la experiencia de trabajar en La Mega? 39:10 Háblanos sobre tu conferencia libros de nenes chiquitos 44:24 Volviendo el tiempo atrás a tus comienzos ¿qué consejo te hubiese encantado aprender? 46:38 En un momento de crisis ¿cómo harías un negocio teniendo solamente una laptop, $500 e internet? 49:11 ¿Hay algún libro que te haya marcado como emprendedor o educador que puede ser útil para la audiencia? --------------------------------------------------------------- Slack: https://slack.com/ Conoce a Gabriel Paizy: https://www.facebook.com/EnBuenEspanol/ Conoce a Madame Paizy: http://www.madamepaizy.com Conoce a Tuko Alberto: http://www.tukoalberto.com Si deseas asistir al Webinar 5 Estrategias que podrían aumentar tus ingresos en hasta un 600% Suscríbete aquí: https://tukoalberto.clickfunnels.com/webinar-registration13084454

In which we interview a unicorn, FreeNAS 11.0 is out, show you how to run Nextcloud in a FreeBSD jail, and talk about the connection between oil changes and software patches. This episode was brought to you by Headlines FreeNAS 11.0 is Now Here (http://www.freenas.org/blog/freenas-11-0/) The FreeNAS blog informs us: After several FreeNAS Release Candidates, FreeNAS 11.0 was released today. This version brings new virtualization and object storage features to the World's Most Popular Open Source Storage Operating System. FreeNAS 11.0 adds bhyve virtual machines to its popular SAN/NAS, jails, and plugins, letting you use host web-scale VMs on your FreeNAS box. It also gives users S3-compatible object storage services, which turns your FreeNAS box into an S3-compatible server, letting you avoid reliance on the cloud. FreeNAS 11.0 also introduces the beta version of a new administration GUI. The new GUI is based on the popular Angular framework and the FreeNAS team expects the GUI to be themeable and feature complete by 11.1. The new GUI follows the same flow as the existing GUI, but looks better. For now, the FreeNAS team has released it in beta form to get input from the FreeNAS community. The new GUI, as well as the classic GUI, are selectable from the login screen. Also new in FreeNAS 11 is an Alert Service page which configures the system to send critical alerts from FreeNAS to other applications and services such as Slack, PagerDuty, AWS, Hipchat, InfluxDB, Mattermost, OpsGenie, and VictorOps. FreeNAS 11.0 has an improved Services menu that adds the ability to manage which services and applications are started at boot. The FreeNAS community is large and vibrant. We invite you to join us on the FreeNAS forum (https://forums.freenas.org/index.php) and the #freenas IRC channel on Freenode. To download FreeNAS and sign-up for the FreeNAS Newsletter, visit freenas.org/download (http://www.freenas.org/download/). Building an IPsec Gateway With OpenBSD (https://www.exoscale.ch/syslog/2017/06/26/building-an-ipsec-gateway-with-openbsd/) Pierre-Yves Ritschard wrote the following blog article: With private networks just released on Exoscale, there are now more options to implement secure access to Exoscale cloud infrastructure. While we still recommend the bastion approach, as detailed in this article (https://www.exoscale.ch/syslog/2016/01/15/secure-your-cloud-computing-architecture-with-a-bastion/), there are applications or systems which do not lend themselves well to working this way. In these cases, the next best thing is building IPsec gateways. IPsec is a protocol which works directly at layer 3. It uses its configuration to determine which network flows should be sent encrypted on the wire. Once IPsec is correctly configured, selected network flows are transparently encrypted and applications do not need to modify anything to benefit from secured traffic. In addition to encryption, IPSec also authenticates the end points, so you can be sure you are exchanging packets with a trusted host For the purposes of this article we will work under the following assumptions: We want a host to network setup, providing access to cloud-hosted infrastructure from a desktop environment. Only stock tooling should be used on desktop environment, no additional VPN client should be needed. In this case, to ensure no additional software is needed on the client, we will configure an L2TP/IPsec gateway. This article will use OpenBSD as the operating system to implement the gateway. While this choice may sound surprising, OpenBSD excels at building gateways of all sorts thanks to its simple configuration formats and inclusion of all necessary software and documentation to do so in the base system. The tutorial assumes you have setup a local network between the hosts in the cloud, and walks through the configuration of an OpenBSD host as a IPsec gateway On the OpenBSD host, all necessary software is already installed. We will configure the system, as well as pf, npppd, and ipsec + Configure L2TP + Configure IPsec + Configure NAT + Enabled services: ipsec isakmpd npppd The tutorial then walks through configuring a OS X client, but other desktops will be very similar *** Running Nextcloud in a jail on FreeBSD (https://ramsdenj.com/2017/06/05/nextcloud-in-a-jail-on-freebsd.html) I recently setup Nextcloud 12 inside a FreeBSD jail in order to allow me access to files i might need while at University. I figured this would be a optimal solution for files that I might need access to unexpectedly, on computers where I am not in complete control. My Nextcloud instance is externally accessible, and yet if someone were to get inside my Jail, I could rest easy knowing they still didn't have access to the rest of my host server. I chronicled the setup process including jail setup using iocage, https with Lets Encrypt, and full setup of the web stack. Nextcloud has a variety of features such as calendar synchronization, email, collaborative editing, and even video conferencing. I haven't had time to play with all these different offerings and have only utilized the file synchronization, but even if file sync is not needed, Nextcloud has many offerings that make it worth setting up. MariaDB, PHP 7.0, and Apache 2.4 To manage my jails I'm using iocage. In terms of jail managers it's a fairly new player in the game of jail management and is being very actively developed. It just had a full rewrite in Python, and while the code in the background might be different, the actual user interface has stayed the same. Iocage makes use of ZFS clones in order to create “base jails”, which allow for sharing of one set of system packages between multiple jails, reducing the amount of resources necessary. Alternatively, jails can be completely independent from each other; however, using a base jail makes it easier to update multiple jails as well. + pkg install iocage + sysrc iocageenable=YES + iocage fetch -r 11.0-RELEASE + iocage create tag="stratus" jailzfs=on vnet=off boot=on ip4_addr="sge0|172.20.0.100/32" -r 11.0-RELEASE + iocage start stratus + iocage console stratus I have chosen to provide storage to the Nextcloud Jail by mounting a dataset over NFS on my host box. This means my server can focus on serving Nextcloud and my storage box can focus on housing the data. The Nextcloud Jail is not even aware of this since the NFS Mount is simply mounted by the host server into the jail. The other benefit of this is the Nextcloud jail doesn't need to be able to see my storage server, nor the ability to mount the NFS share itself. Using a separate server for storage isn't necessary and if the storage for my Nextcloud server was being stored on the same server I would have created a ZFS dataset on the host and mounted it into the jail. Next I set up a dataset for the database and delegated it into the jail. Using a separate dataset allows me to specify certain properties that are better for a database, it also makes migration easier in case I ever need to move or backup the database. With most of the requirements in place it was time to start setting up Nextcloud. The requirements for Nextcloud include your basic web stack of a web server, database, and PHP. Also covers the setup of acme.sh for LetsEncrypt. This is now available as a package, and doesn't need to be manually fetched Install a few more packages, and do a bit of configuration, and you have a NextCloud server *** Historical: My first OpenBSD Hackathon (http://bad.network/historical-my-first-openbsd-hackathon.html) This is a blog post by our friend, and OpenBSD developer: Peter Hessler This is a story about encouragement. Every time I use the word "I", you should think "I as in me, not I as in the author". In 2003, I was invited to my first OpenBSD Hackathon. Way before I was into networking, I was porting software to my favourite OS. Specifically, I was porting games. On the first night most of the hackathon attendees end up at the bar for food and beer, and I'm sitting next to Theo de Raadt, the founder of OpenBSD. At some point during the evening, he's telling me about all of these "crazy" ideas he has about randomizing libraries, and protections that can be done in ld.so. (ld.so is the part of the OS that loads the libraries your program needs. It's, uh, kinda important.) Theo is encouraging me to help implement some of these ideas! At some point I tell Theo "I'm just a porter, I don't know C." Theo responds with "It isn't hard, I'll have Dale (Rahn) show you how ld.so works, and you can do it." I was hoping that all of this would be forgotten by the next day, but sure enough Dale comes by. "Hey, are you Peter? Theo wanted me to show you how ld.so works" Dale spends an hour or two showing me how it works, the code structure, and how to recover in case of failure. At first I had lots of failures. Then more failures. And even more failures. Once, I broke my machine so badly I had to reinstall it. I learned a lot about how an OS works during this. But, I eventually started doing changes without it breaking. And some even did what I wanted! By the end of the hackathon I had came up with a useful patch, that was committed as part of a larger change. I was a nobody. With some encouragement, enough liquid courage to override my imposter syndrome, and a few hours of mentoring, I'm now doing big projects. The next time you're sitting at a table with someone new to your field, ask yourself: how can you encourage them? You just might make the world better. Thank you Dale. And thank you Theo. Everyone has to start somewhere. One of the things that sets the BSDs apart from certain other open source operating systems, is the welcoming community, and the tradition of mentorship. Sure, someone else in the OpenBSD project could have done the bits that Peter did, likely a lot more quickly, but then OpenBSD wouldn't have gained a new committer. So, if you are interested in working on one of the BSDs, reach out, and we'll try to help you find a mentor. What part of the system do you want to work on? *** Interview - Dan McDonald - allcoms@gmail.com (mailto:allcoms@gmail.com) (danboid) News Roundup FreeBSD 11.1-RC1 Available (https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2017-July/087340.html) 11.1-RC1 Installation images are available for: amd64, i386 powerpc, powerpc64 sparc64 armv6 BANANAPI, BEAGLEBONE, CUBIEBOARD, CUBIEBOARD2, CUBOX-HUMMINGBOARD, GUMSTIX, RPI-B, RPI2, PANDABOARD, WANDBOARD aarch64 (aka arm64), including the RPI3, Pine64, OverDrive 1000, and Cavium Server A summary of changes since BETA3 includes: Several build toolchain related fixes. A use-after-free in RPC client code has been corrected. The ntpd(8) leap-seconds file has been updated. Various VM subsystem fixes. The '_' character is now allowed in newfs(8) labels. A potential sleep while holding a mutex has been corrected in the sa(4) driver. A memory leak in an ioctl handler has been fixed in the ses(4) driver. Virtual Machine Disk Images are available for the amd64 and i386 architectures. Amazon EC2 AMI Images of FreeBSD/amd64 EC2 AMIs are available The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of amd64 and i386 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases. Systems running earlier FreeBSD releases can upgrade as follows: freebsd-update upgrade -r 11.1-RC1 During this process, freebsd-update(8) may ask the user to help by merging some configuration files or by confirming that the automatically performed merging was done correctly. freebsd-update install The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before continuing. shutdown -r now After rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to install the new userland components: freebsd-update install It is recommended to rebuild and install all applications if possible, especially if upgrading from an earlier FreeBSD release, for example, FreeBSD 10.x. Alternatively, the user can install misc/compat10x and other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted into the new userland: shutdown -r now Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files: freebsd-update install Oil changes, safety recalls, and software patches (http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2017-06-14-oil-changes-safety-recalls-software-patches.html) Every few months I get an email from my local mechanic reminding me that it's time to get my car's oil changed. I generally ignore these emails; it costs time and money to get this done (I'm sure I could do it myself, but the time it would cost is worth more than the money it would save) and I drive little enough — about 2000 km/year — that I'm not too worried about the consequences of going for a bit longer than nominally advised between oil changes. I do get oil changes done... but typically once every 8-12 months, rather than the recommended 4-6 months. From what I've seen, I don't think I'm alone in taking a somewhat lackadaisical approach to routine oil changes. On the other hand, there's another type of notification which elicits more prompt attention: Safety recalls. There are two good reasons for this: First, whether for vehicles, food, or other products, the risk of ignoring a safety recall is not merely that the product will break, but rather that the product will be actively unsafe; and second, when there's a safety recall you don't have to pay for the replacement or fix — the cost is covered by the manufacturer. I started thinking about this distinction — and more specifically the difference in user behaviour — in the aftermath of the "WannaCry" malware. While WannaCry attracted widespread attention for its "ransomware" nature, the more concerning aspect of this incident is how it propagated: By exploiting a vulnerability in SMB for which Microsoft issued patches two months earlier. As someone who works in computer security, I find this horrifying — and I was particularly concerned when I heard that the NHS was postponing surgeries because they couldn't access patient records. Think about it: If the NHS couldn't access patient records due to WannaCry, it suggests WannaCry infiltrated systems used to access patient records — meaning that someone else exploiting the same vulnerabilities could have accessed those records. The SMB subsystem in Windows was not merely broken; until patches were applied, it was actively unsafe. I imagine that most people in my industry would agree that security patches should be treated in the same vein as safety recalls — unless you're certain that you're not affected, take care of them as a matter of urgency — but it seems that far more users instead treat security patches more like oil changes: something to be taken care of when convenient... or not at all, if not convenient. It's easy to say that such users are wrong; but as an industry it's time that we think about why they are wrong rather than merely blaming them for their problems. There are a few factors which I think are major contributors to this problem. First, the number of updates: When critical patches occur frequently enough to become routine, alarm fatigue sets in and people cease to give the attention updates deserve, even if on a conscious level they still recognize the importance of applying updates. Colin also talks about his time as the FreeBSD Security Officer, and the problems in ensuring the patches are correct and do not break the system when installed He also points out the problem of systems like Windows Update, the combines optional updates, and things like its license checking tool, in the same interface that delivers important updates. Or my recent machines, that gets constant popups about how some security updates will not be delivered because my processor is too new. My bank sends me special offers in the mail but phones if my credit card usage trips fraud alarms; this is the sort of distinction in intrusiveness we should see for different types of software updates Finally, I think there is a problem with the mental model most people have of computer security. Movies portray attackers as geniuses who can break into any system in minutes; journalists routinely warn people that "nobody is safe"; and insurance companies offer insurance against "cyberattacks" in much the same way as they offer insurance against tornados. Faced with this wall of misinformation, it's not surprising that people get confused between 400 pound hackers sitting on beds and actual advanced persistent threats. Yes, if the NSA wants to break into your computer, they can probably do it — but most attackers are not the NSA, just like most burglars are not Ethan Hunt. You lock your front door, not because you think it will protect you from the most determined thieves, but because it's an easy step which dramatically reduces your risk from opportunistic attack; but users don't see applying security updates as the equivalent of locking their front door when they leave home. SKIP grep, use AWK (http://blog.jpalardy.com/posts/skip-grep-use-awk/) This is a tip from Jonathan Palardy in a series of blog posts about awk. It is especially helpful for people who write a lot of shell scripts or are using a lot of pipes with awk and grep. Over the years, I've seen many people use this pattern (filter-map): $ [data is generated] | grep something | awk '{print $2}' but it can be shortened to: $ [data is generated] | awk '/something/ {print $2}' AWK can take a regular expression (the part between the slashes) and matches that to the input. Anything that matches is being passed to the print $2 action (to print the second column). Why would I do this? I can think of 4 reasons: *it's shorter to type *it spawns one less process *awk uses modern (read “Perl”) regular expressions, by default – like grep -E *it's ready to “augment” with more awk How about matching the inverse (search for patterns that do NOT match)? But “grep -v” is OK… Many people have pointed out that “grep -v” can be done more concisely with: $ [data is generated] | awk '! /something/' See if you have such combinations of grep piped to awk and fix those in your shell scripts. It saves you one process and makes your scripts much more readable. Also, check out the other intro links on the blog if you are new to awk. *** vim Adventures (https://vim-adventures.com) This website, created by Doron Linder, will playfully teach you how to use vim. Hit any key to get started and follow the instructions on the playing field by moving the cursor around. There is also a menu in the bottom left corner to save your game. Try it out, increase your vim-fu, and learn how to use a powerful text editor more efficiently. *** Beastie Bits Slides from PkgSrcCon (http://pkgsrc.org/pkgsrcCon/2017/talks.html) OpenBSD's doas adds systemd compat shim (http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=149902196520920&w=2) Deadlock Empire -- “Each challenge below is a computer program of two or more threads. You take the role of the Scheduler - and a cunning one! Your objective is to exploit flaws in the programs to make them crash or otherwise malfunction.” (https://deadlockempire.github.io/) EuroBSDcon 2017 Travel Grant Application Now Open (https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/eurobsdcon-2017-travel-grant-application-now-open/) Registration for vBSDCon is open (http://www.vbsdcon.com/) - Registration is only $100 if you register before July 31. Discount hotel rooms arranged at the Hyatt for only $100/night while supplies last. BSD Taiwan call for papers opens, closes July 31st (https://bsdtw.org/)Windows Application Versand *** Feedback/Questions Joseph - Server Monitoring (http://dpaste.com/2AM6C2H#wrap) Paulo - Updating Jails (http://dpaste.com/1Z4FBE2#wrap) Kevin - openvpn server (http://dpaste.com/2MNM9GJ#wrap) Todd - several questions (http://dpaste.com/17BVBJ3#wrap) ***

This week, the boy wonders discuss LinkedIn's ongoing ubiquity in news and finally catching up to Facebook and Twitter on this one key offering, eavesdropping on employees and gauging morale via Slack, Hipchat and others, more end of the world chatter from people much smarter than you, Yik Yak and the death of  anonymity and another job boards aren't dead story. The Chad and Cheese Podcast is proudly sponsored by America's Job Exchange, WebClipDrop (use coupon code HIREDAILY2017) and Beyond.com/cheddar.

We have completely replaced internal emails at Asian Efficiency. No one sends emails to co-workers anymore. Think it’s impossible? It’s not. You can do it too within your team and organization. There’s one communication and collaboration tool that you need. That’s either HipChat or Slack. In this episode we discuss how we’ve replaced company emails […]

We have completely replaced internal emails at Asian Efficiency. No one sends emails to co-workers anymore. Think it’s impossible? It’s not. You can do it too within your team and organization. There’s one communication and collaboration tool that you need. That’s either HipChat or Slack. In this episode we discuss how we’ve replaced company emails […]

Slack, Hipchat, Campfire - Chat applications have taken over our modern work communication. While they have certainly reduced our need for internal email they have caused their own set of productivity distractions. How do we deal with this distractions before they completely kill our productivity? Oh, and email isn't really going anywhere so let's learn some triage techniques that some of our favorite CEO's use every day.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode #130, Neil and Eric list the ways you can use live chat to grow your business. The two men discuss that there are right and wrong ways to use live chat in order to increase your sales. Also, tune in to discover how Neil tests Eric's own live chat service without his knowing just for our benefit. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:28 – Today's topic: How to Use Live Chat to Grow Your Business 00:48 – Live chats should pop up at engaging points of interaction to work well 01:25 – Avoid using live chat to interrupt the sales flow 01:47 – Eric has tried Olark and Zopim as live chat tools in the past 02:08 – Eric found out more people are using Intercom.io for their live chats 03:17 – Neil drops what Eric doesn't know! 03:46 – Intercom.io and Drift are two most popular live chat tools 04:26 – Get in touch with people at certain engagement points 04:58 – Neil messaged Eric on his website using the live chat! 06:03 – Always put the person's name on the chat 06:25 – How Eric does his live chats 06:42 – Try to help first before pitching your sale 07:38 – “When you engage with someone 4x…they're much more likely to buy what you sell them” 08:12 – Always have someone manning the chat 24/7 08:30 – Neil gets his chat agents from Upwork 08:59 – Ask for the customer's email 09:17 – Connect Drift or Intercom to HipChat or Slack 09:39 – That's it for today's episode! 3 Key Points: Live chat that pops up in the right engagement points work. It's not just about the tools, it's also about when pop ups, pop out. Live chat is NOT for sales alone – remember to help people out. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu

In Episode #130, Neil and Eric list the ways you can use live chat to grow your business. The two men discuss that there are right and wrong ways to use live chat in order to increase your sales. Also, tune in to discover how Neil tests Eric’s own live chat service without his knowing just for our benefit. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:28 – Today’s topic: How to Use Live Chat to Grow Your Business 00:48 – Live chats should pop up at engaging points of interaction to work well 01:25 – Avoid using live chat to interrupt the sales flow 01:47 – Eric has tried Olark and Zopim as live chat tools in the past 02:08 – Eric found out more people are using Intercom.io for their live chats 03:17 – Neil drops what Eric doesn’t know! 03:46 – Intercom.io and Drift are two most popular live chat tools 04:26 – Get in touch with people at certain engagement points 04:58 – Neil messaged Eric on his website using the live chat! 06:03 – Always put the person’s name on the chat 06:25 – How Eric does his live chats 06:42 – Try to help first before pitching your sale 07:38 – “When you engage with someone 4x…they’re much more likely to buy what you sell them” 08:12 – Always have someone manning the chat 24/7 08:30 – Neil gets his chat agents from Upwork 08:59 – Ask for the customer’s email 09:17 – Connect Drift or Intercom to HipChat or Slack 09:39 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: Live chat that pops up in the right engagement points work. It’s not just about the tools, it’s also about when pop ups, pop out. Live chat is NOT for sales alone – remember to help people out. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu

Tim Prüsener ist ein 'serial entrepreneur', der in die USA ausgewandert ist um nach seinem MBA seiner Passion zu folgen, ein eigenes Unternehmen aufzubauen. Mittlerweile führt er eine erfolgreiche Online Marketing Firma und ist der Co-Founder von REX Experience, einer Firma, die Menschen und Firmen hilft in den USA Fuß zu fassen. Des Weiteren ist er der Regional Chair der German American Business Association und engagiert sich als Vorstandsmitglied bei DiscoverPB, den beliebtesten Ort San Diegos, Pacific Beach, für Touristen und Unternehmen noch erfolgreicher zu machen. Sein Interesse beruflich in den USA tätig zu werden, wurde schon früh geweckt. Als Austauschschüler verbrachte er als 17jähriger, auf Grund eines Basketballstipendiums, ein Jahr in Miami bei einer erfolgreichen Unternehmerfamilie. Später, während diverser Praktika und Auslandssemester, unter anderem in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Oxford (England), Las Palmas (Spanien) und San Diego (USA), lernte er die Vielfalt verschiedener Unternehmenskulturen kennen. Die dreijährige Tätigkeit bei einer deutschen Bank, kam ihm zusätzlich bei seinen kaufmännischen Entscheidungen zu Gute. Dein Pitch:  Wir helfen Firmen sich online richtig zu positionieren. Wir treffen uns mit unseren Kunden, um deren Business Model und Verkaufsprozess zu verstehen und Stärken und Schwächen zu analysieren. Wir nutzen diese Informationen, um eine Onlinestrategie zu entwickeln, die das Branding des Unternehmens widerspiegelt und den Verkaufsprozess unterstützt. Dein schlimmster Moment als Unternehmer?  Wir haben ohne viel Geld angefangen. Ich war an einem Punkt angelangt, an dem ich nicht wusste, wie ich in der nächsten Woche die Miete zahlen sollte. Durch mein Netzwerk habe ich einen Unternehmer kennengelernt, der meine Fähigkeiten erkannt hat und mir einen Job als Marketingmanager seiner Firma angeboten hat. Ich bin nur Teilzeit eingestiegen, um meine eigene Firma weiterführen zu können. Nach 4 Monaten bin ich wieder Vollzeit in meine Firma zurückgekehrt. Es hat ausgereicht, um meine Firma und mich, über den finanziellen Engpass zu helfen. Dadurch ist mir klar geworden, wie wichtig ein gut funktionierendes Netzwerk ist. Wie hast Du es geschafft, Deine Leidenschaft zu finden?  Ich wollte schon immer mein eigenes Ding machen und unabhängig sein. Mein Traum war es, meine eigene Firma zu haben und meine Erfahrungen anderen zu vermitteln. Meine Tätigkeit gibt mir Einblick in viele verschiedene Unternehmen. Ich habe den Job gefunden, der es mir erlaubt, anderen beim Aufbau ihrer Firma zu helfen und Strategien zu entwickeln. Vom Branding bis zum Verkauf von Produkten oder Dienstleistungen. Was war der wichtigste Schritt, der Dich zum großen Erfolg gebracht hat?  Mein Wissen und das Gelernte in die Tat umzusetzen, sich durch nichts entmutigen zu lassen und konsequent mein Ziel zu verfolgen. Es wird immer Menschen geben, die dir glaubhaft machen wollen, dass es einen einfacheren und sichereren Weg gibt. Wenn du von deiner Sache fest überzeugt bist, dann tu es einfach, egal was andere sagen und lasse dich nicht von deinem Ziel abbringen. Deine Lieblings-Internet-Ressource?  HipChat! Wir arbeiten viel im Team. Designer, PR Berater, Webentwickler, SEO Experte und Projektmanager müssen immer zusammen arbeiten und Prozesse abstimmen. Daher arbeiten wir alle in einem Großraumbüro. Manchmal kommen noch Foto- und Videographen dazu und da kann es schon mal lauter werden. Wir haben ein Chatprogramm eingeführt, um den Tonpegel zu senken. Selbst wenn mir jemand gegenüber sitzt, wird nur via Chat kommuniziert. Zusätzlicher Vorteil: Ich werde nicht in meinem Workflow unterbrochen und kann auch später antworten. Außerdem können wir so einfach kleine Datensätze hin und her schicken. Trello Grundsätzlich habe ich noch keine Projektmanagement Plattform oder Software gefunden, die mich vollends überzeugt hat. Aber Trello gibt die Möglichkeit, auf einfache Art und Weise, Aufgaben zu verteilen. Link zur Ressource:  https://www.hipchat.com/ https://trello.com/ Websiten überprüfen: https://www.semrush.com/   Buchempfehlung:  The Path to Love, Deepak Chopra https://www.amazon.com/Path-Love-Deepak-Chopra/dp/B007CK77VG/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=   Kontaktdaten des Interviewpartners:  e. tim@iCatch-Marketing.com e. tim@rexexperience.com w. www.iCatch-Marketing.com w. www.rexexperience.com t. 001 (619) 402-5899 iCatch Marketing LLC 1135 Garnet Ave, Suite 13 San Diego, CA 92109 USA +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++   Mehr Freiheit, mehr Geld und mehr Spaß mit DEINEM eigenen Podcast. Erfahre jetzt, warum es auch für Dich Sinn macht, Deinen eigenen Podcast zu starten. Jetzt hier zum kostenlosen Podcast-Workshop anmelden: Podcastkurs.com   +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On this week’s episode, Brian and Lauren discuss their favorite moments and guests that have appeared on the show during Season One of StudioPress FM. In this 25-minute episode Brian Gardner and Lauren Mancke discuss: Their favorite episodes of Season One The most downloaded shows Most memorable guests and topics What they’re looking forward to in Season Two Listen to StudioPress FM below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Follow Brian on Twitter Follow Lauren on Twitter The Transcript The Season One Recap of StudioPress FM Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform. Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, Brian and I discuss our favorite moments of Season One of StudioPress FM. Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner, founder of StudioPress. Today, on this very last season episode for Season One, I am joined, as usual, with Lauren Mancke, vice president of StudioPress, mom of one, soon to be three. Looking forward to just wrapping up Season One. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. Thank you for joining us again this week. We’re closing out Season One and we will be doing this week a little different. We have no guests. It’s just Brian and I talking about some of our favorite moments on the podcast so far. Brian Gardner: Typically we like to go somewhat scripted, where we prepare questions for those that we’re talking to, but Lauren and I, this morning, we’re going to just completely wing it. We have just some general idea of what we want to talk about for this closing episode. It won’t be long. It’s hard to believe it’s been 16 episodes already. I know that for you it might feel a little bit longer because you started editing the first handful of them or first half of them and then we turned that over because you have more important things to be doing, but can you believe, 16 already? Lauren Mancke: No. It’s really flown by. Brian Gardner: I remember when I did No Sidebar, it seemed like it took just forever to edit the shows. I wasn’t structured when I set it up and it felt like it was hard to find ideas and guests and things like that. I’m almost forcing us to close the season down because we have a lot of stuff we have to do before the end of the year, but I don’t want to, because I’ve been having so much fun. It’s been great talking to the members of the community. When I sit down and try to think of who do we want to talk to next or what series we want to have, I’m loaded with all of this, these ideas, these people. There are so many people. I want to do two episodes a week, which of course isn’t realistic. There’s just so many people to talk to and so many topics to cover. For me, it’s been fun so far. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. We’ve already got some great people lined up for next season, so it’ll be good to take a little bit of time off and get that all organized and lined up for next January. Brian Gardner: I almost feel like we have a legit show here, where we actually follow a format and we have a good audience. We get at least a few thousand listens on every show, if not more. I don’t know. I feel really good about what we’ve done. It’s our first full-time gig together, doing the podcast thing. What do you think so far? Have you felt like this has been a successful journey? Lauren Mancke: Yeah. I’ve really been happy with who we’ve gotten a chance to talk to and hearing everyone’s story. It’s really cool how so many people have that same sort of, they were doing something else and they found WordPress and then they built this whole thing. It’s great to hear everyone’s different take on that journey. Brian Gardner: The good thing about WordPress and the cool fascinating thing I find is that even though we have generally that same story, we all come from just much different backgrounds. We also are in the middle of just different types of expertise, where some people come in as designers, some people come in as marketers, some people come in with a technical or programming background. You’ve got a designer who was sitting at a bored day job and then you’ve got like a technical guy who was working for the man and wanted to do his own thing. There are so many different levels of skillset and just expertise that’s being represented within the WordPress space. It’s fun to watch just how many people from how many different avenues of life are coming together in this whole open source project. Lauren Mancke: For sure. So many different types of personalities, too. It’s not just the same type of person. You’d think all these WordPress people would be maybe slightly nerdy or whatever, but it’s not true at all. It’s so many different types of people, and they’re all really cool. Brian Gardner: Yeah. Even within the short spurt we did here at the end with the designers, even the designers that we talked to like Bill Kenney at Focus Lab and Jason Schullermega and Megan Gray, even within just one segment of that audience, you’ve got people with different personalities and flavors. Bill works and owns a creative agency and Megan’s by herself and Jason’s doing a startup. Yes, there’s a lot of resonating stories, but even within a certain sub-niche of the WordPress designer ecosystem, there’s just so many types of different people represented. That wasn’t boring because everyone brought something unique to the conversation. Hopefully, designers and people who don’t design and do other things even were able to pick up something from that as well. Lauren Mancke: In WordPress, I think, when you mentioned the guests specifically, it makes me remember all the different things that make each one of those people unique. You got Bill, who is very, very good at being efficient and I love that about him. He has so many ways of doing that and that’s his focus. He can tell other people about that. Then you got Jason, who is; he’s just a family guy. That’s his passion and you can see that with everything he does and everything he talks about. Those are just fun and unique things that everyone who works on WordPress, they can be their own person and tailor their job and their company around those skillsets that they have. The Most Downloaded Shows Brian Gardner: You know one of the things I think for me that I found for me interesting as a metrics guy and somebody who looks into that kind of thing? There were certain episodes that I thought would have been more popular than others and vice versa. When I would go in and see the analytics and the number of downloads and so on for each one, there were a few that surprised me where I was like, “Okay, this one’s probably not going to do as well, maybe because of the audience. It isn’t such a widespread thing or an ‘interesting topic.'” Then those were the ones that got the most distribution and those that were shared the most. It’s funny how you can draw up a game plan. Nine times out of 10, things go the way you want, but then once in a while you get that one where I’m like, “Wow. That was the one I almost didn’t even suggest doing and it was the one that was in the top three or whatnot of most listened to shows.” That just goes to show, you never know. Lauren Mancke: What were some of the more popular shows that we had this season? Brian Gardner: You’re going to make me look that up, so I’m going to make you talk while I go look that up. Lauren Mancke: You know, we can edit this, so we can break for a second. Brian Gardner: I know. All right, so I was able to pull up the analytics. Sadly enough, three of the bottom four episodes were the first three, which were my story, your story, and the redesign of StudioPress. I don’t know if that’s an indicator of the fact that it was new, and not as many ears were on the show, or if people were just don’t find that interesting. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. Let’s go with the first. Brian Gardner: I’m going to go with that one. Top to bottom, I’m just going to spitball these out here quickly. A Beginner’s Guide to SEO That Works is the number one show. We did that with Rebecca Gill at Web Savvy. I had a feeling that that one … SEO is a topic that a lot of people want to talk about. Lauren Mancke: I thought that was a very informative episode. Lots of good nuggets on that one. Brian Gardner: Yeah. I actually took the show notes to that and the transcript, and wrote up my own little iteration of that. I think I talked about this back then, that I was going to try that a couple of times with these and try to use that from a curation standpoint, a re-purposing content, and so I pulled some of the best things that Rebecca had to say and wrote a blog post about that, and tried to rank for, I think it was a Beginner’s Guide to SEO or something like that. I think last time I checked, that was on page three of Google, so it kind of sort of working. Yeah, there was definitely a lot of stuff that came out of that that was good. Number two, and this does not surprise me just because I know that Matt and some of the folks at Automattic were helping with the distribution of this, and that was the show we did, How and Why It’s Okay to Make Money with WordPress, which of course we just talked about just all of the different types of people within WordPress, so that makes sense because that would appeal to everybody. The next one was How to Scale a Freelance Business. That, I believe, was the one that we did with Bill Erickson. Then How to Build an Online Education Business, now this is the one I was referring to earlier that I didn’t think was going to strike a chord as much, just because it seemed a little bit more of kind of a sliver segment specific to doing an online education because that’s not what we’re all in the deal here for. We did that with Tonya Mork. That was a good one. Great information. She’s got a ton of knowledge. She’s worked 20, 30 years in her field, so she has a ton of expertise that she brings to the table, so that was one a little bit surprising. The How to Sustain a Profitable Creative Agency came next. The Importance of Entrepreneurial Mental Health with Cory Miller. That was probably my favorite episode that we recorded just because it kind of dove a little bit more into just the personal touchy-feely stuff, which I’m a huge fan of. Again, a lot of these were within 1% to 2% of downloads, so it’s not like certain episodes crushed other episodes, but that’s a quick recap. Then of course you and I, and our whole stories, are down there at the bottom, pulling up the caboose. Lauren Mancke: Nobody cares about us. I’m just kidding. Brian Gardner: Which is why we have guests on the show. Lauren Mancke: Yes, exactly. Brian Gardner: Because they’re the ones people will want to listen to. Their Favorite Episodes of Season One Lauren Mancke: I think the Cory Miller episode was very good as far as the content. I think all three of us were tearing up on that one. Brian Gardner: Yeah. I wish I would have seen Cory’s talk at WordCamp Denver just because, and I’m sure it’s on WordPress.tv, but that is something that I think without a doubt every single person who listens to the show struggles with in some regard. Some better than others. I’ve had my seasons of even within the last six years, after we merged the company, of really struggling, especially early on. This was before we brought in the mid-level management and brought in people like you, who came in and really helped do a lot of the stuff that I do. I remember, I think it was within the first year, we came together as partners in Boulder. I had a meltdown and I was like, “Look, guys, I’m just completely fried.” I remember Brian Clark said to me … He says, “Just take the next month and a half off. Do nothing.” I was like, “What?” Like, “No, I m a creative. I can’t do nothing.” It’s one of those things where it creeps in and life gets in the way and clients get in the way. Hard work and stuff like that do pay off, but the whole entrepreneurial mental health thing is something that I think far too many people don’t discuss or don’t have an … It doesn’t even have to be talked about across the internet via a podcast. You got to have a couple of people in your life who even if it’s a Skype call … I know Cory a lot of times has tweeted things out saying, “Hey, I just got a message from a friend and it meant the world.” Just things off radar, offline. Just check in with the people, whether they are people who you work for, who work for you, or people like Jason, who are just peers within the community. That stuff matters, so I’m glad we had a chance to talk about that. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. I think when you’re working on the internet, it’s easy to get lost in that. You’re connected to everyone, but you’re also connected to no one if you’re just in your own little bubble and you’re not really able to sit down and talk with people face to face or, like you said, even on a Skype chat or something like that, so it’s an important issue. Brian Gardner: All right, so let’s talk about some of the other episodes. I’m just going to look down and just see. I know we talked, as I mentioned earlier, Brian and Jennifer, husband and wife team. They own their own agency and we talked a lot about … You weren’t on that episode because I think you had mom duty that day, but that was a good episode because it talked about work and family balance, which is in a way relevant to the mental health thing, where as creatives and those who do stuff online, we have access to the internet 24/7, and so it is difficult at times to balance work and home life. I struggle with it sometimes. There are times where I literally have to just shut my laptop and tell Shelly, “Do not let me open this because I need to go play catch with Zach because that’s important, because I don’t want him growing up thinking the computer is more important than him and so on.” For you even, you’re a mom and have two more on the way, and all of that. I mean, what’s that going to look like for you next year? Lauren Mancke: Well, I thought that episode would have been good for me to be on because I ran a creative agency with my husband, so I know a little bit about that. I even notice my son isn’t even two and a half yet and he’s already … He’ll come in and sit at my desk and say, “I’m working. I got to get on a conference call.” He picks up. He puts on the headphones and he pretends that he’s on a conference call. I’m like, “I don’t know that I want that to be my legacy with my son.” So spending more time with family is definitely a priority. Brian Gardner: Yeah. Going back to Jason and the episode that we had with Tim, that was the one thing, over the last few years, of things that I see online that I get envious about, is the ability that some people have to do that and make that so important. By all means, I don’t shun my family. Shelly is at home all day long, so we get to talk to each other. I’m home at 3:00 o’clock when Zach comes home, so we do have our time together, but Jason, of anybody I’ve ever seen online, puts more importance on his family, his wife, especially his daughter. I can’t imagine the bond that they’re going to have throughout their life because of how much importance he placed on the balance of work versus time with them. It’s fun and sometimes, like I said, I get envious of the fact that people are able to do that, maybe not so much as I wish I could, but yeah, it’s important too to balance that out because relationships, marriages, mother-daughters, father-sons, those types of things, in my eyes, big picture, matter way more than what we do for our jobs. Anyway, that’s the kind of thing that I think just everybody needs to hear, that it is important to balance work and life. All right, so another one of my favorite episodes was when we had Shay Bocks on and talked about food blogging. That also is something that I thought would have been a little bit more less heard because of the fact that it was very niche-specific. I think it resonated with a lot of people because people took things that she said out of the food blogging discussion we were having and those are the things that could have been easily applied to any other niches. So I think even thought it was a food blogging episode, a lot of the stuff that Shay talked about, things that we discussed, could have certainly been used across the sphere. Food blogging to me is interesting because it’s one of the … It sort of came out after real estate, which is sort of not really been that big a thing anymore, but the food blogging industry has exploded. You know, Will, your husband likes to cook and you like to take photography and you’ve done a couple of food-oriented themes on StudioPress. I can’t believe how popular that still is and how many people still … Foodie has regained number one status on theme sales on StudioPress. With the exception of two, maybe three months over the last almost two and a half years now, it’s been number one every single month. Shay and I talk probably at least once a month just about stuff in general and she’s always like, “I’m waiting for the ship to sink.” I’m like, “Don’t.” I’m like, “Embrace the fact that …” Shay has done something of a big lesson for all of us. If you do something that works, instead of trying to replicate that somewhere else, really hone in on that. She’s really crafted her business around the idea of food blogging and she re-branded her company, called Feast Design Company. How more relevant of a brand name than to work within the niche? That is also something I think has been fascinating for me to see, is people within our community really identify where they belong and then really attack at that point. Lauren Mancke: Shay is also just a great person. It’s really great to see her succeed and all of her success. She’s just a wonderful, wonderful human being. I think too, also, food blogging, people … We’ve talked about focus on family. I mean, that’s a trend. People are spending more time, I think, focused on their family and eating and community and all of that, so I don’t see food blogging going anywhere any time soon. Brian Gardner: Yeah. People always eat. There’s always going to be the internet and the will to make money. For people, not so much Shay, but the people who use Shay’s themes per se, that’s the dream, right? Living the dream, we talked about that with Jason, is to take your passion, something … In this case it’s something that you do at home, so you could literally be hanging out with your kids and working at the same time, and even having them help. I recently redesigned a website called Simple as That Blog with Rebecca Cooper. She’s got to a really, really big website. She’s got four kids and she’s a great photographer. She does a lot of her DIY craft and recipe type of things with her kids. She uses them as props. They get dressed up and they do things. For her, it’s a really creative way to do that work-family balance thing because she includes her kids with her work, and so therefore there’s no … I don’t know. Just disconnect between the two, and so I think food blogging is just another example of where that can be done. All right, so the episode that I actually wasn’t sure we would be able to do, mainly because I know Matt sometimes is a little bit slow on email as he should be … I’m sure he gets thousands of emails a day and from probably people way more important than me. I reached out to Matt Mullenweg to talk about WordPress and making money. He wrote back within like a day or two. I was very surprised and very pleased that he was very open to talking to us about that. It was a great episode. We talked almost an hour, I think, on that one, and probably could have kept going. The premise of that show was very obviously how to make and that it’s okay to make money with WordPress open source community. We did a couple of episodes on that. Also I remember we did one with Carrie Dils. With Matt, we talked about just the WordPress ecosystem and different ways that we can make money with WordPress, that it’s okay to make money with WordPress, and the fact that he even endorses the fact that it’s okay to make money with WordPress because I think at this point, the community as a whole has identified that WordPress is a business in a sense. Even though there’s a free version of it, even though it’s an open source piece of software, there’s a full blown ecosystem, as we talked at the beginning of the show, just all the different ways that people use WordPress and can offer WordPress as a business, either as a service or like what we do with commoditized type things with selling themes and plug-ins and so on. It was fun to talk to the guy, right? The guy who founded all of it. I was a little bit star struck, as I always am every time I talk to him. It’s a little bit difficult to … I don’t know. Feel like we were pulling our weight in that conversation, but what did you think about that show? Lauren Mancke: Oh, we’re totally BFFs now, so it’s all good. Brian Gardner: You guys on HipChat or Slack together? You just ping each other with ideas and whatnot. I like to think of Matt as like the mini Richard Branson because he’s always … At this point in his life, he’s probably got tons of money and he’s out travelling around. He’s out in Bali or in Antarctica. I forget that he’s probably 30-something now or late 20s or whatever, but to me he’s always going to be a kid. I don’t know. The whole thing is a great story. Just imagine how many people, their lives have been changed by what he’s done. Mine, yours, everybody who listens to the show, everyone in our company. It’s kind of crazy if you think about that. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. I think he’s around my age, but yeah, he’s definitely prolific and I too am a little envious of his schedule. He gets to go everywhere and do all sorts of fun, cool things. Brian Gardner: Again, I think that goes back to the point of, if you have some crazy idea, sometimes you just need to execute it. Like, what if he never decided to fork b2 back in the day. We all have that question in our life. What if I never left my job or what if I never asked people if they would buy a WordPress theme or any of that stuff? I think the moral of the story here is that sometimes you do need to take that risk and just do that thing, as George Costanza did in Seinfeld back in the day. Do the opposite, right? Because if what you’re doing isn’t working, maybe the opposite will. That was a great episode, by the way. Lauren Mancke: I always get tuna on toast. Brian Gardner: Ah, there you go. Seinfeld, one of the best shows ever, if not the best show ever. What They re Looking Forward to in Season Two Brian Gardner: All right, so moving forward, we are going to take break here. We ran that through our guy in charge of the podcast network and said, “Hey, we’ve got a lot of things we’re working on.” We will not be discussing any of those here on the show because they’re just fun, internal projects that will make a big splash and a big difference next year to everyone listening to the show. What are the types of things you want to do as we probably open back up in January of next year, after the holidays? Who are the types of people we want to have? Anything specific you want to see happen? Lauren Mancke: Well, I know we have Dan from Dribbble lined up, Dan Cederholm. I’m excited about that one. He actually came up to the Northbound office a few years ago when ConvergeSE was going on. That’s a conference in Columbia, where I live. It was great to meet him and Rich, and spend time with him. It’ll be fun to have him on the show. Brian Gardner: Now one of the things I want to do and throw out there is, we would love to hear from you guys, those who are listening to the show. At the bottom of the show notes, we’re going to put mine and Lauren’s Twitter handle. If you have any ideas or suggestions or people, if you want to nominate people, we are definitely open to hearing from the community. I know you and I are both creatives and designers, and so we err a little bit more on the side of that, in terms of show. I do want to make sure that we don’t forget our nerdy friends who are developers and programmers, and bring those types of people in as well, and talk to them because I’m sure they have a ton of wisdom to share with our audience. I’m trying to think of who else I would want to have on the show. I know that we have a little Google doc where we keep track. I want to get outside a little bit of just the general WordPress space and just find some really big entrepreneur type people who happen to use WordPress, but it’s not their business. I know people like Paul Jarvis is a guy that I want to bring on the show, possibly Jeff Goins. From my perspective, those are a few of the people that I plan to hit up. Maybe we’ll see if we can get a guy like Chris Brogan on just to talk some sense into us all and whatnot. We’ll have to think about that over the coming weeks, who else we want to have on the show. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. We’d love to hear from the audience, of suggestions. That’s a great idea, Brian. Brian Gardner: Hit us up on Twitter, @laurenmancke or @bgardner. We’ll put the link in the show notes. Even if you don’t even have a suggestion for the show and just want to say, “Hi. Thanks for putting together the podcast,” we would love to hear some of that feedback as well, good or bad. Let us know. We will wrap the show up. This is our 17th episode, I believe, which still amazes me. Sorry for those who really like the show and want to hear next week. We won’t be here because that will be Thanksgiving week. Actually, you know what? This will air the day before Thanksgiving. Nonetheless, people will be out shopping. No one wants to listen to us anyway. December is really a time for that family and stuff that we talked about. We will be back in January of 2017 with Season Two of StudioPress FM. On behalf of Lauren and I and all of us within our company who touch the StudioPress brand, we thank you very much for your support as customers, as listeners and those who spread the gospel of StudioPress. Thank you very much and we will talk to you next year.

We are lost without our tools. In this episode, we share the tools and applications we can’t live without. We discuss what development environments we use and plugins we find useful. Items mentioned in the episode: MacOS, Windows, Ubuntu, .NET, C#, Sublime Text, Sublime Text dev channel (nightly/monthly builds), Emacs, Atom, Vim, Eclipse, Visual Code, TextMate, Notepad++, Dreamweaver, iTerm, Apple Time Machine backup, Kaleidoscope, 1Password, Dropbox, Trello, Chrome, Firefox, LastPass, Safari, Homebrew, Node JS, nvm, Browser Stack, Alfred, Bartender, Charles Proxy, Screeny, Skitch, Evernote, Eclipse, Eslint, Sublime DocBlockr, Emmet, GitGutter (Sublime), GitHubinator (Sublime), NERD tree (Vim), Less, Sass, Firefox Nightly, JIRA, Slack, HipChat, Yammer, Workplace by Facebook, Microsoft Teams, LG 34 inch curved monitor, Apple Watch, Treadmill Desk, Fitbit Panelists: Ryan Burgess - @burgessdryan Jem Young - @JemYoung Brian Holt - @holtbt Mars Jullian - @marsjosephine Picks: Ryan Burgess - Reptar Ryan Burgess - Chance Jem Young - H.264 is magic Jem Young - We Rate Dogs Brian Holt - Jest Brian Holt - The Naked and Famous - Simple Forms Mars Jullian - Bose ear buds Mars Jullian - React Devtools Mars Jullian - Jolene - collaboration with Dolly Parton and Pentatonix

Chat bots are your newest co-worker. Slack, HipChat, and other chat clients allow developers and other team members to communicate more dynamically than the limits of email. Companies have started to add bots to their chat rooms. These bots can give you technical information, restart a server, or notify you that a build has finished. The post ChatOps with Jason Hand appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Today I'm joined by a man who failed at business through most of his career running a digital marketing agency and nearly went out of business in 2012. But now he's a TEDx speaker, has written over 200 articles for publications like TechCrunch, Forbes, Mashable, Time, and Inc, his agency has grown to 25 staff, and he's the author of the new book Chief Marketing Officers at Work. Welcome to DMR, Josh Steimle. [You can find Josh at JoshSteimle.com] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rLyTAzQOpM On this episode of Digital Marketing Radio we discuss growing a digital marketing agency from China with topics including: How did you turn it all around? Why China? And are all your staff based in China? How has your business benefited from moving to China? And what have you found most difficult about doing business in China? Where are most of your clients based? So from your perspective, what does it take to run a successful digital marketing agency today? What makes a successful client/agency relationship? What’s been your biggest learning experience in growing your agency? How do you grow an agency quickly? What prevents growth? If you were to advise someone who was thinking of starting their own agency, what are the essentials to get right to begin with? [Tweet ""Empathy trumps just about anything else you can do when it comes to marketing." @joshsteimle"] Software I couldn't live without What software do you currently use in your business that if someone took away from you, it would significantly impact your marketing success? Google Docs [Online document creation and sharing] What software don't you use, but you've heard good things about, and you've intended to try at some point in the near future? HipChat [Team group chat] My number 1 takeaway What's the single most important step from our discussion that our listeners need to take away and implement in their businesses? It's empathy I think. I recently had the opportunity to interview 30 CMOs from huge corperations - Paypal, Spotify, GE. And one things that came through to me from all these interviews that I did was these people really understand their customer. And in marketing if you 'get' your customer - you understand what motivates them, where they're coming from, why they buy, then you'll get all the right 'tactics'. You'll figure out how to connect with them, how to sell to them. So I think that empathy trumps just about anything else you can do when it comes to marketing.

I det här avsnittet av Mobilpodden pratar Mats och Micke om Facebooks nya tjänst Workplace. Det är ett socialt nätverk för företag. Tjänsten lanseras nu efter 10 år internt filande på facebook och mer än ett års betatestande av företag i olika storlekar. Vi pratar om utmaningar med tjänster av den här typen och hur konkurrensen ser ut. Slack, Hipchat och Microsoft är de främsta utmanarna om hur vi konverserar med varandra på jobbet.   Lyssna, dela och kommentera gärtna på twitter @mobilpodden

Director of Operations Colleen Carroll reveals some of her favorite collaboration tools in this week’s episode of the Secret Sauce. TRANSCRIPT Allison Manley [AM]: Hello, and welcome to the Secret Sauce, brought to you by Palantir.net. This is a short podcast in which we offer a quick tip on some small thing you can do to help your business run better. I’m Allison Manley, Sales and Marketing Manager at Palantir, and today’s advice comes from our Director of Operations Colleen Carroll, who talks about how the right collaboration tools can make everyone’s workday go a whole lot smoother. Colleen Carroll [CC]: Hi, my name is Colleen, and I’m here today to talk about collaboration tools that we use here at Palantir. We use many different tools here at Palantir, but the ones that I’m going to be focusing on the most are the ones that are basic to being a Palantiri — the tools that we use to communicate and collaborate effectively as a remote-first culture. Some of the tools that are pretty essential to being a Palantiri are really the Google suite. And by that I mean that we use email, through Gmail of course. And that works, that allows us to communicate with each other. But it’s really all the other things that come with the Google apps domain. We use Google Docs for everything. We don’t have Microsoft Office or anything really installed on the computer. We rely on the cloud, we rely on Google Docs in the cloud, to hop in a document together, to draft a note together, to put draft agendas together or to take minutes together. We also use Google spreadsheets and Google presentations. If we can’t get in a document and look at it together, it’s almost as though we’re missing a critical function. We’ve been using the Google suite for many years now. One of the other critical parts of the Google suite that we use is Hangouts. We use that for lightweight video conversations. Because we’re not all here in person sometimes, it’s important that everyone who’s on a meeting be able to see each other, and to be able to talk at balanced and equal volume so that everyone can hear each other. And to that end we also require that people have really good headsets and microphones. So much so that if you’re on a Hangout with a Palantiri, they will correct you and stop the meeting to help you tweak your audio settings so that they can hear you well. Because we have such an inclusive culture here, we want to make sure that everybody has an equal place in the conversation. And you can do that with Google Hangouts by seeing every person and hearing them. One of the other nice things about Google Hangouts and, really, many of the video chat tools now, is that it allows you to share your screen. So it’s another way to collaborate. Let’s get right to it, what are you seeing, let me see that, oh, I know what that means. It allows us to really have a much more informed conversation. Another Google tool that is crucial to our day-to-day is Google Calendars. Because everybody has a Google account, they can easily subscribe to any other Palantir team member’s [Google] Calendar. They can see where they’re at, they can schedule a meeting, they can ask them if they can move a meeting. It makes it really easy to get things scheduled, because we aren’t all here in person and can’t stop by somebody’s desk. By providing that information on demand, it makes it easier to collaborate. The last Google-related tool that I think really empowers the sharing of information and greater ability to collaborate is the Google Drive. Obviously when you use a Google Doc, a Google spreadsheet, a Google presentation, it puts it right up into the Google Drive. But the Google Drive is only as successful as it is organized. And so one of the things that we’ve done is to create a Palantir shared folder, and tried really hard to organize it so that people can easily find things. Again, that on-demand nature is important to our culture because — I don’t always know what people need and at what point in time. I can certainly send an email communication saying, here’s that presentation I made, or, here’s that 360-degree review form. But people don’t always need it right then and there. However, if I have a folder structure, you can kind of consider it like a library that’s easily browsable and accessible, they may find, oh, there’s that 360-degree form, or, look, inside there is that presentation that’s a quick-start guide on how I can solicit 360-degree reviews from my peers. So we try to organize and present information in a way that’s easily accessible and shareable, and in a format that’s easy to collaborate. So to use the 360-degree form again, sometimes people on the team want to create a 360-degree review, but they may want some help drafting questions — creating questions that give them the right amount of constructive feedback. So if they create a document on the Google Drive, they can share it with me and I can coach them through maybe some different wording, help them redefine their goals. It’s not only them being able to create the form themselves, but them being able to share it with me very easily allows for a stronger collaboration and a more effective outcome. One of the last tools that we use, really for communication and collaboration but most for communication, is HipChat. It is essentially our water cooler. It’s our primary mode of having conversations with each other. Inside of HipChat we organize conversations into different rooms. We have a general Palantir room that’s usually the laughter and giggles room, where we share images and videos with each other, and talk about day-to-day things. But then we have more topic-based rooms like a sales room or a design room or a coders’ lounge. We have a social room, we have a spoilers room for people who are all watching the same television shows, and other things that help build our unique culture here. We have HipChat set up so that all things are available to all Palantiri, and again that helps spur conversations that are important to the team and are share those with other members of the team, and aren’t pushed from the top down. They’re not structured in any particular way. At Palantir, the ability to collaborate virtually is key, especially as a virtual team. We wouldn’t be able to do that without these tools, without the Google suite, using Docs, presentations, Hangouts, Calendars, the Google Drive and the shared folders. There are much more tools within the production team as well that help facilitate peer programming, and I think you should stay tuned for a further podcast to hear more about those tools. Thanks! AM: Thanks Colleen. That’s the end of this week’s Secret Sauce. For more great tips, please check out our website at Palantir.net. You can also follow us on twitter at @palantir. Enjoy your day!

  Slack sucks, and Greg can rewrite it in a day. Self hosted slack? Hipchat from Atlasssian Matter Most Electron based Apps - scourge of memory ASCIIDOCTOR is based on Ruby, and in my project which uses it I get weird JRuby/Gems problems - ONLY under jenkins on linux. Pupper + Ruby + Gems / Chef ^ Clojure = Devops. Feedback from last show: Just use Docker for rebuilding images ( thats for the image, not the source IN the image tho ) Programmable builds done right with Kobalt from Cedric Beust. Last Week Tonight: Journalism(youtube) If programming if math - we all fail. JVM Language Summit 2016 Videos Jigsaw - it’ll be a pain ResultSet is actually in JavaSE, not EE, and is only an interface. Jigsaw moves this to the java.sql module. OSGi Split Packages - a nitemare Value Types - worthwhile? Maps turning null for both absent/empty value, but return Optional Jenkins Hate? Greg dislikes Jira - like really dislikes Jira. Silicon Valley - Scrum(youtube) Cube Drone - Scrum (youtube)

One of our favorite things about #thePawdcast is hearing what makes people tick, what they are most passionate about, why they do what they do. The answer for Dan Hanrahan is that the art behind email signatures and how to utilize them to generate more revenue is what makes him tick, what keeps him up at night, what has helped him create the company Sigstr that is growing consistently, at an exponential rate, raising investor capital and generating millions for their customers around the globe. We dive deep into this episode about the science behind a great email signature, the challenges, obstacles, and accomplishments that Dan has faced starting and growing Sigstr. We discuss a lot about managing teams, where email signatures will go especially in a marketplace being modified with newcomers such as Slack and Hipchat alternatives to email, and more. This is surely one episode of #thePawdcast that you will not want to miss! Sigstr's Website: www.sigstr.com Sigstr's Twitter: www.twitter.com/sigstrapp Dan Hanrahan's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/danhanrahan Listen on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-pawdcast/id1071470844?mt=2 Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/pawdcast/episode-020-dan-hanrahan-sigstr Watch on Blab: https://blab.im/chop-dawg-thepawdcast-with-dan-hanrahan-at-sigstr Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/V68GKtWfIYA About #thePawdcast — Discussing all things entrepreneurship, startups, creativity, businesses, innovations, self-awareness and everything in-between. Hosted by Joshua Davidson, Eddie Contento, and Daniel DiGangi. Brought to you by ChopDawg.com.

T-Mobile had a heck of week with streaming and special offer issues. Is Google somehow upsetting manufacturing partners? Why are companies threatening to leave Android? We're wrapping up our OnePlus 3 coverage, and you can get a sneak peek of our full review. Lastly, we just can't seem to shake all of these conflicting iPhone 7 rumors. These stories and we'll be tackling your questions and comments. Make sure you're charged and ready for episode 206 of the Pocketnow Weekly! Watch the video broadcast from 2:00pm Eastern on June 23rd (click here for your local time), or check out the high-quality audio version right here. And don't forget to shoot your listener mail to podcast [AT] pocketnow [DOT] com for a shot at getting your question read aloud on the air! Pocketnow Weekly 206 Recording Date June 23, 2016 Host Juan Bagnell Producer Jules Wang Sponsor Today's episode of the Pocketnow Weekly podcast is made possible by: Atlassian produces collaboration software for teams. From startup to enterprise, Atlassian offers solutions for tracking complex tasks with JIRA management software. Atlassian Confluence provides a platform for creating content and sharing assets between team members. While creating, collaborators can discuss in real time through instant message or video conferencing on HipChat. Lastly, BitBucket provides a powerful platform to test, manage, and review code in real time. See how your team might benefit from the platform and collaboration tools Atlassian has to offer. See how Jira, Confluence, HipChat, and Bitbucket give your team everything you need to organize, discuss, and complete shared work. You can find more information at www.atlassian.com. The Rundown 6:57 T-Mobile's strugglin' with streaming and special offers 22:39 Is Google too good for manufacturers or is it vice versa? 40:36 From the owner of OPPO and vivo comes imoo — an educational smartphone brand 46:13 We just can't put this stupid iPhone 7 headphone jack thing to bed... 55:53 In-depth: five of the biggest acquisitions in mobile tech 1:09:29 Wrapping up our OnePlus 3 coverage with some review spoilers... 1:40:16 The rifle emoji and how it was not meant to be in Unicode 9.0 Listener Mail (01:44:22) Listener questions this week from Daniel, Haniko, and Cory. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We've been using the iOS 10 and Apple Watch OS 3 developer preview BETAs for almost a week. How is Apple stacking up to it Android competition? Bluetooth 5 is coming with more bandwidth and a focus on "Internet of Things". And, Net neutrality is defended again, this time in the courts. Will companies start accepting it now as the law of the land? These stories and we'll be tackling your questions and comments. Make sure you're charged and ready for episode 205 of the Pocketnow Weekly! Watch the video broadcast from 2:00pm Eastern on June 17th (click here for your local time), or check out the high-quality audio version right here. And don't forget to shoot your listener mail to podcast [AT] pocketnow [DOT] com for a shot at getting your question read aloud on the air! Pocketnow Weekly 205 Recording Date June 17, 2016 Host Juan Bagnell Producer Jules Wang Guest Enobong Etteh (Booredatwork) Sponsor Today's episode of the Pocketnow Weekly podcast is made possible by: Atlassian produces collaboration software for teams. From startup to enterprise, Atlassian offers solutions for tracking complex tasks with JIRA management software. Atlassian Confluence provides a platform for creating content and sharing assets between team members. While creating, collaborators can discuss in real time through instant message or video conferencing on HipChat. Lastly, BitBucket provides a powerful platform to test, manage, and review code in real time. See how your team might benefit from the platform and collaboration tools Atlassian has to offer. See how Jira, Confluence, HipChat, and Bitbucket give your team everything you need to organize, discuss, and complete shared work. You can find more information at www.atlassian.com. The Rundown 6:21 Apple fights patent suit and sales ban in China 17:26 OnePlus 3 performance not "flagship killing" — at least out of the box 26:23 Bluetooth 5 is coming to improve your IoT experience 40:01 More and more LG X series of phones announced 54:44 Is iOS 10 becoming more and more like Android? 1:07:22 Apple Watch OS 3 impressions 1:14:19 Net neutrality defended again in the courts Listener Mail (01:21:13) Listener questions this week from Y4M1, Guido, and Cory. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lenovo TechWorld rocked our socks! Let's chat about our first experiences with the Moto Z and Z Force. What is Project Tango, and what is it doing in the Phab 2 Pro? And what might Apple have in store for us at WWDC this year? Make sure you're charged and ready for episode 204 of the Pocketnow Weekly! Watch the video broadcast from 2:00pm Eastern on June 10th (click here for your local time), or check out the high-quality audio version here. And don't forget to shoot your listener mail to podcast [AT] pocketnow [DOT] com for a shot at getting your question read aloud on the air! Pocketnow Weekly 204 Recording Date June 10, 2016 Hosts Juan Bagnell Adam Doud Jules Wang Sponsor Today's episode of the Pocketnow Weekly podcast is made possible by: Atlassian produces collaboration software for teams. From startup to enterprise, Atlassian offers solutions for tracking complex tasks with JIRA management software. Atlassian Confluence provides a platform for creating content and sharing assets between team members. While creating, collaborators can discuss in real time through instant message or video conferencing on HipChat. Lastly, BitBucket provides a powerful platform to test, manage, and review code in real time. See how your team might benefit from the platform and collaboration tools Atlassian has to offer. See how Jira, Confluence, HipChat, and Bitbucket give your team everything you need to organize, discuss, and complete shared work. You can find more information at www.atlassian.com. The Rundown 6:20 Moto Z and Moto Z Force first impressions! 38:11 Lenovo Phab 2 Pro coming to the USA — what's Google Tango? 56:40 What might Apple have in store for WWDC this year? Listener Mail (01:13:02) A listener question this week from Unicorn Workhorse. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today’s guest is Engelo Rumora, who’s killing it on the scene with his amazing real estate investment strategy. He went from working on construction sites to owning and flipping his own properties on an international scale. Engelo may be Australian, but he’s working in Ohio right now flipping and selling his properties to international investors looking for rental properties here in the US. What’s his secret? Selling properties at market value. Sounds ridiculous, right? That’s why I brought him on today. Engelo breaks down his own cash-flow strategy so you can apply it to your own real estate investments. [youtube]https://youtu.be/5g_ZQ872bxc[/youtube] The magic of his full-service cash flow model is a combination of an in-house property management team, his own amazing clientele, and his totally ingenious and completely fearless approach to real estate investment. He isn’t afraid to take the risks, and he’s definitely not afraid to fully enjoy his experiences in this business. Engelo owes so much to his mentors because they gave him the foundation to become the “lifestyle-preneur” he is today. His advice is to surround yourself with the successful people you want to be like and learn from their model. You can apply their strategies to whatever your real estate niche is and finally reach your end goal. [Tweet "Success comes from doing things differently. - Engelo"] MINUTE MARKERS 5:12 - Meet The Dingo – Engelo Rumora! 5:56 - Engelo discusses his expertise on the Ohio real estate scene 7:45-  How did Engelo get involved in international real estate? 9:28-  The two key things that make Engelo’s cash flow model stand out 10:09 - Why does Engelo sell his properties at market value? 12:11 - Mentors helped Engelo break out of his construction job 13:35 - Engelo’s worst moment happened just 3 years ago 15:24 - A desperate state of mind is Engelo’s secret to success 17:36 - What it’s like when people believe in you and how that transforms your business 22:30 - Engelo’s business philosophy is “people want what they can’t have” 24:52 - How Engelo utilizes word-of-mouth marketing and scales 26:44 - Engelo drinks scotch and only scotch 27:03 - What’s Engelo’s best piece of advice? Ignore the noise. 28:02 - Why patience is so important in the real estate game 29:40 - Engelo’s favorite motivational quote 30:02 - How often does your perspective change? 31:29 - It’s time to become a lifestyle-preneur. You only live once! 33:03 - Gino Wickman is Engelo’s favorite author 34:50 - Engelo’s average morning routine 36:33 - Hipchat is the mobile app of choice for lifestyle-preneurs 37:27 - The greatest lesson Engelo ever learned 37:44 - How can this dingo be grateful for everything? 38:50 - Remember - your worst day is somebody else’s paradise 39:18 - Engelo’s advice on finding the right mentor 41:25 - The dingo defines the two concepts that will create real estate success for you 44:14 - Legacy is what gets Engelo out of bed in the morning 45:50 - What gets the man Cory Boatright out of bed? 47:16 - Stop being afraid of your first deal! 48:50 - Step into your fear and see just how much you can really accomplish 51:15 - Take more risks and contact Engelo Rumora on Facebook @ The Real Estate Dingo [Tweet "You have to give others what they want before you can get what you want. - Engelo"] Links and Resources: Traction, Gino Wickman Rocket Fuel, Gino Wickman E-Myth, Michael Gerber Hipchat Gary Vaynerchuk Full Transcript Download the PDF Transcription Cory: Are you ready for this interview? This is going to be one that you may not be able to stop laughing from. Engelo Rumora, cash flow dingo. Got the Russian— that was not the Russian accent, what was I doing there? But, you got the Russian accent eh mate (laugh), that’s all better I think I’m butchering it. Anyway, Engelo is quite the character, and this guy has got a story that just won’t quit.

En este episodio Diego Freniche y yo comentamos que supone trabajar en remoto, o mejor dicho, trabajar desmoralizado en base a nuestras experiencias profesionales. Analizamos las diferentes formas de trabajar en remoto, desde las ocasiones puntuales hasta los equipos plenamente distribuidos, cuales son las ventajas de trabajar así, y cuales son las “trampas” mas habituales [...]

Summary Atlassian leaders Trey Shugart (@treshugart) and Jonathon Creenaune (@jcreenaune) chat with us about how and why they created Skate.js. Skate is a lightweight Web Components wrapper created to help the needs of a large and diverse technology stack while providing simplicity and almost no-barrier-to-entry. Only focusing on Custom Elements, Skate has made its code base easy for companies to buy into. O'Reilly Media Partner Discounts The Web Platform Podcast is a proud O'Reilly Media Partner. As such, one of the benefits we provide our listeners are special  discounts such as 50% off ebooks and 40% in printed material. This includes but is not limited to books on the web technologies. Your discount code is PCBW so head over to http://www.oreilly.com/ right now to get all your favorite tech books at much lower prices. Your Latest O'Reilly Discounts Free eBook: Data-Informed Product Design http://www.oreilly.com/pub/cpc/1220   Designers must understand user needs to create any product. But what type of data should you look at? In her new book, Data-Informed Product Design, Pamela Pavliscak outlines a way to use data of all kinds to understand the relationship between people and technology. Generally speaking, big data is quantitative; it gives you the what, where, and when, while “thick data” provides the qualitative perspective—the how and the why.   Up until now, there hasn't been much information on how to combine quantitative big data with qualitative thick data. That's where this report can help. If you're involved in any aspect of product design, this is indispensable reading. It's useful, and we're pleased to offer it to you, for free! Get the free ebook now. Design Sprint: A fast start to creating a great digital product http://www.oreilly.com/pub/cpc/1221 October 20 | 10:00am PT | Banfield, Lombardo, & Wax   The Design Sprint is the first, and for some projects the most significant, phase of a design thinking process. It gets the entire product design and development team on the same page, reduces the risk of downstream mistakes, and generates vision-lead goals for the team to measure their success. Join Richard Banfield, C. Todd Lombardo, and Trace Wax as they explain why and how Design Sprints work and how you can use Design Sprints to enhance your own design process.   Resources Skate.js - https://github.com/skatejs/skatejs Custom Elements Polyfill - https://github.com/polymer/CustomElements skate.js website - http://skate.js.org/ Skating with Web Components - http://slides.com/treshugart/skating-with-web-components#/ Skate on Hipchat - https://www.hipchat.com/gB3fMrnzo Contributions file- https://github.com/skatejs/skatejs/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md Panelists Erik Isaksen (@eisaksen) - Front End Development Lead at Deloitte Digital & Google Developer Expert in Web Technologies Danny Blue (@dee_bloo) - Front End Engineer at Deloitte Digital Justin Ribeiro (@justinribeiro)  - Wearables & HTML5 Google Developer Expert & Partner at Stickman Ventures or random person who keeps finding Hangout link. You decide

This week: why we might be in for big iPad upgrades this year; our expectations for the iPhone 6C; the one feature we hope iPhone 6S will get (but probably won’t); Woz is worried about Skynet again; and… is Apple building machine for time travel?  You’ll have to press play to find out...   Check out our sexy sponsors   Freshbooks, the easy-to-use invoicing software designed to help small business owners get organized, save time invoicing and get paid faster.  And I can vouch for this from experience, it also makes tax time a cinch.  Get started with a free trial at Freshbooks.com/cultcast, and please enter “CultCast” in the “How did you hear about us?” section!   HipChat's team communication app helps all teams work together more effectively, and gets you the information you need faster than email. Get premium features like unlimited file storage and unlimited message history FREE for 90 days when you sign up at Hipchat.com/cultofmac   We also want to give Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com a big thanks for all the music you hear in today's show.    This week’s links   Intro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B-XwPjn9YY   Behinds the scenes footage of Buster and Erfon preparing for CultCast http://i.imgur.com/PmJEIpX.gif   Breakthrough could finally bring wireless charging to iPhone http://www.cultofmac.com/378492/breakthrough-could-finally-bring-wireless-charging-to-iphone/   Woz and other big thinkers call for ban on AI weapons - erfon http://www.cultofmac.com/362797/woz-and-other-big-thinkers-call-for-ban-on-ai-weapons/   C you never! Apple scraps plans for 4-inch iPhone 6c - buster http://www.cultofmac.com/372652/c-you-never-apple-scraps-plans-for-4-inch-iphone-6c/   This year’s iPad mini upgrade won’t suck http://www.cultofmac.com/362762/this-years-ipad-mini-upgrade-wont-suck/

This week: some pundits are fed up with Apple music, but you know what?  We’re not.  Plus: Apple’s Back To School promotion is finally unveiled; Apple Watch topples expectations, gets insane satisfaction rating; iOS devices cross a major threshold; plus we answer your questions on an all-new #CultCastQnA!   Show our sponsors some sweet McLovin’   HipChat's team communication app helps all teams work together more effectively, and gets you the information you need faster than email. Get premium features like unlimited file storage and unlimited message history FREE for 90 days when you sign up at Hipchat.com/cultofmac   Lynda is like the Spotify of online education, with over 3000 expert-taught video courses you can stream straight to computer or mobile device. Learn to mix and master audio in Pro Tools, or develop Mac apps for OS X—learn all you want for free for 10 days at lynda.com/cultcast.   This week’s links   Intro: Classic Steve Ballmer on iPhone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U   Apple’s ‘Back to School’ promo will give Mac buyers free Beats headphones http://www.cultofmac.com/329987/apples-back-to-school-promo-will-give-mac-buyers-free-beats-headphones/   Tim Cook reveals Apple Watch sales topped expectations http://www.cultofmac.com/329284/apple-watch-sales-topped-expectations-reveals-apple-cfo/   Apple Watch gains a higher satisfaction rating than original iPhone or iPad http://www.cultofmac.com/329583/apple-watch-gains-a-higher-satisfaction-rating-than-original-iphone-or-ipad/   VC Benedict Evans: iOS unit sales are now matching Windows PCs https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/623668376280395776   What We’re Into Picks   Buster is into Antman.  All Antmen, really. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdKf3MneyI   Erfon is REALLY into Twitch http://www.twitch.tv   Leander is into Grain Audio’s shelf speakers http://grainaudio.com/collections/homeaudio/products/pbs  

This week: We all love the popular products, but this ep. we’ll remember some of Apple’s biggest blunders!  Plus: why the new iPods might be the last iPods; Apple’s missing back to school promotion; and perfect way to motivate your lazy workforce...   Please to support our sponsors   If you’re waking up with numb limbs or back pain, Casper's American-made mattresses can help, and with a price far lower than you’ll find in the stores.  Learn how, try one risk free for 100 days, and save $50 off your order at Casper.com/cultcast.   HipChat's team communication app helps all teams work together more effectively, and gets you the information you need faster than email. Get premium features like unlimited file storage and unlimited message history FREE for 90 days when you sign up at Hipchat.com/cultofmac   VideoBlocks is an affordable, subscription-based stock media site that gives you unlimited access to premium stock footage. Start a 7 day free trial at Videoblocks.com/promo/cultcast   We also want to give Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com a big thanks for all the great music you hear on today's show.    This week’s links   Intro: Peep the Pippin! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ln_CmNtbvQ   Buster’s Theme Song https://youtu.be/eUDcTLaWJuo   Leander really hated the Apple Studio display https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Studio_Display   See the Macintosh TV in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61k7yUXj6ck   The hockey puck mouse wasn’t THAT bad... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_USB_Mouse   Apple unveils new iPods in six colors http://www.cultofmac.com/329133/apple-unveils-new-ipods-in-six-colors/   Is Apple canceling their Back to School discount program? http://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/15/apple-annual-back-to-school-promo-missing/   Shanghai company creates a golden Steve Jobs bust to inspire its workers http://www.cultofmac.com/329125/shanghai-company-creates-a-golden-steve-jobs-bust-to-inspire-its-workers/

Award-winning designer and marketing consultant Pamela Wilson — who has helped small businesses and large organizations alike create ”big brands” since 1987 — stopped by to chat about what it’s like to run the blog at Copyblogger.com, and her mission to publish impeccable online content. Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today! As head of the editorial team for Copyblogger Media, she helps guide an abundance of educational content for one of the top online marketing, blogging, and copywriting sites in the world. Pamela’s unique point-of-view comes from the marriage of design, branding, content, and conversion — something she has coined “Customer Experience Design.” In this file Pamela Wilson and I discuss: How Coming Late to Writing Can Work in Your Favor Why Useful Content Creates Priceless Inroads for Writers The Difficulty of Designing a Remarkable Online Presence How Writing Has Become Her Yoga Practice Why You Should Commit to Writing 750 Words a Day The Hallmarks of Great Online Writing Why Picasso is an Inspiring Model for Writers to Follow Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Pamela’s Author Page on Copyblogger Big Brand System Blog The Bobby McFerrin Plan for Creating a Remarkable Business The Write Way to Answer Your Most Pressing Questions by Pamela Wilson 750words.com Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content by Mark Levy Pamela Wilson on Instagram Pamela Wilson on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How Pamela Wilson (VP of Educational Content for Copyblogger) Writes Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com. Kelton Reid: These are The Writer Files, a tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of working writers, from online content creators to fictionists, journalists, entrepreneurs, and beyond. I’m your host Kelton Reid: writer, podcaster, and mediaphile. Each week, we’ll find out how great writers keep the ink flowing, the cursor moving, and avoid writer’s block. Award-winning designer and marketing consultant Pamela Wilson, who has helped small businesses and large organizations alike create big brands since 1987, stopped by to chat with me about what it’s like to run the blog at Copyblogger.com and her mission to publish impeccable online content. As head of the editorial team for Copyblogger Media, she helps guide an abundance of educational content for one of the top online marketing, blogging, and copywriting blogs in the world. Pamela’s unique point of view comes from the marriage of design, branding, content, and conversion — something she’s coined ‘customer experience design.’ In this file, Pamela Wilson and I discuss how coming to writing late can work in your favor, the difficulty of designing a remarkable online presence, why you should commit to writing 750 words a day, the hallmarks of great online writing, and why Picasso is an inspiring model for writers to follow. If you enjoy The Writer Files podcast, do me a favor and leave a rating or review in iTunes to help other writers find us. Thanks for tuning in. Pamela Wilson, thank you so very much for joining me on The Writer Files. Pamela Wilson: I am so happy to be here. You know, I’ve told you like five times. I’m so happy you invited me to The Writer Files. Kelton Reid: Well, it’s truly a pleasure to have you on, and I can’t wait to pick your brain and get into your file. Pamela Wilson: Awesome. I’m ready. Kelton Reid: Okay. Let’s talk a little bit more about you, the author. For listeners who aren’t familiar with your story — I’m sure that many of them already are — who are you, and what is your area of expertise as a writer? How Coming Late to Writing Can Work in Your Favor Pamela Wilson: So the funny thing is, I actually think I’m probably the least likely writer to appear on this series because I came to writing really late in my career. I like to think that might be helpful for some people who don’t think of themselves as writers. You may have a different area of expertise, but writing really is something that you can learn. We’ll talk about that a lot today because it’s something I learned. It was an important part of my professional development. My history is that I was the person who made writers’ words look great. I was working primarily as a designer, but also as a marketing consultant. In that work, part of what I did was people would give me Microsoft Word documents that had very little formatting in them. It was just basically the words on a page. What I would do is make those documents look fantastic, make people want to read them. I’d pull photos to put with them, format them, give them nice-looking fonts and colors, and all of that to draw people in and make them want to read them. I did that primarily through publication design, magazines, books, newsletters, and things like that. Some online design as well, but primarily print. All my career, that’s who I was. I was the person who made the words look good. I never supplied the words myself. I had this award-winning design business, so I did really well at that part of my career. But no one was asking me to write. Every once in a while, somebody would give me copy and they would forget to give me a headline, so I might write the headline for their copy. That was about the extent of it. That was the most I ever wrote except for emails to clients. That was about all I ever wrote. Back in the late 2009, I started to feel antsy. I had been doing this for a long time, and I felt like I’d figured out this system that worked really consistently for all of my clients to help to build a recognizable brand. It was relatively simple. It wasn’t expensive to implement, and it worked really consistently. Without fail, it always worked. I felt like I had figured something out. I wanted to share it, so I decided to write a book. This was the fall of 2009, and I was obsessed with this idea that I wanted to write a book. Right around that time I found Copyblogger. I don’t know where I had been hiding online. I had not found Copyblogger up until that time, and around that time, I did. Just a few weeks after I found Copyblogger, they launched Teaching Sells. I joined Teaching Sells because I thought, “Maybe this is a way to share my information by teaching it online instead of trying to write a book.” What happened as a result of taking Teaching Sells is, I put together a blog, Big Brand System, and I started writing for it consistently in January of 2010. Really, that was when I started writing. It’s only been a little over five years. Kelton Reid: Wow. I saw you speak at Authority Rainmaker Conference, and it was a truly inspiring session you did there. You talked about customer experience design, which I thought was really, really cool. A lot about content and building that warm, personal relationship. You were doing that online as proof of concept I guess? Why Useful Content Creates Priceless Inroads for Writers Pamela Wilson: I was. One of the things I talked about in that talk was the fact that it was so disconcerting to have this offline business that had worked really well and that I thought relied on having this personal connection with my clients. Then I went online, and I was like, “Well, how am I supposed to have a personal connection with people I can’t even see?” It was a huge revelation to me that, by crafting really useful and approachable and friendly content, you could make that same kind of connection. You could make that connection with your writing. That was a huge eye opener for me. I hadn’t realized that. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah. I love that. Where can we find more of your writing? Pamela Wilson: You can find a lot of my writing on BigBrandSystem.com, but nowadays, I’m actually running the day to day Copyblogger blog along with Demian Farnworth and Stefanie Flaxman. I write for Copyblogger a lot more than I write for Big Brand System nowadays, so you can mostly find me there. What happened with that is I got this inspiration when I was at this concert way back in 2010, so it was right after I had started my own blog. I went to this Bobby McFerrin concert, and I got hit by a bolt of lightning. I was like, “What he’s doing in this concert is what I need to be doing with my online business.” I got home from that concert and I told my family, “Okay, I need to do something in the office.” I closed myself in my office. I wrote this post and submitted it to Copyblogger, and it was published on Copyblogger, which was a huge moment. It was a very exciting moment for me. Then I started writing for Copyblogger on a regular basis, developed a nice relationship over time, and now, as you know, I’ve been working with Copyblogger as a member of the team. It’s been just a little over a year now. All of that happened because of my writing, because of this thing that I had never done before. Kelton Reid: Yeah. What projects do you have in the works presently? The Difficulty of Designing a Remarkable Online Presence Pamela Wilson: Well, at Copyblogger, the big thing that I’m working on is helping to tell our story in a more cohesive way. As you know, it’s a very complex company that we work for now. The offer is not something that’s easy to sum up in just one sentence. That’s a lot of what I’m working now — how to tell that story in a way that everyone understands the story right away. The one thing that I’ve kind of zeroed in on is that all of our products — whether it’s StudioPress, the Genesis Framework, or the child themes, or it’s the Rainmaker Platform, Synthesis, or any of our educational products, Authority or anything else that’s really focused on helping to educate people on how to run an online, digital-based business — all of those things are trying to help people to build a remarkable online presence. That’s the story I’m trying to tell about what we do as a company. I think that one story kind of brings everything together. Kelton Reid: Absolutely. That’s really cool. Let’s talk a little bit about your productivity. You’re a busy lady with all of the things that you get into on a daily basis. How much time per day would you say you’re reading or doing research? Pamela Wilson: I’ve listened to a few of these interviews before. You do such a great job, so I enjoy listening to them. They’re very inspiring. I hear people answer this question, and they say like, “Oh I spend two hours researching,” or “I spend four hours reading.” I always think to myself like, “Are those consecutive hours?” Because my day never works like that. I don’t have a chunk of two hours or four hours. It just never seems to work out that way. If I added up all of the little slices, I probably spend two hours total, but it’s divided into a lot of very thin slices. I like to listen to audio books while I exercise. I probably spend 20 to 30 minutes reading throughout the day and probably an hour researching things on websites, but it’s five minutes here and five minutes there. Kelton Reid: Right. Pamela Wilson: I don’t have this research hat that I put on and just close out the world and sit there and do my research. I have this alternate universe where I live where I spent all afternoon sitting in a hammock and reading and researching and thinking about what I’m going to do the next day, but I don’t actually live there. That’s not what my day usually looks like. Kelton Reid: No, no. Mine either, as you can probably guess. Let’s talk about before you kind of get into the writing mode. Do you have any pre-game rituals or kind of warm-up practices? How Writing Has Become Her Yoga Practice Pamela Wilson: The weird thing about this question is that I have thought about it. I’ve realized that my pre-game ritual has to do with my body position. This is going to be a weird answer. What I have found is no matter where I am, because I do travel quite a bit, I seem to do my best, fastest, most productive writing sitting in a chair with my legs crossed under me, and my laptop balanced on my knees. I have no idea why this is, but whether I’m here, at home in Nashville, or I’m travelling somewhere, I always seem to sit in that position. That’s how I write. It’s kind of good to have this body position that works. Then no matter where I am, as soon as I sit down, cross my legs, stick my laptop on my knees, I’m in writing mode. It’s really weird, but it’s very consistent with me. Kelton Reid: You’re like a writing yogi. Pamela Wilson: That’s funny. It is like a meditative position. I hadn’t thought about that. My fingers are not meditating while I’m doing that, I have to say. Kelton Reid: Do you have a most productive time of day or locale? Pamela Wilson: Well, locale doesn’t seem to matter as long as I’m in position, so that’s the good news because I move around a lot. That has worked out well to recognize that seems to be what works for me. As far as time of day, I would say first thing in the morning after a good night’s sleep and after I’ve had my morning caffeine is probably the best. Kelton Reid: Oh, yes. Pamela Wilson: I get the most done. Kelton Reid: Absolutely. Well, you’re kind of a globetrotter, much like Sonia Simone, so I guess you have to find that perfect locale wherever you may be, be it Barcelona or elsewhere. Pamela Wilson: Right, I think so. Speaking of that, the other thing that I’ve noticed is I get so much done when I’m locked on a plane. I don’t know what it is. I think it’s because you may have Internet, but it’s usually spotty, so you tend to just have that off. You want something to do to pass the time. You end up writing. I do anyway. I always get so much done on planes. Kelton Reid: Austin Kleon said the same thing. Maybe I should fly more. Pamela Wilson: I don’t know what it is. It’s like you’re locked in this metal tube, and you need to do something to pass the time. I was on this flight a few months ago, actually I think it was on the way back from Authority, and I was doing the usual thing. I had my laptop open on the table in front of me, and I’m trying to get all this stuff done. It’s a little bit awkward because you have this person who’s right on your elbow next to you, and you’re just trusting that they’re not looking over your shoulder. I did all my writing. I got it all done, and then just as the flight is ending, she turns to me and says — this was the first thing that she had said to me the whole flight — “I’ve never seen someone use a track pad so quickly,” and I’m like “Okay.” Kelton Reid: Compliment or ? Pamela Wilson: I know. Hard to know how to take that. “I guess you were watching,” so that told me everything I needed to know. Kelton Reid: Do you stick on the headphones while you’re writing, or do you prefer silence? Pamela Wilson: I usually prefer silence. It works better for me to not have anything distracting me. That’s actually something I miss from my design days. When I was working on purely visual things, I used to be able to put music on in the background really loud. I could listen to whatever I wanted, and it would inspire what I was doing visually. I really can’t do that when I write. It’s too distracting. I miss that. I miss my music. Kelton Reid: How many hours would you say you put in when you do settle in for a session? Pamela Wilson: I’d say it’s about an hour. Sometimes it ends up being less. I love it when I can put in a full hour. I can get a lot done in an hour. Because I’m writing but I’m doing a lot of other things, it’s usually not much more than that. I wish it was more, but I don’t usually having more than that much time. Kelton Reid: Are you also of the school of writing every day? Why You Should Commit to Writing 750 Words a Day Pamela Wilson: Oh yes. I’m a huge believer in that. Actually, I have a post going up on Copyblogger, I think it’s actually this week that we’re talking about what I do to write every day, which is I use this site called 750words.com. It’s a very cool site. You basically sign up for it. There’s a small fee. I think it’s $5 a month or something. Then you commit to writing 750 words every day. This is a great length in my opinion because 750 words is long enough to be a blog post, so if you’re a content creator, it’s a way for you to get a blog post written. Oftentimes, I don’t use it for that. I just use it to physically write. To sit in front of a keyboard, put my fingers on the keys, make the move, and make words come out. I find the act of physically doing the writing is what makes the ideas flow. That’s what my post is about actually. That has ended up being a very surprising side benefit, to me anyway. That the act of sitting down and writing every day has actually helped me to come up with some amazing ideas and to solve problems that I could not figure out when I just thought about them. There is something about writing about them that — it sounds strange — but it’s like it allows you to tap into this part of yourself that’s really wise, that already knows what to do, and somehow you make that connection. By writing, those ideas can come out. I wrote about it in this post because it was a surprising side benefit that I was not expecting. It works so consistently now for me that, if I have something that I’m puzzling over and I can’t figure it out, I just kind of say, “Well, I look forward to writing about it,” because I have a feeling as soon as I write about it, I’ll know what to do. Kelton Reid: I like that a lot. We’ll link to the post and to the website that you mentioned as well. Pamela Wilson: Great. Kelton Reid: Do you believe in writer’s block? Pamela Wilson: I don’t. I don’t, because for me, the physical act of actually typing words on your keyboard is all you really have to do. I read this book a while back — and I’m sure someone else has mentioned this at this point in your series — there’s a book called the Accidental Genius by Mark Levy. It’s really about the act of writing and being completely unattached to the end product that you get. That made a huge difference for me when I was getting into the rhythm of writing on a consistent basis. It just made me realize that whatever I wrote didn’t have to be great. It’s more about the practice of writing that counts. A site like 750words.com is a huge help as well. They send you these email prompts. The email prompts basically say, “Look, you don’t have to write a masterpiece. Just write. That’s all that matters.” What I find is, when I write consistently like that, it’s almost like you nurture that connection between your brain and your fingertips. You leave that channel open, and you make a strong connection. It’s just easier to tap into your thoughts and easier to write overall. Writer’s block is just not a problem for me. I have that connection reinforced because of my daily habits and my leg crossing and all that crazy stuff. It just seems to work pretty well. Kelton Reid: Nice. We’ll link to Accidental Genius as well. I’m blanking on who else mentioned it, but it has been brought up before. Now I’m going to find it myself. Let’s talk about workflow a little bit. What hardware or typewriter model are you using? I know you’re not using a typewriter because you can’t balance that on your knees while you’re doing yoga. Pamela Wilson: Yes, writer’s yoga. It’s a little tougher with a typewriter. I had a 15-inch Mac Book Pro, and I just recently switched to a 13-inch because of the travel. It’s a little bit lighter. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Pamela Wilson: I know a lot of people at Copyblogger use the Mac Book Airs, but I work enough with images and audio and video that I really needed a little bit more power. I do have a Mac Book Pro just for the processing power. Even just moving from a 15 inch to a 13 inch was a huge relief as far as just walking through airports with the laptop on your shoulder because it’s so much lighter. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Do you have some favorite software that you use most for writing and your general workflow? Pamela Wilson: I do. One of the things I discovered a few years ago was how easy mind mapping software made my writing. What I will typically do is — and not for every post, but a lot of them — if I have some ideas, kind of disparate, random concepts for a post, I’ll open up a mind map and start dropping those onto the mind map. Any connection I make to any of the original ideas, I just build a branch and add that connection. My thoughts don’t tend to be organized when they come in. They just come in, and they’re not in any logical order. They’re not presented to me on a silver platter all organized. They come in randomly. So what I’ve found is, if I can put them on to a mind map, that gives me a place to register everything and then move it around and reorder it until it starts making sense. Typically, what I do is take what’s in the mind map, and then I just paste it into a text document and start fleshing out each section. Most of the posts I write start like that. Kelton Reid: Let’s get into maybe some best practices for staying organized. Do you have any tips, tricks, or hacks for us? Pamela’s Hack: Why Less Is More Pamela Wilson: The biggest hack that I have is something that I discovered a few years ago. I try not to give myself such a long to-do list to do every day. It sounds kind of counter-intuitive that you would actually get more done when your to-do list is shorter. What I’ve found is, when I had a to-do list that has seven or eight or 10 things on it, I didn’t tend to get to everything. I tended to only get to a few things. I always way underestimated how long things would take to do. You write your to-do list, and you think you’re superhuman. Somehow time is going to warp for you. You’re going to be able to achieve all this stuff. You forget about all the interruptions that you know you’re going to have, so you write this super ambitious to-do list. Then, at the end of the day, when you only have a few things checked off, what ends up happening is you feel terribly guilty. I do anyway. I look at all the things I didn’t get to, and I feel terrible at the end of the day. What I ended up doing a few years ago is I switched that around. I try to just have three projects to focus on every day. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Pamela Wilson: Now that doesn’t count things like, of course, I have to deal with email. You and I both end up having to deal with people contacting you on HipChat, for example. At Copyblogger, we use Hipchat to communicate. There are all those things that take time out of your day. But what I’ve found is, counting all those things, I can usually get three other projects done. I try to make a to-do list that’s very realistic and has those three things on it. What ends up happening is, every once in a while, I get to three o’clock and I’m done with all three things. It’s a completely different feeling. You have this list of eight things and you only got three done, so then you felt guilty about the five that you didn’t get to. But when you have a list of only three things and you get them all done, it’s like, “Wow, what am I going to do with this extra time? Maybe I can do something from tomorrow’s list.” You know? Kelton Reid: Totally. Pamela Wilson: That has been a huge attitude shift toward my to-do list. I’ve tried to basically take on less and be very realistic. Kelton Reid: Do you have any best practices for beating procrastination? Pamela Wilson: Deadlines. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Pamela Wilson: Just deadlines, really. Everything I did when I was working as a designer was deadline oriented. I was doing a lot of print design work, and the designer is only one person in a long process. The client gives you the information. Typically, the client needs to get approvals on whatever you submit. Then it has to be finalized and sent to a printer. A printer actually prints the job. The job has to be delivered. Everything in that process has a deadline, and I got very used to having to hit deadlines. If my business was going to make it, I had to hit my deadlines. That was just a thing I had to do. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Pamela Wilson: In order to succeed in business, I had to learn to do that and structure my time so that I would be able to hit the deadlines as promised. Then, the other thing is just not wanting to disappoint people. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Pamela Wilson: You have coworkers or customers, or you have followers. I still write for Big Brand System, and there’s a post that goes up every other Wednesday at 6 am Eastern. Come hell or high water, that post has to go up. I’m sure nobody is sitting there with a stopwatch watching it, but I feel like I don’t want to disappoint anyone. That self-imposed deadline seems to work really well for me. Kelton Reid: Nice. How does Pamela Wilson unplug at the end of a hard day? Pamela Wilson: I work at home, which is always a struggle. You have this siren song of your laptop that’s glowing over there in the corner, and at the end of a long day, a lot of times you end up being drawn back to it. What I do to get away from that is I try to just change location — even if it’s just in my house. I moved to Nashville about a year ago, and we have a house that has a basement. There is actually a space down in the basement that used to be a kids playroom, but now it’s Pamela’s playroom. I have all my art supplies down there. That’s actually a place that I enjoy going, cranking the music, and making artwork and doing stuff with my hands. That’s a huge help — to just go to a different location and do something different than what I’ve done all day long. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Pamela Wilson: I feel the same way about cooking at the end of the day, honestly. After spending all day in front of a screen tapping on a keyboard or working with a stylus pen, it’s great to go into the kitchen, get your hands dirty, and chop things. I enjoy that as well. We have woods behind our house. There’s a little path through the woods, so I like walking through the woods and reading, all the usual stuff. Then I do watch TV. There’s good TV on nowadays. I do watch it occasionally, but it’s usually my last choice of things to do. Kelton Reid: Sure. Pamela Wilson: It usually puts me right to sleep, so it might take me three days to watch a show that’s an hour long. I watch 20 minutes, and then I’m like zonked. I’m not a very devoted TV watcher unfortunately. Kelton Reid: That’s funny because I have that same malady. Pamela Wilson: I think it’s great to put you to sleep. You just turn it on really low, and it’s kind of glowing over there in the corner. It works every time for me. I think my husband gets frustrated because he’s like, “Oh man, this is going to take forever to get this show watched.” He’s very patient about it. Kelton Reid: Significant others do love when you fall asleep during an important scene, without fail. Pamela Wilson: I know. Every once in a while, I’ll say to him, “Just keep watching. It’s okay. Just tell me what happens tomorrow. I’m really sleepy.” It’s like you give them permission to keep going. Kelton Reid: Just a quick pause to mention that The Writer Files is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, the complete website solution for content marketers and online entrepreneurs. Find out more and take a free 14-day test drive at Rainmaker.FM/Platform. Let’s talk about creativity since that seems to be such a big part of your life and work. How do you define creativity? Why Creativity Happens Through Action Pamela Wilson: I love this question. I think each person really is going to have their own creative answer. It’s going to be a little bit different. This is very much a designer’s way of seeing creativity. It’s very much about combining things that aren’t normally combined. Combining things in a surprising way or looking at things from a slightly different angle., I’m kind of touching on this theme over and over, but I really believe that creativity happens through action. We have this image of this creative person who’s sitting still under a tree, and this bolt of lightning hits them when they’re sitting there. I don’t think that actually happens. I don’t think we just sit there and suddenly we feel creative. I think creativity happens when we are in motion doing something, like typing on your keyboard, creating some kind of artwork, doing something with your hands, or walking through the woods. I just feel like action is what makes creativity happen. Kelton Reid: Do you have a creative muse? Pamela Wilson: I don’t really have one creative muse I would have to say. I’ve kind of built my whole career out of the ability to tap into creativity all day long. It’s not something that I have to feel inspired about. It’s just a part of what I do. I don’t know if that’s a good answer, but that’s kind of how it works for me for some reason. Kelton Reid: Sure. When do you feel the most creative, personally? Pamela Wilson: That’s the thing, Kelton. I don’t see it that way. I honestly feel like I can be creative all day long. It’s a little bit of an energy thing. Last night, for example, it was getting toward the end of the day. I was finishing up some slides for a webinar that I had to do, and it was going slowly. I walked away, cooked something, had a glass of wine. I relaxed and got away from it. Then I came back to it this morning, and it came right out. It just came together very quickly. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Pamela Wilson: It’s a little bit of you run out of energy, but as far as actually tapping into the creativity, I feel like it’s always there. The whole muse idea, I just don’t see it that way. It doesn’t work that way for me for some reason. Kelton Reid: Let me ask you, what makes a writer great? The Hallmarks of Great Online Writing Pamela Wilson: This is such a great question. It’s something that I’m thinking about all the time now that I’m helping to run the Copyblogger blog. What we are trying to do at Copyblogger is to become the premier resource for content marketing professionals. We want our posts and everything we put together — so our infographics, our ebooks, everything we put together — we want it to be the most clear and helpful resource out there for content marketers. It’s a big goal. When we’re looking at posts, whether they’re our own posts or posts that we bring in from other writers who we’re working with, I’m always looking for clarity. That’s the big thing. I’m not impressed with people who use a lot of big words or people who string together these very complex sentences. In the end, everyone is busy. If your writing is easy to follow, then it’s better. I always think people need to just get to the point. Spit it out. Don’t stumble. Say it as clearly as you can. Try to make a connection with the reader. That’s what’s going to make you a great writer. Don’t try to impress people with complex sentences and long, obscure words. Instead of impressing them, you’ll just end up losing them. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Do you have a few favorite authors at the moment? Pamela Wilson: Well, Mark Levy’s Accidental Genius. It really changed my approach to writing, so he’s a definite favorite. It’s kind of boring because I read a lot of nonfiction. I’m not reading a lot of fiction lately. I’m not sure why. It’s been a long time since I’ve read fiction. I just tend to read nonfiction. There are so many different things I want to learn. One of the things that I’m reading a lot of lately is books on management. In this position at Copyblogger, it’s really a management position. Even though I had my own business before and I had freelance employees, it wasn’t really a management situation. It was my business, and I was the CEO of the business, passing along information to them. It wasn’t the same situation. Now, I feel like I’m in more of a management position, and of course, I want to rock at it. I want to be really, really good. I’m reading a book right now by a Navy captain named L. David Marquette, and he wrote a book called Turn This Ship Around! with an exclamation point. It’s about how he applied these management techniques within the context of the Navy, which is very much a top-down management structure. His technique is basically putting the power back at the bottom of the structure and sending it upwards. It’s a different approach to management. I love it because it kind of empowers the people who know best what your organization should be doing. Then I’m also reading this book called Reinventing Organizations. That is by Frederic Laloux. I don’t know if that’s how you pronounce his name, but it looks like that’s how you pronounce his name. I have this really bad habit of reading two books at once. In the case of these two, they’re both about management. They’re kind of complementary, so I’m not managing to confuse myself, but I have a bad habit of picking up several at once and starting them. Those are the two that are on my night table right now. Kelton Reid: Cool. Yeah, I’m the same way. I will pick up multiple volumes and really just rotate through and have no idea where I am at any one given time in any tome. Do you have a best-loved quote? Pamela Wilson: This is actually a tough question to answer because I collect quotes. I’ve been collecting quotes for years. There’s something about a really well-formed quote that I just love. It’s that clarity thing. It says so much in so few words. Actually, my last set of business cards from my design business, I got them custom printed with 16 different quotes. Kelton Reid: Oh cool. Pamela Wilson: I used to tell my clients, “Oh it’s like a playing card. Let’s see which one you got.” It could be one of 16 quotes. I couldn’t choose between the 16, so I got 16. One of my favorites — and this is like the story of my life because I’ve had so many new beginnings in my life — there’s a quote that just struck me. It says, “The world is round, and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.” It’s by George Baker. Kelton Reid: That’s a good one. Pamela Wilson: I love that one. Kelton Reid: Let’s do a couple fun ones. Do you have a favorite literary character? Pamela Wilson: Well, as I told you, I read a lot of nonfiction, so there aren’t a lot of characters in that. I think to answer this one I have to go way back in time. One of the first characters that I really related to and I connected to was a character in a book by Beverly Cleary. I think I read it in third grade, Ramona the Pest. I loved that book because she was always getting into trouble. She always managed to get herself out of it, but she was always getting herself into trouble. She had all sorts of spats with her family and her friends. She just seemed very real. I loved that character. It goes way back in my life, but that was the first one that I felt like I really connected to. Kelton Reid: If you could choose one author, living or dead, for an all-expense paid dinner to your favorite restaurant, who would you choose, and where would you go? Why Picasso Is an Inspiring Model for Writers to Follow Pamela Wilson: I have to tell you, Kelton, this is the question I have most been looking forward to answering. I heard your interview with Austin Kleon, and Austin said something like he’d never want to take Picasso to dinner. The first thing I thought when I heard that was, “That is totally who I want to take to dinner.” Kelton Reid: Nice. Pamela Wilson: Picasso wrote books. We know him for his artwork, but he wrote books. He qualifies as an author that you could take to dinner, right? Kelton Reid: Yeah. Pamela Wilson: I would totally take him to dinner because, as a creative person, he is someone I admire so much. I actually wrote a post for Copyblogger years ago about Picasso and about his work ethic. In the process of putting this post together, I did some research. I saw that, in his lifetime, he produced 50,000 unique pieces of art. If you look at his career, if you kind of divide it up over his lifetime, that’s 632 pieces for every year that he was working as an artist. That’s more than a couple of pieces most days, right? Kelton Reid: Amazing. Pamela Wilson: That so inspires me. When you think about the great artists of the world, Picasso is always on that list. If you’ve seen his work in museums, it’s very impressive. But what you’re seeing is just the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of pieces that we will probably never see. What I realized when I saw those numbers and when I saw his artwork is that it goes back to this idea that creativity is really about taking action. It’s not about the end product. It’s about actually doing the thing. I’ve always been interested in his work and in his life, I tend to kind of gravitate to his pieces if I’m in a museum. I’ve seen a lot of Picasso pieces, and most of them are amazing. When you see them in person, they’re bigger than you expect many times. The colors are more vibrant. You can almost see his movements in the brush strokes. It’s really impressive to see it in person, but the other thing that I notice is it’s not all good. Kelton Reid: Right. Pamela Wilson: Not everything he did was a masterpiece. There’s something that’s weirdly comforting in that for me. You just realize, “Wow, if I produce enough, if I just churn out enough creative work, some of it is going to be amazing.” If you think about it, 50,000 pieces, even if only 1 percent is amazing, that’s still 500 pieces of artwork that you’ve created that are masterpieces, right? Kelton Reid: Right. Pamela Wilson: Nobody’s going to talk about the others, but it’s the act of creating that much work that helps you to create that 1 percent that really, really sticks out. Kelton Reid: To circle back, where would you take Picasso to dinner? Pamela Wilson: Well, I speak Spanish, so this is something that not everyone knows about me. I was an exchange student in between high school and college. I lived in Columbia, South America, and I learned to speak Spanish fluently. I would definitely take him out to dinner, probably in Barcelona. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Pamela Wilson: We could go out for paella. We’d make a reservation for 10:30 because you don’t start eating until really late. It would be somewhere where he felt like he was comfortable and in his own territory, and we would speak in Spanish. It would be awesome. Kelton Reid: That’s cool. Do you have a writer’s fetish? Pamela Wilson: Would an iPhone count? Kelton Reid: Sure. Pamela Wilson: Okay. It’s the only thing I could name it. So I got a new phone last year and I got one of those big ones, one of those 6 Pluses. It’s the most expensive small piece of technology I’ve ever had in my life. Kelton Reid: Sure. Pamela Wilson: Now that I have it, it’s like my favorite way to read books. Because either I can read them on Kindle or on iBooks, and it’s big enough that it feels like you’re reading a small paperback. I used to travel around with my tablet, and I don’t take it anymore because I just use my phone. Then I have Audible, so I listen to books on audio as well. I would say that’s probably it. I don’t know if that counts as a fetish item, but I think that’s the closest I can come. Kelton Reid: Well, you’ve dropped a lot of great knowledge for writers already in this session. Can you offer any additional advice to fellow writers on how to keep the ink flowing and the cursor moving? Pamela Wilson: Stop thinking about it, and just start doing it. Thinking about it is probably your worst enemy. What you really need to do is put your fingers on your keyboard and move your fingers. If you do that, if you do what I was saying earlier — you kind of assume the writing position — it won’t take long for your brain to kick in and start flowing down into your fingertips and giving you ideas about what to write about — but you have to assume the position first. You have to be in position to receive those ideas. Doing that on a regular basis will help you to keep that connection so that you can keep the ideas flowing. Kelton Reid: For sure. So where can fellow scribes connect with you out there or online? Pamela Wilson: Well, I still want to write that book, so at some point, I will write a book. Maybe I’ll bug you so you have me back on here. Kelton Reid: Absolutely. Pamela Wilson: But for now, the best place to find me is on the Copyblogger blog. That’s where I’m writing more than any place else these days. They could also find me on Big Brand System. I’m pretty active on Instagram and Twitter, so I’ll give you both of those accounts. That’s a good place to connect as well. Kelton Reid: Great. Pamela Wilson: I would love to connect with people who’ve heard this and keep talking about creativity. It’s one of my favorite topics. Kelton Reid: Absolutely. Pamela, thank you so much for stopping by The Writer Files and sharing some stories with us. It’s been really, really a pleasure. Pamela Wilson: Thank you, Kelton. I appreciate it. Kelton Reid: Cheers. Thank you for tuning in to The Writer Files. Now go write your 750 words. I’m about to do mine. For more episodes of The Writer Files and all the show notes, or to leave us a comment or a question, drop by WriterFiles.FM. You can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers. See you out there.

In this episode, Mike Vardy sits down with Phil Simon, author of "Message Not Received." They talk about the problem with email, why clarity is often lost in communication, and what we can do to make sure we have a far better chance of being heard when we send out messages to colleagues and cohorts. Relevant Links http://amzn.to/1FPu30f (Message Not Received by Phil Simon) http://www.philsimon.com/tag/message-not-received/ (Phil Simon's Website) http://www.informationdiet.com/ (The Information Diet by Clay Johnson) http://www.hipchat.com/ (HipChat) http://www.smartsheet.com/ (Smartsheet) http://blog.todoist.com/2015/03/02/interview-phil-simon-message-not-received/ (An Interview with Phil Simon, Author of Message Not Received | Todoist Blog) https://twitter.com/philsimon (Phil Simon (@philsimon) | Twitter) Want to send us an app, book, or something similar to discuss on the show? Email us at [info@productivityist.com][8] and we'll give it a look. Want to listen on Stitcher? http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=53149&refid=stpr (Click here.) Support The Productivityist Podcast by becoming a patron! http://patreon.com/productivityist (Click here) to visit The Productivityist Podcast's Patreon page and see what perks await those who pitch in a buck or more.

Hajime Morrita さんと、Netflix, The IT Crowd, 絵文字、LGTM, Chromecast, トップレベルドメインなどについて話しました。 Show Notes House of Cards | Netflix For ‘House of Cards,’ Using Big Data to Guarantee Its Popularity The Netflix Tech Blog: Chaos Monkey Released Into The Wild The Netflix Tech Blog: A Closer Look At The Christmas Eve Outage The IT Crowd - Channel 4 IT Crowd - Have You Tried Turning It Off And On Again? ハイっ、こちらIT課！2 The Office comcastic – Consumerist How the new Apple emoji got their skin tones: It's not what you think UTR #51: Unicode Emoji Diversity Asians are not impressed with Apple’s “diverse” yellow emoji Emoji is Finally Coming to Google Chrome New thumbs emoticons look like corpse hands – Hipchat GitHub - LGTM LGTM.in/g HDMI CEC Android Developers Backstage Fragmented | An Android Developer Podcast Google purchases rights to the entire .app top-level domain

Today I’m sharing five different tools for remote teams that have proven very effective for me. You might hear some overlap from past episodes where I’ve recommended tools for different things, but that’s just a reflection of how well they work. Leave some feedback: What should I talk about next? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, leave a short review here. Subscribe to Growth Everywhere on iTunes. Get the non-iTunes RSS feed Connect with Eric Siu: Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @ericosiu

Bei dieser Episode handelt es sich wieder einmal um eine Schwerpunktepisode. Dieses Mal zum Thema "Project Management Tools". Es geht um historische Erfahrungen mit Mail und Skype, sowie Hipster-Tools wie Slack oder HipChat. Nicht fehlen dabei darf eine Diskussion über die verschiedenen Integrationen die damit auch angestrebt werden. Tom und André erzählen, was dabei in ihrer Praxis benutzt wird und wo es noch Verbesserungspotential gibt. Shownotes „Moom“ - Apple Duet Display AirDisplay WP: Skype IBM Lotus Sametime Skype TeamViewer GoTo Meeting Join.me MeetingBurner GoogleHangouts Campfire HipChat Slack

Welcome back to another SuccessLab Podcast, Episode #33! Here with me is Matt Racz, COO and Co-Founder of his startup USEED, which provides crowdfunding resources for higher education. We're talking all things startup, how to identify your passions, and how to stay true to your vision as your business grows. 1.Can you tell us a bit about your journey? What led to the launch of USEED? USEED just turned three years old (or I guess, three years young!) in December of this past year. Those three years have been quite an adventure, a crazy roller coaster ride. I certainly feel like I've led 10 different lives within USEED since we began. The idea of USEED really started back in 2011, and it came out of the idea of being really passionate about education and helping student entrepreneurs pursue their passions, but in a way that set them up for success in today's world. 2. Mission and vision are everything. How did you identify your mission and build a compelling vision, then work to stay true to them? It's a really challenging thing to stay true to your mission, and it's certainly difficult to identify what you believe in. But I think it's also the number one critical thing you need to do. If you're starting something, you need to identify why you're doing what you're doing. Certainly, if you're going to start your own business, whatever it might be, you're going to be dedicating a tremendous amount of resources, time, energy, and your life to it. If you haven't got a good reason for it, you're probably going to burn out or fail. What it comes down to is discovering what problem you want to solve. What are you really passionate about? If you look at the world today, in 2015, there are massive global challenges that are happening, and there's a lot of opportunity to solve many of them. Instead of thinking, "How can I create the next Snapchat or Instagram?" ask: How do you find something you're really passionate about, and how can you build a mission and a life around it? You have to be pretty open with yourself. You have to be introspective and ask yourself, "What problem am I really passionate about solving, and why am I passionate about it, and how can I communicate that to other people?" 3. I believe you implemented some of the Lean Startup methodologies for USEED. Which did you use, and how did you do it? Lean Startup Machine, StartUp weekend, the book —all those things came out when we first started USEED. That became the big trend. We said, "Woah." There's this whole resource and framework to test and validate some of your assumptions and to build a product and be super lean, be really scientific. As people who are really passionate about learning, we absolutely want to be scientific. But at the time, Lean Startup was really geared toward apps, or a B2C-type company. For us, it's really hard to be lean when selling a client takes anywhere from three to six months. How do you be lean? We used the Lean Startup principles to test if our go-to market strategy would be better going directly to students or working with institutions. 4. As you've grown (hired on others), how have you ensured that they adopt the vision and company culture? People can tell you really positive things about themselves; anyone can do that. We've learned this through our hiring process because we've been trying to do it for three years. We've hired many people, and a lot of them didn't work. It's about behavior. If you say you're going to do something, and you don't do it, there's a broken contract there. Then, I don't trust you as a person. You've broken my trust, and therefore, I don't care if you're a culture fit or not. 5. Do you have any tips or tools you can share with entrepreneurs? Here at USEED, we're such a small team, but we have a lot of demands individually in many different areas. We use a lot of different apps for our workflow to make us more efficient: communication tools, task management tools, things like that. Some of my favorites that I use religiously are: RedBooth, which is a collaborative task management system. I use it to manage my own, weekly tasks. Hipchat for team communication. One of our biggest challenges as a company is communication. We're all over the place all the time, so communication is really key. This tool has revolutionized my entire workflow: TextExpander. It takes hotkeys to the next level. You get to create your own shortcuts for text. Also Moom, which allows you to create hotkeys for resizing the windows on your computer. 6. How can folks connect with you or USEED? Send me an email! That's matt@useed.org. You can also check out the USEED website, my Instagram, and LinkedIn.   This Week's Biz Hack Have you ever had one of those days where you just can't get going? Suddenly, it's 3 p.m., and you realize you haven't accomplished anything you set out to do that day? Oftentimes, this is just a matter of being physically and mentally fatigued, overloaded, or building up a particular goal or task into a monumental challenge that feels impossible to tackle. Naturally, any one of these situations are total productivity killers. So how do you overcome it? Well, first diagnose if it is fatigue. If so, it may be worth it to take a quick nap or do something to mentally recharge. If it's overwhelm, one work-around to apply the two-minute rule. You may be familiar with this approach from the book Getting Things Done, in which author David Allen suggests this: If a task takes less than two minutes to do, just get it done immediately rather than letting all those little tasks build up. If you apply this to your work, goals, or in forming new habits, it can be very powerful. Of course, most larger tasks, goals, and habit formations cannot be accomplished in two-minutes, but what is the toughest part of these? Typically, the toughest part is just getting started. So just break off the first two minutes. Once you get going, it's easier to continue doing it. Do you need to write a blog post or article? Give yourself two minutes to write just one sentence. Need to create a marketing campaign? Give yourself two minutes to simply brainstorm what could go in that campaign. Two minutes can have a massive impact on your productivity. Action Item Give the two-minute rule a try. Keep in mind that this approach may not work for everyone, but give it a try. What is one thing you've been putting off? Give yourself two minutes to get it going. Quote of the Week "To be successful you must accept all challenges that come your way. You can't just accept the ones you like." ~ Mike Gafka   Next week I'm in The Lab with Patrick Mathieson, a junior venture capitalist at Toba Capital. We talk about how entrepreneurs can gauge if in fact they need funding, and if so, how to work with a VC, as well as the process his VC uses to set up the startups they invest in for success. Until then, have prosperous week! If you found value in this podcast, please leave a quick review or rating in iTunes.  

Highlights of my conversation with Hannah McIntyre ·         Inspiration for launching Futrli formerly Crunchboards ·         The early design of Futrli ·         Working in a global community ··      Business support in Britain ·         Moving from compliance to value add   Transcript Hannah, what did you like to do when you were 12 years old? Hannah:        Oh my goodness. Probably take my sister into a room and beat her up.  No, that’s a ridiculous thing to say. What do I like to do? I lived in the middle of nowhere in the countryside in the north east of Scotland, so in the summer holidays which would be your winter, your version of your winter, our summer holidays … we did get some sun in the north east of Scotland, it would be a case of, “Right kids, we’ll see you at tea time and we’d be out on our bikes fishing and doing all this sort of Huckleberry Finn sorts of things. Yes, I was a bit of an outdoorsy girl. Heather:        Cool, you were out on the heather moors of Scotland? Hannah:        Well yes, something like that, or being thrown into the north sea with the beautiful beaches that we had. My mum going, “Get in there ya big Jessy.” “It’s ice cold mum and from the Baltic.” But it held no sway with her. We just had to man up and get in there. Heather:        Sensational. So Hannah, what inspired you to launch CrunchBoards? Hannah         Need actually. We had a … Amy and I had ourselves a company before CrunchBoard with a hospitality vertical, it was a back office system. We had that for a couple of years and had been using Xero, probably one of the first adopters of Xero in the UK, coming up for four years ago now. It changed my life completely as the one who does all the books for the business. I’d been using Sage desktop for a long, long time in a previous business that I had, manually exporting all the data, putting it into a spreadsheet for management accountancy information, future projections, all these things that the repetition and the inefficiencies that … and the headache quite frankly that that caused, was the inspiration for the original business, for the hospitality software. But whilst we were building that out, we were looking, or I was in particular, we were looking for a solution for ourselves. We were giving all these instant management accounts to the hospitality sector. I said, “Hold on a second. It would be great if I could have this functionality too.” So we went out, did a load of assessment and looked into the markets for the add-ons as they were, probably come out for a year and a half ago now. Obviously they’re vastly more in the market space now than they were then, and trialled all the solutions that were out there and none of them were a solution for us. I think primarily because they hadn’t been designed from the business owner up, they had been designed for the accountant down. That affords different problems. So guess what? I’d be pulling all the information out because they were putting it into a spreadsheet and back to square one again for the management information and future projections. So we did a load of interviews because if I was suffering in this way, then I’m sure a lot of other people were, and then that kind of led to the fact well then hold on a second, people started to mention, “Well my accountant this …” “My accountant that …” We started speaking to accountants too. This was a pretty big issue getting real time flexible, and that’s what spreadsheets do for you, they’re a blank canvas aren’t they? What do you want to build? Well, you build whatever you want. It’s your business. You know your metrics, your KPIs, you build what you need. That’s what we wanted to build with CrunchBoard. I spent a long time kind of designing it. Didn’t even tell Amy what I was doing in the background. Then we started to plan the design and started our first line of code actually was written 1st December last year. It’s been pretty fast. We’re coming up for our first code writing anniversary next week. Heather:        Definitely was very fast. You said you designed from the business owner up, which is a really interesting concept. I guess a lot of things are … it’s interesting where they’re being designed from. Who are you selling to, the accountant or the business owner? Hannah:        Absolutely both. From a commercial point of view, certainly the accountant because Xero realised that early doors that, “Yes, it’s for the business owner but actually there’s a complete avenue there to go down.” However, that for me has become really exciting because absolutely the core is to make … to demystify the numbers, to make analysis really, really super simple, easy, beautiful actually, you know, we take our inspiration from Xero strapline, “Well yes, actually I want to make my management information beautiful. I don’t ever want to have to create a pivot table again in my life. I don’t ever want to export data again.” So that’s kind of the core, however the journey that we’ve then gone on because of the accountant, for me particularly from the design side of things, has been really exciting because that then gives other solutions that you have to solve. On our board, on our CrunchBoards, you can view multiple clients side by side. It’s practise management and it’s a client experience too, and a lot of the reporting add-ons in particular are one or the other, they’re not often both, and that’s actually one thing that we’ve spoken about on Developer’s Day at Xerocon. It was nice to be able to say, “Well, actually, no, our product is definitely for both users.” The great thing is when the accountant actually shares a board with a client for the first time that they get this, “Oh my God, is that my business? Oh, and I can change that and I can change the date and I can view that the way I want to view it, not the way you think I want to view it.” So while we’re giving the accountant the tools, they are also then able to … and it’s a bit scary for them. I’m not going to lie. There’s some education happening around this but those who are adopting our product for their business are probably the early adopters in the bell curve that people talk about, and accountancy is changing. It’s not about compliance anymore and it certainly won’t be in five years’ time. Advisory is going to be huge, and those who are adopting tools like ours now are certainly ahead of the game in delivering an excellent client experience, and really empowering business owners with real time operational tools. It’s not a history lesson. It’s a live business plan to actually make your business better. Heather:        Absolutely. So you designed it in the early stages. What did that look like? What is you designing it in the early stages looking like? Hannah:        Okay, well as much as I bemoan excel, it does have its uses, doesn’t it? We’re still quite dev heavy actually, is our team, we’ve got seven developers. We’ve got a really big team which is amazing, which means that not only do we get to turn things around fairly quickly in development terms but also we’ve got a massive breadth of knowledge. Our design process is probably one of the most joyful parts of my life actually. I know it’s completely geeky isn’t it. It’s ridiculous. Honestly, if you had told Hannah McIntyre 10 years ago that I’d just say that, she’d probably just shake her head and go, “Who on earth are you?” But it’s a collaborative … it always starts with me and it’s a collaborative approach in as much as I’ll do the wire frames, the design, the rationale, the logic behind it, and then we’ll bring the team in to go, “Right, how can we make the user experience excellent? What can we do to make sure that from the beginning to the end of this process, it’s as few clicks as possible, it’s as effortless as possible?” So that’s the fun bit. Heather:        Cool. Are your team based there in …? Hannah:        They certainly are in Brighton. We have one in EastBourne but all the rest of them are in Brighton but we’re all got a pier that we can see, not from our windows, but fairly close. Heather:        Sensational. That’s actually quite unusual, especially for developers, they seem to be all over the place. Hannah:        Yes, so that’s important to me. I have to say that’s one thing that I’m really, really proud of is we are completely made in Britain. But it’s not just we’re local, we’re altogether we see each other regularly. They’re not all office based. Some of them work from home but we use software ourselves so that we’re all video streaming all the time and just click each other’s faces to start having a conversation. It just works. It works really, really well. Heather:        Absolutely. What’s been one of your biggest challenges along the way since launching CrunchBoards? Hannah:        I would probably say being taken … being so well received in Australia and New-Zealand, the antipodean region. It sounds a ridiculous thing to say that that’s a problem. It’s not been a problem. It’s a wonderful problem to solve but of course it’s meant … you met Amy my co-founder out there. She’s over doing a six week tour. Heather:        Absolutely. Hannah:        The time difference, it’s something that we’ve got to get around but luckily we don’t sleep. We are complete vampires, and that’s fine. We get the poly filler out in the morning and trowel it on and everything is good to go again. No, I mean it’s brilliant. It’s very exciting. We’re building an Australian team now which is super exciting, and in a million years, that was not part of the plan within the first year but it is now and that’s really exciting, but originally, a hurdle that we had to overcome with sound mind and some decent planning. Heather:        Yes, the time differences, which we can summarise that as, is a common thread I hear amongst the ad-on solutions. Hannah, you appeared on the cover of the inaugural addition of the XU Magazine, so I’ve got two questions for you. Tell us about the cover shoot and tell us about the impact the coverage had for your business. Hannah:        Oh that cover shoot where we are in mid-aid. I have to say we had the bonkers photographer. He said, “Just imagine that you’re jumping over a barrel.” I was like … well I don’t know why, maybe because I’m from the north east of Scotland but I said, “Can I imagine I’m jumping over a sheep?” which seems to work for me. Our New Zealand counterparts will probably like that. Yes, it was really good fun. We were there with the XU Magazine boys, and we just had a bit of a giggle with it all. That was good fun. What was the second question Heather, sorry? Heather:        What’s the impact the coverage has had for your business? Hannah:        Well, let’s use Xerocon Sydney as an example. People walked in, it was XU Magazine’s launch as well, great, we were on the cover. It absolutely helped with the fact that, you know, with who are these two in the double denim, what’s this? It was … of course it helped. Of course it helps and they’ve been incredibly supportive and continue to be so. Maybe it’s the British thing. Heather:        What I was interested in … I wasn’t trying to get a claim for XU Magazine. I was just interested in media coverage and stuff, and that’s great. Hannah:        Absolutely, it’s been … and actually, that wasn’t my response either. Seriously, it was really, really fantastic dovetailing. Before we went over there, when we got the phone call from Wes, it was just phenomenal, “Wow, we’re going over and we’re going to launch with a splash.” That was just brilliant. Heather:        Yes, it was massive. It made Xerocon Sydney fantastic. I’ve got quite a long question for you here. Doctor Gordon Patzer, who spent three decades researching physical attractiveness and says, “Human beings are hard wired to respond more favourably to attractive people,” to quote him, “Good looking men and women are generally regarded to be more talented, kind, honest and intelligent than their less attractive counterparts.” He contends that controlled studies show people go out of their way to help attractive people of the same sex and opposite sex because they want to be liked and accepted by good looking people. Do you see physical attractiveness more as something to be leveraged or your unfair advantage? Hannah:        Well, is that you giving me a sideways compliment Heather? Heather:        Yes, it was. Hannah:        That was a rather long way to do it. Thanks very much. Wow, okay, so this is one of those questions I have to think very carefully of how I answer I guess. No, I have two daughters and a stepson, and they are beautiful. Of course you always think your own children are beautiful. But I would say that it, wrongly probably, opens doors. However, if there’s no substance there behind it, then you’re dead in the water. Sometimes I actually think that perceived looks can hinder you because people make assessments about you before you’ve opened your mouth. I hope that Amy and I, as two females in the marketplace, are assessed on our product, what we’re bringing to the add-on eco system, and the way that we do business with integrity. Heather:        Absolutely. Hannah:        That’s all I guess I can say. I just hope that my kids embrace every opportunity they’ve got, and if they get given some more opportunities, then great but I’ll tell you what, they’ll have to work bloody hard to make a success of their life like their mum has to. Heather:        Absolutely. I know when you appeared on stage, the table I was with went silent, stunned, because you were a stunning, shining light there. Then you started speaking and one of them just went, “Bloody hell, she speaks English with an English accent as well!” They were, in a very loving way, amazed by you. How many customers does CrunchBoard need to be successful? Hannah:        Oh my goodness. We are meeting and exceeding our forecasts. I guess that’s a good thing. Heather:        Absolutely. Hannah:        We don’t need a set amount of customers I guess. It’s a case of building, you know, monthly recurring revenues as a business models is an interesting one, and maximising our potential in the antipodean region is absolutely what we’re focusing on at the moment. It’s lovely to see that we’ve got UKs signing up but actually we’re not pushing in the UK at the moment because we’ve got a focus there, and we’ve still got a small team. On the sales side of things we’re building that out now which is, again, another exciting step for us. We are thrilled with our progress. Heather:        That’s sensational. Hannah:        If we continue the way that we’re going then we’re in a really good place. Heather:        So it sounds like you’re a strong UK business with a heavy export focus. Are you getting assistance from the British export authorities – I don’t know what their name is – but the British export type authorities? Hannah:        It’s interesting actually because this week, the Daily Mail in the UK, there’s a focus that they’re doing all of that and actually we’ve been video interviewed for them, so that should be going out this week at some point. But on the export side of things, we are not getting any particular assistance, no. We’re working things out as we go along. I think the biggest challenge that we’ve got is getting the information about employing staff in Australia, New-Zealand, all of those things, because there’s pitfalls there and that, I guess, is our biggest challenge. Amy is going back over there in the New Year again, like I said, for the Australian roadshows. She’ll be doing a little bit more recywork but that’s progressing nicely. I guess it’s the legalities that you’re always a bit wary of. But we’ve got good accountants too. They’re helping us out which is great. Heather:        Sensational. What software do you use in your own business? Hannah:        Yes, I mean we run a SAAS business. We’ve got to use smart software ourselves don’t we otherwise we’re not really practising what we preach. So you’ll be happy to know that we run our business on CrunchBoards – Hurray! So building it from a selfish perspective worked. Heather:        Yes, sensational. Hannah:        I don’t know. So that’s brilliant. So from the development side of things, we’re massive fans of Trello. We use scrum methodology technology in our development plan. We use Trello for that which is fabulous. Absolutely love Trello. We are using things like Salesforce for our CRM. We’ve got some other cool tools like Squiggle that we use to collaborate with our development team, you know, those who are Eastbourne or who are working from home. I guess for me, the biggest one that we’re using is HipChat. We’ve got a room in HipChat which has got our conversation CrunchBoards room from the beginning of time. It’s brilliant because it feeds in with a different software, alerts and stuff that we’re using feeds into it to. That’s an essential tool for the dev side of things. Heather:        So HipChat is what you talked about when you said, “I just hit a button and talk to someone face to face?” Hannah:        No, that’s actually Squiggle. It’s constant video streaming. It’s brilliant. It’s really good. We’ve been using that since they launched it with their beta. They’ve been a few bugs which is fine. Heather:        You’re an early adopter, aren’t you, of everything? Hannah:        Yes, but you’ve got to remember as well, I’m working with geeky boys. It’s like, “Hannah, have you seen such and such?” “No I haven’t, I’ll check it out.” Things like Screen here, that’s quite good as well. I don’t know whether you’ve used that before. It’s kind of instant screen collaboration, and it’s absolutely brilliant. You’ve got both mouses there, you start typing, you’re on the other person’s screen. It’s phenomenal. From peer to peer dev side of things, that’s really cool too. Heather:        There seems to be a lot of screen adoption technologies come out recently because I know I’m still paying my $60 Go to Assist Citrix subscription which I think I need to drop and do one of those. Hannah:        We do use it. We’ve used others. I think that all of them, including Skype which we’re using at the moment, if that’s all you do really, it should be bloody good. Building an application that does a lot of things and making sure that they’re all good is hard work. If this is all you do, let’s get it going well. So I think screen technology is brilliant if it works, and we’ve all had issues where it doesn’t I guess. Heather:        Yes. How do you see the Xero ecosystem evolving? Hannah:        Well, it’s growing at a rate of knots isn’t it? Heather:        Absolutely, yes. Hannah:        Interesting, I’m not using many add-ons now myself. Heather:        No, it didn’t sound like it. Hannah:        We’re using our own because that’s what we needed to use. We are using things like Zapier Integrations which we use for our billing. We use Stripe for our billing, which is brilliant; it creates an invoice in Xero straight away, so that’s brilliant. I see us doing some interesting things next year with the ecosystem but I don’t want to speak too much about that because it’s ‘in the can’. Heather:        That’s okay. Hannah:        2015 is really excited with that. I think that Xero is really pushing the vertical add-ons, sometimes to the detriment of the horizontal add-ons that are out there. As much as Xero has given us all this opportunity in many cases, it is an accounting package. I think that if it loses focus on what actually is its core product, that it will actually create issues down the line with, “Well, what are you? Why build an ecosystem if you don’t want to actually help it flourish.” So I think the next year, in particular, will be very interesting. In particular when you look at Xero’s competitors and what they’re doing. We are purely Xero, certainly at the moment we are. We’ve made a decision despite the fact that we have got other integrations. I’m not going to name any names but we’ve got other integrations that we could turn on and we decided not to because they’ve been amazing. They’ve been very supportive of us. Heather:        Absolutely. You mentioned that you use Stripe billing with Zapier, does strike billing do your automatic subscriptions? Hannah:        Actually no, it doesn’t. Heather:        Okay. Hannah:        We built our … we could have and we did look at their … they’ve got great docs, they’ve got a great system but we’ve got kind of a variable billing system, so we actually built our own … one of our lovely boys went and built a custom one for us. Heather:        Oh, that’s good. That sounds like another little solution you could go and sell out there. Another one, “We built it because we needed it.” Hannah:        Yes, right. I think you’ve touched on this a bit but if you have anything to say, what changes are you seeing in the market moving from compliance to value add? I think you’ve said that you see it becoming … Hannah:        Look, you’re a CPA. Heather:        I’m FCCA. You actually know that. Hannah:        Absolutely. Heather:        People in Australia don’t know that. Hannah:        So previous life for me, I’ve had accountants beforehand who I’ve not seen for a whole year, and at the end of the year had gone, “Oh hi, it’s year end, we’ll get your accounts prepared and here’s a P&L and a balance sheet and here’s a bill for £2,000.” That was years ago. Years ago! Heather:        And that sounds really cheap. Hannah:        Yes, right, exactly. Well, it didn’t feel it but you’re just like, “What value am I getting here as a business owner?” So there’s that. We kind of parked that on one side but I think that business owners are kind of having … there’s some really entrepreneurial businesses out there. There’s still some huge business, fine, but yes I mean markets are traditionally time poor, on the ground, firefighting, all of those things, really hands on, and until you get to a point in your business where you can employ these things for you, you need input now and again. There was a great study, I can’t remember who commissioned it, that I read probably about a year and a half ago, that said that 84% of SME actually want their advisor to take on more of a CFO role, a remote FD role. Heather:        Yes. Hannah:        It’s hard doing it on your own. I may be wrong and I may be off here but I do think there will be a move that actually compliance will not be the thing that’s the billable. It’s actually  … actually I met a very interesting accountant in Brighton actually awhile back, actually last month, who she hasn’t got many clients but she does definitely perform that FD role for them and does not do compliance. They have another accountant for that. She’s not interested in it. It’s like, “I’m here to help you run your business and make you as successful as possible.” That’s exciting. Heather:        Yes. Hannah:        Compliance is a necessary evil. Tools are actually making that process a lot quicker, a lot easier than it was before, even for the single ledger it’s revolutionised a lot of these things. It’s a lot more streamlined, so where’s the value? What do we need an accountant for? Well, actually, you should have a hell of a lot of knowledge to help me run my business, so give me some. That’s where I see it going. Heather:        Absolutely. If you were talking to … and I’m asking you this because it’s specifically around your product, if you’re talking to a bookkeeper or accountant who’s never ventured into value add work, and there are a lot of people like that, what would you suggest is the easiest thing they can do, using your product, to help their client and value add? Hannah:        The first thing I’d say is how do you present data to your client? How do you give your client visualisation over their own business? First question. Often, there’s an um and an uh there, and a pause. Then the second point will be what we’ve just discussed, you know, the value add side of things, and what do business owners … we know this because we did the bloody interviews. We know it. We’re not making it up. Actually we’re one of those business owners, “Hi there, we’re one.” What we would then do is create … and we have, we have them already built out, but we’ve got sample boards that can get turned on and they work for every organisation because they’re a little bit more generic. That’s fine. It’s a great introduction to the visualisation side of things, the power of actually just being able to pull out one account, for instance, or income and see all of your sales streams side by side on a chart in seconds, and being able to change that data. Do you want to see it this week, this month? We’ve got a great client of ours that looks after cafés and restaurants and things. Great, so they’ve got one board. That’s a starting point, and then each business they’ll tailor it, of course, but for each vertical, we can get those things set up. The kind of point about it is we’ve created an engine, and it is an engine, it’s a platform that allows you to absolutely tailor and make bespoke in seconds, analysis: future, present and past. All of those things in one card, one of the cards that we’ve got on our board, can be flipped out into forecast data, again in seconds. It’s just that instant, effortless, and now you start doing this the conversation starts. That’s the point because the boards that we’ve built, you can then share with the client. They receive it. It gives them a mirror copy in their instance on their tablet, their phone, we designed it responsibly so it works on any device. It’s a case of right, we’re syncing with Xero automatically as well, about three times a day, three times every 24 hours, so that data just comes through. It’s being updated all the time. You build out your forecasting CrunchBoards as well. You’ve got that versus actual forecast. It’s how we compare it. Tracking is being released within the next week or so. They are looking amazing those cards at, and great plans for the future for consolidation of things at the beginning of next year. It just literally is, I know we say on our website, “Where Xero stops, CrunchBoard starts,” that really is the case. That’s what we’ve done. Heather:        Absolutely, and you seem to be evolving and bringing out new updates so quickly because I know that Amy said it almost looks completely different to the original version. Hannah:        It does. Again, I sneakily did version two while she was in Australia. I did it while she was away. It’s terrible. It’s like cheating on your wife. But the beauty of cloud, the beauty of … and that’s why we’re here isn’t it Heather, it’s all about cloud. The beauty of that and the whole point of it from an end user’s perspective is you don’t pay for a disk of some desktop software that you punch in to … plug into your machine, and then that’s it you’re done, and you hope that it doesn’t corrupt and you need to phone the support line. You get really an update for the same license fee. It just keeps giving. We’re just a gift that keeps giving. That’s the point of it all. Heather:        Absolutely, well you’re the frosting on the cake. Hannah:        The frosting on Xero’s cake, for sure. Heather:        So Hannah, I’ll leave you with one final question. What do you look forward to doing most? Hannah:        Oh my goodness. Seeing my kids more probably. I have mummy guilt quite a lot, so they’re seven, eight and twelve, and I think I’m really, really looking forward to Christmas this year. It’s been an insane 12 months, insane, and spending some family time with my kids and my amazing partner. He’s the rock. I couldn’t do it without him. I’m being a bit soppy now but that’s the truth. That’s the truth. Why do you do this? Why do you slog your guts out? For family. Are they looking like they’re going to go into computer sciences? Hannah:        It’s funny actually. My youngest, she’s a big crazy, that’s just an aside, that’s just a statement of fact, but she wanted to be a vet. She said to me the other day, “Mummy, if I don’t get to be a vet, I think I want to be a business woman like you.” I just thought, “Bless you darling,” because she sees the hours that Amy and I put in, and especially with Australia and New-Zealand of late. We start and 5 and tonight I’ll finish at 10:30. My day started at 5 today. Usually I’m drinking wine, today I’ve actually got water which is a big … I’m quite impressed with myself. So I hope that we’re an inspiration to the kids. I hope so. It would be nice. Heather:        Yes, I do think sometimes, and it may not work for you, but the cloud, it means you can actually be flexible around your children. Hannah:        At the end of the day, if I want to take a day off, I can do. If I need to work away, I can do. This year not so much because we’ve had so much to do but next year it will be different. We’re not going to take our foot off the pedal but we will be structuring things a little bit differently by taking on more staff, etc. Heather:        Absolutely. Thank you so much Hannah for speaking with us today. I’m sure our listeners will really appreciate everything that you’ve shared with us. Hope you have a wonderful evening. Hannah:        Thanks Heather. Heather:        Thank you. Cheers. Hannah:        Bye. End of Transcript Mentions ·        CrunchBoard http://crunchboards.com ·        Xero https://www.xero.com ·        Sage http://www.sage.com ·        XU Magazine http://xumagazine.com ·        Salesforce http://www.salesforce.com ·        Squiggle  https://squiggle.codeplex.com ·        HipChat https://hipchat.com ·        Zapier Integrations https://zapier.com ·        Stripe https://stripe.com   ·        Trello http://www.Trello.com

Justin and Jason discuss Justin's rebound project and the myriad questions Justin has about HFT (high-frequency trading), learning to code with CodeAvengers and CodeCombat, the latest on Operation Superhero and MV Code Club, scaling with Node.js at Uber, posting error messages to Slack and HipChat, scaling and managing servers at Digedu, Jason's interview on Get Up and Code, why iXL didn't work for the math team and how to setup a backup configuration using MySQL and EC2.

Kazuho Okuiさん、Naoki Hiroshimaさんをゲストに迎えて、ALS、英語、課金、モバイルアプリ開発、Slack, Email などについて話しました。 Show Notes Vancouver 2014 Bill Gates And Tim Cook Dump Ice On Their Heads For ALS Awareness Gifts to The ALS Association - The ALS Association Rebuild: Aftershow 53: Because We Are Global (Matz, zzak) Rebuild ep53a transcript Kei Igawa - The Lost Yankee No English Please, We're Japanese Baseball Players Blue Jays' Munenori Kawasaki Gives A Great Interview 課金とは Jared Sinclair | Blog | A Candid Look at Unread's First Year My iOS Indie-Game Numbers @OvercastFM: Third login option coming in 1.0.2 Native advertising Sponsorship: Rebuild - Podcast by Tatsuhiko Miyagawa Slack is killing email The Most Fascinating Profile You'll Ever Read About a Guy and His Boring Startup HipChat is now free for unlimited users Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business Internet Mail 2000 Facebook retires its troubled @facebook.com email service Slack at Work | Great jobs, with smart teams, using Slack

Naoya Itoさんと、シドニアの騎士、Slack, Emacs などについて話しました。 Show Notes Aftershow 50: RPG Is Software Engineering (Naoya Ito) シドニアの騎士 Knights of Sidonia on Netflix 『シドニアの騎士』にみるCGスタジオの起死回生 Slack Can I use Slack for free? Hipchat Emacs 起動が遅いとかいうやつはにわか。なぜなら終了しないから

In dieser Folge reden Benedikt und Christoph darüber wie man den Preis für sein Produkt findet und gestaltet. Show Notes TerminRetter.de Tarifseite LinksSpy.com pricing Stage CMS für Bands AppointmentReminder.org plans & pricing Stuff:   Product People Podcast Episode 55 FirstOfficer.io HipChat jetzt mit unbegrenzt vielen Nutzern The post Folge 11: Pricing, Segmentation und mehr appeared first on Nebenberuf Startup.

Download this episode, in which we talk about Andrey finally leaving the house, street cred, Quintu, the work that goes into a typical SaaS app, implementing push in Uberdeck, OS X 10.8 update woes, git and distributed source code control,   supporting developers vs. supporting end users, downloadable vs. SaaS, playing with SaaS marketing at an early stage of the product, being organized with marketing, tracking the marketing flow, onboarding, pricing based on volume, seasonal stores, celebrities in NYC, the new Panic office, and a day of doing nothing at work.   Arq, Crashplan – backup software. VirtualBox, VMWare Fusion – VM software. HipChat – private group chat. Rachel Andrew – Founder of Perch. Chargify,  Stripe – Recurding billing and payments services. HubSpot – inbound marketing software. KISSmetrics, Mixpanel – analytics and metrics tools. Trak.io – Ian’s preferred metric app (for now). Optimizely – A/B testing tool. Seasonal stores The Living Room NYC Panic office – founder’s room.   Discuss this episode with other bootstrappers in the forums.  

Episode 38 - How to Work in a Team                                      Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe to RSS Download MP3 Stephen Williams joins us to discuss his trials and tribulations working in software teams. We delve into what tools the team can utilize to communicate and coordinate efficiently. We talk about why you should be using tools like HipChat and Campfire if you’re not already. The episode also touches on important subjects like how to deal with technical disputes, if project managers are necessary, lazy team members and ways that you can put the team first. Show notes Dividing work within the team Tools you use to coordinate or communicate with the team (HipChat, Flowdock, Campfire, IRC, IM, Email) How to deal with a lazy or slacker team member How to handle a technical disagreement Personal philosophy for promoting team over self Know when you are overwhelmed Talentopoly links - Noteworthy links posted on Talentopoly in the last two weeks Under the hood: Rebuilding Facebook for iOS Bariol - Font - pick your price JavaScript Programming Patterns Is There a Landmine Hidden in Amazon’s Glacier? OpenHallway - Simple usability testing

Episode 30 - Managing a software project                                      Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe to RSS Download MP3 Intro Welcome to Episode 30 of the Talentopoly Podcast. Managing a software project hosts Jared Brown Brandon Corbin guest David Christiansen Beverage Introductions Warm-up Discussion Podcast network Topic Pivotal Tracker UserVoice, ZenDesk, GetExceptional, Airbrake.io, Intercom, Mister Smith HipChat, Campfire, Basecamp, Grove.io (IRC) Google Docs Github Harvest, Billings Noteworthy links Delight.io - Record and replay your iOS app’s user sessions Mailchimp Email Blueprints Bootbox.js - alert, confirm and flexible dialogs for Twitter’s bootstrap framework Android Ported to C# by Xamarin Sketch - A vector graphics app with a beautiful interface Filepicker.io - A better file uploader crud-bones - Boilerplate template for Node.js projects The design of a signage typeface AWS Marketplace: Server Software for Amazon Web Services Firefox no longer displays favicons in address bar