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Announcing our newest project, Rasionne.gallery, an art management tool for art galleries
Show Notes
Jonathan, Caleb, and Daila discuss our newest project, raisonne.gallery. What started as a client project has turned into one of our first real products. It aims to solve the needs of art galleries who want to share their collection online and with other galleries.
[01:53] New Product for Art Galleries
[03:28] Building a Custom Database for Kamloops Art Gallery
[08:02] Launching a Landing Page for Raisonné
[09:34] Checking Our Spelling
[12:01] Caleb Groans While He Works
[13:53] Raisonne.gallery
The Product: OpenHouse.social
[01:53] New Product for Art Galleries
[03:28] Building a Custom Database for Kamloops Art Gallery
[08:02] Launching a Landing Page for Raisonné
[09:34] Checking Our Spelling
[12:01] Caleb Groans While He Works
[13:53] Raisonne.gallery
The Product: OpenHouse.social
Newsletter: factory.twostoryrobot.com
Twitter: @twostoryrobot
Instagram: @therobotfactorypod
The Product: OpenHouse.social
Newsletter: factory.twostoryrobot.com
Twitter: @twostoryrobot
Instagram: @therobotfactorypod
Follow Jonathan: @thejonotron
Follow Caleb: @calebissharp
Creators & Guests
What is The Robot Factory?
Follow along as we attempt to build and sell a SaaS company. A build in public behind the scenes journey of a small software agency, Two Story Robot, trying something new.
Jonathan: I figured it out the easy way to
make sure that you never run out of candy.
That everyone gets candy and that
is the first child that comes.
You give them half of your candy and
then the next child that comes, you
give them half of the remaining candy
and you keep doing that forever.
And you will always have a little bit of
candy to give to someone by the end of it.
Daila: Don't you at some
point have to like bite it in
half and put it in their bag?
Okay, well
Jonathan: somebody gets crumbs,
but everybody gets some candy
Daila: perfect.
Caleb: Wealth distribution in the
Daila: I know I was gonna say that
I feel like we're teaching them also
like a social lesson at the same time.
That's awesome.
Jonathan: welcome back
to the Robot Factory.
This is a podcast where we switch topics
all the time, sometimes have guests and
sometimes talk about products we have
built, sometimes talk about new products.
We're going to build all in the hopes
of creating stuff that we can sell.
Uh, that's the goal.
I'm your host, one of your
hosts, Jonathan Bowers.
With me as often as we
can is my other hosts.
Daila: I'm Daila Dufford,
one of the other hosts.
Caleb: Caleb Sharp is my name.
Doing podcast is my game.
Jonathan: Yeah.
. I do it.
Oh, I feel like we should have
recorded your, uh, light saber
sounds because that was pretty neat.
He took it, he took it apart for us and
uh, showed us the little crystal that's
in there, the kyber crystal, which gives.
Power and power
Daila: are you supposed to take it apart?
Caleb: Yeah, it's, it's, it's, you build
your own, so it comes in pieces and you
have to put together the kyber crystal
isn't actually the source of power.
It's actually three AA batteries,
Jonathan: Oh,
Daila: Hey, hey.
You're ruining my illusion here, Caleb
Caleb: I think the color comes from it.
There's like a little NFC
tag in there or something.
I think you can hack it
so you can get more color.
Jonathan: Yep.
Caleb: I'll try that one day.
Jonathan: Speaking of colors, um,
so , Caleb's, Caleb's Light Saber is
red, but a new website that we are
about to launch because we have a
new product that we've been working
on . So let's recap a little bit.
We had OpenHouse.social, which was an
experiment in generating, um, images
for social media, for real estate agents
that led us to have a conversation
with, uh, our friend Brendan Shaw.
And we are building some property
management software, but also
we've got another product.
in the art gallery world and, uh,
last Friday or a couple Fridays
ago, um, Daila, you and the little
robot team had a little, I dunno
what you call 'em, design sprints.
What is the, what is the
Daila: I guess so we, we've
been calling them sprints.
I don't know if that's like copyrighted,
but yes, we, it was like a fun little,
little design slash development
sprint cuz we, we did it all, we
designed and developed in a few hours.
Super.
Jonathan: I said speaking of color,
the website is purple and I like it.
I like that it's purple and it's got
some fun shapes, , anyways, we have
this product that we have built.
Uh, it was originally a custom,
custom piece of software, but we
discovered that the problem is shared
by other customers of the same type.
Um, Daila, can you just like, talk a
little bit about what, what we've done?
I think we can, yeah.
We can talk about who it was and
what, um, what the product is
and what we wanna do with it.
So what is, what did we build?
Daila: so you've been very vague,
but I don't have to be vague and
Jonathan: No, we don't have to be very
vague like we, cuz we've got, we've got
people's names on the website, so it's
Daila: Yeah.
Okay, sweet.
Then it's.
No holds barred.
Um, so what we built originally, the
original piece of software was for
an art gallery, Kamloops Art Gallery.
Um, go there if you're ever
in Kamloops, it's wonderful.
And they came to us
saying, Hey, you know what?
We wanna put our collection online.
Which I think the pandemic brought a lot
of that to light too, that people wanted
to see art during the pandemic and they're
like, man, we should have been doing.
All along and it, it opened up a whole
bunch of other, um, issues that they've
been having that could be solved by this.
So what we did was we did, we took
all of their, their collection,
which was in a huge spreadsheet, and
we created a no code app in Bubble.
Where we just took that
spreadsheet and turned it into a
visual, uh, of all the artwork.
So you can search by artist object.
Painting style and a
whole bunch of things.
Um, and uh, you can see all the
individual pieces of art and
all the information about them.
But the biggest thing that everyone's
really excited about in the art gallery
world is that other galleries can
now look and see what Kamloops has.
And I didn't know this was
a thing, but then you, you.
Not commission the artwork, but
you can have the artwork sent to
your gallery for, um, exhibits.
So this is a really easy way for
them to quickly see who has what,
or this is our, we'll talk about the
end goal there, but that, that turns
out that's a big issue for galleries.
Um, it's just a lot of phone calls
and emails saying, Hey, does anybody
have artwork from these artists?
And hoping you hear.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a super, it sounded like a
super manual process of, like you
said, just phoning emails and hope
like . You don't even know, you phone
some random gallery in, uh, wherever.
I mean, every, I think everyone knows he.
Each other.
So they might have some intuition about
what's there like, but it's all locked in
your head, but you don't know for sure.
And then, yeah, you just phone up
and say, Hey, do you got any, uh, you
got any paintings by, uh, so andSo?
And they say, uh, nope.
And okay, , because like, it's, it's
the, the sense that I got was that,
um, there's a lot of this happening,
like people are putting on exhibits
and it might be a themed exhibit that
is, uh, you know, maybe themed around
an artist or a type of medium or,
or, uh, I don't know, uh, content.
Um, and so they're looking around for,
for, for pieces cuz they don't, like every
art gallery doesn't have everything to, to
satisfy that, that exhibit requirements.
So they look around and borrow
stuff from each other and it
just happens all the time.
I had no idea that,
that, that was something
Daila: I didn't know either.
Jonathan: Yeah, doing it manually.
So it's super, super cool.
There's the potential for this, this
network effect where galleries, um, get to
use it and the more galleries that use it,
the more other galleries want to use it.
So it's pretty neat.
Um, we're very excited about
the prospects presented by this.
Daila: It's exciting and like
our, our goal, we're calling it
the art mega database is to one
Jonathan: What?
No, that's not what we're calling it.
Daila: no, that's what
Paige and I are calling
Jonathan: Oh,
Daila: because we liked, sorry, not
we, we as in the me and Paige, cuz
we thought mega database sounded fun.
We're not saying that to
clients , but so that everybody's
art is in one searchable place.
Jonathan: Mm-hmm.
Daila: is super exciting,
Jonathan: Mm-hmm.
. Yeah.
One place so that they can just have those
kinds of requisitions, what's the word?
Uh, requisition, not commission.
I don't know what the word
is, but they just borrow, they
borrow art from other people.
I wonder if they could do that in a
digital way, like put on a digital exhibit
where you're like, this is, this is so
some art gallery in whatever cities.
Like we have our virtual exhibit and
it is the featured works of so and so.
Um, we don't actually own.
Any of this stuff, but we've
got permission to borrow it
from other people virtually, and
we're putting it on our website.
And if you wanna go see it in person, you
gotta go to like that, that art gallery
over there, this art gallery over here.
Uh, I don't know.
I dunno if
Caleb: I thought, I thought this
was going to, you were gonna
jump into like NFTs or something?
Jonathan: Oh yeah.
We sh Um, yeah, I don't know.
Uh, some of this feels like somebody
would have proposed a block.
Blockchain technology to deal with this,
but um, we're just doing it in no code
Caleb: yeah.
Jonathan: uh, cuz it's faster.
So last, last week or two
weeks ago, we've started on the
landing page for this website.
Uh, first of all, what are we,
I'm gonna make you pronounce it.
What do we call this new product?
Daila: Oh, okay.
It's called uh, Catalogue
Raisonné, I think.
Catalogue Raisonné, which means.
Collection of reasoning
Caleb: And I think it
means reasoned collection,
Daila: reason collection,
that's what it means.
That makes more sense, Caleb.
So, yeah, so I mean the, the one guy,
Steve, on our team, he's British, and
apparently that's what they called
all of their artwork when they were
in school, was you had to create a
catalog, raisonne, I call it raison.
Like,
Jonathan: you're terrible
Caleb: even a T in.
It
Daila: like the little Yes.
Oh no, there isn't.
Jonathan: No,
Caleb: make any sense.
Daila: Oh, then
Jonathan: But I like RA nets too.
Daila: Yeah.
I like raisinettes.
Um, so yeah, Catalogue Raisonné.
And
Jonathan: Caleb, as a, as a someone
who likes to experiment with languages,
um, how would you pronounce it?
Caleb: Uh,
Jonathan: Okay.
Well, very nice.
I'm gonna, we're gonna have to snip
out that little sound bite and send
it to some French people and ask,
Caleb: uh, well, I only
took French to grade 12.
Wait, I need to check something.
I need to really, I just need
to quickly double check that
we haven't made a fatal, fatal
Jonathan: mistake.
Caleb: Yeah.
Daila: Oh, fatal spelling mistakes.
Caleb: Uh, hold on.
I just gotta pull up, pull
up my word reference.com.
Where is French?
English to French search.
Oh, okay.
I think so, cat, it's, it's look catalog.
It's a, it's a masculine noun.
And we spelled a with an extra E on the.
because I, I think it's an
adjective here, so it should
not have the extra E on the end
Jonathan: Oh, um, two E?
Caleb: should have one E,
isn't it spelled with two E's?
Spell with the accent?
E and then the another E.
Jonathan: No, just the
Caleb: No.
Okay.
Phew
Daila: Oh my goodness.
That
Jonathan: It's
Daila: it almost all crumbled around us
Jonathan: my goodness.
We have to pivot.
And now we're building a
language, language app.
Caleb: Oh,
Jonathan: wild.
I, yeah, it's, it's,
Oh, what is the domain?
We bought the domain name.
Caleb: I tried to go to a RA
Jonathan: What did we buy?
Caleb: son
Daila: I can't remember.
That was like two weeks ago, Jonathan.
Geez.
Jonathan: Oh, okay.
So, um, when are we launching the site?
Because, uh, I'm gonna publish this, uh,
the, this episode probably next week.
Daila: Yeah, you know what?
I'm just looking at it now, so I've
gotta just make a few changes I see
that haven't been put in there yet,
which I'll do this week and then we'll
launch it before you publish this.
Um,
Jonathan: hoping to publish
this episode tomorrow or Friday.
only because, so we haven't recorded,
we haven't recorded a couple
of, uh, for a couple of weeks.
Uh, I did record last week with, with
Courtney and I published that episode.
Daila: yes.
Jonathan: Last week.
Um, but now I have, I have no, I have no
episodes in the buffer, in the hopper.
Um, I don't love that.
Uh, but it's fine.
I don't need to publish this next
Daila: Okay.
But I mean, I
Jonathan: actually I don't
need to publish this this
Daila: changes are pretty quick.
I, if I'm looking for like, it's
like cleansing my pallet from.
When I'm really stressed out about
other work is I do stuff like this.
So maybe I'll just do it at the end of
the day today to cleanse my work palette
by just quickly working on the Raisonne
landing site cuz it's so much fun.
Jonathan: Caleb, can you log
into AWS and figure out what our
domain name is that we bought?
Caleb: Uh,
Jonathan: Uh,
Caleb: okay.
Jonathan: so much work.
worse.
Caleb: Uh oh.
I'm signed into my root account.
I've signed into a different account.
Im user, ugh
Jonathan: This is what Caleb is
like working next to in the office.
He just groans.
I came in, so I came in from a run
and he, he , I came in and he was,
he had his, he was hunched over.
He had both fingers of both
hands poking his eyeballs.
His eyes were closed, but he was like
shoving his fingers into his eyes.
I thought he was maybe having
a migraine and he was trying to
massage his brain from the inside.
And at some point, like stopped.
But he still had his eyes closed.
And then he was like pointing
in different directions.
I think he was doing vector multiplication
in his head or trying to, trying to
reason about how to, how the, how to
multiply, um, s spatial vectors together.
Uh, and he was groaning.
So this, this way of working is
Caleb: Uh, it was, it's like a,
it's like a form of meditation.
Jonathan: Um,
Caleb: My authentication originally.
Correct.
What,
Jonathan: what's the,
in, in a Monty Python?
I think it might have been life of Brian.
Um, the monks were walking around smacking
themselves in the face with a board.
Um, and there's a word for that.
Uh,
Caleb: uh, self flegellation
Jonathan: Yeah.
Are you a self flag?
Caleb: No.
Daila: that sounds wrong,
Caleb: I'm not,
Jonathan: Oh, okay.
Caleb: wasn't painful.
It was like it, I if, I don't know,
it was so that I could like really
visualize what was going on cuz it
was dealing with like, spatial stuff.
So I needed to be able to visualize it.
So I had to shut out, shut out
Daila: Were you like in your mind, palace
Caleb: Yes, it did actually work.
I did figure it out.
It's all figured out
Jonathan: Sweet.
Now, did you figure out the domain
name that we bought, because that seems
Caleb: I'm getting there.
Jonathan: of magnitude less
Caleb: it took me a long time to sign in.
For some reason I kept putting
in the exact same password.
Lot of domains to go through here.
Jonathan: Starts with an R or has an R in
Caleb: It's not an alphabetical order.
raisonne.gallery
Daila: Oh,
Jonathan: nice.
Daila: okay.
Okay, sweet.
I will make sure we launch it on that one.
Jonathan: That's the domain in we bought.
I forgot that we bought that.
Daila: I did too.
Oh, I like that.
Caleb: TLD is almost longer
than the actual like domain.
Jonathan: so smart.
We didn't buy the, uh, with the,
with the accent on the E though.
Um, cuz uh, I don't, I don't know
that we can, I don't know how, I don't
Daila: I don't think we'd want to
Caleb: I don't think
that would improve her
Daila: how hard it is to
figure out how to do that?
Jonathan: Do you know how long Caleb and I
spent yesterday experimenting with all the
different characters you can type on your
Caleb: It wasn't that long.
Jonathan: longer than we should have.
Caleb: Probably it was a
non-zero amount of time.
Jonathan: There's like three different
ways to type something that looks like
the degree symbol, but only one of them is
Caleb: Yeah,
Jonathan: Well, yeah,
Daila: Are there actually
people in the world who would
know if you did the wrong one?
Jonathan: there's people in the world who
would probably seek that out and correct
you
Caleb: Jonathan would know
Daila: there is.
It's the
Jonathan: I can't, I don't know how
to determine which one is which.
Caleb: well.
The, I can at least determine between
the ordinal indicator and the degree.
Cause the ornal indicator will
look more like a zero, and the
degree should be a perfect circle.
It doesn't depend on the
font a little bit, but.
Jonathan: yeah.
So,
Caleb: Italian, they use the ordinal
indicator, so they might know
Jonathan: instead of
degrees, they just use that,
Caleb: No, they use it.
It's the same as in English.
How like first, second, third,
the little, little letters above.
It's like that's what it is.
Jonathan: oh.
Caleb: Like in, in other languages,
like in French, like Zim is second.
So they type a little or they
do a little Me about the two.
Jonathan: Oh.
Daila: Oh,
Caleb: Yeah.
Yep.
Daila: hmm.
Jonathan: Um, let's come
back to on topic chat.
So, wait, am I, am I supposed
to roll the R or just
Caleb: Um, some French accents.
It is actually like a role are like
that, but most of the time it's
like a, it's like a gutteral sound.
It's not technically a roll.
It's like
Jonathan: Say it.
Say the whole thing.
Kaison a a.gallery.
Dot gallery is our, is the, is the
site, is the site that we have, uh,
the domain name that we bought, um,
because we got really excited about,
uh, the name when Steve said it,
and I went and bought it right away.
Uh, and we're gonna launch that, um,
by the time this episode comes out.
And so you can go and have quick peek at
some of the features that we have and,
Daila: it
Jonathan: oh, uh, yeah.
Good, good idea.
Daila: because
Jonathan: Wait, I'm gonna try and
spell it without looking at it.
And Ka, you need to correct me.
So R A I S O N N E.
Did I get it right?
Caleb: Is the spelling of the domain name.
Yeah.
Technically the domain is raisonne because
it doesn't have the accent on the E,
but it, it, it, it at least
means mostly the same thing.
Jonathan: Okay, so raisonne.gallery.
Daila: Yes.
Caleb: Yes.
Jonathan: R A I S O N N e.gallery.
Um, yeah, we're excited to start
talking about some new product.
Um, so we, we've got,
we've got that built.
Um, Paige on our team who does, uh,
some of the business development.
She's gonna be chatting with
galleries and trying to recruit
some folks to start using it.
Um, we've got the product kind of built.
Um, there's some stuff that we want
to, we want to change, but we won't
do that until we start getting some.
Some customers in so unlike, unlike,
um, open house.social, where we
built stuff and never sold any of it.
Um, this one we've sold stuff
and haven't yet built it
So kind of the opposite.
Well, well, that's not true.
We, we have built a product, so it's being
used by the Kamloops Art Gallery, um,
which I think you can see, like if you go
Daila: yeah.
You can just go through their site or
collection dot kag, k a g dot bc, do ca
Jonathan: uh, so yeah, so we, we had,
um, they like, like you said, dayla at
the, sort of the top of this episode.
Um, they had reached out to
us because they had a problem.
We built them a solution and.
They're using it now, and um, we're
going to try and turn it into a product.
So, um, so it is kind of opposite, right?
Like we built open house at
social and didn't sell it.
Um, but this one we sold
it and then built it.
Uh, and now we're trying
to do the same thing.
We're trying to, we're trying to get
some interested galleries, but at
least now we have got, we've got, uh,
testimonial from an exising customer.
We've got use.
We've got, uh, we've even got
some mockups and designs for what
some future features are gonna be.
And we know, we know what we're gonna
build and we're probably gonna start
building some of that, um, pretty soon.
So it's, uh, yeah, it's exciting.
We're putting it out there and hoping
some galleries find us at the moment, but
we are gonna be putting some effort to.
Daila: Yeah.
Jonathan: Reach out to some galleries
cuz uh, the galleries that we know
have, have been quite receptive, quite
interested in having some conversations.
So we're gonna do that and see, see where
things go and hopefully we have a cool
product that will start to generate some,
uh, monthly recurring revenue for us.
Yeah, I hope we can do that by the end of
the calendar year, by the end of December.
That's my, that's my like approximate.
Daila: Yeah, I like that
You've been listening
to the Robot Factory.
I've been your host, one
of them, Daila Dufford.
Caleb: I've been your
other host, Caleb Sharp.
Jonathan: And I've also been
this third host, Jonathan Bowers.
We will talk to you
sometime, , maybe next week.
bye.
Caleb: But