Kristopher Priemer (00:00)
Awesome. Well, I thought we could start by, we just had a sales call with a potential customer and updating Garrett on kind of how that went and different ideas that came through. So John, I don't know if you want to start with, you know, giving some highlights there, but I think then we could get Garrett's input on where he thinks we should go.

John Nunemaker (00:19)
For sure. So the first topic that came up that was really interesting was basically video. And so they were like, you know, we already have an audio podcast. We're super interested in getting on YouTube and having video as well. And so they're like, what can you do to help with that? So that was like, well, that was technically topic number two. Topic number one was like, do you do editing and things like that? And the topic number two was like, do you do video?

And so we kind of talked about that a little bit about how I am, you know, really old and gray bearded and I don't watch YouTube podcasts. And Kris is a millennial. I don't know what the right word is, but he, you know, has a TV on a wall that he watches YouTube on. And so we kind of went down that path a little bit. And, you know, the potential customer was also in Kris's boat. So maybe Kris can explain, like, you know, why you do it that way, what, you know,

from like the consuming standpoint, what that's kind of like having consuming a podcast from YouTube.

Kristopher Priemer (01:19)
Yeah, think, and Garrett, I will be curious on if you've watched YouTube at all for podcasting, but for me, it's getting, you get to see the people on the podcast. And so you get to, I feel like you get to know their personalities a bit more by being able to see them. Like you're used to, especially if they already have like a sitcom or they've been on TV before. So that's how you're used to consuming it. And it just feels easy to have it running in the background.

while you're working. And I guess you could say that for audio podcasts only as well, but it adds a dimension on if they're talking about certain pictures or certain videos and clips, then they'll cut to those and you can participate in that a little bit easier than if it was audio only.

John Nunemaker (02:01)
Yeah, I think my only issue with it that I that I've come across is that like I typically listen to podcasts in the truck or in the tractor or in places like with no screen and so I can't look at it anyways. And so that's the only reason I don't. And I've not found like the OK, well, here's this episode you're listening to. And now the next one is this in line and the next one is this is line kind of be as you know, or like pick up where you left off. Like you go back in.

And then you're like, okay, I was halfway through that one and I want to start listening to that again. And YouTube's like, hey, how about something new? So that's the only thing that's been a little bit different for me. But what about you, Garrett? Have you done this?

Hey, this is John. I am the hype man. I'm getting everyone fired up. This is Standing in the Fire, episode number two. We've got some slight smiles on our faces and we're ready to talk about fireside and things that have been happening that are possibly interesting to you all.

Garrett (02:57)
I mean, I'm still like, I'm probably more like you or I'm old enough that like to me, YouTube is something that's on the computer and that's where it is. like to me, like I think I've really mainly just use YouTube for when I want information about a topic like a lot of home repair or,

John Nunemaker (03:06)
Haha

Kristopher Priemer (03:06)
No.

Garrett (03:19)
The other thing I started doing was looking for reviews on YouTube because it's harder for it to be a bunch of AI generated, you know, garbage because it's got to be real. I did a series of like 10 videos about prosthetics and that kind of stuff, like just educational for people to like help because it was information I could never find when I was thinking about amputation. like to me, that's what YouTube is for. I mean, I pay for it so not to watch ads, but I can't really imagine.

John Nunemaker (03:45)
course.

Kristopher Priemer (03:45)
It

Garrett (03:47)
watching it outside of my computer. mean, maybe on my phone, if I'm like doing something around the house and I need to be able to see it and go back and forth, but that to me is what YouTube is. So like, don't think of it that way. I'm more like you with pot. It's an audio thing. Like you can throw on, you know, some earbuds and do the dishes and listen to something or like other things around the house. But as a entertainment channel, I think I almost actively dislike YouTube because of all the patients and

Kristopher Priemer (03:58)
Interesting.

Garrett (04:16)
You know, like and subscribe and like if this I don't know all that just wears me out. Maybe I'm getting old.

Kristopher Priemer (04:21)
It's interesting because what I find, and I don't remember if we talked about this in the last episode, but the discoverability is a little bit easier. So like if there's a guest on a podcast and then they have their guests on other podcasts, the algorithm will show you them. And so I can discover other podcasts that I might not have seen before. So that for me, that's interesting. Sometimes I like that same guest and I want to know, I don't have to search for it. It just displays it to me.

John Nunemaker (04:50)
Yeah, that's a great point. Discoverability, think, is you can't beat that. You can't beat YouTube. I said that, but YouTube for that kind of thing. So that makes a lot of sense.

Garrett (04:57)
I completely did. Because I feel like the algorithms just recommend such dumb, like all the here's. my. Probably are like, like, you know, all the famous people giving college speeches and they overlay a bunch of crappy stock photos and inspirational quotes. And it's like, what it like that to me. And like I said, I'm mostly doing like home repair stuff or like prosthetics or product reviews.

Kristopher Priemer (05:06)
You have a bad algorithm.

John Nunemaker (05:08)
Yeah.

Garrett (05:25)
and stuff like that. And I don't know, to me, it's just, it's almost like frustrating. Like I would rather get recommendations via RSS feeds and the people I'm following. And then something they read a book and they're mentioning it in their RSS feed. Like then that to me is a more valuable recommendation than like this algorithm that's just trying to increase engagement, which part of all this too, I'm reading Nexus right now with, it's about, he's written a bunch of books, but this is basically about

things we need to be aware of with AI and he's talking about how like the Facebook and YouTube recommendation algorithms, it was all so like just drive engagement. wasn't recommend useful things. wasn't make the world a better place. It was just drive engagement. And then the companies naturally found out that like angry, you know, really polarizing things are what drove engagement. And so then they

push more and more of that. So like the more I'm reading it, I'm like, well, yeah, that's probably why I don't like any of those recommendations, because it's always so like, it's trying to like stir me up. And I'm like, I don't want that. I just want information I don't want, you know, so

John Nunemaker (06:22)
Yeah

Kristopher Priemer (06:28)
No, say the other thing, so yeah, so YouTube video came up of, well, the comment that was also made, and I'll go to a different comment, was that it's actually the biggest podcasting platform. And so, I don't know, it'd be interesting for us to do some research on that and figure out, know, comparatively to some of the other platforms. But it was also brought up of like how to make,

John Nunemaker (06:29)
So here, go ahead Kris

Kristopher Priemer (06:54)
podcasting more efficient. And I think we felt that a little bit as we were starting the second episode of, I would say the prep work for the podcast, but also the editing and post work and the potential customers asking a lot of questions. I know what features we had, what we don't have. And it just gave us some ideas and John, I don't know, you want to throw some of those out just for our discussion of, know, what could we build that helps with that pain point after the episode is recorded?

because there's so much that has to happen. You stop it, but there's still a lot that happens before you can actually publish it.

John Nunemaker (07:27)
Yeah, I kind of took this on because I've never done it before and I was just really curious like what does it take to make an episode and you know, we just naively You know through 20 bucks or whatever 30 bucks at riverside and recorded and we're like Sweet now we're good to go and then once you actually go to you know, use your tool which is fireside.fm

We go to actually create a new episode. It's like, you need to have a summary. You need to have a description. You need to have keywords. You need to have tags. You need to have, do you do episode art or do you just use your cover art and all these kinds of things that you don't chapters. I hadn't even thought about chapters. And one of the cool features of fireside is once you make the chapters, you like hit a button.

and it embeds them in the MP3 so that they go everywhere along with it, which is, that's cool. Like I was able to create them, but even just things like that, there's a lot of friction to actually get an episode out. So the first thing I started with is like, okay, now I've got Riverside, I've got some editing. What do I do next? And it's like, well, they show a text up, the video and like all this stuff. And you can basically like click a word and delete it, which is really cool.

delete the spaces, the ums and ahs, all these kinds of things. I discovered kind of towards the end, you can basically control individual track volumes so you can kind of auto level everyone's voice because Garrett had his awesome mic. I had my Yeti mic and Kris didn't have his sweet mic set up like he does on this one. You'll notice his voice sounds, you know, bassier and more amazing. Booming. And so Garrett was like, you know, almost a little hot compared to Kris and I. And so being able to

Kristopher Priemer (08:58)
Booming.

John Nunemaker (09:07)
level that out using Riverside was super helpful. Being able to once that was kind of done, the leveling and the cutting out of the things, then it was like, OK, export, you you get an MP3 file. But we recorded with video and we technically could have, you know, exported an MP4 or both. And so seeing how like that editing process goes, that felt like I would say the largest friction I've been tracking my time. And I would say that was definitely ours because it was my first time I've never used Riverside, I've never edited a podcast. So

Garrett (09:18)
in

John Nunemaker (09:36)
It would be way faster the next time. That's what we all think. And so that was some of the friction. So what I ended up doing at the end is I was like, cool, they have a magic, you know, export chapters, summary, description, keywords, all this kind of stuff. So I kind of use theirs and got a transcript and also drop that transcript in chatGPT And I asked, just started probing it with questions like, give me some clips that were good, that were like, many people were laughing, you know, things like that.

And even just from the transcript, it did a really good job of like it picked out like Garrett's quote about like drink your own champagne and how it was like a Donaghy Estates thing from 30 Rock. And I was like, that's actually yeah, that's like the clip of the show. Well done, you know. But yeah, that's that's the friction that I was seeing. And I know Garrett has went through that, too, because you created a podcast. It's been a little little while. But seeing that friction, it's like, OK, what are ideas that we can do to make it faster? You know, like.

Let's upload the MP3 from the beginning. Let's upload the transcript and then if you have it and if you don't, maybe we just AI create a transcript. And then once you have the transcript, you could like auto fill everything else out. Just a suggested thing or you can fill it in yourself. But like just a little bit of workflow, I think in that process would help. And the other thing that really stood out, I'll be curious to hear what you guys think about this after is creating chapters was was

It wasn't painful. It was like new chapter, new chapter, new chapter, new chapter. But I'm like, I have this little file that's like, you know, minutes and you know, chapter name. Why can't I just paste that in a text field or upload the file and then hit a button? Like that's very easy programmatic thing. And I was like, OK, that's it's cool. I'm trying to keep all these notes while I go.

Garrett (11:17)
Mm-hmm.

feel like too, there's a lot of kind of chicken and egg things with a podcast. Like you need the MP3, but then you, you you've to do, you said, the title, the description and all of that. And so you record it and then you're going back. And like, if you don't necessarily do it right after the episode, you almost have to listen to it again to refresh your memory. Like what did we talk about? And things like that. And so it becomes difficult and you're almost just context switching between something audio and something text-based input and

John Nunemaker (11:36)
Yes.

Garrett (11:46)
It's very difficult to really have a flow. think, you know, even after I don't even remember, I did a bunch of episodes for my book and I mean, had to be like 20 ish or something. And I feel like I never really found a workflow yet. And I mean, I was trying to just because I'm always thinking about that kind of stuff. And I just couldn't, it was just in every episode was just slightly different. You know, or you've got to find a picture of your guest or, know, have it. There's just so many.

John Nunemaker (12:01)
Mm.

Garrett (12:14)
I mean, even just coordinating with guests on, you know, here's the time we're going to record. We'll talk like five minutes ahead of time and like handle everything, make sure the audio is all set up. And so being able to send stuff like that to a guest ahead of time, there's so many just little details that are just, you bounce all over the place.

Kristopher Priemer (12:33)
I have either of you. Well, I don't know if you have used one, but it makes me think as I watch again, my YouTube podcasts of having a podcast producer that takes a lot of this out. So they're responsible for that. The pre-work, the follow-up, and then also the editing. And, you know, I, I'd be curious if folks who use fireside, you know, struggle with that and, you know, need someone like that who can do those people. Maybe they're only doing 10 podcasts a year or 20.

but can do all those cumbersome pieces, following up to get the photo, following up to get their approval if needed. I do think there's a lot that has to be done and at some point you're just like, let's just get it out without all those things, but it really makes a better quality product when they're all present.

John Nunemaker (13:21)
So on that, I was just gonna say real quick, when I was at RubyConf last week, one of the people that I talked to, she had a podcast, it was on Fireside, but it's like on Hiatus. And she was like, you know, I just won this package that was like producing of three episodes. And she was like, and so I feel like that's actually super valuable. So I should like come out of Hiatus, record at least three episodes just for that.

Garrett (13:21)
There's ton.

John Nunemaker (13:49)
And so kind of to what you're saying, Kris, it's enough work. Yeah. I think even just people that are currently using fireside, that's just one person, but that's one not statistically significant example of someone who like having help with that production side would have, I think made a big difference. Sorry, go ahead, Garrett.

Garrett (14:06)
No, I mean, I was just saying that, because there's a whole slew of people where that's what they do. And they'll like help basically, you know, kind of a show runner where they handle those logistics and, you do the recording, but then you just pay them to do all the episodes. Obviously we don't want to do that because we're drinking our own champagne. But actually at this point, maybe it's eating dog food, but that we experienced that friction. we're like, this sucks. Let's fix it. Like,

And so many things have evolved, you know, since fireside was created and like just all the tech has come a long ways in terms of what you can do inside of a web browser that historically was much more challenging. And so there's so many ways we can streamline things now, just because it's not incredibly difficult thing to, you know, for.

Drag-and-drop files to inspect them and there's so many apps doing all this stuff with web-based tech now that there's just so much room for improvement.

John Nunemaker (15:04)
Yeah. And I really think that's kind of like a next thing that I'm really interested in is like, how do we just reduce that friction between like, like you said from the beginning, Kris, it's like, how do you now we felt it. How do we take that pain away before we get processes and stuff that kind of take it away for us just to help people get started? I mean, right throughout random ideas, you know, do we have recommended editors or producers like

in the app or on our website, know, or, you know, Kris was like, well, or maybe we have just have that as a service, like we will you give us the tracks, and we'll do the editing the transcription, like we'll just do that for you. So that you don't have to or you know, there's a bunch of different ideas on that front that could help.

Garrett (15:48)
Not personally, because we wouldn't be very good at it.

John Nunemaker (15:51)
No, we

Kristopher Priemer (15:51)
No, we would hire folks to do it, but we would just house it that way. We could control if we're recommending something, we can control the quality and what's being put out there.

John Nunemaker (16:01)
Yeah, which is a great, it's a great idea. Cause again, it's like anything that can reduce the friction I think is the key. And there's definitely friction. Cause what you want to do is you just, you're like, I've got ideas. I know I want to talk about it. I bought a mic. I have a camera. I can pay for Riverside or squad cast or anything else that exists out there. I'm done. And it's like, no, you're not. I mean, we need to cover art. Like Kris, I mean, maybe you talk about even that, how we went through that process.

Kristopher Priemer (16:26)
I mean, yeah, was essentially what I try to do is look up cover art of podcasts that I liked. And I sent it to the group and said, here's some option, here's some inspiration. That's where I typically like to start. And then I think what I, think I did use AI to come up with some subtitles because I was trying to figure out what was the interesting main podcast name, but a subtitle to give it context if someone just stumbles upon it.

And then, you know, came up with three options sent to the group, did some revisions and, you know, it was a process just to come up with that one. And as we talked maybe like five minutes ago, I'm thinking, what about episode one versus episode two? You know, we haven't even thought about that and I didn't think about that until now.

John Nunemaker (17:13)
Yeah, I was thinking about it because I was like, there's an option for episode cover art and it's different than the podcast cover art. And so I thought, I should put that in. And I saw that on Garrett's, you know, starting a sustaining podcast, it does have, you know, that that cover art for each episode. And I was like, yeah. So then I went it was it's silly. But I went to Riverside and I was like, surely Riverside does this. No, like I was just like, even if I just do a three up of us, you know, recording on the video, they show me one. But I mean, I

could not figure out how to just like export a large version of that image. I even inspected the HTML. We're getting dirty here for a second. I went in, I tried to find like a background image or like anything that was like that other than, you know, just taking a screenshot of it with like command shift four on the Mac, you know, and I couldn't, I couldn't find it. And I was like, okay, obviously I need to like search this somewhere or something because it's got to exist. They have the video there. Like there has to be a way to do this.

Kristopher Priemer (18:10)
I mean, even with that, I was wondering, do you take the screenshot, send it to me, dump it in Photoshop, cut out? I don't know what it looks like, but we can cut out the background, plop it on top of the existing artwork, remove all the words, you know, and then put the episodes or the titles on the bottom of each one. I think faces, when I've seen, but again, I watch YouTube, like they do change that cover for each one. And it is typically human based versus design based.

John Nunemaker (18:22)
yeah.

So we all need to make our really crazy like surprised face with like a random finger pointing in.

Kristopher Priemer (18:41)
hahahaha

Garrett (18:42)
I mean, I videos on YouTube. That's what you got to do.

Kristopher Priemer (18:43)
Listen listen!

John Nunemaker (18:46)
Yep. That's funny.

Garrett (18:49)
painfully.

Kristopher Priemer (18:49)
Like, what would you say over the last week, week and a half has been, you know, the one biggest, you know, move forward with what you guys have been working on?

Garrett (18:58)
Go ahead, John. Yours is exciting. Well, guess internal.

John Nunemaker (18:59)
Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I mean, I would say two things. So one is performance. So I've worked on we added some tracking so we could see how the Rails app is responding and all that kind of stuff. So we have a better idea of throughput and things like that. And then just dug in, did things that I've done for a long time and

Garrett (19:05)
performance.

John Nunemaker (19:26)
I was able to. So one of the things that that we do at fireside.fm is we actually have websites for like each, you know, and a lot of the hosts will do this for you. But we have websites for the podcast and then those websites, you know, people visit them, they get rendered and you know, if those are slow, that stinks. So what I did is I was looking at, you know, where I can make the most impact with, you know, the least amount of effort. And I saw basically that was one of the areas in the app. And so

I went through, did my dark magic, which I can talk about some other time and was able to get, we were getting spikes up to three, four second response times and really flattened it out. So I'll add a link in the show notes to various places where I talked about it on on X and blue sky. But that was probably the biggest thing. And then I think the biggest thing for me personally was just like, kind of have the app and the infrastructure all loaded in my head now.

And now I can see exactly what needs to happen to consolidate and simplify, which is what I'm excited about because simple things are easier to iterate on. And so I think I see where some spots where we can consolidate some things, simplify some things and move a little quicker.

Garrett (20:36)
And on my side, it's basically just been upgrading Rails, which for the non-technical folks is the framework that Fireside's built on. And it's a handful of versions behind. so getting current on that helps mitigate the chance for security problems. It gives us some of the new benefits and features of Rails so that we can more easily build things because in earlier versions, you'd have to do a lot more legwork to do

file uploading or background jobs or whatever it is. And in the modern versions, that kind of stuff has been improved and streamlined so that it's more integrated and easier to do. So once we get all of that stuff upgraded Ruby as well, we'll get some almost free performance improvements. We'll have a lot more tools at our disposal to iterate and move faster on improving some of the features and upgrading them. So yeah, it's not the most fun work per se, but

it's going to definitely free us up to do some of the more cool, exciting things we're looking forward to.

Kristopher Priemer (21:33)
Awesome, I think the two things that I was glad to get out the door, one is setting up a new blog platform so that can more easily put up blog posts and publish the first post, whether it is stellar or not is to be determined, but we have it live. So that way we can all, know, write things up, whether it be about podcasting specifically, or about equipment or about episodes from other podcasts that we like.

John Nunemaker (21:47)
Hoorah!

Kristopher Priemer (22:00)
I was glad that we got that out there. And then secondly, had a good conversation with Garrett on doing some black Friday sales. So, I think of that more from the marketing side of how do we interact with our customers more, our trial accounts more, and set up some of that repetitive touch points to make the customer journey a bit more, or I should say less fragmented. And so as we go through the next week, week and a half, we can chat about how that went, what we did.

and how we might do it better next time.

John Nunemaker (22:31)
that'll be fun to follow up on, know, things like that where it's like, we tried a thing and then a couple of weeks later, we'd be like, it totally didn't work or it did work or stuff like that. I think that'll be great. So yeah, it's been a good, a good couple of weeks since the last episode. Again, I think once we get a little better, we'll get even more cadence. Like I think our goal would be like weekly. But I think we're realizing, and this is probably what a lot of podcasters already know, if you don't put it on the calendar, it just does not happen.

Kristopher Priemer (22:39)
Mm-hmm.

John Nunemaker (22:58)
And it's a really fascinating thing. But you're like, yeah, we'll talk Tuesday. But if you don't actually schedule it, you don't block out that time. Tuesday comes and goes or Thursday comes and goes. So yeah, that'll be a very interesting one going forward. It's like making sure we get it on the calendar, make sure we cover these things back up and do all those production style things that are not necessarily natural to us of, you know, saying, OK, let's go through the last episode. What do we talk about for following up or have a notes file that we add as we go and

and keep track of that stuff for the next episode so we can actually follow up on them.

Garrett (23:31)
I think what we need to build is continuous integration, continuous deployment for podcast episodes.

John Nunemaker (23:36)
That's exactly it. Yup. Bring some software techniques in.

Garrett (23:40)
have no idea what that would look like, but I'm just thinking about like publishing, like nowadays releasing an update for an app. It's streamlined, it's clean, it's got all the checks. So like if you break something, it's going to stop. And so it's like, Hey, you forgot the transcript, which is easy to do because you forget to upload it and you're getting bogged down and like the cover art or whatever else. So it could almost be like, you know, the checklist and then it's like, all right, cool. Now it's published.

John Nunemaker (23:57)
Mmm, yeah.

That's really cool. We have that a little bit at the top right now, which I know you built a couple years ago, but it's like, you know, this is a private, know, this is MP3 is whatever, like it says a couple of those things. I love that idea of putting transcript and some other things there.

Garrett (24:21)
Yeah, or just have like a centralized checklist at the top that has everything that you would want to make sure you do before you actually hit publish. And I don't know, there's, there's maybe some concepts we could pull over from, from that. Cause it's a lot easier to deploy this ginormous app than it is to publish a podcast episode. And I feel like the app is probably a touch more complicated overall.

John Nunemaker (24:29)
Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

Definitely is. I think that's something we can help with.

Awesome. Anything else?

Kristopher Priemer (24:49)
If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe at fireside.fm.