Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / Michael Fienen | The Christian Reeve Podcast | #119 |

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Michael Fienen | The Christian Reeve Podcast | #119 | · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian.
• 0:02
  We podcast, today's guest is a podcaster, and career web
• 0:06
  developer hailing all the way from the United States.
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  His name is Michael Feenin, welcome to the show.
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  How you doing, Michael? I just need to congratulate you
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  for getting the name right on the first pass like that.
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  You're closer to Germany though than people around here are so
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  that like it's between spellings and pronunciations.
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  I've heard every variation on my name possible but you nailed it.
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  First try, good job. Okay.
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  Couple. Rings.
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  Hey, are you have a German background then?
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  Well, my family name is just from Germany.
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  I am born and bred, Kansas USA. I've, I grew up in Southeastern
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  Kansas. I escaped for a very brief
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  period in my youth hood and ended up back here.
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  And yes, I have not not a world traveler, this one so much.
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  I have been to Denmark once but that was also many years ago.
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  And that was just for a visit and back.
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  I get that but I guess. Yeah it's amazing to me just in
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  general America. It's kind of it's amazing
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  because I think people often forget you know how long it
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  takes to travel around the country.
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  And you know, I've had a lot of American guests on this show and
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  we've spoken about this how, you know, even just going from state
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  to state can take upwards of like 13 hours in some cases.
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  Yeah. And like I don't know, I've had
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  some guests that say you know it's every state Is very unique
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  and it's almost like different countries in a way.
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  But another guest say, oh no, it's generally the same Vibe,
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  everywhere you go, just a little differences here and there so I
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  did. I think there's mixed feelings
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  about State star supposed to really depends the things you're
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  into, isn't it? And how you view things, I
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  guess? Yeah.
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  Are you driving through or you know, are you flying from place
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  to place? Like a lot of times because I've
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  done a lot of conference speaking over the years and
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  things like that. So I have Old a lot around the
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  us, but a lot of that travel just sends you from airport to
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  airport and so you're you go from one airport to the next
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  airport then you're in a city you don't travel the
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  countryside, you're not necessarily getting out into
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  like the you know the random places that you know, normal
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  people go to your downtown, there's a Starbucks.
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  There's you know, a Dunkin Donuts.
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  There's all of the normal things you would see.
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  So you have to go out of your way, a little bit in a lot of
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  those instances. To engage that culture a little
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  bit. But if you know if you're
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  driving it's a whole different thing then because as you're
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  driving, you're going to go through everything and you can
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  choose to stop or not stop. You're going to see all of the
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  changing landscape and architecture and all of that
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  kind of stuff. You know, I've never asked any
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  of my American guests this before, but it just popped into
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  my head. What's it like, growing up in
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  the states? In general, because obviously,
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  as we've sort of outline, their, you know, travel is such a big
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  thing, you know, like, I mean, I've had so many friends that
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  and I can attest for this having visited the states as well.
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  You just can't live unless you have a car.
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  You just can't. I mean, maybe you could use the
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  Subways places like New York, maybe, but generally speaking,
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  if you're doing any kind of work that a requires you to travel
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  and be you know even just ya go. From one part of the state to
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  another or traveling, as you say, like from one part of the
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  city to another downtown, something like that.
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  It's going to take you, maybe an hour or more, but I wonder when
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  you're a teen, you know, before you can get access to a car and
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  stuff. Like what's that?
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  Like how how do you kind of get around?
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  I grew up in a relatively small town.
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  So, for me, getting around, like you, you could bike from one end
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  of town to the other where I grew up.
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  So like it was never a big deal. Deal for me, are my hometown was
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  a little tiny city of about 10,000 people.
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  I now live in a sprawling, Metropolis with 20,000 people.
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  So, like, I still am arguably in a relatively small community,
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  though. We are the biggest city for a
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  good ways in terms of Kansas, anyway, I think we're the sixth
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  or seventh largest city in Kansas.
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  I'd have to probably verify that to know.
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  Other I'm just making it up or not but it's you know, it's not
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  not bad, you know, walk ask the parents to drive you somewhere.
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  You know, if you're going out I had a lot of older friends
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  growing up. So like that solved a lot of
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  problems, certainly, but you can also drive when you're like 14
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  here. So wow, okay.
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  And get a learner's permit. Now, there are restrictions to
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  that. You're supposed to have a parent
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  in the car. You're only supposed to go to
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  and from school or to, and from work.
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  Now ask people if they actually adhere to that and they just
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  jump in their car and go. But yeah, we because we have no
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  real mass transit of any kind around here.
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  There is a little city bus that will go from a few points.
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  But also nowadays like we have a guy that does Uber here.
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  So it's like we have the one dude that does Uber that you can
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  thing and he'll take you wherever you want to go.
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  So, it's the one guy that's pretty a bit, but I grew up But
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  a time before smartphones. Yeah.
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  So like before Facebook before my space so for me it was it
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  really was like you just pick up the phone and call your buddy or
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  like. Yeah.
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  Dad. Can you take me somewhere?
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  And that's how we got around. That's how we did things but it
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  wasn't a big deal because it's, you know, safe at night.
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  It's, you know, you don't have to worry about oh God, the sun's
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  going down the gangs are coming out.
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  Like, we don't have those kind of problems here.
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  It's it's really, that's one reason.
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  Why I ended up back in this area was because like this, the slow
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  life is really nice. I can drive from one end of town
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  to the other in 10 minutes. There's no such thing as a
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  traffic jam in Pittsburgh. There's like these things aren't
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  problems that we have to deal with.
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  So it's act it's a very relaxing slow pace compared to any kind
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  of big city How does Pittsburgh compared with Kansas in what
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  sense? Well, yeah like a kind of
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  highlighted before you know it stayed to stay places.
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  Do tend to vary as far as like how people are all cultures
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  living, standards, Etc. Like one of the biggest things
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  to stand out for you between the two places.
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  So, one of the things is, we are in the far Southeastern corner
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  of the state that puts us really close.
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  Those two a couple areas called like the Ozarks and the Flint
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  Hills which are very hilly. Mountainous is not the word to
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  use but very hilly forested areas when people think of
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  Kansas especially they think oh flat flat flat and it's like yes
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  it is in Western Kansas but not over here like there's there
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  there's actual like landscape here.
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  Now there are five sections as well.
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  Pittsburgh itself is much more liberal than And most of Kansas
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  because we do have a university here, it is a large and you know
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  any time you get into any kind of populated area that ratio
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  tends to go up and we're right on that threshold economically
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  of like being good and self-sustaining.
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  A lot of small-town life in this area is starting to recede.
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  Because there's nothing there to sustain it and the current
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  economy you have Farmers. That's what you have.
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  Have you have farmers? And so in these are farmers and
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  Dollar General, every one of these towns has a Dollar General
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  but they don't have access to high speed internet, like good
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  high-speed internet, they don't have good cell phone coverage,
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  they have nothing to draw in big business and so like the town I
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  came from, it was 10,000. I think it even picked up around
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  12,000 when I was there. It's down under 9,000 now and
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  dropping the last time I was there.
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  It's like you drive through town.
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  You see all the empty storefronts and all of this
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  because there's nothing drawing in but Pittsburgh is pretty good
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  at that. It's very stable it's not
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  necessarily growing but it's also not shrinking.
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  Like we have like this homeostasis almost that kind of
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  keeps the town alive and it's it's actually very nice because
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  it's like kind of floating in a Salt Lake.
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  It's just kind of like you can just kind of lay there and enjoy
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  the fact that things aren't too crazy.
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  You're not to worry. Worried about stuff, you know,
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  it's and things aren't going so quickly that you can't keep up.
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  So yeah, I mean, I have to say, I've noticed the same thing in
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  other countries, I've lived in where, you know, you have your
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  main key cities that are always building and always attracting
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  business Etc. And then ya soon, as you go to
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  the countryside, it's just like, as you explain saying, same sort
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  of thing, just kind of dead, or disconnected, or whatever the
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  case may be, and that makes perfect sense to me, but I do
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  kind of think that we might be entering an age where that's
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  going to change significantly because of the whole working
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  from home concept and so on and so forth.
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  So like for instance in England obviously everyone just goes on
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  and on and on about London about you know you got to live in
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  London London's, great blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and
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  okay. London has a lot of great things
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  that could be wrong but the reality is it's very expensive
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  to live there. It's okay populated Etc.
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  A lot of the infrastructure in the government developments that
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  are Bo Investments. I should say that are being put
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  into infrastructure, our surrounding high speed trains
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  linking up the rest of the UK to London and you get people
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  traveling as far as places like not in mm.
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  So for those who don't live in the UK that would be sort of
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  like a distance of maybe four or five hours by train, maybe a bit
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  less maybe because it's high speed.
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  But point is people can live outside of major cities.
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  Cities and commute in and it costs significantly less than it
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  would if you live directly in that city, right?
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  Yeah, I think maybe the same thing might start happening.
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  In many of these places that I'm starting to hear about in
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  America, where, you know, maybe you at one point, you know, they
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  were really successful bustling places and then they sort of
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  deteriorate over time, you know, I've heard things about, for
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  instance, Detroit's I heard that like mini, I mean Detroit it's
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  always been kind of rid with problems anyway, but there was a
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  point. it was very it was it was it was better than it was like
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  its interior. It was a manufacturing Central
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  for the United States for decades.
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  And they say, well, ironically the same thing as happened in
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  the UK as well in the 80s when Margaret fracture closed down, a
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  lot of the industries. That's what you had all of these
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  cities or, or areas that have been built around factories
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  where people lived suddenly had just no purpose.
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  They're just dead Town. Some over even abandoned by feel
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  like this kind of Push towards working from home and and being
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  able to do that from home might actually change things moving
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  forward. I mean what do you think about
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  that? You think that's possibly.
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  I see it. And it's interesting to me
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  because like I was working from home before it was fashionable.
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  So, to speak, I hear in about four, more months will take over
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  a decade at the company. I'm at now, and I came in as a
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  remote employee and this was back in, like, 2012.
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  When I started doing that, and for me in particular, Ocular as
• 11:57
  a web developer as somebody who builds digital experiences, it's
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  like, doesn't matter where I'm at and where our entire company
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  over this last year, has officially gone remote.
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  Only we are working on, closing down all of our leases, all of
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  our property and everything, and it's saving us millions of
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  dollars a year and all of that. And so it's it's interesting to
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  see kind of how just in the last couple years, the landscape of
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  my own company. Has changed in terms of that
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  because now it's like when we're talking about, hey, we need to
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  get somebody on the team to help with a project or something like
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  that. Suddenly, It's not.
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  Well, are those people located like in Asheville South Carolina
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  or in Boston? Massachusetts, I can say, hey I
• 12:44
  know somebody up the street. Let me shoot job description
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  over to them and see if they're interested, or you know, that
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  you can live anywhere at this point.
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  I happen to be really fortunate because Pittsburgh is one of the
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  few towns in the area. That is fully wired for fiber
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  internet. So we have incredibly good
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  internet here at a very affordable price compared to and
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  I mentioned like these really small even like bedroom
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  communities have a lot of trouble with that because of the
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  best they can do is cable or DSL and it's a tenth of the speed
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  and it's more expensive. And so I think that, you know,
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  we have a duty in this area I think to really push on how we
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  are building our infrastructure partly, because so much of our
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  population is under served in all of these things.
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  And it's going to I think be a real determining Factor as to
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  how some of these communities go forward.
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  I would love to live in an even smaller town, but I can't give
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  up the things that make my work possible.
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  Like I would have Have no problem saying.
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  Yeah, I'm gonna move out to Western Kansas where there's a
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  town of 300, people. All know, every single person I
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  can leave my doors and windows open at night.
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  It's quiet. Like I could take all of that
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  but I can't do that today and work it's just not possible and
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  so that that's all you know and and that holds true for all
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  kinds of infrastructure at that point.
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  Like, you know, we got to get the right roads there, we have
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  to have access to some kind of airports somewhere the closest
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  airport. Is 30 minutes away which isn't
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  bad. But that only opened in the last
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  few years and prior to that I was having to drive two and a
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  half hours to get to an airport. And that was when I say Drive I
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  mean that's 140 miles. That isn't km 207 km/h.
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  It's yeah. It's a long way to get to some
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  of these resources that make business possible.
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  Here's the thing that I don't understand, right?
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  And I saw this a lot during the pandemic, shout to Joshua, fluke
• 15:02
  the YouTuber for those who haven't heard about him, go
• 15:05
  check them out. He does a lot of stuff on, just
• 15:10
  workplace stuff. You know.
• 15:12
  Like toxic workplace is toxic businesses, Etc, and advice and
• 15:16
  whatnot, and I mentioned quite a lot on these on this channel,
• 15:20
  when I've got people that are kind of in the corporate sphere
• 15:22
  of the business sphere, and He was covering a lot of how
• 15:28
  Corporate America was reacting to, you know, working from home
• 15:32
  and everything. From how companies were
• 15:35
  tracking, you two companies, desperately trying to get people
• 15:40
  to come back into the office. Physically.
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  And the one thing that confuses me about this, which, I mean, it
• 15:46
  makes sense. In the perspective of why
• 15:49
  they're trying to keep control over things.
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  But at the same time, it doesn't from a business perspective.
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  So I'll explain what I mean, basically, you've got higher ups
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  and Company CEOs, business managers people board members,
• 16:02
  who are, like, we need, we need people to come back to the
• 16:04
  office when we need to be able to track people at all times and
• 16:07
  make sure they're working as hard as possible Etc.
• 16:09
  And you can only do that if they're in the office and learn
• 16:13
  and Isla. But as Joshua has often pointed
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  out and many People online, your work is, always measured by what
• 16:23
  you deliver, you know what I mean?
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  So if you're in sales it's how many sales you make.
• 16:27
  If it's a URI, you know if you're in development as a
• 16:32
  developer software developer or something, it's going to be you
• 16:34
  know, your turnaround time for things and the and the
• 16:37
  efficiency of what you develop. And you know if the client is
• 16:42
  happy and how much money you get for that Etc?
• 16:44
  There's always ways you can measure the effectiveness of it
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  and The thing that always confuses me, is that a lot of
• 16:51
  these companies tend to look at employees.
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  You know, as resources, hence, why it Human Resources exists.
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  But in reality is, you know, you're not working in a
• 17:02
  nine-hour shift. You're not working every single
• 17:04
  minute, you're taking small breaks here, and there you have
• 17:07
  moments of productivity and moments, you know?
• 17:10
  Because we're not robots, that's the reality.
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  We are not robots. We can't function in that manner
• 17:14
  in offices in toxic companies. They kind of expect that now
• 17:20
  bring in to Peyton the other side of this.
• 17:23
  There are companies out there that seem to be adapting and in
• 17:28
  many cases, you know, only employing remote workers, or
• 17:32
  that that makes up a lot of what the company is as far as
• 17:36
  employees are concerned and you know, you touched on this very
• 17:39
  briefly as well. How companies are saving money
• 17:42
  by doing that and this is why, this is how I look if I'm
• 17:45
  running a business, why am I paying In loads of money for a
• 17:49
  physical space, to have all these people, if I don't need
• 17:53
  that. If I need that for certain
• 17:54
  things, then fair enough. But you know what I mean?
• 17:58
  Like it does. It doesn't make sense to me to
• 18:00
  be a so obsessed with wanting to track your employees constantly.
• 18:04
  That if I'm a business owner, all I care about is, do we have
• 18:09
  a good reputation? Are we making money?
• 18:12
  Are the clients happy? Those are the things I care
• 18:15
  about, you know, David. I just don't understand
• 18:18
  Obsession with needed to track employees and getting them back
• 18:20
  in the office. What are your thoughts on that
• 18:22
  Paradigm? Shifts are always painful in
• 18:27
  some way shape or form to somebody in whatever population
• 18:30
  you have to think about the fact that over the last 300 years or
• 18:35
  so of economic history of the world we've seen three or four
• 18:40
  major Paradigm shifts in that area.
• 18:43
  At the very Leading Edge of that.
• 18:45
  Most people were self-employed, you know, They were farmers or
• 18:49
  they were the blacksmith or they were the cobbler or whatever,
• 18:52
  and they maybe had an apprentice or something like that, but the
• 18:55
  notion of like, really big companies was very limited, they
• 19:00
  existed certainly but not in the way that we would think of them.
• 19:03
  Today, as we approach the Industrial Revolution, we start
• 19:07
  to see these large companies, especially, you know, when you
• 19:10
  thinking the us about the coal miners, the steel factories,
• 19:14
  these places where now you employed people And you can't be
• 19:20
  a coal, Coal Miner in your house.
• 19:22
  You have to go to the place where the work is, you know, and
• 19:26
  the same holds true even as we started to see western expansion
• 19:31
  in the US, you you went to where the stuff was even down to stuff
• 19:36
  the gold miners and then, and the 49ers and people like this,
• 19:39
  when something happened, they went there to where that work
• 19:42
  was. Now we are in the midst of
• 19:46
  another paradigm. Shift where 20 years ago, it was
• 19:51
  almost impossible to work from home, effectively, especially as
• 19:57
  a normal. Did people do it?
• 19:59
  Yes. You know, you had the Mary, Kay
• 20:02
  representatives, who, you know, sold makeup out of their house
• 20:05
  and the Tupperware parties, and people like that, but we didn't
• 20:09
  have the video conferencing capabilities.
• 20:11
  We have now, we didn't have the audio capabilities, we have.
• 20:14
  Now we didn't have the ability to share Google.
• 20:18
  Didn't exist Dropbox didn't exist.
• 20:21
  Now, we have all of these new tools and we're seeing now a new
• 20:25
  paradigm shift as we enter a world that is not, that is
• 20:30
  Commerce driven, but it isn't is not merchandise.
• 20:33
  And, and like, physical, good driven, we have a huge amount of
• 20:38
  business that is just business for business sake, and the
• 20:44
  people running most of these companies that are Are out there
• 20:49
  are people older than me, I've got some gray in my beard.
• 20:53
  I'm not going to lie about that. I got some wipes.
• 20:55
  I'm still relatively young though on the grand Spectrum,
• 21:00
  these folks, these CEOs that are in their late 50s 60s, and even
• 21:04
  70s came of age and grew up in business, in a time where
• 21:11
  conducting business from home, simply was not possible.
• 21:16
  And so it Requires growth to get beyond that.
• 21:21
  And realize, oh yeah, these sales calls can take place from
• 21:26
  home. We can find a new way to measure
• 21:29
  these things, but it requires growth and change and people
• 21:33
  resist change even when it's changed for the better because
• 21:36
  there is a fear and innate fear in Us in the unknown.
• 21:40
  And we have these risk-reward propositions that even when the
• 21:46
  risk rewards seems very Very balanced towards taking the risk
• 21:50
  for the reward. People still are really bad at
• 21:54
  evaluating that and they would, they would rather eat the carrot
• 21:57
  in front of them rather than grow more carrots with the seeds
• 22:02
  so to speak. That's a terrible metaphor.
• 22:05
  But that's, that's sort of the thing.
• 22:07
  We we are of, you know, instant gratification.
• 22:10
  We only, we only know what's right in front of us and that
• 22:13
  abstract thinking, required to say, you know what, we could
• 22:16
  change our whole business model. That takes a kind of thinking
• 22:20
  that is rare in business today. Now, in 10 more years, Maybe
• 22:27
  that's very different. There will always be jobs where
• 22:31
  you have to go in where you have to do.
• 22:33
  Like there's there's no getting away from that.
• 22:36
  And the flip side of that coin is it's like education.
• 22:41
  It's a whole lot like education. The human species has been
• 22:46
  teaching itself for 200,000 years has been educating itself
• 22:52
  and for one hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred and eighty
• 22:59
  of those years. All of that learning took place
• 23:02
  face-to-face in groups around the campfire in buildings in
• 23:08
  rooms and Idea of. Well, now we can teach everybody
• 23:12
  online. It's a great thought.
• 23:15
  But most people aren't wired to learn well, that way.
• 23:21
  We are as a species and interpersonal type of being, we
• 23:27
  need that human contact. We need that discussion and
• 23:32
  abstracting it away while it seems like functionally.
• 23:35
  Oh yeah, we can put all the same learning material.
• 23:37
  We can put all our tests and homework.
• 23:39
  It can all go in the System. It really sterilizes what it
• 23:44
  means to learn and work is also I think very much that same way
• 23:48
  for the last 9 years. I heard time and time again.
• 23:50
  What do you do? I'm a web developer.
• 23:53
  Oh, who do you work for? Well, I work for a company whose
• 23:55
  name you can't pronounce and they're like, where is that at
• 23:58
  now? Michael there in Boston?
• 24:00
  I work here now, like, oh, that must be so great and my answer
• 24:04
  every time was always try it. It takes an enormous amount of
• 24:10
  discipline to self guide yourself to turn, tune out the
• 24:14
  distractions of a TV in the other room or like my wife is
• 24:17
  off work for the day and she's around doing laundry and moving
• 24:20
  around the house. That's a distraction to me that
• 24:23
  I have to like, functionally tune out and People think oh I
• 24:29
  want to work from home. I want to be able to get up 10
• 24:32
  minutes before I go into the office and and be able to just
• 24:35
  walk to my bathroom when I need. But it's like, there's a cost
• 24:39
  associated with those perks. And a lot of folks learned in
• 24:45
  this last year year and a half. Now that, yeah, it's not all,
• 24:49
  it's cracked up to be and some folks have found great success
• 24:52
  in that that's not to knock anybody and like I say, our
• 24:54
  company discovered we could go fully remote like our people Can
• 24:58
  do their jobs and do them successfully and consistently
• 25:02
  without being in that office space, but all of these changing
• 25:07
  paradigms are going to take time to assimilate and refine.
• 25:12
  We're all getting better at this as we go.
• 25:15
  That's one reason why I bring up communication a lot and things
• 25:19
  like this because that is so important to me as a web
• 25:23
  developer and the work that I do because I am abstracted, I am I
• 25:27
  do work remotely the way we are having this conversation.
• 25:31
  Now is how I interact with all of my co-workers and all the
• 25:35
  people. I am building these websites
• 25:37
  for. So I have to put in a lot of
• 25:40
  extra effort to make sure that I'm not sterilizing that
• 25:44
  experience to the point that it loses all flavor, and, and
• 25:49
  ability at that point, and it's hard.
• 25:53
  Like, it's real hard to do that. Well, I'd say I agree with you.
• 25:58
  I also work from home and I agree with your points, but I've
• 26:04
  also found the flip. Reverse is the problem as well,
• 26:07
  so in my experience is working in corporate in offices.
• 26:11
  I actually remember so many times when I had like people
• 26:15
  talking too loudly, people screaming in some instances and
• 26:19
  I are literally, I remember I worked in a particular place
• 26:21
  that had like several floors that we owned within this big,
• 26:25
  massive corporate building. And I literally would just
• 26:28
  Escape away to somewhere quiet. Just so I could do my work.
• 26:30
  Yeah, you know a lot of people He's going to the lounge to do
• 26:35
  nothing. That's like, no, I went there to
• 26:36
  get away from you people so I can do my work.
• 26:39
  Yeah. Open offices, like open concept
• 26:43
  type things and the headphones, man, the headphones are worth
• 26:47
  their weight. Yeah.
• 26:48
  But sometimes I think sometimes you need you hit on something
• 26:53
  very, very important that we all work in different ways.
• 26:56
  We all operate in different ways and I think the, the key element
• 27:01
  in all this is choice. Statistics show that working
• 27:06
  remotely has improved productivity for many companies
• 27:10
  but also the reverse is true as well for some people, you know.
• 27:13
  They need to be in that offensive Armament.
• 27:15
  So what's the answer? You give people you provide
• 27:17
  people the option of? I don't know.
• 27:20
  I think personally I think it depends on the situation
• 27:23
  case-by-case. Like for instance the company
• 27:25
  that I work for, I'm nowhere near their headquarters.
• 27:31
  And you know, I'm subcontractor. So we that's what we agreed and
• 27:34
  it works perfectly, you know, but it does depend on the
• 27:37
  position, it depends on the setup of what you're doing, you
• 27:39
  know, as you say, is a lot easier to learn in the office, I
• 27:42
  can agree with that as well. So, it's sometimes it's a lot
• 27:45
  easier to just be able to walk up to your boss and talk to them
• 27:47
  directly rather than trying to get through to them on a given
• 27:50
  day. I totally understand that.
• 27:53
  But at the same time, you know, it's the sort of thing where
• 27:57
  again, we all operate in such a different way.
• 28:00
  And You know, some of us need the ability to be in the office
• 28:04
  and I think it really does depend who you are and what your
• 28:08
  circumstances are. I think for many of us, myself
• 28:11
  included, you know, not having to travel distances and saving
• 28:15
  time in that way. Means you can be more effective
• 28:18
  and more productive in the day. You have more energy.
• 28:21
  You know, there's not more of, a sort of that sinking feeling as
• 28:25
  you're headed towards the end of the day, knowing that your
• 28:27
  commute is going to be, you know, very long and but, you
• 28:32
  know, you made some really good points earlier, it depends on
• 28:35
  the type of jobs and I think that You know, I think the
• 28:41
  hybrid option for many companies, is probably the way
• 28:44
  for it. And, you know, I've seen some
• 28:45
  companies have a smart approach to this, some of them have have
• 28:50
  even included that in the job offers that they make to people,
• 28:53
  that I call it hybrid work in these opportunities to work from
• 28:56
  home. Right.
• 28:57
  And I do think that's a little dangerous, because if you use
• 29:00
  that as a benefit, it can be used against you.
• 29:03
  And, you know, it's it can be taken away from you as a
• 29:06
  punishment, you know, I mean, it's kind of silly how companies
• 29:09
  work Times but it requires two pieces of honesty.
• 29:13
  One. And one of those is workers have
• 29:15
  to be honest with themselves about, are you good at working
• 29:18
  remotely? Are you good at working from
• 29:20
  home? Because again some some people
• 29:22
  aren't and that's not a bad quality, they say it's just some
• 29:26
  people are wired differently for that and they need the structure
• 29:30
  of an office environment. They need the separation of
• 29:33
  their home and work lives the house.
• 29:35
  I live in. Now, just to give you an example
• 29:37
  that my first house was a little tiny crack.
• 29:39
  Acker box size house. And I had a room that was my
• 29:43
  office. My problem was, I could not
• 29:47
  finish work and then go to the living room and separate myself
• 29:52
  from my work effectively because I could still see that room.
• 29:55
  I had line-of-sight to my office because my house was so small
• 29:59
  and so like, there's like this intellectual disconnect that I
• 30:04
  was not getting that wasn't healthy.
• 30:06
  Like, that's I as a result I was working too much.
• 30:10
  I would go back in and do stuff and be thinking about things.
• 30:13
  So I bought the house I have now which is much bigger, and has
• 30:17
  this space. That I'm in right now where it's
• 30:19
  like this room, the only place you can see this room from is if
• 30:24
  you're going to the bathroom or you're doing laundry otherwise,
• 30:27
  this room is isolated. So it's like, this is my
• 30:30
  workspace. This is my wife will sneak in
• 30:33
  sometimes and and come in to like give me a kiss or something
• 30:36
  on the saying goodbye or whatever.
• 30:38
  And it's like, She's noticed, like, I get like tense when she
• 30:42
  comes in here because like, this is my, this is a bubble for me.
• 30:46
  Like, this is a workspace, and so that distraction immediately
• 30:49
  puts me on edge because I have built.
• 30:52
  So much of my, my procedure and process, and everything in
• 30:58
  routine around. This room is where I go to,
• 31:01
  like, Focus. I got two monitors and a laptop
• 31:04
  screen and then a wall mounted TV over here, take my battle
• 31:08
  station and Focus comes down to that range of stuff.
• 31:13
  And so, anything outside of that is something that breaks the
• 31:16
  fourth wall for me so to speak, you know.
• 31:20
  So yeah, that's a really great point and I can I can relate to
• 31:25
  that in terms of things, like going to the gym, I can't train
• 31:30
  at home. Same thing, I have a disconnect,
• 31:33
  I just can't get the motivation, but if I go to the gym,
• 31:37
  physically, I will train because I I've paid to be there.
• 31:41
  I'm going there. What else am I gonna do?
• 31:42
  Sit on my phone. You know, I've got work out and
• 31:45
  so the environment forces, the behavior.
• 31:47
  So I, yeah, I totally get where you're coming from and I think
• 31:50
  that it is important to be able to have that disconnect and or
• 31:54
  create that mental space, where I'll come here to work, okay, I
• 31:59
  can get away from it afterwards, don't have to think about it.
• 32:01
  I can truly turn off and as another thing as well as like,
• 32:08
  It's, there's this kind of element to to Modern work now.
• 32:13
  I think we're You know, you're always accessible now.
• 32:18
  Things like having slack on your phone.
• 32:20
  Yeah, it's like people can always contact you and I have to
• 32:26
  be on call once a month. So for a week out of every
• 32:29
  month, not only can people get a hold of me.
• 32:31
  But I'm the on-call guy for an international company.
• 32:34
  So, we have a London office. We have a Paris office.
• 32:38
  We have a Japan office. Cool.
• 32:40
  And it's like, if something goes down and it's 3 a.m. for me.
• 32:45
  Guess whose phones starts waking him up at that point.
• 32:48
  It's like and that's just like an accepted consequence of my
• 32:52
  line of work you know that we have to be answerable to the
• 32:56
  business and our business literally does run 24 hours and
• 33:00
  we don't have teams dedicated to each one of those areas that
• 33:05
  work like in those time slices and I'm not going to time shift
• 33:09
  either. Like I will time shift for calls
• 33:12
  and things in the moment but like I'm not going to take a
• 33:14
  whole week. Or something, and be like this
• 33:16
  week, I'm working for Japan. So I'm going to work Japanese
• 33:20
  hours the whole week. I don't do that.
• 33:21
  Like that's I will. I work my hours and we will
• 33:25
  communicate over email and try to catch us each other, at the
• 33:28
  end of the day, or start of the day, where we have that little
• 33:31
  bit of overlap. But like, bad, that process,
• 33:35
  that is hard to get away from in those instances.
• 33:40
  And one of the challenges, this ghost like this notion of like
• 33:45
  getting distracted or having structure around your remote
• 33:48
  work is like, when you work with a team, especially, I can't ask
• 33:57
  a question and wait, two hours for you to sit back down at your
• 34:01
  machine to answer it. Like there had there has to be
• 34:05
  weak because we use slack as well.
• 34:07
  And my team is fantastic. Everybody is really good at
• 34:11
  keeping up. You know, during work hours, we
• 34:14
  keep our eyes on things, but it's like, if we had a problem
• 34:17
  with that, if one of our devs or something wasn't good at that,
• 34:20
  or was constantly getting up and walking away and not taking
• 34:23
  their phone or something, that'd be a huge Problem for us because
• 34:27
  we need that communication. Otherwise, you're stopping.
• 34:30
  Everybody's work. If I need to ask you about a
• 34:33
  piece of code, you wrote or understand like something that
• 34:36
  about what you're working on, or I'm doing a code review for you.
• 34:39
  I need to be able to talk to you during business hours, are
• 34:43
  business house, you are home. You are working from home but it
• 34:46
  is business hours now. So we need to be able to have
• 34:49
  that that continuity, so to speak.
• 34:54
  So like this, There's a good and a bad side to that, and it's
• 34:59
  just so funny because it just reminds me of all the problems
• 35:01
  in the office as well, which is the flip reverse this.
• 35:04
  So it's like, where you can't You know, where you have this
• 35:09
  kind of problem, maybe of reaching people because they're
• 35:11
  working from home, and you don't always know that you have access
• 35:13
  to them. If you're working in an open
• 35:15
  plan office, which I don't know. I've never worked in anything
• 35:19
  other than open plan office. I don't even think offices with
• 35:22
  separate doors even exist anymore, unless you're a
• 35:25
  manager, like, every office of overworked is open plan and the
• 35:29
  problem with that is, you know, especially if you're working in
• 35:32
  coding or something like that, where you need to focus.
• 35:35
  You just have anyone just come up to you.
• 35:37
  You and to start distracting you and it's like, well, hang on,
• 35:40
  man. I'm in the middle of something.
• 35:42
  I'm trying to do my work and it's like, they just want to
• 35:44
  distract you or, or pull you away from what you're doing, or,
• 35:48
  whatever the case may be, and it's just like, come on now.
• 35:52
  There is no perfect solution. I mean, that's really all right.
• 35:56
  The end of it. Like, you just have to find the
• 35:58
  the balances to those things and get your environment configured
• 36:04
  as optimally as possible. So like, for instance, I've In
• 36:07
  an open concept. I've also had my own office and
• 36:11
  one of the things that was really nice was, you know, being
• 36:14
  able to close that door, cut myself off and do my work and
• 36:19
  things like well yeah, but so make it.
• 36:20
  So, come up and knock on the door or anything like that.
• 36:22
  So maybe I put a sign out that says, hey, write your name down.
• 36:27
  Leave a message. I'm in the zone or something
• 36:31
  like that. Like, say, if you open this
• 36:33
  door, it better, you know, there better be a server on fire
• 36:37
  because is like, I am trying to, you know, focus on stuff.
• 36:40
  There are ways to kind of massage those environments and
• 36:45
  the same goes for working remotely where it's like, you
• 36:48
  know what? Yeah, I am going to go ahead's
• 36:50
  down on some code. I can't switch contexts right
• 36:55
  now. Like I need to work on this for
• 36:57
  two or three hours without disruption.
• 37:00
  What do I do? I go into slack and I just help
• 37:03
  people say, hey, I'm going to be away from slack.
• 37:07
  I'm you Everything be aware of that here.
• 37:10
  Like here you shoot me a Google chat if you really need me, if
• 37:16
  there's like a big emergency, but I really need to not pay
• 37:20
  attention to slack for a couple hours and that's completely.
• 37:23
  Okay. Like there we have no problem
• 37:26
  with that. Where we work, I do feel very
• 37:29
  lucky to work. Not just had a company that gets
• 37:32
  it but with people that also get it, it's a very well.
• 37:37
  Organized, well, structured type of setup that I don't know that
• 37:42
  I could really improve upon a whole lot.
• 37:44
  And a lot of folks are not that fortunate and I recognize that
• 37:48
  and it's like, I'm a huge educator.
• 37:51
  I love. I my first like real web
• 37:54
  development job was for a university and I've always
• 37:58
  enjoyed the art of teaching, and sharing and mentoring and all of
• 38:02
  this kind of stuff and being able to like hell.
• 38:07
  People learn how to adapt environments how to switch.
• 38:12
  You know, from one mode to another is really fun for me,
• 38:17
  and that's why I like I've got my show now that I do that is
• 38:20
  all about web development is in as my way of being like, here's
• 38:23
  how we do this, here's how we get into these things.
• 38:25
  We did a whole episode on remote working, like, what, what do I
• 38:29
  do and what is my co-host? Do to make us successful in
• 38:33
  terms of, you know, tips and tricks and little things that
• 38:36
  we've done in to make our environments better and make it
• 38:40
  easier to focus and not get distracted.
• 38:43
  I eat out a lot. I go out for lunch all the time
• 38:48
  but it's the little things like that.
• 38:50
  It reminds me of the passive aggressive nature of working in
• 38:54
  the office for certain things like, remember one company I
• 38:57
  work for, they the IT team had a note on the door that said
• 39:03
  something like, if your problem. Does not exist within a Jarrett
• 39:09
  asked file order a task and your problem does not exist.
• 39:13
  It was kind of like this thing of.
• 39:15
  Like, don't contact me on slight slack, trying to get me to do
• 39:18
  stuff because unless I will chase it up if there's an
• 39:20
  official task, but if there isn't it, just, you know, it
• 39:23
  doesn't exist. And I, you know, I worked
• 39:25
  abroad. So I had a lot of people
• 39:28
  sometimes. Drop by the drop by my slap
• 39:31
  messages that are hey, Chris can you look over this for me?
• 39:33
  Can you look over this for me? And I would always do it and I'd
• 39:36
  be happy to Because it normally would just take like five
• 39:38
  minutes. Just go for it, check it, but
• 39:40
  sometimes they send through something that genuinely would
• 39:44
  take like, I don't know maybe an hour to go for and I'm like, you
• 39:48
  need to make this a task. Do you need to you need to
• 39:51
  because it and especially when I'm a had a manager who
• 39:55
  basically told us we had to do time tracking, which change the
• 39:58
  whole game that really kind of ruined things but yeah, there is
• 40:04
  a cost to context switching. That idea of, I need to go
• 40:09
  ahead, stay down. There's a good reason to do that
• 40:12
  because the back-and-forth nature of those disruptions
• 40:16
  there, there is a cost associated with that.
• 40:19
  Okay, I have to put stuff aside. Remember where I left off deal
• 40:23
  with you for even if even if your task is only a five-minute
• 40:26
  task, you have derailed a half hours worth of work.
• 40:30
  Exactly. Yeah and so like there's that
• 40:34
  cost and getting people to understand that in a polite
• 40:37
  Right way, is a challenge. Like, that's not something
• 40:41
  that's easy and it's hard. It's a hard thing to teach
• 40:44
  people how to do, it's kind of one of those like, you know, it
• 40:48
  when you see it and it takes support like your manager, you
• 40:53
  know, and your department has to be okay, with, being able to
• 40:56
  say, to people, like, if this will truly take me one minute,
• 40:59
  I'm okay with it. But if I tell you to enter a
• 41:01
  ticket, I need you to enter the ticket for it.
• 41:04
  And, you know, if it's an emergency for You or you forgot
• 41:08
  it deadline was coming up, I sympathize.
• 41:12
  But you did the old saying, like, your lack of planning does
• 41:16
  not constitute an emergency on my part.
• 41:18
  Like the it has to be okay to tell people that.
• 41:22
  Yeah, I agree. And as the world won't end, like
• 41:26
  we've had that happen before, where it's like, you know,
• 41:28
  there's a new marketing campaign or something going out that is
• 41:31
  like, oh crap. Something's not working.
• 41:33
  We didn't, you know, Test X, you know, or this form is not doing
• 41:36
  what needs to now. And it's like okay I'll fix it
• 41:40
  when I get to it. I will make it a priority to get
• 41:43
  to it but I'm not dropping everything and trust me the
• 41:48
  world's not coming to an end. Yeah.
• 41:50
  Everything will still be okay. It'll be fine.
• 41:53
  Couldn't agree more. You mentioned within the, you
• 41:56
  know, about your podcast which is known as the drunken ux
• 42:00
  podcast which from the title alone.
• 42:03
  This tells you everything you need to know and I'm already
• 42:05
  intrigued. This is brilliant.
• 42:06
  So what can you tell? Us about the show.
• 42:09
  I am the classic. I don't I go.
• 42:13
  You know what? There's three, sort of
• 42:15
  generations. I guess I fall into now or micro
• 42:17
  Generations, right? Mm, I guess I am technically a
• 42:19
  millennial or as any Allure, an elder Millennial, depending on
• 42:23
  how you go about that. I'm I'm a dude, I have a buddy,
• 42:29
  I have a podcast, like I could not make this more cliche, then
• 42:33
  I went, let's make it drunken. Now I We'll admit that the
• 42:38
  drunken part of the show is fairly mild back.
• 42:43
  I do not get crazy sloppy or anything like that, but we do
• 42:46
  have a glass of scotch or something and sit down and talk
• 42:50
  about all things web development so that that ranges from.
• 42:54
  Yes, absolutely ux. Which is user experience for
• 42:58
  folks who aren't familiar with the field?
• 43:01
  We talk about coding. We talk about design, we talk
• 43:04
  about user research and testing. We talked about things going on
• 43:09
  in the news, for web development, you know, big
• 43:11
  changes to things. Accessibility is a huge part of
• 43:15
  what we talked about. You know, how do we build these
• 43:18
  experiences that that we talked about?
• 43:22
  And I mentioned earlier, like, you know, not like sterilizing
• 43:25
  things to the point where you take the human out of it, one of
• 43:31
  the big things I preach is a website is not Noise a website
• 43:39
  is in the way websites are there to help one person who is
• 43:44
  creating something of value transmit that to somebody else.
• 43:49
  Who wants to know that thing? People write the content on the
• 43:54
  web sites, people read the contents on the website or watch
• 43:57
  them, or listen to them, in the case of a podcast, everything
• 44:00
  else is in the way of that. So how do we do that in a way
• 44:04
  where we make it as easy as possible for as many people as
• 44:09
  possible regardless of where they are in the world?
• 44:13
  You know, if you are in parts of Africa or Western Kansas, you
• 44:17
  may not have good internet, you know, thing if it's if you've
• 44:20
  got a slow internet connection and your Sleight is burdened by
• 44:24
  videos and tons of JavaScript, remarketing, trackers, and
• 44:29
  things like that. And that site is 25.
• 44:33
  MB. Download you are excluding your
• 44:36
  content from people because they can't wait around and bandwidth
• 44:40
  is at a premium for them. But then we get into things like
• 44:44
  can you you have a visual disability of some kind one in.
• 44:50
  Ten males are color blind Are you picking colors?
• 44:54
  That make sense that, you know, are you using Color to convey
• 44:57
  information like cancel or accept and those look the same
• 45:02
  to somebody. So this all like it is in
• 45:07
  compost, in what we talked about, because we are very
• 45:10
  passionate about that and about how there's a lot of folks out
• 45:14
  there that use the internet for evil, and I don't mean like
• 45:20
  comically evil or anything like that.
• 45:22
  I mean like, Little things the way we constantly use
• 45:27
  advertising pop-ups, the way cookie compliance as somebody
• 45:32
  well formerly EU, but the the whole EU cookie compliance does
• 45:38
  GDP our compliance, you know, the way we are approaching that
• 45:44
  factors into how we build things, how we strategize things
• 45:48
  and are we doing it in a way? These cookie compliance things
• 45:51
  everybody sees These a million times a day now on websites and
• 45:55
  you can immediately tell the difference between a good one,
• 45:57
  and a bad one. The good ones pop up and they're
• 46:00
  like, we got cookies. Do you want to accept them all?
• 46:03
  Or do you want to decline them or do you want to manage them?
• 46:06
  Boom, decline, I don't need them, I don't care.
• 46:10
  Then you get to the site. That's like you can either
• 46:12
  accept these or manage them. And then you hit the manage
• 46:18
  button and it's a giant pop up with a million options.
• 46:20
  It's designed to Get you to not do that.
• 46:24
  Basically. It's like that's the kind of
• 46:26
  stuff that really sort of put sand in the gears of a website
• 46:33
  and we've got to get better at that and train people better
• 46:37
  than that. So that's been, we are right at
• 46:40
  the tail end of season 4. We've got over 100 episodes.
• 46:44
  We've got a little bit for everybody in there and season 5
• 46:47
  is already stacking up. So like this stuff is going to
• 46:52
  go on For a while because I got a lot to talk about, you
• 46:56
  highlight a few things in the sort of key points, I suppose,
• 47:01
  for what people should be considering with regards to ux
• 47:04
  and general. But what would you say are the
• 47:05
  kind of the most important aspects of ux both in general?
• 47:10
  And for a website let's say someone's creating someone
• 47:13
  create a website from scratch. Like what right should they
• 47:15
  consider one of my favorite sort of key phrases is Do less
• 47:22
  better. There's there's an alternative
• 47:26
  way of putting this, which is that Perfection is the enemy of
• 47:31
  done. And if you chase Perfection, you
• 47:36
  will never launch the thing you're building.
• 47:39
  You have to have a line in the sand, where something is good
• 47:42
  enough and then you will iterate on it.
• 47:45
  Get out what you need, get out the value of what you're
• 47:48
  building and then start iterating on the details and
• 47:53
  dialing. In and making it better do.
• 47:57
  Less better is sort of my easy sort of t-shirt motto version of
• 48:01
  that which is just like, what's the least amount you can do
• 48:04
  really well and do that before adding stuff in.
• 48:09
  I used to talk with a lot of folks about social media
• 48:12
  strategy and this was back when Pinterest first started blowing
• 48:16
  up, this was what 2007-2008 probably when Pinterest launched
• 48:23
  and A lot of the folks other organizations I was talking to
• 48:26
  is, how are you all integrating Pinterest into your social media
• 48:30
  strategy and my advice to everybody was don't you have no
• 48:35
  business getting on Pinterest for your business.
• 48:38
  Because I've seen the way you handle Facebook and YouTube and
• 48:42
  Twitter, which was very new at that point and I'm like, you
• 48:46
  aren't doing those three. Well, enough to add a fourth one
• 48:50
  that just means you're going to do a fourth one worse.
• 48:53
  Hmm. Do less better, focus on what
• 48:57
  you can, what you have the capacity, don't start stretching
• 49:00
  yourself out and that holds true across any sort of metric.
• 49:05
  You want to apply to web development.
• 49:09
  The other part is, you know, build the thing that serves the
• 49:15
  most people. Whatever, whatever methodology
• 49:20
  you want to apply that to do. You want to use inclusive
• 49:23
  design? Do you want to use Universal
• 49:25
  Design? Do you want to use accessible
• 49:27
  design? Those are three are all great
• 49:29
  things, like those are all ways to make.
• 49:31
  Sure the thing you build is much better.
• 49:34
  I wrap those in a blanket term called kind design.
• 49:38
  Kind design is the thing where I am building something that is
• 49:43
  important to me and it's important that other people have
• 49:47
  access. Way, I'm going to do what it
• 49:49
  takes to answer those questions. We used to do this in in the
• 49:54
  real world, right? When you build a building You
• 49:58
  build one building. This is where Universal Design
• 50:01
  is not a digital term and actually comes out of industrial
• 50:05
  type design. Because if you are building that
• 50:09
  building I can't build one building for regular people one
• 50:13
  building for people with wheelchairs and one building for
• 50:16
  people who are blind. That that's not how the world
• 50:20
  works. I get one chance to build one
• 50:22
  building. And I have to make that one
• 50:23
  building serve as many people as possible.
• 50:26
  And so that has transformed into a lot of digital thinking, but
• 50:31
  we can we actually can sort of carve out experiences in a way
• 50:36
  to make sure that if something isn't perfect, maybe we can Flex
• 50:41
  it into a slightly different type of feature so that it
• 50:44
  accommodates everybody if possible.
• 50:48
  And that's all done in service of combating the antithesis of
• 50:54
  kind design, which is hostile Design.
• 50:57
  This is also known as dark patterns, that may be afraid
• 51:01
  that's that dark patterns is getting a lot more momentum as a
• 51:03
  phrase. It's a thing that was coined by
• 51:06
  Harry brignole back in 2010 and this is all the stuff that Is
• 51:13
  designed to make a user do something, they don't want to
• 51:16
  do. And so these are things like I
• 51:19
  signed up for an Amazon account, Amazon made it super easy for me
• 51:22
  to, I just gave them my email address and a password and
• 51:25
  signed up, and I have an Amazon account.
• 51:27
  And then I say, now, go delete your account.
• 51:31
  And they make it so hard. Yeah.
• 51:34
  To delete that account newspapers.
• 51:37
  Oh my God, newspapers, almost like they do it on purpose.
• 51:41
  Yes. Yeah, you newspapers are more
• 51:43
  than happy to let you sign up online and give them your credit
• 51:46
  card to get access to their gated content.
• 51:49
  But then you have to call them or even.
• 51:51
  In some cases, write a letter to them, to get them to stop
• 51:56
  billing, you and to turn off your access, that's a dark
• 51:58
  pattern. These are things that are done
• 52:00
  intentionally to keep a user, either to make a user do
• 52:04
  something, they don't want to do, or keep the user doing
• 52:08
  something, you want them to do. And Got to get better at showing
• 52:14
  business that there are other ways to go about solving these
• 52:17
  problems. And it's, it's hard.
• 52:19
  It's hard work because every business is going to say, but if
• 52:22
  we don't give them an easy way to unsubscribe, then we keep
• 52:25
  getting money from them. Look at all this money.
• 52:27
  We keep making from people who aren't using our service and I'm
• 52:30
  like yeah that's not something to be proud of.
• 52:35
  You've got to be better than that.
• 52:37
  And so these these are things that I think about a lot.
• 52:39
  When I talk to people about what Yeah, how do I build a site man?
• 52:43
  I don't care what technology you use.
• 52:45
  I don't care like what your aesthetic preferences are.
• 52:50
  These are all like trivial decisions to make in context of
• 52:54
  the bigger things about building a site.
• 52:57
  Well and building it with good intentions towards your users.
• 53:03
  What do you think of the best places to actually build a
• 53:06
  website? These days?
• 53:07
  I mean, do you think for example, website, such as Wix or
• 53:10
  WordPress? So worth looking into or do you
• 53:12
  think there are other avenues that are better?
• 53:15
  Like what's the what should people kind of start looking
• 53:18
  when they're thinking of setting up their first website?
• 53:21
  Think it depends on who you are. I think yes tools like Wicks
• 53:25
  Squarespace. These are good tools, they
• 53:28
  aren't great but they are good enough for a lot of people
• 53:32
  webflow web flows. Another one that's that's pretty
• 53:35
  solid and these are really geared towards people who aren't
• 53:40
  web Ella purrs, right? Like these are geared towards
• 53:43
  the mom-and-pop shops folks who need set up a simple page.
• 53:46
  They have three or four pages. You need to get your hours up
• 53:49
  there. I need to get my restaurant menu
• 53:52
  posted somewhere for folks like that.
• 53:55
  For the most part, those are good and it's hard to take a lot
• 54:00
  of what I'm saying and apply it to folks like that to say, well
• 54:04
  you're not building an accessible website and the
• 54:06
  dudes, like I'm going to Chef, I just need people to know what's
• 54:10
  for dinner tonight. At the restaurant and what's
• 54:12
  the, you know, what's in season? Like, you have to meet or your
• 54:16
  expectations with some of those conversations, obviously, I, of
• 54:21
  course, like, everything I do is bespoke, like, we build sites.
• 54:25
  I encourage people. Go out, use a service like
• 54:29
  digitalocean, it, lets you set up a server real quickly, really
• 54:33
  easily, and it gives you your own sandbox for five dollars a
• 54:37
  month, and you can go there and now you have the ability to set
• 54:39
  up something. That you want to build a little
• 54:43
  application then install node on it and take off and if you break
• 54:47
  it, no big deal, it's yours, get rid of it, throw it out and
• 54:50
  start over other services. Like I'll tell people like you
• 54:57
  can use things like Bluehost or media Temple.
• 55:01
  Some of these shared services and they're fine for just like
• 55:03
  having a place to put files where people can get to them.
• 55:09
  But it'll come down to A lot of like sitting down and talking
• 55:13
  like, are you building this for somebody else that you need to
• 55:15
  hand off to then use WordPress and find somewhere?
• 55:20
  That's cheap, you know, three dollar a month hosting for
• 55:22
  WordPress. Is it the best answer?
• 55:24
  Not usually but it's the good enough answer that.
• 55:28
  Most people will have, at least, some familiarity with and that
• 55:33
  somebody else can come in and pick up at some point.
• 55:35
  There's a, there's a law called Jacobs law.
• 55:39
  Its there's the Is called the laws of ux and Jacobs laws.
• 55:44
  This notion that don't get too cheeky with the things your
• 55:49
  building and try to get like super creative or take huge
• 55:53
  risks because people spend most of their time not on your site.
• 55:59
  They spend most of their time on everybody else's site but yours.
• 56:04
  And so you need to keep things familiar for those users.
• 56:07
  And that applies to somebody you may be building a site for who,
• 56:11
  then you're going to hand it over and be like, see you, I got
• 56:14
  my check, I'm done. I'm going to My next client.
• 56:15
  Now, those folks need to have something familiar to them too.
• 56:20
  And so it makes sense to use something like WordPress as that
• 56:24
  sort of backbone because they can get a lot of help for they
• 56:27
  can find what they need for it. Listen to the things to avoid in
• 56:32
  ux design. Oh the dark patterns is a good
• 56:38
  start because it's easy to do them because you're told and
• 56:46
  this is a hard hard thing for folks to sort of get their head
• 56:50
  around and figure out like it. Is this a hill worth dying on
• 56:54
  when your business says, we pay your paycheck and we want you to
• 56:57
  do this and you think I can't afford to lose this job, I'm
• 57:01
  going to write the code and make it do it.
• 57:03
  It's hard for me to say no, you should sacrifice your job on the
• 57:06
  altar of this. I can't tell people to do that,
• 57:10
  but learning about dark patterns as a website dark patterns, dot
• 57:14
  org. That has a whole list.
• 57:15
  Stuff like real common ones and one of those is like let's say
• 57:20
  confirm shaming, confirm shaming, is this notion of?
• 57:25
  I'm going to click the decline but like you want to add I see a
• 57:29
  so this isn't exactly confirm shaming with its close.
• 57:32
  If you order pizza here in the u.s. using like the Domino's app
• 57:36
  or something as you're checking out they'll ask you do you want
• 57:39
  to add extra cheese and and more meat and stuff because we can
• 57:43
  charge you more for all that a They hide the decline button,
• 57:47
  they D emphasize it and put it at a lower level of importance
• 57:51
  on the accept button and you'll hit that and it'll be like are
• 57:55
  you sure? Now are you sure is not
• 57:59
  necessarily confirm shaming but some places will take that much
• 58:02
  farther than that and will actively try to make you feel
• 58:07
  bad for not doing the thing that you don't want to do.
• 58:10
  Like if if you decline this, then you're going to miss out
• 58:14
  on. Codes and and sale notifications
• 58:19
  and they're going to try to make you feel bad for saying, I don't
• 58:22
  need your spam like because most people like, they'll think that
• 58:27
  in the bank. Oh, I don't want to miss out on
• 58:28
  that stuff. Stop.
• 58:30
  And think about how often you actually look at those emails
• 58:33
  and be like, Oh, coupon code, you know, know you're sending
• 58:37
  that straight to spam. You don't care about that.
• 58:39
  You don't need it. You have disguised as this one's
• 58:44
  real bad. We're especially on like blogs
• 58:47
  and things like that, where companies will go out and
• 58:52
  sponsor blogs on websites and the website won't Clearly say,
• 58:57
  hey, somebody paid to put this on our site.
• 59:00
  Advertisement is another word for this.
• 59:04
  Those things are incredibly misleading, because they're
• 59:08
  written from one point of view. They're going to leave out all
• 59:11
  the bad and they're going to be written in such a way as to
• 59:14
  intentionally You'll like oh this is just a review.
• 59:18
  This is my honest opinion. And so that content creation
• 59:22
  process is designed to mislead the user.
• 59:25
  We have to learn what these things are so that we can avoid
• 59:30
  falling into those traps, a couple other easier ones that
• 59:34
  were things like just remembering like your
• 59:37
  experiences are not the experiences of your users.
• 59:39
  We can have sort of self-service bias while I don't think it's
• 59:44
  hard. I I feel like this is a real
• 59:47
  straightforward thing to grasp. That's cool.
• 59:51
  Have you tested it? Did you ask anybody?
• 59:53
  Like I'm not talking about like a clinical test with all kinds
• 59:58
  of forms and charts and surveys in a room with somebody.
• 1:00:02
  Go on Twitter and just share a mock-up and just be like, hey
• 1:00:06
  does this make sense to people and you'll get two or three
• 1:00:08
  people who will answer at least, you're starting on that journey
• 1:00:12
  of getting that feedback and trying to figure out what's
• 1:00:14
  what's good? Too bad and get you out of your
• 1:00:18
  head space. Like, well, I'm doing it.
• 1:00:19
  I'm right. And take criticism.
• 1:00:23
  Well. Criticism of a design is not
• 1:00:26
  criticism of you. It does not devalue you as a
• 1:00:29
  person. It means.
• 1:00:31
  Listen, see what's up and see if it's something you maybe need to
• 1:00:35
  do anything about. We can get really, really
• 1:00:39
  defensive about code that we write and and sites that we
• 1:00:42
  build and when it doesn't work for somebody and they tell us
• 1:00:45
  that instead of taking it as feedback and something to maybe
• 1:00:49
  iterate on and grow on WE immediately become defensive of
• 1:00:53
  it. Oh well.
• 1:00:54
  I'm not wrong, you're wrong. And that's a terrible way to
• 1:00:58
  approach something that is somebody going out of their way
• 1:01:03
  to tell you. Hey, this is hurting me.
• 1:01:06
  This is not serving me. This is complicated or it makes
• 1:01:10
  it hard for me to do this. I like this person went out of
• 1:01:12
  their way to give you feedback and to take that as an attack is
• 1:01:18
  one of the worst things we can do in the field overall.
• 1:01:25
  This is one of those things that I can go on for an hour talking
• 1:01:28
  about what should and shouldn't happen.
• 1:01:31
  That the thing is just go out and build something.
• 1:01:36
  It's so easy to get out there and learn these things and as
• 1:01:39
  long as you listen and learn, You're going to be gold, those
• 1:01:46
  two things open so many doors and make it so easy to get along
• 1:01:51
  and figure out and and make better things because the first
• 1:01:55
  couple things you build are going to be trash.
• 1:01:58
  They're going to be bad because they're the first couple things,
• 1:02:01
  you build your still learning stuff and that's cool.
• 1:02:04
  That's okay. As long as you know that and you
• 1:02:09
  learn and then build something better next time or iterative.
• 1:02:13
  It on it that we use that word a lot.
• 1:02:14
  Iterate iterate. Recite website, redesigns are
• 1:02:17
  terrible uses of time and money. Pick pieces of the site and
• 1:02:22
  change them over time. Oh, this called doesn't work
• 1:02:25
  anymore. Oh, this, this carousel on the
• 1:02:29
  header doesn't is not generating any traffic.
• 1:02:31
  Cool change. That one thing first?
• 1:02:34
  Because that makes it easy to measure the to changing one
• 1:02:37
  thing. Impact the, the number I care
• 1:02:41
  about when you change everything, you can't.
• 1:02:44
  You never can tell that totally agree with this.
• 1:02:47
  I stay it kind of reminds me of every time like Facebook or meta
• 1:02:51
  as it's now called. Yeah, every time they do a major
• 1:02:55
  redesign and it's funny, you know, I'm I know everyone kind
• 1:02:59
  of hates Facebook. I'm kind of like whatever at
• 1:03:01
  this point, I don't really care but one thing I do care about
• 1:03:06
  from a sort of a marketing perspective and yeah, just
• 1:03:09
  Development perspective is like they do give you a luck a little
• 1:03:14
  bit of warning normally about the redesigned for sometimes.
• 1:03:17
  They don't like this. Most recent one we just did it
• 1:03:20
  and since probably 2008/2009, I think they've done like five or
• 1:03:24
  six redesigns and every time of hated it but this last time I
• 1:03:29
  actually liked it, they actually did something.
• 1:03:32
  It was more to do with the layout of pages and stuff like
• 1:03:35
  that, but, yeah, always used to bother me that they would do
• 1:03:39
  that. And speaking to your point, I
• 1:03:41
  mean, it would have always made more sense.
• 1:03:43
  I think to just change little things and see how people react
• 1:03:47
  to it and stuff. And it doesn't verse to change.
• 1:03:51
  We talked about this about work, right, like, right?
• 1:03:53
  Yeah. Okay.
• 1:03:54
  It doesn't matter if the change is better.
• 1:03:57
  Most people are going to be angry about it because it
• 1:04:01
  doesn't meet their Stations. Well, what do you make about?
• 1:04:05
  Because I've seen sometimes I think Facebook's also done this
• 1:04:07
  before where you kind of offer the new design and the classic
• 1:04:13
  design and in some cases, some websites.
• 1:04:15
  Keep its I know read it. I think you can always
• 1:04:19
  perpetually switch between the classic view and the new one,
• 1:04:23
  which I think majeure was doing that for a while too.
• 1:04:25
  I think it's better to do that way because then you've I mean
• 1:04:27
  it's probably more work to keep it, you know, keep it going and
• 1:04:31
  such but at least you've And of you're pleasing Everyone by
• 1:04:33
  doing that that the challenge to that is it's incredibly
• 1:04:38
  expensive, okay? That that is an expensive
• 1:04:41
  business process, that process to undergo.
• 1:04:43
  The thing about a website redesign is you are committing
• 1:04:48
  all of your resources to make that thing happen.
• 1:04:52
  And in that process, a if it fails you've now completely
• 1:04:57
  failed. Like if that redesign isn't
• 1:05:01
  accepted by people, Or doesn't accomplish what you need it to
• 1:05:05
  you. Are now out the entire redesign
• 1:05:10
  the right approach is incrementing change.
• 1:05:15
  We're really bad at seeing that change.
• 1:05:19
  If I modify button position or like with the Facebook redesign,
• 1:05:25
  they the way they started calling out comments in the sort
• 1:05:30
  of gray boxes. With rounded Corners.
• 1:05:34
  It's like if you introduce just that into your existing design
• 1:05:40
  that's going to be much easier for somebody to assimilate, then
• 1:05:46
  when the entire post layout changes, because now you're
• 1:05:50
  saying you have to relearn this entire interface, you have to
• 1:05:55
  relearn everything all at once instead of do this, one little
• 1:06:00
  thing changed but it's not a big deal because it was one little
• 1:06:03
  thing that's, that is sort of that right process because And
• 1:06:07
  the other thing is, you can, you can test as you go then.
• 1:06:13
  Doesn't that change generate outcomes?
• 1:06:16
  No. Cool.
• 1:06:17
  Let's abandon that change. But we don't do abandon
• 1:06:20
  everything. Just the one thing that didn't
• 1:06:22
  work. That's a really good point as
• 1:06:24
  well about having to relearn it because some websites might give
• 1:06:29
  you indicators. They be like, oh, this is moved
• 1:06:31
  to here. Now, this is where this is now,
• 1:06:33
  you know, at least you know, whereas Facebook is really
• 1:06:36
  guilty for this ice. Ali.
• 1:06:37
  They just do it. But give you, no indication of
• 1:06:40
  where things move. So you have to spend like.
• 1:06:42
  So for instance, especially when you have a Facebook page and you
• 1:06:45
  have to manage it and stuff, you're like, well, where did
• 1:06:47
  this go? Can I get this as this gone?
• 1:06:49
  Or is it somewhere else? I mean, they just don't tell
• 1:06:52
  you, they just have to figure out yourself.
• 1:06:54
  It's very frustrating and here's this gets into like dark pattern
• 1:06:59
  territory to and I'll say this, just because I enjoy saying it,
• 1:07:01
  which is tools like Facebook and Instagram don't exist for you.
• 1:07:05
  They don't care if you do or Don't like it.
• 1:07:08
  And I've had conversations with folks before about how do some
• 1:07:11
  of the things you talked about applied to a site like Facebook.
• 1:07:13
  And I always say they don't, they don't they operate on a
• 1:07:17
  completely different level from any other place that I'm going
• 1:07:20
  to give advice to or Consulting to or anything like that.
• 1:07:23
  Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, you know, all Tick-Tock.
• 1:07:27
  All of these tools they aren't designed to help you get a nice
• 1:07:32
  pleasant feet of all of your friends updates that you can
• 1:07:34
  just see when you need to see it their entire goal.
• 1:07:37
  Goal is to make you stare at that screen as long as humanly
• 1:07:42
  possible. They collect so much data about
• 1:07:47
  what you engage with, what you click on, what you spend time
• 1:07:50
  staring at Instagram. I can't prove this but I
• 1:07:56
  absolutely and truly believe that when you are scrolling
• 1:08:00
  Instagram and you pause scrolling Instagram for more
• 1:08:04
  than a couple seconds. It's collecting data on that to
• 1:08:08
  know that. Oh you stared at the like
• 1:08:10
  especially with videos you stared at this advertisement,
• 1:08:13
  for three seconds. It caught your eye.
• 1:08:15
  So we know you didn't comment on you didn't like it but you did
• 1:08:20
  engage with it in a way that you didn't realize.
• 1:08:23
  And we know that everything about it is designed to create
• 1:08:29
  and this is where I dark patterns, don't even cover it
• 1:08:32
  enough. The level of sort of
• 1:08:34
  psychological manipulation that goes into some of the work that
• 1:08:38
  these companies do to say. No, we don't just want you
• 1:08:42
  staring at this screen. We need You to stare at that
• 1:08:46
  feed for two hours a day to justify the advertising, spend
• 1:08:51
  that comes into those experiences, it's so true.
• 1:08:55
  Yeah, advertising is completely change the game on those
• 1:08:58
  websites and and that's, that's really obvious, I think for most
• 1:09:01
  people, you know, because especially with Facebook.
• 1:09:04
  I mean my God that they just load you up with ads.
• 1:09:07
  I mean other platforms are guilty of it too like Tick.
• 1:09:11
  Tock is a really good example of this.
• 1:09:13
  Every time you open up Tick-Tock, the first thing you
• 1:09:15
  see is an ad, which you can't easily skip, like it's in the
• 1:09:20
  top corner, but it's not easy to immediately skip it.
• 1:09:24
  So, not a lot of time you have to, at least see that five
• 1:09:26
  seconds of the act. So they've got, they've got your
• 1:09:28
  attention for at least five seconds.
• 1:09:30
  I've titled a good eye. My motto.
• 1:09:33
  Do less better. I don't have Tick-Tock.
• 1:09:36
  I have enough time to, you know, try to keep up with what we
• 1:09:40
  already run on LinkedIn and Twitter and Instagram like like
• 1:09:43
  no, no. I'm not installing Tick-Tock.
• 1:09:45
  I don't need it. If it's really funny or
• 1:09:48
  interesting, it'll show up on imager in a week, it'll be fine.
• 1:09:50
  I'll see you there, the cream will rise.
• 1:09:53
  So to speak. It goes back to your point
• 1:09:55
  before about, you know, businesses choosing certain
• 1:09:58
  platforms that work for them and not others, you know?
• 1:10:00
  Like, for me, personally, I'm a content creator or aspiring
• 1:10:04
  actor musician, Etc. So, makes sense for me to have
• 1:10:06
  those apps. But then, there's some that I
• 1:10:08
  don't have, and probably never will at have, for instance, I
• 1:10:13
  have a link to In. It's mostly for my work life
• 1:10:18
  occasionally I might share pod, cast off, and there.
• 1:10:21
  I have sort of began to slowly post there, but I'm very kind of
• 1:10:26
  like, I don't feel like it's the right place.
• 1:10:29
  It kind of, isn't it? LinkedIn is a very strange place
• 1:10:32
  because it's like you see a lot of deer behavior that you would
• 1:10:35
  see on other social media sites but it's very curved sort of
• 1:10:40
  pulled back restrained. Yeah, on purpose obviously.
• 1:10:44
  But then sometimes you see like memes on that or like personal
• 1:10:48
  stuff on there and then that just kind of froze, everything
• 1:10:51
  out of balance is like, oh, okay, is it slowly deteriorating
• 1:10:55
  coming? Something different, I don't
• 1:10:57
  know. It's weird.
• 1:10:58
  You can't control how people use it once it's in their hands like
• 1:11:01
  exactly. It's nothing to stop you, from
• 1:11:03
  posting whatever you want. At that point outside of, you
• 1:11:06
  know, whether or not they'll lock your account or something
• 1:11:10
  like that. But as long as it's not a
• 1:11:12
  violation of the terms of service.
• 1:11:14
  Yeah. Wanted to use LinkedIn the same
• 1:11:16
  way I use Facebook. I could do that.
• 1:11:18
  Now, will I get followers? Will people pay attention to me?
• 1:11:21
  Probably not. Like there would be a
• 1:11:22
  consequence there, but it there's just there's so much of
• 1:11:27
  it. And the one thing I really like
• 1:11:30
  about getting older is I don't feel any compulsion to be like,
• 1:11:33
  no, I have to pay attention all of these things, I am perfectly
• 1:11:37
  okay? With not doing that, there's
• 1:11:40
  nothing more important to me about everything in web
• 1:11:43
  development from Building sites to social media to creating
• 1:11:47
  content myself for podcast and things like that.
• 1:11:50
  There's nothing more important to me than the people and
• 1:11:55
  keeping in mind that we are all here for The Human Experience.
• 1:12:01
  And you can't substitute Facebook for that or Twitter for
• 1:12:07
  that people think you can, but you absolutely can.
• 1:12:11
  It will make you feel good for a minute because They are
• 1:12:14
  designed. They, they literally do,
• 1:12:17
  dopamine, and serotonin studies on the way, people use these
• 1:12:20
  tools and, and what the levels are doing, like they know how to
• 1:12:24
  feed you, things to keep you looking at it and keep you
• 1:12:27
  feeling good or angry, angry is also an option because angry
• 1:12:32
  people engage, but pay attention to the people and go out.
• 1:12:36
  You want a social network, go to a bar, there's social
• 1:12:39
  networking, you know, I think that's a really good point as
• 1:12:42
  well. I think when people really sit
• 1:12:44
  back and I think about it. You never really going to
• 1:12:46
  necessarily have the kind of you never going to have you never
• 1:12:50
  going to see something on one of those social media websites,
• 1:12:54
  that's like an experience, you might see videos of stuff that
• 1:12:58
  you're passionate about or things that you like but it will
• 1:13:01
  never be the same as, you know, watching a movie that inspired
• 1:13:03
  you hearing a particular album that changed your life because
• 1:13:07
  of the meaning or because it reminds you of certain memories
• 1:13:11
  or whatever or a particular place that you visited.
• 1:13:14
  Or, you know a particular gig that you went to excetera.
• 1:13:18
  Like those are experiences, meaningful experiences, that
• 1:13:21
  will stay with you or social media websites, as you say, it's
• 1:13:24
  just quick snapshots, I mean, everything moves so quickly.
• 1:13:28
  Like for example, if I'm really into professional wrestling,
• 1:13:35
  right and wrestling Twitter is kind of just this hilarious life
• 1:13:42
  of its own and sometimes People will tweet about things that
• 1:13:46
  happened years ago, it all year one year ago, but it feels like
• 1:13:50
  an eternity ago because so much has happened since that point
• 1:13:55
  every day, several times a day and that's not even including,
• 1:14:00
  like, the events, the wrestling. It's like events that might have
• 1:14:04
  taken place online things that people said, things have said,
• 1:14:06
  people said about other people, etc etc.
• 1:14:09
  Like and I feel like because of that it's so difficult to You
• 1:14:14
  get people's attention, be like, remember meaningful things and
• 1:14:20
  see, I don't know, I feel like everything shifted.
• 1:14:24
  Now, you know, it's like my motto is always just kind of
• 1:14:29
  focus on the now live in the now because everything else is dead
• 1:14:33
  or doesn't exist and yeah people will argue with me on that but
• 1:14:37
  let's be let's be real people only ever care about what you're
• 1:14:40
  doing in this moment. Yeah, you can talk about oh I
• 1:14:43
  did this thing. NG 2 years ago.
• 1:14:45
  Okay, great. But it's not happening now, is
• 1:14:47
  it? Yeah, I mean it's like that's
• 1:14:50
  what people care about, you know, that the challenge is
• 1:14:55
  always going to come down to living in the moment, but
• 1:14:59
  honoring the past. Yes, you know, you said like,
• 1:15:02
  you know, people remember experiences people attach
• 1:15:06
  themselves to things, you know, if you were sitting at
• 1:15:09
  WrestleMania 25 and saw Shawn Michaels versus The Undertaker
• 1:15:13
  like that, Doesn't experience that you will remember and hold
• 1:15:18
  with you. I always remember my first
• 1:15:20
  concert that I went to Lynyrd Skynyrd Tulsa Oklahoma.
• 1:15:24
  When this this was back in the 90s, early 90s.
• 1:15:28
  So like this is like all still old litter Skynyrd at this
• 1:15:31
  point, but but I'll always remember is my first concert
• 1:15:34
  that I ever went to was with my dad, like, these moments
• 1:15:39
  Ghostbusters. I'm a, I am a die-hard
• 1:15:41
  Ghostbusters fan. We're recording this a week.
• 1:15:44
  Before the new movie comes out, my proton pack is in the other
• 1:15:48
  room right now. Ready to go.
• 1:15:51
  Like I am going in full regalia because like the experience of
• 1:15:55
  that matters to me and has influenced me throughout my
• 1:15:58
  life, that's a childhood memory that I hold dear.
• 1:16:01
  You know what, I've never once felt like was a formative moment
• 1:16:07
  for me my space and one but it's like but we aren't I'm going to
• 1:16:14
  go back to like, oh my God, you like, I we, I did.
• 1:16:18
  Oh man, that's so pretty mr. Jack about nice face, we can we
• 1:16:22
  can talk about it, right? Like, oh, yeah, my life is.
• 1:16:25
  I remember Myspace. There's a Russian guy that has
• 1:16:29
  resurrected Myspace, by the way, like old-school, my space baby.
• 1:16:33
  Yeah, yeah, I can't remember the name of it.
• 1:16:35
  Now, it's got a slightly different name but it's the old
• 1:16:37
  style. Myspace, top eight, the whole,
• 1:16:39
  the whole shebang. But those digital Experiences
• 1:16:45
  that we have are there like empty calories?
• 1:16:48
  Almost like we will keep sitting there and we'll stuff are faced
• 1:16:52
  with them. Nobody ever remembers a
• 1:16:54
  McDonald's cheeseburger. They remember the time they went
• 1:16:56
  to the Michelin star restaurant and sat down for a real meal.
• 1:16:59
  Right. You know and that's kind of
• 1:17:00
  where social media that that feeling comes in and it's like
• 1:17:04
  yeah let's let's get away from that.
• 1:17:06
  Once in a while I couldn't disagree with your Myspace
• 1:17:08
  though. And I said why the only reason
• 1:17:12
  is that Back then, it was, it was truly about creativity and
• 1:17:20
  like, many people that got involved in my space in the
• 1:17:23
  early days. Learn about basic coding for it,
• 1:17:26
  because obviously, you had the ability to edit the website for
• 1:17:28
  your HTML and all these different things.
• 1:17:30
  And a lot of people were fascinated by that and then sort
• 1:17:33
  of delved into careers and studying into those fields off
• 1:17:36
  that they're after the fact. But I don't think any other
• 1:17:39
  website to this day has really kind of said that true sense of
• 1:17:45
  creativity and person ability, you know like everything on
• 1:17:50
  there you'd have liked your profile song that was unique you
• 1:17:56
  or like profile skins that you could edit and customize
• 1:17:59
  yourself and all these different things that you could.
• 1:18:05
  Make come to life on to the side, you know, I mean you could
• 1:18:08
  do that with face but you can't do that with Twitter you?
• 1:18:10
  Yeah, sure. You can put a nice cover
• 1:18:14
  background or whatever but it's not really truthfully a space
• 1:18:19
  that feels like yours. It's just another profile
• 1:18:21
  amongst a million other profiles and that's all it will ever be.
• 1:18:27
  Whereas if I Myspace was like, it was truly like your page, you
• 1:18:31
  know, it was, you know, it was a first to Market Type thing.
• 1:18:34
  Yeah, you know, while they obviously were not the first
• 1:18:37
  social network no you were, they were the first in terms of like
• 1:18:40
  what we would consider modern social networking.
• 1:18:43
  This I just had this conversation recently where it's
• 1:18:45
  like, you know, we talk about these things like oh my God,
• 1:18:48
  social networking and what has it done to us and all of this.
• 1:18:51
  But it's like we've had social network and we just used to call
• 1:18:54
  it Usenet, you know, we used to call them chat rooms.
• 1:18:57
  I don't like we had social networking back then.
• 1:19:03
  It's just that What has changed is our level of access the
• 1:19:06
  number of people who had access to those things in the 80s and
• 1:19:09
  90s was microscopic compared to the number of people who have
• 1:19:12
  access to Facebook today. Even my space, like in
• 1:19:16
  2003-2004, like the number of people who had access to that is
• 1:19:23
  still dwarfed by the number of people who have access to
• 1:19:26
  Facebook today. And that's what's really changed
• 1:19:29
  about this entire landscape and why we have the bones we have
• 1:19:34
  today. Why we have the challenges we
• 1:19:35
  have today is that we are increasing that access access as
• 1:19:40
  an abstract concept is always good.
• 1:19:42
  You want people to have access to whatever they need to have
• 1:19:44
  access to but we're still I think as a species trying to
• 1:19:49
  sort out what it means I'll put a bow on this conversation a
• 1:19:53
  little bit and go back to what I was talking about education.
• 1:19:57
  As a species, we have spent nine, the 99th percentile of our
• 1:20:01
  time. Understanding how to interact
• 1:20:05
  with each other interpersonally. In, in contact face to face this
• 1:20:10
  thing we're doing right now. Recording a podcast on Zoom
• 1:20:14
  having never met for real and very likely never, will this
• 1:20:18
  stuff is, yeah, this is the new and we don't know our brains,
• 1:20:25
  don't know how to handle this stuff yet.
• 1:20:28
  The the one reason u.s. politics are so bad right now.
• 1:20:33
  Is because I'll we found a lever in social media that we can pull
• 1:20:39
  and the consequences. Be damned.
• 1:20:42
  We keep pulling it because of all of those saying, dopamine
• 1:20:46
  drops that we get every single time but we aren't yet
• 1:20:50
  successfully internalizing and processing.
• 1:20:53
  What the damage is actually being done to us and we got to
• 1:20:57
  figure that out and we have to figure out sooner rather than
• 1:21:01
  later and it's going to require some really big.
• 1:21:03
  People changing the way they think.
• 1:21:05
  And the way they approach web design web strategy and all of
• 1:21:08
  this. Because as long as people are
• 1:21:10
  willing to build the things that do harm to us, we will harm
• 1:21:15
  ourselves. We aren't good enough to protect
• 1:21:19
  ourselves from them. On the whole, there are the
• 1:21:22
  pockets, the people who do get it, and who recognize it.
• 1:21:25
  And that's, that is exactly why that I pushed this concept of
• 1:21:29
  kind design so hard. Because I think it's the oh,
• 1:21:33
  it's the only other lever. I have to pull, to get people to
• 1:21:37
  understand that there are a lot of folks building things in the
• 1:21:41
  web industry to take advantage of you at the end of the Hurt
• 1:21:47
  other people because they never have to deal with the
• 1:21:50
  consequences. Speaking of which, what do you
• 1:21:54
  make of Facebook's change to creating this metaverse thing?
• 1:21:59
  Because I've heard a lot of negative press about this.
• 1:22:01
  I know I'm no expert on web designer stuff.
• 1:22:04
  But from what I hear, it's not a good thing.
• 1:22:08
  What are your thoughts on it? It's you know, there's a lot
• 1:22:12
  that goes into branding that gets away outside of any of my
• 1:22:16
  Tease, I'm reminded very much of when Google founded alphabet,
• 1:22:21
  and then used alphabet has kind of the ownership thing that's
• 1:22:25
  sort of how I'm approaching this and the way I think about it,
• 1:22:28
  the whole purpose of meta is really to better describe the
• 1:22:33
  organization as a, whole, which now owns far more than Facebook.
• 1:22:38
  They have Instagram, they have WhatsApp.
• 1:22:40
  They have Oculus, you know, how does Oculus fit into Facebook?
• 1:22:44
  Well, it doesn't, those are, I mean, there's Certain certainly
• 1:22:47
  social overlap things but as a as two pieces of Technology,
• 1:22:52
  they don't make sense the way, like, you like when Coke owns
• 1:22:56
  Coke and Powerade, it's like, well, yeah, they're both drinks
• 1:23:00
  right there. Both in the industry of solving
• 1:23:02
  thirst but Oculus and Facebook are two, very different kinds of
• 1:23:06
  things. So it's meta is giving them away
• 1:23:09
  to sort of articulate the ownership over all of this
• 1:23:11
  stuff. I don't I don't know what it
• 1:23:16
  means. I don't know what the
• 1:23:17
  consequences of that are yet because I don't think anybody
• 1:23:20
  does. Google found it alphabet and
• 1:23:23
  everybody we had the Same Song & Dance.
• 1:23:25
  I was like, Oh Google's alphabet now.
• 1:23:27
  That's so stupid. Why would they do that?
• 1:23:29
  Everything's going to change. And notice it didn't.
• 1:23:33
  Like nothing really changed and I said, sorry, didn't infect
• 1:23:38
  internship. I feel like the big difference
• 1:23:40
  here is where alphabet was founding a company.
• 1:23:44
  So, Google was founded. A company to kind of change, you
• 1:23:49
  know, their position of how they were branded themselves and all
• 1:23:52
  their business activities, okay? Facebook is do also matter is
• 1:23:56
  doing the same sort of thing, but the key thing that they're
• 1:23:59
  introducing, which is Has been brought in with this whole
• 1:24:03
  metaverse thing. Is this idea that they're trying
• 1:24:06
  to transform the way people interact with things and try to
• 1:24:11
  kind of living within a world within a world.
• 1:24:14
  So, to speak that you, I mean, you've got so many people that
• 1:24:16
  are into like gaming and like, yeah, that's all they do.
• 1:24:20
  You know, they live in fortnightly live in these
• 1:24:21
  different gaming universes. And Facebook, from what I
• 1:24:25
  understand is trying to kind of capitalize on that and through
• 1:24:28
  things like the work sphere. So for example, introducing a A
• 1:24:33
  a our story and other Technologies to kind of quote
• 1:24:37
  unquote, enhance your experience working safe from home.
• 1:24:40
  You can have like office elements in your house without,
• 1:24:45
  you know, physically having to be there and stuff, and it's
• 1:24:47
  like, is it basically my point being, it's a detract moment
• 1:24:51
  from or move away from the real world, it's like trying to push
• 1:24:54
  you into that virtual reality world, you know.
• 1:24:57
  And and I think we, this is what it's one of those areas where
• 1:25:00
  and like, I say, we don't know, we don't Don't know enough about
• 1:25:03
  this because it's never happened.
• 1:25:05
  And the technology is just now catching up to some of this in
• 1:25:09
  terms of thing about where Oculus was what was four years
• 1:25:13
  ago when they launched their Kickstarter for five years ago.
• 1:25:18
  And the notion of in-home VR was then like of real new thing.
• 1:25:24
  And now it's like, man it's cheap, it's easy you can do it.
• 1:25:29
  There was the deal Google cardboard, where you could A
• 1:25:33
  little pop-up VR headset. You just slid your phone into
• 1:25:38
  and while it wasn't amazing. It also wasn't terrible.
• 1:25:42
  Like it made VR accessible to literally everybody and who had
• 1:25:47
  access to a box in a box. They literally sold the box.
• 1:25:51
  It's a box with a magnet in it and this just kind of goes back
• 1:25:58
  to everything. Like, what's they'd ask me?
• 1:26:00
  You know, what are the consequences Of students
• 1:26:04
  spending a year and a half learning remotely.
• 1:26:07
  I don't know. I need them to get older before.
• 1:26:11
  I really understand what the impact is going to be on.
• 1:26:14
  Whether that's interpersonal, communication, how they
• 1:26:16
  developed friendships, how they perform professionally.
• 1:26:19
  We can speculate and, and make hypotheses and things like that.
• 1:26:24
  But, you know, there's a certain amount of this that has to play
• 1:26:28
  out before we can really know what's Happened.
• 1:26:33
  And it could be good. Could be bad.
• 1:26:34
  My instinct is actually the say it's probably not great only
• 1:26:38
  because Facebook's goal is going to be to get everybody into the
• 1:26:43
  bed of verse, right? Like, that's their goal.
• 1:26:45
  Then their goal is to get you in that headset.
• 1:26:48
  To get you into these products that are built around entire
• 1:26:53
  interconnected digital experiences and to make you feel
• 1:26:57
  like there's value in getting your badges gamifying, these
• 1:27:00
  things or creating cloud, or whatever they want to do, in
• 1:27:04
  terms of like attaching you to this space, we saw a little bit
• 1:27:09
  of this year. In years of all say years and
• 1:27:11
  years ago. I think it's still around that
• 1:27:13
  in Second Life. Yeah.
• 1:27:15
  Like was this huge thing and the only thing that they really
• 1:27:18
  liked was that they were a singular entity and they got a
• 1:27:21
  little bit left behind because they didn't get outside of
• 1:27:24
  themselves but you know, people got into that in dangerous ways
• 1:27:31
  like for their health and things howsoever they were committing
• 1:27:35
  so much time, you know we're talking about people who were
• 1:27:38
  not eating, you know, No, they would spend all their time in
• 1:27:41
  Second Life building their houses and their islands and
• 1:27:45
  things like it had impacts on people's physical well-being,
• 1:27:48
  because they were so addicted to to that digital experience.
• 1:27:53
  And so what happens in a world that's much bigger than that, I
• 1:27:58
  don't know. Nobody knows Kurzweil, maybe he
• 1:28:02
  could get in here and have some really intelligent things to
• 1:28:05
  say. And I think he'd probably be
• 1:28:08
  right around where I'm at, which is I think we need to be a
• 1:28:12
  little scared of it the same way.
• 1:28:13
  Like I'm if you want to maybe a better example of tech that is
• 1:28:18
  dangerous. And is getting worse.
• 1:28:21
  Fast is like deep fakes? Yeah.
• 1:28:25
  That's a scary topic right there.
• 1:28:27
  That that whole thing. Like there's a whole other
• 1:28:29
  episode there we could do like the concept of deep fakes is
• 1:28:33
  wildly. Dangerous and has implications
• 1:28:36
  so far beyond what people are even thinking about right now.
• 1:28:40
  And what does that mean? I don't know, because in fact,
• 1:28:45
  it has already evolved so quickly that in five years.
• 1:28:51
  I think we are understating the danger it poses and I think
• 1:28:55
  we're also understating how it doesn't have to be good to be
• 1:29:00
  bad. People don't need a deep fake to
• 1:29:04
  look perfect. They want a deep fake to look
• 1:29:07
  like it was recorded on a potato and re-encoded four times and
• 1:29:12
  put on Instagram, and then Tick Tock, and then Facebook.
• 1:29:16
  And now it's all pixelated and garbage looking.
• 1:29:19
  Because it makes it easier to believe doesn't have to look
• 1:29:22
  like an HD movies. My Max deep fake level quality.
• 1:29:27
  That's not what's necessary for it to be dangerous.
• 1:29:32
  So yeah, there's there's a lot there's a lot of future thinking
• 1:29:35
  here that gets into stuff and I hope we handle it.
• 1:29:38
  Well, I'm not necessarily encouraged because I do think
• 1:29:42
  there's just a lot as a lot of risk and meta is going to
• 1:29:46
  prioritize money over Health. They're going to prioritize
• 1:29:50
  money over relationships. They're going to prioritize
• 1:29:53
  money over, literally everything, and it doesn't
• 1:29:59
  matter to them what damage they will do in the meantime.
• 1:30:02
  We know that we know that today. We've got the testimony on it.
• 1:30:06
  We've got the Whistle blowers on it.
• 1:30:08
  We've seen the outcomes of it. So that's what's scary about.
• 1:30:13
  It terrify really is, thanks, thanks, I was really trying to
• 1:30:18
  take us on an upswing. They're getting into kind of
• 1:30:20
  sign and you're like no that's bring it down.
• 1:30:24
  Well my next question should should improve the mood.
• 1:30:30
  What's the biggest life lesson that you've learned?
• 1:30:32
  40 the biggest life lesson I've ever.
• 1:30:37
  I've learned to this point is never underestimate the human
• 1:30:42
  human experience ever. I've met people online.
• 1:30:47
  I've met people online in person who are great friends of mine
• 1:30:52
  now. But one of my absolute favorite
• 1:30:56
  things to do is not be in front of the computer, my hobbies.
• 1:31:02
  Take me away from the computer. I go out, I go camping, I work
• 1:31:06
  on old cars. I've mentioned my proton pack.
• 1:31:11
  I did. I, it's all.
• 1:31:12
  It's a 3D printed proton. Pack that I spent months on
• 1:31:17
  sanding and painting and working with my hands.
• 1:31:20
  And, you know, it's those are the things to kind of throw back
• 1:31:26
  to that other comment. We made about like those those
• 1:31:29
  experiences you have in real life going going to a football
• 1:31:32
  Game with a good friend. You know, these are the things
• 1:31:35
  that change us and these are the things that shape us, the
• 1:31:38
  importance of our childhoods and, and interacting, with our
• 1:31:42
  parents, and our neighbors and our friends.
• 1:31:45
  And then we learn about the phone and then we stare at the
• 1:31:47
  phone all the time, and I do worry that, that is a dangerous
• 1:31:52
  thing for us in the long run because we don't know how to
• 1:31:54
  handle it. And the more you can take the
• 1:31:57
  time and as a web developer, At my first job, I was not remote.
• 1:32:02
  I worked in an office, I had a setup.
• 1:32:04
  I had everything. I was the one web developer for
• 1:32:07
  the entire University and I had to do a lot of work at those
• 1:32:12
  monitors and when a helpdesk ticket came in and the biology
• 1:32:17
  Department needed assistance with updating content.
• 1:32:22
  I shut my machine off, I walked across campus, I got some fresh
• 1:32:26
  air stretch, my legs, and I went and worked with them
• 1:32:29
  face-to-face in their office. And that has made me better at
• 1:32:35
  what I do. Could I have emailed them and
• 1:32:38
  instructional video or write up with screenshots of yes I could
• 1:32:42
  have and and stayed right where I was but that process of
• 1:32:47
  getting out of your space and taking time, you know, when we
• 1:32:50
  talk about controversial, stuff, getting that political argument
• 1:32:53
  on Facebook. I've I used to enjoy, I was a
• 1:32:56
  debater in high school. I love arguments, but one of the
• 1:33:00
  things I've committed to of recent and in my old old age is
• 1:33:05
  if you aren't willing to sit across a table All from me, buy
• 1:33:09
  me a glass of scotch and have this conversation.
• 1:33:11
  This conversation is not worth having.
• 1:33:14
  If you will not, tell me face-to-face, what you are
• 1:33:17
  willing to write without consequence at a keyboard
• 1:33:20
  keyboard Warriors. If you aren't willing to say
• 1:33:23
  that to me in person, Then it's meaningless.
• 1:33:29
  And so, I spend a lot of time talking about like, yeah, how
• 1:33:34
  how, our digital experiences get in the way of growth as people.
• 1:33:40
  And I've got a book. I'm working on right now that
• 1:33:42
  speaks heavily to that. I've got everything I talked
• 1:33:45
  about with the Shannon Weaver model of communication and
• 1:33:48
  emphasizing kind design. And all of this comes back to
• 1:33:51
  this notion of. How do we make sure we get all
• 1:33:55
  of these websites? Out an applications and
• 1:33:57
  everything out of our way as much as possible to make sure
• 1:34:00
  that people are in touch with people.
• 1:34:03
  Because unless you go live in the mountains, you're always
• 1:34:07
  going to have neighbors, you're always going to have family,
• 1:34:09
  you're always going to have school friends, and you need to
• 1:34:11
  be able to interact with them. I'm agreeing woman.
• 1:34:16
  I'm toted same as you. They say it's funny how like
• 1:34:20
  everything I do is online now, but I so much.
• 1:34:26
  I Savor those moments when I'm just having a conversation with
• 1:34:29
  someone talking with someone just being with someone, you
• 1:34:31
  know, my phone is nowhere in sight at that.
• 1:34:34
  That to me is Like magical, you know, I missed, I'm an introvert
• 1:34:40
  and extrovert Sam, I'm really good, like you put me in a group
• 1:34:44
  of people. I know and I'm a ball of energy.
• 1:34:47
  Same time. It takes takes me.
• 1:34:48
  A lot of effort though, to go out and do things with people
• 1:34:51
  that I don't know, or where it'll be a large place, where
• 1:34:54
  maybe I'll do a few people, but not most.
• 1:34:56
  And one thing I realized because of covid over the last year and
• 1:35:00
  a half with everything was locking down for us.
• 1:35:04
  I have a habit. I kind of I'm a creature of
• 1:35:08
  habit. I have a little hole-in-the-wall
• 1:35:10
  bar that I like to go to go there once a week, maybe twice
• 1:35:15
  if I'm feeling really squirrelly but once a week is good enough
• 1:35:18
  for me and I would go there, everybody knows me, I know
• 1:35:22
  everybody, we sit there, we talk about, literally everything
• 1:35:26
  people from like every Walk of Life.
• 1:35:28
  Every political affiliation and we can have those conversations
• 1:35:31
  because they're worth having face-to-face.
• 1:35:33
  I'll emphasize That, but when everything locked down, I lost
• 1:35:37
  that experience. Mmm, and for those six, eight
• 1:35:41
  months where I couldn't go out at all and couldn't go to the
• 1:35:45
  bar literally wasn't open, couldn't go there, I don't do
• 1:35:49
  much else. I don't really got to the
• 1:35:51
  movies. I don't you know I'll go out for
• 1:35:52
  a walk but that's by myself, you know socially you know maybe a
• 1:35:56
  concert here and there but that 23 hours once a week.
• 1:36:02
  I didn't realize how important those hours were to me until I
• 1:36:09
  couldn't have them and it clued me in you know, just how
• 1:36:15
  important like it doesn't have to be high volume, its high
• 1:36:17
  quality. Yeah, you know that it's that
• 1:36:19
  kind of thing and so that's iy say men, get out you go out and
• 1:36:24
  Savor those moments was when they get taken away from you at,
• 1:36:27
  you know, against your will. It's like you're going to miss
• 1:36:31
  not being able to Do that. And it actually led to a group
• 1:36:35
  of us that like the bar regulars, like we started up our
• 1:36:37
  own Facebook Chat and we would all get on video chat and do
• 1:36:42
  like Cards Against Humanity or something like that and like
• 1:36:45
  still. So we get at least see each
• 1:36:47
  other and talk to each other and things like that.
• 1:36:49
  It's like, if I hadn't had that either, I would have gone, stir
• 1:36:53
  crazy. I would have gone absolutely
• 1:36:55
  stir-crazy. And so, yeah, imagine if we had
• 1:36:57
  to do this in the 50s, how do you know how maddening it would
• 1:37:00
  have been? He's something to booze in it.
• 1:37:05
  Well, well, as we draw things to a close for today.
• 1:37:07
  Do you have any upcoming projects or some final thoughts?
• 1:37:10
  You'd like to share with our listeners?
• 1:37:13
  The, the shortlist is if you are interested in anything, web
• 1:37:17
  development, web design, coding research, check us out.
• 1:37:21
  It's drunken you. X.com new episodes every other
• 1:37:24
  Monday. Come check it out.
• 1:37:28
  Give us a listen. We have a lot of fun.
• 1:37:29
  We keep the conversations, very light.
• 1:37:32
  Very accessible. In terms of language, we don't
• 1:37:36
  get real technical on anything. If we are using acronyms, we
• 1:37:39
  explain the acronyms like we try to really, you know, make sure
• 1:37:43
  that our content is good for everybody.
• 1:37:47
  We are currently working on a couple projects on the side.
• 1:37:51
  One is a ethics and web design website that will be launching
• 1:37:54
  probably by the end of the year. I don't have anywhere to give
• 1:37:58
  you to go look at that yet because it's still being built,
• 1:38:01
  but that will be Be coming up soon.
• 1:38:03
  And I'm hoping by the end of next year, little mr.
• 1:38:07
  Feenin will have himself his second book out to check out,
• 1:38:11
  that'll be on the application of communications Theory.
• 1:38:15
  Specifically Shannon Weaver on web development and so be sure
• 1:38:19
  to check that out. If anybody ever wants to have a
• 1:38:21
  conversation, I'm easy to find Twitter, Facebook, any of those
• 1:38:25
  / Feenin, and I'm always happy to answer questions especially
• 1:38:29
  about web design. Like, if you want somebody to
• 1:38:31
  look at Then if you have a don't know a tool to use, if you're
• 1:38:34
  having a bug you don't get, I'm always happy to ask and do some
• 1:38:39
  mentorship or share some resources.
• 1:38:41
  So yeah, please by all means, reach out.
• 1:38:44
  If you're ever interested myself, thank you for being on
• 1:38:47
  the show. It's been an absolute pleasure
• 1:38:48
  to working with you. And yeah, I wish you all the
• 1:38:51
  best you as well. Thanks for having me out, man.
• 1:38:55
  And, to everyone listening to the Christian we've podcast, as
• 1:38:58
  always, thank you so much, be safe.
• 1:39:00
  Be well, I'll see you in the next one.