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This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, May 15th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson.
And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How you doing, Seth?
Good. I'm just, I can't believe it's mid-May. I'm just shocked.
Yeah. It's, as you can hear in the background, there's a celebration
been going on in my house, mid May celebration is something I'll yeah. I man, time is like, uh,
distorting right now. I feel like, like the days feel super long, but the months are just kind of like a blur. I have.
Yeah, it's not like I'm doing any additional like things different.
I don't know.
It just maybe it's because everybody else around me is paused as well.
My wife has been working from home.
She's still working from home.
Like my daughter is not going to daycare.
So maybe it's that part.
I don't know. But it definitely feels like the days have been long and the weeks have been compressed and short
and the months have just been flying by. Yeah, no doubt. So speaking of long days, Jason, I
understand you have a new role there in your company, taking on new responsibilities, it sounds
like. I do. Yeah. Yeah. We recently transitioned. I recently transitioned, I should say, over
from Director of Partner Development was my title before. I'm now Director of Product at
OneVision, and we're excited about that. It's been a move that we've been talking about for
quite a while, well over a year. We certainly think of our, you know, we're very much in the
services business when it comes to our partnerships with integrators and not by any stretch a
traditional software company, although we have a lot of technology and software as part of the
platform. But we, you know, I've long been interested in the world of product management, product development.
And we really think it makes sense to sort of take a look at our platform from that perspective, you know, and use a lot of those best practices from the world of product management. And, yeah, so this was a transition that we've had planned for quite a while.
And I've moved into that role several weeks ago.
And it's been a lot of fun. It is definitely something I'm really passionate about. So I've, I've moved into that role, uh, several weeks ago and, uh, it's been a
lot of fun. It is definitely something I'm really passionate about. So I'm super excited to have the
opportunity. Yeah. So like looking at the entire offering as a, as a single, as a single idea,
single, like I'm, I'm sure that you have like front and back end services that kind of flow
into one thing that you can call what, what you guys do at One Vision, right? Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
Yeah. We've got, you know, we've got our, One Vision, right? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
We've got our support, the white label 24-7 support. We've got our marketing where we do
landing pages and email campaigns and payment processing and subscription management for our
partners. We've got partner development, which is kind of the change management, training,
onboarding, customer success arm. And of course, all of these departments are developing
and evolving at a fast pace. And so we really realized that we needed a kind of one layer up
cohesive management. Like you said, how are we thinking about this platform? How are we
taking feedback from the field and really incorporating that in a cohesive way and
making sure that everybody across all of our different departments,
you know, we're, I think about a 45 person company at this point. So we are at a size now where
it's pretty critical that you make sure everybody kind of has a shared understanding of what the
outcomes are that we need to be thinking about and is keeping those in mind as you make day-to-day,
week-to-week and month-to-month decisions about priorities.
I like one of the things you said there. It kind of flows into your project management background and doing project management. One of the things that I always tried to do and never was very
successful at doing, but I definitely tried, was was using the the feedback uh that the
feedback loop right like so you do your product you you do your project you complete it supposedly
complete i'm putting completed like i'm putting my air quotes because everyone knows that no
integration company can ever complete a project and then like you take the feedback that comes
from that whether it be from the guys in the field that did the project, whether it comes from the customer and you kind of try and roll that, those experiences somehow formalize
them and roll them into the next project and, and create like an ever involved evolving type, uh,
um, product management type system where the mistakes that you make on product project.
Number one, don't get transferred over to project number two.
At least that was the goal. That was the goal. That's a good goal. That's a good goal. Yeah, you want to get a little bit better on every project. And that's actually one of our core
values as a company, in fact, is mistakes are okay as long as you learn from them, own them, don't repeat them.
Going out and making mistakes is good. In fact, I did an article in Residential Systems recently with just a few of these sort of best practices from product management that we've been talking
about a lot and thinking about a lot lately. And one of them is this adage that it's kind of
become a truism now for modern product teams.
It's certainly not a new or novel idea in the world of product, but it's the idea of fail fast, embrace failure, really figure out how to make that part of your DNA.
Because it sounds cliched to say, but, but truly we're all guilty of it. We have a new,
a new thing we want to bring to market and we, it takes us forever. And we're so slow to get it out
there because we're afraid of having something out there that that's not totally perfect. And
honestly, the, you know, the, the best features and best solutions that you develop are very
rarely version one, uh, you know, version two, version three,
that's always where the big insights and the big breakthroughs, uh, in my experience tend to come.
So getting, getting out there and making mistakes and learning, learning how to learn from them is
there, there's actually an art, an art to that. Right. Right. And, and, you know, translating
this over to like integration businesses like nobody's perfect.
You aren't perfect. I have worked for a couple of guys who thought they were perfect.
And that that attitude definitely can be good in some respects. Right. Like it can be good to be kind of cocky and realize like at least at least in some like maybe some sales situations that could be a good attitude to have um but when it comes to like repeating mistakes repeatedly and never being able to fix them because you're right that
that that becomes a problem so it's always cardinal sin it's always a good thing to look out for yeah
don't don't repeat the problems they're just not good that's right yeah greg posted in the chat
room here project project managers so not product but project manager's job is to put themselves out
of a job by completing the project which is funny and. And to an extent, I agree with it. But what's interesting is,
I think that one of the things that I know as a former integrator still challenges the industry
like crazy is that as home tech pros, we're very much unlike a drywaller, painter,
or even an electrician.
Like so many of these other trades,
there's this very clear, easy to delineate finish line
where the project is actually done.
And in technology, it's much more muddy and gray
as to when it's done.
And I would argue almost that to an extent, it's much more muddy and gray as to when it's done. And I would argue almost that to
an extent it's never done. It's a living, breathing system more than any other system in the home,
I would argue. And so actually thinking about your work, if you're an integrator, as a product,
more so than a project, it's an interesting framework because you put these
systems out into a client's home and you've got to support them then for life.
And so applying these sort of best practices of constant kind of iteration and improvement,
there's some really interesting takeaways there that I think no matter what part of
the industry you work in,
there's some good stuff here. I might push back a little bit on the projects being complete,
because I think projects like, well, stages can be complete, right? Because like,
I think what you what you're talking about is, again, the like the feedback loop and the iteration of a product, a project's lifecycle, like, yeah, it may never be done, but the phases
can get done so like
rough in gets done you kind of know when your rough and gets done um and and you can take the
feedback from the guys like hey you didn't mark like this always happened to me you didn't mark
the thing on the the floor right so i didn't know where to put that wire you know like that that was
the the symbols like i would always go out and write these little symbols and i thought they
made sense to me but then like they didn't make sense to the guys out in the field. So they'd call me up and like, they'd take
a picture. I was like, what the heck is this? I'm like, well, you know, I, I sent you out there with
like this map floor plan and you know, it had a symbol that looked like that. And I drew it on
the floor and they're like, Oh, can't you, can't you just write like TV instead of this elaborate,
uh, sketch and, uh, that you've drawn on the floor.
I'm like, yeah, I can do that next time.
So like, I think that those,
those like those,
if you think of like having a customer
or having a project as like,
and even as a homeowner,
having a home like as a project in of itself,
like yes, those things never will finish
and you will always have an open project to complete by having that feedback loop coming back in. My system's not
working today. Well, okay. That that's part of the project as well. Like, but I, I, I think it's,
I think one of the biggest things that we do have a problem with, and I will agree with you there
is like the integrators can't tend to have a problem. And we always did. Uh, they tend to have a problem of, of not knowing
when that all the check boxes have been checked off and, and when the check boxes that, that have
been paid for have been checked off. Right. And there certainly become like at the end of that
project, there certainly become a bunch of check boxes that, uh, the customer starts adding on.
Uh, if, and if you get in there a little too late,
we banned Friday installs for this very reason.
No installs on Friday.
You know why?
Because inevitably you'd get one TV up and going, right?
The family room TV.
You'd get that one up and going for the weekend.
And over the weekend,
the client had time to find out everything
that was wrong about the system
and make up another checklist for you to go through
before you were able to finish the project on Monday.
So we banned Friday.
Friday was out.
If you wanted to get installed on Friday, too bad.
No, as a company, we just would not do that.
It was reserved for something else.
There were other reasons we did that too
because you can't buy things on Friday
to get back out to the, you have to go back on Saturday.
So there's many reasons never to have installs on Friday, but this was definitely one of them where if you left
the system in half working order in an unexpected, you know, improv way, the customer would always
come back on Monday and be like, I don't really like how this works, blah, blah, blah. And you'd
have to spend longer time defending, you know, that kind of like adds that less confidence in your work type thing to their mind.
And it just kind of like needles in there.
So it's a conversation or a situation you just want to avoid.
And yeah, getting over the line can be done.
It just you have to you have to draw that line hard in the
sand. Um, yeah, when the drywall is up, that line is, is definitely a full featured line,
but I think that it's, it's up to the integrator and the salesperson and the people working in the,
in the field to say, well, this is, this is when our project does stop, but we will be happy to
add those, those, that piece on, but it's, you know, set expectations, all sorts of stuff.
Yeah. They go along with, with getting those other check boxes done.
Yeah.
I mean, I, I, I agree with you completely.
And I, I certainly was not trying to imply that, um, it's never done sort of throw your
hands up and accept it.
Right.
Um, but.
Well, some, some guys do that, right.
Uh, which is, which is unfortunate.
I think that the analogy I like to use is if you're a homeowner and you
just had a, maybe you just built a new house or you just had a big remodel done, you can walk
around the house. And like, if you go turn on every sink and water comes out and you can flush
every toilet, then the plumber's done. If you can walk up to every light switch and turn on the
lights and plug a device into every outlet and power comes on, then the electrician's done.
If you walk into every room and the walls are the color that you expect them to be, then the painter's done.
There are very clear ways to tell.
Now imagine that you're a homeowner and you sit down in your media room and you pick up the remote and the TV's hanging on the wall. You use the remote,
you turn on the TV, but you go to log in, you go to watch your favorite show on Hulu and the Hulu
app isn't installed. Or you turn on the show and then you want to play the sound in the kitchen
speakers, but you can't because you forgot, sidebar, that you value engineered that out of
the system eight months ago, right? Or whatever the
case may be, like in the client's mind now, it's, this isn't done. And Greg is a hundred percent
right in the chat room. Clear scope is one of the biggest ways that you can avoid this.
And too many people I've seen confuse a proposal with a scope of work and the scope should be very
easy to understand. And in plain English, what's the functionality that you bought? But anyways, all of this is to say that ultimately,
I would argue the hardest part of the job is to, at some point, get that clarity with your client
about, we are now done, and we are moving into service and then
providing that service of course in a way that's sustainable and profitable and all of that's a
whole separate conversation but there are some interesting parallels here i'll i'm going to share
a uh a screenshot and i'll share a link to an article as well in the chat room. There's this concept from software
called day zero, day one, day two.
And the central sort of gist of this is
as everything's kind of gone to the cloud,
day two, you can see is where you get into
this sort of iterative feedback loop
where it's just, there's this constant,
day two is after everything is deployed,
right? And that's where you get into the most complexity and you've got to keep everything
iterating and maintained and online and working. And too many companies are focused on day zero
and day one, and they kind of treat day two as like this sort of necessary evil instead of
treating it like, hey, this is something we really need to
bear down on and get serious about. Oh, yeah. And this definitely
articulates that. This is a pretty good, nice little drawing of how that like everything kind
of phases in over time. And then, yeah, customer service starts on day two. Forget about that one.
You always forget about that one, customer service.
Like, oh, yeah, we have to explain to people how this works, right?
Yeah, there's going to be issues that come up.
They have to get fixed.
Yeah, that's all that comes from day two on.
Well, my wife has now decided to vacuum the kitchen above me.
So if some of that's coming through in my recording, I apologize.
Thin walls here. But anyways, no, these are great, great conversations. And again, I think that
no matter what industry or, you know, even if you're not in the home tech industry,
no matter what industry you're in, or if you are, no matter what, where you sit in the industry,
there are really interesting principles
from the world of product management that I think apply really well universally.
Yeah.
So that term product management, of course, most people associate it with software development
these days.
But yeah, it's a really interesting, really rich area of study.
And I love being a student of it and the fact that i
now get to do that uh full time for my job is uh just an amazing opportunity it's embarrassing like
this is this is what i do every day like and i i don't i mean i don't take some of this stuff
seriously like well because like it's i'm a one-man show in some respects but at the same time
um we all have our we're a smaller company we all have our, we're a smaller company, we all have
our little roles that we play. So like, I know that if I need QA done, I send it to this person,
I know if I need testing, I send it to this person. And if I have any questions about like,
what a dealer installer is going to run into, I'll send software to this person. So it's,
it, it kind of works for us. But we but we're definitely like what you were saying before,
we're definitely in the software business and like, because we, all of our stuff's online,
we have an online store. Like, I forget that I have to maintain that too. Right. So like
the credit cards have to get processed. Right. So like, you know, if the server is down,
which it doesn't go down, it doesn't go down. That's a trick. Um, let's get that straight.
Yeah. It does not go down. Not anymore. We used to have problems. Not anymore. I doesn't go down. That's a trick. Um, let's get that straight. Yeah. It does not go
down. Not anymore. We used to have problems. Not anymore. I've got them fixed. Um, so yeah,
the web, the website is always up. Um, but yeah, if there's no website, there's no orders and
there's no orders, there's no money coming in. You know, it just, it basically flows no paycheck.
So, um, yeah, it, it, it's, it's one of those things like everything that, um, we do definitely comes from, it comes from the software thing. I probably need to start
looking into the software life cycle too, and, uh, seeing how I can apply some of that stuff to my,
my trade as well. It's fun stuff. Yeah, for sure. Cool. Uh, well, what do you say, Seth,
jump into some home tech headlines. Yep, let's do it.
Wink upset customers last week with the announcement of a new surprise subscription service that will be required to use the Wink product going forward.
Wink, which was not a subscription service when customers purchased the product at the time, said it would give customers, get this Seth, a whopping one week grace period before changing
to a subscription or before charging a subscription fee. As of this week, Wink has announced that it
will extend the grace period for another week. How gracious. Giving customers till May 20th
to pull the trigger. The subscription fees were originally set to kick in on May 13th. Today, as we record.
Yeah. And incidentally, Seth, I think, and I legitimately didn't connect these dots until
right this moment. Perfect corollary here to what we were just talking about.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
A company that was focused on day zero and day one and kind of forgot that like supporting and maintaining a platform
like this, uh, for the long run is complicated and expensive and is now having to, you know,
try to figure out a model to, to stay viable. Um, and they're, they're an extreme case. Obviously
Wink has been on the ropes for a while, but, um, really interesting to think about.
Yeah. Yeah. No, super, super, uh, super, super interesting.
The, uh, it's, what's funny is a friend of the show. Um, Tony, uh, I don't know his last name,
Tony something just has Tony in Indianapolis was contacting me on Twitter. He just sent me a wink
version one hub for the, uh, for the museum. So I gave him a shout on Twitter, but I do want to
give a shout outout on the show.
The collection grows.
Yeah, the collection grows.
I love it.
He offered a Staples Connect version, too,
but guess what?
I already had one.
It was already pristine in the box, untouched.
Staples Connect version, too.
Beautiful.
Yeah, yeah, this is wild.
It is kind of funny.
We were kind of just talking about that,
and this is the first story we talk about. Yeah. It does flow into that because yeah, you, you release something,
a $70 hub. Uh, and what happens when you don't take over the world and the sales start to slow
and maybe you, your product company changes hands three or four times and now you're owned by will. I am like what happens to the product at that point? And yeah,
you, you,
you're now your $70 hub that you've bought is going to cost you another $60 a
year. And, and while like, honestly,
if I was a Wink customer and I liked their product and I kind of like all
things said, understood kind of where they were,
this is the way to like support the company, right? Like this is, that's what I would think,
like $5 a month, not bad. I pay more in coffee than $5 per month. So like, yeah, it's not
into the world if I had to pay 60 bucks a year for something like this but um at the same time i i don't want it to go i don't
want the company to go away right because we should have some longevity to it because from
what i understand it was i think i used a couple of their projects but like people who used it did
like it so this will be uh asking those people in in kind of a painful way in the middle of a
pandemic to uh put their money where
their mouth is and pony up some money, pony up five bucks a month to keep the company afloat.
I don't see them. I mean, there's definitely no way that they're going to keep Wink going if
they aren't getting income coming to the company to keep it progressing and improving and that
kind of thing. You have to have some type of income stream. Yeah. Yeah. Anthony says worth, worth the $5 a month to not have to sort of buy all your gear
again or redo your system. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, I, I mean, pretty clear $5 a month is,
it's not the dollar amount here that, that has people up in arms, I would assume, at least. By and large, this just wasn't
handled tactfully. I mean, I just don't think you can give people a one-week notice, even if it's
only $5. You got to handle it more graciously than that. And I suspect that a lot of this is
psychological, because there's no rational reason why I shouldn't, I maybe,
maybe that's too strong. I, I, I get that, you know, money can be tight for people, but I just,
I have a hard time imagining that a lot of people are really up in arms because of the dollar
amount. It's a very negligible monthly fee, but everybody has expectations and the expectations around wink are
it's a cheap hub and there's no subscription and so you just you go pull the rug out from
other people and of course there's going to be backlash right right i so if if you're five dollars
a month six months from now it doesn't bring you features, it doesn't bring you, you know,
a substantially improved app, you know, if your $5 a month doesn't doesn't start doing that for
you and improving on and building on the product that they have, then maybe it's start, it's time
to start looking for something else. Because then, you know, a couple months from now, you know,
say you spend $30 more than the the 70 you you dropped 100 whole dollars on
your wink at that point like it it might be time to to to look into something else and moving over
matthew matthew is is saying uh look at hubitat you know we talked to those guys on the show
as well maybe moving all the devices over and your automations over to that. We talked to SmartThings last week.
Home Assistant.
I'm sorry.
We talked to Home Assistant last week.
That might be a good platform as well.
So it's tough, though.
I can totally understand why they would need to do this.
Honestly, I don't understand the backlash.
But I guess it's over maybe the time frame having a week they probably should have given everybody 30 days heads
up and said well i you know i i think there's there's all there's going to be a vocal minority
here who are going to be up in arms probably no matter what like even if wink had come out with
a 90 day heads up, there would still
be a vocal minority, uh, shouting and kicking and screaming about this. But I suspect the big fat
middle of the bell curve are probably people who are looking at this and going like, Oh, this just
feels icky. Like a week, really? Like I just, that wouldn't sit well with me. I'm with you, Seth. If I really loved Wink, I would,
I would pay the money in hopes that it would help them remain viable. But I think given Wink's
history, and like I said earlier, I mean, they've been on the ropes. There's been questions about
their viability for so long now that, that this could very well just have the opposite effect where people are going to say like
okay this is the uh you know this is the death throes of wink and now's the time to start uh
figuring out a plan b yeah i wasn't already thinking that i mean i mean i was already
thinking that that this is the death throes when this came across our radar. And oddly enough, uh, the way we recorded
the interview last week was a week before we made a joke about wing being out of business.
By the time we, this, the interview went live, uh, during that interview, two weeks later,
uh, the day after the show, we, we recorded our show and edited things down. This came out. So
it's kind of, it was kind of funny timing and that, that we were joking about week's demise and then they sent this out. So immediately I thought, yeah, this is,
this feels like a desperate move. They need cash coming in, in the next 10 days. And to do that,
they're going to start charging people $5 a month to keep their automation on.
Right.
No, it doesn't look good. Yes. It's a little bit of money. And I guarantee you that the vast, vast majority of that middle or even the vocal minority that is complaining online do not even own Wink equipment.
I guarantee you.
Sadly, you're probably right.
It's just people complaining to complain.
And if you are a Wink customer, the writing may or may not be on the wall
if you do like the product you do like your app you do like the organization
the five dollars is going to be you know the tax for keeping them alive because they didn't win
out the home automation you know war with their hub they they they were up against companies like
oh i don't know apple who put a hub in every single phone
that they shipped. Or, you know, Amazon, who decided to release, in the interim, decided to
release this magical box you could talk to that would randomly work and call up to the cloud
for hundreds of milliseconds later, give you a light that turns on, maybe or may not turn on.
So they weren't thinking
that all this was going to happen when they came up with the $70 a month thing, I'm sure. And,
you know, now they've got to figure out how to make the company move forward and keep continuing.
I don't know if this $5 a month is going to save them. I have no idea, no idea what their
financials are. But if I was a Wink and I, I love the product, I like what it did $5 a month. It would definitely be worth it for me. It would definitely,
I think they, like the chat room pointed out, uh, it would definitely be worth, uh, not,
not having to redo all my gear. I just, just keep it working. I don't care. I'm not changing this
right now. So $5 here, here, half $10. I would pay 10 bucks.
Well, some great dialogue in the chat room here, people pointing out, you know, if this,
then that integration for a garage door, uh, apparently they were charging something like
$10 a year. There was still an uproar there. Uh, Matthew says, sadly, people having to pay
for something free is, is auto backlash regardless. Um, and regardless. I totally agree. I think we'll move on from this
story, but it was said to me once, and this always stuck with me, that one of the hardest
parts about business is that you're always competing with people who are going out of
business. Wink very much came along in that heyday of everyone else, like you talked about, where
it was just this, we talk about it like it's ancient history, but you know, this has only
been over the last five years, like just this hub mania and low, low prices. And a lot of this is
still going on. And there's just so much of a question mark around, are these businesses viable in the long run?
And what does that mean for consumers?
So really interesting case study here.
Well, speaking of financials, interesting case studies, which will you know, a master's degree write-up. Emerald Holding
has released their 2020 fiscal first quarter financial results and the organization makes
no bones about it. It has been hit and hit very hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Emerald, of course, is the company, the show company that holds the CDA trade
show, which is kind of why this is coming up in our, uh, conversations here.
And the company announced that in the first quarter of physical 2020, the period ending
in March 31st, uh, sales declined 27.4% to $99.7 million.
Wow. And the company had the biggest net loss in its history, losing $570.1
million. Crazy numbers to look at here. Yeah. Yeah. This is from a strategy,
a Ted Green site, and you really feel for these companies, you know,? This is really affecting real people, and real people are really suffering
because of this. I mean, these are really rough numbers. He says the numbers are pretty sobering.
Emerald reported that revenues in the first quarter of fiscal 2020, again, came in at 99.7
million. This is 27.4 lower than the first quarter of last year. And he goes on to
say, let's see, Emerald reported a net loss of 571 million way off their profit of 26.5 million
this quarter a year ago. So from a profit of 26.5 in Q1 of last year to a loss of 570 million in Q1 of this
year. So staggering numbers here. And I don't want to contribute to the problem by speculating about
what's going to happen in September, but it's for CDF or our channel, but that's just one trade show. Yes. And they,
their whole business is in trade shows and, and it's just,
you have these industries like events and travel and entertainment and all
these industries that are just being decimated by,
by this virus.
And so it's certainly something to be thankful for.
I think for those of us in the home technology business, at least what I'm seeing and what I'm experiencing directly is that most of us are still gainfully employed and staying
pretty busy.
There's all sorts of question marks about the slowdown and
what six months from now look like. But for now, you know, we're all still busy and we're all still
working. And just reading this makes me grateful for that. Yeah, absolutely. I saw that they had
to let go 18% of their staff, I believe, 18%. And they cut back on expenses, extreme. I mean,
that was kind of the first things that every business did, I think And they cut back on expenses, extreme. I mean, that was kind of one of the first things
that every business did, I think, was cut back expenses.
These guys have a bigger road ahead of them.
I think they also took a $40 million loan
just to kind of float things along
for the foreseeable future.
But you're right.
The losses, this loss, this losses that they are showing come from just the cancellation of a couple events in the first quarter for this company. They've canceled everything for the first half of the year. And the question mark is, is the rest of the year, when they have the vast year. So all, what does that come down to?
60 or something in the last part of the year, including the CDHL.
So we'll be interesting to see what happens.
I have no idea.
I know that there's very little interest that I've come across from people who are willing to go.
Of course, we had the story last week that Crestron was going to show up with the booth this year. And that's interesting. One of the things, one of
the notes I will say at the bottom of this is there's a big question about insurance. And will
the insurance hold up and pay for some of this? They do have cancellation policies. Like if they
have to cancel a show, they do have insurance for that um because why wouldn't you but the question now becomes to the will the insurance be able to pay
yeah are those companies solvent yeah yeah well they're insurance companies but the question is
is like will they will they pay for will they will they pay for a show like let's let's put
cd as an example because i think he did in the story. Say Colorado is kind of opened up for business, so to speak, in September.
And Emerald decides due to the lack of attendance, they're just going to cancel the show.
What happens?
Will the insurance company actually let them cancel?
And that will come down to being a big yes or no.
How will they be able to navigate that?
Jason, one thing I think that we're both probably grateful
is we don't have to worry about this too much.
But man, I do feel for these companies
because they are going to go through
and continue to go through a tough time
in the foreseeable future.
I mean, as far as I can see, five, 10 years,
companies like this are
going to have troubles getting 20, 30,000 people back into a building. Yeah. Yep. It is, uh,
really a lot to think about there. I saw Apple's, um, you know, released their plans to do their
developer conference, all virtual. Yep. Um, and I, I suspect we're going to see a ton more of that.
Not, not, not exactly going out on a ton more of that. Not, not, not exactly
going out on a limb by saying that. Infocom is all, I'm getting notices now to do sign up for
Infocom virtual stuff. So yeah, it's, it's looks like that's going to be the way forward for the
time being. And you know, there, there was a lot of discussion around the social aspects of,
of, uh, of the show and I, you know, we certainly partook in those, right?
Like we had the Home Tech Happy Hours
a couple of times,
a handful of times.
And we'd love to have those again,
meet up with everybody
and have a couple of drinks.
But when will we be able
to get back to a show
and do something like that again?
I don't know.
That will be missed.
That will probably be more missed
than having to trudge around
and show floor and shake hands. No question. No question. All right. Well, moving on here.
What are your clients doing at home during the novel coronavirus lockdown? Apparently,
they're listening to a whole lot of music. This from CE Pro. That's the word from Sonos,
which revealed that among the 10 million homes worldwide in which it has devices,
listening hours increased by 32% in March and get this a whopping 48% in April as consumers are stuck in their homes during the lockdown.
That's quite a big uptick.
Not bad.
I can tell you, I mean, we've been listening to more music here but i i think it's
more attributed to the fact that we are actually home and not at work during those hours so
um yeah interesting that it's up almost 50 in april yeah wow unfortunately this is all
rolled in with a lot of rough news from sonos as well. Their Q2 report showed revenues fell 17%.
Despite a rough Q2,
their CEO Spence is upbeat
about the achievements from the company.
They've released several new products.
You know, listening hours,
obviously a good sign of engagement,
but yeah, they're getting hit
just like everybody else by this slowdown in terms of
their overall sales and revenues. So kind of a mixed bag here for them. I can tell you from our
standpoint, there was definitely a stumbling point. It feels like everybody kind of stumbled, but
man, our guys are all back to work. So I don't know. I can tell you this month has been a really
good month compared to last month. So it seems like things may be getting back on track for that.
I don't know. I'm sure it's heavily region dependent and country dependent, depending on
how bad you're being hit with this. But it seems, it seems, I don't know, we we've been seeing
some orders come through. We're just like, who's out there doing this? You know, it's like,
right. Somebody decided to pull the trigger on something big and there it goes. Okay. Wow. That's,
that's crazy. So it's been, it's been a good month this month, but you know, last month and
the month before we're definitely like stumbling blocks, you know, where you're just like, yeah.
Well, another interesting, uh, separate, but, but related to Sonos as well, a separate note, um, kind of going to sound like a broken record here, but I actually just went back in my head again to day one, day two conversation, right?
Because we've seen Sonos now coming out with their radio service.
There's been a lot of conversation.
We've had some sort of surface level dialogue on this show about does Sonos try
to get into services and more of a recurring revenue model? Again, they're very much a company
that's been focused on one-time hardware sales since their inception. And is that model sustainable?
Again, I think you keep coming back to that question as you look at the landscape and
it's an interesting one because then on the other side,
you've got subscription fatigue and everybody getting, you know,
so many monthly charges now at what point does that become a factor?
And it's a complex challenge.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I guarantee you there's more,
I guarantee you there's more margin built into Sonos products than there was a
$70 Wink Hub.
Oh, 100%. Maybe more than 100%,
Jason. There's a lot more margin built into those products. So they were definitely selling them,
or are selling them at a premium. But the question is, what happens when you have
saturated your entire market, right? Like what happens when there's,
there's no one else to sell to, um, and sales start falling off because of that. Well,
you've got product out there that's been last that's lasted 10 years and you can't kill it.
Like you literally have to send a kill code to it to kill it. Um, that, that, that becomes a,
an odd problem to have and stumble through, uh, at the end of last year. So it will, it'll be interesting
to see. I think there'll be okay for the short term. It's definitely a good product and they're
coming out with new product lines. So yeah, no, this doesn't strike me as an existential problem
right now for Sonos, but it is interesting to see as they've released Sonos radio and
conversations start to pick up about where they're going to go next in terms of, of services. Um, I, I just continue to think about that,
that recurring model is something that every, everybody's got to sort of grapple with in their
own way. I tried, I tried listening to that Sonos radio. What's the verdict. It's, it's not great.
It's not great. I mean, it's, it's perfect's perfect for, and this is where I really think it's going, it's perfect for a department store. It's perfect for a hair salon. It's perfect for
a small business that needs some music put into it. But man, it's not great. Not very fun to
listen to, that's for sure. Google's streamlined Nest Aware service is finally rolling out in 19 markets several months after it was first announced.
As of this week, you can now pay $60 per year or $6 per month to provide 30 days of event video history for all your Nest security devices instead of paying per camera.
Pay $120 per year or $12 per month.
And Nest Aware Plus will both double the event history to 60 days and offer 10 days of 24-7 history.
Got it.
It sounds like to me they have moved,
Nest has moved from a simple, you know,
cellular thermostat cameras here and there to like a
complex cable comcast cable model here i'm so confused by this is this payment program yeah
well i mean my understanding of it is it's largely because before you had to you know
when it was just one or two devices you know you just charge per device but people, you know, they're trying to get people with more and more of these devices.
And so you got to try to simplify that pricing, which appears to be what they're doing here.
This is like the way the ring is set up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Some other interesting things here. It says your Nest speakers and smart displays will let you know
about concerning sounds such as breaking glass, smoke alarm. So they have some awareness there.
And then it also goes on to say, and you can take care of remote relatives if they have a Nest Hub
Max. Not sure if that's like an aging in place play. That's what it sounds like. Um,
you can switch over to this new subscription. If you're an existing aware customer,
uh, you'll need to migrate your nest account to Google, uh, migrate from a nest account to Google
if you haven't already. Um, and then one other thing that was interesting in this story, Seth is
they're trying to sweeten the pot for newcomers. They've got the Nest Hub price has dropped to 90 from its prior $130. And the indoor Nest Cam is dropping
from 200 to 130. So some significant price drops in the hardware. Yeah. And I really did. I really
did like that Nest Hub. But man, I got to tell you, I've started pulling out these devices left and right. My home pods have left the desk.
They're back in their little boxes up for the museum when Apple.
Is that right?
Yeah, I've taken them off.
They did not integrate well with very much of anything.
And since they only really worked well with Apple Music, once I bored myself of paying for that, like, why bother having them? They sounded great. They
sound much better than the speakers I have here, but I can't make my computer audio play over them
and I can't, you know, do a couple of this. So it is basically just go back to the little
Mackie monitors that I picked up that don't sound, you know, half as good, but I've been pulling
those out and I pulled, we've pretty much pulled all the Amazons out and the Google thing is, yeah, it's in the box as well. So like
the, the world of like voice assistance has, uh, all but gone away other than like Siri on the
phone and your headphones and that kind of thing. Um, we're, we're not playing in that world anymore.
Interesting. Well, more devices for the museum. Yeah. One of these days yeah one of these days one of these days
yeah all right moving on here to our last headline of the week tech analyst john prosser
prosser we'll get to the pronunciation thing later uh tweeted on may 7th that a new Apple TV 4K is ready to ship. This is our first
indication that the timing for a new Apple TV 4K is imminent. If this is accurate, it is a
confirmation that Apple's revamped set-top box will be considerably more powerful than the original
Apple TV 4K, which debuted in 2017 and has not yet received a hardware refresh.
So to quote this tweet word for word says new Apple TV 4K with A12X 64 gigabyte, 128 gigabyte
is ready to ship. Codename Neptune T1125, another one of those that could drop any time.
So anyways, the A12X there is the reference to the processor,
which sounds like it's a pretty powerful powerhouse of a chip. It says this is the processor inside of the 2018 iPad Pro.
So pretty powerful little device here.
Yeah, and a big bump in specs for the Apple TV
if they do indeed ship this.
It will be interesting.
One of the things it points out here
is that it would be good for games
within the Apple TV Arcade subscription
that they have going on, which would be cool.
I tell you, I've bought one of these before.
I've bought the Apple.
I have a 4K Apple TV, right?
And I have the previous generation, which was not 4K, but looked just about the same.
I think it's a little less tall than the 4K.
And the other day, I realized that not on my 4K TV is the regular Apple TV.
It's like forever.
We've been not like the old one.
The,
the one I thought was the old one was the new one.
And it just packed up in a box over and behind me on a shelf.
And we were taking that to like hotels when we traveled.
Do you remember those times?
And the,
it was like a lifetime ago.
Yeah,
I know.
So I was hooking the 4k,
nice 4k Apple TV up to like hotel room TVs,
which.
Oh, how funny. Probably like seven 20 P with auto motion plus turned on and right and then the the not crummy little apple tv has
been serving me well here at the house without me realizing um and until i hooked it up the other
day and i realized like oh this is the new one because i can't tell the difference they're just
little black boxes yeah you need more pixels that's funny i'll have to swap those out one of these days and see if i get a better picture
yeah we've we've got a 4k apple tv and you know when i read this story um for me certainly there's
no reason to go out and pull pull the trigger on this i have no issues with the the performance
or storage space on ours but i I get it. It does appear to
really be aimed at gaming is probably the most compelling use case for this extra processing.
And that's kind of interesting to think about because gaming on these devices is a pretty novel
thing still today. But if you read into this article, and we'll link to it, this particular
one is from Digital Trends. They talk quite a bit about that. And it does seem to be shaping up as
an area of competitive differentiation for many of these companies. So gaming on these set-top
boxes is going to be more and more common. Other thing that this story mentioned that I thought was noteworthy was a kid's mode. Now this, this will very likely not be tied to
the new hardware. This is a software upgrade that will let parents select which apps and content
kids get to use as well as set a maximum amount of screen time per session. So that sounds kind
of cool for, for the parents out there. It sounds like
that may be coming down the pike as well. Yeah. There's, there's very similar services built into
the iPads and phones already. So it's, it's nice to see that kind of brought across the entire
product line to the forgotten stepchild. That is the Apple TV, I guess. Cause it's like literally
gets everything last. That's right. Here you go.
Here's a hand-me-down processor.
Here's a hand-me-down software upgrade that we should have put in there years ago.
That's right.
I'm always glad to see things like this getting hardware bumps because I remember there was a long time that we went with Apple TVs that they just didn't change.
So it's very nice to see them come out and put new hardware out.
Hopefully we see this, uh, soon.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
Well, all the links and topics we've discussed on this week's episode can be found in our
show notes at hometech.fm slash three zero three.
While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter.
We'll send you show reminders and other occasional updates about all the great stuff going on
here in the world of home tech. And don't forget, you could join us live in the
chat room Wednesday, starting sometime between 7 and 7.30 PM Eastern. You can find out more about
that at hometech.fm slash live. All right, Seth, well, we couldn't decide on one pick of the week
this week, so I think we're going to go with two we've got two and one of
them one of them is something that i discovered today that you have known about for i don't know
months that you you turns out you tell me um yeah so i've only known about this for maybe a month
okay i wish i would have known about it a long time ago so zoom Zoom has this annoying feature in it, among many other annoying features. But
one of the most annoying features is that it shows you yourself talking and inevitably your eyes. I
don't know why this happens, but your eyes will wander over and you'll just be staring at yourself
talking. It's the strangest feeling. And I hate it. I hate it. It must go away. Turns out you can
turn that off this whole time. I've been using Zoom. It's, it's, it's been on there. I don't know why I've never clicked the
little button to figure out, uh, how to turn that off. You just hover over your image. You click
the little dot, dot, dot menu thing that has a bunch of stuff under it and say, hide self view
done. Go away, Seth. No more Seth. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of, I mean, it's not, it's not terribly hidden,
but I know that I was looking, I was looking to figure this out. So we use, um, ring central
meetings at work, which is a, uh, which is powered by zoom. It's basically zoom. And so I've been
using that for like three years. I've been battling with this sort of fatigue that comes from just constantly sort
of self-consciously catching yourself, staring at yourself. Uh, I'm on video calls like all day
long. Um, and I finally, somebody at work told me about this and I was just like,
were you going to tell me about this sooner? You know, like, cause it,
interestingly, it only came up because, um, I I've seen several articles talking about this phenomenon called like
zoom fatigue that everyone's experiencing now, where you're like, you're on these video calls
all day. And it's very unnatural because you're looking at a screen with like five, eight, 10,
or more people all staring right back at you, which is not typically, unless you're up
presenting, uh, typically if you're in a meeting, not everybody in the room is just like sitting
right in front of you staring back at you. Right. Right. So, so that's part of it. And then the
other thing that I've seen cited is the fact that, you know, you're, you're kind of looking at
yourself all day. That's, that's pretty unnatural too. So yeah, hide self view.
Found that probably a month ago and I turn it, I turned my self view off on all my meetings now.
I wish, the only thing I wish is that they, that in preferences, you could disable it by default.
That's what I was, I'm like, why is this not a feature? Like they have so many other features
lost in their preferences view like why they need you
know what jason they need a director of product and uh they will amen they will probably have
uh an easier time actually i know zoom is like they they've really i i want to give them a hard
time on this but they have uh really stepped up their game when it comes to like releasing new
stuff and security features they've done a good job of becoming like
they're the king of the hill now so like you gotta you gotta poke a little fun at them right
yeah yeah so like i i'm i i just can't believe this isn't like turn off my self-view like why
is that not in the video preferences that i they have to look at it why haven't i found this little
thing under this random like i don't like looking at myself talk. Why would I ever hover on my picture and look under that menu? Like, why, why would I ever do
that? I'd never have done that. And, uh, there you go. There you go. Three years of this, Jason.
I can't imagine. I can't imagine. You know, it's good to have, if like you're actually doing a
presentation or a webinar and you want to make sure like my camera has different zoom levels and
balance and all that kind of stuff that you can adjust. And so, you know, if you are doing any
sort of formal presentation, obviously it's helpful to be able to, to see yourself and
make sure that everything is as you want it. Um, but once that's all set up, then yeah,
I go ahead and turn it off because it is very distracting.
Absolutely. So, well, we've got one pick of the week. We've got a second pick of the week. Jason, this is you always with the pronunciation. This one is me. And, you know, I am,
I'm not proud of this problem, Seth. I just, I have a terrible time with pronunciation. And so, I don't know, like,
I think you have to have Android for this, Google Lens.
I've looked on the App Store.
I don't think this is an iOS thing.
So I don't know that this is going to help me,
but this is amazing, Seth.
Google Lens, you can now point it at like words
and it'll basically tell you how to pronounce them.
This is made for you.
This is solving a huge problem for me.
We're going to be using this on the show from now on
as like a little cheat sheet.
So you may have here.
Yeah, you'll see me.
Pause and do some robotic voice.
That's right.
Yeah.
It doesn't look like it's available on iOS though.
Oh, it's not like an app.
I think it's like built into Android.
Interesting.
So that's kind of disappointing.
But if you share the problem that I have, go check this out.
Google lens, by the way, sounds really cool.
I like that you can, you can like point it at, I don't know, I'm, I'm kind of a nerd like this. And so I've got, um, kind of an interest in learning more about like the different types of,
uh, trees and birds and stuff around my house.
And it got me to thinking the other day, like if you have a tree in your yard and you want
to know what kind of tree it is, how do you Google that?
Oh, there's an app for that.
I know there is.
There's like a little app.
I will find what app that was.
And like if you hear a bird singing or something
and you want to know what bird it is,
like you can send it off to this service
and it will listen to the bird.
And it'll tell you, yeah, it'll tell you what it was.
Like, oh, that's a chickadee or a cardinal or whatever.
So yeah, yeah.
There is a-
But it does get into this whole other sort of next realm of
of like ai and search because you don't even really think about it but everything
when you google and look up information you've got to have you've got to have the words to describe
what you're looking at right and with something like google lens like it's taking it to that next
level of we don't need that as humans we can look at something and see and say, oh, that's a car.
But when you're looking at something that you don't even have the words to describe, anyways, I'm off the rails now.
But this looks pretty cool.
There is an app for it.
I will try and find it.
And maybe I'll put it in the show notes.
Maybe we'll have it for the Pick the Week next week.
Finding songbirds with the Home Tech podcast.
That's right.
There's like interesting applications for that technology, for sure.
So anyways, maybe it can help me.
Lord knows it's needed.
All right.
Well, if you have any feedback, questions,
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Absolutely. All right, Seth. Well, that'll do it for this week. Fun episode. Enjoyed, uh,
enjoyed sitting down and catching up with you.
Busy week.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, a quick lawn update.
I've got my grass seeds down, fertilized.
I've been on pins and needles.
It's a big pile of mud.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm sure you have been.
It's a big pile of mud outside.
And the reason it's mud is because I have a sprinkler system.
I turned it on and I was thinking,
we were talking about this a little bit in the pre-show,
I need to put my transformer,
I need to find my 24-volt transformer
and I couldn't find it.
Well, Greg had an excellent point.
I think it was Greg had an excellent point in the chat
that a doorbell transformer will work.
And guess what I do have?
A doorbell transformer.
There you go. And I will be using my doorbell transformer to work. And guess what I do have? A doorbell transformer. There you go.
And I will be using my doorbell transformer
to power up my sprinkler system
until I get a ratio or something special
that I can control with an app
to water the mud pile that I have outside
until green grass starts appearing.
Well, Greg, for the win.
Yes, thanks, Greg.
Appreciate it.
Nice.
All right, well well thanks to everyone who
hung out in the chat room this week that was a bunch of fun we had a bunch of folks hanging out
with us uh this week we appreciate it thanks everybody else for tuning in and supporting
the show and seth i hope you have a great weekend yep have a good weekend i will talk to you next
week take care