Meeting Title: Uttam <> Owen—Hope-Hydration-Central-Control-App Date: 2024-08-20 Meeting participants: Owendaw, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:01:20.990 ⇒ 00:01:23.499 owendaw: Hey, hey? Sorry! That was weird! For a second
2 00:01:24.030 ⇒ 00:01:24.799 owendaw: kind of like
3 00:01:25.120 ⇒ 00:01:26.240 owendaw: blurred out my whole.
4 00:01:26.240 ⇒ 00:01:27.490 Uttam Kumaran: Calm, blurred.
5 00:01:28.530 ⇒ 00:01:31.560 owendaw: Pretty bad lighting. How are you doing.
6 00:01:31.800 ⇒ 00:01:33.375 Uttam Kumaran: It looks fine.
7 00:01:34.120 ⇒ 00:01:39.000 owendaw: Alright! How? How’s it going with you? I’m good.
8 00:01:39.280 ⇒ 00:01:48.844 Uttam Kumaran: Things are good. Yeah, just another day just trying to. Now it’s getting a little bit cooler here in Austin in the morning, so I try to go for a walk in the morning.
9 00:01:49.160 ⇒ 00:01:56.019 Uttam Kumaran: which is the the usual plan. But sometimes you wake up. You’re like, I just gotta get to work.
10 00:01:56.440 ⇒ 00:01:59.349 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m trying not to do that these days. So.
11 00:02:01.028 ⇒ 00:02:03.190 owendaw: How how cold is it in Austin.
12 00:02:03.230 ⇒ 00:02:04.490 owendaw: you know we have a little bit of a.
13 00:02:04.490 ⇒ 00:02:07.258 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like 90 degrees.
14 00:02:08.391 ⇒ 00:02:22.840 Uttam Kumaran: That’s I mean, if it’s 80 in the morning, I’m happy, because then I can go. I can go outside and come back and not look like I have to shower so yeah, how’s it in New York?
15 00:02:23.370 ⇒ 00:02:30.230 owendaw: And I mean, I thought this morning here was gonna be like a nice morning for a walk. It was like 67, which I thought was like
16 00:02:31.410 ⇒ 00:02:33.109 owendaw: not too bad.
17 00:02:33.290 ⇒ 00:02:33.700 Uttam Kumaran: Nice.
18 00:02:34.110 ⇒ 00:02:36.529 owendaw: Ideas be like, I’m not going outside.
19 00:02:36.530 ⇒ 00:02:41.820 Uttam Kumaran: No. And I, I, you know, I, I just try to listen to a podcast or something. But it’s so odd. And
20 00:02:42.140 ⇒ 00:02:46.979 Uttam Kumaran: you know, just try to get some steps in and like clear my head before the day starts.
21 00:02:47.110 ⇒ 00:02:51.059 Uttam Kumaran: cause there’s days where I just wake up, and I immediately come, sit down, and then
22 00:02:51.560 ⇒ 00:02:54.779 Uttam Kumaran: I just like I’m like, I blink, and it’s 4 o’clock, and I’m like
23 00:02:55.410 ⇒ 00:03:00.691 Uttam Kumaran: I feel bad. I haven’t dehydrated. I didn’t eat like.
24 00:03:01.220 ⇒ 00:03:05.870 owendaw: I know exactly what you mean. It just flies by sometimes.
25 00:03:05.870 ⇒ 00:03:06.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
26 00:03:08.150 ⇒ 00:03:21.149 Uttam Kumaran: Well, cool. Yeah, I guess. Let me know what you thought about the proposal. I know, you know initially, when we spoke. We didn’t set any like firm budgets or timeline, so I thought, it throws me out there and then kind of get your feedback.
27 00:03:21.280 ⇒ 00:03:22.669 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, let me know.
28 00:03:23.340 ⇒ 00:03:29.346 owendaw: Yeah. So you know, I really appreciate you putting together proposal. Let me just pull it up.
29 00:03:30.120 ⇒ 00:03:31.706 owendaw: my end.
30 00:03:33.630 ⇒ 00:03:36.390 owendaw: I mean, you guys definitely have a great understanding of
31 00:03:36.500 ⇒ 00:03:38.159 owendaw: trying to get done
32 00:03:38.760 ⇒ 00:03:41.099 owendaw: and trying to figure it out.
33 00:03:41.580 ⇒ 00:03:50.450 owendaw: But putting together a timeline was great with the deliverables, you know, I think this thing is really great super professional. I love it.
34 00:03:52.830 ⇒ 00:03:53.600 owendaw: maybe
35 00:03:54.560 ⇒ 00:03:58.429 owendaw: I was. I was hoping that you could kind of walk me through.
36 00:03:58.740 ⇒ 00:04:01.410 owendaw: You know how you see kind of everything
37 00:04:01.430 ⇒ 00:04:02.516 owendaw: going together.
38 00:04:03.060 ⇒ 00:04:03.460 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
39 00:04:03.570 ⇒ 00:04:07.310 owendaw: A few things with key milestones in month, one and month 2
40 00:04:07.882 ⇒ 00:04:11.980 owendaw: but you know really what what the expectations can be, what
41 00:04:12.060 ⇒ 00:04:15.000 owendaw: those kinds of things look like. And and you know
42 00:04:15.090 ⇒ 00:04:16.870 owendaw: what’s what’s your vision on this.
43 00:04:17.390 ⇒ 00:04:21.345 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So yeah, I know, I I appreciate it. We try to.
44 00:04:21.990 ⇒ 00:04:39.759 Uttam Kumaran: you know, although we’re a data company like, I care a lot about design, and I want to make sure that things are very clear. And this is hopefully something that you know, even if you don’t decide to go with us. You can take and market and use. So you know, I’m I’m really happy about that. Yeah. So you know, mainly this.
45 00:04:39.920 ⇒ 00:04:58.960 Uttam Kumaran: it doesn’t seem like a huge project, huge typically, for me, is like anything from 6 months to a year. So I do think that there’s something we can get done in 2 months. Of course, given. You know the amount of effort we need. If if there’s no strict timeline, we can also do that in a longer timeframe. The biggest thing I want to do is focus on
46 00:04:59.120 ⇒ 00:05:13.773 Uttam Kumaran: one. You mentioned that there were some back end Apis that may still need some work. So I wanna make sure we have a list of what’s completely done versus not. And then also get the front end engineer directly, working with you initially to make sure he’s getting the results set that he needs.
47 00:05:14.342 ⇒ 00:05:37.960 Uttam Kumaran: So this would be basically like setting up the basic infra making sure that they can query the Apis and handle any like off there? And then basically handle the most, the highest priority items, you know, which, like, I remember looking at the figma was really like the top few screens I know. We talked about like search, and some like, really like things that seem like more nice to have, and this is where I’m
48 00:05:38.450 ⇒ 00:05:45.950 Uttam Kumaran: putting on like my Pm. Hat, but like there was some stuff that seemed more nice to have more flashy. The biggest thing and the biggest goal is to take
49 00:05:46.250 ⇒ 00:05:48.040 Uttam Kumaran: as what you said would just take
50 00:05:48.200 ⇒ 00:05:54.007 Uttam Kumaran: time off your plate and then allow other folks to do this or allow you to do this through a ui that saves you time.
51 00:05:54.270 ⇒ 00:06:23.990 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So, however fast we can get to that point, I want to make sure that that’s possible. So basically, again, from from my sense, it looked like that initial home screen, the Stations list and the events page were really like the main things. The nice thing is you know, you mentioned that Ivana use like a more open like library for icons and for the actual material system. So not too worried about that. I think the biggest thing is, although I do think actually this.
52 00:06:23.990 ⇒ 00:06:40.970 Uttam Kumaran: we could probably make this happen in a month. I don’t like to over promise, because you never. I’m not. I don’t know what the whole system looks like, so I do think 2 months is like pretty reasonable for this. The other thing is again, as we want to add more things on, or if we get to month one. And
53 00:06:40.970 ⇒ 00:06:56.510 Uttam Kumaran: we’re like, Hey, we actually want to switch up the priorities and things like that. The biggest hiccup I want to get through is that the front end person is really comfortable with hitting your Apis getting data structure data back and displaying that after that, it’s basically on them to
54 00:06:56.630 ⇒ 00:06:57.430 Uttam Kumaran: like.
55 00:06:57.730 ⇒ 00:06:59.682 Uttam Kumaran: get the job done
56 00:07:00.380 ⇒ 00:07:06.070 Uttam Kumaran: from our side. Also, it’s like regular communicate. It’s like everything around communication things like that. So it’s not like we
57 00:07:06.310 ⇒ 00:07:08.250 Uttam Kumaran: get this. And then we just like leave.
58 00:07:08.655 ⇒ 00:07:17.420 Uttam Kumaran: This is like we set up basically at the notion page. With all this tasks, everything ideally is, isn’t Github. So everything’s Github issues.
59 00:07:17.490 ⇒ 00:07:22.750 Uttam Kumaran: assignments, dates, estimation. So it’s like the whole normal flow. For like getting
60 00:07:22.920 ⇒ 00:07:35.829 Uttam Kumaran: shit done in our world. And that’s like something we I got. That’s like a non negotiable for me, because I can’t really get projects done consistently without that. So yeah. And then and then ideally again, we work directly with you, and then
61 00:07:36.070 ⇒ 00:07:49.112 Uttam Kumaran: we didn’t talk anything about employee onboarding or collecting feedback or anything. But again, I’ll kind of leave that stuff to you. The my main goal is really just to put something in front of you as fast as possible, and then make sure that the
62 00:07:49.430 ⇒ 00:07:51.520 Uttam Kumaran: engineer can interact with Apis.
63 00:07:52.280 ⇒ 00:07:53.090 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
64 00:07:53.679 ⇒ 00:07:54.270 owendaw: So
65 00:07:54.510 ⇒ 00:07:59.660 owendaw: I like that, I think, to be completely transparent on my end.
66 00:08:00.740 ⇒ 00:08:05.919 owendaw: the the price, the pricing here is kind of well is. It’s a lot more than I think
67 00:08:06.200 ⇒ 00:08:09.419 owendaw: we can do from from our side.
68 00:08:10.650 ⇒ 00:08:12.389 owendaw: and it’s also
69 00:08:12.560 ⇒ 00:08:19.720 owendaw: it’s a little bit hard for me to go pitch the team on it, especially since it’s an internal tool, and I can’t really say that it will
70 00:08:20.010 ⇒ 00:08:24.430 owendaw: drive external value in the in the same way, although not to say that there’s
71 00:08:24.590 ⇒ 00:08:26.750 owendaw: no value. It’s just for the
72 00:08:26.790 ⇒ 00:08:29.080 owendaw: the non technical facing people and.
73 00:08:29.080 ⇒ 00:08:29.550 Uttam Kumaran: Hiring, no.
74 00:08:29.550 ⇒ 00:08:30.190 owendaw: It’s
75 00:08:31.050 ⇒ 00:08:38.289 owendaw: so it it’s going to be hard to get them to free up a lot of cash in the in the same kind of way.
76 00:08:38.549 ⇒ 00:08:41.749 owendaw: but I do want to try and kind of figure something out.
77 00:08:41.750 ⇒ 00:08:42.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so it’s.
78 00:08:42.419 ⇒ 00:08:43.949 owendaw: Let’s see how that works.
79 00:08:43.950 ⇒ 00:08:45.949 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, tell me what’s more
80 00:08:46.020 ⇒ 00:08:47.800 Uttam Kumaran: comfortable for you to pitch.
81 00:08:47.930 ⇒ 00:08:50.310 Uttam Kumaran: and then I can come back to you with like
82 00:08:50.630 ⇒ 00:08:53.909 Uttam Kumaran: what’s possible in terms of timeline and stuff cause one
83 00:08:54.230 ⇒ 00:09:10.379 Uttam Kumaran: actually like. Again, I spent a lot of time looking at stuff, and, you know, kind of understanding your workflow. I actually do think that as part of you guys like scaling up this is like you’re gonna need some sort of admin panel or like something. I mean again, I’m just explaining to you what the project is. But like
84 00:09:10.540 ⇒ 00:09:26.149 Uttam Kumaran: I, yeah. So I I do think that you’re right. But I I also I could see how the budgets high. But again, for us this was mainly like giving you like a 2 month proposal. Here’s like what a full time person could look like, but we have room to work. So tell me like.
85 00:09:26.220 ⇒ 00:09:28.940 Uttam Kumaran: give me a sense of like where you want to move.
86 00:09:29.556 ⇒ 00:09:30.490 Uttam Kumaran: The needle.
87 00:09:31.130 ⇒ 00:09:32.065 owendaw: Yeah,
88 00:09:34.420 ⇒ 00:09:35.959 owendaw: so I guess
89 00:09:36.220 ⇒ 00:09:38.629 owendaw: what would make the most sense is to say, like.
90 00:09:38.990 ⇒ 00:09:43.769 owendaw: start with, like, what what does a Mvp for? This look like
91 00:09:44.515 ⇒ 00:09:47.840 owendaw: kind of let’s let’s shave off some of
92 00:09:48.060 ⇒ 00:09:52.362 owendaw: the features and some some of the dev, especially if we’re moving at like
93 00:09:52.780 ⇒ 00:09:53.910 owendaw: a price
94 00:09:53.950 ⇒ 00:09:55.210 owendaw: like a
95 00:09:55.400 ⇒ 00:09:59.270 owendaw: cost of time for doing an hourly rate. Let’s talk about
96 00:09:59.420 ⇒ 00:10:03.920 owendaw: shaving off some of these these features. That might be. They’re more
97 00:10:04.180 ⇒ 00:10:05.610 owendaw: time expensive.
98 00:10:05.920 ⇒ 00:10:09.180 owendaw: I guess everything’s time expensive in this case. Not.
99 00:10:09.180 ⇒ 00:10:10.500 Uttam Kumaran: See what you mean. Yeah.
100 00:10:10.842 ⇒ 00:10:14.950 owendaw: Yeah. And so let’s talk about, what does the Mvp look like?
101 00:10:15.190 ⇒ 00:10:17.810 owendaw: What’s it look like to get that up and off the ground.
102 00:10:18.510 ⇒ 00:10:20.209 owendaw: How can we? How can we
103 00:10:20.390 ⇒ 00:10:24.571 owendaw: work together to make sure everyone’s happy, you know, if,
104 00:10:25.150 ⇒ 00:10:29.820 owendaw: you guys are getting the same hourly rate and spending less time on it, I would assume you guys are still happy.
105 00:10:31.780 ⇒ 00:10:36.159 owendaw: or I don’t know if you want to look at kind of a project based structure. Or say, we’ll get to
106 00:10:37.100 ⇒ 00:10:40.563 owendaw: Point X, and we’ll just call that a certain price.
107 00:10:42.090 ⇒ 00:10:47.149 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, for for us. It it depends like and again, I got.
108 00:10:47.320 ⇒ 00:10:53.379 Uttam Kumaran: I’m happy to be like, really transparent for us. It’s it’s like it could work both ways like we’ve done stuff on a project basis.
109 00:10:53.460 ⇒ 00:11:01.030 Uttam Kumaran: The tougher part with a project basis is like there is a premium because we don’t know what we don’t know. And so like.
110 00:11:01.280 ⇒ 00:11:06.660 Uttam Kumaran: after working in engineering, I’m just like to account for 20 to 40% of like random stuff coming up.
111 00:11:07.288 ⇒ 00:11:22.199 Uttam Kumaran: At the same time. If it’s like cool for you to sell this internally, let’s scope it way down that way. You can show results, and then that’ll continue to free up budget. If that’s kind of how you see this working out, then let’s work on that path because.
112 00:11:22.200 ⇒ 00:11:22.810 owendaw: Yeah.
113 00:11:22.810 ⇒ 00:11:46.430 Uttam Kumaran: Otherwise, this is going to be dead in the water when you basically bring it up. And I got again. I’ve been, and I’ve been in your shoes on that side instead. What I could do is basically thin this down like, I think things about like signing in things about certain stuff here, we could definitely like, thin out. Basically say, here’s probably what like one month or like, here’s a 40 h to get you.
114 00:11:46.750 ⇒ 00:11:56.449 Uttam Kumaran: and then kind of like price it that way, that way, maybe halfway through that, or at the end of that, you have something to show. And then you can basically say I need another
115 00:11:56.700 ⇒ 00:12:00.160 Uttam Kumaran: 40, or we can kind of roll on that basis.
116 00:12:01.380 ⇒ 00:12:03.090 Uttam Kumaran: what is? How do you think about that?
117 00:12:03.610 ⇒ 00:12:06.500 owendaw: Yeah, I like that. I think you know my.
118 00:12:07.430 ⇒ 00:12:08.000 Uttam Kumaran: Perspective.
119 00:12:08.000 ⇒ 00:12:09.040 owendaw: It is.
120 00:12:09.750 ⇒ 00:12:17.210 owendaw: What would be the most effective on on both of our ends is, you know, I can go to the team with something that’s.
121 00:12:17.430 ⇒ 00:12:18.160 owendaw: you know.
122 00:12:18.590 ⇒ 00:12:31.720 owendaw: some sort of Mvp. That has, you know, value and functionality and get them using it. And then I get them saying, Oh, we want this, we want this. And so we had this on the roadmap already. But now that you’re pushing for it, and there’s a demand for it, you know
123 00:12:32.381 ⇒ 00:12:34.790 owendaw: you know. Kind of let it pitch itself.
124 00:12:34.990 ⇒ 00:12:35.460 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
125 00:12:35.460 ⇒ 00:12:36.987 owendaw: Instead of going there
126 00:12:37.860 ⇒ 00:12:42.109 Uttam Kumaran: Do you think a 1 month, timeline, like kind of works
127 00:12:42.370 ⇒ 00:12:48.319 Uttam Kumaran: for that? Or do you think you want to try to just do something in like a few weeks and get something go. I mean, again. I don’t
128 00:12:48.590 ⇒ 00:13:00.230 Uttam Kumaran: actually think we can get something pretty decent in in a few weeks, but I I just don’t like to promise things in week terms. So, but like, you know what I mean like, that’s that would be our goal.
129 00:13:00.750 ⇒ 00:13:03.929 owendaw: Yeah, I I I think
130 00:13:03.960 ⇒ 00:13:06.710 owendaw: you know budget wise. I mean.
131 00:13:07.330 ⇒ 00:13:16.420 owendaw: 1 1 month is at this rate is costing $12,200. Right? Yeah. And and that’s I still think that’s not something that we can really
132 00:13:17.330 ⇒ 00:13:23.609 owendaw: put towards towards everything here. So maybe we break down. Hey, let’s do these core functionality. Let’s get sign in
133 00:13:23.730 ⇒ 00:13:28.520 owendaw: list of stations where we could even talk about like what components need to be made.
134 00:13:28.660 ⇒ 00:13:36.529 owendaw: We can get granular if we need to and talk about. You know we’ll use this, or you know we could skip this, and that will save time.
135 00:13:36.840 ⇒ 00:13:37.980 owendaw: And I had.
136 00:13:38.410 ⇒ 00:13:46.360 owendaw: I feel like there’s there’s a weird balance here between, like actually jumping into a Pm role and breaking things down into individual tasks and getting estimates on it
137 00:13:46.400 ⇒ 00:13:48.560 owendaw: before like work was even.
138 00:13:48.700 ⇒ 00:13:49.470 owendaw: you know, started.
139 00:13:49.470 ⇒ 00:13:55.830 Uttam Kumaran: No, I don’t again like I’m happy to do that, because again, everything’s very clear for me. It was just knowing.
140 00:13:55.960 ⇒ 00:14:12.849 Uttam Kumaran: Is this, gonna be like a Hey, let’s just get this done, and then we’re out. Or is this like a we want to kind of piecemeal? And it seems more of like, let’s just break down the things that really matter, you know, and I’m even. I’m just looking at the the figma again. Now I think the biggest thing, I think is gonna be probably
141 00:14:13.050 ⇒ 00:14:21.879 Uttam Kumaran: like, just like, at least like, get the main stuff done for stations. And like, get that that like a list
142 00:14:22.220 ⇒ 00:14:31.870 Uttam Kumaran: kind of component done because that’s used in a bunch of places. And then like kind of a again, if the homepage is really important, then we’ll do that.
143 00:14:31.990 ⇒ 00:14:38.519 Uttam Kumaran: We can even like dodge some of this stuff on sign in again. I’ll I’ll kind of find out what’s tricky there.
144 00:14:39.157 ⇒ 00:14:42.910 Uttam Kumaran: But like, it’s right now. We basically have, like.
145 00:14:43.140 ⇒ 00:14:47.929 Uttam Kumaran: you know, probably like 10 or 15 things. I’ll try to boil it down to like 5 things
146 00:14:47.980 ⇒ 00:14:56.090 Uttam Kumaran: where we’re like, if we can get the homepage done, we get a stations list done and kind of like, basically see what else we can get done.
147 00:14:56.350 ⇒ 00:15:06.590 Uttam Kumaran: And then kind of like. Try to do it in like more of like a 2 week to 4 week basis. Where again I won’t do it. Based on. Here’s 40 h bucket. I’ll try to price out
148 00:15:06.940 ⇒ 00:15:09.040 Uttam Kumaran: each item as best I can.
149 00:15:09.250 ⇒ 00:15:12.240 Uttam Kumaran: And then we can say, Okay, cool. Let’s just get started with like.
150 00:15:12.630 ⇒ 00:15:21.350 Uttam Kumaran: here’s like 5 K, let’s just get started. And then that way, throughout that period of time you have it. And then again, also, you know, I know I baked in time
151 00:15:21.360 ⇒ 00:15:25.890 Uttam Kumaran: for like a Pm. On our side, mainly because I know there’s gonna be like
152 00:15:26.140 ⇒ 00:15:29.849 Uttam Kumaran: and forth coordination. That’s something that.
153 00:15:30.430 ⇒ 00:15:44.605 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I if you could handle that would work. But also like, that’s an option, although I do know that there’s typically time on our side to do coordination things like that, so I don’t want to put that on on your plate entirely, but
154 00:15:44.920 ⇒ 00:15:49.154 owendaw: I got you. No, I would definitely be able to handle that
155 00:15:50.360 ⇒ 00:15:50.790 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
156 00:15:50.790 ⇒ 00:15:54.399 owendaw: I think I have like a I mean, you definitely have a good vision of what we want.
157 00:15:54.580 ⇒ 00:15:56.619 owendaw: Think you know.
158 00:15:56.700 ⇒ 00:16:00.759 owendaw: it might skip a step, too. If if an engineer has to ask you, you have to jump to me.
159 00:16:00.910 ⇒ 00:16:04.709 Uttam Kumaran: No, if you can handle them, that that’s actually ideal cause I just work with.
160 00:16:04.890 ⇒ 00:16:05.790 Uttam Kumaran: I just work with.
161 00:16:05.790 ⇒ 00:16:06.569 owendaw: Your time perfect.
162 00:16:06.570 ⇒ 00:16:09.780 Uttam Kumaran: And if you’re like, yeah, I know exactly what we need, then
163 00:16:09.840 ⇒ 00:16:20.270 Uttam Kumaran: it’s totally good. Because again, we’ll be working everything in issues and kind of break everything down via that, and then that’ll get all tracked to branches and stuff like that. So
164 00:16:22.310 ⇒ 00:16:26.999 Uttam Kumaran: so let let me try that. Let me see if I can break this down a little bit further. Try to get it more in, like.
165 00:16:27.160 ⇒ 00:16:32.560 Uttam Kumaran: you know, like initial range of like 5 K, like 5 to 7 K. Is that like
166 00:16:33.050 ⇒ 00:16:37.069 Uttam Kumaran: closer to what you were thinking, or you are you still like? Let’s just
167 00:16:38.240 ⇒ 00:16:41.100 Uttam Kumaran: pick like 5 features and run with it? Or what are you thinking.
168 00:16:41.560 ⇒ 00:16:43.030 owendaw: Yeah, I’m thinking.
169 00:16:44.070 ⇒ 00:16:45.989 owendaw: 5 5 to 7 K. Still.
170 00:16:46.100 ⇒ 00:16:47.640 owendaw: you know, pretty high. From what
171 00:16:47.740 ⇒ 00:16:51.330 owendaw: I envisioned, my thought is, you know, looking through the figma.
172 00:16:51.740 ⇒ 00:16:55.640 owendaw: There’s a lot of like components that might even be repeat components.
173 00:16:55.640 ⇒ 00:16:56.130 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
174 00:16:57.830 ⇒ 00:16:58.740 owendaw: so.
175 00:16:59.010 ⇒ 00:17:06.029 owendaw: But also I understand that it’s like, you know, get things up and running, get things working, like you know, just design it, and it goes right.
176 00:17:06.400 ⇒ 00:17:10.170 owendaw: I do a lot of dev work. I know there’s a lot more that comes with it
177 00:17:10.380 ⇒ 00:17:15.490 owendaw: that can be very frustrating. And time consuming. So I want to be respectful of
178 00:17:15.720 ⇒ 00:17:19.459 owendaw: of that. And your guys and and the work that you guys are putting towards this as well.
179 00:17:22.930 ⇒ 00:17:26.440 owendaw: But I also wanna make sure that we can work something out and that we can like.
180 00:17:26.619 ⇒ 00:17:28.559 owendaw: get you guys this deal.
181 00:17:28.560 ⇒ 00:17:29.400 Uttam Kumaran: Oh!
182 00:17:30.140 ⇒ 00:17:31.349 Uttam Kumaran: So let me so I mean.
183 00:17:31.350 ⇒ 00:17:33.249 owendaw: Same time I’m I’m trying to.
184 00:17:33.520 ⇒ 00:17:34.170 owendaw: Yeah.
185 00:17:34.170 ⇒ 00:17:35.310 Uttam Kumaran: Guys, I see what you.
186 00:17:35.310 ⇒ 00:17:35.839 owendaw: The anniversary.
187 00:17:35.840 ⇒ 00:17:36.980 Uttam Kumaran: So let me
188 00:17:37.070 ⇒ 00:17:44.889 Uttam Kumaran: let me aim for something again, like I’m trying not to do this on like a monthly fee basis. I want to do this like a pay as you go.
189 00:17:45.900 ⇒ 00:17:57.119 Uttam Kumaran: But at the same time for me to book people, it’s they’re gonna need. They want some like, hey? Or am I gonna be doing this for like a week? Or is this, gonna you know? So let me plan like a month’s work of work
190 00:17:57.130 ⇒ 00:18:02.579 Uttam Kumaran: and try to scope it out in terms of hours, and then give you like a little bit of a menu there.
191 00:18:02.680 ⇒ 00:18:06.249 Uttam Kumaran: the just as you know, the the problem is is like.
192 00:18:06.270 ⇒ 00:18:13.209 Uttam Kumaran: I can only be so accurate. But you understand that. And I understand that. So we’ll kind of understand that. That’s
193 00:18:13.220 ⇒ 00:18:34.080 Uttam Kumaran: that’s a stipulation there and then I’ll send you. I’ll just send you a version of that. I’ll try to work on that in like notion that way we can like, collaborate, and just have that in one place, and you could just I don’t even need much. It’s just like this is good or like, add this thing. Add this thing. And let’s do that. Let me see if I can get that to you in the next like day or 2.
194 00:18:34.700 ⇒ 00:18:37.749 owendaw: Cool. Yeah, I think you know, big things for me are like.
195 00:18:38.810 ⇒ 00:18:40.489 owendaw: really like, got
196 00:18:40.550 ⇒ 00:18:45.209 owendaw: sign in just like station and event functionalities. Right? Having
197 00:18:45.370 ⇒ 00:18:48.649 owendaw: certain station, like listing stations, having
198 00:18:48.820 ⇒ 00:18:53.695 owendaw: adding, like all the crowd operations, really for stations and events. And then,
199 00:18:54.870 ⇒ 00:18:59.529 owendaw: that’s like those are core, you know things, I would add on top of that are like
200 00:19:00.430 ⇒ 00:19:03.399 owendaw: things that start to be like online offline status
201 00:19:04.048 ⇒ 00:19:10.609 owendaw: sending commands. The next layer would be like uploading screens changing the screens.
202 00:19:11.740 ⇒ 00:19:13.679 owendaw: things that are like very bottom.
203 00:19:13.780 ⇒ 00:19:16.090 owendaw: There are like search functionality. Or
204 00:19:17.910 ⇒ 00:19:20.749 owendaw: you know, things that are like nice to have, but not need to have.
205 00:19:20.960 ⇒ 00:19:26.560 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, I think the some of the like action dialogues and some of the more highly designed things
206 00:19:26.640 ⇒ 00:19:30.269 Uttam Kumaran: we’ll just. We’ll just kick the can on. I think the biggest things is like
207 00:19:30.300 ⇒ 00:19:32.330 Uttam Kumaran: getting the list of stuff there.
208 00:19:32.936 ⇒ 00:19:34.320 Uttam Kumaran: And again, even like
209 00:19:34.440 ⇒ 00:19:41.112 Uttam Kumaran: once we get in and look at like the actual component library and stuff, things may take a little bit faster.
210 00:19:41.470 ⇒ 00:19:54.379 Uttam Kumaran: and then also again, like, let me try to price it out in a way. That’s just like more hours for for sections, and then we can keep going that way until we hit somewhere where it’s like it works out. So let’s just do that. And so I’ll get something over to you in the next like day or 2.
211 00:19:54.750 ⇒ 00:19:55.390 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
212 00:19:55.390 ⇒ 00:19:58.869 owendaw: Really appreciate it, and I appreciate your flexibility here.
213 00:19:59.090 ⇒ 00:19:59.930 Uttam Kumaran: I appreciate. I know.
214 00:19:59.930 ⇒ 00:20:00.430 owendaw: You’re coming from.
215 00:20:00.430 ⇒ 00:20:14.410 Uttam Kumaran: And I know you guys are like a just like a growing company. And I want to make something happen. And like again, I’m I actually don’t think this is that like, I don’t think this is that difficult. So I know your perspective. At the same time, it’s like
216 00:20:14.660 ⇒ 00:20:22.429 Uttam Kumaran: guarantees are only worth what they’re worth. So I hate doing thing. Even when when I was internal companies, I’d never be like
217 00:20:22.450 ⇒ 00:20:25.720 Uttam Kumaran: this is just gonna take a month, even if I know it’s gonna take a month.
218 00:20:25.790 ⇒ 00:20:32.160 Uttam Kumaran: cause it just never works out that way. But like, I think we’re on the same page there. So let’s see, I think we’ll we’ll get somewhere. We could work this out.
219 00:20:33.100 ⇒ 00:20:36.189 owendaw: Yeah, cause I would love to get this worked out and then
220 00:20:36.500 ⇒ 00:20:40.820 owendaw: continue like a relationship, make it make it work on both ends. Now.
221 00:20:40.820 ⇒ 00:20:56.029 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Yeah. And I’m definitely also interested in talking about, you know, I was actually mentioning somebody about your Grafana dashboard. You know. So like, there’s a lot of stuff that we’ve done on the data side. That’s like, that’s like what we do really core. So it’s
222 00:20:57.690 ⇒ 00:21:04.249 Uttam Kumaran: yeah. You know I was talking to. I think I don’t know whether I was talking to Yvon or somebody. Where, hey? I think I was talking Ivana, where I was like, yeah, Owen showed me
223 00:21:04.330 ⇒ 00:21:11.589 Uttam Kumaran: like Grafana dashboard. I’m like, you remember, that’s something we did a float code on like you guys should be selling that for like a ton of money like
224 00:21:11.690 ⇒ 00:21:15.590 Uttam Kumaran: that’s like a hundred percent margin product. So.
225 00:21:15.780 ⇒ 00:21:19.319 owendaw: You. You know what? Send me send me over like
226 00:21:19.790 ⇒ 00:21:25.580 owendaw: the other things that you guys do, and maybe we can talk about some other stuff as well. That could be fun work on together.
227 00:21:25.940 ⇒ 00:21:39.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I just think that, like at Floco, we had the same problem where, like we were, we realized our clients not only wanted the functionality. But then they’re like, Oh, like, how’s it doing? And then, of course, like, you guys have like a specific ad product. But
228 00:21:39.595 ⇒ 00:21:43.939 Uttam Kumaran: you’re if you have the the way you have the Grafana dash. You’re just a few.
229 00:21:44.110 ⇒ 00:21:53.499 Uttam Kumaran: You’re like a few steps away on like making it look polished for it to be like, oh, for 5 KA month you could get like our. You can get like our analytics. Hub, you know. So.
230 00:21:53.500 ⇒ 00:21:53.880 owendaw: Yeah.
231 00:21:55.030 ⇒ 00:21:55.350 owendaw: Reason.
232 00:21:55.350 ⇒ 00:21:56.349 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll show you some stuff to you.
233 00:21:56.350 ⇒ 00:21:57.979 owendaw: For free, honestly.
234 00:21:57.980 ⇒ 00:22:11.089 Uttam Kumaran: I’m telling you when you you’ll give like you could give like a free version where it’s like, Hey, you have like 4 components. And then here’s like an enterprise version, which is like again, this is like, always, just like you can get like custom reporting you can get Api and pointing. And all this stuff. And we were
235 00:22:11.150 ⇒ 00:22:19.509 Uttam Kumaran: at flow code. That was actually the primary revenue driver. The codes were like almost free and then cause. But everybody wanted the analytics cause.
236 00:22:19.730 ⇒ 00:22:39.690 Uttam Kumaran: The way the way you compare, like your different ad platforms, is like hope. Hydration is like one versus the House hope doing versus Facebook versus doing other things right? And so they’re gonna compare your impressions versus theirs like all these things. And so you want to be like, how are we competing with the data that, like Facebook, digital gets back? And how far are we from that? Right? And.
237 00:22:39.690 ⇒ 00:22:40.390 owendaw: So.
238 00:22:40.390 ⇒ 00:22:45.780 Uttam Kumaran: And also you could charge like a ton of money for enterprise analytics like
239 00:22:46.270 ⇒ 00:22:46.940 Uttam Kumaran: it’s.
240 00:22:46.940 ⇒ 00:22:48.909 owendaw: Try and tell him I try and tell him.
241 00:22:48.910 ⇒ 00:23:12.730 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll send you some stuff I’ll send. I’ll send you some materials, and then you can maybe get hyped on it. And then I do think that again, like you have that dashboard already. I think it’s I’ll send you some stuff where there’s actually some ways of making it again. As long as you guys only have a couple of customers that would fit in there. You’re not building like a huge scalable platform. It could be something that’s like a little bit defined for every customer. So I’ll send you some stuff. And then.
242 00:23:12.920 ⇒ 00:23:13.980 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, I can take a look.
243 00:23:13.980 ⇒ 00:23:24.739 owendaw: I I actually have like in in our like Project Pipeline, I’ve scoped out like a client data portal, which essentially is like what we have in Grafana. But it’s not Grafana branded. It’s like, all the same data.
244 00:23:24.740 ⇒ 00:23:25.740 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly.
245 00:23:25.740 ⇒ 00:23:27.180 owendaw: And like exportable, or like.
246 00:23:27.180 ⇒ 00:23:27.620 Uttam Kumaran: I’m.
247 00:23:27.620 ⇒ 00:23:28.060 owendaw: To be.
248 00:23:28.060 ⇒ 00:23:31.603 Uttam Kumaran: It’s only the front end. And so this is a common thing that people do.
249 00:23:32.090 ⇒ 00:23:33.450 Uttam Kumaran: they’ll do a
250 00:23:33.710 ⇒ 00:23:48.170 Uttam Kumaran: like. Commonly people will do like power by looker or powered by tableau, where they’ll white label tableau and give it. There’s actually there’s a whole range. You can either like, basically take a Vi tool. Shove your data into it. Put in front of customer. There’s like that, or you like, build out your own
251 00:23:48.340 ⇒ 00:24:16.129 Uttam Kumaran: thing. There’s there’s a range in the middle. And there’s actually some like now, the last few years, or some cheaper tools that look amazing. But basically, you can be like, here’s our customer port, and then the nice thing is out of the box. You don’t have to build like a an export like endpoint. You don’t have to build these things instead, you’re just like, let me make sure the tables are there. You probably need someone to just like, do a little bit of dashboarding and like, do some modeling. And then it’s just like
252 00:24:16.300 ⇒ 00:24:23.649 Uttam Kumaran: you just filter it to that client you’re like, here’s yours. Yeah, it’s all sequel. You filter to them. And it’s like, Here’s your code. You have some secure off, and then.
253 00:24:24.370 ⇒ 00:24:26.809 Uttam Kumaran: like that’s it. I’ll send you some stuff, and you can take away.
254 00:24:26.810 ⇒ 00:24:35.219 owendaw: Cool. I like that. Yeah, what’s nice about Grafana is? It’s all open source. So you can just like compile it and like, change up whatever you want, if you like. Know what you’re doing.
255 00:24:35.490 ⇒ 00:24:45.879 owendaw: I’m just like running out of a docker container, so I can change some things. But all the codes like recompiled, but all the the assets images super easy to swap. Some of the Css. Stuff also as well.
256 00:24:46.030 ⇒ 00:24:46.640 owendaw: That’s a.
257 00:24:46.640 ⇒ 00:24:55.429 Uttam Kumaran: The nice thing about some of the tools that have come out recently that, like my whole company for any implementation we do, I’m trying to do everything as code, which is even the bias code.
258 00:24:55.600 ⇒ 00:25:06.559 Uttam Kumaran: right? We were using looker and tableau. But the problem is, there’s some components that are code. But it’s all ui based. And I can’t version control. I can’t reuse it for other clients.
259 00:25:06.600 ⇒ 00:25:27.679 Uttam Kumaran: There’s all these issues. And so there’s actually 2 tools that I’ve been using. This tool called rail, and this tool called evidence that are all as code. You can self host. Both. They both have cloud versions and evidence is more for data products. And then real is more for like operational analytics. But both also have like a hey, you can white label us and put us in front of folks.
260 00:25:28.088 ⇒ 00:25:35.860 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll send you both. They’re both a kind of different products. But we’ve done implementations of both for clients, and the nice thing again, you can self host.
261 00:25:35.960 ⇒ 00:25:43.079 Uttam Kumaran: and everything is as code. So you could parameterize like, for example, if you want to spin up a version for one client versus another client. You’re not like.
262 00:25:43.440 ⇒ 00:25:48.969 Uttam Kumaran: basically, the thing is like, I didn’t want to hire analysts who, like all they do, is a click tableau.
263 00:25:49.070 ⇒ 00:26:02.749 Uttam Kumaran: I’m like everybody’s an engineer here. Everybody’s doing everything in Github. And then, like even the bi stuff, I want to try to reuse some of these things, because otherwise we’re spending months for clients doing the same thing. And I’m like, I want to move faster for them. So.
264 00:26:02.750 ⇒ 00:26:03.120 owendaw: Yeah.
265 00:26:03.160 ⇒ 00:26:06.650 Uttam Kumaran: There’s some options in the last few years that have come out that weren’t there?
266 00:26:07.612 ⇒ 00:26:16.789 Uttam Kumaran: Like at Floca we actually built everything on looker for our clients, but it was kind of a nightmare, because it’s all ui based, and even the dashboards you have to go drag and drop.
267 00:26:17.080 ⇒ 00:26:22.049 Uttam Kumaran: and like, it’s just like, not the world we live in anymore. So.
268 00:26:22.410 ⇒ 00:26:33.700 owendaw: I’m used to doing all this stuff, you know, like from from scratch kind of like as codes like a last company. Same kind of thing like we built all the analytic stuff in house. So
269 00:26:33.720 ⇒ 00:26:39.210 owendaw: I like, I like doing that and and setting it up as like code infrastructure as code is like
270 00:26:39.250 ⇒ 00:26:41.860 owendaw: kind of the way to go. You can replicate kind of.
271 00:26:41.860 ⇒ 00:26:47.619 Uttam Kumaran: You have all Cicd for deployments, you have staging environments again, because that if that becomes a product that goes to your customer.
272 00:26:47.690 ⇒ 00:26:54.710 Uttam Kumaran: how are you gonna have a staging version for your product and then for this area, you’re just like, Oh, that’s the data side like it doesn’t work the same way.
273 00:26:54.790 ⇒ 00:26:58.159 Uttam Kumaran: you know. So I think only recently they’ve started treating
274 00:26:58.210 ⇒ 00:27:01.359 Uttam Kumaran: customer facing data products as like a real
275 00:27:01.500 ⇒ 00:27:09.189 Uttam Kumaran: like, not not something when you go into stripe, and they have, like a whole dashboard, everything I’m talking more of like for just like normal companies that like, Hey, I’m I don’t have like
276 00:27:09.430 ⇒ 00:27:12.149 Uttam Kumaran: 10 data engineers. And like all this staff.
277 00:27:12.170 ⇒ 00:27:14.719 Uttam Kumaran: I still want to put out polished data products
278 00:27:14.750 ⇒ 00:27:20.099 Uttam Kumaran: like, there’s a couple of tools that have come out to make it a little bit easier. That we’re running with recently. So.
279 00:27:20.370 ⇒ 00:27:22.799 owendaw: I should probably be using more tools. I just.
280 00:27:23.100 ⇒ 00:27:25.910 owendaw: I just like built a Ci CD
281 00:27:26.310 ⇒ 00:27:33.360 owendaw: pipeline for our station code for the stations like push to Github, push it to the production environment automatically deploys on all the stations.
282 00:27:33.360 ⇒ 00:27:40.159 Uttam Kumaran: No, that’s what we did. We have github actions for everything. Now, you know. Are you using github actions for for stuff or.
283 00:27:40.600 ⇒ 00:27:44.610 owendaw: Yeah, for that, we have to live action. So it it it’s actually
284 00:27:44.970 ⇒ 00:28:03.239 owendaw: code gets deployed as a version gets sent to S. 3 then we have a few like dynamodb tables with like versions, and then each station of either, if they’re on the latest version or a specific version, and then client for each station and checks it says, Is there a new version available? Hits? Api says there is another Api to download it.
285 00:28:04.580 ⇒ 00:28:05.280 owendaw: sets it off.
286 00:28:05.280 ⇒ 00:28:14.689 Uttam Kumaran: That’s that’s the move. I mean, like, we do everything as as Cf, like using Github actions, basically. And then also on failures. We have another job that like sends it to slack.
287 00:28:16.284 ⇒ 00:28:17.460 Uttam Kumaran: Yup.
288 00:28:17.460 ⇒ 00:28:18.040 owendaw: It’s.
289 00:28:18.040 ⇒ 00:28:33.740 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I just didn’t want to pay for like circle Ci, or I just didn’t want to pay for some of these. And then I’m like Github offers free minutes outside out of the box to like run, do those runners? And, for example, we use Dbt for some data stuff
290 00:28:33.840 ⇒ 00:28:40.289 Uttam Kumaran: they have like a cloud version. I’m like, well, they’re open source. I’m just gonna run. All the Cloud version does is really like run the jobs.
291 00:28:40.290 ⇒ 00:28:40.620 owendaw: It hopes.
292 00:28:40.620 ⇒ 00:28:46.310 Uttam Kumaran: I’m like, I’m gonna run the Cli in an action on Pr, and then run it on a cron, and then.
293 00:28:46.580 ⇒ 00:29:01.220 Uttam Kumaran: like we just save like 50 bucks a user per month. And like, I don’t have to charge clients for that. And I have to have a conversation about like, Hey, because every time we go to a client also bring in like 10 tools, I’m like, I hate doing that so as much as we could shove into github for Snowflake.
294 00:29:01.230 ⇒ 00:29:07.459 Uttam Kumaran: and like I’m unlimited. It’s like the way to go. I just think people underestimate how much you could do.
295 00:29:08.090 ⇒ 00:29:23.780 owendaw: I think that there’s a big issue kind of in at least the Devops space where it’s like there’s a lot of products that will do a lot of things. And everyone has like highly specific needs. And it’s just like you can’t find the right shoe that fits. It’s like you end up making things yourself, making systems yourself. And so.
296 00:29:23.780 ⇒ 00:29:29.429 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s like I can’t have 10 like I dev off. I can’t have my engineers looking at 10 different things.
297 00:29:29.520 ⇒ 00:29:33.519 Uttam Kumaran: 10 different places paying, and then also paying for 10 seats across 10 products like.
298 00:29:33.870 ⇒ 00:29:46.700 Uttam Kumaran: So I I just have like a very hard thing where, if people are like, I want to use this new tool, I’m like, Why have you like, have you done this in actions? And I’m not like, like, Okay, we can’t do that. But I try to just like push people to say, like.
299 00:29:46.840 ⇒ 00:29:55.640 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t. Wanna not only do I. This is gonna push you out of pull you out of context, it’s gonna take more of your time. We’re gonna have to pay for. It’s another layer of security.
300 00:29:55.710 ⇒ 00:30:08.249 Uttam Kumaran: So as much as we can do it. Gh. Actions is really good. You should try like chat. Gpt is actually really good at writing actions code, by the way, and they have a marketplace. They have a Github marketplace for actions, too.
301 00:30:08.250 ⇒ 00:30:08.860 owendaw: Cool.
302 00:30:09.340 ⇒ 00:30:14.569 Uttam Kumaran: So like a lot of common things, like messaging to slack or sending emails, or like
303 00:30:14.760 ⇒ 00:30:16.999 Uttam Kumaran: just notifications. And stuff is all too.
304 00:30:17.000 ⇒ 00:30:17.999 owendaw: Taken care of.
305 00:30:18.190 ⇒ 00:30:25.039 Uttam Kumaran: Like the other things you can do is you can actually check out code. So you can modify code and commit code within an action.
306 00:30:25.160 ⇒ 00:30:33.490 Uttam Kumaran: So, for example, let’s say you’re like running something, and then that that like execution spits out a file, and you want to commit that, you can actually do that, all in action.
307 00:30:33.600 ⇒ 00:30:36.589 Uttam Kumaran: And the nice thing is, you’re not like moving files
308 00:30:36.800 ⇒ 00:30:41.619 Uttam Kumaran: anywhere, because it’s all running right on top of your code base. So then it becomes.
309 00:30:41.620 ⇒ 00:30:41.940 owendaw: Yes, I.
310 00:30:41.940 ⇒ 00:30:46.690 Uttam Kumaran: Actually, yeah, we’re not like moving. I’m not like running something here. Then committing it and like moving stuff.
311 00:30:46.840 ⇒ 00:30:51.379 Uttam Kumaran: I’m checking out the code, running something, getting a new artifact, committing it back, and then it just all runs. There.
312 00:30:52.360 ⇒ 00:30:55.009 owendaw: That’s sick. Yeah, I like that a lot.
313 00:30:55.230 ⇒ 00:31:01.320 owendaw: I think that. Yeah, we can use Github a lot more here. But I usually just do all this stuff on the Aws side. There’s like the land.
314 00:31:01.320 ⇒ 00:31:01.830 Uttam Kumaran: Wasn’t so.
315 00:31:01.830 ⇒ 00:31:02.609 owendaw: Cheap, too.
316 00:31:02.820 ⇒ 00:31:03.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
317 00:31:03.960 ⇒ 00:31:07.970 owendaw: Same kind of thing right? It spins up like a temporary instance, gets the job done, and.
318 00:31:08.370 ⇒ 00:31:08.960 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly.
319 00:31:08.960 ⇒ 00:31:09.909 owendaw: You need with it.
320 00:31:10.060 ⇒ 00:31:15.269 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think it just becomes bigger as you get more people, basically like, you’re like, okay, how do I like.
321 00:31:15.450 ⇒ 00:31:18.689 Uttam Kumaran: how do I make sure that bad code just doesn’t make it in, you know.
322 00:31:19.430 ⇒ 00:31:26.130 owendaw: Yeah, but you know, so send me some of the other stuff, you guys do. And and we can. We’ll probably talk about some cool stuff.
323 00:31:26.130 ⇒ 00:31:27.760 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Okay, we’ll do.
324 00:31:28.190 ⇒ 00:31:30.729 owendaw: Alright, I’ll I’ll look out for my email for you.
325 00:31:30.730 ⇒ 00:31:32.490 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, alright, thanks all. Bye.