Evolving Industry:

A no BS podcast about business leaders who are successfully weaving technology into their company DNA to forge a better path forward

Leading like a Technologist

00:00:00 - 00:04:01 I had a lot of fun with our guests today. He worked on Yahoo Mail back in the day. He was at Nike where he was in charge of major part of their content ecosystem, and we talked about content ecosystem. This was massive. We're talking across the globe, not just an insane amount of content but an insane amount of content authors and the complexities and dealing with the brand. He's now a fidelity investments working on their marketing technology. So roum Moralei is our guest today and we not only talk about building teams, some of the challenges and rolling out content ecosystems, but then we start pontificating on what's next as we look at them at a verse that as we look at blockchain and FT web three. We Geek out a little bit at the end, but it's fun. You're listening to see sweet blueprint the show for sea sweet leaders. Here we discussed nobs approaches to organizational readiness and digital transformation. Let's start the show. So from thanks so much for joining me. Thank you, John, to be here. So I know we're excited to talk about some of the future trends and get there, but I figured a good place to start is in a little bit more of a grounded space where some of the accomplishments that you've had, because they're they're fantastic accomplishments, and I figured, you know, a great place to start might be some of your lessons learned. I'm building teams. You built a great team at Nike, and then we can move a little bit more into content ecosystems and kind of the complexities and scale of that at a global level. Yeah, sounds good. Actually, we can start even from my first time. We I became a people manager in Yahoo and I think start the journey starts there, in my view. Yeah, all the lessons learned kind of translated. So I can dive right into it if you want. I think the one of the hardest things as people managers, I don't know if it is talked about enough because it's not documented, is when you go from being an individual contributor to a people manager. There is a first six to eight months where you end up thinking like an individual contributor, where everything is about what you can do and what you can accomplish. The shift between it is not about you to it is about the team happens, I think, well into a one one year mark of being a first time manager. So for me it was the same way, you know, in Yahoo, when I was an architect on Yahoo male and when it when they all opportunity presented itself to be a manager, I continue to play my previous role and just manage resources versus actually work on managing people. If that struck a nerve, only after a year. So I think that's where the journey starts. It's funny you go through that transition and then you kind of forget about that transition for a while and then you revisit that transition when you're now managing people who need to go through that transition themselves. I'm curious any tips that have worked for you for forgetting people over the help. I know one thing, at least with engineers, that always worked for me is I would just force them to remove development environments from their machine, like you just you can't have a dea environment anymore. You're not going to be able to just do it yourself because there is I could do it faster. You know, I'm curious kind of what tricks you've used. Yeah, I think the biggest Aha moment came. I think it's one of my managers who said, you know, you need to learn how to remove yourself from critical path. I think the Devon been on meant I kept it for a very, very long time. I still run M de Environment on my machine. But the critical path comment kind of struck a nerve with me when I first was having their transit transformation, because if you keep as a people resource manager, or if you time spent is working with the business and the product teams and others to figure out how to get towards certain outcomes, if you keep putting yourself in critical path, then the entire team relies on your chicken or your single configuration update or any of that to actually make progress. So then it's all about then balancing your time. Like which one needs more attention? Is the stream more successful because of the ex brilliantly...
00:04:02 - 00:08:00 ...written algorithm that you're capable of doing, or is it more successful because you can remove road blocks for the team to actually be successful? So that statement, I think, struck a nerve with me and that continues to be something I at least when I meant or other managers or talk to other people. I kind of share that as a defining moment for me. At least to say, HMM, put yourself out of critical path. That debtails into the I want to take more relaxing vacations and sleep better night factors. Wow, right, well, I actually thought, you know, once you get that over the hurdle you end up actually, you know, the kind of work that comes to you or the kind of things that are important to you are much harder problems to solve because when you own a piece of code, you own the outcome. Like you can make it work, not make it work, documented well, you not test a well, all of that. But when it comes to management, it's a little less concrete. You know, it's all about relationships. It's how to you remove those road box people problems, someone's going on vacation. How do you manage resourceing, budgeting? There is so many things that gets added to the plate and in fact that are newer skills that people need to develop. And your earlier question and other kind of how when I left Yahoo and join Nike, going from a technology company to a, you know, a product company and a big brand like Nike, I think that was one of the other harder parts of that transition, where the need to talk to a business and Nike and need to talk to various other teams was kind of amplified when there were various things and that's when it actually started falling in place in some of the comments and where your mind was. And I think ultimately it comes back to what brings the person satisfaction. Because as an engineer you finished thousand lines of court, you feel accomplished. You can put a checkmark on a check in and say, yeah, I did that, whereas when it starts moving into management, it's starts because coming a more fuzzy on what you can pin your accomplishment to. Yeah, mushy and messy and yeah, I know a lot of this scale that you were dealing out at Nikes is maybe hard for some to comprehend, and and so maybe if you could give a little bit of a flavor as to, you know, your content ecosystem. What are some of the facts that you throw out there as to how big? I remember hearing I forget what the number was even just the number of content authors that you had there was. Was that Reuss? Yeah, first of all, you know, the back to that knee jerk when we first came to Nike. You know, there was so many the brand was so big and they're in initiatives were so widespread, like the New York City would have a separate marketing campaign, the global would have a separate marketing campaign, the campaign in China would be different, but they all would tie into a common message. Now, if company is going that fast and that quickly, and as Nike was always on the bleeding edge, what ended up happening is what was. When you become when you start focusing on solutions, you end up creating multiple solutions that don't talk to each other. So many were men vender built. Many solutions just existed because someone wanted to move fast. So one of the from a scale perspective, yeah, if you add all of them up, there were millions of pieces of imagery and video every year that was being produced and bet up by it's worth of digital imagery that were being put out there, from various shopping to brand moments, to campaigns, to offer pushers to emails and all of that. So if you put all of that in an aggregate it's pretty huge. But for every team, every business was trying to dry value. For them it might be small. So from a scale perspective, when I came into that row. That was one of the hardest thing that struck me where it was like, as a technologist you look at this is like, why do you have that many cms systems, why do you have that many image delivery systems and why aren't we using content delivery network? Like, when you look at each of those problems as a technologist, is easy to be dismissive,...
00:08:00 - 00:12:01 ...but I think when you get into it you start understanding why they went there and what that accomplished for the business and how the business grew because of those solutions. So to change the mode from okay, this is as a technologist you see this as a problem, to how can you deliberate your technology skills to in fact make it better for the business? I think was the defining statement for my first two years at Nink and building a team around that was what was the entire focus became in. So now you move from a people manager to a Capital Hill lobbyists trying to get people onto your side and convinced that you know this is the right way to go. I think it's a perfect example. I I know people probably a sick of me talked about conways law, but it's a perfect example of Conway's law, which says you know, however you design a system will be will be similar replica to the way that you're organized inside. So if you have five hundred cms systems, people are going to experience your brand in your content in in the same kind of a way. And Yeah, it's not just you. I got ways lie every chance I get. Also, just to touch on that from an art perspective, I think when we started there, the good thing that was happening is, you know, there was a large initiative to move things to a more modern platform, oriented thinking into the cloud, and there was a program that was focused on moving us to the cloud. So there was some buying already exists prior to people coming there and building our team. So there was a that was a huge benefit because someone had done the hard work to position this as a need for the future, but the scale of it was still not there what it meant for business to actually adopt it. And let's take content. Right when storytelling was a thing, there were teams already pushing digital imagery to the website. Now the moment you recognized a simple thing, for example when we put in a content delivery network. Yes, there work content delivery networks being used, but because there was so silot solutions, people are uploading full res imagery into the sites and that took made the site performance go down. Now, if your site performance goes higher, suddenly the more people come in, there is more interaction, it's much snappier and all of that. So when you solve that one problem, the win from a technology standpoint might still be a small one, but I think it tells a bigger story of this is actually benefiting us. So trying those two together, I think kind of grew the value of a lot. And there were other pockets of work being done outside of various teams, outside of the content teams that kind of helped to that, everything from the commerce checkout area and Nike to some of the membership work. And I think the second piece was it was also affording us and ability to attract a lot of good talent where it was pure engineering talent, and when we were looking at doing that, you know, people actually came in to solve hard engineering problems. You know when, if you look at the sneakers experience, for example, there was a content play to it where you had to figure out how to put a stream of content on an APP which refreshed quickly, and how you can get that, you know, richness and content by having a lot of stories available, not just a few that you throw twice and the stories are over, but to actually build that experience out where, instead of someone standing in a line outside store, how can you build a similar experience on the APP? I think took a lot of product thinking, modern digital thinking and engineering thinking, so that I think that was also hugely beneficial to attract that kind of teams, and we can talk about how the teams were set up and some of the motivating things there. But yeah, that was one of the big things that also took place. One thing I love about that problem, and I know you and I've thought a little bit about this before, but when you take in that real world to the to the digital space, there's sometimes a natural inclination...
00:12:01 - 00:16:02 ...to do try to digitize what you have today rather than like transform or reimagine what it is that you have in them. I'm cares the challenges or how you overcome that common pitfall. Well, not from a pure engineering leader, not as much from new ideation, but definitely, if you look at some of the possibilities let's take this. You know, the sneakers example on Nike, right, it went from standing in a line and a store to actually first come, first serve on an APP. Right. But then you look at okay, if you're once on a digital platform, you can start thinking about newer and other ways, like can you have the perpensity of engagement be a driver for offering certain benefits to people? So how can you tie that to a membership play? Even if you extrapolate that to other brands, for example where you know the we talked about this last time, where if you look at the thing between web one, door to and web to dot to, the big difference between newspapers and the CNN's of the world, as they were blasting information to you. And that's what people did in web word or to. It was all about a brand website. It was all about news, being New York Times replicating their newspaper just on a pixel screen, and that was defining for the web one dot over. Now if you go to the two door too, it became more of the social interaction. You know, social network started becoming a thing, user generated content started becoming a thing. So there was a little bit of an interaction and engagement. That kind of became the defining moment of Web two, dotto, and that kind of also drove how products were built. Now, how that influence something like a content platform is, you know, you needed to think about more of being a headless platform that can publish stories to any user experience, maybe a mobile aware an email, push notification, something in China, which is a different APP. Can you use a single system, regardless of the requirement to deliver content and a standard format that can then be manipulated and used in however you want. So that was the defining moment of that shift. Also, we're moving away from a traditional content management system, which is publishing pages, to actually publishing structured car data that can be interpreted in different ways. I think then that kind of was the defining space for the web to it. You know, time will tell what our decentralized model in the web three will get us too, because it keeps me up at night trying to read up and trying to keep up, because the growth between web one and web two, as exponential or that might be, this is going to almost be like a hockey stick. It feels like, making me feel old already. Yeah, it feels like I'm being left out every day. I know, I know, and trying to figure out, you know, what really is going to happen. I've actually been reading quite a while about there were really, you know, within not just web three hour, but we're just within the fourth industrial revolution. Yeah, and what is that going to do today to day life and what does that mean to present to everything that we do, is as company and as people as well. Yeah, so it's totally up for grabs, because the economy is that are going to exist in web three. Fee will definitely feel different. You touched on this briefly, right. You went from a line, physical line, to a digital line to something which is digital native. So I think it will have a similar transition in web three. And all this metas word, where something there will be a shopping mall that will be created in a virtual world, and that's where it might start. But then, what is the true virtual nature of the experience? Is something that people would need to spend time in figuring out, because there was a great here is a good example, right, if you used an are or an augmented reality set and went to and they've been explorations on this.
00:16:03 - 00:20:00 You're asked about content. You there is one thing to say. You can look at a piece of art, like maybe artist puts an art and it'll explain how a little bit of storytelling around the artist. The moment you where this class because you don't have enough real estate, the physical space. Now, what happens if the art actually came to life? There have been explorations on the to d art actually becoming three d when you interact with an augmented reality thing, and those are all many people have shown examples of that. Not that just takes it and enhances it a little bit. The question is, what happens next? What if there is I don't know if it's very hard to think about that abstract. It's clearly smarter people than me are doing it. But what will be a truly digital first, virtual first kind of experience? I think time will tell. Many people will and even the interactions like, I think I shared this with you my and I was sharing with my friend. We bought the new we are headset and we were playing with it and there was this drying application on it. I sat with the drying application. I was seated in a chair. I drew it was perfectly fine. I gave it to my son, who's nine years old. He put it on and started walking around in d space and actually started drying the same application in d to that moment it hadn't even registered to me that this could be a d diagram. And he was drying coil springs and like shapes and D and walking around it and interacting. It was almost natural to him versus for me. It was an amazing thing to see him do that. So it means that you know that are different, that thinking out of the box changes it's the box itself is a redefined right now it isn't. And there's going to be so many different skill sets and so many like even just the concept of how do you build a team and what does that even mean in that that world? Right, you know, I I think you you had built a very talented and large team but was mostly centralized in Beaverton. Right. And Yeah, and it was maybe like talk a little bit about that and then let's then we can maybe antificate a little bit about, you know, in a decentralized, you know, virtual metaverse world, what is how were we going to be building those themes? What does that even mean? Yeah, for sure, as we were building the team. I think the charter was pretty clear when it was engineering. First built software mindset, get to a continuous delivery, continuous integration mindset, all of that. Those are kind of the marching orders. So there was obviously a mix of people who have been there a long time and people who are coming in fresh. You know, you start with hiring senior leaders who have managed digital natives, software engineers first, so that's what we also did. Then when it came to actually engineering, you know the I would say a lot of advertisement has been given by technology companies into what great technology culture looks like. Right, I have a ghost feel about culture, but that's for another day. If you look at the Google's of the world, you know they have these foolsball tables and TT and people define cool t shirts and foosball tables and other things as needed for software engineering. Yes, you absolutely have to cater to that. You know, when you're attracting such talent, you need to create the space for open collaboration, having ability to have these idea sessions, not to take nine to five timing, to serious lead focus on the getting the work done, not when and where it has done. So all of those things we try to incorport it. But there was a little bit more where we had to focus on. What does it truly mean from a culture standpoint to actually go after high performance delivery, like how can you be a team who can become immensely focused on I want to be reliable, predictable and I can deliver collatic product with absolute confidence. We need to move from issue, you...
00:20:00 - 00:24:00 ...know, issue avoidance, to issue fixing. If you if you focus too much an issue avoidance, like if someone came and said, can you guarantee that this piece of software will have zero bugs before we release? I think any sin engineer who's win there would probably say, you know, I I can be confident that nothing might happen, but I cannot guarantee. But if you shift the focus to yes, we know issues will happen, we will absolutely be aware of that. But can we move to issue detection and issue resolution? We can hope, if we can promising we can detect the issue as close to or immediately after it happens and resolve it within our next build, which can be a small build, which will not be a massive build that will take three days to make. That mentality also was important because then it creates an opportunity to say, how can you be allowed to take more risks? Why is there a fear of not failing? You know, all of that changes. So to me it was some of those things which is less, is harder to put down on paper as a checkbox. It's more of how you talk about it, how you create that air cover, how do you shield certain things? There will be flat that will given. You know, there was I remember in Nike that there was a huge debate about code freezes. It still gets me going when someone talks about code freezes, you know, or freeze windows, holiday freeze windows, where there will say no, code has to be checked in due from this time to this time because we can't afford any issues. Usually what ends up happening is there as exceptions and some higher level person says approved and then it gets going right. So versus, if you our constant fight was, how do you not create a code freeze window? Can we trust the engineers to do sensible things? Those are all elements which I feel are more cultural than the just keep table tennis stair boards and football tables which need to be imparted in an engineering organization. It's funny I never really thought about curve friezes like that, but it's a cut freeze. is almost like a ignoring that reality does not exist right and there's always some sort of triage and exception process and and it never really happens anyways the end of the day. So why even bother kind of telling yourselves that there's going to be a culd phrase? Yeah, I mean, sanity needs to prevail. You don't want to check in the massive piece of code on a Friday night and leave for the weekend. Write it. I get it. I totally get it. Holidays I also get it. But I think the sentiment of a freeze like thou shalt not do anything from this time to that time, is what I take kind of how do we get past it? Kind of thing where I think the sensibility of not doing something just before a big holiday, I think it makes sense. But then if you're having your changes in a bite size manner, which is not just about coat change, it's also about user facing functionality, instead of doing this big bang release, which will be necessary sometimes, but how can we build towards that big band release with smaller things which are already integrated, that are already tested. You know, I think those are more tangible, fungible things that, as an engineering leader, I would highly hope everyone is focusing on. HMM. And you know, in your ability to attract that team, like how much did that the brand of Nike and you know, the great campus that you guys have, like how much did that plan to attracting them and versus just your engineering culture? How did you balance that? It's a fascinating question in our day and edge right now because, yes, it's a huge benefit. You know, the brand is big. Many companies, the current company I work for, or all well built. Fidelity is a big brand. Nike is a big brand. Yeah, who was a good brand? Yeah, who's brand value started to dip, but we were still able to attract good talent. The brand definitely plays a big deal and Nike, you know, being so close to sports. If you're a sports fan and you happen to be in software, you end up being in the best culmination of those two things. But it only goes so far. It can get you into the door. You know, the bigger problem in managing a team is...
00:24:00 - 00:28:00 ...retention. How do you keep people engaged and motivated? Is the is the swimming pool and the tennis court going to keep you at coming back? Or are good people, managers challenging problems? Is Your Voice being heard? Are All those things that are going to keep you here? You know, is what you thought your job is going to be? Is that? Is that going to continue? Those were the much harder things to do and I remember there was a huge fear of demoying their work to the business because the business wanted everything to be perfect. We have to make sure that, you know, it's a big brand company, so you they make a big deal about presentations. So everything had a presentation and everything right. So there's and this happened even and Yahoo. It happens in the current company and happens in Nike where if there is a two or three level senior member who comes in, it's always has to be pictured perfect. They can't all the dirty laundry has to be hidden away. One of the things which I am very, very proud of was I somewhere said, you know, that needs to stop. What if our dirty land ration? You know the some of these leaders who are coming in are also technology leaders. They've also build in technology. They might appreciate actually seeing, you know what it takes to put things APROS. So we started making saying it's okay to have a demo, which looked bad, and there was a very simple role where I think it had a big benefit, which where I were a couple of US went and said, next time you do a demo, there is no projection, no screen, no projector nothing. It happens on your laptop because it puts the engineers on their element. So you people have crowd over the person's laptop. Doesn't matter who it is, whether it's senior vice president, marketing officer, doesn't matter. You crowd over the laptop. At best, we will put it on the person's monitor. They witness the demo there and move on to the next demo. I think that had a huge like comfort factor in it, where people were like yeah, it's my element, it's my console, it's my you know, code editor, it is my environment that I control, and they were okay, showing some of the cool trips, you know, tacks they did and everything, and it started becoming I wish I could show photos, but it started becoming a little bit of like most of our demo photos or people huddled around the Monitor. Yeah, becomes more fun. Yeah, by a part and circumstances, out the window, right out the window, and I think that translated to, and it was someone else's idea, and I won't take credit for this, where they said, what if we combined this with a Halloween Day right where everyone dressed up in Halloween, and it became a whole cultural movement where people dressed up, the cubes were decorated, people walked in, they still saw the demo of the work they did on the Monitor, but it was a whole story behind it. They made it a scary thing. They said, are at all the scary bugs, and it became a hollow. It was fascinating. There were a hundred and fifty some teams that did this and it was widely beyond my eman imagination that the creativity was just insane, the kind of demos we saw. Someone built a maze through which you need to go and solve pieces of the Mace to get the final demo. It was amazing. There were everyone from the junior and most engineer to the senior most leader who did everything, which was, I think, culturally very powerful. That's great. I think one of the biggest travesties to communication has been powerpoint, to be honest with you, everyone being locked into that right. This is one way of communicating and maybe that's a good segue then into you know we are, and the metaverse and and what are things going to look like that? Because everything you just said, as far as creating a maze and doing this, you know that stuff is going to be so much easier in we are right totally, and I think it's a great seguere because one of the things which I said was you asked me what...
00:28:00 - 00:32:01 ...the power of the campus was. I think that is diminishing and going away very, very quickly. Like I'm sitting in a nice office, I have my my son's Legos with me. We have stuff in our back wall. Its customized to me, right, it's me. I take it with me, I bring it with me to work. What was happening slowly was, if you see the even if you remove pandemic, what was happening was companies were going down with flexible workspaces where they said, no one has a cute people come in as groups, huddle around get the work done. It is very powerful, you know. It basically puts everyone at the same playing field. But even that, I feel, is your yes, you're bringing your work and you're collaborating, but what happens when you're actually doing the world? Would you like to have your favorite coaster next to you where you want to keep your coffee right, because you know my wife, my wife's coaster says drunk lives matterr drunk wives back. But things like that. There are certain charch keys, things, house plans or something that you would like to keep in your desk and that makes it personal. If you transition that into the thinking of how the newer Carment, what pandemic has forced us is people are inviting people into their homes. You know, it's a little bit of Hey, this is me, I have protected this. There is no way you can encourage this right, but there are moments where I can showcase this to you. Some choose to put a background because they don't want to showcase it. Some choose to put a blurred because they want to show you know I have nice, colorful things. Some are willing to showcase and that's goes with your personality and very much of that decentralized nature is what I think is also shifting towards the Meta worse and all of it where you own your data, you know, not the big corporations. You own your identity, the work that you do. Translate. It's between every network you go to. That kind of Def is the defining structure of a whip three space. So would that be a thing that will promote in going in future? Maybe there is still huge value to having physical social meetings and meeting someone over drinks and are having a team event where you can make make yourself physically available, is still going to be there. But when it comes to actual work, would it still be necessary to sit in a cube which is completely settle and has nothing around it? I don't know, because I personally prefer not to do that. I as much as I'd like to go into have a team activity, if when it comes to actually sitting down or making a powerpoint, Dick, I want to have my space. Yeah, and and you know, and if we compartmentalize then and have that in person time truly be you know, fun conversations like the even though this conversation then a person, but conversation is like this over dinner, over drinks. You know that. I definitely never want that to go away, but it did. Definitely. You we it's funny. We were moving farther and farther away from the command and control leadership everyone works in this building, to the n empowering teams, empowering individuals, and I think we're just on a path for a hockey stick of even more empowerment to that individual present, you know as especially when you factor in like nft's and what does that mean to your value and technology? I might not work for one. I mean it's are you already seeing it? Without an IFTS, you know, you're not working for one company. You can be wherever. You know, I have this set of value that other, other people can leverage in any way. Right. Yeah, the future is where dynamic, you know, border less organizations without any hierarchy, that they can undertake some kind of value creation. I mean that becomes the foundation of how I think web. Again, I'm very new and I shouldn't I'm no expert in the space and my internalizing this as we go. But that value creation...
00:32:01 - 00:36:00 ...and that create an economy, I think, is where we are heading towards, because think of what the nft world has done or something like the board APP Yart Club that is happening right now. Right there is a non fungible topen. That represents your membership towards something you then collaborate. If you take that to a song artist, you can completely eliminate these big studio houses that take a huge percentage out of it, because every time your song is used or somewhere else, you get linked to that because it is your entity and you own it. You completely are empowered to build it. I think it is creating that economy in so many interesting ways. I think about like even if you took some of the newer jobs that are coming up right, people are getting into nt creation like full time today in the blockchain word. The gas prices are fairly high and it's still there is a little bit of UN certainty about some of these things, but I think it will get to a point where people will get paid to play certain things, people will get paid to participate in certain things. You know, people will get paid to create or use their creativity, and certain things they will they might get paid to judge or filter out certain elements. Right, everyone participates and owns a piece of the larger value that is being created, versus a single organization saying I know best, you come and get it delivered for me and we will share back. I think that will just be disrupted in some way. When how? Time will tell. Again, I'm very new to the space, I shouldn't comment, but that's where I think the word lifestyle might also change. I love pontificating. Yeah, I mean, there's so many unknowns that that I can't even wrap my head around, but it does feel like there's many organizations across all industries. They should probably be looking at themselves and saying, am I just a middleman right now, and is that going to go away in the future? And on the flip side, as much as I love the idea of everything being decentralized, there will be new middleman type of organizations to help you navigate that right and like what to those look like, and I think that that's really exciting. There will be, there will always be some kind of like the person who envisions the idea would have a higher stake in it right, even obviously because they were initiated and people are following that idea. It will, of old a lot of that to happen. It would be very interesting to see how finance, you know, e commerce and gaming is usually the earliest adopt. So we know give a gaming is going crazy. But even the whole notion of independent all these centralized organization saying you create this character in my game, you can use it on my game, gaming platform. What happens in this economy where you can take your skills that you gained? Maybe you're someone who is an excellent parry. You know you can block attacks really well. Shouldn't that translate to other Games because that becomes your score skill set? Maybe you can rent out your ability for a little bit. You know, there are many of these opportunities which are fascinating to think about. Maybe there is an opportunity to have a shared basket where you can put together outfit from four or five different websites and it's your basket. You are pulling together an outfit for you and you're shopping on four different sites. You know, maybe that becomes a thing. It's it is interesting. Is definitely interesting. I get brainstone with you for hours on that. So maybe what we do next is even I could do a wh do your podcast in the metaverse where all we do is talk about all sorts of crazy ideas. We are good a good friend of mine have been frivolously trying to avoid, you know, get through our formo and see if we can get in...
00:36:00 - 00:40:04 ...on some of these things. You know, we did a couple of meetings on the on the matters to see how that would go. Yeah, that would be fun to do because, and I think I mentioned this to you right there is a right now it feels gimmicky, it feels like it's a novelty. Oh, see how cool this is. You can turn and do that, or you can actually use your pen to write something, or see, you can your finger serviceable on the virtual's way. All of that is, I would say it is novelty. Fact that it's new, it feels fresh. There is a moment in time, if you're in a conversation, where the novelty blurs away and it actually becomes immersive. I think that is when the fund really is because then you're having an eye to eye contact conversation instead of staring at a D screen, most probably at yourself, to actually looking someone and turning from one end of the room to another end of the room. I'll be a virtual you know, being able to get up and walk to a fit board in a virtual space, which you're physically doing and still do it. I think when the novelty fades away. There is value there. I still am very eager to see where a r takes us because I think that is more exciting than we are, you know, to me. HMM. But getting in on some of those interactions early I think will be useful because somewhere the novelty needs to die down. You know, the novelty of having an IPAD was there when the IPAD came you know, everyone was carrying like this. People didn't know if they had to hold it like that. They didn't know whether it needed an IPAD. People didn't know whether it to give it a pain. That was all that novelty on it right. I remember an Amazon they sold many cases with the group in the back because they didn't want to hold it like that. You know. You know, I what I've been loving is the I agree it's a little quirky, but what I do love the audio is so much better as far as interacting with humans right so you can have people on the other side of the room and it's not like with unzoom or whatever. It's not all the same volume. You can have people on the other side of the room quietly having a conversation, not bothering the rest of the people, and that's that's been something that I think, you know, zoom and these d things really get wrong. It's funny you talk about I started trying to get better at the white board in there as well. Yeah, perfect example, though, of just digitizing and experience that we have today when, like, should we even be using a white board in there? So we'll be using something completely different exactly. Maybe it is something completely different and maybe if Elon Musk has his where the tip in your brain should be telling you ideas as is. You know, it's it's crazy to don't think about it, but it is not outside the realm of possibility sometimes when you have these crazy dream ideas. But yeah, but I think the novelty factor as it wears away. I remember the first time the wireless headphones came in, you know, the ones that go into your ear. People are constantly tapping to see if you can receive a call. It wouldn't work, then you would remove it put your phone in your do you I've done that much of our times. HMM, when you're running, the battery dies off and you don't know how to put them in your pocket because it falls off the wider ones were better. You could at least hand like. There were many things like that, which I think will fascinating to see how the knowledge these kind of comes in and goes. But yeah, it will be interesting to watch. Yeah, it's accelerating quickly, but a lot of those same patterns that you're talking about. You you're seeing the same exact patterns manifest. Yeah, so to be continue, retinue to Bromout. Will definitely do this in the metaverse next. Thanks so much for joining me. Enjoyed it. Appreciate it. This was fun to talk about and some reliving some memories was fun. Thanks for having me. Absolutely thanks. Over, technology should serve vision, not set it at intivity. We design clear blueprints for organization readiness and digital transformation that allow companies to chart new paths. Then we drive the implementation of those plants with our client partners in service of growth. Find out more at devww Jon Heavitycom was last podcast you've...
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