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BARRY RITHOLTZ's new book "How Not to Invest" has received a warm reception. We talk about investing mistakes, the Trump Tariffs, and curating a good media diet. https://youtu.be/pS4f45v2iRk https://www.amazon.com/dp/1804091197/ "How Not To Invest" Transcript Frazer Rice (00:03)Welcome aboard, Barry. Barry (00:04)Well, thanks so much for having me, Frasier. Frazer Rice (00:06)Well, we are recording in the midst of chaos and disorder. We're basically in day three, trading day three of the tariffs and trying to understand all of that. But back at the matter of hand, your new book, I read it really good. I thought it did a really good job of sort of colloquially putting some process and structure around not making bad investing decisions. Tell me a little bit about the impetus for the book. Barry (00:35)Sure, so the last book, Bailout Nation, was 15 years ago when I've had a lot of friends and family say, when's the next book coming? And, you know, I had a little, like, hey, that was kind of a slog, stuff blowing up and forcing me to rewrite entire sections of the book every time some new company went belly up. And I came home from Christmas break from vacation. You have that dead zone a few days before you're back in the office January 2nd. And I just started thumbing through some old quarterly calls for clients and research notes and market commentaries. You know, I had moved the blog from GeoCities in the nineties to Typepad in the two thousands to WordPress in the 2010s. And so I was looking at some of these old things and like, God, I never revisited this. This is such a great piece of research. I love this academic take on where alpha or even beta comes from. And I'm just kind of mulling it over. I start writing down chapter ideas on three by five cards like these. And I end up using this giant bulletin board on my wall. It just basically I start putting stuff up and I start rearranging them. And pretty soon it becomes obvious. Hey, these ideas, a lot of them are don'ts. Don't do this. Don't do that. Avoid this. Try not to make this bad mistake. And ultimately, I kind of came to the conclusion that, know, we've part of the reason I held off writing a book is there have been tens of thousands of investing books telling people what to do. And we're all pretty mediocre investors still. Maybe it might be useful if we learned what not to do and thus "how not to invest" was born. Frazer Rice (02:35)We found kind of an interesting crucible to test all of this with sort of Trump's tariff initiatives and a bunch of chaos on that front. As you think about what we're living in right now with uncertainty, whether manufactured or not, what are some of the top things that you think about that you tell people, your clients and otherwise? to keep in mind as we sort of weather this storm and try to learn a little bit about what the future is going to look like. Barry (03:06)Right. I had no idea what what the sequel would be named. Maybe it could be how not to run an economy or what we'll play with that. But so so what's happening these days are kind of fascinating because the first third of the book I spent a lot of time talking about how little we really know about about what's happening right now. And we learn even less about the future. And so our Frazer Rice (03:12)Ha Barry (03:34)A hot take on these things is maybe we shouldn't build portfolios based on having to predict where the economy is going to be, what the hot sector is going to be, where the hot geography is going to be, what the best companies are. Maybe we need to be a little more robust and capable of withstanding this. And the tariffs are a perfect example of how little we know. Look, the obvious examples of "How Not to Invest" Nobody had heading into 2020 in their year had forecast global pandemic that shuts the world's economy. And by the way, stocks go straight up. They just after a 34 percent crash,

Fredrik talks to Jack Cheng - author and creator of the iPhone note capture app Bebop. Jack describes where Bebop came from and how he built it, and how and why Copilot and other AI tools became integral parts of the workflow. Being aware of the maintenance cost of each decision, keeping things focused, avoiding building yourself into a bloated corner - sometimes even deciding certain things don’t belong in your app. Coding on the side, needing to balance the time you have? Use it to your advantage! Jack also talks about the other apps he uses for working with notes and writing, and how different apps feel right for different types of writing. (Yes, Obsidian once again makes an appearance.) Thank you Cloudnet for sponsoring our VPS! Comments, questions or tips? We a re @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at info@kodsnack.se if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive. If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi. Links Jack Detroit Jack’s books See you in the cosmos The many masks of Andy Zhou The slow web - Jack’s blog post Copilot Captio - the app Jack used which let you email a note to yourself Obsidian Nvalt Fsnotes Zapier Bebop Jack’s post introducing Bebop Ruby on rails Typepad Swift Swiftui Objective-C MVC App intents Visual studio code Xcode Figma Cursor is the editor with more builtin LLM features Support us on Ko-fi! Morning pages Jack’s newsletter Ghost Highland 2 John August Cot Share extensions Testflight These days - Jack’s first novel, financed through Kickstarter Robin Sloan Robin’s text about how an app can be a home-cooked meal WWDC - Apple’s yearly developer conference The Humane AI pin Rabbit See you on the bookshelf - Jack’s podcast about creating See you in the cosmos Booksmitten jackcheng.com Jack on Instagram, Threads, and Mastodon Titles Addicted to the slot machine of social media Just spin up an Iphone app A specific thing I want to build Advanced auto complete Gold coins along the way Freeze all these features The maintenance cost of every decision The speed of capture Tiny dopamine hit Use it to your advantage Immediately useful You can’t not be cliché Today as the title

Jim talks with Brad DeLong about his book Slouching Toward Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century. They discuss how everything changed around 1870, the idea of a polycrisis, Friedrich von Hayek's affirmation of the market system, the calculation problem, Karl Polanyi's response, a quantitative index of technological knowledge, the pace of growth, the necessity of a grand narrative, Malthusianism, the lead-up to the Industrial Revolution, the invention of the industrial research lab, the Edison-Tesla fight, science as an institution, the transition away from force & fraud dominance, theories about the rise of global empires, communities of engineering practice, causes of World War I, Max Weber's German chauvinism, 30 glorious years of social democracy, the Macintosh launch commercial & the neoliberal turn, the evaporation of cultural conservatism, the liminal age, and much more. Episode Transcript Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, by Brad DeLong Local And Global Networks Of Immigrant Professionals In Silicon Valley, by AnnaLee Saxenian Brad DeLong is a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He was a deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the U.S. Treasury during the Clinton Administration. He is a New York Times instant bestselling author, for Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, which was called: “magisterial” by Paul Krugman, "required reading” by Larry Summers, “immense scope and depth” by Diane Coyle, and “impressive… written with wit and style and a formidable command of detail” by Ryan Avent. He has been too online since 1995, now in the form of a SubStack, formerly at TypePad.

Show notes and referenced links: https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1553456558264164356Old talk version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzK4IxHv3W0Join the Coding Career Community: https://learninpublic.org/Follow for future spaces: https://twitter.com/Coding_CareerTranscript[00:00:00] Chad Stewart: I think we should set up the whole thing first in case, people might be coming off the street and they don't necessarily know exactly about the chapter of the book. I definitely think you should talk a little bit about that first. [00:00:10] swyx: I do opinion introduce it. Yeah. Yeah.[00:00:13] That'd be great. Do you wanna give it a shot? I wanna see what what your take on it is. Oh, okay. Yeah, sure. I'll give it a shot. So, [00:00:20] Chad Stewart: So pretty much the idea. Well, so first of all the, currently the chapter actually is at the end of the book. And a lot of you get a lot of, the, you get a lot of other information before you get to this chapter.[00:00:32] And the kind of idea is that, all that other information is important. It's great. But if you don't necessarily know how to implement. Then, yeah, it's not particularly useful. And so my understanding, you of took the idea of hairs, things that that you could use to start implementing some of these things.[00:00:53] And then one of the things that actually really enjoyed really liked I read over the chapter again, just to to refresh myself, was the idea of not everything to use all the time. You have tactics which you use whenever they come up, then you have strategy. Which you use, like you use a little bit more often.[00:01:13] I don't remember what the third one is, but it is like levels of when you use them principles. Yes. Principles. Thank you. When you use them often. So the chapter resonated with me mostly because of a lot of the things that you were talking about is like habits and like laying the foundation for success.[00:01:30] Part we talked about it in the Mito last week in terms of keeping yourself physically healthy, but just also, it's just generally your habits, both your physical habits, like learning, expanding your knowledge, networking, interacting with people it's just having that foundation laid out so that, leveraging the other topics of the book was is what you call.[00:01:53] It was easier. I know we had that, this kind of discussion about about maybe putting it earlier in the book, but that's the reason why I decided, Hey, maybe this would be the first thing to talk about because this is something that, we talk up in the industry, but not really, yeah. So just wanted to talk about [00:02:11] swyx: anyways. Yeah. That's a great recap. Yeah, that's fantastic recap. Okay. Job done. Thank you everyone. Yeah. Wow. And you didn't even I didn't even tell you I was gonna ask you anyway. I just love hearing about it from other point of view.[00:02:23] But yeah, you can see how it's weird to put it at the front of the buzz. I have to go through and set up all the context first, which is like 39 chapters of random shit. And then but, and then I come in at the end with a really strong chapter. Right. But I think my reflection is like, Imagine you would hand it the golden book of advice.[00:02:42] Like maybe my book is like not the golden book of advice, but maybe someone else's book in book of advice. Can you convert that advice into results and the chances are, is it's no, because it's not really, you're not really lacking for advice. You're really lacking for systems to implement that effectively in your career, in your life.[00:03:03] Right? To actually put things in action and follow through on them. It's not ideas, it's execution, it's not motivation, it's discipline. And so like it's really boring blocking and tackling stuff. But then I felt like if I did not talk then everything I, everything else I talk about is a complete waste because like this that's the real sustainable advantage.[00:03:24] I think for sure, I was very influenced by atomic habits. Like you can have all the fancy trading strategies that you want, but ultimately, your net worth is a trailing indicator of your financial habits. Did you save enough? and, did you did you did you put did you pay down the interest rate on the things that you're supposed to pay down first before chasing the investment in other categories?[00:03:48] And I definitely feel like, when people give high level career advice, they tend to overstep in terms of the high stakes, the very dramatic, the very flashy, the very sexy, or very smart sounding ideas. And there's just the boring, like eat of vegetables, versions of the ideas. Isn't talked about enough when actually it is the predominant.[00:04:08] Thing to get right. So, yeah. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry. I cut you off. Oh, no, I see you also join on your personal, so, I'm talking to two CHADS. Oh [00:04:15] Chad Stewart: yeah. One that's a duck and one that's an actual person. Yeah. No, so I would, I, so I do agree with you. But, and I guess it's I try not to say too much about the, on, on like you're delivering the chapter as opposed to the chapter's contents itself.[00:04:30] But like I do agree that, like the thing that everybody's interested in, like you said, the gold as you put it is definitely. The, what you call it the flashy advice, the, this is how you negotiate your salary. These are the technologies that you choose, as opposed to the eat, your vegetables as you call it version is, get up every day and code, get up every day and read tech, tech news, or get up every day and network, specifically the phrase network, where network is just this bland, instruction that you're, that [00:05:02] swyx: everybody gives, know, which network what you supposed to do when people say I'm gonna get up to date end network.[00:05:06] What is that? I [00:05:08] Chad Stewart: have no clue. I just, I say it all the time. And then I sit down and okay, what am I supposed to do? Ha [00:05:15] swyx: oh, but so my version of that right. Is to learn in public. Right? And I know, this, so, like it's weird to come to, to reach out, to let's, here's an unenlightened version of networking, which is.[00:05:26] You're just, you're gonna go out there and you're gonna look for some industry mentor and you're gonna cold email them and say, please, can you be my mentor? Which is an unspecified job of indeterminate length for no money. So good luck. But if you learn the public you're putting your interests out there, you're you progress out there and people can help you with specific dimensions and you can build your network that way by building up assets of value that you exchange for something else.[00:05:50] And I think that's a really positive some way to network and I highly encourage people [00:05:54] Chad Stewart: to do that. Yeah, no, I definitely agree. I definitely agree. And I guess like that's like the going back to the operating system of you is like the more kind of boring part, because that is something that you have to do all the time, it's the grind, right?[00:06:11] Like everybody is trying to tell you to grind, but they don't necessarily tell you. You know why it's important and they don't tell you that it gets boring. Well, I guess it's implied that it gets boring, but, but yeah okay. You know what, I'm just going to say that. I think anyways, you think [00:06:26] swyx: what [00:06:26] Chad Stewart: kind?[00:06:27] Yeah. What do you think? No, I was just like, I just, as I was thinking, I just hit a roadblock in my head and I just like, yeah, no. [00:06:33] swyx: Okay. That's an action cancellation, when you're playing fighting games and you're doing something and you're like, oh, Nope. oh, you on the path I want to go down.[00:06:44] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, there's two things. One is keeping going through the daily grinds having good habits, letting them compound part of that is, your physical body, part of that is your mental. Your mental storage space, so, we talk about sleep.[00:07:00] We talk about building a second brain and then the third section is building a scheduler which is how do you take on multiple tasks and multitask prioritize them and then try not to drop any tasks. I think that's a very foundational skill, I'll talk about that. But the last bit I really which is to keep your kernel alive, which is the process zero, the kernel that, the process that schedules other processes.[00:07:23] And for me or for most developers that is some concept of drive, right. If you lose your drive, you burn out. And I think something that maybe a lot of people don't discuss is yeah, like there's a lot of burnout in the industry and that's of game over You talk about the differences between lasting in this industry five years versus 50 years, like it's basically, do you have a love for programming?[00:07:43] Do you have a reason that you do what you do? And I think I tend to try to remind people that it is not about chasing money. It's not just about chasing money. Money's good. But there, there can also be a higher purpose to the things that we work on. [00:07:56] Chad Stewart: I definitely agree. And I guess of going down the it's not about chasing money, it's not, so I guess my thing is, it's less about, you want to chase the thing that interests you.[00:08:08] You know what I mean? Like I, and I think that's something that like, especially in the industry, we do a really good we do a really good job of telling people that these are the things that are important and pushing up the things that they are interested in, yeah. So say, like for instance, you're just a front end Devrel and you love doing UI UX, but everybody just convinces you that UI UX is not the thing to do by the way.[00:08:33] I'm just picking this because probably because I'm most related to it, not necessarily the situation, but just the anyways. But yeah, like this is your thing, but everybody tells you, oh, you really need to get into the cloud. No something else, right? Like it's backend engineering and you do that and you get good at it, but it's not the thing like that will eventually lead to burnout as well.[00:08:58] Like it's really, at least my understanding of burnout is really when there's like the reward that you're getting for the actions that you're doing, don't match with the rewards that you want. That's probably a bad description of it, but yeah you know what you're getting versus what you actually want.[00:09:18] If those things don't align and they don't align for long enough, then you know, you just don't want to do it anymore. You're not getting properly rewarded. Yeah. For the things that [00:09:27] swyx: you're doing. Yeah. That's that's the burnouts phase. I feel like I had more to share that, but I always like to turn into a discussion, where this is an open discussion.[00:09:36] If people want to raise their hands and talk about, any of these concepts the, from the physical, to like the brain stuff to scheduling and to burnouts, we can always have that open . actually got some feedback from one of my previous spaces that apparently people can't really raise their hands until they're invited.[00:09:52] I'm not sure how this works. [00:09:54] Chad Stewart: Yeah, I'm not necessarily sure. Either. Like usually, so like you have a request button for people that are new to spaces, you have the request button and then that will tell us that you're you want to come up and then we can bring you up and then you can like, raise your hands and stuff like that.[00:10:10] I also want to point out I forgot to, to say this, but we have a link as well for a Slido. So say for instance, you actually do have a question and you don't want to necessarily come on stage. It's you can go to the Slido and just ask your question there and monitoring that. So the link to the Slido, if you notice that there's a tweet at the top of this space, we call it jumbotron.[00:10:34] The tweet has that link to that slack. Ah, there it is. Test [00:10:38] swyx: question anonymous. Yeah, that was me. That was. Oh, you see, [00:10:42] Chad Stewart: it's anonymous. You're supposed to not let anybody know. Oh, right, right, right. [00:10:47] swyx: Okay. Whoop . [00:10:49] Chad Stewart: Yeah. So feel free to do that as well. But yeah, this is this kind of an open ended que even though spaces are ne not necessarily, I guess you have to cultivate that, but yeah, this is a open ended space.[00:11:02] So if you have any questions, feel free to, to jump up and ask them, just ask them however you want. Like even feel free to to tweet at the tweet. [00:11:12] swyx: And I'll monitor that as well. This new chat feature in in Twitter. So we can try that out. Okay. So maybe I'll put it this way. Yeah. One thing.[00:11:21] One thing, one thing I wanted to offer is I think that there's an there's an image that I think you said in your recap resonated with you a lot, which is that we have principles, strategies, and tactics. We talk about the sort of three levels of applications that we offer or that we think about principles are always on.[00:11:40] Chad Stewart: Are you still there? [00:11:41] swyx: I feel like Shawn. Yeah. So strategies are like big apps. You constantly run them. Right. And you always all your datas in them. So you take your time to choose. It's like slack or discord notion of OneNote. F sketch is like a big, bigger decision, but tactics are like utilities.[00:11:55] So they're one off you, you picked them up when you need them and you drop them when you're done. So, and I really one of the big breakthroughs was really. Seeing that it align to your job strategies, align to your career and principles, align to human life. And that's the individual scale at which each of these things operate.[00:12:15] And to me, that was like when I realized that I was like, oh, okay. Each of these things apply on different time scales. And part of the joy of being human is, or having operated, have to operate all these things at once. [00:12:25] Chad Stewart: Yeah. That's really interesting, actually. Never really. I mean, I have thought about it, but not necessarily to that level of, like you said, the utilities are the things that you pick up really quickly and you leverage really quickly.[00:12:38] And then, like it's, I've just never thought about it in that kind of timescale that I thank you. I really appreciate, I'm really happy. [00:12:45] swyx: This is recording. I'm like in general I, I actually feel like there's a lot of things we can steal from computer science to run like the rest of our lives because.[00:12:54] It's and this is not a new thing. And there's a book called that tries to take a stab at this, but I think doesn't go far enough. Like one of the things that I did not end up writing about was how we do hyper parameter tuning for machine learning. And it turns out that there is a perimeter that you can tweak to essentially say how excited you should be by progress.[00:13:21] If you make some progress, how much more aggressive should you be? I think it's the alpha perimeter, but I mean, it doesn't really matter what you call it. If you tune it too high, if you tune it higher, you'll learn faster. Because if you have, if you try something, you have initial bit of success, then you're like, okay, screw it.[00:13:35] I'm gonna do 10 X more, whatever I just did. And then you're like, okay, I have 20 X more success. All I'm gonna put a hundred X more than whatever I just did. And then you find that there's a usually converge on a, some local global minimum. Minimum is a good thing in machine learning. And, but I also find there's some grads in which you can overshoot by being too excited about stuff.[00:13:54] And the fact that you have this result in machine learning that you can apply to normal human learning is actually fascinating. So I, I feel like, basically what I wanna do is take computer science learnings and apply their analogies to life. So I don't know if I lost you there [00:14:09] Chad Stewart: no.[00:14:09] I'm so I'm trying to kind imagine that as well. No, I'm just I'm listening. I'm trying, you know what, I'm not gonna lie. Some of it did go over my head [00:14:17] swyx: but it's very thorough. I feel I need to draw it out, but like at the same time, that's the point of podcasts or Twitter spaces, you can just mouth blog, the stuff that.[00:14:26] You don't dare to write down cuz it's not fully . [00:14:28] Chad Stewart: Right. And then not only that you can kinda get people's opinions on it. So like I would, so my immediate thought is that yeah, you you want to tune that, but I would also say you're not let to necessarily get it perfect. And it's just like about being constantly improving.[00:14:46] Yeah. Or, so you don't want to, you don't want to chase perfection because you chase perfection and you're never gonna get anything done. Whereas it's this is good enough for now. And then when you either have time or when you want to, at some event you decide to make improvements.[00:15:02] Right? Yeah. And the thing is you want to make improvements, but you don't want to make improvement often too much and you don't want to make improvements too little, [00:15:12] swyx: Yeah. So, so we have a principle, right? Good enough is better than best. Stop looking for things that are best because that involves obsessing over benchmarks, carrying what influencers think, keeping up with everything new.[00:15:25] And when you obsess with good enough, you turn from the external facing point of view to the internal painting. Point of view, you focus on what you need done. You focus on what you need, well, and you focus on what you enjoy and once you hit good enough, move on. And I feel like that's a fundamentally healthier with life, I guess.[00:15:41] Yeah. Yeah definitely agree. Question. Oh, so thanks for, so whoever submitted that Slido that is our first submission. So we do have a Slido pinned to the top of the thingy, the space. Yeah. Twitter should just build this instead of building like co tweeting or or like the hot take reaction button or whatever that is which I'm also very.[00:16:03] Kind of miff that I didn't get, but whatever, like it's just real, it's just like a really weird feature. Nobody wants to run that company going on. There's no adults supervision going on in, in that company. So the question is, what are your favorite calendar hacks. Do you have any chats?[00:16:19] Chad Stewart: I don't know, so, okay. I guess, let me think. Man, because my whole calendar strategy is, I don't even know if I wanna call it a hat, but so something that I do is that I will make a calendar event. I don't know if it's a hat, but I'll make a calendar event. And I always make the calendar.[00:16:35] I always make the event also happen like at 8:00 AM in the morning so that, my day starts and it's oh, okay, I have this is the stuff that I want to do today. And then it will tell me obviously when the event is going to actually happen. And so I set an alarm on my phone for that time, but I set it for the, for 10 minutes before, and then I just hit the snooze button.[00:16:56] I don't know if that's helpful, , but like it, I'm just like it. I very rarely miss meetings because of that whole setup, [00:17:01] swyx: yeah know. Yeah. That's super smart. I wanna offer the operating systems analogy, right. Which is amazing. We, for someone like me, I, I never really did an operating systems course, but I just I pulled up, I watched some lectures and I pulled up some texts on that and just read the basic, overview of stuff.[00:17:20] There are scheduling algorithms for processes and it, and one of these I wish I could show an image here. I can't really show an image. So there are three main things that you wanna have, right? You wanna have a single source of truth to store all the queues that you're on the task uses that you're accumulating.[00:17:36] You wanna be able to prioritize, so you need some kind of garbage collection slash planning period. And then you need to batch work. So you reduce context switching. So, the first algorithm. Is basically just process scheduling queues. And I'm just gonna read from this slide. It says process migrates among the queues throughout this slide.[00:17:52] So, I have an image here of what a CPU does to do scheduling or what an operating system does is do scheduling has a ready queue in IO Q and it waits for child execution and it waits for interrupts. And those are. Analogous to the types of things that can come into and out of our operating system and the next task, I think is really interesting.[00:18:11] There most job pool systems have a long term scheduler versus a short term scheduler. So you can, you have a long term storage of jobs. You pop some off into a ready queue for your CPU, which is. To process. And that goes from long term to short term. And once your short term scheduling is done, you put the, put it back into either your exit or if you can't finish it, you put it back into a waiting queue.[00:18:34] That's just such a really good analogy for the stuff that you have to do long-term versus the short term and to manage it really well. There's more than that. There's like other decisions. There's also ways to decide about scheduling. So for example, you can design by requirements, you scheduling criteria, you wanna maximize CPU that utilization and you wanna maximize throughput.[00:18:53] In other words, you wanna maximize, the amount of resources that you're, that you've utilizing, and you wanna maximize the amount of work that you're doing. You wanna minimize turnaround time. You wanna minimize waiting time. You wanna minimize response time. In other words, like when people rely on you, you want to have your operating system work and in such a way that they get response in some kind of minimum as LA.[00:19:12] All of these are just like very reasonable requirements if to design for, but because we don't really design our own operating system, we, the emergent property is that, well, sometimes I take two months to reply to an email cuz , cuz I'm still working on this. But I think having.[00:19:26] Desirable properties and then working backwards, scheduling algorithm is, can really help. There are, there's a whole like library of them. I'm just gonna read some out for people to search there's round, rubbing round Robin scheduling, shortest job, first shortest, remaining time priority scheduling first come first serve.[00:19:46] And then the most complex one, which is multi-level Q scheduling. Those are the in terms of my sort of research. Those are the scheduling algorithms that I researched. I don't know. Does any of those appeal to you? ? [00:19:58] Chad Stewart: It's hard for me because I'm trying to imagine like literally the process, and as you were mentioning, like you have a lot of the kind of images I'm trying to imagine.[00:20:06] A lot of the [00:20:06] swyx: processes it's got for audio only medium. Maybe I'll tweet it out and then I'll attach it to the, I was [00:20:14] Chad Stewart: about to say the same thing. I was about to say the same thing. It's [00:20:16] swyx: just okay. Yeah. No. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, I'm just like, I think like whatever this is we should research the, like scheduling the philosophy of scheduling or the algorithms of scheduling are not limited to CPUs are not limited to operating systems.[00:20:30] Like we could just use them for ourselves. Why don't we use them for ourselves? That seems right.[00:20:38] that seems weird. So, so yeah, I mean, that's my essential assertion and I've been researching this for a while. I've got one more, but if no one, and obviously if anyone has like comments on scheduling systems that work for them you can jump on in. So, you want to work on all these prioritization.[00:20:53] There's a really good article from Sarah ner. It's basically on prioritizing how she works on that. She used to be my boss at nullify. And she says lately I've been working on grouping similar tasks. For example, meetings should happen in succession because it's easier for me to jump from one to another than it is having an hour in between.[00:21:12] I'm more keen to communicate with others on Monday when I'm getting the lay of the land towards the end of the week, my energy is higher. If I'm dedicated to coding, especially if I've allotted uninterrupted time. So essentially what she's telling you is like she's observed herself, what she prefers to do during the week.[00:21:26] And then she's allocated her calendar accordingly. And I saw that I worked with her. I worked for her and Thursday was her. And blocked day to, to work on individual projects. And Monday was the was meeting day. And I definitely think some of 'em are batching actually helps with scheduling because of contact switching and also adapting your own task to whenever you feel like you're most, you're most attuned to finishing them.[00:21:48] So, I thought it was really useful. The article, I think is CSS trick.com/prioritizing still one of the best prioritizing articles I've ever read. I should be tweeting this up, but like, where do I attach it? Do I attach it? [00:21:59] Chad Stewart: So when you tweet something it's weird, when you tweet something, you have to go and then you click the share button in the tweet.[00:22:07] And one of the, one of the options is this. And then you'd be able to put it up in the jumbotron, but it's funny that you mentioned that cuz there is an actual question here that was talking about how do you keep from changing focus too quickly? And I think you did a good job of, of talking about that to be quite honest with you, like act I would even go as far to say that's something that I struggle with even though to be fair.[00:22:33] I'm actually fairly good at context switching, but I never I really think about my week I'm like the furthest I would go is like my day. Like I'll just organize my day in a sense, and I don't necessarily organize my entire week in terms of my level of energy throughout the week.[00:22:52] Oh yeah. It's just always this assumption that my, my level of energy is going to be the same unless an event happens, [00:22:59] swyx: so the most opinionated advice I've been given. So, now that I'm a manager. Is it's weird to have opinions on day of the week. Like what you should do on the day of the week.[00:23:09] It's like they be the same as Friday. Obviously not cuz like Friday, you're like close to weekend. But they're like schedule your one-on-ones earlier in the week because if you need to bump them, you can bump them later and it's still the same week and I'm like, wow, to have such strong opinions on this.[00:23:24] This is is pretty special. So I think that's definitely true. We have Fridays at air by as well. So I think that's, that can be really helpful. And yeah, just scheduling focus time for shipping long projects and then scheduling, scheduling, meeting times together.[00:23:36] I think definitely is very useful for for batching. No, I definitely agree. [00:23:40] Chad Stewart: Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I cut you off. [00:23:42] swyx: Well, calendar there. There's one person saying calendar hacks, right? I think I would be remiss. I didn't mention the ultimate calendar hack. If you do a lot of external. You should use ly.[00:23:52] I uses cow, which is a ly competitor. It's basically the same price, same it's got slightly different features. It's got slightly nicer design and it's by Derek Reimer. Who's a indie hacker. So I just choose this indie hacker that I know compared to a $4 billion giant. But yeah, I think the stigma around can Lee has gone away despite what some venture capitalists mentioned.[00:24:13] And it really saves time scheduling, with the email ping pong of what type available, if you're three times that might work for you, so yeah, that, I guess, as far as hacks go, I think that's a big one. [00:24:23] Chad Stewart: Yeah. I definitely agree. I, which is funny.[00:24:26] I don't even use it as much something I've seriously been contemplating mostly cause I had a lot of people kind reach out, but yeah, I definitely agree with that. So something I also, which I actually struggled with, I would also like kind having just one place to view your entire calendar.[00:24:42] Yeah. So if you have a personal calendar, right. Because you may have a work email, like that is also a big deal as well, just so that, you, don't schedule something when you just simply couldn't see that you had another event, even if it's just like I have two calendars now, one for work and then one for my personal thing, and for whatever reason, it just says busy, doesn't say the actual event, that definitely has been like big [00:25:06] swyx: help as well.[00:25:06] You can tweak that into settings. So yeah, I have it set up so that my personal reflects onto my work and yeah, I try to manage, sometimes I get double booked, which is very annoying, but I mean, it works. I wish Gmail would make it more native. Cuz sometimes I have lesser use emails for business stuff. And sometimes those have calendar events. it starts to break down after a while. yeah. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Calendar hacks. Well, so there's, there is an app called I think it's k.com. It's a, it's one of those YC sort of superhuman for calendar apps. I haven't personally used it, but if I just wanna mention it, cuz it always is in the mix when someone else is talking about this.[00:25:46] Oh, it looks like they got a corporate notion. Oh, not too long ago. Last last month. Interesting. That is either positive or negative. They didn't mention the price. Interesting. [00:25:57] Chad Stewart: That's like the exact, they do exact same as, I don't know, [00:26:00] swyx: to see it's an IDK, but if they were yeah.[00:26:03] Whatever. Anyway, I think I applaud them for trying. I think there are a lot of people also trying to do AI scheduling for for your calendar. So if you just plug it in, they will try to find the best slots for you and optimize your meetings. I haven't really heard from anyone who's used that positively, but I think there are all these people trying to do time block planning for you.[00:26:21] I tried AKI flow for a while, which is a really good time block planning app. It was just a bit too resource intensive for me. And I've given them that sort of performance feedback. Ah, okay. I wanted to throw before we get off this calendar hacking, cuz that there's been a couple other questions that came in on the Slido before we get off the calendar hacking I wanted to go through what I got from calendar port.[00:26:40] So for those who. County Park's fairly famous. So it, I, first of all, I find this his distribution strategy. Very interesting. He very famously does not use social media. But he just writes really good content and then lets other people on social media tell others about him. So I feel like in doing this on this space, I'm of doing his bidding.[00:26:59] It's weird, but it's just a good idea. So I'm just gonna share it. So, he has a podcast. So counterpoint is the, is a computer science professor, but also an author. He wrote deep work, which a lot of people know him for. And he has a podcast called deep S where he goes a little bit more into the ideas behind his book, by the way, every book should have a podcast.[00:27:17] Every book should have a community because then you can engage more with the ideas. It makes you reading much more worthwhile. That's why I do this unity thing. But anyway, so, he actually imple, he actually came up with a genius implementation of how to get control of your time.[00:27:32] It's I think a lot of the scheduling comments and ideas, especially the stuff that we just said, it's oh yeah. I've read it uncles like these. And I, my life hasn't really materially changed cause I don't really have a game plan to implement them in my life. And so he gave it a, he gave it a shot.[00:27:45] He actually did a Dave Ramsey style list of baby steps. Like a seven step plan to. Get control of your life. And I think this is episode 180 4 for people who want to listen to it. I have it clipped on my own mix tape. If you wanna go to Swyx mix tape, or you can go to his podcast but I'll just give you a preview for those listening of this, because I just thought it was so good.[00:28:08] And I thought it was so well matched. The scheduling analogy that we are setting up for the operating system of you. And I just, I cannot think of anything better because he'll even sequenced it correctly all, so let me just get into it. And then we'll talk about the meta. So the first step outta seven is time block planning, give every minute a job, right?[00:28:23] It's no use piling up task in your to-do list. Because you don't ever have a plan for when you're actually gonna do it. So you're just gonna accumulate a giant back level to-do list. You're gonna feel guilty about yourself, and then you're gonna eventually start over and have a new list because your oldest filled up with too much.[00:28:38] So time block plan is basically saying, use your calendar as your to-do list. I have about this, that I can go back and pin, but I think it just makes a lot of sense. If you don't have a plan for setting aside time to do a thing, then you don't have a plan to do it at all. Great.[00:28:50] So I, yeah, I, which is like super brutal, right? I just I mean, it's a lot of work, but I'll put things like read, article on, in a five minute, 10 minute block on my calendar. And that would actually work. I'm pinning it now to the channel. If for those who have never heard of time block planning he has a book, I think he's called time block planner.com.[00:29:08] If you like to, every productivity influencer eventually sells you. A journal of blank pages, right? Whether it's the bullet journal guy, whether it's like the, the time block planning guy, everyone's like, how can we sell you a book of blank, empty pages and make you pay like 23 bucks for it.[00:29:25] But I think it's, , it's worth it. But this, I mean, it's not really about, obviously it makes more money elsewhere, but I just think it's funny in the evolution of influencers, like eventually you shall grow up to either sell your own burgers. If you're Mr. Beast or you shall sell your own productivity planner.[00:29:40] So, so that's the first part of seven, which is time block planning. I think that is a really good baseline to get into the habit of planning out your day consciously and. Making sure that you have space to do the things that you sign up to do and to drop or schedule elsewhere, and the things that you don't have time to do.[00:29:58] Then the second thing is to set up task boards. I think this is biggest Trello a bunch of boards keep track of every task. And in other words, you need to stop drop, right? Like anytime anyone has any expectations on you or you sign up to do anything needs to go somewhere, needs to go in a trusted place, needs to go somewhere, cross platform that you'll see it and you'll address it.[00:30:15] You won't just leave it hanging. And for him, like one, what the value add for him here was he actually gave suggestions on what passports to have, because I think you can have way too many. And that starts to be really really unmanageable as well. So he has four, he has this week, he has ambiguous, he has major projects and he has waiting to hear back.[00:30:35] And I like, I really liked that last one waiting to hear back, which means let's say I do a task this week. And I'll do it. And usually it depends on someone else. Right? Usually I'm like, I'm sending email and I'm like, all, this is long-term project and I'm done with, it goes off my board. And then let's say the other person drops my task.[00:30:50] I don't have a process to go two months later, I go Hey, wasn't I, well, they're supposed to get an email for this and stuff to gets dropped and doesn't get done. So you move a task once you're done with it to waiting to hear back column if you're relying on someone else. And I think I think that's a really fascinating system that that sets this up.[00:31:06] But you realize like this is the first time you start to intersect between long-term planning and short-term planning. The time block plan is for your individual day and the long the task board is for your, your weak plus minus you. Two to three weeks. And I think that makes a lot of sense.[00:31:20] In other words there, there are a lot of things where you cannot use your calendars, your to-do list, cuz like you don't particularly have a time to do them when so you just set up a task board and then and when you do your weekly planning, that's when you move your task board into your calendar, your daily calendar and you set aside that stuff that you sign up to do that makes just a ton of sense.[00:31:38] I, I, when I looked at this, I was like, oh yeah. I mean, out of all the productivity systems that I've seen, like all them were too complex. I couldn't really keep up with that, but I can do these two steps. The third step is full capture. So for him and this is very much a getting things done GTD which is the.[00:31:56] Manual of the of the productivity industry. It's by David Allen. David Allen is a podcast where he airs the entire audio of his GTD workshops, where people pay thousands dollars to list to it. And I've been of going through it. It's really super long, but his examples are super good and it's all free.[00:32:12] So why not? If you want to, if you wanna, if you're interested in getting things done and who the hell is not interested in getting things done it's such an fantastic name. I wish I thought of it. Third step is full capture it. By the end of every day, every obligation has to be out of your head in a trusted system.[00:32:26] What are your trusted systems? There are three trusted systems that he has. One is your email inbox. Two is your calendar. Three is your task board. It should, nothing should exist in your memory because you, your memory's unreliable and you will forget. And you and so I just think like establishing this as a harder task role, it's just such a good thing, because then you have a clear mind to have your personal life.[00:32:45] To enjoy yourself to do go do whatever, because you can pick it up again when you get back to work, but otherwise, how do you enable work life separation? If you're thinking about work while you're still in the rest of your life, like you need to unload. And it's of like a weird operating system thing where, you know, when you spin down your container or whatever, you wanna save your state.[00:33:03] And I think those trusted systems are super. I'll go through the last four really quickly. Four is your weekly plan. So going from daily to weekly at the beginning of each week, build your plan for the week block time for your critical things and make your daily time block plan.[00:33:15] Five is your strategic plan. So now by by stage four outta seven so let me recap. The four first is time block plan two is set up task boards. Three is full capture. Four is weekly plan. So by stage four, outta seven, you should have your week in order. Like every. You should have a plan for that week.[00:33:31] You should you should be much in a much more productive phase in your life because you, or at least know, what's going on. You're being proactive about your time. Five is your spend setting your vision for your professional life on a court annual basis, five year basis, 10 year, 20 year, 30 or 40 year.[00:33:46] And it then eventually feeds into your weekly plan. So this is much more strategic thinking. Six is automate and eliminate. So this, like he leaves the automation step all the way to the end. So basically saying I will source it to an executive assistant if I want to I will reduce the round of context switching by trying to batch stuff like this is off, we talked about with Sarah ner will say no to things that we've signed up for.[00:34:05] And when I look at the totality of everything I want to do, this just is like priority number seven and add to it. So. Let's just not beat around the Bush. I'm just gonna say no to this. Right. And leaving and stepping away from stuff is the most high leverage thing you can possibly do, because that gives you more time to focus on the things that really matter to you.[00:34:22] And yeah, I mean that, that is so brutal, but it's still clear. And then finally seven out of the seven step he says, go for it. Like basically once you have control of your time, take more ambitious projects at big swings because that's the way to build a fantastic career. So, what do you think the seven step plan?[00:34:37] Chad Stewart: No, that's pretty, so, I alright to be, I was trying to absorb as much of that as possible. Like definitely. What was it for me personally, I have the biggest issue with like I do. I have a lot of things that kind of live in my head and I try to put as much of it as I. In places as possible, but to be quite honest, a lot of it still lives in my head, same, and so definitely that's the thing that resonated with me the most. The second thing to be quite honest also is giving once you have everything, when you see like the priority of things that you have, no, being strong enough to be like, look, this is just not going to get done.[00:35:18] I can't get this done. And to just freeing up your time, because I'm definitely one of those people that will be like, Hey, can you do this? Yes. And I will grit my teeth. Yes. And do it anyway. And I just don't have a lot of time for myself. Like me personally, I'm trying to learn more system design stuff because that's my interest.[00:35:39] And I find that I do a lot of my system design stuff at nine 30 at night when I'm trying to get to bed at 10, you know what I mean? Yeah. And I'm like struggling through it and I, I keep up the habit I'm doing it, but, I don't feel like I'm retaining anything, but at the very least I'm keeping up the habit, like it's, that's wasted in my opinion or potentially right.[00:36:01] Because I don't retain anything. So definitely just I don't have the time to do this, please, [00:36:08] swyx: you're gonna have to figure that out. This is the fine art of making time, which is fantastic. Okay. So yeah. So first of all I, and I had, I got a little bit better about this over the past two years.[00:36:17] So you must have an app in your phone that you can just dump notes to yourself. It's, it must be offline first. It must sink every. And you must trust it kinda completely. Right. So for me, it's my second brain. Which I use obsidian for and sings the GitHub. So I know if I ever lose it, if if anything, any data ever corrupts, I can just go to GitHub.[00:36:37] And I think you can use notion for that. You can use things, you can use apple notes. Doesn't really matter. There's this meme, actually, this week, you saw that meme, right? The apple notes meme. It's the tools for thought people you start on with the low IQ people using apple notes, and then the mid IQ people start using.[00:36:54] I don't know, Rome research and obsidian, the things . And then the really high IQ people just back to using apple notes again. I think that kind of makes sense for sure. Jack Dorsey talks about his to-do list and he keeps it in apple notes. And if that guy can run his life on apple notes, why can't you[00:37:11] So I mean, not that I hold him up to be like the Paragon of, of human being, but you can't deny that he's been successful. Right? Right. He has a don't do and don't list. I feel like I clipped this before, but I'm really gonna have trouble pulling it up because I clipped this a long time ago.[00:37:29] Maybe I'll just Jack Dorsey, maybe I'll oh, no, I don't have that. Jack Dorsey don't list. Yeah, won't do list. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It's just Google Jack Dorsey. Won't do this. He talks about this in 2018. And I just thought he's just fantastic. Oh, here's this here? He says, okay. It's apple notes.[00:37:45] Oh my God. Okay. He says today, do meditate, workout, tweet, aggression, read, write, consider, follow up. Won't do alcohol, just decided on, he just has a list of like stuff that he just won't do. And, it looks like he's so, he's just always every single day, he just wants to not do alcohol.[00:38:04] And I think that's a super useful question. And then for and then he falls, he finishes off his day with daily questions. What truth did I discover? What am I grateful for? And who did I help? I, this reminds me of actually Benjamin Franklin. Like at the end of his day, he would talk about what good I, what good did I do in my day today?[00:38:20] Like how did I benefit humanity? And I think like having that reflection and consciously living towards. Some small set of purposeful goals, like really helps to align yourself. [00:38:30] Chad Stewart: Definitely agree. As you were say, as you were saying, all of that, the first thing that kind of run to me was atomic habits.[00:38:37] And how one of the stories that the author told was James clear. One of the stories that he told was how he had a friend who was trying to lose weight. And one of the questions she would ask herself is what would a healthy person do? And that effectively became the guide the guide for her.[00:38:57] Not necessarily her life, but her weight loss goals is that she would just always ask that question and it made it more of an intrinsic motivator for her. I, I know in the book he has like levels of, I don't know if it's motivation, but it's like where you want.[00:39:11] To get the drive, to push yourself to do habits. And you have things that's you, your ex, when you have an external motivators, like you want money, you want fame or you want something to pull you towards it. And then when you like the, what he's getting at is you should be more intrinsically motivated where it's you want to be pushed by an idea.[00:39:32] And then that idea is the way you think about you both approaching the world in a sense, yeah. So I, that was like the thing that kind of run out to me as you are, as you're going through the list, it's also very interesting that he that Jack Dorsey takes the time to be grateful.[00:39:48] I feel like that's something that we tend to be very forgetful about, is just like a lot of the times where we're in a very privileged position. Like not to say that everybody is in a great position, but we're a lot of times we're in a very privileged position and is just like being grateful for all the things that we already have, while still trying to achieve more.[00:40:07] It's just interesting that he has that. [00:40:10] swyx: Yeah. Have you, have I read you my favorite quote on motivation and intrinsic pharmacists. Okay. Let me attach it to the tweet so that other people can read along. I read this four years ago and it really. Has guided a lot of my career choices as well.[00:40:25] By then, so I've just pined it up for those following along. And it's from Dan Pink's drive and he calls it extrinsic promises, destroy intrinsic motivation. As children, we are driven by our inner desires to learn, to discover to help others. But as we grow, we are programmed by society to need extrinsic motivations.[00:40:43] We take out the trash, we study hard, we work tirelessly, we'll be rewarded with friendly praise, high grades, and good paychecks slowly. We lose more and more of our intrinsic motivation because extrinsic promises destroy intrinsic motivation. And I'm just like, wow. Yeah, like how much do I, not how much do I do anymore?[00:41:01] Or don't do because no, one's paying me to do it. So I don't do it. And and how different is that from kids who are like, yeah, this looks fun. Let's just go do it. Let's just write out, [00:41:10] Chad Stewart: yeah, no, it's, to be honest with you, I would even go as far as to say that The way I do everything is I guess it's chasing that original kind of ideal of this is just something interested in doing, and I'm just like, I'm just trying to put position my life in a place where it's I can get back to maybe not necessarily reacting oh, this is interesting.[00:41:29] I want to attempt this, but I have all of these other things I have to do, I have all of these other responsibilities or just things that I said that I, well, I guess, responsibilities. So I was just trying to getting back to that, but yeah, it's. Yeah, [00:41:43] swyx: definitely. Cool. Cool, cool.[00:41:45] Did we talk about what keeps you, so we're going back to questions on Slido. Let's finish these out. There's three more questions. What keeps you from changing focus too quickly? Do we talk about that? Yes, that was like things we talked about. That's cool. It's cool. If anyone has has follow up questions, obviously feel free to chat.[00:41:59] Let's go with some more can you share some examples of how you specifically implement operating schedule OS scheduling concepts into how you design your week advances task and doing, thank you. Yeah, so, I think we talked a little bit about the planning phase for, if you, so I listened to the manager tools podcast, and I listen to county reports podcast, and mostly you wanna do your planning on.[00:42:20] Monday morning, you only plan a week out. Right. And part of that is going to be determined for you. You have weekly standing meetings, try to have one-on-ones earlier in a week. And then towards the end of the week, try to do what they call a 15, what they call a 15 five writeup, which is essentially sum up the week in 15 minutes so that you yourself or your manager can look back and track like what, your progress and how you think your week ran.[00:42:46] We have a limited amount of these things, and I think it's incumbent upon us to not let every week go by business as usual going feeling three outta five, instead of a four outta five or 505, like you wake up too many times in the same day, in the same week and are not excited about what you're doing, then we need to start changing that.[00:43:02] Right. So I think for me, that. Well, one thing that I'm part in particularly working on right now in terms of operating, scheduling, operating schedule concepts it's very much the queue thing, right? So I tweeted out earlier it's pinned up here on, on the tweet stream, but having those task boards are basically, which are basically task queues is exactly how an operating system would work.[00:43:23] And you need some sort of scheduling algorithm to prioritize them and take them off of task use into your short term task list, which is the linear sequential list of things you're gonna do throughout your day. EV every single one of us has 24 hours. We hopefully work eight, I don't know, eight to 10 hours a day.[00:43:37] And that's all we have, right? So we have to make the most of what we do there. So, the way that we translate task list to our calendar is essentially the scheduling problem. And I think that, the whole analogy of, what is an operating system, but a general. Way to run a bunch of applications and applications generate tasks.[00:43:55] And we're running those tasks on limited hardware. That is that hardware is our bodies is our time. So it's an optimization problem. We study this algorithm extensively in operating systems. It's time to apply it to. Our own time. [00:44:09] Chad Stewart: so I have a quick question. What happens when you have say for instance, I guess an emergency, yeah. A task comes out of nowhere. It needs to get done. I guess now that I'm thinking about as literally, as I was talking about it, I was reminded of one of Greg's tweets that he mentioned [00:44:27] swyx: GGE he's Hungarian [00:44:28] Chad Stewart: GGE. Thank you. Thank you so much. I've had no idea how to pronounce his name. I know GGE yeah.[00:44:33] GGE one of his, [00:44:35] swyx: try his last name. If you wanna challenge. Yeah, I'm good. [00:44:37] Chad Stewart: Nah, I'm not trying to advise myself, [00:44:39] swyx: but yeah. [00:44:40] Chad Stewart: One of, one of his tweets that he mentioned as a, as an engineering manager, which is essentially, everybody comes and says, oh, we need to get this task done right now.[00:44:49] I hold too much into it because I actually still want to ask the question, but like, how do you not, yeah. How do you how have you dealt with the, the reactionary tasks that come? What, how do you, how have you sorted that out? [00:45:02] swyx: Okay. When emergencies happen. Right. First of all I don't know.[00:45:04] I don't feel like I have that many emergencies. So maybe I'm not that experienced. If anyone else has more experience, more advice, please jump in Jay. You're always a good in our sessions. You're always a good source of advice and wisdom. So now feel free to jump in on that one. I think most things are movable.[00:45:23] And if you just tell people in a very reasonable tone Hey, we had this prior commitments, but this other thing came up and here's why I have to drop you. They'll understand. I think the fortunate thing about being in knowledge work is that usually not firm deadline that you cannot move for valid reasons.[00:45:37] I think just having clear communication and knowing what commitments you've made, being able to ping back essentially have a webhook on your commitments and say Hey, like I gotta job you. I, I got this other thing going on. I think that's the fine way to do it. Yeah. I guess [00:45:51] Chad Stewart: it is like you have to have, you also have to have that level of, I don't know, because I feel like I have the opposite effect where it's just Hey, I have something really important I need to do.[00:46:00] And then the person's yeah, I'm the most important thing. Why aren't you doing it? But [00:46:03] swyx: I'll say one. Yeah, sorry. Having slack is really good, right? You don't wanna run a 100% utilization, just like saying any any cloud service, any I don't know, cluster of any data center. It is actually a bad idea to run.[00:46:16] Try to run your your app, your applications, or your server cluster at a hundred percent utilization at base load. You want to have some slack, you wanna maybe run it 60% so that when bikes happen, you have the ability to absorb at least a little bit of emergency workload. So I, I do think that's true.[00:46:32] That's obviously not what you wanna hear as an employer, to have your people slacking around for some time. But I do think if you are a knowledge worker, if you're a creative worker in particular we should work like lions instead of cow. Right. We should sprint. We should hunt. And then we should laser around waiting for the next big hit.[00:46:50] Whereas for cows, you're just constantly grazing. And so we are not factory workers. We're not, we're not on an assembly line. Humans have, hot streaks and cold streaks and hopefully we just have, better hot streaks than we have cold. But I do think that someone on slack is important.[00:47:03] Chad Stewart: So I'm I'm not at derail the entire conversation, but when you said slack, I was literally like, oh wow. Slack the application. I'm sorry. I just had to make that joke. [00:47:13] swyx: but [00:47:13] Jay Massimilano: pretty Kathy Sierra said something. Yeah. Hey, this is Jay [00:47:17] swyx: that similar, right. Let me introduce Jay. Jay is one of the I don't know what he's doing in our community, but like he's one, like by far way more experienced than any one of us in software.[00:47:26] And he's, yeah, he's one of the biggest source of advice. So I'm super happy that you hear man. [00:47:30] Jay Massimilano: Well, yeah I learned a ton from this from the coding career meetup and I'm, I love that it's I've learned a ton, so it's, that is it's. I think it's, I've learned more than what I've said for sure.[00:47:42] So on, on the topic that you're mentioning about that you'll have to be like lions, Kathy Sierra I think it's in somewhere she's published a while ago. She said only in, in the tech industry, you are expected to. So if you're in medicine, you get to practice what you do is called a practice, right?[00:48:02] So you, and even if you do carpentry or anything, there's always throw away work. You practice, you train for a bit and. You do something new, right. But only in our industry, we expect you pick up a new tool and deploy that to production. Like without any gap or without any element for throwing things away.[00:48:19] Right. There is, there's just now we are not allowed or at least it's just been culturally, not common for us to for a company to allow us to experiment and throw things away. If you start with a new tool, it needs to be you have to take it to production. And maybe a lot of her problems are because of not allowing for throwing things away, work away.[00:48:37] Right. But and she says like in medicine, literally what they do is called practice. But not, that's not the case in ours. So there has to be a lot of learning and I think like when you say lions, it's like, You learn, you compress all your learning digested, and then when you're ready to P your, what exactly you're doing and it's, the output is professional.[00:48:58] And at least in real world, when I, the work that I've seen that we have done when we pick on pick up new technologies and so on is it's usually we implement it wrong. The first version that goes out is, and it hurts customers and not right. And it so yeah, when I when I heard the line thought that's what came to me, what Kathy Sierra said, you need to back more.[00:49:20] swyx: Yeah. Is that any is so Kathy Sarah left the tech before I joined. Okay. She was harassed off of the tech. I. Is that a book? How do you come across her work? She she had a hype, [00:49:32] Jay Massimilano: Head rush. I think her [00:49:33] swyx: blog rush head first [00:49:35] Jay Massimilano: head rush. Let [00:49:37] swyx: me look up. She used to write the head first books. That's how I know her.[00:49:40] Yeah, that, that [00:49:41] Jay Massimilano: is she wrote a blog on headrush dot hype ad.com. It was one of the first blogs I read when I bought my computer. So it's not online anymore. [00:49:50] swyx: Typepad no, I found it. I found it. Oh yeah. Head address that Typepad [00:49:53] Jay Massimilano: yeah, that's a it's it's still online. That's great. Yeah, it's, A's a well up information [00:49:58] Chad Stewart: probably should tweet it and so we can [00:50:00] swyx: post it up here as well.[00:50:01] I'm adding into my thread. So if anyone's following along there is pin tweets at the top of this space and I've just been taking notes. Just cuz what, cuz I love show notes. I love giving. Homework[00:50:14] you guys know that, right? That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Kathy, the other thing that, that Kathy is famous for is the fire flower, right? The there's the picture of the Mario this picture, the fire flower. And then there's a picture of fire, Mario. Yeah. And most vendors or most entrepreneurs try to sell the fire flower when actually users wanna be the fire Mario.[00:50:32] Right. [00:50:33] Jay Massimilano: And I don't know I really miss her. She was one of those who mixes, who I think her LA her most recent book was, is called badass. Yeah. And I that's her jam. Like she, she really care thinks about how to deliver something. Like how creating an impact on the person who is consumed who is using work like, and her advice is around.[00:50:54] For creators, how to make impactful work, how to do impactful work. So, and yeah, I think anyone who has, if you have not heard it I'm sure a lot of people here have never heard [00:51:06] swyx: yeah. I mean, it looks like she stopped blogging in 2007. So this is a long while ago. Yeah. [00:51:10] Jay Massimilano: She was she was docked and someone harassed her.[00:51:14] Yeah. Yeah. And she had leave the scene and yeah, I wish we couldn't have her [00:51:19] swyx: back. Yeah same here. But maybe maybe I'll request this from you, Jay. Because you are very familiar with her work. I love a thread of the best of Kathy Sierra, just write that.[00:51:29] Is he still here? He's just dropped out. [00:51:31] Chad Stewart: Twitter spaces being Twitter spaces. [00:51:32] swyx: Oh man. Oh man. I just made a big ass to him and then he dropped out. Ah, I mean the space is recorded, so it you're still hack. I [00:51:44] Jay Massimilano: had a time limit on my iPhone for one hour Twitter.[00:51:46] swyx: Anyway yes. No, so no, I was basically asking you since you're the Kathy Sarah expert. Can you do a best of Kathy Sierra so that other people can benefit? I, yeah, [00:51:55] Jay Massimilano: I will definitely write one. For sure. [00:51:57] swyx: Just do a Twitter thread. Just go here's like top five things you need to read.[00:51:59] Yes. Yeah. Cool. See content idea, right? Yeah. and it's really not that hard. Like people are interested in like superlative, like best of worst off first time, last time whenever. Yeah. There [00:52:11] Jay Massimilano: are other folks who are also close to her maybe than even know her personally Ryan singer, who used to be at base camp.[00:52:15] swyx: Wait, is he no longer at base cap? He's no longer at base after [00:52:18] Jay Massimilano: the a year ago. [00:52:20] swyx: Oh yeah. I thought he was one of those. Okay. Okay. Yeah. [00:52:25] Jay Massimilano: Oh yeah. So he's no longer at base camp. [00:52:26] swyx: Yeah. Yeah. [00:52:27] Jay Massimilano: He also speaks very highly for like in his work. He Heights are. [00:52:33] swyx: Cool. Well, you can do the same. Yeah, sure.[00:52:35] Yeah. Cool. Cool, cool. So, yeah. [00:52:37] Chad Stewart: Yeah, so I actually wanted to ask, I mean, I think this is one of the, one of the last questions was how do you manage emails? Do you have something like K screener or something like that? I guess wanted to point that out there. Oh [00:52:50] swyx: man. Can I just say I paid the $99 for hay and it was very disappointing.[00:52:57] It's supposed to be fast. It's supposed to be like a new invention of email, whatever. And it was so slow. Every key press took like a second to resolve. I don't know what people's experiences were here, but I was in Singapore at the time and it just didn't have Singapore service or something, but it was just unacceptably slow.[00:53:14] But the screening I thought was interesting. I think it's over, maybe over-optimized for screening things out. I used superhu I've just canceled it. Because I think superhuman, the thing about superhuman is fantastic. Local productivity with shortcuts and offline syncing, right? That is what you want for the fastest possible interaction with your email.[00:53:34] And you've got nice scheduling. They've got nice, learning curve as well as they'll rewards you for reaching inbox zero. Something that they suck at, which I need is filters. It's to set up filters to say all these patterns of email, they come in, I want to go tag them here, archive them, delete them, do whatever.[00:53:51] Right. And they haven't implemented that in four years of existence. So I just, I got tired of waiting and paying, $300 a year for this one missing functionality. And I'm going back to Gmail.[00:54:01] Chad Stewart: How oh, so how do you, I guess, how long have you been using Gmail? I guess how long have you been since you've returned to Gmail? Cause I wanted to pick your brain on some of the [00:54:11] swyx: stuff that you do with Gmail now. Oh, I mean, yeah. I mean, well, I never really left, but guess I'm back on Gmail now.[00:54:17] Yeah. Not too long like a few weeks. I've like I've given superhuman a try twice. One once when my employer paid for it and then two on my own. But I, it just I need filters. I need to be able to easily set up filters and everything else. Like I, the keyboard shortcuts you can get in Gmail as well.[00:54:33] Like I used, I didn't co justify like paying 300 something for, slightly faster email. [00:54:37] Chad Stewart: I hear you. I dunno. I feel left off the loop cause I'm just mostly I don't know. I just, I don't know, like more recently I've been getting a ton of like work emails, cause like I get a lot of notifications from GitHub and like it was ridiculously [00:54:53] swyx: no don't get, yeah leave GitHub notifications outside email, just, leave it inside a GitHub and then, check it whenever you're doing code stuff, but otherwise don't, I think those GitHub was the first thing, one of the first notifications streams that turned off I'll say yeah, make extensive of filters.[00:55:08] Snippets are really useful. Like Bigham, like pre baked replies to everything. Instant shows can help a little bit. And that's when you BCC some, you take someone off to BCC and then you promote up the two list. All those things like having memorizing the keyboard shortcuts, like everyone's working on some version of that.[00:55:24] I think there's a, the, there's some former Gmail engineers who spun out and are making their own take on what a better Gmail could look like. I think it's called shortcut. I haven't tried, I haven't like I've, I haven't mentally on my list to try them. Yeah. I mean, like base is fine.[00:55:39] Just use filters wisely use snippets and I think you're use, use the key

About AnilAnil Dash is the CEO of Glitch, the friendly developer community where coders collaborate to create and share millions of web apps. He is a recognized advocate for more ethical tech through his work as an entrepreneur and writer. He serves as a board member for organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the leading nonprofit defending digital privacy and expression, Data & Society Research Institute, which researches the cutting edge of tech's impact on society, and The Markup, the nonprofit investigative newsroom that pushes for tech accountability. Dash was an advisor to the Obama White House's Office of Digital Strategy, served for a decade on the board of Stack Overflow, the world's largest community for coders, and today advises key startups and non-profits including the Lower East Side Girls Club, Medium, The Human Utility, DonorsChoose and Project Include.As a writer and artist, Dash has been a contributing editor and monthly columnist for Wired, written for publications like The Atlantic and Businessweek, co-created one of the first implementations of the blockchain technology now known as NFTs, had his works exhibited in the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and collaborated with Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda on one of the most popular Spotify playlists of 2018. Dash has also been a keynote speaker and guest in a broad range of media ranging from the Obama Foundation Summit to SXSW to Desus and Mero's late-night show.Links: Glitch: https://glitch.com Web.dev: https://web.dev Glitch Twitter: https://twitter.com/glitch Anil Dash Twitter: https://twitter.com/anildash TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: It seems like there is a new security breach every day. Are you confident that an old SSH key, or a shared admin account, isn't going to come back and bite you? If not, check out Teleport. Teleport is the easiest, most secure way to access all of your infrastructure. The open source Teleport Access Plane consolidates everything you need for secure access to your Linux and Windows servers—and I assure you there is no third option there. Kubernetes clusters, databases, and internal applications like AWS Management Console, Yankins, GitLab, Grafana, Jupyter Notebooks, and more. Teleport's unique approach is not only more secure, it also improves developer productivity. To learn more visit: goteleport.com. And not, that is not me telling you to go away, it is: goteleport.com.Corey: It seems like there is a new security breach every day. Are you confident that an old SSH key, or a shared admin account, isn't going to come back and bite you? If not, check out Teleport. Teleport is the easiest, most secure way to access all of your infrastructure. The open source Teleport Access Plane consolidates everything you need for secure access to your Linux and Windows servers—and I assure you there is no third option there. Kubernetes clusters, databases, and internal applications like AWS Management Console, Yankins, GitLab, Grafana, Jupyter Notebooks, and more. Teleport's unique approach is not only more secure, it also improves developer productivity. To learn more visit: goteleport.com. And not, that is not me telling you to go away, it is: goteleport.com.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Redis, the company behind the incredibly popular open source database that is not the bind DNS server. If you're tired of managing open source Redis on your own, or you're using one of the vanilla cloud caching services, these folks have you covered with the go to manage Redis service for global caching and primary database capabilities; Redis Enterprise. To learn more and deploy not only a cache but a single operational data platform for one Redis experience, visit redis.com/hero. Thats r-e-d-i-s.com/hero. And my thanks to my friends at Redis for sponsoring my ridiculous non-sense.  Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Today's guest is a little bit off the beaten path from the cloud infrastructure types I generally drag, kicking and screaming, onto the show. If we take a look at the ecosystem and where it's going, it's clear that in the future, not everyone who wants to build a business, or a tool, or even an application is going to necessarily spring fully-formed into the world from the forehead of some God, knowing how to code. And oh, “I'm going to go to a boot camp for four months to learn how to do it first,” is increasingly untenable. I don't know if you would call it low-code or not. But that's how it feels. My guest today is Anil Dash, CEO of Glitch. Anil, thank you for joining me.Anil: Thanks so much for having me.Corey: So, let's get the important stuff out of the way first, since I have a long-standing history of mispronouncing the company Twitch as ‘Twetch,' I should probably do the same thing here. So, what is Gletch? And what does it do?Anil: Glitch is, at its simplest, a tool that lets you build a full-stack app in your web browser in about 30 seconds. And, you know, for your community, your audience, it's also this ability to create and deploy code instantly on a full-stack server with no concern for deploy, or DevOps, or provisioning a container, or any of those sort of concerns. And what it is for the users is, honestly, a community. They're like, “I looked at this app that was on Glitch; I thought it was cool; I could do what we call [remixing 00:02:03].” Which is to kind of fork that app, a running app, make a couple edits, and all of a sudden live at a real URL on the web, my app is running with exactly what I built. And that's something that has been—I think, just captured a lot of people's imagination to now where they've built over 12 or 15 million apps on the platform.Corey: You describe it somewhat differently than I would, and given that I tend to assume that people who create and run successful businesses don't generally tend to do it without thought, I'm not quite, I guess, insufferable enough to figure out, “Oh, well, I thought about this for ten seconds, therefore I've solved a business problem that you have been needling at for years.” But when I look at Glitch, I would describe it as something different than the way that you describe it. I would call it a web-based IDE for low-code applications and whatnot, and you never talk about it that way. Everything I can see there describes it talks about friendly creators, and community tied to it. Why is that?Anil: You're not wrong from the conventional technologist's point of view. I—sufficient vintage; I was coding in Visual Basic back in the '90s and if you squint, you can see that influence on Glitch today. And so I don't reject that description, but part of it is about the audience we're speaking to, which is sort of a next generation of creators. And I think importantly, that's not just age, right, but that could be demographic, that can be just sort of culturally, wherever you're at. And what we look at is who's making the most interesting stuff on the internet and in the industry, and they tend to be grounded in broader culture, whether they're on, you know, Instagram, or TikTok, or, you know, whatever kind of influencer, you want to point at—YouTube.And those folks, they think of themselves as creators first and they think of themselves as participating in the community first and then the tool sort of follow. And I think one of the things that's really striking is, if you look at—we'll take YouTube as an example because everyone's pretty familiar with it—they have a YouTube Creator Studio. And it is a very rich and deep tool. It does more than, you know, you would have had iMovie, or Final Cut Pro doing, you know, 10 or 15 years ago, incredibly advanced stuff. And those [unintelligible 00:04:07] use it every day, but nobody goes to YouTube and says, “This is a cloud-based nonlinear editor for video production, and we target cinematographers.” And if they did, they would actually narrow their audience and they would limit what their impact is on the world.And so similarly, I think we look at that for Glitch where the social object, the central thing that people organize around a Glitch is an app, not code. And that's this really kind of deep and profound idea, which is that everybody can understand an app. Everybody has an idea for an app. You know, even the person who's, “Ah, I'm not technical,” or, “I'm not really into technology,” they're like, “But you know what? If I could make an app, I would make this.”And so we think a lot about that creative impulse. And the funny thing is, that is a common thread between somebody that literally just got on the internet for the first time and somebody who has been doing cloud deploys for as long as there's been a cloud to deploy to, or somebody has been coding for decades. No matter who you are, you have that place that is starting from what's the experience I want to build, the app I want to build? And so I think that's where there's that framing. But it's also been really useful, in that if you're trying to make a better IDE in the cloud and a better text editor, and there are multiple trillion-dollar companies that [laugh] are creating products in that category, I don't think you're going to win. On the other hand, if you say, “This is more fun, and cooler, and has a better design, and feels better,” I think we could absolutely win in a walk away compared to trillion-dollar companies trying to be cool.Corey: I think that this is an area that has a few players in it could definitely stand to benefit by having more there. My big fear is not that AWS is going to launch stuff in your space and drive you out of business; I think that is a somewhat naive approach. I'm more concerned that they're going to try to launch something in your space, give it a dumb name, fail that market and appropriately, not understand who it's for and set the entire idea back five years. That is, in some cases, it seems like their modus operandi for an awful lot of new markets.Anil: Yeah, I mean, that's not an uncommon problem in any category that's sort of community driven. So, you know, back in the day, I worked on building blogging tools at the beginning of this, sort of, social media era, and we worried about that a lot. We had built some of the first early tools, Movable Type, and TypePad, and these were what were used to launch, like, Gawker and Huffington Post and all the, sort of, big early sites. And we had been doing it a couple years—and then at that time, major player—AOL came in, and they launched their own AOL blog service, and we were, you know, quaking in our boots. I remember just being kind of like, pit in your stomach, “Oh, my gosh. This is going to devastate the category.”And as it turns out, people were smart, and they have taste, and they can tell. And the domain that we're in is not one that is about raw computing power or raw resources that you can bring to bear so much as it is about can you get people to connect together, collaborate together, and feel like they're in a place where they want to make something and they want to share it with other people? And I mean, we've never done a single bit of advertising for Glitch. There's never been any paid acquisition. There's never done any of those things. And we go up against, broadly in the space, people that have billboards and they buy out all the ads of the airport and, you know, all the other kind of things we see—Corey: And they do the typical enterprise thing where they spend untold millions in acquiring the real estate to advertise on, and then about 50 cents on the message, from the looks of it. It's, wow, you go to all this trouble and expense to get something in front of me, and after all of that to get my attention, you don't have anything interesting to say?Anil: Right.Corey: [crosstalk 00:07:40] inverse of that.Anil: [crosstalk 00:07:41] it doesn't work.Corey: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's brand awareness. I love that game. Ugh.Anil: I was a CIO, and not once in my life did I ever make a purchasing decision based on who was sponsoring a golf tournament. It never happened, right? Like, I never made a call on a database platform because of a poster that was up at, you know, San Jose Airport. And so I think that's this thing that developers in particular, have really good BS filters, and you can sort of see through.Corey: What I have heard about the airport advertising space—and I but a humble cloud economist; I don't know if this is necessarily accurate or not—but if you have a company like Accenture, for example, that advertises on airport billboards, they don't even bother to list their website. If you go to their website, it turns out that there's no shopping cart function. I cannot add ‘one consulting' to my cart and make a purchase.Anil: “Ten pounds of consult, please.”Corey: Right? I feel like the primary purpose there might very well be that when someone presents to your board and says, “All right, we've had this conversation with Accenture.” The response is not, “Who?” It's a brand awareness play, on some level. That said, you say you don't do a bunch traditional advertising, but honestly, I feel like you advertise—more successfully—than I do at The Duckbill Group, just by virtue of having a personality running the company, in your case.Now, your platform is for the moment, slightly larger than mine, but that's okay,k I have ambition and a tenuous grasp of reality and I'm absolutely going to get there one of these days. But there is something to be said for someone who has a track record of doing interesting things and saying interesting things, pulling a, “This is what I do and this is how I do it.” It almost becomes a personality-led marketing effort to some degree, doesn't it?Anil: I'm a little mindful of that, right, where I think—so a little bit of context and history: Glitch as a company is actually 20 years old. The product is only a few years old, but we were formerly called Fog Creek Software, co-founded by Joel Spolsky who a lot of folks will know from back in the day as Joel on Software blog, was extremely influential. And that company, under leadership of Joel and his co-founder Michael Pryor spun out Stack Overflow, they spun out Trello. He had created, you know, countless products over the years so, like, their technical and business acumen is off the charts.And you know, I was on the board of Stack Overflow from, really, those first days and until just recently when they sold, and you know, you get this insight into not just how do you build a developer community that is incredibly valuable, but also has a place in the ecosystem that is unique and persists over time. And I think that's something that was very, very instructive. And so when it came in to lead Glitch I, we had already been a company with a, sort of, visible founder. Joel was as well known as a programmer as it got in the world?Corey: Oh, yes.Anil: And my public visibility is different, right? I, you know, I was a working coder for many years, but I don't think that's what people see me on social media has. And so I think, I've been very mindful where, like, I'm thrilled to use the platform I have to amplify what was created on a Glitch. But what I note is it's always, “This person made this thing. This person made this app and it had this impact, and it got these results, or made this difference for them.”And that's such a different thing than—I don't ever talk about, “We added syntax highlighting in the IDE and the editor in the browser.” It's just never it right. And I think there are people that—I love that work. I mean, I love having that conversation with our team, but I think that's sort of the difference is my enthusiasm is, like, people are making stuff and it's cool. And that sort of is my lens on the whole world.You know, somebody makes whatever a great song, a great film, like, these are all things that are exciting. And the Glitch community's creations sort of feel that way. And also, we have other visible people on the team. I think of our sort of Head of Community, Jenn Schiffer, who's a very well known developer and her right. And you know, tons of people have read her writing and seen her talks over the years.And she and I talk about this stuff; I think she sort of feels the same way, which is, she's like, “If I were, you know, being hired by some cloud platform to show the latest primitives that they've deployed behind an API,” she's like, “I'd be miserable. Like, I don't want to do that in the world.” And I sort of feel the same way. But if you say, “This person who never imagined they would make an app that would have this kind of impact.” And they're going to, I think of just, like, the last couple of weeks, some of the apps we've seen where people are—it could be [unintelligible 00:11:53]. It could be like, “We made a Slack bot that finally gets this reporting into the right channel [laugh] inside our company, but it was easy enough that I could do it myself without asking somebody to create it even though I'm not technically an engineer.” Like, that's incredible.The other extreme, we have people that are PhDs working on machine learning that are like, “At the end of the day, I don't want to be responsible for managing and deploying. [laugh]. I go home, and so the fact that I can do this in create is really great.” I think that energy, I mean, I feel the same way. I still build stuff all the time, and I think that's something where, like, you can't fake that and also, it's bigger than any one person or one public persona or social media profile, or whatever. I think there's this bigger idea. And I mean, to that point, there are millions of developers on Glitch and they've created well over ten million apps. I am not a humble person, but very clearly, that's not me, you know? [laugh].Corey: I have the same challenge to it's, effectively, I have now a 12 employee company and about that again contractors for various specialized functions, and the common perception, I think, is that mostly I do all the stuff that we talk about in public, and the other 11 folks sort of sit around and clap as I do it. Yeah, that is only four of those people's jobs as it turns out. There are more people doing work here. It's challenging, on some level, to get away from the myth of the founder who is the person who has the grand vision and does all the work and sees all these things.Anil: This industry loves the myth of the great man, or the solo legend, or the person in their bedroom is a genius, the lone genius, and it's a lie. It's a lie every time. And I think one of the things that we can do, especially in the work at Glitch, but I think just in my work overall with my whole career is to dismantle that myth. I think that would be incredibly valuable. It just would do a service for everybody.But I mean, that's why Glitch is the way it is. It's a collaboration platform. Our reference points are, you know, we look at Visual Studio and what have you, but we also look at Google Docs. Why is it that people love to just send a link to somebody and say, “Let's edit this thing together and knock out a, you know, a memo together or whatever.” I think that idea we're going to collaborate together, you know, we saw that—like, I think of Figma, which is a tool that I love. You know, I knew Dylan when he was a teenager and watching him build that company has been so inspiring, not least because design was always supposed to be collaborative.And then you think about we're all collaborating together in design every day. We're all collaborating together and writing in Google Docs—or whatever we use—every day. And then coding is still this kind of single-player game. Maybe at best, you throw something over the wall with a pull request, but for the most part, it doesn't feel like you're in there with somebody. Certainly doesn't feel like you're creating together in the same way that when you're jamming on these other creative tools does. And so I think that's what's been liberating for a lot of people is to feel like it's nice to have company when you're making something.Corey: Periodically, I'll talk to people in the AWS ecosystem who for some reason appear to believe that Jeff Barr builds a lot of these services himself then writes blog posts about them. And it's, Amazon does not break out how many of its 1.2 million or so employees work at AWS, but I'm guessing it's more than five people. So yeah, Jeff probably only wrote a dozen of those services himself; the rest are—Anil: That's right. Yeah.Corey: —done by service teams and the rest. It's easy to condense this stuff and I'm as guilty of it as anyone. To my mind, a big company is one that has 200 people in it. That is not apparently something the world agrees with.Anil: Yeah, it's impossible to fathom an organization of hundreds of thousands or a million-plus people, right? Like, our brains just aren't wired to do it. And I think so we reduce things to any given Jeff, whether that's Barr or Bezos, whoever you want to point to.Corey: At one point, I think they had something like more men named Jeff on their board than they did women, which—Anil: Yeah. Mm-hm.Corey: —all right, cool. They've fixed that and now they have a Dave problem.Anil: Yeah [unintelligible 00:15:37] say that my entire career has been trying to weave out of that dynamic, whether it was a Dave, a Mike, or a Jeff. But I think that broader sort of challenge is this—that is related to the idea of there being this lone genius. And I think if we can sort of say, well, creation always happens in community. It always happens influenced by other things. It is always—I mean, this is why we talk about it in Glitch.When you make an app, you don't start from a blank slate, you start from a working app that's already on the platform and you're remix it. And there was a little bit of a ego resistance by some devs years ago when they first encountered that because [unintelligible 00:16:14] like, “No, no, no, I need a blank page, you know, because I have this brilliant idea that nobody's ever thought of before.” And I'm like, “You know, the odds are you'll probably start from something pretty close to something that's built before.” And that enabler of, “There's nothing new under the sun, and you're probably remixing somebody else's thoughts,” I think that sort of changed the tenor of the community. And I think that's something where like, I just see that across the industry.When people are open, collaborative, like even today, a great example is web browsers. The folks making web browsers at Google, Apple, Mozilla are pretty collaborative. They actually do share ideas together. I mean, I get a window into that because they actually all use Glitch to do test cases on different bugs and stuff for them, but you see, one Glitch project will add in folks from Mozilla and folks from Apple and folks from the Chrome team and Google, and they're like working together and you're, like—you kind of let down the pretense of there being this secret genius that's only in this one organization, this one group of people, and you're able to make something great, and the web is greater than all of them. And the proof, you know, for us is that Glitch is not a new idea. Heroku wanted to do what we're doing, you know, a dozen years ago.Corey: Yeah, everyone wants to build Heroku except the company that acquired Heroku, and here we are. And now it's—I was waiting for the next step and it just seemed like it never happened.Anil: But you know when I talked to those folks, they were like, “Well, we didn't have Docker, and we didn't have containerization, and on the client side, we didn't have modern browsers that could do this kind of editing experience, all this kind of thing.” So, they let their editor go by the wayside and became mostly deploy platform. And—but people forget, for the first year or two Heroku had an in-browser editor, and an IDE and, you know, was constrained by the tech at the time. And I think that's something where I'm like, we look at that history, we look at, also, like I said, these browser manufacturers working together were able to get us to a point where we can make something better.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle HeatWave is a new high-performance accelerator for the Oracle MySQL Database Service. Although I insist on calling it “my squirrel.” While MySQL has long been the worlds most popular open source database, shifting from transacting to analytics required way too much overhead and, ya know, work. With HeatWave you can run your OLTP and OLAP, don't ask me to ever say those acronyms again, workloads directly from your MySQL database and eliminate the time consuming data movement and integration work, while also performing 1100X faster than Amazon Aurora, and 2.5X faster than Amazon Redshift, at a third of the cost. My thanks again to Oracle Cloud for sponsoring this ridiculous nonsense.Corey: I do have a question for you about the nuts and bolts behind the scenes of Glitch and how it works. If I want to remix something on Glitch, I click the button, a couple seconds later it's there and ready for me to start kicking the tires on, which tells me a few things. One, it is certainly not using CloudFormation to provision it because I didn't have time to go and grab a quick snack and take a six hour nap. So, it apparently is running on computers somewhere. I have it on good authority that this is not just run by people who are very fast at assembling packets by hand. What does the infrastructure look like?Anil: It's on AWS. Our first year-plus of prototyping while we were sort of in beta and early stages of Glitch was getting that time to remix to be acceptable. We still wish it were faster; I mean, that's always the way but, you know, when we started, it was like, yeah, you did sit there for a minute and watch your cursor spin. I mean, what's happening behind the scenes, we're provisioning a new container, standing up a full stack, bringing over the code from the Git repo on the previous project, like, we're doing a lot of work, lift behind the scenes, and we went through every possible permutation of what could make that experience be good enough. So, when we start talking about prototyping, we're at five-plus, almost six years ago when we started building the early versions of what became Glitch, and at that time, we were fairly far along in maturity with Docker, but there was not a clear answer about the use case that we're building for.So, we experimented with Docker Swarm. We went pretty far down that road; we spent a good bit of time there, it failed in ways that were both painful and slow to fix. So, that was great. I don't recommend that. In fairness, we have a very unusual use case, right? So, Glitch now, if you talk about ten million containers on Glitch, no two of those apps are the same and nobody builds an orchestration infrastructure assuming that every single machine is a unique snowflake.Corey: Yeah, massively multi-tenant is not really a thing that people know.Anil: No. And also from a security posture Glitch—if you look at it as a security expert—it is a platform allowing anonymous users to execute arbitrary code at scale. That's what we do. That's our job. And so [laugh], you know, so your threat model is very different. It's very different.I mean, literally, like, you can go to Glitch and build an app, running a full-stack app, without even logging in. And the reason we enable that is because we see kids in classrooms, they're learning to code for the first time, they want to be able to remix a project and they don't even have an email address. And so that was about enabling something different, right? And then, similarly, you know, we explored Kubernetes—because of course you do; it's the default choice here—and some of the optimizations, again, if you go back several years ago, being able to suspend a project and then quickly sort of rehydrate it off disk into a running app was not a common use case, and so it was not optimized. And so we couldn't offer that experience because what we do with Glitch is, if you haven't used an app in five minutes, and you're not a paid member, who put that app to sleep. And that's just a reasonable—Corey: Uh, “Put the app to sleep,” as in toddler, or, “Put the app to sleep,” as an ill puppy.Anil: [laugh]. Hopefully, the former, but when we were at our worst and scaling the ladder. But that is that thing; it's like we had that moment that everybody does, which is that, “Oh, no. This worked.” That was a really scary moment where we started seeing app creation ramping up, and number of edits that people were making in those apps, you know, ramping up, which meant deploys for us ramping up because we automatically deploy as you edit on Glitch. And so, you know, we had that moment where just—well, as a startup, you always hope things go up into the right, and then they do and then you're not sleeping for a long time. And we've been able to get it back under control.Corey: Like, “Oh, no, I'm not succeeding.” Followed immediately by, “Oh, no, I'm succeeding.” And it's a good problem to have.Anil: Exactly. Right, right, right. The only thing worse than failing is succeeding sometimes, in terms of stress levels. And organizationally, you go through so much; technically, you go through so much. You know, we were very fortunate to have such thoughtful technical staff to navigate these things.But it was not obvious, and it was not a sort of this is what you do off the shelf. And our architecture was very different because people had looked at—like, I look at one of our inspirations was CodePen, which is a great platform and the community love them. And their front end developers are, you know, always showing off, “Here's this cool CSS thing I figured out, and it's there.” But for the most part, they're publishing static content, so architecturally, they look almost more like a content management system than an app-running platform. And so we couldn't learn anything from them about our scaling our architecture.We could learn from them on community, and they've been an inspiration there, but I think that's been very, very different. And then, conversely, if we looked at the Herokus of the world, or all those sort of easy deploy, I think Amazon has half a dozen different, like, “This will be easier,” kind of deploy tools. And we looked at those, and they were code-centric not app-centric. And that led to fundamentally different assumptions in user experience and optimization.And so, you know, we had to chart our own path and I think it was really only the last year or so that we were able to sort of turn the corner and have high degree of confidence about, we know what people build on Glitch and we know how to support and scale it. And that unlocked this, sort of, wave of creativity where there are things that people want to create on the internet but it had become too hard to do so. And the canonical example I think I was—those of us are old enough to remember FTPing up a website—Corey: Oh, yes.Anil: —right—to Geocities, or whatever your shared web host was, we remember how easy that was and how much creativity was enabled by that.Corey: Yes, “How easy it was,” quote-unquote, for those of us who spent years trying to figure out passive versus active versus ‘what is going on?' As far as FTP transfers. And it turns out that we found ways to solve for that, mostly, but it became something a bit different and a bit weird. But here we are.Anil: Yeah, there was definitely an adjustment period, but at some point, if you'd made an HTML page in notepad on your computer, and you could, you know, hurl it at a server somewhere, it would kind of run. And when you realize, you look at the coding boot camps, or even just to, like, teach kids to code efforts, and they're like, “Day three. Now, you've gotten VS Code and GitHub configured. We can start to make something.” And you're like, “The whole magic of this thing getting it to light up. You put it in your web browser, you're like, ‘That's me. I made this.'” you know, north star for us was almost, like, you go from zero to hello world in a minute. That's huge.Corey: I started participating one of those boot camps a while back to help. Like, the first thing I changed about the curriculum was, “Yeah, we're not spending time teaching people how to use VI in, at that point, the 2010s.” It was, that was a fun bit of hazing for those of us who were becoming Unix admins and knew that wherever we'd go, we'd find VI on a server, but here in the real world, there are better options for that.Anil: This is rank cruelty.Corey: Yeah, I mean, I still use it because 20 years of muscle memory doesn't go away overnight, but I don't inflict that on others.Anil: Yeah. Well, we saw the contrast. Like, we worked with, there's a group called Mouse here in New York City that creates the computer science curriculum for the public schools in the City of New York. And there's a million kids in public school in New York City, right, and they all go through at least some of this CS education. [unintelligible 00:24:49] saw a lot of work, a lot of folks in the tech community here did. It was fantastic.And yet they were still doing this sort of very conceptual, theoretical. Here's how a professional developer would set up their environment. Quote-unquote, “Professional.” And I'm like, you know what really sparks kids' interests? If you tell them, “You can make a page and it'll be live and you can send it to your friend. And you can do it right now.”And once you've sparked that creative impulse, you can't stop them from doing the rest. And I think what was wild was kids followed down that path. Some of the more advanced kids got to high school and realized they want to experiment with, like, AI and ML, right? And they started playing with TensorFlow. And, you know, there's collaboration features in Glitch where you can do real-time editing and a code with this. And they went in the forum and they were asking questions, that kind of stuff. And the people answering their questions were the TensorFlow team at Google. [laugh]. Right?Corey: I remember those days back when everything seemed smaller and more compact, [unintelligible 00:25:42] but almost felt like a balkanization of community—Anil: Yeah.Corey: —where now it's oh, have you joined that Slack team, and I'm looking at this and my machine is screaming for more RAM. It's, like, well, it has 128 gigs in it. Shouldn't that be enough? Not for Slack.Anil: Not for chat. No, no, no. Chat is demanding.Corey: Oh, yeah, that and Chrome are basically trying to out-ram each other. But if you remember the days of volunteering as network staff on Freenode when you could basically gather everyone for a given project in the entire stack on the same IRC network. And that doesn't happen anymore.Anil: And there's something magic about that, right? It's like now the conversations are closed off in a Slack or Discord or what have you, but to have a sort of open forum where people can talk about this stuff, what's wild about that is, for a beginner, a teenage creator who's learning this stuff, the idea that the people who made the AI, I can talk to, they're alive still, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, they're not even that old. But [laugh]. They think of this is something that's been carved in stone for 100 years.And so it's so inspiring to them. And then conversely, talking to the TensorFlow team, they made these JavaScript examples, like, tensorflow.js was so accessible, you know? And they're like, “This is the most heartwarming thing. Like, we think about all these enterprise use cases or whatever. But like, kids wanting to make stuff, like recognize their friends' photo, and all the vision stuff they're doing around [unintelligible 00:26:54] out there,” like, “We didn't know this is why we do it until we saw this is why we do it.”And that part about connecting the creative impulse from both, like, the most experienced, advanced coders at the most august tech companies that exist, as well as the most rank beginners in public schools, who might not even have a computer at home, saying that's there—if you put those two things together, and both of those are saying, “I'm a coder; I'm able to create; I can make something on the internet, and I can share it with somebody and be inspired by it,” like, that is… that's as good as it gets.Corey: There's something magic in being able to reach out to people who built this stuff. And honestly—you shouldn't feel this way, but you do—when I was talking to the folks who wrote the things I was working on, it really inspires you to ask better questions. Like when I'm talking to Dr. Venema, the author of Postfix and I'm trying to figure out how this thing works, well, I know for a fact that I will not be smarter than he is at basically anything in that entire universe, and maybe most beyond that, as well, however, I still want to ask a question in such a way that doesn't make me sound like a colossal dumbass. So, it really inspires you—Anil: It motivates you.Corey: Oh, yeah. It inspires you to raise your question bar up a bit, of, “I am trying to do x. I expect y to happen. Instead, z is happening as opposed to what I find the documentation that”—oh, as I read the documentation, discover exactly what I messed up, and then I delete the whole email. It's amazing how many of those things you never send because when constructing a question the right way, you can help yourself.Anil: Rubber ducking against your heroes.Corey: Exactly.Anil: I mean, early in my career, I'd gone through sort of licensing mishap on a project that later became open-source, and sort of stepped it in and as you do, and unprompted, I got an advice email from Dan Bricklin, who invented the spreadsheet, he invented VisiCalc, and he had advice and he was right. And it was… it was unreal. I was like, this guy's one of my heroes. I grew up reading about his work, and not only is he, like, a living, breathing person, he's somebody that can have the kindness to reach out and say, “Yeah, you know, have you tried this? This might work.”And it's, this isn't, like, a guy who made an app. This is the guy who made the app for which the phrase killer app was invented, right? And, you know, we've since become friends and I think a lot of his inspiration and his work. And I think it's one of the things it's like, again, if you tell somebody starting out, the people who invented the fundamental tools of the digital era, are still active, still building stuff, still have advice to share, and you can connect with them, it feels like a cheat code. It feels like a superpower, right? It feels like this impossible thing.And I think about like, even for me, the early days of the web, view source, which is still buried in our browser somewhere. And you can see the code that makes the page, it felt like getting away with something. “You mean, I can just look under the hood and see how they made this page and then I can do it too?” I think we forget how radical that is—[unintelligible 00:29:48] radical open-source in general is—and you see it when, like, you talk to young creators. I think—you know, I mean, Glitch obviously is used every day by, like, people at Microsoft and Google and the New York Timesor whatever, like, you know, the most down-the-road, enterprise developers, but I think a lot about the new creators and the people who are learning, and what they tell me a lot is the, like, “Oh, so I made this app, but what do I have to do to put it on the internet?”I'm like, “It already is.” Like, as soon as you create it, that URL was live, it all works. And their, like, “But isn't there, like, an app store I have to ask? Isn't there somebody I have to get permission to publish this from? Doesn't somebody have to approve it?”And you realize they've grown up with whether it was the app stores on their phones, or the cartridges in their Nintendo or, you know, whatever it was, they had always had this constraint on technology. It wasn't something you make; it's something that is given to you, you know, handed down from on high. And I think that's the part that animates me and the whole team, the community, is this idea of, like, I geek out about our infrastructure. I love that we're doing deploys constantly, so fast, all the time, and I love that we've taken the complexity away, but the end of the day, the reason why we do it, is you can have somebody just sort of saying, I didn't realize there was a place I could just make something put it in front of, maybe, millions of people all over the world and I don't have to ask anybody permission and my idea can matter as much as the thing that's made by the trillion-dollar company.Corey: It's really neat to see, I guess, the sense of spirit and soul that arises from a smaller, more, shall we say, soulful company. No disparagement meant toward my friends at AWS and other places. It's just, there's something that you lose when you get to a certain point of scale. Like, I don't ever have to have a meeting internally and discuss things, like, “Well, does this thing that we're toying with doing violate antitrust law?” That is never been on my roadmap of things I have to even give the slightest crap about.Anil: Right, right? You know, “What does the investor relations person at a retirement fund think about the feature that we shipped?” Is not a question that we have to answer. There's this joy in also having community that sort of has come along with us, right? So, we talk a lot internally about, like, how do we make sure Glitch stays weird? And, you know, the community sort of supports that.Like, there's no reason logically that our logo should be the emoji of two fish. But that kind of stuff of just, like, it just is. We don't question it anymore. I think that we're very lucky. But also that we are part of an ecosystem. I also am very grateful where, like… yeah, that folks at Google use Glitch as part of their daily work when they're explaining a new feature in Chrome.Like, if you go to web.dev and their dev portal teaches devs how to code, all the embedded examples go to these Glitch apps that are running, showing running code is incredible. When we see the Stripe team building examples of, like, “Do you want to use this new payment API that we made? Well, we have a Glitch for you.” And literally every day, they ship one that sort of goes and says, “Well, if you just want to use this new Stripe feature, you just remix this thing and it's instantly running on Glitch.”I mean, those things are incredible. So like, I'm very grateful that the biggest companies and most influential companies in the industry have embraced it. So, I don't—yeah, I don't disparage them at all, but I think that ability to connect to the person who'd be like, “I just want to do payments. I've never heard of Stripe.”Corey: Oh yeah.Anil: And we have this every day. They come into Glitch, and they're just like, I just wanted to take credit cards. I didn't know there's a tool to do that.Corey: “I was going to build it myself,” and everyone shrieks, “No, no. Don't do that. My God.” Yeah. Use one of their competitors, fine,k but building it yourself is something a lunatic would do.Anil: Exactly. Right, right. And I think we forget that there's only so much attention people can pay, there's only so much knowledge they have.Corey: Everything we say is new to someone. That's why I always go back to assuming no one's ever heard of me, and explain the basics of what I do and how I do it, periodically. It's, no one has done all the mandatory reading. Who knew?Anil: And it's such a healthy exercise to, right, because I think we always have that kind of beginner's mindset about what Glitch is. And in fairness, I understand why. Like, there have been very experienced developers that have said, “Well, Glitch looks too colorful. It looks like a toy.” And that we made a very intentional choice at masking—like, we're doing the work under the hood.And you can drop down into a terminal and you can do—you can run whatever build script you want. You can do all that stuff on Glitch, but that's not what we put up front and I think that's this philosophy about the role of the technology versus the people in the ecosystem.Corey: I want to thank you for taking so much time out of your day to, I guess, explain what Glitch is and how you view it. If people want to learn more about it, about your opinions, et cetera. Where can they find you?Anil: Sure. glitch.com is easiest place, and hopefully that's a something you can go and a minute later, you'll have a new app that you built that you want to share. And, you know, we're pretty active on all social media, you know, Twitter especially with Glitch: @glitch. I'm on as @anildash.And one of the things I love is I get to talk to folks like you and learn from the community, and as often as not, that's where most of the inspiration comes from is just sort of being out in all the various channels, talking to people. It's wild to be 20-plus years into this and still never get tired of that.Corey: It's why I love this podcast. Every time I talk to someone, I learn something new. It's hard to remain too ignorant after you have enough people who've shared wisdom with you as long as you can retain it.Anil: That's right.Corey: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.Anil: So, glad to be here.Corey: Anil Dash, CEO of Gletch—or Glitch as he insists on calling it. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment telling me how your small team at AWS is going to crush Glitch into the dirt just as soon as they find a name that's dumb enough for the service.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

We spoke with Paula Forbes of Stained Page News, a newsletter about cookbooks. For her, it's a place to geek out about cookbooks - where she can write about news, recipes, and upcoming releases. Paula has a multifaceted view of the culinary world. She worked as a professional cookbook critic for over a decade, writing for publications like Eater, Epicurious, Lucky Peach, and Food 52. She also has a background in cooking for restaurants, and in 2008 she published her own cookbook, The Austin Cookbook.We talked about the worlds of food blogging and cookbook writing, what makes a good cookbook, and what it was like for Paula to write her own cookbook after years of reviewing them. LinksStained Page News, Paula's newsletterPaula on TwitterThe Austin Cookbook, Paula's cookbook Highlights(2:23) Paula's writing journey, from writing cookbook reviews to blogging to starting her newsletter (12:38) Why people buy cookbooks, even though so many recipes are online now(18:42) How the 2008 recession coincided with the rise of food bloggers(25:44) Paula's favorite types of cookbooks, and the overall qualities that make good cookbooks (37:34) The process of writing a cookbook On similarities between cooking and writing:The feeling you get from cooking in a restaurant and writing a solid blog post that goes up really quickly is very similar to me. A very speedy, quick strategy is involved. You have to be very efficient.On having a community of newsletter readers:I think that in the grand scheme of things, you're never going to make it rich with a cookbook website or TV show. But being able to focus on a self-selecting audience who has said, "Okay, I'm interested in this topic. I'm interested in cookbooks. I want to hear what you have to say about them.” It amplifies what you're saying so much more.On the process of writing a cookbook:It's a hell of a process. You have to be so organized and you have to be just on top of everything. It's so much more data than just writing the text of the thing. Cookbooks are so much work and I have so much respect for anyone who tries to write one.TranscriptNadia (00:22):We see a lot of food writers on Substack, but your publication, Stained Page News, stood out to me because you're specifically focused on cookbooks - which just said to me that this person isn't just really into food as a broader topic, but you have this truly geeky obsession with cookbooks specifically that I really want to hear more about. How did you come to fall in love with this topic?Paula (00:44):Way back when I graduated from college, I originally thought that I wanted to go to grad school and go into academia. And what I wanted to do was ... This was not really a thing that existed then, but I wanted to look at food cultural history of the 20th century through the lens of books as a literature.Paula (01:19):I applied to grad school a bunch of times and didn't get in because people kept saying, "You're a great candidate, but we don't have anyone here who can help you study that." So, in the meantime, I started writing book reviews, freelance, for a Typepad blog because this was what, 2007, 2008? And then later for outlets and I've been covering cookbooks ever since.Nadia (01:52):Wow, this got me even more excited about this topic. So, you really are coming at it from a researcher mindset way back in the day of wanting to just understand cookbooks as a genre, it sounds like, before you got into writing. You mentioned writing on a blog in the early days and then writing professionally and now you have a newsletter on Substack - how does that experience of early blogging compare to writing today?Paula (02:23):That's why I started the newsletter, it's because I missed blogging. So, I started writing cookbook reviews and later just about everything else for a blog called Eat Meat Daily that no longer exists. And they looked at the liberal arts of food. It was art, it was film, it was books. And just generally weird stuff with a good sense of humor.Paula (02:52):So, I started there and that was a very late odds style blog. And then from there, I moved on to writing for Eater, which is a different style of blog.Nadia (03:13):So, for folks who haven't read Eater, can you tell us a little bit about how it's different?Paula (03:23):I can't really speak to their current style of blogging, but when I worked there, it was very quick hit news, re-blogs, everything with a sense of humor - sense of humor and a point of view of restaurant insiders. But the two were different and that one was very much ... Eater was very much volume-driven when I worked there, so it was very much get in, get out of the story. Get it up, have the best headline, that kind of thing.Paula (04:02):And I missed that. I also have a background in cooking in restaurants and the feeling you got from cooking in a restaurant and writing a really solid blog post that goes up quickly is very similar to me. A very speedy, quick strategy is involved. You have to be very efficient - so figuring out how to do that in my head scratches the itch of like, "Okay, now I'm working." And that doesn't really exist anymore in media, near as I can tell, at least not in my circles.Paula (04:48):So, I missed it. I missed talking about cookbook news which I didn't really see anyone doing. And I just started tweeting stuff. And then, people started picking up stuff I was tweeting and I was like, "Well, this is not great because I'm a freelance writer, and I would like to be making some money off of the scoops I'm finding." There is one in particular that was after Anthony Bourdain passed away.Paula (05:29):They announced that they were going to be publishing a book that he had been working on when he passed away. And so, I tweeted about it and everyone linked to the tweet. People magazine linked to the tweet. It was wild, and I was just like, "Why am I just throwing the stuff up on Twitter when I'd be writing it?" So, that's a very long way of saying that the newsletter scratches both the quick hit, how much information can you relay in one sentence thing that I got from blogging, and also fills the hole of the cookbook news that I wasn't seeing other places.Nadia (06:14):That makes sense. It sounds so simple but I feel like the addition of an email list really just changes that relationship. Even if you have a popular blog post and it goes super viral and everyone is reading it, you never really know who's on there and they kind of go off into the ether and do something else. But when you have a place for people to subscribe and get more of it, then it's you're actually building this relationship within an ongoing audience.Paula (06:41):Yeah, and especially with a topic like my topic which is so focused. I think that in the grand scheme of things, cookbooks are not ... You're never going to make it rich with a cookbook website or TV show or whatever but being able to focus it at a self-selecting audience who has said, "Okay, I'm interested in this topic. I'm interested in cookbooks. I want to hear what you have to say about them.” It amplifies what you're saying so much more.Nadia (07:13):I'm curious whether you feel like you've created a different sense of community because you're this independent writer at the center of your work versus writing about cookbooks and reviewing them on say Eater or Food 52's communities.Paula (07:29):Gosh, not really. I don't allow comments on my newsletter.Nadia (07:35):Oh, interesting.Paula (07:37):So, I actually did on today's newsletter but it's a rarity for me. The newsletter management for me is very much about the path of least resistance in many ways. And it came down to: did I want to spend a ton of time moderating comments? And I've decided that that was not for me.Nadia (08:03):I really like that. I respect that. Actually, I noticed that you started writing Stained Page News a few years ago and then you went on hiatus and then you brought it back. And I just thought it was great because a lot of writers struggle with getting into this rhythm and feel maybe over-obligated to do more or maybe respond to or moderate comments or write all the time and consistently. Do you have any advice or learnings from this experience of being able to step away and come back again?Paula (08:36):Yeah. Gosh, how did that happen? I mean, the money is the big part of that, not to get into the weeds about the money - but as a freelancer, you can only spend so much time on things that don't pay. So that was part of why I stepped away, just I couldn't excuse it anymore. I couldn't make the time and I wasn't about to give up weekends or anything. You know, freelancers deserve downtime too.Paula (09:07):So, having an outlet where I could make some money off of it was honestly a huge, huge deal for me. I priced it pretty low, I think. It's five bucks a month and I did that specifically because I know that things come up where you can't do it occasionally and I didn't want people to feel like we're paying her 20 bucks a month or whatever it is, and then she doesn't write. That's not to say ... I write pretty much every week.Paula (09:45):But things come up. You get sick. You want to take a vacation, whatever. It's not going to happen every week, but I do think that if you're consistent in your publishing week to week, you will see it in open rates and you will see it in click-throughs and you will see it in the number of people who respond to the newsletter and it snowballs for sure.Nadia (10:09):You mentioned one of the reasons for stepping away is that you couldn't justify it as a non-paid thing you're doing versus the other paid work you had to focus on. Had you considered doing paid subscriptions previously? I know you did end up adding them when you moved to Substack.Paula (10:28):I didn't. It hadn't really occurred to me as an option. I had tried to figure out how to do affiliate links. Amazon doesn't let you do affiliate links and emails as I'm sure you know and people listening might not know. But I was doing a thing where I would send the email and then I would put the text of the newsletter on my website, but I really have to completely reformat it just so I can put in the Amazon links and then no one was ever using that.Paula (11:01):So, it's this huge thing and I was just like, "There's just no way. There's no way I'm ever going to be able to make money off of this." You all made the paid subscription thing really easy honestly.Nadia (11:16):How has having paid subscriptions changed your relationship with your writing if at all - since I imagine it does allow you to focus a little bit more time on that?Paula (11:25):Yeah. I feel a responsibility to my readers even though I tried to price it affordably. I'm never, ever, ever going to take for granted the fact that someone would give me money to read an email from me. So, I definitely take that into consideration. For example, recently, I used to send my newsletters Wednesdays and Fridays because new cookbooks come out on Tuesdays so I wanted it to be when books would come out and also that there had been articles written about the books would run Tuesday or Wednesday when food sections publish also.Paula (12:11):So, the Wednesday articles are the free article and the Friday issue was the paid and I was noticing that the Friday paid issue was kind of skimpy. So, I moved it to Tuesdays so that there would be more time and more time for things to happen so that I could give my paid subscribers a meatier issue every week.Nadia (12:38):That makes sense. I'd love to just dive into cookbooks themselves since we've been talking about you and your publication a bit, but you also write about this really fascinating topic that you have a lot of insight into. I would love to just maybe kick things off by talking about why people buy cookbooks.Nadia (12:57):I think about the cookbooks I've received from my mother. She loves cooking. I do too, and so food has become this way for us to bond - especially when I was younger and making that transition from angsty teenager to a person that my mother can actually converse with.Nadia (13:13):And so, my experience of cookbooks has been that they bring us closer to other people or remind us of a sense of place. Does that align with what you've seen? Why do people buy cookbooks in a world where so much cooking now happens through online recipes?Paula (13:29):Sure. I mean, gosh, I think there are tons of reasons why people buy cookbooks. Where do I start? So, first of all, I think that there are two different ways that people react or interact with cookbooks, which is that some people are very recipe-driven. I'm going to follow this recipe. I'm going to panic if I have parsley and not basil. I'm going to frantically text my friend, Paula, to see if I can cut it down to serve four instead of eight, that kind of thing, because I do get these texts.Nadia (14:07):You must be that person for all your friends.Paula (14:11):And then the other people who just glance at it and, "Oh, kale, potato, sausage soup, great." And just do whatever they want. So, I think you start there. So there's just two schools of people. The people who are real sticklers for the recipes are the people who are buying very generalist cookbooks. I'm talking about The Joy of Cooking or New York Times Cookbook, those kinds of things, How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman.Paula (14:42):But also a lot of the books that are like weeknight dinners, the healthy food that still tastes good, basic pastas, those kinds of things, things that are very action-oriented. So, those consumers of cookbooks, people who are like, "I'm buying this book because I literally want to make this thing for dinner."Paula (15:04):Then you have the other people who are buying them for inspiration for ideas, launch pads, and those are people who are maybe buying more restaurant books, international cookbooks, books that are very visual. There's also professionals buying cookbooks and there's also people who are buying them to read them as literature. And there are people who are buying them as status objects to have on their coffee table.Paula (15:38):And there are people who are buying them as souvenirs. I went to this restaurant on my vacation and then now I want their cookbook as a totem of that time that I spent at that restaurant. So, I think there's a lot of different reasons that people buy cookbooks.Nadia (15:56):Yeah, sounds like it. You had a little brainstorm right there. Do you find that cookbook publishers nudge authors into appealing to one of these certain kinds of markets the way that we might expect an editor for someone who's writing in journalism to maybe nudge them towards certain kinds of audiences? Does that happen with cookbooks?Paula (16:21):Absolutely. I would even take it a step further and say those certain publishers tend to publish different books for different audiences. I mean, that's not 100% true across the board, but if you look at Phaidon for example, they are known for doing these big artsy chef and restaurant books from renowned chefs around the world. But then also they do these “food bibles” where it will be the big book of Irish cooking - or those are the most recent ones. That's not the title but it's called The Irish Cookbook.Paula (17:01):Anyway, they've done them for Indian, Thailand and Mexico and all these different countries. So, they gear that way, these big books. You got Ten Speed which does a lot of books with chefs. Each publisher finds their niche and cultivates that audience. Of course, there are outliers to all of that, that people will tell me about the second they listen to those.Nadia (17:29):I guess there are a lot of different types of cookbook authors as well, right? I'm thinking about the domestic brand types like Martha Stewart or Chrissy Teigen or chefs or food critics. And so, there's just like different publishers that appeal to different types of authors?Paula (17:49):Mm-hmm. There are so many more cookbook authors than you would ever even think of. There are a lot of people who write small volumes that are a book about jam, or a book about Jewish baking or a book about ... I don't know. I don't even cover the diet books but there are a whole thing of cooking for diabetes and all of that. So, there are all these wings of cookbook authorship that it's pretty endless. There's a lot to write about.Nadia (18:22):How do cookbooks intersect with the rise of food blogging in the last 10 or 20 years? You've got like Spin Kitchen or pioneer women types who've written their own cookbooks. Do you see food blogging as this democratizing force for cookbooks - of allowing you entrance into the market? Or did it negatively impact the demand for cookbooks?Paula (18:42):How do I put this? I think that the demand for cookbooks is not linked to food blogging. And the reason that I will say that is because I think that the demand for cookbooks was more tied to the 2008 recession which coincided with the rise of food bloggers for maybe the same reason, which is a very complicated way to answer that question.Paula (19:13):What I will say is that, like you said, a lot of the big names of that first generation of food bloggers have written cookbooks to great success. And also that people are still doing that. And then these days, you tend to see also YouTubers and Instagram influencers who write cookbooks as well.Nadia (19:41):I had no idea that the 2008 recession coincided with the rise of food bloggers. And as I'm hearing that, I'm just thinking about right now experiencing the COVID pandemic that we're seeing right now and how that is correlated with a rise in people writing on Substack and I'm wondering if it's similar forces at work. Can you tell us just a little bit about what that was like in 2008?Paula (20:03):I mean, that was mostly just due to the fact that people couldn't afford to eat out anymore so they were eating at home. There was also, at the time, cultural discovery. I was a young person then, and so, it just seemed like everyone I knew was 25 and teaching themselves how to cook.Paula (20:24):I'm sure that's not what it looked from the outside, but what I do know is that book sales started going up and then there was this real big boom in cookbook publishing and it's been chugging along ever since. Near as I can tell in the current crisis, cookbook sales are doing okay, maybe even up.. But anecdotally I've noticed - and I've been covering this for 10 to 12 years -Paula (20:55):I've noticed significantly fewer book deal news coming across my desk, so that's a little troubling to me. But hopefully, people are just being cautious and it will pick up again in the fall.Nadia (21:09):That's really interesting to think about. What is the role of narrative in cookbooks, because I mean, as we're just thinking about the different types of people that buy cookbooks and why, there is this tendency for me to initially think of cookbooks as essentially how-to books. But then, you can look at it through this narrative lens as well where then I start thinking about them in relation to this broader genre of food memoirs.Nadia (21:35):I'm thinking about Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal which straddled both genres of cookbook and memoir. Where's the line between something being a memoir about food versus a how-to sort of cookbook?Paula (21:50):Yeah, I mean, I don't know that there needs to be a line there. I think that what you're doing with the memoir is you're trying to evoke the feeling of being in a place and time. And you're trying to represent something you remember as best as you can remember it. And I think that a recipe does the same thing in a much more obviously tactile and real world way but that that can be part of the experience of evoking this memory, I'm thinking specifically about restaurant cookbooks.Paula (22:30):Restaurants aren't supposed to last forever. They're a business that is born and has a heyday and then probably someday end - hopefully with everyone retiring very happy and well off. But in the meantime, it's a feeling that can go away. I mean as we're learning the hard way right now, the atmosphere and the buzz of a busy restaurant and the food it cooks, it's not a forever thing. Gosh, I didn't mean to get this depressing. But that narrative follows that, can evoke that and can be a record of what that energy was while in existence.Nadia (23:22):It's just like, I mean, that just also makes the case for books more broadly. It's a really beautiful take, and I appreciate it because it just makes me think about how when we are talking about online food blogging versus cookbooks and how those two things can coexist. And similarly, just writing in general, there's a place to write tweets. There's a place to write blog posts and there's always going to be this place to write books just because it is like this more permanent record or a marker in time as you were saying to capture a certain sentiment that maybe a short form can't always do.Paula (23:59):Yeah, absolutely, and that it can look at it from different angles. You can have a cookbook where you involve the pastry chef and you have some sample playlists from the music that plays in the restaurant. You have the photographs of the space. And maybe you have a few testimonials from customers and that kind of thing and then all of it builds and adds to become as close as you can get to the restaurant itself.Paula (24:29):And I think that the recipes are a key part of that because you can say, "Okay, well, what about an episode of some TV show where they interview chefs and go to restaurants and things." But it's the food, the food is the thing. And so, when you have that recipe, you can understand how the food has been ... Even if you don't make them at home, even if you don't recreate it in your own kitchen, you can still read about it and say, "Okay, well, they made it with this brand of soy sauce instead of this brand of soy sauce because so and so was from here. But at this market, they only have this."Paula (25:03):And then, "Oh, they have this wild technique where they salt mushrooms two hours ahead," whatever. You read the thing and you learn all this stuff about what went into this restaurant in a way that you can't learn otherwise.Nadia (25:23):Yeah, that sounds like it's like the recipe isn't just a process or a list of steps but it's a peek behind the curtain to see what really goes into, especially as you're saying, with a restaurant cookbook. What's the mark of a good cookbook for you?Paula (25:36):What's the mark of a good cookbook? I don't know.Nadia (25:41):I mean, just what are your favorite types?Paula (25:44):Yeah, I was going to say there's a difference between a good cookbook and a cookbook that I get excited about. I like really weird cookbooks. I mean if something surprises me, that's going to get me excited. Weird art, weird design makes me excited. Sort of over-the-top writing makes me excited.Paula (26:12):But what makes for a good cookbook - that most people who aren't the crazy cookbook lady are going to think is good - is I want to be able to open to three separate pages and want to make one of the recipes, I would say, is big. I think that information beyond the recipes that you can use in multiple settings is important for me.Paula (26:42):A really good cookbook, if I'm going to keep a cookbook in my kitchen, I need info in it beyond the recipes that are useful to me in more than one way. So, say you have a book on sourdough and sourdough starters. I want to be able to read about how the starter can be applied to bread versus pizza versus muffins or whatever. And that to me is a book that's not just a one-off disposable cookbook. That's a book that has earned its keep on its spot on my shelf.Nadia (27:27):What are some styles or trends that you've seen in cookbooks over the years? Especially just comparing like modern, let's say post internet style cookbooks - are they really different from the cookbooks of the '50s?Paula (27:39):Oh, gosh.Nadia (27:39):We're going all the way back, maybe the '90s.Paula (27:44):I mean cookbook, you would be shocked how much cookbooks have changed. I bought this cookbook recently from 1999 and the photographs, if you didn't know it was from 1999, you would think from the '80s. You would not be able to guess.Paula (27:58):So since I've started writing about cookbooks, the big things have been most books drop the jackets. So we don't do jackets anymore. There was this big trend towards unfinished paper. So it was this matte finish that in my opinion made the photos look blurry as opposed to a glossy finish paper, which people like because the unfinished paper is thicker and it makes your book look bigger. But I think it made the photography look terrible and we seemed to be moving away from that a little bit, so that's good.Paula (28:40):The big trend recently has been the white covers with the photos with the white border around the photo. Alison Roman's cookbooks have that. What else? As far as topics go, there was a big restaurant push that we seem to be coming out of where it's just like, "Oh, if you're the big chef in your size town, you should have a cookbook." There's always been nerdy bread boy books. There are always men who write these like “my bread journey” cookbooks.Paula (29:22):Now, we're seeing more regional international cookbooks which I think is good. Like not just, I don't know, China but specific regions of China. That kind of thing I think is great.Nadia (29:37):I love it. I love the aesthetic ones, the changes that you mentioned. I'd love to just see your collection of cookbooks all lined up chronologically. I imagine you could just visually see how much they have changed over time.Paula (29:50):Probably, yeah.Nadia (29:52):Fun project. How does an author go about getting a cookbook published? Is it similar to getting books published in general? Is there anything special about the cookbook genre?Paula (30:01):How you get a book published, I mean it's about the same. It's similar to the nonfiction world where you write a book proposal and then you get the advance and then you write the cookbook with proposals. You need a whole list, all of the recipes listed ahead of time so you know what every single recipe in the book is going to be. And you also have to develop them.Paula (30:32):So, I'm working on a proposal right now and I think we have 12 full recipes and then five to eight sub-recipes that are real short. Here is the stock that goes into the soup kind of thing. And then of course, the cookbook publishers are often specialized publishers. They're not publishing novels and other things but they're part of those publishers.Nadia (31:01):How do they coordinate all that gorgeous photography? I mean, design falls under the publisher. Where do all the photography come from?Paula (31:10):Well, I can tell you how it worked on my book.Nadia (31:12):Yes, so I'd love to hear about your book.Paula (31:15):So, I wrote the Austin Cookbook. I wrote it in 2016. It came out in 2018. We shot the photography ... I worked with a photographer from Dallas-Fort Worth named Robert Strickland who's an excellent photographer, A+ to Robert. He came down for two long weekends when we shot all of the food where we worked with the food stylist for studio food shots. And then, I don't know how many weekends he came down to shoot the restaurants. And we shot some of the food in the restaurants also. So, the book is a collection of restaurant recipes from Austin restaurants.Paula (32:06):When all the photography was done, I sent that to the publisher. And I also sent them an email with a million links to Flickr and Instagram and all these things that I just thought looked Austin-y, murals and colors and just all kinds of random stuff I thought might be useful. And then they had their designer put it all together. They had a fun idea where some of the font for the headings of the recipes was inspired by old Tex-Mex menus and stuff like that. It's all very evocative of the thing, and I think that that's right that it should be like that.Nadia (32:56):It's kind of cool because as a writer, I imagine there aren't that many genres that are so photography heavy. Producing this cookbook is really an entire production process of not just writing the words but also having a vision for the visuals and knowing how you want to portray them.Nadia (33:17):And so, you're not just writing out words but you're also having to think in terms of imagery and layout, which just draws upon many more skills and maybe some of those other writers are comfortable with.Paula (33:29):You know though, it's not dissimilar from blogging.Nadia (33:32):In what way?Paula (33:34):If you're thinking about white space, you're thinking about how do I break this up with headers so that it's easily skimmable? You're thinking about how long are people's attention spans? It's not writing a novel. You're not going to have a wall of text. So how are you guiding the readers' eyes across ... I mean I didn't design the book, but how are you breaking up that information into these digestible little chunks.Nadia (34:06):That's a really good point. I guess I'd never really thought of that. I'm such a text-heavy person. I'm just like I can't do anything that involves images. The writing that I do doesn't really have any images in it and stuff. But you're right, I definitely think about the breaking up of paragraphs and texts. And there's sort of different styles too.Nadia (34:22):Some people really lean into the long rambling style and enormous paragraphs. And they make use or work for it. And then other people do that one line, one dramatic statement per paragraph. So, yeah, you're right. I mean even bloggers have to be thinking about how they visually lay things out to draw people in.Paula (34:41):Well, for my newsletter for example, certain sections I do bullet points. I always bold cookbook titles and cookbook author names. I'll bold a few keywords in a quote. And that's the same muscle. It's like, "Here's where I want you to look."Nadia (35:00):Right. You still need to draw people's eye in even if you're just writing text without photos. We talked a little bit about the fact that you wrote your own cookbook and you wrote that after being a cookbook critic for over a decade now. After years of reviewing other people's cookbooks, what prompted you to cross over and try to write your own?Paula (35:24):It was something I always wanted to do. And it was an opportunity that came up. It was not my idea to write the book. It was an opportunity that came up from my agent. And I was like, "Yes, absolutely." I wanted to experience the process of it because for example before that, I was reviewing cookbooks and I always ... Obviously, a lot more people than the author are going to the cookbook but I always use the author's name as sort of this authorial presence when I would talk about the book.Paula (36:04):But I think it was really useful in showing me how much of the process is actually totally out of the hands of the author. Things like a common complaint you'll hear about cookbooks if you go to an Amazon review is that the ingredients are on a different page than the instructions. You have to flip back and forth between the ingredients and the instruction. And often there's no getting around that but there's also just like 17 people who influenced that.Paula (36:37):So I think that going through the process of publishing a cookbook was really illustrative to me of just how many hands are in the thing. And this is not a shade on my publisher, Abrams - they were great. But just living the experience, I think, really informed my ability to review cookbooks. I'm probably going to do more. We'll see.Nadia (37:05):More cookbooks? They're addictive, book writing things. I just published my first book. It's a nonfiction book and it definitely had that same sort of takeaway as like wow, so many people go into writing this final thing. Unfortunately, your name appears as the author which means that if everything is amazing, then the credit goes to you and if there's anything wrong with it, then it also looks like something that you wrote which is this very weird experience.Nadia (37:34):I'm curious about your research process just to sort of trade notes. I love the book writing process now in retrospect - but during it, it was miserable in a lot of ways because you're just trapped in front of your laptop and you're typing all the time. And I have this very glamorous image of cookbook writing by contrast being this feast of the senses where you're cooking and you're hosting taste test parties. You're going out to eat for inspiration. Take me down a notch, what is the process of writing a cookbook really like?Paula (38:06):It's a little bit of that.Nadia (38:08):Damn it.Paula (38:08):It was a lot of sending emails. So, my book was recipes from restaurants. So it was a lot, a lot, a lot of emailing chefs and publicists. And chefs are not necessarily known for email etiquette or even having a computer in their office in their restaurants, so it was a lot of trying to track people down reminding them, "Oh, yeah. I'm Paula Forbes with the project where we're doing all the Austin restaurant cookbooks or recipes," and reminding them who you are and all the things. So that was probably the first four months of it.Paula (38:54):And then I did do a lot of recipe testing. I had a dinner party every Friday for about three months.Nadia (39:02):You're everyone's favorite friend.Paula (39:05):I don't know. A big thing with me was I didn't want to waste the food, but it got to be a lot of work and it got to some weird dinner parties when you started only having a few recipes left and you're like, "Well, these things don't really go together," but you'll eat it and you'll be happy.Paula (39:27):So, it was that and then very heavy on copy edits are huge in cookbooks - like you always want the ingredients in the order they appear in the recipe for example. What else? It's like that. We had to wait until my book was published in metric and then, what do you call it, imperial.Nadia (39:52):Imperial, yeah, I guess so.Paula (39:56):Cups and teaspoons.Nadia (39:58):Right, that one.Paula (39:59):So there was a lot of how do we translate this, figuring how much stuff weighed months after you had tested it, that kind of thing.Nadia (40:12):You had recipes in your book that were from restaurants but then you also had to test them out yourself. Are you adjusting their recipes at all or is it just to ensure that someone reading it could then replicate the same experience?Paula (40:30):I cut the size down. So, often, their chefs would send me just their actual recipe which made five gallons of enchilada sauce or whatever it was. And so, I would have to cut that down to the amount of enchilada sauce that would go on one lasagna pan of enchiladas and then also talk about how to make the enchiladas, because that would be different than how they would make it in the restaurant. But the recipes themselves I didn't change. So the amount of chili powder or garlic or the taste of the thing is the same but just at a home scale.Nadia (41:10):Got it. And so, it's like you're co-writing with the restaurants in a sense, because they're agreeing to give up their recipes for your book and you have to convince them of that, I assume. And then you're taking that and putting in this right narrative and context that people will enjoy them.Paula (41:29):And you know it's also a lot of interviews and telling their stories and that kind of thing, too.Nadia (41:38):Just to wrap up, you've had this privileged experience of seeing cookbooks on both sides, both as the author and as a person reviewing them. Did that writing experience give you more empathy for others writing cookbooks?Paula (41:55):Yes and no. A good friend of mine once told me that bad recipes are stealing. You are stealing money from people who spent that money on their food and they were expecting to be able to make X and if it doesn't work, and that's on you, that's stealing. So I still firmly, firmly believe that and I don't think anyone has any business publishing recipes that are not thoroughly tested and worked. So, that's what I'll say for starters.Paula (42:36):But yeah, I mean I think it's a scary thing to write a cookbook. I think I know every single weird thing in my cookbook that no one will ever, ever notice. And they don't keep me up at night but I know they're there. There's no mistakes in it or anything, just you know - you always know the weird thing like, “Oh, that condensation on that glass and that photo is slightly off," or that kind of stuff that no one cares about.Paula (43:06):Yeah, I have empathy for that. It's a hell of a process. You have to be so organized and you have to be just on top of everything. It's so much more data than just writing the text of the thing. It's so much work. Cookbooks are so much work and I have so much respect for anyone who tries to write one - unless they don't test the recipes. Thank you for subscribing. Share this episode.

The thought of combining two very successful websites into one would make most marketers quake in their boots. How did David Meerman Scott do it without interruption to his business AND see improvements in traffic and search engine rankings? This week onThe Inbound Success Podcast I'm joined by famed marketing expert, best-selling author, entrepreneur and internationally-renowned keynote speaker David Meerman Scott, along with IMPACT's own principal strategist Stacy Willis.  The two recently worked together on a project to merge two of David's websites into one. Both sites attracted a significant volume of traffic and were important drivers of business for David - something that made the notion of combining them very scary. In our conversation, David and Stacy talk about why they combined the sites, how they did it, and the results they saw. This week's episode of The Inbound Success Podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, IMPACT Live,  the most immersive and high energy learning experience for marketers and business leaders. IMPACT Live takes place August 6-7, 2019 in Hartford Connecticut and is headlined by Marcus Sheridan along with keynote speakers including world-renowned Facebook marketing expert Mari Smith and Drift CEO and Co-Founder David Cancel. Inbound Success Podcast listeners can save 10% off the price of tickets with the code "SUCCESS".  Click here to learn more or purchase tickets for IMPACT Live Some highlights from my conversation with David and Stacy include: David's primary website is DavidMeermanScott.com. He had several other sites including webinknow, which had over 1,500 blog posts and a considerable number of valuable backlinks. When David and Stacy worked together to design his main website, they made the decision to merge all of the content from webinknow into the main site.  One of the main reasons they decided to combine the two sites was they were cannibalizing each other when it came to keyword rankings and traffic. Stacy used tools like Screaming Frog and SEMRush to analyze how David's sites ranked and for which keywords, and that is how she was able to determine that these two particular sites should be merged (while some of David's other sites should not be folded into the main site). Having a plan for putting 301 redirects in place for all of the pages that were going to be merged was essential to the success of the project. Stacy also evaluated David's website traffic to determine which blogs were getting the most traffic and used this as an opportunity to improve the way they were optimized. Central to this process was the development of a topic cluster strategy for David's news site. Within weeks of launching the new site, Stacy was able to determine that all of David's traffic and keyword rankings from the two separate sites were preserved with the move to the new site. In the weeks that followed, they also saw that many of his keyword rankings actually improved further, and he has begun to see an increase in lead flow to the site. David's advice to anyone considering combining multiple websites is to take the project in stages. Resources from this episode: Save 10% off the price of tickets to IMPACT Live with promo code "SUCCESS" David Meerman Scott's website David's books Newsjacking.com Stacy's article on The SEO Implications of Changing Domains During a Website Redesign (& a Successful Example) "Is SEO Dead in 2019?" (pillar content collaboration between Liz Murphy and Franco Valentino) Listen to the podcast to get details of the exact process David and Stacy went through to merge David's two websites and increase his search engine rankings. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host):Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm Kathleen Booth, and I'm your host. Today we have a special episode of the Inbound Success podcast. I have two guests. The first is my colleague, Stacy Willis, who is a strategist here at IMPACT. The second is David Meerman Scott, who is the famed author, keynote speaker, entrepreneur, 10 books... I'm sure I'm missing so much in how I'm describing you, David. For those people who've been living a rock for the last decade, can you tell my audience a little bit about you, who you are, and the kind of work you do? David Meerman Scott (Guest): Sure, and thanks for having me on. This is so much fun. I really appreciate it. David, Kathleen and Stacy recording this episode   About David Meerman Scott David: I was a corporate marketing guy for many years. I worked in Asia for 10 years. I was the vice president of marketing of two different publicly traded technology companies. I got fired in 2002, had to figure out what the heck I was going to do, so started to work with a few clients. Then I started to write, and had a book called The New Rules of Marketing and PR. It hit the international bestseller list. It went crazy, and just has sold to date over 400,000 copies. It's in 29 different languages. I've written nine other books besides that, and I also serve on advisory boards of companies, including HubSpot. I was the first Advisor to HubSpot when they had less than 10 people and no revenue. Kathleen: Wow. David: I've been with them ever since. I wrote a book with HubSpot CEO, Brian Halligan, called Marketing Lessons From the Grateful Dead. I invented the concept of newsjacking that I know IMPACTers talked about a lot. It was my invention and it is now in the Oxford English Dictionary, which is an awesome thing. I've been working with IMPACT now for a couple of years. As you well know, you've done my marketing work. You've built out four different websites for me, so I really appreciate the effort and work that you've done on my behalf. I can work with anyone on the planet - bestselling marketing author - but I choose to work with you, so I really appreciate that, and I'm really happy that we can have this discussion. Kathleen: That is really very kind of you to say. We are very fortunate that we get to work with you. I think this is such a fascinating conversation to me because you are clearly a man who has a lot going on. I don't think the moss grows under you very often. David: Yeah, when I start to get a little bored I book a speaking gig in a crazy country. I've actually spoken in 46 different countries, most recently last month in Romania. Yeah, the moss doesn't grow because I jump on an airplane so it doesn't. Kathleen: I love it. One of the things that's so fascinating to me about your situation as you describe is you've published many books. You have all these very diverse initiatives you undertake as an entrepreneur, and that could become, as some marketers I know like to say, a "Frankenmonster" of a marketing undertaking. If you have a ton of websites, a lot of different marketing channels, that can quickly become very unmanageable. I know one of the things that we've been working on recently with you - and I shouldn't say "we" because I've had nothing to do with it, it's really Stacy and her team - is looking at how do we maybe combine some of those disparate marketing efforts into a more unified web presence. You obviously have a unique situation, but there are a lot of companies out there that have different brands or different divisions that might have multiple web presences. One thing I do have a lot of experience with is talking to those companies and hearing the anxiety in their voice when they think about, "Oh my god, I'm afraid to touch it because I might break the internet," right? David: Hey, I have that fear too, right, Stacy? That was freaking me out. It was breaking my website. I think I probably said to Stacy and the team 30 or 40 times, "This is not going to break this, right? I'm going to be okay. I don't have to sweat it." We'll get into the details shortly, but I had a blog I started in 2004. There were over 1,500 blog posts. It's so important to my business, and I'm like, "We're not going to break it. We can't break it." But you're right, I do have a bit of that Frankenmonster that you described for a couple of reasons. I've tried to build out a basic website for some of the books that I've written because I try to choose a unique title for books. For example, World Wide Rave, there's a website around World Wide Rave. There's a website for a book I wrote called Marketing the Moon. I've got some other websites out there. I have DMScott.tv. I got some junk out there too, but there's some that are important. Part of that is like I'm like a venture capitalist where I say, "Gee, I've got a new project coming up, and I think that it's got some potential to perhaps be something that's worth a standalone presence, so let's create one." That might be a new book for me or it might be a new concept. In the case of a couple of my books, it wasn't really that beneficial, and in fact now those sites are basically orphans. In some cases, I take the site down and redirect it somewhere else, typically to the book page on my main website, which is David Meerman Scott, but in other cases, it's been incredibly powerful, for example, in the case of newsjacking. Newsjacking is a concept that I pioneered. It must be about six or eight years ago now. When I first started to talk about newsjacking, nobody else was talking about it. It's basically the idea that if you understand the news cycle, you can inject your ideas into that news cycle and generate tons of media attention and grow your business, get sales leads. It's a fabulous concept, and I bought the URL newsjacking as soon as I knew that I was going to be talking about this concept. Man, was that a smart move because every single day there are people who are writing about newsjacking. Every single day there are people who are using social networks with the hashtag newsjacking. All of that points back to me now because I have Newsjacking.com. I have that URL. I am the pioneer of newsjacking, but it's made official because I have that URL. Then when the Oxford English Dictionary listed newsjacking in the dictionary, they wrote about me as the person who founded it, and that drove even more traffic to the site. On one hand, I've got sites that are orphans and maybe they end up just being redirects. In other cases, they become standalone properties in their own right. The Frankenmonster thing is like a VC. Sometimes it's going to take off and do great; sometimes it's not, and I never know which one is going to be which. Combining Multiple Websites   Stacy Willis (Guest): It really made for an interesting challenge for your website. Kathleen: Yeah. David: Especially with one of the sites that we combined, I've had, gosh, 12 years, something like that, the other one since 2004. What's that? 15 years. It's a combined almost 30 years of those two websites with thousands and thousands of keywords, so you're right. It was a challenge. Kathleen: I think that's what's really interesting about this, because you have this very disparate set of sites - things like newsjacking, that have taken on a life of their own. Yeah, you wouldn't want to touch that because, gosh, there's no bigger holy grail for a search engine marketer than a back link from the Oxford English Dictionary. Talk about authority, right? But then you have these little sites that were trial balloons you sent out that maybe didn't go anywhere. It's an easy thing to say, "Well, let's take the trial balloon and merge it into the mothership," but you were talking in this case about taking a site that had a substantial amount of content that was delivering results for you and merging it into another big one. There's the potential to break both essentially. So coming into this, David, can you talk a little bit about what your goals were for this whole undertaking? David: Yeah, sure, of course. So I had two sites that your team - actually, Stacy and the team - recommended that we merge. It wasn't my initial plan because frankly it scared the hell out of me to do it. But the two sites are DavidMeermanScott.com, which is my basic front page to the world. That's the site where I typically will have people who are interested in having me speak will go to that website and learn about my speaking. There's a bunch of videos on that site. That's also where people will go to learn about my coaching services and my advisory work. When people want to quote me in a news article or story, that's the place they'll go. It's basically the home base of David Meerman Scott. Oh, and by the way, I just might add, my middle name is Meerman. I chose to use that 20 years ago when I built my first website because I'm the only David Meerman Scott on the entire planet. There's a whole boatload of David Scotts, but there's only one David Meerman Scott. There's a David Scott that walked on the moon as the commander of Apollo 15. There's a David Scott who's a multiple time Iron Man world triathlon champion. There's a David Scott who's a member of Congress from Georgia. That's just a few of us.  Kathleen: Very good company. David: It's good company, but when I first started my first website 20 years ago, I wasn't going to be able to get any traction against those more famous David Scotts, but putting my middle name in, I was the only one. That was actually a very clever search engine marketing tactic I did a long time ago that I figured out myself. But anyway, getting back to DavidMeermanScott.com, that's my home base on the web. That's where people go to learn about me, maybe to book me to speak, to ask for a quote in an article, to pitch me something, to learn about my coaching services and to learn about my online learning programs and whatnot. My other main web property is the horrifically named webinknow. Don't ask me about that, but when I started it back in 2004, I was trying to come up with a name for my blog. Why I didn't just call it David Meerman Scott's blog I have no idea, but I didn't. I called it webinknow, W-E-B I-N-K N-O-W, which a lot of people didn't know what it meant, so they said, "web in know," which is actually spelled the same way, which makes no sense either. I was trying to imply with webinknow, it's web ink. It's like you're writing. It was a long time ago granted in the beginning of the internet, so it made sense at the time I suppose, but it was a very important property for me because that's where I blogged at least once a week for 15 years. It was a lot of content there. David: There are some blog posts that had millions of views, so there are some blog posts that had hundreds of inbound links. It is a very important property to me. I'd love to have Stacy jump in, but as we were looking at these two properties that were so important to me, we realized that there might be benefit in combining them, which totally freaked me out, but I was talked down from the cliff, and we decided that, yes, this does make sense. I don't know, Stacy, do you want to jump in or do you have another question, Kathleen? Kathleen: I'm going to frame the question for you, Stacy, because this is really interesting to me. As somebody who is a strategist who works with clients, I know you've had multiple situations where there have been companies that have said, "Should we or should we not combine these two web properties?" From your standpoint as the outside strategist looking at this, when would you say, "Yes, you should combine these two," versus when would you say, "These should stay separate"? Stacy: This is actually a really interesting case because we said both to David, right? We said, "Don't combine your newsjacking but do combine webinknow," right? Essentially what we looked at first and foremost was how much cannibalization was happening. Were we ranking for some of the same keywords? Was one site taking traffic away from the other site when it might make more sense to combine forces essentially and get even better rankings and drive all of the traffic to the same place? Most importantly, David, for your site is, were we cannibalizing traffic that might ultimately want to hire us to speak? To look to us for coaching and sending it to the wrong website that doesn't convert people down the right path for that? Stacy: When we looked at the data, we found that it made sense for webinknow to come on to the David Meerman Scott domain, and it didn't necessarily make sense for a newsjacking. Newsjacking had its own really specific topic area. That even made for another layer of interesting keyword strategy because we wanted to be really careful about talking about the newsjacking book. We definitely want that on your website, right? It's really great credibility. It's important to show the world what you've done, but if we talk about it too much, do we start cannibalizing traffic from the newsjacking site and bringing it over to yours? That put a lot of interesting thought process into this strategy that we put together for the book pages. But really the big reason for combining webinknow was that big cannibalization factor, and the fact that we really wanted to drive up the domain credibility for the David Meerman Scott domain. Kathleen: I want to make sure I understand. Let's just focus for a second on webinknow and the David Meerman Scott main site. You were looking specifically at the various keyword sets that each was ranking for. Were you looking at where there was overlap or were you looking simply at like with webinknow, here are the keywords that rank really well, but we would very much like these to be what the David Meerman Scott site ranks for? Stacy: It was a bit of both. The biggest thing that we really looked at was where there was overlap. If we have two websites that are ranking well for the same term, that means one of them is getting the traffic at the expense of the other, right? We wanted to find ways to stop that if we saw too many overlaps, and that was the case with this. We saw enough overlap, and there wasn't a strong enough reason from our perspective when we talked through it with David to keep webinknow separate, aside from that, because there's always things that you can't necessarily just look at data and have an answer to. From a branding perspective, it may have still made sense to keep a website separate even if data tells you to do it. We looked up both sides, and it, just from both ends of the spectrum, made sense to move them together. Kathleen: Stacy made this recommendation. You immediately, David, thought what? David: The biggest thing was I was really worried about doing it because it's such a big part of not just my business but my life because I actually go to my own blog and search on stories to remember things. I'll say to myself, "When was I in Russia?" I'll go to my blog and search "Russia" to see if I wrote a blog post about being in Russia because I can't remember when I was there, that kind of thing, or I'll remember that I did a post about a particular topic. As I'm doing work on, say, another book or whatever it is, I want to get information, so it's not just even the business aspect. It's the personal aspect of how important that blog was for me. I was really, really worried that number one, something disastrous would happen, and it would disappear. I guess that's human nature. I was assured many times that there's multiple backups of this and we can download it locally and we could do all this other stuff, so, okay, fine. Then I was worried because I'm not an expert in this stuff. I'm a marketing strategist, yes, but I'm not an under-the-covers SEO person. I was worried that all of those fantastic inbound links - and I don't know, Stacy, if you know how many we have, but it's certainly thousands of inbounds link - would somehow break. I was worried about that and my credibility would go down, so those things I needed to be reassured or under control, but I was really happy about losing the horrible name, webinknow, because even from the first year, it just didn't make a whole lot of sense. It would have been a very different discussion however if my blog name was really interesting. For example, if I had called it "The Marketing Blog," or something like that, that had SEO in its own right, I'm not sure that combining them would have made as much sense. But when you have a URL for a blog and a name for a blog that's so confusing, people don't even know what it is, then that's a good reason to combine. The Process of Combining Two Websites Kathleen: That's a good point. You all took the decision to do this. Can you walk me through what the next steps were? Did you have to start by cataloging the content? How did you prepare for this undertaking? Stacy: Yeah, so the biggest thing that we went through is the webinknow domain, since that was going to be the one that was going away and moving over the David Meerman Scott domain. Internally, we used a tool called Screaming Frog for this. We went and did an audit of literally every single URL that existed over there to make sure that we weren't going to miss anything when we moved everything over. We migrated all of the blogs in draft form first, so nothing actually changed on the live site. Everything still looked the same to the outside world. We got everything set up and ready, and then we had to create this massive 301 redirect file essentially where we start pulling what were all of the old URLs that we need to make sure, redirect and move to new URLs on the new website. David: There were over 1500 of them. Stacy: Yeah. Kathleen: I imagine that most of our listeners know what a 301 redirect is, but just for anyone who doesn't, fair to say it's like a change of address form for Google basically? Stacy: Yes. It's when you go to the post office and you give them your new address and do mail forwarding essentially. Kathleen: Yeah. Stacy: It moves everything over from your old URL to your new URL. 301 redirects tend to be less scary when they're within a domain. They tend to get a lot scarier, and this is when you get people who get very nervous about moving from a completely different domain to another one. That's when there's a little bit more at stake and it's a little bit easier for Google to get confused, and for traffic to get lost in that forwarding process. We wanted to make sure that we were being really very careful about it. We made sure all those redirects were set up. In addition to that, we took the opportunity to say, "Do we have ways that we could adjust some of the URLs that used to exist and keyword optimize them as we move them to the new website?" We're going to be changing the URL anyway. Can we find ways to actually improve the keyword optimization of any of our existing content? We looked at that, and then we also keyword optimized all of the new pages that we were creating as part of the redesign, so that they fit with the content and the structure and all of the topics that were coming across from webinknow. We took the opportunity to say, "We have all this old stuff that, oh my god, if we lose it, the world will end, but how can we take that and make it fresh and new and still combine it with an updated strategy for today?" Kathleen: Now, for somebody outside of this, that sounds like a massive undertaking. How do you do this in a way that isn't going to take months? This is 15 years' worth of content. David: Let me add a little bit of clarification that might help first, and then I'll let Stacy talk about some of the details. When I first started working with IMPACT, I'm going to guess it was about two years ago or maybe even three years ago. I can't remember. We did two projects together that were essentially setting this up to make this process easier. The first thing that we did was we moved my DavidMeermanScott.come website from a WordPress site to a HubSpot site. That happened, again, I don't remember the exact date, call it three years ago. The second thing that we did was we created webinknow, which was in Typepad, and moved that over also to HubSpot. Again, I don't know, let's call it two or threes years ago that was done. Those two projects were pretty significant undertakings in their own right that happened several years ago, so that now we're sitting with both DavidMeermanScott.com and webinknow.com under the same HubSpot account, which in my mind makes things easier. I'm putting words in Stacy's mouth, but in my mind makes things easier. I personally wasn't as worried as if we had been moving from WordPress to HubSpot with DavidMeermanScott.com and moving from Typepad to HubSpot with my blog, and then combining them all at the same time, which would have given me more sleepless nights. Kathleen: Yeah, I can imagine. Stacy: Yeah, and I'm definitely okay with people putting words in my mouth if they're the right words, so I totally agree with that. I would say the best way to help make this process more manageable, there's going to be parts of the process that you can say, "Let's focus on the best performing content," and there's going to be parts of this process that you would say, "Well, this is going to be tedious. I'm just going to have to put my big girl pants on and do it." The 301 redirects, there's no shortcuts; there's no turnarounds; there's nothing. You have to make sure that you are moving things over appropriately. When you're doing a blog migration this tends to be pretty easy because you can really move things over if you're keeping the same URLs. Everything that's after the slash, so it's moving from domain.com to domain.com/blog/whatever. Everything after the slash tends to stay the same if you're a straight blog migration, so you can do those more simplified where you create a rule for your redirect where everything of this type of the structure, so everything that's got the "/blog" in front of it all redirects to the same thing on the other website. They can be made easier in that way, but anything where you're changing the URL completely- Kathleen: Which you did. Stacy: We did on a few cases, so we didn't do it on all of them. This is where we focus on our highest performing content or the content that needs it the most. What you would do is if you're looking to improve your optimization, you might select the top 5% of converting blog posts, for example. Hey, these top 10% of our posts convert the most visitors. I want to make sure that we're super extra keyword optimizing them to get the most out of them. You might really say if you're going to put in extra effort in any place, just focus on the ones that are going to drive you the most results, right? For the most part, we moved everything over with that same URL structure to keep it simple and safe and less scary. But - we also at the same time that we did this - we put together a topic cluster keyword strategy, and made sure that anything that we could pull into that cluster that was fitting in terms of topic area or already talking about a similar keyword, and we pulled those pieces in and did things like update URLs or update the keywords on the page that we're moving over in order to fit that new strategy. We took the opportunity to do a hybrid, keep what was old and find a way to utilize and make new what we could improve. Kathleen: I like that strategy of prioritization. I want to make sure I understand what you said. You cherry picked, as you call them, the top performing posts. Was it based on conversion rate or based on traffic or was it a mix of the two? Stacy: In this case, we really focused on the pieces that would fit within our topic cluster strategy. If you were doing this and you weren't doing it at the same time as the topic cluster strategy, you may pick the top converting posts as an example, but we really focused on those that fit with the topic cluster. The Results Kathleen: Okay, great. I'd love to jump forward and talk about what happened. You undertook this process. You merged the two sites, and then what? Did everything break? Did David's worst fears come true? Stacy: It was very, very smooth. There's always an expectation when you do something like this, when you move from one domain to another, that Google's going to take a few weeks to catch up. What we do when we launch is we always make sure as soon as everything's up running and looks good, we resubmit our site map to Google to make sure that they are starting to index it immediately, so shorten that process and have them understand those new redirects as fast as we can. Kathleen: You're doing that through Google Search Console? Stacy: Correct, yes, my favorite tool. It's basically like, "Let me talk to you, Google, directly about what you know about me instead of guessing." After that, we kept a really close eye on what was happening. Was traffic moving over? Within the first two weeks after the site was launched, we were at the place where, if you looked at the traffic numbers for each individual domain before and you added them together, they now equaled on your traffic. We were getting almost all of the traffic across. The only difference would be that the traffic that we were cannibalizing now is all coming to one site, which is great. We weren't splitting between the two. Then the keywords that we were ranking for immediately rebounded as well. Each site, if you look individually at the number of keywords, that it had ranking in the top 20, the top 30, the top 50, whatever number or range you're looking at and added those two numbers together. Within two weeks, we were summing up to that total on the new domain. We had everything move over and continue to keep the same ranking level through that move. The exciting part was we actually even saw our rankings improve or new rankings appear for some of the pieces that we deemed appropriate and put as part of our cluster strategy. Lessons Learned Kathleen: Wow, that's great. Any particular lessons learned or things that you would do differently or things that you would advise somebody listening who's considering doing this to really watch out for if they want to undertake this for themselves? Stacy: The most important thing I can say is make sure you understand if you are considering either changing a domain or combining multiple domains together. Make sure you understand everything about how each of those domains is working today before you start making the decision about whether you should even undertake something like this because if you don't actually know how things are working or if you don't know if you're cannibalizing traffic, you may make the wrong decision and go through this process needlessly or make it a little bit harder on yourself. Just making sure that you know what your domain is doing, what keywords you're ranking for, what kind of traffic you're driving from search, and then use that to inform your decision, as opposed to waiting until you've already made the decision. Must-Have Tools Kathleen: You mentioned Screaming Frog, but you used that to catalog the URLs on the one site. Any other particular tools that you think are must-haves for this kind of a process? Stacy: Absolutely, so in order to find out if we're cannibalizing traffic, the tool that we use internally to do that is called SEMrush or S-E-Mrush. I think I've heard it pronounced both ways. But that one, it's great. It actually gives you a really easy visual of how big your overlap is, so it actually visualizes it as a Venn diagram. If you put like, "Here's the keyword universe of site A and here's the keyword universe of site B, and here's how much they overlap," you can really start to understand how that cannibalization is happening or if it's even happening. If there's no overlap, then you're fine. The sites are probably not really causing problems for each other, but if you're within the same topic area, there's usually going to be a decent amount of overlap. That's what we used to decide if it made sense to combine the URLs or not. The Owner's Perspective Kathleen: Great, and David, from your standpoint, obviously there was a lot of trepidation going into this process. Stacy has explained what happened from the technical side, the ranking side, but as the business owner, can you speak to your experience through the launch and post-launch? Was there an interruption to the business? How did that all play out? David: For me, I think what was absolutely critical and made it happen really smoothly was that it was done in stages. As I mentioned a couple of moments ago, the first stage, which happened several years ago, was to move the website from WordPress over to HubSpot and then we moved the blog from Typepad over to HubSpot. Those happened several years ago at two different times. Then we did a redesign of the website, followed by a redesign of the blog, and finally the last step was combining them. For me, it wasn't a massive "tear down the house and rebuild it." It was more like what we did was we were still living in the old house, but we built a new foundation and then we built the new house, and then we painted the new house. Then we built a wall between homes and we tried out the new house for size and it seemed to fit. Then we moved in and we knocked down the old house. It was a really, really staged process. For me, I found that to be a really thoughtful way to go through it that I was able to manage given all the other things that I'm doing. There's many times that we'd be communicating and I'd be in some other country about to jump onto a stage to give a speech, for example. I really appreciated that it was done in those stages. For that reason, it wasn't like, "Oh my god, we just did a redesign and combined everything, and I've got to learn a new tool and how to use it," all at the same time, which would have been a problem. From my perspective, it went really smoothly. I was really excited to see that for certain search terms, instead of being position five and position eight, we'd jump up to position two for the same keyword, things like that. That was a real major part of the strategy, so it ended up working, although, I don't have enough data yet to be able to say. Ultimately the main goal is that I want to generate more leads particularly for my speaking business. I think it was just within the time that this project was finished I had quite a few more leads than I had been getting. It looks like tomorrow I'm going to close a nice speaking gig for an organization in Canada, which I'm excited about, who found me through search. That was the ultimate goal, and it looks like that's playing out. This is not easy. Stacy and the team did the work, but even as the business owner who is involved in the process start to finish, it's not an easy process. But once it's done, it's like moving into that new house. It's all worth it because you live better and happier and healthier and with more prosperity, so it's all worth it. Kathleen: I think that's really fascinating what you said about the stages. A lot of times I talk to companies who are sitting in that situation of, "Oh my god, I have these three websites, or these two websites that I need to combine or I'm thinking I might want to combine." It can seem overwhelming. What I'm hearing is that maybe the first thing isn't to try to, as they say, eat the elephant all in one bite. It's to say, "How can I get myself on a surer footing and maybe put these two websites on the same platform?" It was funny. You used the analogy of the house renovation. In my head, what I was thinking is there's some types of surgery, I feel like ACL replacement, where they tell you you have to get in shape in order to have the surgery. I feel like this is like that. We're going to get in shape before we go into surgery. David: No, and I think that's right. I use the house metaphor because we actually did a massive renovation project on our house that finished up about two years ago. That's exactly how we did it. We not only renovated the original house, but we also created an addition to the house. It was a long three year process to do that, and we decided we wanted to live in the house during the process. That's the same as this project. The website cannot go away. The blog cannot go away, yet we're trying to renovate it and combine it all while it's still running. I think that's the best metaphor is that renovation and addition project that we did it while still living in the house. That's what we did with this project, and I think it worked great. It is hard, but I think so far it's only been a couple of months since we've been completed, but so far it's been totally worth it. We haven't talked about the design at all, but the design of the new combined website / blog is fabulous. It does a way better job at showcasing who I am than what we had originally, which was old and dusty. It was built quite a few years ago. A different company, not IMPACT, worked on it. It was adequate at the time. I wasn't embarrassed by it, but what I've got now, I'm really proud of, so it's really big, great change. Kathleen: Stacy, do we have any before and after pictures of the site? Stacy: We could definitely get some. Kathleen: Yeah, I would love to put those in the show notes, so we could see the transformation. That's always so much fun. Stacy: Yeah. DavidMeermanScott.com Before and After This is David's current website homepage (designed by Stacy and the team at IMPACT): This was David's homepage prior to the redesign (courtesy of the Wayback Machine): Kathleen: Really interesting to hear about this process. I know, Stacy, you're writing an article on this that, by the time this interview goes live. It's going to be up on our site, so I will link to that. Click here to read Stacy's article Kathleen: David, I think you're going to be posting some things on this from your perspective, so I'll link to that as well. If you're listening and you want to learn more or dig in, get more details, head to the show notes on the IMPACT website, and you'll find a link to David's article, Stacy's article, and some cool before and after pictures as well as some screen shots of the results that David got (check out his organic keyword rankings below!). Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: Changing subjects for a minute, there are two questions I always like to ask my guests. I'm going to ask both of you. I'm going to start with David. David, I'm really interested in this one because you were an advisor to HubSpot from way back in the beginning. I always like to ask every guest I have, company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now? David: That's a very, very interesting question. One of my favorite companies to talk about is a little tiny company in York, Maine, called Grain Surfboards. They make sustainable wooden surfboards. They're a little company. I think there's four or five people there. They run out of a barn in York, Maine. They just do a fabulous job at their inbound marketing. They're not marketers. They're people who make surfboards for a living. I ran across them because I did a search on Google for wooden surfboards. I found them. Wow, they have a really cool website. This is really interesting. Then I found that not only can you buy a wooden surfboard, but you can actually go through a wooden surfboard course where you can make your own wooden surfboard, so I signed up. I did that, then I went back and I did it a second time. Kathleen: That's so cool. David: Through one Google search, I think I've spent $4,000 to go through two wooden surfboard building courses at Grain Surfboards. I'm a really big fan of organizations like that that have either zero marketing dollars in their marketing budget or maybe there's $150 and somebody's brother-in-law, but they can still do a fabulous job. Kathleen: I love that example, and I know a lot of my listeners are companies just like that. It's great to hear an example of somebody successful doing this with a shortage of resources. Stacy, how about you? Who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now? Stacy: This answer's going to sound totally self-serving, but especially for the topic area as we've talked about, there's two resources that I've relied on super heavily to learn about all of the pieces that built the way that we do keyword strategies, and then all of the technical SEO knowledge to make sure that we could pull something off like this without breaking David's site. That's Liz Murphy internally at IMPACT is an incredible resource for understanding how to build topic clusters and pillar strategies. Then Franco Valentino from Narrative SEO, which is a partner of IMPACT's - those are my two go-to sources of information. They have put out such great content. We just released a pillar page that was a collaboration between the two of them. If you really want the best of the best information on SEO. Exactly, but those the places that I've been going for, especially in this topic area. Kathleen: Great. Yeah, I have to say I couldn't do my job without the two of them, so I would agree with that. Alright, for the second question, I'm going to start with Stacy and end with David. We'll change up the order. Second question I always ask is with the world of digital marketing changing at, it would sometimes can seem like, a lightning fast pace, how do you stay educated and up to date? Stacy, let's start with you. Stacy: I try and find a balance because you could really easily get just swept up in the tons and tons and tons of information that is out there and being produced day in and day out. It's almost impossible to keep up and say you know everything about everything. I've picked some topic areas that I try to make sure that I am constantly up to date on. I'll tend to return back to really specific sources for those areas. For example, the SEMrush blog for SEO stuff specifically is topnotch. It's where I learn a lot of what I do. Then I try to, on occasion, google terms that fit with the topic area as well and find new sources that are maybe outside of what I know already because it's really easy to get stuck in that little bubble of people who think and talk and act just like you, instead of looking out at people who are looking at things a different way. Kathleen: Great. David, how do you stay current? David: I do have some blog and other sources that I read on a regular basis. I get the IMPACT content, which I love, of course. I read Seth Godin. I read a guy called Bob Lefsetz, who's absolutely not a marketer. He writes about music, but he has a fascinating take on the music business, which I think, because I'm such a huge music fan, that I apply those ideas to marketing in general. But the vast majority of the way I keep current is when I speak at conferences all over the world on a regular basis. I don't just go do my speech and leave. I go, I listen to the other sessions. I meet people at lunch. I go out to the dinners or the cocktail receptions and find out what people are up to. I serve on about a dozen advisory boards. I don't do traditional consulting. I'm not a consultant. I'm not a marketing agency or anything like that, but I do serve as an advisor to about a dozen different companies, including HubSpot, who I've been with since 2007. I try in every case, when I'm working with those advisory clients, to learn how they do their marketing. What's working? What's not working? How can we make this better? That's really great because it's almost like I'm not an employee of those companies, but I am essentially an insider, so I'm able to see what's going on in their real world situation. That combination keeps me to the point where I'm feeling like I'm current for what works for me, although there's plenty of people who are way more on the cutting edge than I am. Kathleen: I think it sounds like the common theme between both of you is knowing what you want your area of focus to be, and not trying to be an expert in all things. That's a good take away. David: Yeah, and in my case, working with IMPACT and working with Stacy and the team, it's been great because I consider myself a marketing strategist. I love the strategy aspect. I am decidedly not an SEO expert, not a designer. I don't know what's going on. I know what a 301 redirect is, but that was about the extent of my knowledge of most of what Stacy just said over the last 45 minutes. I'm fortunate to be able to be partnered with you guys on the project because I had a vision for what I wanted to accomplish, but I had no clue whatsoever how to get there. Kathleen: It's been really interesting for me to hear you guys talk about this experience because in my many years of first being an agency owner and then I was on the sales team at IMPACT, I've talked to so many different companies, and this kind of thing comes up a lot. The stress and worry and tension that always bubbles under the surface is really palpable. It's interesting to hear a real example of this process having been carried through to its end and having gone well. Thank you for sharing that. David: Oh yeah, and thank you for having me on, and thank you, Stacy, for all the hard work. Stacy: Awesome. Thanks for letting us tinker with your site even though it was scary. How to Reach David and Stacy Kathleen: I know that you can find Stacy at IMPACTbnd.com. David, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, learn more about what you do, maybe talk with you about coming to speak, can you tell them the best way to find you online? David: The fabulously redesigned DavidMeermanScott is a great place. If you google my name as we spoke about earlier, David Meerman Scott, it will only pop me up, which is neat. On most social networks, including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, I am DMScott, D-M-S-C-O-T-T. You Know What To Do Next... Kathleen: Great. Thank you both for being here today. If you're listening and you enjoyed what you heard or you learned something new, of course, as always, I would love it if you would give the podcast a review on Apple Podcast or the platform of your choice. If you know someone who is doing kick ass inbound marketing work, please tweet me at Workmommywork because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thanks.

This month Joe invites fan favorite Gina Dalfonzo to talk about the 1951 British version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, AKA Scrooge. In this episode the discuss Dickens' belief in helping those in need which inspired the writing of this story, Alister Sims' great performance as Scrooge and the similarities and differences this movie has to the book. A wonderful discussion about this Christmas classic.Find Gina's Article About The Maid Here!Find Gina online:Twitter.com/GinaDalfonzoFacebook.com/GinaDalfonzo.AuthorDickensBlog.TypePad.comFind Us Online:Facebook.com/TheCommentariansTwitter.com/TheCommentsPodInstagram.com/CommentariansPodPatreon.com/TheCommentarians

Technorati rankings. Full RSS feeds vs partial RSS feeds. Blogrolls. The Techmeme leaderboards. Blogspot vs Wordpress vs Typepad. If you were a blogger over the mid-aughts, these were just a few of the things you might have obsessed over as you catapulted blog post after blog post into the ether, hoping someone would notice and provide you precious links and send even more precious readers. Back then, the internet felt huge, but the number of actual content producers was tiny compared to today, and distribution of content was much less centralized. A-list bloggers duked it out while the rest of us B and C-list bloggers pined desperately for attention from these internet demigods, who they themselves only wanted recognition and legitimacy bestowed upon them by the Mainstream Media. I remember all this because I was right there at ground zero, plugging away as a blogger while I went to college and later worked as a newspaper journalist. And so was my guest, Bill Beutler, who worked at a DC publication called The Hotline and launched a blog called The Blogometer. Tune in while we reminisce about a bygone era when we didn't live or die by the Facebook algorithm and the internet was a Wild West composed of various ideological fiefdoms.

I'm not foolish enough to think that the entirety of WordPress' growth is driven by our love for the software, but that we consultants are responsible for a sizeable portion of it. A portion that shouldn't be ignored and one that should be welcome to the discussion more often. Under-represented. Perhaps. You can listen to the audio version Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners The blue-collar WordPress worker and the 2,500+ websites built to grow the CMS Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:14:17 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:14:17 I know many of you are like me, we don't run 100+ person agencies, we don't have 1mil+ plugin downloads, and we haven't been contributing code to core for the last decade. However, what we do share in common is a life of servicing customers in the online business space. Servicing customers or our local community by way of building websites — helping organizations amplify their message. This act of service is deeply rooted in using our favorite tool, WordPress. Sure, we're talking less and less about the tech side of things lately, but we know that it delivers a massive advantage as a platform to our customers. An advantage that might not matter to them in the short-term, but in the long-term sustainability of their business. While many might join the ranks of offering WordPress services simply for the fact that it represents a big market to cash in on — and we all know that person — I believe many of us are in it for the right reasons: Promote the use of open source software. Give our customers a chance to own a sliver of their online presence and/or data. Provide a flexible & sustainable platform for future opportunity. Earn an honest living through service. It's at this point where I begin to disagree with a part of Matt Mullenweg's theory of WordPress' growth. Granted, he has a WAY better vantage point from atop a tower of data that I (we) don't have access to. I'm relying on my own gut instinct, naivety, and feedback from my audience to deliver this message — take it for what it's worth. Tweet from @photomatt Who is responsible for all of this WordPress? A business can't survive without strong sales & customer service, two competencies that are arguably the lifeblood of a company. Many of you reading this fill that exact gap for the open source WordPress project. I don't mean this as a slight to the thousands of wonderful people that build the software, document it, and support it in the forums, but that consultants (doing it right or wrong) are also fueling this locomotive too. There are no official sales or customer service channels at WordPress.org and us consultants bear the brunt of it — for better or worse — and that's where our job comes in. Just as you trust a core contributor to spot-check her code and ensure that we've sanitized all the things! Consultants are the boots on the ground, and as you'll see below in my feedback section, represent a disproportionate ratio of launching many more websites than an individual website owner. Mullenweg alludes to the end-user (what I'm calling the solo site owner) as the driving force behind growth. He might (probably does, can we have it please?) have more data than me, but on the flip side, it might be a vanity metric. If you count all the 1-click installs on GoDaddy or .com installs, perhaps, but how many of them were influenced or eventually turned to a professional to take over the reigns? Just back-of-the-napkin math, a consultant might launch 50-to-1 websites in a year versus an individual blogger or business owner launching their first and only website. What happens when that number compounds over 5 years? On paper, I'm responsible for 500+ WordPress sites in the wild not counting the hundreds of other people online and in my local community I've influenced over the years. I'm sure you're in a similar boat as an individual or team that is responsible for the growing adoption of WordPress. Thank you for that. Thank you to everyone else that makes this project possible. 1-to-many vs. 1-to-1 Again, maybe I'm just naive but out of the 500 websites I've helped build in some way, roughly 70% of the list counted on me to sell them on the software and support it. I was sales + customer service for the open source CMS. I was the face of their decision and the person they relied on to get it all working. You too, I'm sure. I could have offered Drupal, Expression Engine, or Squarespace and my customers would have bought it regardless. Many of my WordPress peers are making that same adjustment today. Sure, I would still have to support it regardless, but those applications and parent companies have an easier story to tell. The waters aren't muddied. You pay for a product, you know the expectations. Matt, if you're reading, do you know how hard it is to explain to someone new in this space what the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org is? Add Jetpack, an Automattic company, to the mix and heads begin to explode. Especially when in-app ads cause uncertainty. When you compete with yourself Step outside of the WordPress bubble for a moment and imagine selling a product that competes with itself. Think of the confusion and apprehension a customer might feel when hearing that you have another paid alternative that's getting coined as an “easier all-in-one” alternative or “made by the team behind WordPress…dot com. I've actually been there before, selling Chevrolet's when customers would ask “What about GMCs?” Two of the EXACT same products, by the same company — different badges. We all know how that turned out, General Motors went bankrupt. Maybe not directly because of mixed-brand recognition, but certainly adding this line of confusion didn't help. They axed Pontiac and Oldsmobile because as a result — the least performant of the mix. Enter in: sales. That's where us consultants spend time selling. The story, the benefits, the future growth. Blue-collar WordPress workers need a seat at the table I consider myself a blue-collar digital worker. I'm pulling at the strands of “WordPress” as it begins to move away from me. Jetpack + .com + Gutenberg are reshaping the opportunity we once knew into something — else. A lot of what we do has already been commoditized in the last two years and it's only getting worse.  I'm a believer that once the market corrects, we will discover new inroads, but for now, we fight to find ways to earn. I don't know about you, but I'm rolling up my sleeves and getting my hands a lot dirtier navigating these uncharted seas. On one hand, everyone has a SaaS, a podcast, an info product, or an agency to service customers. On the other, Jetpack and .com set their sites directly on consultants & product creators to ramp up their own revenue efforts potentially squeezing us out of the middle-market. I'll let you formulate your own caricature of the upper-class vs. middle-class in this context. Don't lose sight of us When I first had Matt on the show, it was off of his remarks that Jetpack was responsible for a large portion of the growth of WordPress. A comment that was almost thrown out or lost in the shuffle. To that I say: What about the free/paid plugins? What about the free/paid themes? How have these helped boost the adoption of WordPress? See, even some many years ago, Matt knew where Jetpack was going as a monetization platform that we weren't aware of, yet. Now it's staring us down the barrel of its golden money gun. Jetpack was about to take on the feature set and revenue share of other plugins — big and small — in the market. And now, as I write this piece, I feel that the same squeeze play will begin with consultants. Not by taking away our livelihood, or that VIP will launch a services business, but that we're not being considered to shape the product as our clients use it. Why care? I am so very passionate about the guidance of WordPress because it represents free speech, the democratization of publishing, and the livelihood of so many hard-working people around the globe. see: heropress.com I respect the decisions being made from core & Auotmattic and expect the same in return that our collective voices are heard — regardless if we can contribute code or not. That not all of WordPress growth comes from a fancy feature or a new design language think tank, but from how real world people are using the software. I yearn for the ambitious days where WordPress wanted to be the operating system for the web and not settle as just a Wix competitor. I want to connect my refrigerator to a custom post type via the REST API — well — because I can. I celebrate everyone that contributes to WordPress' success from the smallest line of code to the sponsorship donations at WordCamps. You all have built something truly worthy of global recognition. If you've not yet contributed in your own way yet, I ask that you start however you see fit. A blog post, a YouTube video, or join over at make.wordpress.org. Either direction you take, it's important you make your voice and opinions heard.  Like Mullenweg said before me, I too believe that what got us here won't get us there — a better software for all. It's up to us to get involved While I feel that new mediums must be created for greater community feedback, we have some tools and places you can go to get involved. If you want to effect change, visit the following channels or conferences: Get involved here: https://make.wordpress.org/ The Make.WordPress Marketing group: https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/ The Make.WordPress Community https://make.wordpress.org/community/ WordCamp central https://central.wordcamp.org/ Learn more about starting your own meetup: https://make.wordpress.org/community/meetups/ Get more involved on Twitter! Join a WordPress professionals group like WP Elevation or Post Status Who's responsible for all the WordPress growth? The following list of quotes & feedback comes from a question I sent to my newsletter based on Scott Bollinger's post, Perspective on WordPress. Consider joining to stay connected. I'm incredibly proud of the feedback I received, not just because someone took the time to respond, but because of how diverse these answers are. I hope you all use this feedback from my valuable audience to understand how we all define the growth of WordPress. // I'm early on in my freelance career, but I do think we as WordPress Experts and consultants we are responsible for a large amount of WordPress's growth. It's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about holding on to my clients and always being on hand to support them to grow online, after the website is launched. No one wants to see abandoned WordPress sites sitting sad! — @deandevelops 5 WordPress websites // WordPress' growth as a platform is primarily the outcome of a large community of independent creators who want to publish multiple ideas without technical limitations – that's why WordPress is used and promoted by so many technophiles. — Brennan Bliss 40 – 60 WordPress websites // The WordPress Growth is facilitated through adoption. Adoption specifically by developers, integrators and service providers. It's also facilitated by time. At the time of WordPress' birth, there were few alternatives that did it as well as WordPress. That though was a double-edged sword, by identifying the need we established a new market. When I sit back and look, site builder platforms can be to WordPress, as WordPress was to Typepad and other solutions 10 years ago. They've gone one step further in the simplification process, and similar to WordPress, are building their network on adoption with developers and integrators. Interestingly enough, they don't require service providers. One of the very interesting things about WordPress was it's ability to build a new economy for developers / integrators. Very few other platforms were able to do the same. This new economy propelled the platform forward. Today however, new economies are being built on site builders – Shopify being the most prevalent. Five years ago, when talking to website owners WordPress would be common language, these days the conversation starts with website builders first, WordPress second or third. When asked why, the responses are almost always uniform – it's too much to deal with. So yes, there has been growth. That's undeniable. But there is also a slow down in it's adoption, and I'm not sure downloads numbers count as an accurate measurement to best represent adoption. I travel the world, speak to a great number of website owners and small business, and at an alarming rate I am seeing a shift in the conversation around the solutions they use. There was a time when I would spend time with the Joomla! community and I would ask them what they work on. Almost sheepishly they would always mutter, out of ear shot, they build WordPress sites on the side to keep the lights on. These days, much to my surprise, from WordPress dev's, I hear – I built and support [insert site build platform] on the side too. I find this to be a fascinating trend, and a strong indicator of what these platforms are contributing to the market. Our successes tomorrow won't be based on how amazing we were yesterday. Yesterday we fit a need, today that need is being satisfied by so many others. — Tony Perez a lot of WordPress websites // A big % of WordPress growth has been agencies/consultants pushing it. Clients want a site that's done and maintainable. They use whatever platform we say is best. — John Locke 65+ WordPress websites // I believe the growth in WordPress usage is because it is easy to learn, free to use, and the community support is amazing! — Jay Van Houtte 7 WordPress websites and counting. // I agree with Scotts wife it was super hard to figure out this platform. I build square and wix sites now and had to code my first ecommerce site back in 1998. Then I was off grid for about 7 years and came back to a whole new world. I spent endless hours working it and with chat help and I almost bailed. I only stay on for the social media aspect of it. I admin some facebook pages but am just me on my one wordpress site. — Gretchen Mauer No longer user WordPress // Open source FREE, plugin selection, popular Word camps and awesome developer community are the reason behind growth — Ronik Patel 120+ WordPress websites // WordPress is growing because of its enormous value to small businesses; it provides a great deal of autonomy and value to the end user. — Seth Shoultes 100+ WordPress websites 40,000 active plugin installs // WordPress' power is its flexibility. I can design whatever I want, and the client can easily update content. We both do what we do best. — Lisa Cerezo roughly ~150 WordPress websites // The growth of WP definitely comes from non-technical users. Developers are the foundation, but users are rockets! — Anh Tran 80 WordPress websites // WordPress has grown not because everyday users prefer it, but because the people *that they trust* prefer it. — Aaron Hockley 25+ WordPress websites // There are tons of free resources for learning more and a plugin to do just about anything, making it one of the most accessible yet flexible web building tools around. — Jackie Latham 50+ WordPress websites // I've probably influenced over 1000 people to become aware or use of WordPress – at least. From my perspective, one major factor for WordPress growth is the technical and creative industries advocating WordPress (agencies/designers/devs), and the community creating paid/free plugins pushing the limit of what WordPress can do and thus making it a perfect fit for so many needs. Extra comment: If the industry as a whole had seen a better CMS as an option in the past, WordPress would have faded to the background like all the others that didn't have a commercial industry sitting alongside it to drive it forward. Extra summary: It's grown through advocacy. — Paul Lacey 250+ WordPress websites // I would bet only a handful of my clients, in the history of my business, would have found WordPress on their own without me. The setup process for anything other than a basic blog is too much for average users in my experience. A lot of my clients are in an industry with high turnover and it's a constant struggle to onboard new employees on the inner workings of the WordPress admin. — Brian Link 15 WordPress websites // WP has grown because people view it as all free or they think they want/need more control. — Corey Maass 24+ WordPress websites // WP has grown quickly because of the helpful inclusive community, enthusiasm of builders and developers, ease-of-use, and the GPL. — Eric Amundson 500+ WordPress websites // I think WordPress grows in tune with the democratic back-bone of the internet. Sure we cane it for business, but ultimately wp represents the freedom to self-publish and the boundary-less opportunity of the net itself. — Woody Hayday 500+ WordPress websites // I attribute the growth of WordPress to the quality, simplicity, and extensibility of the product and the diverse and perpetually generous community supporting it. — Brian Dusablon 75+ WordPress websites // In the early days Matt had to differentiate and position WP as a non-technical platform during the days of strong Joomla and Drupal presence. Now with clear dominance in the CMS market and its size of not just users but of the support community, technical support community I might add, is the result of its learning curve. Because WP was never a WYSISWYG Squarespace experience. — Vadim Mialik 70+ WordPress websites // Besides all the great WordPress sites on the Web, there are also countless dead, half-finished or poor SEO link bait sites. — Lisa McMahon 200+ WordPress websites Thanks for reading and please consider joining the newsletter and subscribing to the podcast. ★ Support this podcast ★

This week, I'm extremely excited to have Dr. Jessica Vogelsang as a guest on the podcast. I am a huge fan of Dr. Jessica Vogelsangs content. Not only does she create great content, but she does it consistently. Today we talk about how she got started creating content, how she started on social media and what she has learned along the way.  Dr. Jessica Vogelsang is an author, mother, practicing veterinarian, and medical communicator. After graduating with honors from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. V started her award winning website pawcurious.com in 2009 while continuing to work in small animal practice. Currently, she is the Editorial Manager for DrAndyRoark.com, and is also the Author of All Dogs Go To Kevin.  In today's episode we go over how Jessica got started with digital marketing and what she has learned since she got started. Originally when she started the web was very different and she was using Typepad to create content. Since then, the tools have come a long way to make it far easier to create and distribute content.  Dr. Vogelsang shares her insight in what she thinks veterinary professionals should be doing in content creation, distribution as well as some of her thoughts on new platforms. One of the best pieces of advice I think she gives is finding what you're good at and investing into that. So many people say "Be Everywhere" but sometimes that can be a recipe for disaster.  Be sure to listen to the entire episode because there is so much good info. I even talk to her about instant articles on Facebook. The Dr Andy Roark facebook page is the only publisher I know personally who is using instant articles. I've tried setting it up(I think you need a computer science degree) and I've been really really curious to talk about how it has worked for them.

With social media being as powerful as it is are blogs still relevant? And if they are what's the best way to utilize them? Joining us to answer those questions and more is Yaro Starak. Yaro has been blogging since 2004 - he started on a Typepad blog! He saw the potential for the medium and began his current blog, Entrepreneurs Journey, a year later and has been growing the site ever since. On this edition of Youpreneur FM he shares how to use blogs in your P2P marketing, why blogging is still relevant today in the face of social media, and how to make the leap from being a free content creator to developing and selling your first training product. Get ready to hear all of that and more on today's show! Essential Learning Points From This Episode: What does USP stand for and why does it matter to you? What is the hub and spoke marketing approach? The blog sales funnel: what it is and how it works. Why I love the presale model. Anyone who sells anything online goes through what process? Much, much more! Important Links & Mentions From This Episode: Entrepreneurs Journey website (http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/) Yaro Starak on Twitter (https://twitter.com/yarostarak) Blog Profits Blueprint (http://chrisducker.com/yaro) (www.youpreneuracademy.com) Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose mine, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the top and bottom of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes (https://www.chrisducker.com/itunes) , they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to (https://www.chrisducker.com/itunes) , to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live!

More than 60 million new posts are being published on WordPress.com each month. Wait a second, that’s just WordPress. Let’s not forget the other blogging platforms such as Blogger, Tumblr, TypePad, and Posterous. That’s overwhelming, right? This is where smart content curation can go a long way. The post Content Curation: How To Apply The 911 Rule appeared first on StrengthInBusiness.

On today's episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about having a polished web presence for your blog and online store with my guests, Alicia Paulson and Arianne Foulkes. Alicia Paulson's blog, Posy Gets Cozy, has a large and devoted following. After eight years using a Typepad template and PayPal buttons to run her blog and business, Alicia hired Aeolidia to do a complete redesign of her online presence. She has a new logo, new colors, a new blog design, and a fresh Shopify site. Arianne explains at what stage a creative business should invest in a new website and professional branding, what the process looks like, and how much it costs. And, of course, we recommend great stuff we're loving right now. Please note that this show used to be called the While She Naps podcast. The name has changed, but the content and host have stayed the same. To get the full show notes for this episode, visit Craft Industry Alliance where you can learn more about becoming a member of our supportive trade association. Strengthen your creative business, stay up to date on industry news, and build connections with forward-thinking craft professionals. Meet with show host, Abby Glassenberg, each month for our Craft Business Roundtable, get access to courses and webinars taught by industry leaders, and much more. 

This week’s @lesleyriddoch podcast is still reeling from the cyber attack at our Typepad blog hosts. So we started to speculate on other things outwith our control. The list starts with the BBC Referendum debate in Orkney. Was this a format not suited to a debate? A debate not suited to the format. And how did this contrast with the Science Festival Energy Referendum Debate ; ‘The Perfect Mix’ ? Lesley doesn’t write the headlines in the Sunday Post either and has a few things to say about Eck and subs.   Finally we wrap up with the challenges of islands, explore ‘inalienable’, ‘Our islands, our future’ and discuss the good news from Community Land Scotland.

Allinduath is a Starseed and the following was written by her I am a clairaudient and physical medium and have been channeling higher-dimensional beings most of my life. Recently, I have been guided to share some of the messages I receive from them. These messages can be found on my blog www.CrystalChildMessages.Typepad.com. All my life I have been seeing energy. At two-and-a-half, I refused to enter a house my family was moving into because of the “bad things” I was seeing and feeling inside of it. From my earliest remembrance, I have seen entities, both positive and negative, in the world around me, and have known that I had energy in my hands that could help people if I touched them. At the age of four I began hearing a voice speaking to me and started telling my mom what “God” was saying to me. By the age of sixteen, I was channeling regularly. I learned that the “voice” was actually a team of four of my guides, all of whom are on a council dedicated to helping Earth in her ascension process. The council is called The Council For The Assistance To Earth, and the four members who speak to me are: Faleekastrina, a scientist from Lyshtia Lagonatha, another universe within this multiverse, who is now an eleventh dimensional being, and is Head of the Council; Ezekiel Memchat, an Atlantean who is Faleekastrina’s First Assistant; Fongeetale, a Guardian of Earth from a nature dimension of another planet who is Faleekastrina’s Second Assistant; and Plashdar, a seventh-dimensional Andromedan who is Spokesperson for the Council. I came to Earth in this life in 1988 at the Crystal vibration with the sole mission of being a channel for the Council so that they can reach the people of Earth, and especially Starseeds who have incarnated, with their messages, and so help the Earth ascend into her true reality. I offer Past Life Readings via e-mail. Information on these can be found on my blog, http://www.CrystalChildMessages.Typepad.com.

Tune in for You Don't Have to Be a Genius, Facebook marketing, Beef Jerky Bouquet Review, SEO for Google, SBI vs. Typepad, E-Commerce Store Tips, Boy Scouts Entrepreneurship, RSS buttons, and more! Join us for a live simulcast of the Click Millionaires Show webcast from http://www.ClickMillionaires.tv. Best-selling online marketing expert and author, Scott Fox, shares e-commerce strategy tips, online marketing strategies, book reviews, and the inspiration to help you make more money online. Join us LIVE to ask your e-business questions in the chat room at http://www.ClickMillionaires.tv

How to pick the best blog software platform for your business blog? Scott Fox discusses Wordpress, Typepad and Blogger and explains how to choose the blogging tools best for you. Also, hear Scott Fox's 10 "fake progress" time sinks that can kill your online business. More "plain english" e-business blogging advice and web site vendor recommendations available at http://www.ScottFoxBlog.com today. Best-selling online marketing expert and author, Scott Fox, shares e-commerce strategy tips, online marketing strategies, book reviews, and the inspiration to help you make more money online. Join us LIVE to ask your e-business questions in the chat room at http://www.ScottFoxShow.com.

If you want to put your video on the web and you don't know a lick about website creation, look into Wordpress. Producing media and distributing it online requires a platform that provides a base from you can attract interest and develop a community. I think its fair to say that self promotion on the internet is not a common skill set of most production oriented media producers. One of the best ways to step into this critical space and feel as though you have some control over the process is to produce a blog using Wordpress. Wordpress is one of many different blogging software platforms, such as Typepad, Blogger and Drupal, however I think it is the best combination of flexibility, power and accessibility for non web developers. There's a tremendous amount of learning resources for the uninitiated, with tutorials for the beginner at Wordpress.org and online in general. Even easier, you can go to Wordpress.com, create an account and start blogging in 10 minutes. There is even a video channel, Wordpress.TV that offers up a hefty dose of information for newbies. There are meetups that take place all over the country, all over the world! I just found a Wordpress meetup in Boston that I'll be attending next month. Last month there was presentation by Adam Wood on how to customize a theme called Atahualpa which you can follow here. I found an interesting review of Thesis, another popular theme, containing lots of information about how a good theme simplifies blogging. The really valuable thing about Wordpress is that is is more than just a blogging tool. It's a content management system (CMS) the organizes your content, tracks your marketing efforts and does other things CMS software does. Finally you can attend, for next to nothing, Wordpress Camps all over the country. I just found one will be in Boston, close to where I live, in January. Even if you can't attend one, or you want to know what kind of sessions occur you can check out past unconferences online. A recent Wordpress Camp in Phoenix has some video of some their sessions, including how to put video online. Last week, about 700 attended WP Camp New York City and going by the list of sessions it must have been amazing.

If blogs are the core of your social media diet, how must they adapt to keep your personal and business presence successful? Join us with Six Apart's VP of Products Michael Sippey, live from Sun's campus, as we chat and take your questions through the key updates for your blogs. Stay tuned for an exclusive Socially Speaking giveaway!Michael Sippey is VP of Products at Six Apart, responsible for product strategy and management for the TypePad, Movable Type and Vox blogging platforms. Previously, Michael was part of the founding management team at email services agency Quris, led engagements at the Internet consulting firm Viant, and managed market data and transaction download systems at Advent Software. He blogs at sippey.typepad.com.

If blogs are the core of your social media diet, how must they adapt to keep your personal and business presence successful? Join us with Six Apart's VP of Products Michael Sippey, live from Sun's campus, as we chat and take your questions through the key updates for your blogs. Stay tuned for an exclusive Socially Speaking giveaway!Michael Sippey is VP of Products at Six Apart, responsible for product strategy and management for the TypePad, Movable Type and Vox blogging platforms. Previously, Michael was part of the founding management team at email services agency Quris, led engagements at the Internet consulting firm Viant, and managed market data and transaction download systems at Advent Software. He blogs at sippey.typepad.com.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Dina Kaplan Co-founder and Chief Operations Officer, blip.tv Date: December 22, 2008 Dina Kaplan: blip.tv [music] Lucy Sanders: Hi. This is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women & Information Technology or NCWIT and this interview is part of a series we've been running for a couple of years now in which we interview women who have started IT companies and we learn just fabulous lessons from these women. And we're very excited today to be interviewing Dina Kaplan. With me today is Larry Nelson on w3w3.com. Welcome, Larry. Larry Nelson: Oh, I'm happy to be here. Believe me, I love the topic that we're going to be talking about. Lucy: Well, and with us is Dina Kaplan. Dina has had a very interesting career all the way from being a news reporter and I know is our first interviewee who has won an Emmy Award. Dina Kaplan: Oh, is that right? Oh, my. Thank you. Well, it's an honor to be here. So, thank you for having a good memory to have dug that up. Lucy: Well, Dina is the CEO and co-founder of Blip TV which is a very interesting site and provides a valuable infrastructure for the video blogging community and has some very interesting episodes on there. I had fun watching 'Drinking with Bob.' Dina: Actually, this is high brows weekend I have to say. Lucy: Is this high brows you get? Dina: I'm just teasing. Lucy: Well, it's really a great site. So, welcome. We're really happy that you're here to share with us today about entrepreneurship. Dina: Thank you, Lucy. And thank you, Larry. It's really great to chat with both of you. Lucy: So, we really wanted to ask you first how did you first get into technology? What caused you to make that jump between being a TV news reporter and now you're founder of a technology company. Dina: Right. It's a definite jump from the traditional media to the new media. I had worked at MTV News as an associate producer producing stories about the very early days of the Internet, about music and about politics. Then, as you mentioned, became an on-air TV reporter. And now, I'm definitely firmly in the new media world. So, I would say, first of all, that it's a big jump from the mindset of a traditional media person to a new media person. But, you'll notice that that word 'media' is still in both of those terms and I think that's very important to mention. We definitely at Blip.tv on TV view ourselves as a media company and I believe that for a lot of these new media companies, or digital media, whichever term you prefer, if the technology is good enough which, hopefully, it is, at a certain point, it feeds away and you think more about the media than the technology that enables it. If you go back a few decades, NBC, and CBS and all those broadcast networks that we now think of media companies, back in their early days, they were considered technology companies. So, I think we'll see that same transition happen with the new media companies. But, I will answer your question and I will say that it's incredibly rewarding to be at a new media company that's not betting on hits and banking on hits. And essentially, having the authority to give a green light or a red light to a project. So what Blip.tv is a very democratic network where anyone can upload a show and if it's good, the show will amass hundreds of thousands or, potentially, even millions of viewers and can also have the opportunity to make money as well. You're never going to have that type of democratic platform with a traditional TV network because just by their nature, they need to invest in hits, and bank on that and hope that something is really huge because there's a limited number of bandwidth over those airwaves. So, part of the reason that I jumped over to new media that it met with my values and my beliefs that anyone who's talented should have a chance to succeed and it shouldn't be up to one programming chief to decide what gets a green light and what does not. Lucy: Well, it's a great value proposition for sure. Larry: It certainly is. Dina, would you mind just giving us a quick differentiation between YouTube and Blip.tv. Dina: Sure. Blip.tv is essentially a media company that has 3, 000 active shows on it. They are uploading an average of four new episodes a month, so about one new episode a week. And on that, we get overall for the whole mackerel of all of those shows, we've got 62 million video views a month and I should add that that goes up about 11% a month, month over month and has for the last twelve months straight. So, whereas YouTube has lots of great content, they have viral videos that may be a one off video that's funny or amusing, or it might be a trailer from a new film that's coming out. They might have some broadcast programming. They might some original shows. They have a huge and wonderful variety of clips. Blip.tv is much more like a television network that's on the Internet. So, the only thing that we have on Blip is original, serialized shows that have loyal and persistent audiences that are building up over time. And they have brand names. So, the people that are creating shows on Blip, many of them think of this as a business, not as just a hobby and it's a very different mindset than the mindset of someone that's just going to do one clip and hope it gets a lot of views, but really just do one thing. Lucy: Well, it's an exciting company. You have a lot of passion just like lots of entrepreneurs have which leads me to my next question. Why are you an entrepreneur? What about that makes you tick? Dina: I have to say there is nothing better than calling up a show creator and saying, "Hey, you know what? This show that you have been toiling over and doing one new episode of every week for the past year," or for some people, even a few years, "Hey, we just brought in a sponsor for your show and you're not going to make money doing that." That is an incredibly rewarding feeling and, look, if we succeed at Blip.TV, which really just means that the shows are succeeding. We are hoping to create a new media and, in some ways, a true new media type which is that anyone who has talent, and an idea for a show, and a camcorder, or a digital camera, or a very well shooting cellphone can create a show that could be every bit as good as a show that you might see on broadcast television or on cable. So, I really fundamentally believe in what we're doing. It's exciting to be part of a team, and there are five founders of Blip, so I'm one of five founders. But, the only female founder, relevant in terms of the topic of this show to feel that we've created this and we built this up from nothing to having 62 million video views and we're sending out lots, and lots and lots of checks to content creators every month is an incredibly rewarding feeling. So, I absolutely love it and the other thing that I love, which is going to sound funny to you guys, but I like the idea of being part of the functioning New York economy and part of the functioning American economy. I love that we're hiring people. I look forward to even paying some taxes. It's a great feeling to be contributing value. To content creators, hopefully lots of entertaining content for millions and millions of viewers. And then, just to be part of the whole functioning economy and building value in that sense is something that I'm very proud of. Larry: Dina, whether it be a mentor or someone who was a great role model for you, who is the person that probably influenced or supported you most in your career path. Dina: The person that I think of first when you ask that question is Jerry Layborn. The first thing she did when I did not even know her, but I graduated from Wesleyan University. I'm not on the national board of Wesleyan. So, I'm involved in the school and a huge supporter of it. She didn't attend there. But, I believe it's her husband attended there and one of her kids attended there. So, I knew she had that connection. So, I emailed her out of the blue and said, "Hey Jerry. My name is Dina Kaplan. I'd love to work at MTV. I know that you're working at Nickelodeon, which is part of that ViaCom family. Would you maybe forward my resume to someone over at MTV News?" And without knowing me, she agreed to take a call, and then she agreed to take a meeting and she ended up getting me a job. Or, helping me, I should say, get a job at ViaCom and I'll never forget that. But then, just as importantly, or perhaps even more importantly, when Blip was starting, we were doing a number of small deals. We were bringing on some content creators, we were doing some distribution deals, we were syndicating content to iTunes, to blogging platforms such as Word Press, Type Pad and a few others. But, we had no revenue deals. So, I remembered this Jerry Layborn connection, she, at the time, was running Oxygen and I happened to be at a cocktail party that she was at. And someone at the party asked me, "Dina, I love to support women entrepreneurs. I know you're starting a young company. Who at this party would you like to meet?" And I said I'd like to meet Jerry Layborn. So, she walked me over. She said, "This is Dina Kaplan. She's starting a company that runs video on the web and you guys should talk." And Jerry said, "Can you come see me tomorrow?" I said, "Yes." She said, "Here's my number. Call me. I'll block off whatever time it is that you can come in." So, sure enough, she did and I came in the next day. And I pitched her on, essentially, enabling content that they needed for Oxygen that would've required some money from them. It was a big meeting for us. It was very important. We walked out of that meeting and she said, "We're going to close this deal. We are going to make sure you get some revenue for the company." And I envisioned my job as being - enabling the next generation of women who were working in media to take leadership roles. So, sure enough the deal closed. Sure enough, that deal enabled us to get a much bigger deal with CNN and eventually the whole Turner brand. And I am not sure that Blip.tv would have taken off if it were not for Jerry Layborn. So, I will always be grateful to her and her mentorship for the rest of my life. Lucy: It really sounds like she gives a lot to entrepreneurs. Dina: She is incredibly supportive of women. She's wonderful person and all that I can hope for is the opportunity to pay that forward to many other women who are coming up behind all of us. Lucy: Well, that gets me to the next question around advice to young people around entrepreneurship. If you were sitting here with a young person and giving them some amount of wisdom about entrepreneurship, what would you say to them? Dina: I think that the most important thing is two key bits of advice. One of which is to just do it. If you have an idea for a company, you should not belabor the thinking about whether you should jump into this or not for years on end and ponder every possible scenario. There's something to be said for just getting started and I am definitely putting my money where my mouth is, or however that expression goes, because once we had the idea for Blip, we literally launched the company three days later which brings me to the second point of advice, which is that it's very important to build your business by getting feedback from your customers. So, we launched Blip. Our product was not great when started and we knew that it wouldn't be. But, what we did do was identify thought leaders in the audience that we were seeking to grow from which was content creators; people producing original web shows of which there were about five to ten when we started. But, we sought out the best ones and we asked for their advice and said, "What should we do, and what do you need and how can we help solve problems for you?" And we just iterated the product. At that point, we were doing new releases every two weeks. So, we learned from them. It was very much of a grassroots, bottom up development rather than saying, "OK. We thought about this for five years. Here's the product. Take it or leave it." So, I'd say start, and then iterate and constantly listen to people and learn from them. Larry: Dina, with all the things that you've been through and everything else, what would you say is probably the toughest thing that you had to do in your career? Dina: I think the toughest thing is figuring out time management and figuring out how to balance your priorities. I should mention that one of the tough things should not be questions about values. I think that, as an entrepreneur, you have opportunities to make very short term moves that would be greatly, say, financially beneficial to your company or greatly drive up your number of users. But if, in any way shape or form, anything you do ever compromises your ethics, that should not even be a consideration. So, we are so proud of the way that we are running this company to try to, just essentially, say, "All we're doing is supporting shows." So, we have no goals for ourselves for Blip other than trying to make life easier for really talented producers on the web. So, that makes a lot of decisions really easy. In terms of the tough scenarios, it's just trying to prioritize your time and trying to stay in very, very close touch with your customers, and just always being really humble and really knowing that you're never going to have all the answers. Whatever it is that you're looking at, there's someone out there, there's a group of people that know that area of expertise incredibly well because they're doing it all the time and you're probably doing 50 different things. So, as much as you can engage the experts in every aspect of your business and continue to learn from them, listen a lot and not talk too much, then I think you'll be in pretty good shape. Lucy: What personal characteristics do you have that you think make you a successful entrepreneur? Dina: I think one of the things is listening and engaging people. As an entrepreneur, you have this tendency to just put your head down and work, and work something like 18 or 19 hours a day. You have all of these things that require your time at the office whether it's setting up your P&L or getting the whole pro formas projected out for the next ten years correct, to getting all your bills paid, making sure the product works. All of these things that require you to be in the office. But I believe it's as important to be out within the community that you're serving so go out, go to cocktail parties that are related to your space, go to tech meetups and video meetups. Those are some social elements that are important to our community. And then in terms of advertisers, go to advertising meetups, take every meeting that you can with advertisers when you're just beginning to bring in revenue from brands and from agencies. Another part of our world is distributors. So we need to spend time with iTunes and find out what's important to them, and the folks at AOL Video and Yahoo Video, and all of the other great video destination sites. So I have a tendency to be pretty social and to enjoy engaging in dinner parties and cocktail parties, and just spending a lot of time listening to people. And I think that that's very valuable to your business. It's going to be valuable when you want to raise money - it's much easier to raise money from people you know than to make cold calls - and it's also going to be valuable when you do business development deals. I will say that almost every startup will be part of an ecosystem. It's very hard for a startup to just exist on its own. So for us the early players in that ecosystem were WordPress, Typepad, Flickr, iTunes, a number of other distribution platforms and then also content creators. And we had to get out there. We had to hang out with them. We had to be in a position where those folks trusted us both personally and also trusted our product. So I think the inclination to engage with people and learn from them is a helpful aspect when you're starting a company up. Lucy: Absolutely, and you know with all the interviews we've done, I think this is the first time someone has answered this question this way. Larry: Yes. Lucy: And it's a very important observation. Larry: Yes, and obviously meeting Jerry Labon at one of these networking events, cocktail parties, I think that was a fine example. Dina: Yeah, I mean that was a huge turning point. And if I think about other very crucially important deals that we made for Blip early on, we did a pretty early partnership with Google AdSense for Video which is their video ad product. And that relationship was forged through someone that I met at a conference, sitting at a big lunch room around an eight person table. And we struck up a conversation, and it took a few months to close that deal but we ended up closing that deal which was lucrative for Google, I'm not going to say hugely lucrative, we're a small blip on their radar screen at this point, but it was a beneficial relationship for them. I think they actually tested that product on Blip before they did on YouTube. And it was incredibly important for us. If I look back to almost ever early business development deal that we did, it was through someone that I or someone else from Blip met at a conference, or at a digital media meetup, or at a digital media party, et cetera. So it is definitely important to be a part of the ecosystem that you're in. And then I'll add, you also clearly need to spend time on the product, and you need to spend some time in the office as well. Larry: And that's a fact. Dina, you've already accomplished a great deal. Here you've got Blip.tv, 62 million viewers per month and that number is growing constantly. What's next for you? Dina: So the next thing for us is to vastly expand our distribution platform. So we have this belief at Blip that every show created for the web has what's called a total potential audience, and you are never going to reach that total potential audience on one site. Why is that? That's because a music lover in Britain may only want to watch their video on Bebo, so we have to get our videos to Bebo.com. And someone that's old school Internet user may only want to go to AOL Video, so it's very important for us to make our content available on AOL. Other people just love their MySpace of Facebook pages, so we need to make our content available there. So what you'll see in 2009 is Blip.tv announcing a number of significant distribution deals to get our content into every nook and cranny of the web, and then some places off the web as well. We've already announced deals with Tivo, with Sony Bravia and with Fios, but we'll have some other deals as well. The second thing that we are going to focus on in 2009 is making things a little bit easier for advertisers to "buy" web video content. Right now it's very difficult for them to make buys because they need to come up with one type of creative for one side, a different type of creative for Blip, a third type of creative for another publisher. So we're going to be working with a number of other video destination sites and a number of the top web show creators such as Michael Eisner's team out in LA called Tornante, DECA Group which does this great show called "Boing Boing," another show called "Project Lore," "Momversation," and others. 60Frames and other key producers such as those to figure out, how we can come up with standards so that it's much easier for advertisers to make buys across multiple shows, on multiple platforms. And then there are some other tools that we are going to be collaborating with other folks in our ecosystem on to essentially streamline the whole system of buying for advertisers. Lucy: That's going to be a busy year. Larry: Boy, I'll say. Lucy: And we really do appreciate your time. This has been really a great company. And I wrote myself a little note here that you are democratizing TV. [laughs] Dina: No, that's exactly right. I mean if you really wanted to have a show on the air in the past - I mean a big show that has say, millions of viewers to it - you'd have to knock on the doors of NBC or Bravo or Sony Studios and just pray that you would get a deal. Now, you can just do the show and you can build up huge viewership for it and you can make money too, and do all of that not having a boss, not having a network chief telling you what to say or how to wear your hair. So I think that's an incredibly exciting thing for us and for talented show creators. But I think it's a little bit of a nervous time for the traditional networks in trying to think, how we compete with the massive content that's on a platform like Blip. Lucy: Well I have an idea for a show: "I Love Lucy." [laughs] Larry: Oh. Lucy: That's just a little joke. I'm sure someone took that one already. Larry: I love it. Well one of the things that I really appreciate is the fact of what you're doing. Pat and I, we have had w3w3.com talk radio for 10 years now, and things sure have changed over that time. Lucy: Yes, they have. Thank you, Dina, so much. Dina: Thank you, thank you for your time. It was wonderful to chat with both of you. Larry: By the way, you listeners out there, make sure you pass this interview along to others that you think would be interested. They can listen to it on... Lucy: NCWIT.org. Larry: And w3w3.com. Lucy: Thank you, and thank you Dina. Dina: Thank you. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Dina KaplanInterview Summary: blip.tv wants to provide a great service for great shows. A new class of entertainment is emerging that is being made by the people without the support of billion-dollar multinationals. blip.tv's mission is to support people by taking care of all the problems a budding videoblogger, podcaster or Internet TV producer tends to run into. They take care of the servers, the software, the workflow, the advertising and the distribution, leaving clients free to focus on creativity. Release Date: December 22, 2008Interview Subject: Dina KaplanInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 21:46

The hype around Web 2.0 continues to increase to the point of absurdity. We hear all about a rich web of data, but what can we learn from these trends to actually apply to our designs? You’ll take a tour through the past, present, and future of the web to answer these questions and more: - What can we learn from the rich history of data visualization to inform our designs today? - How can we do amazing work while battle the constant constraints we find ourselves up against? - How do we really incorporate users into our practice of user experience? Jeffrey Veen is an internationally sought-after speaker, author, and user experience consultant. As a consultant, Jeffrey has been involved in designing the leading blog and social media applications on the web, including Blogger, TypePad, Flickr, and more. Jeff also led the creation of Measure Map, the well-received blog analytics tool acquired by Google in 2006. After five years with Adaptive Path, where he was a founding partner, Jeff moved to Google, where he where he lead the redesign of their Analytics product and managed their web apps UX team. He left Google in May, 2008, to work on personal projects. Previously, Jeffrey served as the Executive Director of Interface Design for Wired Digital and Lycos Inc., where he managed the look and feel of HotWired, the HotBot search engine, Lycos.com and others. In addition to lecturing and writing on web design and development, Jeffrey has been active with the World Wide Web Consortium’s CSS Editorial Review Board as an invited expert on electronic publishing. He is also the author of the acclaimed books The Art & Science of Web Design and HotWired Style: Principles for Building Smart Web Sites. In 1998, Jeffrey was named by CNET as one of the "First Annual Web Innovators" and has won the Communication Arts Interactive Annual award for his work on Wired News. Other clients include Technorati, Creative Commons, Macromedia, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and National Public Radio. Jeffrey specializes in the integration of content, graphic design, and technology from a user-centered perspective. Licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

You know what blogs and wikis are, and you know your YouTube from your Facebook. But do you know how to make a compelling business case for these technologies? Social media and social networking tools are poised to have as much of an impact on business as they’ve had on the way we communicate with our friends and family online. Anil Dash, a blogger since 1999 who’s helped thousands of businesses make use of social media through his work at Six Apart, shares real-world examples of how companies are using social media to build their business. Six Apart is the world’s biggest blogging company, behind such platforms as Movable Type, LiveJournal, Vox, and TypePad. And even more important than where technology has been is where it’s going: Learn about cutting-edge technological initiatives like OpenID and OpenSocial, and how these aren’t just about new ways to poke your Facebook friends - they’re business opportunities. Finally, no change this big happens without thinking about the social and political realities of the business world. What works in convincing your company, your coworkers, or your boss to spend their time and money trying new things? This session will lead a conversation to find out. Anil Dash is Chief Evangelist at Six Apart, Ltd, the world’s leading independent blogging company. Dash is a recognized expert on blogs and web technology, having founded one of the earliest and most popular weblogs on the Internet, and been named as one of MSNBC’s Best of Blogs. A frequent keynote speaker, Dash has given presentations around the world about the future of social communication online, the relationship between blogs and traditional media, and business blogging. Dash’s work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Wired, MSNBC, CNN, ABC News, and on television, radio, print and blogs around the world. He has also had his work showcased in museums including the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and lectured at universities including UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Columbia University’s School of Journalism, and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Prior to joining Six Apart as its first employee, Dash worked in online communications and technology development for the publishing and music industries. When he’s not traveling, Dash lives in New York City with his favorite dog, cat, and human. Licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

This episode has been sponsored by GoDaddy. Get your piece of the Internet today and save 10% on your next order by using code POD11. http://www.godaddy.com Help Donate to the Taylor Marek College Fund. Go to: http://taylormarekpodcast.chipin.com/college to donate. In today's episode I will show you to put your Finances on Autopilot. In Business you will learn about Audio Branding your company. In Technology you will find out about which blogging platform to use. I recommend Blogger, Wordpress.com, Wordpress.org, TypePad, and MovableType. The articles used in today's show can be found at: http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/starting/archive/2007/st0627.htm If you have any questions, comments, or ideas about anything mentioned during the show, or to give your two-cents on a topic, call our toll-free line at 1-866-TMP-2860.

Mena Trott, president and a co-founder of Six Apart who run blogging platforms Movable Type, Typepad, LiveJournal and recently launched Vox in October. Agree, disagree, like, don't like...? Feel free to leave a comment at http://mediasnackers.com/2006/12/mediasnackers-podcast58/

This month, author Steven Johnson joins TypePad’s Michael Sippey and Anil Dash to discuss "The Ghost Map" and the scientific mystery story surrounding a devastating 1854 outbreak of cholera in London. Other topics include Outside.In’s take on local conversations and...

Seth Godin is a TypePad blogger and author of the new book Small is the New Big. Download the podcast

Recorded on the M-Audio Microtrack...this week's show discusses Web 2.0-like web services and more about the "dirty little secret" of performance with them. I'm a user of several different web services (Flickr, Typepad, Gmail, Bigstep) and am growing increasingly anxious...

Download the MP3. At age 28, Mena Trott is a veteran blogger and an accomplished company founder. Six Apart, the business she started four years ago with her husband Ben, now has over 100 employees. Its stable of popular blogging products (including Movable Type, TypePad and LiveJournal) are used by writers of all types -- from the most influential bloggers to children who communicate after school. She's still pushing her company forward as president and developing some very ambitious new technologies. Towards the end of the interview, VideoEgg co-founder Kevin Sladek jumps into the conversation to announce a partnership with Six Apart. Venture Voice covered the launch of VideoEgg during our DEMO coverage (show #14 and show #15). Starting today, VideoEgg and Six Apart will add video capabilities to TypePad. Show notes:

At age 28, Mena Trott is a veteran blogger and an accomplished company founder. Six Apart, the business she started four years ago with her husband Ben, now has over 100 employees. Its stable of popular blogging products (including Movable Type, TypePad and LiveJournal) are used by writers of all types — from the most influential bloggers to children who communicate after school.…

Andrew Gwozdziewycz and Matt Jacobs from Six Apart talk about their recent release of Typepad Motion and Sean O'Connor gives a talk about bad Django scents.