Daniel (00:01.104)
you realize that I will introduce you with a title today.

Dave (00:06.87)
no. Okay. We did indeed.

Daniel (00:08.028)
We talked about this last week and I have not forgotten. I have not forgotten. Do you want to just jump straight into it?

Dave (00:13.592)
no. Okay, go on.

Yeah, go for it. I'm on 10 talks.

Daniel (00:19.132)
All right, cool. Hey, welcome to Waiting for a View, a show about the majestic indie developer lifestyle. Join your scintillating hosts. Let's hear about a tiny slice of their thrilling lives. Today I'm introducing Dave, engineering manager of Lightbeam Apps, source code motivational coach, runner up sexiest man on the WFR podcasts.

Dave (00:48.766)
Run her up you git!

Daniel (00:50.786)
and engineering chapter lead, brackets mobile, at his day job. My name is Daniel Gilg. I'm a CTO. I'm a JDW and a H-O-T-T-O-T-O, H-O-T-T-O-G-O. Damn it, I mangled that. Add telemetry deck. G-D-W, by the way, means junior druid wrangler, because I am very much.

Dave (01:10.776)
He

Dave (01:17.516)
Okay.

Daniel (01:19.234)
an amateur at rankling druids still, which is something that I'm learning every day these days.

Dave (01:26.52)
And if I'm the runner up, Daniel, I think you must be leading with your bluest of beards just there looking very, very hot. That's fine. I'll tell you something. I'm going to, for a start, damn, I was not expecting you to go there straight up on that with the intro. So, but you've set the bar and we're going to have to keep thinking of...

Daniel (01:34.05)
I'm sorry I had to put that in there.

Daniel (01:46.684)
You

Dave (01:55.56)
of different intros now, I think. Yeah, yeah, maybe. But the thing I was going to say, Daniel, is speaking of your brilliant, brilliant visage in front of me here, I saw your pictures on the LinkedIn's and other places yesterday.

Daniel (01:56.081)
And we're going to limbo right underneath it next time. That's what bars are for.

Daniel (02:22.342)
from the award ceremony.

Dave (02:24.658)
Yeah, and also the day mode, night mode, Daniel pictures as well.

Daniel (02:31.58)
Yeah, I posted one picture in a suit with like styled hair and everything and I put I right next to it I posted the picture the next day where I had jeans a telemetry deck t-shirt and an ESA sweater or zipper hoodie actually

Dave (02:52.29)
Yeah, you're looking great, looking very well dressed and you were going out. You were going out to an award ceremony.

Daniel (03:02.096)
Right. So there is a new award being awarded in this city, like starting this year for women in business. And you had to like, you had to like propose people to get in there. like lots of people like wrote, wrote to me and Lisa like, Hey, you should, you should, you should nominate Lisa. And it turns out the nomination process was really, really hard. And so no one could actually nominate Lisa except herself because they were like the, the forum just needed so much, so much information that

Other people really probably wouldn't have, except if they are a very creepy stalker. But after some prodding, Lisa decided to nominate herself because so many people wanted to nominate her. And we didn't really hear anything anymore. And then about two weeks ago, an email arrives that says something like, hey, you're a nominee for the award.

Dave (03:37.291)
Right.

Daniel (04:01.526)
I'm going to say what award in a second. Just wanted to make sure that you're there. You can also bring up to two people with you. And so Lisa is like, am I going to win this? I'm going to win this. And I'm like, That is the wrong kind of way to go there, I think. Because imagine you're hyping yourself up, or we are hyping ourselves up like, we're going to win this thing. We're going to win this thing.

Dave (04:04.738)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (04:11.831)
Okay.

Dave (04:17.602)
Yep. Yep.

Daniel (04:31.516)
And then you go there and it's just like a huge disappointment. So I was like, OK, just let's dress nicely and just go there because there's going to be lots of cool people there. There's going to be feminists. There's going to be people in our circles, basically. There would be bubbly wine. There will be some snacks.

Dave (04:39.103)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (04:56.418)
Yeah, go to enjoy.

Daniel (04:57.606)
Just treat this as it's cool. It wasn't an art gallery tool, so you could look at art and stuff.

Dave (05:03.698)
lovely.

Daniel (05:06.3)
So yeah, so that's what we did. brought her husband and I was the plus two, I guess. And then they had the awards ceremony. The mayor was there and lots of high ranking business people and stuff. then they had the awards and they always would say a few sentences. then because of that, the award goes to person X. And they had four categories.

And first one was like, I forgot, I forgot most of them. The first one was for someone who's a manager, think, like best manager, best female manager, I guess. No, best female, company owner, something like that. Anyway, there's a local cosmetic company and the newly minted CEO of the company is a woman.

And she won that thing and deserved it deservedly so I've heard good things. The company is called Grandel or grandel and the CEO's name is Ariane. So he's Ariane Grandel. No joke. Next one was there was like best manager I think some HR person that I

Dave (06:23.961)
Brilliant.

Daniel (06:33.846)
sadly haven't heard of before, like she seems cool and everything. Then there was Best Newcomer, which was someone who works at a local aerospace company, MT Aerospace. They make rocket tanks basically. So like for the Iriana rocket, for example, they make lots of fuel tanks. And she was like under 35 physicists who has like a huge responsibility and like stuff that's really impressive.

Dave (06:59.352)
saying. Yep.

Daniel (07:03.152)
And, and there was also a startup price. And at that point, I was like, okay, no, like, Lisa's not going to win this thing because like every, like, nominee before her that went on stage had like a, impact on the city's finances by millions, right? Like these, companies are very large. Their revenues, their yearly revenues are probably double to triple digit millions. we're not playing in that league yet. But then the guy.

Dave (07:20.76)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (07:31.548)
is like, and now we're talking about a startup and you know, like data privacy is very important. And it's a company that she's leading with all her heart because she's really into having an alternative to data hungry applications like Google Analytics. And I'm like, ooh, ooh, ooh. And I'm nudging her husband and I'm like, when she will get up, like.

Dave (07:53.14)
Mm-hmm. Here we go.

Daniel (08:00.73)
Let me out as well. can take a video for the TikToks later. And then he's like, yeah, and she has her fantastic co-founder, Daniel Jirg, and I'm like, ooh, I think that's me. And so he awards Lisa Fieggers the prize for, let me think, Female Tech Pioneer of the Year.

awarded by the City of Oxburgh.

Dave (08:30.039)
Hey.

Brilliant.

Daniel (08:32.954)
So yeah, Lisa is now the Female Tech Pioneer of the Year. The award, like she went up there, she had a, like she improvised a fantastic speech, which was really cool. And the award is like a, I want to say five kilogram block of glass. It's like a huge thing. It's like milky, milky, milky half transparent glass. It looks pretty cool. And, but that thing is heavy. You could bludgeon someone with that thing.

Dave (08:50.698)
Right.

Dave (08:55.81)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (09:02.232)
I hope is that is the award gonna be pride of place in the telemetry deck office for this year? Yeah. Brilliant.

Daniel (09:02.79)
So yeah.

Daniel (09:11.15)
It already is. It already is. We put it there. Because it's so, I didn't take a photo though, but I will take one and put it on the Mastodon these days. It is very pretty. It's very elegant. says, like, Tech Pioneer of the Year and everything. And it is also very yellow because, like, the brand colors of this award were kind of yellowish. And so it has this gradient from, like, transparent, from yellow to transparent.

Dave (09:21.932)
Yeah. Yep, yep, yep.

Daniel (09:39.76)
But out of the corner of my eye, it looks like a tall glass of Fanta.

Daniel (09:48.822)
Which I appreciate, but now I'm thirsty whenever I'm in the office.

Dave (09:53.224)
Right, that's gonna probably result in you buying some Fanta to have in the office, right? Yeah, yeah.

Daniel (09:59.088)
Yes, yes. This podcast, by the way, is sponsored by the Coca-Cola company. Not.

Dave (10:04.586)
I would, I mean, we've got the, you've got the Fanta orange almost with the telemetry deck orange on your microphone.

Daniel (10:10.896)
Yeah. So Coca-Cola, if you want to sponsor us, let's talk, but the price will be three times the normal rate because you are Coca-Cola. By the way, there are various podcasts that are kind hosted by or organized by the German broadcasting stations. And these are state broadcasting stations. They are journalistically separate from the state, but they're paid for by the state.

Dave (10:20.44)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (10:38.924)
Yep. Okay.

Daniel (10:40.156)
And so like various like, I don't know, like cultural podcasts, comedians, stuff like that. They are on these podcasts. And the thing is you don't really notice it's pretty cool actually. But one thing they kind of have to do is they are not allowed to promote individual brands or companies or stuff like that. whenever they talk about something like cars or whatever, they will always like say something like,

For example, I drive a VW, but of course there are other fantastic car brands, like for example, there's Volvo and there's Cadillac. Or they say something like, yeah, you know, I use Google Analytics, but of course there's other analytics tools out there like telemetry deck. And so yeah, of course there's other perfectly good fizzy drink companies out there that make really nice yellow lemonade.

Dave (11:28.64)
Yep. Yep.

Dave (11:37.364)
Absolutely, Don't forget Vimto. But I don't know if you know Vimto Daniel, that's a very, it's not an orange drink, it's a purpley sort of drink and it's a very British thing. But yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

Daniel (11:46.416)
I do not.

Daniel (11:54.052)
Also kinda tasty.

I'm getting a tiny bit thirsty just now even.

Dave (12:00.652)
Well, I'm thinking maybe I should have mentioned Iron Brew rather than Vimto as an alternative orange drink.

Daniel (12:07.546)
Yeah, I always thought that was like just from the name I thought it would be beer, but it's not right. It's lemonade.

Dave (12:13.117)
It's made from girders. yeah, it was a whole thing in the 90s. They did an advertising campaign that way. And yeah, anyway, I was very little before I realized it was just a joke, but no. Okay. Well, awesome news on Lisa's award.

Daniel (12:16.102)
from girders.

course.

Daniel (12:39.184)
Right. Lisa was on stage. I'll be on stage next week as of time of recording. But by the time you hear this, be have I have given my presentation already. So I can actually name the title. The title is The Root of All Evil because it's about premature optimization. And apparently not everyone knows this quote. Like I was like big in my circle somehow. But like there's this computer scientist like very early, early days computer scientist Donald E Knuth who wrote

Dave (12:40.268)
Definitely get your office fanter in.

Dave (13:06.936)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (13:07.77)
the LaTeX type setting language, but also lots of books and compilers. And he said that. He said, premature optimization is the root of all evil and had very strong opinions on it. I think has. I don't think he has expired or anything. Yeah, so looking forward to that. I still got to finish my presentation though.

Dave (13:24.6)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (13:29.206)
Right. Well.

Is it something we're going to be able to link up in the show notes?

Daniel (13:36.028)
Probably not. They don't seem recordings. I'm going to ask Lisa to record parts of it and then put it somewhere. if it's a success, I can totally translate the whole thing to English and then just present it again at another conference.

Dave (13:57.164)
Yeah, yeah, you probably should. But anyway, I look forward to hearing how that's gone, Daniel. It's been a while since I've presented anything like that. And you're reminding me it should be on my to do list, I think, to sort of talk about certain things.

Daniel (14:05.82)
Yeah.

Daniel (14:10.554)
Yeah, it's been a while for me too, but I'm kind of slipping into it just as well. And yeah. Other than that, like I had a pretty stressful week. like Lisa's award and like looking forward to the conference are kind of my two high points.

Dave (14:16.117)
Awesome.

Dave (14:23.595)
Yeah.

Dave (14:29.77)
I can see a note, we often talk to the show notes, we have a shared note that we put.

Daniel (14:32.444)
Just read the note and I will not elaborate. Just read the note and we'll just not talk about it.

Dave (14:40.111)
Yeah, the note just says, Daniel hates servers.

Daniel (14:46.646)
And that's why I'm the junior Druid Wrangler, because at some point I will really need to hire a senior Druid Wrangler. Anyway, I found a new failure mode.

Dave (14:56.994)
So tell me what the servers have been doing to make you hate them this time.

Daniel (15:02.108)
I have this, like we have this concept of a calculation queue, right? So whenever like you ask the server to or like when you in the UI want to display a chart, that query needs to be calculated. So the query gets put into the queue and the server kinda just like pushes like, like does one query after another, pushes that to the Druid because otherwise the thing, the poor thing gets overwhelmed. But the queue.

And the queue is shared between instances of the API containers. that job that kind of works on the queue kind of runs directly into in the API containers. And now I'm kind of building up a new infrastructure. And that new infrastructure has the same database already because we have already switched over to the new database without so many people noticing. But it has a different caching server.

where the results will then be placed. And so what's happening today was that someone would go onto the normal telemetry website and run a calculation. That calculation would be put into the queue, and then a runner running on the new infrastructure would pick it up from the database, execute it, run it, and then put it onto the new caching server where the old API server couldn't access it.

That was so frustrating and so hard to debug. I have separated the cues and dotted the T's and crossed the I's.

Dave (16:30.598)
Right. Yep.

Dave (16:41.452)
Is this one and yes, dotted the lowercase J's. Is this one of those scenarios where you've kind of literally crossed the streams in terms of how you set it up or yeah.

Daniel (16:54.8)
Yeah, like there are a few things that just need to be centralized in this architecture. And one of them is just the main database. But it turns out inside of the database, the different queue workers need to have their own queues. luckily, that was not hard to do with the architecture that I have. But it was hard to find out. And it was very stressful. I have one or two gray hairs now.

Dave (17:02.53)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (17:22.168)
So is this old man yells at server infrastructure? Yeah, clouds.

Daniel (17:24.912)
Yeah.

Daniel (17:30.268)
Clouds. Clouds. Yeah, the other thing that really frustrated me today was a customer that has decided not to become a customer. Like, we've been chasing a few pretty large customers. And one of them today decided that after talking to them for a few months that actually we're not in their budget, which is very disappointing.

That's like extra frustrating. So I'm really happy to have like the good news that kind of balance these bad news.

Dave (18:05.227)
Yeah, that's a shame. I mean, obviously, you you win some, lose some, it's going to go like that. But it's still frustrating after so much time being invested towards it, I'm sure.

Daniel (18:19.386)
Yeah. But I think the good thing is I can go back to doing more on the technical side again, because I think like software quality has really slipped the last few months and I need to write that ship again. Like there's never enough time in the day, But, and like this is a recurring theme. This is a recurring theme, right? Like you have this pendulum and the pendulum has been in the sales and marketing side, but now it really needs for me to swing back. At I will stay on the sales and marketing sides.

Dave (18:28.568)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (18:34.782)
No, no, and you can always use time back.

Daniel (18:48.932)
side for now because she's getting really, really good at it. Like she's been good to begin with, like just she's been putting so much work into that. It's fantastic to see.

Dave (18:50.53)
Fair. Fair.

Dave (18:58.646)
Yep. that's great. And I mean, I think that's, you know, what practice makes perfect. That's the sort of thing that I can see both of you really dialing into now in the time that you've been working in this way. But I'm glad for you. Glad for you to be able to focus on the technical stuff for a little bit now, because I know it gnaws at you when the pendulum swings too far one way.

Daniel (19:13.626)
Mm. Cheers, mate.

Daniel (19:24.956)
Right. Because I see that like there are errors and problems and bugs and paper cuts and stuff. And I really want to be like, I want to work on that. But I need to see also look at the bigger picture and see like, the company needs new customers to survive. It needs to, we need to increase our revenue just to not go bankrupt. Right. And so like customer acquisition has to be the name of the game.

Dave (19:33.57)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (19:48.3)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (19:55.252)
Etas, etas.

Daniel (19:55.504)
And so on the one hand, means like chasing medium to large customers because if that works out, then you have a huge payoff and that's really cool. On the other hand, means like also focusing on the Indies and the SMEs, the small and medium enterprises, because those are way more nimble and they can really decide on like, like they don't have a three month process basically. They're just like, hey,

Dave (20:12.076)
Yes. Yes.

Daniel (20:22.652)
Let's check this out. then two days later, they're like, okay, let's try it out for a while. And so,

Dave (20:23.351)
Yes.

Dave (20:26.796)
And they're almost in the, in the passive end of acquisition, right? In terms of your actual, hands-on and time that gets chewed up. mean, they're, they're not passive. You've still got to work to get folks to you, and to support them through that with the material so that you've got the website and everything else. then that's a, you've done it. You can then update those things later on. Keep looking at that sales funnel. You're not directly.

having meetings and going over X, Y, and Z that they need because they're finding that for themselves, right?

Daniel (20:58.896)
Right, right.

Right. mean, yes, but one thing that we started to do because people have advised us to do so is really sharpen the customer profile that we're going after. Not excluding anyone, just like we have one chance to, well, not one chance, but like we have a limited budget to really get the word out for advertising and also time budget, like just on being on social media, stuff like that.

Dave (21:15.16)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (21:31.63)
And so we've been advised to really find out what are, right now, not in the long term, but right now, the best customers for us. Or maybe even in the long term, but don't optimize too prematurely. And the answer that we came back to is just like any developers and small and medium businesses, because these are the people that we are already really well equipped to handle.

Dave (21:31.992)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (21:42.498)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (21:47.096)
Yes.

Daniel (21:59.254)
And they love us most of the time when they're not super annoyed at error. Reason starts with not found. And so yeah, and so one thing that Lisa has been doing is she's been talking to our customers. Like she's been scheduling interviews with some of our more like bigger customers, but like still that are very much in that indie slash SMB, SME, like target group. Some of them.

were like podcasters that I really liked to listen to. And I was a bit starstruck. Yeah. And so yeah, what she came back with was the privacy thing is really, really cool, especially because it means less hassle. So that's one important thing for our customers, that our user interface is pretty good, is another thing. But there's also been criticism that it could be better, which I agree with.

Dave (22:33.922)
That's cool.

Daniel (22:56.592)
But one thing that everybody, everyone praised and one thing that everyone was like, that was kind of the reason why they tried out telemetry in the first place was the ease of integration. the fact that you can literally take four minutes of your time and then just get started and then like start collecting data. okay, there's, might be app store submissions in between, but like the amount of work is really minuscule.

Dave (23:16.664)
And that

It's funny you mentioned that because I mean, I've integrated Telemetry Deck ages ago. It's there right at the start. I saw the warnings on the websites about using an out of date library. Updating was easy. I'd literally just updated the Swift package, but I think the thing I wanted to just mention was that you've got the revenue cap integration documentation.

Daniel (23:37.404)
Mm.

Dave (23:49.494)
And I was looking at that like, do I really want to do this? This looks fiddly. And then I read it through and I'm like, that's not fiddly. I'll do that this weekend.

Daniel (23:57.372)
Yeah, I think I want to update the documentation page to make it look as easy as it really is, because I think the documentation page looks a bit complicated, but it really is easy. So I'm going to have look at that. And also, I kind need to write a blog post about that, because it's not officially announced, but it's out of beta, really, because it just works now. So yeah. But one thing that we really did with that information is we updated our landing page once again. I'm going to share it with you here.

Dave (24:04.299)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dave (24:17.366)
Yeah, yeah, so I definitely want that.

Dave (24:24.756)
sharing screen in progress, yes.

Daniel (24:27.164)
And so, yeah, we have a new slogan at the very top of the landing page, which is analytics in minutes. apparently that is one thing that is really interesting about us. And the other thing is we've decided, some people tell us, I was able to integrate this in one minute or two minutes, and other people talk about 10 minutes, and we've decided to go all in.

Dave (24:34.741)
Awesome.

Ay.

Daniel (24:57.372)
on saying four minutes everywhere on the website, just because it feels realistic. The amount of work that you really need to do is just drop in a Swift package and then copy paste the code. But it also feels very specific, exactly four minutes. But yeah, it is...

Dave (25:17.12)
Yeah, I love that. I love that. Remember the, what is it, the four hour work week, you've got the four minute analytics drop.

Daniel (25:26.139)
Exactly.

Dave (25:29.974)
Yeah, I love it. Although the meme rotted part of my brain is offering up Homer Simpson going, four minutes, but I want it now. Yeah. But that's great. That's really great. And I think focusing in on your immediate

Daniel (25:33.453)
Let's see how goes.

Daniel (25:43.463)
I wouldn't know!

Daniel (25:49.262)
Exactly that.

Dave (25:57.112)
user base on the companies and people that you really, I guess I'm putting words in your mouth here, but I'm saying like the people that you really love working with and have been consistently working with. I think that's a really good idea. it's a, how can I put it? It's a lean into playing to your strengths, playing to your immediate base. It makes a lot of sense to me.

Daniel (26:09.5)
sure though.

Dave (26:25.354)
And it's also part of what I've loved about Telemetry Deck as well as that, you know, I've got my, got my apps, got everything I've got going on with my, my indie app dev and you know, Telemetry Deck, I know you of course, and that helps, but Telemetry Deck is the analytic service that kind of resonates for me because you know, playing in the same sort of space. Yeah.

Daniel (26:47.452)
yeah, and I want to keep it that way. But more people need to know about us. So I think at the end of this process, there's going to be some sort of advertising or outreach or something.

Dave (26:54.445)
Yeah.

Dave (27:01.048)
Yeah. I think, you know, speaking to your customers and I assume, am I right in thinking Lisa is actually literally speaking to some of your SMEs and NDs and folks? Like, you know, maybe there's something there if people were interested in doing so in terms of like small interviews with folks that can actually go out on social media.

Daniel (27:17.414)
Hmm.

Dave (27:31.038)
that side of things it will be interesting to see. Yeah.

Daniel (27:31.893)
Yeah, I mean, we've been doing these case studies and those are really cool, but those are like text only so we could only do like a little podcast basically.

Dave (27:40.492)
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. It doesn't need to be a big thing. I'm sort of something that lets you highlight what people love and the things that really resonated. It's 20 second, 30 second grabs that go out on social media just to sort of illustrate these things.

Daniel (27:59.29)
Yeah, I'll think about it. I'll chuck it over to Lisa when I meet her tomorrow. No, she's not in the office tomorrow. we're going to meet her through a screen tomorrow.

Dave (28:10.552)
hybrid, hybrid working. But you, I.

Daniel (28:12.316)
Hybrid, very family friendly, apply now. Don't apply now actually, we don't have the money to pay you right now.

Dave (28:23.896)
Talking about customer acquisition and I looked across at my whiteboard that I've got nearby to me here in the office because for my apps and everything I've got going on with my video mixer with Govj, I wrote on the whiteboard a whole bunch of stuff the other day about how do I want to close out 2024? And it's a similar pendulum switch.

is that I've got at the top of there, I want to land the audio reactive feature that I'm building. I also want to update the onboarding part of the app. I actually think that, you know, I'm getting people to install the app. I show them how to use it as part of the onboarding. I show them the paywall that explains. So it makes it clear this is a paid experience if you want everything. But what I'm not doing

is really doing anything to capture customer intent at that point. And I think that's actually probably for me something that I should be doing. And I've thought about this for years. And it's kind of a thing that I want to do. So rather than be going, boom, you're in the app and now I'm going to hit you with everything it can do. I'm probably going to surface some sort of screen that comes up and sort of says, well, hi, this is video mixing app. What are you here to do?

and give some, it will give some options like, Hey, I'm a, I'm a DJ looking to run visuals for my show. I'm putting a party on or I'm a band or I'm a VJ, something like that. Probably some top three or four sort of personas. And then an other that might, it might be some sort of text entry. That's like, please tell us, which I can route through, potentially through feedback bulb. there's the feedback service I'm using.

And then we go off and into the app and I can say, here's how to use it. You know, skip this. I want to get, get straight into it, et cetera. But that's the thing I've been thinking about because I have, I have a funnel if you like with, with, with the app, you know, I get so many downloads a month, people boot it. And then if I look at the percentage that they're actually buy anything or carry on using it, it drops off a bit of a cliff.

Dave (30:52.908)
And that's normal, right? You know, people kick the tires, they install stuff, they go, yeah, not for me, move on. And that's fine. But I feel like I might be missing something in that side of the process. And I feel like maybe putting something where people can actually tell me what they're there to do will help me to understand things I can do. Yeah. So I'm going to do that.

Daniel (30:54.415)
Yeah, I think so too.

Daniel (31:09.008)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (31:17.232)
Yeah, yeah, that sounds like a very good idea.

Dave (31:23.277)
So again, that's a bit of dev, but it's shifting towards thinking about customer acquisition. And then the

Daniel (31:28.879)
so I'm going back into dev mode and you're like switching to marketing.

Dave (31:32.69)
Yeah, yeah, a little bit. mean, I've got plenty of dev to do as well on the side. Like, so this is a, I really want to stand up a test flight version of Govj Pro. I think I might just go into some sort of fugue state over a weekend and do that.

Daniel (31:49.788)
those are the best though. Those are the best though. Those like weekends where you're like, okay, I have no pressure because no one expects me to do this thing. Like people expect me to do 15 other things, but this is not the thing that people expect me to do. And that is when you get your absolutely best work done. I love those so much.

Dave (31:55.618)
Yep.

Dave (32:00.962)
Yep. Yep. Yep.

Dave (32:08.116)
Yes, yes, complete jack move or whatever in terms of things where you just go sideways for a second. But yeah, that's probably to be honest, that probably will be how Govj Pro gets to a test flight version. Lots of coffee and lots of, you know, leave me, leave me alone for a couple of days, music blaring.

Daniel (32:29.24)
absolute hyper focus.

Dave (32:31.728)
Yeah. Yeah. So that's the thing that's there, but really the focus is, on these acquisition things. And I've also then got a, a list of potential, vlog posts, cause this is a thing I've been doing now for quite a while. where I'm building up a persona on Instagram and, and tick tock where I talk about the app that I'm building, and interact with, with users and

I guess it's customer acquisition ultimately. mean, it's kind of user feedback and product developments as well. But I've got a bunch of ideas of things that I actually want to do that. What seems to be really actually working out well over there is showing people how I use the app, showing people what they can make it do, which sounds like.

Daniel (33:24.238)
Even me, like I don't want to do VJing, right? But I see these videos now that you're starting to do and I love them. It is so cool to actually see the things because I'm like, maybe it's because I'm not in the target demographic or whatever, but like, just like seeing the thing in use is like so cool. I'm like, this is so cool. Look at what it can do. So 100 % yes, please continue doing these videos. I think also they're going to really help.

Dave (33:27.864)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (33:50.512)
like sell people on the idea of what your app does and give them a way better, better idea of what you can use it for.

Dave (33:58.29)
Yeah, thank you. yeah, I'll be doing it. So some of the things on there are kind of bit show and telly. Quite I want to do them because I think I'll find them fun as well, which is the best overlap of this sort of stuff. If I look there, I've got one that is how I made a Bluetooth MIDI adapter. So I've got a MIDI controller that's wired and I've put a Raspberry Pi Zero on it and

Daniel (34:21.649)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (34:26.588)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (34:26.7)
then I can access it over Bluetooth. So a little bit geeky, but I'm kind of going to show like the 3D printed case for the Pi Zero and how I pulled it all together. One of the ones that's going to be quite fun to play with is on the iPad. I've got video in because we've got the camera input API there. And

Daniel (34:35.373)
Ooh, nice.

Daniel (34:50.396)
I was like, I was like so ready to ring the NDI bell. I don't have an NDI bell, but by this time I probably need one.

Dave (34:55.256)
No, no, no. Every time I mention it, no. So I've got a USB microphone and so I'll hook up the USB, USB-C hub that I've got. I can plug it into that and then not microphone, so microscope. USB-C, yeah, so USB microscope hooked into the video app. You can get some really

Daniel (34:59.676)
Keding!

Daniel (35:16.931)
Ooh, that's even cooler.

Dave (35:25.016)
funky video effects by just zooming in on day to day items. Very much. Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel (35:30.912)
yeah, can totally see that as it's really cool. Question though, like how much time does one of these videos take like from start to finish?

Dave (35:40.268)
Yeah, so really good question. I try and spend as little time on it as I can in a sense of just making it easy for me to do. so when I record any of the sort of vloggy, me talking to people kind of posts, tends to be run and Like I'll pop up with a camera on, I've got an idea. I've got something I want to talk about. And I kind of run through that in my head for a couple of minutes before I go and actually record. Then I record it.

So it's, know, anywhere up to a minute and a half's worth of yapping. then that's kind of, yeah, yeah. And then that's it for the actual recording. Then all the effort is about pulling it through onto the Instagram itself. I'll let it do its auto captions. I tend not to go and correct them. I don't particularly care if it's got them wrong because they're a guide rather than having to be

Daniel (36:15.772)
Speaking of Gen Z slang.

Dave (36:39.028)
literal to some degree. I'll tell a lie if it's got Govj's name wrong, I tend to correct that. and yeah, add a caption, write some bits. It's probably like all in all about 15 minutes worth of work. Yeah.

Daniel (36:56.572)
that's really good. Like because I'm asking because like that is my problem. I started trying to do TikToks and I spent like, I spent like a day on one TikTok and I got 38 views.

Dave (37:03.81)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (37:08.966)
yeah, no, so.

Daniel (37:10.478)
It got 38 views because of different reasons, I think, but still, I spent way too much time. I made a TikTok basically on how do I migrate all my data and settings to a new phone using encrypted backup, because that's kind of the best way that we know these days. iPhone to iPhone, not just generic phone.

Dave (37:27.597)
Yes.

Daniel (37:33.292)
And I took so much time because I needed to capture video off my computer, but also off the phone. So I took screen recordings. I took off my phone, screen recordings of the new phone, screen recordings of the process on my computer, various B-roll shots. And then I wrote a whole script and read that. then I actually used DaVinci to actually cut and splice the whole thing. And then I uploaded it after a day of work. And it got banned for community guideline violations.

Dave (37:56.044)
Yep. Yep.

Dave (38:03.809)
Why?

Daniel (38:04.144)
because I used the word transfer and the AI categorized me as a financial scam.

Dave (38:13.824)
wow, okay. Yeah, that's rough.

Daniel (38:16.508)
And it said, like, I did appeal that, that does take a day. And the algorithm very much prioritizes newness. And so if it sees a video that's a day old, it's basically a dead video. And Lisa.

Dave (38:28.504)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (38:32.514)
So you're better off deleting it and redubbing the word transfer into something else.

Daniel (38:38.586)
Maybe, I actually, I tried like so many times before I even got to that stage that I got a reason for the rejection. Like I uploaded the thing like three, four times that I was like, okay, I'm not gonna risk the whole account just for one video. But I'm a bit peeved because Lisa uploaded a video and that video has now over 100,000 views.

Dave (38:50.924)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Daniel (39:01.242)
Like same account, like there's just one video before about unpacking the iPhone. A hundred thousand views. Gosh darn it.

Dave (39:01.516)
Okay.

Yep.

Dave (39:12.574)
Yes, so...

Maybe it's probably, yeah.

Daniel (39:16.634)
It's really well made though, like it's really well made, but still I am peeved.

Dave (39:22.712)
I can understand that. I have no great salient insight here on how to do this other than I would say to you my approach with it, the motto I sort of seem to be aspiring to is kind of run and gun. Right? So yeah.

Daniel (39:41.094)
Yeah, I've been thinking about that, but I think most of the things I want to talk about or would like to talk about are not run and gun. They either need a bit of research or they need a bit of preparation so that it's really is smooth because I don't want to make short form video where I have like 30 second waiting periods in between, where I kind of look for the thing I want to click next or stuff like

Dave (39:48.632)
Yes.

Daniel (40:06.373)
So either I just record everything and then cut it together, but then there's a cutting process. Or I think about what I want to say before and write it down and then prepare some things. yeah, that's not. So I'm still looking. I'm still experimenting. But thanks for the reality check, because I do want to spend about half an hour or so, or max, on a video and not a day, because I don't have that day.

Dave (40:20.598)
I have a suggestion. Sorry, go on.

Dave (40:30.358)
Yeah. Yeah, Dan, I think that's, that's, that's the thing, right? It's got to fit in. it's an additive exercise, not, your day job, but, I have a suggestion for you if you're, you're open to it, Daniel.

Daniel (40:47.098)
Always.

Dave (40:48.434)
So all of what you've described is quite, you're like to make a technical video, to make something that sort of walks people through that sort of stuff. It will be involved. It will take that amount of time to sort of cut it and make it good. I think it could be better for you to maybe put that energy into writing a blog post instead.

Daniel (41:15.248)
I'm really good at writing blog posts these days. But I want to be on the platforms where people are,

Dave (41:17.821)
Yeah, yeah, and then.

Dave (41:24.876)
But what I'm thinking is, make the blog post, right? So that takes up your, your, mental space in terms of laying out the content and actually really getting the topic down and writing something that's really useful to people. It lives on it's on your platform. It adds to everything else you've got for telemetry deck. So that's good. it's got a long, long tail on it in terms of what the content is. and then because short form video is so pheromone.

One thing you could do is you could actually screen share walking through your blog post to some degree. You could talk through that blog post rather than trying to have it literally walk through the entire process. You could, yeah, you could do a thing where you're talking through some of the blog posts. Maybe you put a few bits of B roll or other bits in, but use it to then storyboard a quick

overview that works for short form video.

Daniel (42:26.46)
Yeah, that could work. I actually, I have a confession to make. I forget which is good because I'm daring people to find the blog post that this applies to. I told you about something that I did for a telemetry deck a few months ago, and I was really excited about it. And so I told you everything about it. And then I realized I also needed to write a blog post about it. So I actually put the whole transcript of the podcast into ChatGPT. I think it was ChatGPT, maybe another...

Dave (42:44.546)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (42:56.57)
model anyway, and told it, write a blog post about this. This is how I write because I gave it a few paragraphs of what the style should be and also some background information, like where a geometry deck, da-da-da-da-da. And then I spit out a reasonable blog post, not really good, but a good starting point. And that was a really good starting point to really iterate over that and make it into a good blog post.

Dave (42:57.176)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (43:18.04)
Yep.

Daniel (43:26.084)
which was actually a pretty fun experience because telling you things is actually something that I really like.

Dave (43:32.844)
Yeah. that's awesome. I love that as a, as an approach.

Daniel (43:38.224)
Yeah, and of course, never put like just like raw AI, like text on the internet. just like, it's, it's, feels very recognizably AI. It will include like weird hallucinations, stuff like that. But as a starting point, it was way better than starting from nothing. And so I basically, touched every single sentence in that thing by the end, but it was a really good starting point. I like

Dave (43:45.035)
slop.

Dave (43:51.884)
Yep.

Dave (43:55.83)
All yeah

Dave (44:02.2)
That's cool. I can see that that is good as a process in terms of getting you away from it gets described as the tyranny of the blank page. You know, because you've got something then to pull out and to form into what you need it to be. And yeah, you're absolutely right. You shouldn't just take what the AI spat out and post that straight to the net.

Daniel (44:11.77)
Right, exactly.

Dave (44:31.03)
detectable tone of voice. kind of describe it as the it's like the text version of the uncanny valley. Yeah, you can sell.

Daniel (44:38.063)
Yeah.

Yeah. with the, I've listened to a bit of the podcast project where Google kind of, where you can like give, this is a Google prototype basically where you give it like a large number of texts and it will just like create a summarizing podcast. And it's like horribly uncanny valley. It's like,

Dave (45:04.544)
Yeah, did they have like the AI generate laughter and little bits of ums and ahs and things as well, was it that one?

Daniel (45:14.352)
Yeah, totally. At first glance, for lack of a better word, it really does sound like an actual podcast. after a few sentences, it's like something is off about this.

Dave (45:28.288)
I can foresee a version that then, sorry, linking back to what you mentioned earlier in the show about the public broadcasters that cannot mention one brand without mentioning another, I can foresee a version of that that gets used to go to do the opposite. And then it's like a Truman Show style dropping in the product in the middle of the generated podcast.

Daniel (45:50.766)
yeah, totally, mean, products are doing that right now even. Like MKBHD, like famous YouTuber, recently posted that products are now using his voice, like an AI version of his voice to talk about their products. Like he posted one of those, it's like a video and it's like, I forgot what it was, like some technical thing and you see it from the POV of a person, so that is looking down at their hands.

Dave (45:57.858)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (46:07.512)
God. Yep. Yep.

Dave (46:19.096)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (46:19.684)
and playing with the gadget or whatever it was. And you distinctly hear MKBHD's voice, like talking about the product, which he never reviewed though. And that is just because like people associate him with like, let's say journalistic integrity and like a fair review of things, wallpaper apps notwithstanding. so yeah. I'm just joking.

Dave (46:44.332)
Hey, I can't fault him for the wallpaper app to be honest, but.

Daniel (46:49.628)
So yeah, like of course it works. It's just like really skeevy. Skeevy a word? I think it's a word.

Dave (46:55.426)
Yeah, yeah, skeevy skeevy is kind of a slang word. I understand. Yeah, kind of scummy. Not not cool.

Daniel (47:03.012)
Scummy, yeah, that's what I was looking for. Scammy even.

Dave (47:06.776)
Yeah, mean I can see it. I can see it because yeah, you use the voice generation. It's not literally trying to portray him himself, but people associate. It's sort of thieving his brand really to do that. What a world. Daniel, I need to go do the things. We're at that point in my

in my day in my morning. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to love you and leave you this time,

Daniel (47:43.226)
Aww, I love you too. And I mean, to be fair, you are the sexiest man on this podcast.

Dave (47:48.248)
well now my my my ego is boosted ending on a high note. Yeah, but Daniel read me the outro, mate. Let's let's let's learn this.

Daniel (48:05.04)
I will. Thank you for listening. Please rate us on iTunes and YouTube. Send us emails at contact at waiting for review and join our discord. The links in the show notes. Dave, where can people find you?

Dave (48:19.084)
Good question. So as I've mentioned it a lot on this show, let's link my Instagram in the show notes and my Instagram username there is lightbeamapps.com. That's D-O-T com or one word. You can find me on the mastodons and the feddies at Dave at social.lightbeamapps.com. Awesome. How about how about yourself, Daniel?

Daniel (48:46.192)
Yeah, you can find me by going to telemetrydeck.com, then scrolling down all the way. And then you either click the master button or you click the merge button and then buy some Telemetry Deck t-shirts.

Dave (48:59.096)
Ooh, is that a real thing? Can I do that?

Daniel (49:01.692)
That has been a real thing for months and I just realized I haven't been promoting this at all. It's just a cooperation with, it's like basically the whole cotton bureau range. So we have mugs, t-shirts, beanies, whatever.

Dave (49:07.672)
Just T-shirts? you have?

Dave (49:13.312)
Yeah, Beanies. You have no idea, Daniel. Yeah.

Daniel (49:17.53)
I think like they have beenies. I assume I activated them. Like the show's over. The show's over. You can go, but leave the recording for a second while I look this up. I assume the Merch link is here. Like maybe it's not even in the footer. It is. it says service unavailable.

Dave (49:26.264)
Yep

Dave (49:35.672)
The outro music might be playing as you speak, Daniel, not to pressurize you. Keep going. Quick, quick.

Daniel (49:46.458)
That's kind of disappointing. it's... Like the whole cotton bureau is down. Cotton bureaus, like telemetry deck is up. like, telemetry deck is up, but cotton bureau is down. See?

Dave (49:46.833)
cliffhanger.

Dave (49:53.976)
So...

Dave (49:57.944)
Ha ha ha ha!

Maybe they need a junior druid Wrangler. Well.

Daniel (50:07.26)
All right, go there once it's back up, buy a t-shirt. All the costs go to cottonviro. We don't make no profit on that, but send me a picture of you in that t-shirt, Or other merch.

Dave (50:18.104)
Awesome. I'll roll the outro music now, Daniel. So let's Bye.

Daniel (50:22.01)
All right, have a great day, bye.