Alan: Cool.
All right, we're
hear what's
what's
new.
Mario: So what's new.
Let's see, let me look at my notes
here.
So the issue with remote controlled recording was resolved
Alan: the big one, right?
Yeah.
Mario: Yeah.
Well, recording was never broken itself.
Alan: wasn't
auto starting.
Right.
Mario: Yeah.
So it wasn't really working properly with some of the changes that I introduced.
The reason I was asking you earlier, if you could see the record button
is because there's an new setting now at the podcast level where
the host has full control of recording for everyone in the session.
So if, if you turn that feature on, then only the host has the record button.
When the host clicks record, then everyone
starts recording automatically locally.
Alan: So yeah, effectively you can buy that being the the controller
of the podcast, you have the recording, you're like, okay,
we're going to start recording now.
It, and that's it.
And no one has to,
then that's nice.
Mario: yeah,
Alan: That that's probably better than the
auto recording
idea.
Right.
So rather than it being like
dropping everybody into auto recording, it's actually
just controlled and you can effectively introduce it and make sure everybody's
happy And then
kick it off.
Right.
Mario: Yeah.
exactly.
And the option to auto start recording is still there.
It's just in case someone wants that.
So, so that that's still there, but it's, you know, you can
turn it on and you turn it off.
if you don't like it at the podcast level.
what happened was when I introduced that new feature
with a remote control recording all of a sudden the actual remote
controlled recording wasn't
working the,
it seemed like the message wasn't getting across, you know, to the other browsers
Alan: wasn't getting the message to, to start recording, right?
Yeah.
Mario: Yeah.
And so the, we, our thing was that it was working.
On my development environment, and it
was working on the staging environment,
Alan: And who was working on that.
So you set it up and staging was just working and you're
like, what the hell?
Mario: yeah, So but wasn't working in production, which is when I
inadvertently broke remote recording in effect because it was working locally.
It was fine.
So I didn't know I was pushing something that was not going to work
in production, so I didn't have a staging environment at the time.
So this kind of forced me to set up a staging environment.
That's, you know, identically replicates the production environment And I pushed it
to staging and it worked to there as well.
And I was like, man, what the heck is going on?
So long story short, I did a lot of debugging and logging and troubleshooting.
And it took forever, but finally narrowed it down to something in the bill.
So the fact that it was working in, in my local environment and staging
and not in production, it kind of pointed to the build process
because the only difference
between those three environments was that the code for production gets minified
and mangled, you know, JavaScript gets mangled.
So something in that built process for production
was affecting my code somehow.
so.
Alan: of it was working like the rest of the interface was working.
It was just that
part.
Right.
Mario: It was just that one,
Alan: It's like, if your UI doesn't work at all, you're
like, all right, we've got a
JavaScript problem.
right.
But just that
little
bit, right.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
so after a lot of debugging I finally found the part of the
code that was causing the problem.
So interestingly enough, I had a, method that was relying.
It was attempting to determine the name of the class of a JavaScript object.
And in doing that, it was relying On a statement that does
object.constructor.name, basically.
So it pulls the name of the constructor, which
is theoretically the name of the class.
And it works in.
And when, well, it gets mangled.
So
Alan: Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Mario: gated.
yeah.
It gets office gated.
And so it changes the name arbitrarily every time it builds for
production, it was, mangling that.
and so it was changing to like a single letter, you know, T or F or whatever,
Alan: yep.
Yeah, of
course.
Mario: every time.
So, the lesson here is not to rely
on constructor dot name.
And subsequently I
found all these warnings, people have posted on stack
overflow.
Don't do this because it'll, you know, it'll,
It'll change it arbitrarily when your
code gets office gated.
a little too late for me yet for spending
so much time.
But that was the
reason
Alan: won't make that mistake again though.
That's For
shit.
You've learned it the hard way.
Mario: For sure.
Yeah, but it made sense after the
fact why it wasn't working in
production and it was working everywhere else.
Because it was only for production that it was getting obfuscated,
therefore changing the name
Alan: that
w wouldn't even like,
It wouldn't even cause like a JavaScript error because
it's still valid.
JavaScript is just the wrong method or the wrong object.
It's trying to call it.
Right.
So
Mario: Exactly.
And
Alan: It's not just like invalidated
mode.
It's just not there.
So it's
like, oh,
Mario: it is just not there.
There's no error.
And that's
why I never got any error because the real problem was I had a conditional
statement that said, if this
object equals this class
name right, then do this.
And so it was never that class name because it was obfuscated.
Alan: that's
Mario: So.
Alan: It's just getting silently eaten because it's not
an error.
It's just not there.
Mario: an error.
Yeah.
when I finally fixed it, I was
it felt great.
so that was that, and that
was the
Alan: massive relief.
Mario: Yeah.
So now, now this feature works really well.
Now the host can
control everyone's recording status.
And everyone gets a message though, you know?
So when the host initiates recording, everyone gets a little message that pops
up and lets them know what's going on.
Let's see.
Then the next thing that.
I
worked.
Yeah, let's see.
The other thing I did was scheduled sessions.
Now show info if the link is accessed too early.
And I think that was your suggestion.
A while back you suggested, well, if the session is scheduled
and they followed the link.
There was nothing telling them anything about the session.
It was just, you know, acting normally showing you the button to
join and enter your name and join.
So now a scheduled
session when they access it early, it basically says, this session is
scheduled for such and such date and time.
And then
it has a little explanation there that
says it all happened automatically, so no need to refresh the page.
Alan: Nice.
and so because, and That the URL is like obvious skated anyway, using hashtag.
So it's not like any old stumble across it so, Yeah.
Nice, cool.
That's a
good
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
So thank you for that suggestion,
Alan: Oh yeah.
That was my idea.
So it was a great idea that
Mario: that
was great.
Yeah,
yeah.
Yeah.
So that's, that's in now.
You
probably didn't see it this time
because the scheduled time was like a
minute later
or
Alan: Yeah.
Yeah.
Right, right.
So do you, does that kick in like five minutes, 10 minutes,
some period before or at the
Mario: Oh yes, yes.
Sorry.
I forgot to mention that.
So let's say a schedule is
scheduled for 3:00 PM or 1500 Then it will enable the ability to request to
join five minutes before.
So at 2 55 or, you know what is that?
1,455.
Alan: Yeah.
Don't start with that yeah.
I've been having
time zones fun myself.
So I also have the things so like, yeah, I mean, I'm
so used to, I guess 2,400 clock in Japan uses,
Solely like 24 hour clock, even weirdly Japan uses 30 hour clock.
In most cases for like retail and for times that you see a time they use
the 30 hour clock, which is, is an
interesting one.
Basically it ends, it ends at 6:00 AM the next day, which
means that if like a bar is
open or a shop or something, it , it closes at 1:00 AM it closed at 2,500.
And so by default, that ends at 6:00 AM.
So that will then
roll roll over, you know, because you, you don't close at
seven o'clock in the morning.
If you're going to close overnight, it'll be like
three, four o'clock or whatever.
So for T train times for shops, for bars, restaurants, that kind
of thing, they always use 30 hour clock, which is it's weird.
The first time you see it, like that's wrong.
That's ridiculous.
It should just say one.
And then once you get used to it, you're like this that's such a good idea.
It's so clear when something says it's open from, you know, 2000 till 24, 26, 27.
You're
like, all right.
Yeah,
that
makes sense.
Mario: this is like the next day.
So.
you get used to the idea that it's the next day.
Alan: Yeah,
Mario: Huh?
Interesting.
Hmm.
Alan: and it's it's one of those that
the first reaction is just like, you're like no
wrong.
This is that's just incorrect.
But yeah, when you get used to
it, you actually
prefer it is just,
yeah.
Mario: Oh, that's cool.
That's cool.
I didn't, I didn't know that I never heard of that.
Alan: So, yeah.
So I'm
dealing with the clients during the U S and my default of course,
is to use 2,400, a 24 hour
clock because it's unambiguous.
It's clear.
It's what I'm used to.
And there are like, we can't
think like that.
Can you just put name that?
Like it's maths every time I have to put it in a
time, can you please change it?
And I'm like, well, yeah, no.
Yeah.
I
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: it's something I discovered this way.
I didn't even know it existed because I use Safari primarily as my browser.
And apparently there's a, an input type equals time, which works on pretty much
everything apart from Safari, which will give you a time picker just like
a scrolling of, and that is apparently based on the setting of your Mac as to
whether your machine PC as to whether it's set to 2,400 hours or 12 hour clock.
And it will give you an am PM.
And I didn't even know that input existed, but finding out that it
doesn't, isn't supported in safari makes it might as well not exist anyway.
So like one of those.
Yay.
Mario: Nice.
Nice.
Alan: anyway,
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah, so
no none, No worries
Alan: I actually, that's a good question.
When you shed your all in your own, your schedule or a,
A podcast recording a session.
Yeah.
What do you use for timepicker there?
Do you just have a using like flat picker or I can't, I
can't actually
remember.
Mario: yeah, I'm using what is it called?
let me look
here.
I'm using popular library for that, that I found online.
So I created a view component, a
custom view component, but on top of a open source library
that I found online it's called
V calendar, vcalendar.io.
So if you need to check it out, go to vcalendar.io, I can put the link here.
Alan: Oh, no.
Cause I
I ended up, well, I, need the same thing as well, and I originally
just
had, okay, so just taking a look.
So it has a, has a time picker in it as well, right?
Or is it just a calendar, Oh, it does have like a
little time.
Oh, that's quite
nice.
All
Mario: it's pretty robust
and it's very flexible.
It has a lot of options that you can,
that you can play with deals.
It can deal
with date ranges and things like that.
Markers All kinds of stuff.
It's,
it's pretty extensive.
So I really liked
it because it it, provides a lot and it seems
to be popular
and a well-supported and you know,
Pretty well developed and
the
Alan: So yeah,
Mario: really good.
So
Alan: always
nice.
It's not a, it doesn't relate.
Does it relay on for you or is it
it's
actually
agnostic.
Mario: I think it's I think it's framework agnostic or maybe
it supports different ones.
Let's see.
View three.
Yeah,
take a look.
I think
Does it
let me see introduction.
It's been a while since I set it up.
Alan: JS.
It says that right in the
title.
So yeah, users view.
Okay.
But I might have a look at
that.
See how it
works is there, so I'm not using view.
But,
Definitely there might be.
Good for an influence.
So
it's, it's, shocking how not so that the default, or at least the, one
of the most popular seems to be flat
picker, which seems to do a lot of things, but it's, doesn't
seem very elegant in any of them.
And so I'm using that as a, just a like, oh, well, it's, it's
working until I have a chance to re go back and, and improve it.
But yeah, just a, a good solid timepicker that doesn't rely on
any framework doesn't seem to be as available as, as I would have liked
it, I would have kind of expected to be like, oh, that is 10 great examples.
And it's like, no, there's, there's one and it's not that great.
It's like, oh, okay.
So I think yeah, I just need to go back and do it properly.
So yeah, it's, it's surprising how it's such a common thing
and there isn't like a.
At least not that I found that there was a default, yet everybody uses this.
This is the one and
a lot of libraries.
You tend to
find that way.
So
Mario: yeah, yeah.
Alan: it's just me being lazy and not, not wanting to write my own
because why out of all the things I could be spending my time on writing a time,
picker is not what
Mario: yeah.
exactly.
I mean, it's, it's a lot of, it's a lot of
work to create a time picker or a
date picker, all the, you know, all
the, all the nuances with,
Dates and time zones and all that.
It's crazy.
Alan: So I had this fun one.
So I have a reminder thing in, in dot plan.
So you can say, oh, you know, five 30 every day, send me a reminder.
And I, I inadvertently screwed that up.
So so I'm using AWS SES for sending the emails.
And
that's fine.
That just there's a, there's a bit of a validation thing you have to go through.
You know, I have to jump through some hoops to get AWS, to one turn it on
and then two allow you to send emails to non test addresses, because you
got to say, why are you going to do it and what it's for and all the rest.
So once you said out a lot of it, it's fine.
And I don't know why I am assuming it was my logic rather than their logic,
but one of the mails got delayed.
And it was only by a few minutes and I'm assuming it was my scheduler.
Didn't kick off at the right time or something, which I don't understand
why, but I have to kind of have a look at some time and that caused.
Kind of a knock on effect for my logic, for when to send a reminder, it won't send
you, it wouldn't send you a reminder if it was, if that one been sent within the
last 24 hours of the same reminder type.
So you could actually set one for 5:00 PM and one for 6:00
PM at is, as it is right now.
And it would send you one at 5:00 PM and the 6:00 PM one wouldn't send
because it was like, well, I've already sent you one within the last 24 hours.
Oh no.
Sorry.
It would because they're separate reminders, but by one of them being
delayed, that reminded then kept being delayed even further because it's
like, oh, I haven't sent, I've already sent you one within the last 24 hours.
I'll send you one a little bit later.
Had this thing where each day they were getting like five
minutes later and I'm like,
okay.
Mario: Yeah,
Alan: But it got to the end of the week.
And I'm like, okay, I really need to fix this.
Now.
It's like, you know,
half an hour out of
sync.
So
Mario: yeah,
Alan: I hate times
with a
passion times.
Mario: It's always a pain dealing with that
Alan: And, and and at the end of the day it was a time zone thing.
It was just me trying
to shift things around time zones.
And by doing that ad the calculation was
incorrect and it was going,
so, Yeah.
Mario: yeah,
Oh man.
Alan: sorry to
interrupt.
Mario: No, no, not at all.
No worries.
Let's see.
A couple more
things to report here.
I scheduled
a hangout on one of my communities.
Alan: I saw
Mario: Yeah
Alan: how did that go, How many you turned up?
Did anybody up?
Mario: it didn't get, it didn't go very well.
So I think I made a mistake of scheduling it for a Friday and
not giving people enough notice.
I thought maybe Friday was going to be a good day because it's, you know, it's the
end of the week.
Alan: of the week.
Mario: people, people would, you know, hang out.
But I,
think what happened was hopefully that what happened was that
people were not very
active
in the
community at that time and not many people found out about it.
And and also, you know, there's time zone issues, you know, with people
Alan: I, I didn't actually see your
message until after it.
had happened.
So yeah.
That's kind of an example of that, especially since I
don't check as frequently, I'll see that, you know, when I've
got some downtime and I'll, I'll
go and have a look, see if there's any messages and it's not, whereas,
you know, work is kind of like
on and open and notifications, whereas other channels are like, ah, you
know, it's, it's not so important.
So yeah, maybe she had you on a couple of days, like on Friday
Mario: yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ahead of time.
So only one person showed up.
And
Alan: made a new friend.
Mario: she she showed up because I had, I had mentioned to her
that I was planning to do that.
And at some point, and she asked me to let her know.
And so I dropped a quick message directly to her
you know it's this Friday.
And so hopefully you can make it.
And she showed up and she was the only one.
So.
Alan: Yeah.
Mario: So I'm, I'm, I'm thinking to schedule another one for one
of these days, but I'll give people more time, more in advance
Alan: On the subject of like
communities and things.
So I think I mentioned to you over DM.
So I joined founders
circle and it was a
I think like a paid community, but the guys made
it free, basically.
Just message him and tell him why you want to be in and they'll let you in.
And so he's covering basically all it is using circle app as
like a like community board thing.
And it's, it's really nice, I think because it's smaller and
he's trying to establish it.
He's been very proactive in In, in trying to grow the community and trying
to get other people to be active too.
So it feels a little bit more like he's you know, I think, whereas MegaMaker
is quite established now it, for the most part, you know, just in kind of
like, we'll poke it occasionally, but it's not like his full-time like, okay,
I've got to get everybody to do things.
Whereas this feels still a little bit more like it's trying to get to establish.
So it's, it's nice and everybody's very sensory helpful and there's some
really interesting people on there.
I didn't realize the you know, I mentioned copy.ai a few weeks ago which
is like the AI copy rewriting thing.
So he's actually on that as well.
And there's some other interesting folks doing some interesting stuff,
so, but they also mentioned in, they do like a weekly like a weekly check-in
kind of idea in one of the channels and Oh, there is no chat either.
It's all just by posts.
So it feels a little more asynchronous than something like MegaMaker, which
seems to have gone more towards the slack than the board right now.
And so he mentioned that he's, they've been testing podcast, recording tools
with the co-founder of the board to find one, to record a podcast
with, and I'm like, come on Mario.
So you could be the, the, the tool of choice there because they seemed very
supportive in their own in real product.
So I would recommend Colin and saying, introducing what you're doing.
Cause I think that'd be very willing to, give it a go and
it gives some good feedback.
So it's interesting.
So the, the founder of it did a like a loom walkthrough of dot
plan for me as like a freebie, you know, like I'd like to help out.
And there's another guy that is a UX designer from London that is,
he said, he's going to do it too.
He I noticed that I don't know if he's created an account.
Somebody creates an account like yesterday and I'm like, okay,
I'm what I wasn't expecting anybody else to create an account.
So I assume it was him.
I haven't so he said he's gonna do similar kind of thing just to walk through.
So they're actually starting to share those.
There's a directory of them so effectively to help each other out.
They really we'll do walkthroughs of each other's product.
Like the onboarding, like, oh, well, what does this mean?
Like, you know, talk through, talk out loud through the
thought process of the product.
And that's been really helpful.
So so, so once off our own, somebody else is doing it.
And and because of that, other people are watching it And then
sent, oh, that looks really cool.
I I'll like to give it a try as okay.
If I sign up, please sign up.
So hopefully it's a nice little way of getting people to, to know about
it and to see it as well, because people are interested in learning
from other people's UX examples.
Anyway.
So that, that actually I'll I guess I'll you, you're kind of finished, right?
Just to check,
Mario: Almost.
Yeah.
Almost yeah, no, no, no worries.
No,
and
Alan: want to start rambling on about,
My things first.
Mario: no, and on that note, I did get your invite link the
other day for, for that community.
And I, I did join already, but I haven't had a chance to introduce myself
or, or, you know or do much in there.
I
need, I still need, to explore and
introduce myself.
So I
I should be doing that.
Alan: Yes.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
it looks
like a really cool
community though.
It looks it's funny as you're mentioning that it's just getting
started, but it looks like there's quite a bit of participation going on
Alan: right.
So I think what happened is, so Gene, the
founder, just I'm kind of reading between the lines.
So it
looks like so he's based surprisingly very close to me.
He's in, on the same island, but in the south and it was like, oh, okay.
Yeah, that's weird.
like
it's a really small world,
right.
Sometimes.
And so I think so he's selling an info product and so people who were
buying it, he was inviting them to it.
And so I think it's been slowly, he's been building it out to
know he's getting more people
involved.
So it
was kind
of interesting.
Mario: Nice.
Alan: Yeah, so I, it seems like a, quite a nice community.
So I definitely I'd recommend
introducing
yourself.
And
Mario: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
I
Alan: that.
Mario: yeah, I'm looking forward to it and
I'll, I'll be doing that
pretty soon because one of the, one of the things that.
I want to share too, which kind
of is a good segway to it is that I
that I decided to freeze any new features at this point just for now.
And I think
Alan: I need somebody to tell me to do that.
Mario: you can do it online.
You can do it,
Alan: It's
impossible.
Mario: it, right now.
No, I think Fusioncast is at a point where it's good enough that it can be used.
I have someone who's, who's been using
it
Already.
And I think, I think it's at that point where,
Yeah, it still, needs more features.
It's still, it's still needs quite a bit of work to be polished
here and there, but for the most part
it's usable, You know?
Alan: I absolutely 100% agree with you that this is, yeah.
I mean, yeah, there's, there's lots of things that you want to do, but
there's absolutely nothing that it can't do right now that you would
need to make a podcast for somebody.
Right.
You know, and it looks
great.
And there's, you know, walking through the the admin interface
and as a guest as well, both it's
I think having that remote control, I mean, it, it sounds like a small thing,
but that, I think that's like the final not must have, but really nice to have.
But then anybody can there's no, excuse, absolutely.
You've got zero
excuses now.
Mario: yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, you're right,
So I decided to freeze.
New features and a focus on marketing for awhile.
I need to update my marketing site.
You know, the landing page is good and all right.
now, but it it's it's it was like the first attempt at putting something out
there and I need to update it with more relevant information and something that
reflects what the product is becoming now, you know, the copy that I have
on the marketing site is kind of a reflection of the early
ideas and the early stage of the product.
And now it's, you know, it's, becoming more defined.
So I need
to update that
Alan: I would highly recommend playing with copy.ai when you're
doing that, just because it's really.
Mario: Cool.
Yeah.
I'll try to do
that.
Yeah.
And I'll
I need to send some email updates to the people that I've onboarded with the latest
changes put into the product and
also do more onboarding.
I
need to invite some, people
Alan: you say you, you, cause you've got outset are already set up.
Right?
So there's but you don't have any restrictions with
the billing plans, right?
Is that
Mario: right.
I have an account with them and I'm using some of their features, but I haven't
integrated any part of the billing yet.
So billing is not, I don't have
anything set up for that yet.
So I think at this point,
And I'm still in private beta and I'm going to be
onboarding some people, I think I can still get away with,
without the billing integration.
Alan: I think you can for at least another month or so until you
kind of reached the point where you get, you want people to pay.
Right.
Mario: yeah, exactly.
so I'm just going to be focusing on that for the next
few weeks is marketing emails.
I want to establish some kind of strategy for social media, mainly Twitter.
That's the only social media that I'm,
Alan: I think
Mario: that I care about really.
Alan: I think that's
absolutely the right
decision where you are.
I mean, it's, there's the, one of the nice things that you have that
is maybe, you know,
I guess different to
my product is
somebody either
wants to make a podcast or knows they should, or they don't.
And people know what a podcast is and it's you, what you have to do is convince
them that your product is worth trying.
Not that they need your product, right.
Mario: right.
right.
Alan: I mean, I guess there's advantages.
You can talk about the benefits of podcasting, but it's not
like, this is a like, wow, podcasting, never heard of that.
Right.
You know, the, the, the hard part of that is already done for you.
You just now need to convince them that your product is worth their time
and attention.
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: at least, you know, worth evaluating.
So we, yeah, with DotPlan, I guess I have this, this thing where
some people aren't sure if they even need it or even what it's for.
So I have to convince them a little, some people absolutely get it immediately, this
most maker type people already get it.
Or a lot of software
people will get it.
If you put it, it frame it in the context of a stand-up.
So if you say, well, it's like your stand-up, but just less formalized
and they go, okay, I've got it.
Whereas people who aren't working in software are like,
huh, I've got to do what?
So it's, it's slightly more of an alien concept.
And I don't, I'm trying to avoid using the word standup because I don't
want to target software developers.
That's not my I mean, I'm very happy for them to use it and it
hopefully works well for that, but that isn't my primary target.
So it's, I'm trying to avoid using the term stand up for that reason.
And that's actually affected a few things, so watching people walk through it.
So I've, yeah, I've got two recordings of people walking through it now that
have given me some very useful ideas or at least realizations of things that
I could improve or maybe change with regards to wording and copy on the page.
So the first one is I use the word organization quite a lot as in, so right
now, if you create an account, you join an organization and that is starting to feel
off with everybody who I'm using it with.
People don't necessarily it seems, it feels like on for business
type B2B, SaaS apps workspaces becoming the go-to word for that.
And I think
people are
less there's less
Mario: Did you say workspace.
Alan: Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, it does.
It seems to be less
Say
it's a less loaded term.
Whereas the word organization is very loaded.
People immediately think, oh, well, I'm in a big company.
I've got to, you know, I work for Toyota.
Or if I create this, I got to create a Toyota account.
You know?
It's
like,
no,
Mario: yeah.
Yeah.
Alan: so it could just be your group.
This is fine.
So the word organization has got to go two things.
I'm happy about that because it always felt a little bit,
Slightly out of place, but it felt necessary to have, I
mean, we need that, that group.
But the word never, I was never completely convinced by it.
And the other thing as well is I spell it with an S and American spell
it with Zed and I O and I come and it's, it's both ways in my code.
Some of the things I've not been very consistent with my code, I use S
throughout my code, and then I'm trying to change it, to use Zed in the UI.
And then I forget, and I put S and then I do a search and replace, and it's like, oh
God, this is
just
Mario: Oh man.
Alan: coming here as workspace.
So I I'm going to bite the bullet and change everything to
workspace.
And I think that will yeah, watching people go through it
is like, oh yeah.
Th that that's almost feels like a barrier to people.
They hit that, like create or join an organization.
They're like, oh, but I can't do
that.
And you're like, why not?
So that's, that was a
big, yeah.
I need to change that.
So I'm
actually
having.
Mario: yeah, That, that's awesome though.
That's
I wouldn't have thought of that, but now that you're explaining
it, it totally makes sense.
The term
organization it's just sounds too enterprisey
too, you know, huge corporation or a huge
organization and yeah, workspace it's, it's so much more
friendly, like, oh, workspace.
It's my workspace, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't imply a huge enterprise entity.
Alan: right.
Exactly.
I mean, it might just be, you know, you, and, you know, w w we could
effectively create a Fusioncast workspace.
Right.
And that was still valid.
It's not, we're not an
organization, but we could have a workspace and we
could share check-ins there.
And also that
also, so I've been
quite careful about.
Obviously the privacy aspect for our companies is kind
of major with this, right.
You know, they're putting data in this, that, and, and also personal profile
of who I am within that business that can not be leaky in any way.
But at the same time, people do exist in multiple workspaces.
So the whereas organizations, again, it has this, this low determined
that if you're in one, then
you can't be in another.
Right.
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: So workspaces does feel like there, there is a possibility of switching
between workspaces that I've got to be very safe, very careful about that.
I think because you want to make sure that people are aware of where they
are and there's good landmarking to like, you know, I'm, I'm currently in
this workspace, you have to be very clear about, you know, the who you're
publishing to and what context you're in.
But at least it feels possible.
Whereas workspace felt in my mind, not a feasible thing to add from
a UI perspective it's kind of just cleared things up in my mind once,
once I've realized that it's like, oh, okay, that, that makes things better.
So, and along a very similar lines I have teams as a top front and
center concept within DotPlan.
So I think I don't know if you remember, but you've got like check-ins and
teams and people, so I can see people within my organization and teams.
So my concept around this was teams are a, loosely defined group that
you want to keep in touch with.
That might be you know, if, if we're working on a, in a, in a workspace and
we're working on making a new landing page or, you know, it's our job,
there's, there's a designer, there's a developer and there's someone from sales.
And so we, you know, our project is to improve our landing page.
That is, was kind of my idea of a team, but people aren't reading it
as that people are reading it as sales or development or marketing
or a front-end or back-end.
And it's, I think this is maybe a problem of me not working in a large
company for a very, very, very long time.
But my idea of what a team is apparently is out of whack with what
other people's idea of what team is.
So I'm actually going to demote teams.
I'm going to keep it there as but move it within the people
Page category.
So you can still, yeah, yeah.
Right.
And I'm going to add the concept of projects as a top level
thing, which is basically we work in the same way of teams, but I'm going to
call it
projects.
And also that's
Mario: I see.
Alan: Yeah, so this way, I'm going to add some
copy to make it clear of what it is, but the idea is that
projects can then come and go.
Like we might be on a project together for the next month.
And then we effectively close archive that
project, our check-ins for that project are still kept together.
They're visible and viewable as a, as a
collection, but that project can effectively be archived and, you
know, we've got it there for if we need to go back and look at
it, but it's not an active thing.
So I think making projects more of a front and center feature rather than
trying to do it ad hoc via teams and me not communicating that very well.
It made it very clear when people started to try and use it as like people
aren't that we're not on the same way.
So I've tried the wording and talk through this with people the people who
did that and they're like, oh, okay.
That, that makes sense.
Now.
So I think that's, it's not a major change on my end, but I think
it's it's, it's a slightly more work than the workspace change.
But I think it,
get it, it kind of gets across my intention better than the teams,
which I, my idea is to kind of make it
I guess human hackable, right?
That that's my intention is to not like force people down
a particular way of using it.
But what I'm finding is that people are rather than doing that, people are
reading into something and then making assumptions about how it should be used.
I guess this is, I think I've talked about this before.
I like this idea of giving people some tool sets and then going
figure out, make this work for you.
What I'm realizing is people aren't doing that.
People are making an assumption about what I want them to do, and
then say assuming that that's what they have to do and that's it.
So I think I'm going to have to lead people by the hand a
little bit more than I was doing.
So rather than having this ad hoc teams that you can use it in
whatever way suits you, then now I'm going to say you've got projects.
You know what a project is, make a project and then we'll archive the project.
You finished it, close the project and archive it.
Okay.
I get that.
It opens, it closes.
It's done.
I think the, I, I was being a little bit too hippie they're thinking, giving
people that just here's your tools, you know, you should figure it out.
Yeah.
Maybe that's not what I
should be doing,
Mario: yeah, I think you're on the right path here with changing
your, thinking about this because the like you were saying earlier,
the product it requires a little bit of
education, right?
It a little bit of positioning and education.
And
I think making these changes will make it You're making the product more assertive
as to what, what it is that it does and this is how you do it, and this is
it, you know, instead of leaving it up
to the user to use it.
however they,
Alan: Yeah.
And that's not 10 tends to
be my nature, but I'm realizing that I kind of have
to be a little bit more if I want
people to understand what, you know, how to get the most out of it, Right.
Mario: yeah, yeah.
yeah.
I
think that's that's the
right call.
Yeah, for sure.
I was going to ask you since we're talking about the
UI and, and stuff, when you do a check-in
is there any way
to edit what you wrote?
Cause I, I don't think
Alan: don't see it because I removed that feature at the last
minute because they wanted to
Change.
I wasn't happy with how it was working,
so yeah, the delete are unpublished.
So yeah, what it was right now was an edit.
So you could just go in and change things.
I wanted to change it to be an unpublished.
So if I did something wrong at
unpublished, this, move it back into your plan page, fix it, and then republish.
And I'm thinking I might just temporarily actually, just until I've
got that working because that that's, there's a few complications with that.
Just the way it manages how plans get moved around and
checked off and checked in.
So I think in the meantime, I'm just going to have an edit or
delete just as a short term tool.
But until I can get the unpublished finished yeah, you're the first person
that's bringing it up, actually.
That's
Mario: I see.
Okay.
Alan: it, yeah.
But I was waiting, it was one of those things where I know it wasn't
working and I'm like, has anybody noticed yet nobody's done this,
I'm
glad you.
Mario: The other day I, posted,
something and I wanted to change it.
I want to edit it and
I, couldn't find a way.
And
I was like, huh, I'm going to ask Alan
. Alan: So
Yeah.
I've held off on inviting any
more
people because I kind of want to
implement these and then get
the right kind of feedback.
right
So I get the feeling now, if, if I entered
use anybody else I
wanted to get some more people invited last
weekend or before last like sometime last week.
And then when I kind of made these realizations, I'm like, I do, I
have to get people on board and then tell them how it's going to change.
And I'm like, that's, that's not cool.
So I'd rather get, at least some of these changes made and then be like,
okay, now we've got some more valid, you know, better feedback because it's.
The better version.
Right.
So yeah, those, those changes are currently being done.
So hopefully, and I'm gonna try and get them finished this weekend.
And then hopefully next week I can introduce some, also invite
some more people on board.
So it's, yeah, it's frustrating.
Cause I I'm now like, ah, I kind of just want more people, but I'm
also like, okay, don't waste this.
Now as I've made some good new understandings, don't waste
those people on old learnings.
Right.
So,
Mario: exactly.
No, that's good.
That's a good call.
Cool.
Alan: quite fun.
Mario: It's looking, really good.
Alan: Thank you.
I so my wife has just gone
through my get text file and translated everything.
So we've got a first
pass of Japanese in there as well, which will be I haven't merged in
yet, but it's quite exciting to have
like, oh, we've got like the whole UI in Japanese now.
So,
which is interesting.
Cause I've got a
a It's a, it'll be fun.
So I've got a talked about the
startup hub in Fukuoka that I'm a member of.
So obviously because of
COVID w I haven't been as active there as I would like
to be, but one thing they do is
we have like a six monthly, like, meeting with them.
So I've got a meeting
next week with people from FGN, the actual It is a co-working space,
but it's more than that, you know, it's this like startup that they're
trying to, you know, support and grow startups in the city rather than just
being like, yeah, you can have a desk.
So I've got a meeting next week with people from FGN and also apparently people
from the city and I'm like, Ooh, okay.
I don't know what, but they kind of want to, you know, know how it's going.
Just talk about like, what, what I need.
So they're like, what can we do to help grow the company?
So having a working Japanese version will be kind of cool to be able to go look, you
please use it.
Mario: That's That's awesome
Alan: So, yeah, they're always looking at ways to, to let the, you know, to try
and get the city or companies within.
That kind of network to to support startups and to help.
So if there's something that they can say, all right, you know, like we know a
team within our department or in a company that will help you test this in Japan.
So I'm hoping that.
I can get something from that.
So it's, as I said, that they seem very proactive in trying
to get things, you know, try and get startups working and better.
So that's been fun.
And what are the fun things of, I had this an interesting one as well.
I've I haven't published it yet, but you know, we've got
the, how you're feeling aspect.
You know, you've got the emoji mood check in, right.
I had somebody request one for being.
And I'm like, oh, that's obvious.
Like, especially in this day, in these times.
Right.
So if I did there, that little sick guy, emoji with his thermometer as, and
it's, it's kind of one of those you're like, oh yeah, I never thought of that,
but it's like, you might not be, you're still working and checking in, but
I'm feeling a bit under the weather.
I'm like, oh yeah, that that's actually quite cool, but I'm not sad and I'm not
happy, but I'm just feeling a bit off.
So
I've added my intention is to make that completely flexible to have
that customizable either by the user or by the the workspace manager.
But for now I want to try and keep it concise
to just like, you know, five or six.
So I've added that as a via request.
So that's
fun.
Mario: Oh, I see that.
And yeah, that's awesome.
Alan: I did, actually
Mario: The little guy with the
Alan: yeah,
Mario: it's The guy with the
the emoji with the thermometer.
Right.
Alan: that's.
Mario: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's here.
I see it.
That's cool.
Alan: did.
I did
publish that.
Cool.
So that's
actually,
the, the project thing also
helps with The you know, how you
have this organization,
your
teams following teams, again, that kind of
makes that something I
can I can play with a lot more
because this idea of like, which projects you're on, I can bring
projects a little bit more in focus as to how you use the app.
So it, it actually, it's funny how just a word change.
I actually did toy with the idea of actually just renaming teams and I'm like,
no, it actually deserves more than that.
Actually.
I think there's more I can do with it.
Once you've changed the wording for something in your mind, it almost changes
how I think of that feature, even though I had, it's very similar intentions,
the change of wording actually.
Made me realize things I could be doing with it that I
haven't really thought about.
So it's, it's crazy how important copy is, right.
Just like naming things.
Is
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: it almost like frame some thinking in your mind that it closed?
I may have even mentioned this before, but they just, by calling it one thing,
you almost like build up barriers that it can't be something else.
And I think by just renaming those things, workspace and projects, it, it reframes
them different and they, they take on a different life or new life because they're
less closeted or less like closed in as to what that thing thinker feature is.
So it's actually quite, quite exciting.
It's like, ah, yeah, this actually gives me a whole new set of ideas and
that the trick now is not doing that, but just starting down that path,
you know, like you know, trying to.
Scope those changes to the fact that, okay, right now you've got projects.
Just add to that move teams, change workspace, and then, okay.
That step is done.
Don't try to
get
onto this whole,
well, I
Mario: Do the whole
Alan: until yeah, exactly.
So but at least it then frames in other people's mind that
there are other possibilities.
I think by having teams, people
assumed it has a limit, right?
Oh, because teams are this and that's it.
Whereas I think by having projects, it kind of is suggests that the
feature will be taken further.
Right.
Because there's, you know, there's the possibility of interaction with other
tools while you might have you know, you might want to import your projects
from your PM tool or things like that.
So there's.
Yeah, it's really hammered home.
Just how important getting these this naming stuff is writers.
So,
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: I feel I'm on the right path anyway.
Mario: I, yeah, I think so.
And, and you're right.
Naming things is one is really
difficult, but it's,
difficult, I think, because of
the ramifications of naming something and, like you
said, it kind of
puts you in a mindset and it frames what that thing is, and
it boxes you in.
Right.
so it's pretty critical
naming things is,
Alan: yeah, you've got shows, sessions recordings.
And
after the, after you figured it out, it all makes, it seems obvious, right?
It's like, well, of course it's a, this or that.
Right.
But getting there is not as easy as it sounds.
Mario: yeah.
And oh man, I've changed it so many times.
I, I, if I don't know, I don't even remember how many times I changed
the structure of the organization of, things within Fusioncast.
Cause,
Yeah, I thought of one way and then it didn't work very well.
And then at some point I
had,
Sessions all mixed into,
into one place and I didn't have the concept of scheduled sessions
and unscheduled sessions, which then later I renamed to any time sessions.
Yeah.
So many, so many
Alan: But again, that idea of like an unscheduled session versus an
anytime session is actually like,
again, it changes how I even think about what that
might be used for.
Right.
If I have like an,
any
time session.
Oh yeah.
Well, I'm just dropping it on the call.
It makes sense.
And unscheduled
it's like, was I supposed to show you a late,
it almost suggests that I'm doing
something wrong by doing that.
It's like, well, it's unscheduled.
It might be, it should be scheduled, but I'm doing it wrong.
Right.
So it's
Mario: yeah, yeah, I'm happy to hear your
going down this path of renaming certain things and reorganizing things.
I think that's gonna make the product more intuitive and position it better
and make it easier for the user.
just to understand what the tool does, you know?
Alan: Yeah.
I
mean, my goal is To minimize
the amount of additional
explanation I need to do.
I mean, I envisioned I'm
going to have to have some amount of, you know, onscreen,
you know, prompts and copy and things,
but the, the hope is that yeah.
People's What people understand when
they see a particular page or phrase that they'll understand
through the context of the name.
And what's presented on the page rather than me having to have explainers and
pointers and question marks all over the place, you know, I'd rather not do that.
So
Mario: Yeah, yeah.
Cool.
Well, anything else?
you
want to
Alan: for
now.
Mario: That's it
Alan: it for this week, it's
been a been a busy one, but it feels like progress.
Yeah.
It's
it does feel like things are constantly improving, so
that's good.
It's a long journey.
This is not an overnight.
It's not an overnight
project.
Is it either of
Mario: It is not making software is not easy.
I saw a tweet by Ian Landsman.
I don't know if you're familiar with him.
He's
been around for awhile.
He's started his SaaS some, I don't know, 20 years ago or however long.
It is a long time ago.
He so his company builds
Help desk software,
Alan: Okay.
Mario: I think.
UserScape is the name of the company, I can't remember now, but
he's big in the Laravel community.
He's he was actually one of the people who discovered Laravel in the early stages.
And he hired Taylor Outwell who's the creator of Laravel.
And so he's pretty well known in the community.
he posted something on Twitter that said something like programmers,
credo, we do these
things.
Not because
they're easy, but because we thought they were
going to be easy,
Alan: That's exactly.
Mario: I thought it was pretty funny.
Yeah.
Alan: Exactly.
I know.
You think well, it's how difficult can it be?
You know, famous last words,
Mario: yeah.
Alan: I think that's what makes it fun though, is knowing that yeah.
easy, you would probably wouldn't want to do it in the first place.
Mario: Yeah,
exactly.
that's kinda how I feel about Fusioncast.
if I had known it was going to be so challenging, I
probably wouldn't have started.
So it's a good thing that I didn't think about that.
And didn't know that because otherwise I wouldn't have started it
Alan: Yep.
Mario: yeah, I just, just, got to keep going forward.
Alan: Absolutely.
Mario: Cool.
Awesome.
All right, Allen, this is probably a good.
time to wrap it up.
Have a great.
rest of the week and I'll see You in a couple of weeks.
Alan: catch you next time.
Cheers man.