HomeTech.fm - Episode 352 - A Familiar Voice

Episode Date: May 28, 2021

This week on HomeTech: Jason drops in to to say "hi" and chat about all the new offerings from OneVision, Amazon buys MGM, and Roku has its eyes on the smart home... All this and of course, the pick of the week.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, May 28th from Denver, Colorado. I'm Jason Griffin. And from Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. Jason, it's been a while, man. Yeah, it's good to be back. Yeah, good to see you. Yeah, this is wild. Yeah, a familiar voice for those who may have joined the show for some reason in the past, I don't know, a couple of months. Jason is a former, I guess, maybe interim Home Tech podcast host. Only started with Jason Griffin, that's all. So Jason has some big news that we talked

about a little bit last week on the podcast over there from OneVision. And I said, I know how to get him on the show. I know how to get more information about this program. So I said, hey, you want to come on the show and do the show? And talk about all the stuff you guys are doing at OneVision? Got the thumbs up. And here we are. Yeah, it's great. I'm excited to be here. It's a little trip down uh trip down memory lane and i've been watching what

you've been doing with the show i love that you're doing video now so happy to be with you here on that and um yeah appreciate the opportunity to to come back on no worries anytime anytime so we're doing some some juggling here at the last second, but I think we're going to pull it off. We've done this enough times that I think we can make it through. And there's always the golden gift of editing. Yeah. It's like riding a bike. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right. All right. Well, Jason, what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Yeah. Let's do it. The deal is done. Amazon has bought MGM for $8.45 billion,

a pretty big acquisition for Amazon, who now gets a content library of about 4,000 films and 17,000 hours of television shows. This acquisition is likely to help Amazon attract even more big spending Prime subscribers and expand its Prime video service. So big move here from Amazon. Yeah, I've been seeing a lot of talk about this today. I mean, it's an $8 billion deal. So a lot of people are talking about it. But MGM was up for sale last since like December 2020. So somebody was going to buy it., Amazon gets all of that content for their programs, like for Amazon prime. And that's, that's pretty huge.

Like that's, that's, that's a ton of stuff. It's going to help them really like stay competitive with, uh, with, you know, Disney. I think Disney is like the big one on the block, right? Like everybody is competing with Disney these days. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like at this point that's true. I think Disney is like the big one on the block, right? Like everybody is competing with Disney these days. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like at this point, that's true.

And it'll be interesting, you know, lots of good content there. I wonder what else is sort of behind this deal for them in terms of just, you know, talent and maybe intellectual property beyond just the content. So pretty interesting move. I think you've got a valid note in here that I think is worth pondering. Is this really a bigger story for the movie theaters? As I understand it in the past, studios were not allowed to own distribution. And now that's exactly what Amazon is doing. So they've got this massive studio now. And of course, they've got all of the distribution. So what does that mean for the future of movie theaters? And distribution is an interesting thing to think about.

Yeah, and it's not just Amazon. Disney also is the content producer and the distributor of their products, too. So really, I mean, I don't know how theater is going to survive any of that unless the laws change to where Disney can own a Disney theater and have their Disney products and everything put in there. It's kind of weird, kind of a weird thing. Right. All right, well, moving on here from Protocol. After becoming one of the biggest players in the living room, Roku is now looking at getting into the rest of the home.

The company has plans to expand connected home technology with job listings and a recent hire hinting at products being developed in-house. Roku also may be looking to partner with existing smart home manufacturers. So earlier this year, Roku published and since removed a job listing for director of product management, comma, I love the comma in a title, comma, home technologies. And that position had a description on it that they were trying to get, do expansion into the smart home technology and as a necessity to remain competitive. So they're looking at this to keep people into the Roku house here.

Potential applicants were told that their job duties would be to quote, develop Roku's home technology product strategy and to quote, develop theoku's home technology product strategy and to, quote, develop the company's product roadmap. And just this month, Roku filled this role with the hire Demir. Oh, man, I should have let you had this one, Jason. Demir Skripik. That's all you, buddy. Who joined the company from Amazon. Before that, he worked over for five years. He worked over at TP-Link, working on their CASA smart home unit, as well as smart home security camera maker Arlo.

So this is a pretty interesting development that Roku, the streaming company, is looking to expand their product outside the little $30 streaming devices. Yeah. Yeah, it is interesting. And I know they've made a couple of acquisitions over recent years. They bought a Dynastrom, which brought them into the speaker space. And then in 2019, they bought the property assets of Blackfire, which was a San Francisco area startup specializing in wireless

networking for smart home entertainment products. So yeah, it's hard to say what exactly they see as particularly compelling in their specific case. What do they feel like they can do better in the smart home than everybody else out there? Obviously, a very crowded space. But Roku's been around for a long time. They're a well-established company. They've got a strong foothold in the home with their video products, so it will be interesting to see what they're able to do here. Yeah, absolutely. Roku is one of these companies that has a very subsidized product. If you look around, the ones that are in that $30 to $50 range, it's Amazon, it's Roku.

They're paying for that product some other way. And their business model really needs you to stay with them. And so the more stickiness that they can provide, like if they're just an endpoint for your video, like who cares, you know? But if they're providing the audio in your house and they're turning on and off the lights the way you want, hey, maybe I'm going to stick with Roku and keep giving them my valuable information, private information. Yeah. The way they survive over there.

Right. But good on them. Yeah. Yeah. Like you said, these business models are a little bit hard to wrap your head around. A lot of it's sort of behind the scenes and the data play that a lot of these companies have is really, again, where they make their money. So it's not always immediately obvious how these companies are planning to

monetize and make money with what they're doing. But generally speaking, I guess it's the old adage. They say, if it's free, then you're the product. And I guess you could probably extend that to say if it's dirt cheap, you're also the product. It sounds too good to be true. You're the product. Yeah, when you see these like devices that are so inexpensive, it's very safe to assume they're finding other ways to make money, which presumably involve using your data in some way, shape, or form. And in fairness, some of us are okay with that. We're willing to make that trade-off. You get high quality hardware for a low price. And as long as you understand the trade-off that you're making, that's one thing. The problem, of course, is a lot of people don't realize what's actually happening behind the scenes. we took a vacation to north carolina a week or two ago i can't remember now it's like when you come back from vacation it's just a blur so uh but they had yeah i'm glad you uh made it

home by the way with the gas issues out there it's crazy you got caught up in that wild the uh the the the condo cabin whatever you want to call it. We stayed in, uh, had Roku TVs and like Roku devices plugged in and they're like, you can just use our login. Our password is blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, uh, I don't know about this, but I think I'm just going to use it. I, we, we always bring an Apple TV with us. So we plug that in and we can watch all our stuff. We don't have to log in or anything. So that's what we did. We just plugged it in, turn on a TV show at the end of the night or whatever. Most of the time we did. We just plugged it in, turn on a TV show at the end of the night or whatever. Most of the time we were outside though. Good. Well, that's why you go,

right? Yeah. Yeah. That's the goal anyways. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, speaking of, uh, speaking of making money, there's a reach for that transition there, but speaking of making money, it would have made sense if I had said it when we were talking about Roku making money, but we transitioned to North Carolina in cabins. We've got here the director of product from over at One Vision, Jason Griffin, on the show. And last week, we talked a little bit about these new business services that One Vision was launching for custom integrators.

And Jason, you're here to tell us a little bit more. OneVision started off as kind of like where you could sub out part of your service team, right? First line responders, basically. Yeah, yeah. Essential workers. So going back to when it very first started, so even before my time there, the vision was, hey, we know that integrators out there really struggle with service. Service is obviously a really critical part of any successful integration company, but it's also a significant burden and liability for these companies. So the initial vision was

our founder, Joey Kolchinski, had a company that's still around and still functioning today. It's our legacy business that was basically predicated on providing really high-end service to people who owned smart homes. And they were a little bit different than your traditional integrator in that they really made their money on service and recurring revenue. And so they built out this core competency in providing great service to owners of high-end smart homes. And the idea behind the initial versions of OneVision, which at the time we called the integrator service desk, was basically what you're describing, kind of a white label, tier one support. So for example,

Bob's home technology shop in Chicago could hire OneVision and all of Bob's clients would get a phone number and an email address that they could call in and we would respond to those emails or answer those phone calls in Bob's name. So say, hey, uh, you know, Mr. Client, this is Jason with Bob's home technology. How can I help you? And we would do everything we could to resolve that issue. And if we could, great. If not, we would put all that information into a ticketing system and escalate that

over to the partner. And we still do all of that today. Uh, but as you alluded to, the business has really grown and developed over the years. And we can certainly get into more of that as we move along here. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, and that seems like enough work in and of itself. But I mean, the couple of different things, I mean, we kind of touched on this earlier, but HR and helping with HR and hiring virtual CFO and, and, and leadership development. Those are, those are really like key things in the backend of the office that most integrators that I've worked with most, maybe all have, uh, have had a struggle with, especially like HR and hiring,

like, uh, non-existent, like how do we find somebody? Uh, what, what are they even going to do? And, and maybe even like trying to figure out like what, what they need. And it sounds like that, that alone right there would be, you know, so, so much, so worth it to have somebody else just kind of take that burden off your hands and get started. Yeah. Yeah. HR is a big one and definitely want to get into that just to kind of build a little bit of a bridge from sort of where I started to that, we went through a lot of growth in the early years and sort of figuring out like, all right, this sort of white label tier one support offering is very valuable. We're seeing a lot of traction with that.

What we're realizing is that there's a lot of value being created here. And what we very quickly moved into in the early days was packaging all of that up into premium service plans that we could then go market and sell to the clients of again, like Bob's Home Tech Shop or whatever integration company. And we've got partners all over the country now. And we would do all of the and again, we still do all of this. The landing pages, the email campaigns, the backend payment, subscription management and payment processing.

Everything that you need to do in order to get to a place where you can market and sell recurring revenue service plans is all done turnkey. We do all of that on the backend. And so you couple that with the tier one support offering, and then a lot of partner development services where we do a lot of

hands-on coaching and guidance of how to implement these services and have success with those. That's been the model for us for many years. So expanding out from just the tier one support, becoming a bit more comprehensive in terms of, hey, looking at it as a holistic service offering and how do we make service as a whole profitable entity and part of the company. And that's still really core to what we do. But as you've alluded to, we've also started to expand out into additional services. So HR and hiring being a big one of those, financial bookkeeping. We've sort of formalized the business coaching and things that we do as well. And really the sort of why behind all of that is that we realized as we've grown as a company that many integrators

are out there running amazing businesses all over the country, but there's just so much to keep up with on the backend. And if there's just so much to keep up with on the backend. And if there's an outside partner who can come in and really take a lot of these backend services off of their plate and really be that sort of platform to hold up the backend of the business, that really frees up our partners to go out and focus on what they do best, which is building relationships and doing really awesome installs in markets all over the country. And the more of that sort of backend operational overhead that we can take off of their plates, the more that they can focus on really growing and differentiating their businesses. So it's a

very symbiotic, you know, win-win relationship. And we're really excited about these additional services. Right. Yeah. It makes sense to do this because like, I'm just thinking like all the companies that I've worked for, there was only one that was large enough to actually have an HR person there for a while. And I mean, what a night and day difference it is to have that person on staff where you can say, oh, you know, my paycheck's messed up and you don't have to go over and bug the owner or manager or something like that. Like so they have to stop whatever they're doing. Like it's such a time drain to deal with a lot of this stuff. And if you can sub that out, like just, just the same way that you can do your tier one tech support, uh, it's a great, that's a good thing.

That's a great thing. Yeah. Um, yeah, the HR is a really big one and we, you know, this one grew very organically. So as we were really kind of maturing and developing our focus on the service department, what we realized was a lot of, and this will not be a surprise to any of your listeners, one of the biggest challenges out there consistently in industry study after industry study is, you know, marketing, or I'm sorry, recruiting, hiring, you know, retaining talent within the

company. And so we realized that many of our partners were, you know, we're struggling with this. And we've got, we had a, still have a great individual on our team in Chris Williams, who's a fellow member of our leadership team who comes with a really, really deep background in HR. And so we started kind of experimenting early on with having him work with our partners to do things like write job descriptions, screen candidates, conduct interviews, these sorts of things, mostly focused on that front end of recruiting and hiring and again, retention. And we saw a lot of success with that. Many of our partners took us up on that. And we very quickly expanded that outside of just service. And we said, Hey, if you're

looking for any employee, it doesn't just have to be a service employee, because we really realized that in order for all of us to be successful together, it's not just, you can't look at service in a silo, right? It's part of a very integrated system of, of, of teams and individuals who all have to be working in close concert. And so, yeah, we started expanding that out and doing job descriptions and hiring for all different roles within the company. And that really was a very popular offering as well. And so now we've even expanded that out further and kind of formalized that to include even more HR services. So needs assessment in the organization, compensation analysis, job profiles, hiring, scheduling, you know, all of these things sort of fall into that HR umbrella.

And we're really excited to be able to help our partners with that. Yeah, this comes at a time where we're sitting around staring at each other the other day going, how do we write a job description because we need to hire someone? It's hard. Yeah, it is really hard. I think it's very, you know, I think it's very an underrated skill. I think in the sense that we all know that finding good people in our industry is difficult, but it's not immediately obvious that writing a really good job description with a little bit of personality and life to it is actually almost like a marketing tool for your company to attract good people. And if your job description really stands out and you can make it pop, you'll attract better and more candidates.

And it's not surprising when you think about it, but it's not a muscle that many people flex often, right? As a business owner, maybe you're writing job descriptions, you know, once or twice a year at most. And, and we do it all the time. So we're able to, again, kind of bring in that scale and expertise and really, um, write those job descriptions that kind of help our, our partners stand out, uh, amongst their competition. Well, the second thing I hate to do most is anything that has to do with QuickBooks. And literally, I just, I don't want to deal with QuickBooks. So whenever I was working, I was like, I'll do anything and everything up into the point I have to enter anything into QuickBooks. But this is a virtual CFO who is deeply familiar with the CI channel. So you can

offer standardized models and P&L reporting framework to reflect complexity of supporting both project and service-based business units. This is great. This is really cool. Accounts receivable, payable, expense management, all that stuff. Yeah. I mean, it beats shooting from the hip because that's... Yeah, it sure does. Yeah. I think a lot of people maybe don't... I don't want to paint with too broad strokes. There are plenty of people out there who I'm sure look at bookkeeping this way, but there are many people, I think, who don't recognize that your books, and if you keep those really clean and have a methodical way of approaching those, they can be a very strategic tool that can really help inform

better decision-making in terms of how you run your business. And so this is another one that really developed very organically for us as part of this, again, growth that we were going through and recognizing that the service operation really couldn't be looked at in a vacuum. It had to be looked at as part of a more integrated whole and system. And we started recognizing that it wasn't enough to just focus on generating recurring revenue. Really, the thing to be focusing on that we realized several years ago was overall service profitability. So that's a very important

distinction. And I think one that we want to make sure that integrators out there realize about us is that recurring revenue is great, but having an overall profitable service department is even better. And those two are very closely related, but they're not the same thing. Those are different goals. And so as we started increasing our focus on the overall profitability of the service department, it became very clear that we needed standard ways to sort of measure that and benchmark across different partners. And so we started developing, you know, kind of standardized ways of keeping the P&L and keeping the books and working with partners to really evaluate more accurately and critically

the profitability of the service department. And that really, again, kind of grew very organically into us recognizing that, hey, it's not just about having a good P&L, but overall, there's a lot that goes into keeping clean books. And that's a really powerful thing for a company to be able to execute at. So we're now offering these virtual CFO-level services to our partners. And like you said, this is more than just a partial bookkeeping service. This is really a kind of a CFO level person who can come in and really help you take a more strategic look at how you're keeping your finances in order. And it's not just someone sitting there making sure QuickBooks is updated. It's a lot more involved with that. It looks like accounts receivables in there where you can make sure that you're actually billing out all your, all your projects the way you need to be billing them out.

I mean, that was always a trick. Like every single job we had was it eventually be standardized, but like, it was like, well, how do we, how do we invoice for this? Do we do 30 and 70 or 70, 30, 30? You know, it was, it was every single contract. There was these questions about what was the fair way to invoice this out. And, um, yeah, it took a couple of years, but we, we did figure it out. But, um, a lot of guys, you know, still have, you know, those questions. I see them pop up on forums all the time. How do I invoice these out? What do I do here? Yeah. And like with a lot of these things, there's not like one clear cut right or wrong way to do things. Right. And so in many of these situations, it's not necessarily about wanting or needing a very prescriptive playbook. In a lot of these situations, it's, hey, you know, our partners just kind of need help thinking through this tough decision financially in terms of do I make this investment in, you know, whatever, a new building or stick with what I'm doing or a

new truck or any of these big financial decisions. There's a lot of different ways to look at these problems. And so having an outside person who can come in and really be maybe a bit more objective in terms of how to analyze that and make sure that there aren't any real blind spots in your decision-making process. So again, that kind of strategic layer in terms of financial planning are can be can be really, really helpful. Yeah, definitely. And then and then last one we we touched on briefly, but leadership development is pretty big. Now, I couldn't get from the description of this, and you're gonna have to help me with this. Is this like leadership development of the owner, or does it also include employees in the company, like managers and that kind of thing?

Yeah. So we work with entire teams to implement a comprehensive framework. And so today we work primarily with the EOS, Entrepreneurial Operating System. If you're familiar with that, we've got EOS implementers that kind of a recommended list of EOS implementers that we work with and provide sort of coaching, but really kind of expanding that out and looking beyond just... So it's not just leadership teams, right? We have people on staff who are experts in marketing, in HR, in bookkeeping, in just general management and leadership. And so really, our partners can see us as a general resource on any sort of

business and strategic question that they have. We have people on staff that can handle all of that. But more tactically speaking, we'll help companies implement frameworks around quarterly planning cadences, weekly meeting cadences. How do you bring some structure to that? How do you set priorities within your company? How do you communicate about those? How do you evaluate what different people are doing in the organization? Does your org chart make sense? Do you have clear accountability between individuals on the team? If not, how do we get there? So a lot of it's just about really putting in a structure in place to bring a little bit more sanity to life. And we know that that's a tough thing. You know, we're all like small to medium-sized businesses in this industry. And we're invariably, we're kind of under-resourced and spread thin.

And so being really smart about how you're planning and executing on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis is a lot of what we do on that coaching level and putting in a comprehensive framework to make sure that you're thinking about those things intelligently and not reinventing the wheel. And so that you can put your, your more of your creative energy into problem solving while you put some of these other things like, you know, meeting cadences and stuff like that sort of on autopilot. Yeah, yeah. I'm just sitting here going, man, I wish all this existed when I was an integrator. Like I would have I would have just like thrown money at you guys.

I remember the first time we put in like a weekly meeting thing and we were, you know, just basically the guys had no idea what they were doing. They would just, they would come in, they'd grab their stuff and they leave in the morning and they get back in the afternoon and it was just chaos. It was absolute chaos. And we finally sat down and went over every single job one Monday morning and then we did it again the next. And then we did it again the next. And that was like the most, I mean, it, yeah, it took away from your Monday mornings. And, and I can see how some managers and some owners may go, I've got guys just sitting around doing nothing for a couple hours here. But if it's productive time that

we're all talking about where the jobs are, we're all talking about the States and everything. And man, that just, that one little thing opened up the whole company where we could just be so much more efficient and just move through these projects left and right. Um, so in, you know, we didn't go out to job sites without speakers and that kind of stuff. Like it's all sorts of good stuff that came from. Yeah. It's, it really is amazing how like sometimes you can find those little, you know, I, I call it leverage, right. And it's like, you can find those little points of leverage in the company where you make this one sort of modification to how you think about meetings or how you set values in the company or how your org chart is arranged. And you find these little tweaks that you can make that just have a totally outsized impact on the operation.

And I'm endlessly fascinated by working with companies and trying to find those areas that can really help them sort of supercharge what they're doing. But, you know, you spoke about the financial side. And I do think it's worth mentioning that a lot of like these new services really are all being offered to our partners at, you know, basically free or heavily discounted rates versus what you might pay off of the street. We are very much like one of the things that we're really, and we've completely updated the website recently at onevisionresources.com. So if folks are listening and interested in learning more about this,

I'd encourage them to go there because it's all brand new and really, I think, tells the story well. But generally speaking, we like to frame this conversation as one of investment versus a traditional vendor relationship. So we know that we're not for everyone.

We're not a platform that's going to be a great fit for every integrator out there, but we're out there looking for those integrators who do want to really take their business to the next level and get set up for what we see as a very bright future in terms of long-term success in this channel. And ultimately, our partners pay a platform fee, but it's a very subsidized rate. And we are also investing a lot from our end into making this all work. And at the end of the day,

we believe in a bright future. We're putting our money where our mouth is and betting on that bright future and saying, hey, let's partner up together and work to really get the service profitability and recurring revenue engine humming. And that's where our interest lies. So it's sort of this longer term vision that we have for the industry and making these, again, investments in those integrators out there who are really committed to driving their business to the next level. And when you

come on the platform, you get this very comprehensive suite of services and a team of, you know, 50, 60 people that are all working hard to, to drive your business to the next level. Yeah. This is all real close to the website. Looks great. It's a one vision resources.com. Put that in the show notes this week. So it's very nice looking website, but I mean, it's very good. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. That was a, that was a big project and, uh, appreciate the good feedback. I think that, that, uh, the team that worked on that did a really good job. And like I said, I think it really conveys the story nicely. So, um, if you're kind of hearing all this and you know, it sounds sort of different and unlike anything, you know, maybe you've seen in the industry that's cause it is pretty different

and pretty unique, we think. And so I would encourage anyone who's interested in learning more to go spend some time on the website and, you know, reach out to us if you have any questions. Absolutely. Well, thanks, man. I appreciate you coming on. This has been a lot of fun. We do have a pick of the week, but just kind of let's do it. All right. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for having me on yeah no this has been fun it's good stuff i you know we we've it's funny like as long as we were doing the show i think you and i both kind of like avoided work talk you know like we didn't talk too much about it there occasionally you guys had it like a you did like a blog post or something or had some

information you wanted to get out there. I remember the remote systems management paper or book that you made like that. Yeah, in the book, yeah. There wasn't too much that like you, and I know you were super busy like up into all through the end of 2020. So like, I know you were probably working on a lot of these projects with your team there.

And so like, it's good to actually hear what you're doing in the world these days. This is really cool. Yeah. Yeah. I think, uh, you know, for better or worse, uh, self-promotion has never been my strong suit. And it is funny because like we did this show together for, you know, years and, uh, this is probably the most that I've ever talked about one vision on the home tech podcast. Uh, so appreciate the opportunity. And, uh, yeah, it was a opportunity. And yeah, it's great timing to come on because again, a lot of these are very recent developments and we've got more coming. So be sure to stay tuned.

Cool. Well, all the links and topics discussed tonight can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 352, 352, yeah. And don't forget, you can join us live on Wednesdays, usually starting between 7, 7.30 PM Eastern, a little bit early tonight, a little blitzkrieg podcast tonight. We had to jump into the show.

And I'm going to try and do the pick of the week here. Let's see. I have a boom. All right, Jason, look at that. Oh, there it is. Audio visual logger. That is beautiful. I don't really, I mean, you can't buy a receiver these days, but you can buy this.

That is so funny. Discover new music with audio visual. I know, right? Look at that. I need to go back. I was breezing through this store today. It's kind of one of those, it's kind of one of those um art it's kind of like a bunch of artisanal products and different wines and beers and cheeses and that kind of things and i was grabbing lunch there today and saw that and snapped a shot i need to go back and grab uh this little maybe six pack that's a gem yeah see how it tastes give it a try yeah with a name with a name like audio visual like how could it be bad? Exactly. Exactly. That's too good. That's too good. But if you have any feedback, questions, comments,

pics of the weeks or great ideas for the show, give us a shout. Email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. Do want to give a big thank you for everyone who supports the show, but especially those who support through our patron channel. You can find out how to get to that patron page over at hometech.fm slash I do want to give a big thank you for everyone who supports the show, but especially those who support through our patron channel. You can find out how to get to that patron page over at home tech. Dot FM slash support and learn how you can support home tech for as little as a dollar a month.

Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out on the show, but every pledge gets you an invite to private slash at the hub and into our home tech talks, which have been going on for the last couple of weeks and, and quite a bit of fun. A lot of like talking shop now, but we're, we're looking for ideas for that. And if you want to look at the archives of that,

those are up on the patron page as well. If you want to help out, but can't support the show financially, totally appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or positive reading in the podcast app of your choice to help people find the show. All right, Jason, that wraps up another week in home technology. Again, thanks for swinging by and helping out with the show tonight. This was fun.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. This was, like I said, a little trip down memory lane. I appreciate the opportunity. No problem. Where are you hanging out these days? Are you still doing the, I've seen like on Saturdayss, of course the worst day for me to actually do,

but there's like giant notion events you're, you're getting involved with. Are you still doing those? Uh, Rome. So Rome. Yeah. Yeah. Sort of a notion competitor sort of. I use both Rome and no, I, well, I use both. I use notion at work and and Roam for spelled R-O-A-M, Roam Research. I use for personal knowledge management, note-taking, things like that. And yeah, I started a little project called the Roam Summit, which is the Roam research community is a really thriving community of people who are all kind of nerds like me and have a passion for reading and knowledge development, taking lots of notes and sort of building up these personal knowledge bases and a lot more than that. It's a really

rich community. And I saw an opportunity to sort of leverage some of my passion and experience for hosting shows like you and I did for so many years. So I started the Rome Summit and not really on a regular cadence. I think I've done about six of those sessions, but a little bit sporadic in terms of when I schedule those. But you can head to romesummit.com to find some information about that. And if you're into kind of that personal knowledge management space, I'd encourage you to go check that out. It's a really interesting and thriving community that I've gotten involved in over there. There's a new one that everyone's talking about. Of course, there's a new one really interesting and thriving um community that i've gotten involved in over there there's a there's a new one that that everyone's talking about of course there's a new one when it comes to task management and knowledge graphing there there's always a new program out there i'm trying to remember what this this one was called i want to say especially

the q there's you know the the big ones that, uh, kind of competing with Rome right now are, uh, obsidian. Yeah. The glass. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which I, I, I've heard the interface is just really strange and kind of out there. So, yeah, I, I haven't used obsidian. I've kind of checked out some of their videos. I'm, uh, I'm super happy with Rome personally, but there are, you know, like any space, there's lots of different tools out there. And ultimately, it just depends on what you're looking to do. That's what happens. People are like, I don't like this one tiny feature.

I wish it had. And then they go out and they're like, I'm just going to make my own app. I think that's what happens all the time. Well, the best one is there's one out there called Athens that's like an open source. And it's literally like a direct knockoff of Rome. So you get Rome and then Athens and it's like this whole, in that community, there's like all this sort of drama, um, around that, but I don't get involved in all that. I just, I'm super happy with Rome. Um, and, uh, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a powerful tool, but,

but it is an interesting space. And like, if, like I said, if you're a nerd like me and you're into, uh, these sorts of topics around knowledge management, knowledge development, uh, go check it out. It's cool stuff. Cool. All right, man. Well, thanks again for, uh, joining on the show. Thanks. A couple of people stopped by to watch the show live. It was kind of like in and out, but, uh, thanks for tuning in. Everybody's a little bit early, so we didn't have a regular crowd in here throwing heckles at us but Jason again too bad thanks again for dropping by

really appreciate the time hopefully get you back on the show one of these days whenever you want just let me know we'll get you in we've got two cameras now so it works you've stepped up your game here this is is very cool. Have a good weekend, and we'll talk to you next week. Thanks, everyone.