they jostle. This is Rick Messer, your host, and

my co hosts here with me is Anthony. Luke. Hello. Today we have, uh Well, I guess he's pretty special guy. A pretty special guy. Uh, special guest. Uh, we were with today a guy named named Travis. Um, he is a guy. So nice they named him twice. Good Travis Way. Travis y skin. Yeah.

I've rehearsed that, like, 100 times. You're saying that this year. So nice. Yeah. Yeah. Um hey, Travis was I think I'm gonna change my bio toe get apparently just a really special guy. Really special. I'll attribute it to you. Okay. I would I would appreciate it. Uh, dude, who are you?

Who am I? Who? Who is Travis Weiss? Good. I I am a pretend triathlete. Okay, We'll put it that way. Okay, that No, I like that. Yeah, that makes sense. I play one on the weekends. Um, when I'm not trying to get over colds, The ah ah.

I am a developer turned designer turned manage a real eatery type person. Um, yeah, I can dive into any part of that you would like. I guess I could start at the beginning. And

why don't you just tell us a little bit about your background and what you've been doing the recent years? What you're working on now,

Uh, self top programmer, uh, standard, like, started in high school playing with my parents computer. Now it was a 4 86 so I came into the game late. It's not like I could say, Oh, yeah, It was programming on a C 64 when I was five years old. None of that, but started playing on the computer. It was a toy. And then I was like, Well, how do I make this toy do other things?

Right? Um got into, uh, programming doing Web design and development back when there really wasn't a difference. You did Web stuff, so you would do the design and the development and gravitated more towards the back end. Is that started to split into more of a defined discipline? I spent about a decade doing that, um, and was constantly trying thio taken to heart, the pragmatic programmers tip on like learning a new programming language. Every year. I've been constantly learning new things tryingto expand the knowledge I brought to any project I was working on and hit a point where it was like, Okay, I can pick up a new programming language and be, like,

functional, not doing it expertly but functional in it in a week or two. So it's not like really sitting down and spending a year learning new programming language is gonna be that valuable to my career. Did you learn cold fusion? Know when I started, I actually did some stuff with cold fusion, but I ended up going the PHP Ralph back in the day. Nice. Um, but I remember cold fusion back before it was adobe cold fusion. I actually saw a Twitter poll yesterday was like, What's the worst programming language ever created? It's a couple of things, but they said adobe cold fusion. And I'm like, If you only know cold fusion as adobe cold fusion.

I don't think you get to vote on this, but you don't have the context of the last 15 years. Um, but yeah, when I was trying to figure out, like what? To learn next design was the thing that had done some very rudimentary design early on in my career and decided that I wanted Toa focus on that and spend some time. So every designer that I would run into whether it was a tech meet up or ah ah, conference or something else if I could get there here for a couple minutes later. Okay? I know nothing about this. I know what good design is like. I can say. Yeah, I like that. That looks good.

I don't know what what do I need to learn to do that, Um, And started picking up some skills so self made, self taught design as well. Yeah, Although I wouldn't. I still have a hard time classifying myself is a designer. I've definitely ingrained a lot of the thought process that goes into a, um, and recognizes I was going into it that a lot of the thought process that goes into good design is the same thought process that goes into good development. So, as a developer you're designing, it's just what your inner what you're designing is interfaces for code. How code works together. How

everything is orchestrated together. Isn't the definition of design just something like in the intent of organizing things? Basically something

like that. I don't know if it is,

but I like that intention, you know. And also it's everything is designed whether it's yeah, you know, intentional or not Bad share a good share that experience could experience.

Yeah, I mean, that was the thing when I started looking at design, especially going back to the original stuff. It was like here, focus on typography. It's thinking in typography was a book that was recommended to me, and I started reading that, getting some ideas and I was like The way that they're approaching this is the same way that I approach deconstructing a programming problem. So it was interesting. Toe have had a foot so long into the development world, then come into the design world. Kind of like OK, complete novice. How do I learn how to do this and then see things that could transfer? I don't know if I would have been able to have done that if I would have gone a year to end of my career as a programmer, and then so can we learn how to design?

I don't think I would've had that high level context, but because I have gotten to the point where I could see the forest for the trees. When I started looking at different programming languages and I could pick things up relatively quickly, I was able to approach design sort of a similar fashion. Yeah. Um, and think about it. Okay. What's the overworking concept here? Not like, how do I do, X, But why do I do X? So how do you feel about designers that don't necessarily have the ability or interest in getting into engineering? Do you feel fine about them? Do you feel like dude,

I think it's their loss. Yeah, but I'm not the thing that was going around a couple of years ago around the like Everyone needs to learn to program. Um, I think that it wasn't that long ago. Still going well, I have some pretty good takedown on the the programming side. Most of it focuses on you're never gonna be an expert. So Wyler, which I think is a horrible way of the world. I'm never gonna be a pro tri athlete like it's just not gonna happen. But I still enjoy it, and I get something out of that practice. So I think there's value in me doing that. Um even if you're not gonna be a professional programmer, I think learning how to think like a programmer like I don't think I'll ever sell myself and be a job for my primary responsibility is a designer.

I'm not a visual designer like that's That's the part of design I'm horrible at, um u x the information architecture of them or almost engineering focused things of design is what I That's the areas I gravitated towards When I started looking at it, I wouldn't consider myself an expert in any of them, but that was the areas that, like, naturally, fit with what I was able to do. But I think still focusing on the graphic design and kind of trying to understand it and understand where they're coming from made me ah, better developer for sure. Sweet. I think expanding your skills regards. Please use your learning to juggle is a good thing That makes you a more well rounded person. So should designers Jekyll, would you say? Yeah, I think I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that all designed,

all designed, all designers should like that should be one of your new interview. Frost questions. First thing here's three bean bags. Is that this is make or break. Okay, we're gonna decide whether how much time we need for this interview. Five minutes. Are you gonna spend the day with? Drops it right away. You're just done.

It would be hilarious to see the look on people's faces. Really? Really? Yeah. If

you could sell it right, it would be pretty funny. No, no, seriously, just let's see you go, like 123 By the same token, there is some value in, like, putting somebody in that, like, borderline awkward situation where it's something that they can't do it. Are they gonna ask? Well, I don't know how to juggle. Yeah. Okay. Well, what about what

they say? Show me. Show me how had a gentle

Yeah, you could turn this into something that could actually be really useful in telling it how they approach problems. A zit. Somebody who's interviewed scores of developers, the technical problems that I like asking, um are not the like brain teasers that you learn coming out of a C s program or something like that. It's more than like, how do you think I want to I want to throw something at you. When the best questions I ever got when I was being interviewed was a question that right up front, that's a language I don't know. Yeah, he's like, Okay, well, do you understand the concept I'm like, Yeah. Can you explain it to me?

I tried explaining it to me like, Yeah, that's that's the basic concept. Now, how would you implement that? And we spent about probably about 30 minutes 20 minutes on guy was implementing Java's a ray generator interface. Did not program in in Java. I knew it. I knew Ray was. I knew what, innit? Aerator Waas and I could ask him questions. What about this? And he would answer back and forth. And he just wanted to see how I would approach a problem that he knew. I probably didn't know how to solve.

And at the end of it, between that back and forth, I was like, Okay, so how does this work is like, Yeah, that was the first implementation of jobs, array of it, aerator. There's some problems in it, but we found that out after I did that as a language in a community So was it like an unsolvable problem or something? It wasn't unsolvable problem. It was one that I didn't know the answer to going into. And he wanted to see how he asked you to. Jet Jungle Code. Kind of.

Yeah. Here you go, man. I mean, you always nerve wracking here. I was sitting in front of a guy, um Ning, who had built out there had designed and implemented their document database back before there were document databases. I finally offended him a little bit when I said when he was describing us like, Oh, so it's like a couch TV or mongo. He was like, Yeah, except we did that four years ago. So I got interrupted you with the juggling question you were talking about how you got into design, um,

talked to designers. Yeah. I mean, ask questions throughout my career as a developer is a designer asking questions of the things that have moved me forward. Um, that community and design and development of the same in this way, both community, if you're involved in something like you're going to the dribble, meet up or you're going to refresh. You've already self selected into a group of people that are passionate about what they're doing so that the likelihood that they want to talk about what they're doing is pretty high. So asking them a question in being genuinely curious and their answers Um, most people talk your ear off like that. Yeah. True. So can you tell us a little bit about what you're where you're working and what you're doing right now? Um, I'm actually in between things. I'm going to be starting at Conde Nast next week. Oh, yeah.

Here in Austin, which is a big deal,

I think. Yes. Yeah. Conde Nast is opening their first remote office. That is not like we purchase Pitchfork. We purchased Wired. They have an office in San Francisco. They have an office in Chicago. They have an office in London. Um, but this is the first time. It's, like, Okay, we're gonna set up in office somewhere. They're setting up a big engineering team. We'll be hiring 20 to 25 people this year.

Um, and the plan is toe be 60 plus in three years. Wow. So amazing. Yeah, for sorry. But for people like me who didn't know what that company did until you told me they do. So Condi Nast is a magazine. Uh, company. For the most part, Uh, you could think of it as a lifestyle. They do. They publish the magazines that you probably heard of The New Yorker. Vogue style G Q Conde Nast Traveler.

Ah, lot of, uh, the more high end lifestyle magazines. Cool. Awesome. That sounds great. Yeah, um, and also wired, which is wired in ars Technica are two of the the tech properties of Conde Nest. That's awesome. And I'm not sure the exact structure they own controlling or significant part of Reddit Reddit is in the Conde Nast office. I remember a few years ago seeing ah, uh, somebody tweet out a photo of an internal memo that have been sent around,

and it was at the red it offices. And it was like just to remind everybody we do have a dress code and pants are required offices. Apparently, some of the Conde Nast people were coming out to the Reddit offices in San Francisco, and they wanted to remind everyone they need to be wearing pants. Wow, man. So slightly different vibe than like the New Yorker style or something like that, Or vogue in the World Trade Center tower, where they have, like, 20. Yeah. Yeah, I'm thinking that sounds like a pretty different vibe.

Yeah, completely off base here. But at one point in time, did Condi Nast own Razorfish? Where am I? Just like

a mine. Just like I don't know. I'm not sure on that. I have to look it up. That's exciting, man.

Seems like a great place for you to be able to put all those things together, right? Yeah. Engineering and design And the things you are good and design in the editorial publishing space and who knows what you're working on. That sounds like a great intersection

of those things. Yeah, it's gonna be fun to get back into the media space. I spent some time in the various jobs that have I've had over the years. I spent about three and 1/2 years of the Texas Tribune here in Austin, which, for listeners that don't know it's a, uh, a born digital politics and policy paper that was focusing on Texas State government, and I got out of that and it's great to be able to go back in and work on the platform that they're building out, Um, and do it with a team that's expanding and has big expansion plans. Yeah, it's always fun to be like, OK, come in and build a team for us, Please.

Sounds great. Yeah, that sounds like a good opportunity. Um, were talking earlier about, uh, man, that does tell me, Tell me what you think of when you think of a product team a product team, Right. So maybe we can just get get into, um, the way engineering works with with design and how it seems to be kind of evolving these days, because that's something that, you know, have fun size.

We talk a lot about care a lot about have a lot of strong opinions on. So when you think of, you know, a product team, what do you think of like, um, like an ideal product team somebody that you're gonna have somebody on the team regrets? Well, that's an engineer, a designer or a product manager or somebody on the business side. Somebody that owns the product and the vision is moving that forward. Um, and then designers, developers, a cz, many as you need of each,

um, but no more. So I think keeping it small if you've got, uh, the right combination of three or four people, I think that's perfect. When you start getting much more than six or seven to me, that's too big of a team.

I heard someone phrase that, like the team shouldn't be more than a two pizza team. If you If you have to order more than two pizzas teams,

probably big, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah, that's interesting. This is a one and 1/2 pizza team. But what what is what does that mean exactly? Like per feature on a product or something? Or I think that's really like It's, it's It's hard to break down and say, Universally, this is the correct way of doing it. Uh, so, like inside Conde Nast, they have a couple of teams that are focused on the bigger brands. Like The New Yorker has a product. An engineering team that's all inside the New Yorker as a vertical think there three or four that are dedicated solely to that,

um, the so I think it really depends on what it is you need for them. Their mission is, like move everything of the New Yorker forward. Like, um, with a team that we've already started building out here in Austin around the user platform. So analytics and things like that of users as they move across all of the various sites. And, uh um, that's initially is like Okay, well, how do we wouldn't be billed for tracking and things like that and keeping track? What information do you want? A store. So when somebody comes to Conde Nast traveler and then they show up on the New Yorker,

we can use that to better that experience. Um, but I think it's hard to say that it's not like this. You should have a product team every time you're gonna d'oh, sign up form. Or every time you're gonna roll out a new article page or every time you're gonna roll out an entire new brand, it kind of depends on how narrow can you make it? Do you want to make it? Um, why do you think it is that, um, engineering, You know, I don't know what you're the agile development manifest. So, uh,

was written. I want to say it was like the nineties 99 99. Okay, so why is it taking, like design so long to adopt that mentality that engineering is has been able to do it array quickly, Um, release more often. Don't working a waterfall process that, you know, keeps you headed down one road for a year, two years something, and then release and then find out what you did wrong. Why? Why would you think it is that it's taken us so long as designed to you adopt that mentality as well? And, um,

I don't know. That's a really hard question to answer. It is, I think maybe it's unfair, I think, on the development side, like engineers, especially those that are familiar with agile and doing, Smalley actually wants a big, a agile or extreme programming or scrum or any of those. But like small, it's a small, a agile, as the agile manifesto laid it out. Um, I think some of the fault lies at their feet because it was like,

Okay, we want to involve everybody. Um, rather than have the business person that comes in every two weeks or every month or every three months and says Yeah, you're doing great. After we've built all these features. We want them there if we can. In the chair next to us saying, yeah, we should be working on this. All right? Why We took that to the business side and didn't involve designers. I have no clue. I think I have a hypothesis about this. Um, remember who was discussing this with?

That's the thing about going to, like, conferences and all the events. You never can remember who you were talking to. So many conversations. But anyway, um, we were a sort of proposing that maybe because, you know, before, like, engineering is actually a relatively new like code wise, it's a lot more like relatively new discipline. So they have not been carrying the weight of of centuries of a medium like design has, like, visual design,

you know, it goes back and it's crossed many mediums, you know, think of print. Think of television, think of even, you know, before that, any type of design. Um and so then I guess that it just seems like it's like because design is like an older discipline. Maybe not that engineering,

you know, as a concept, isn't older, but I could definitely see that. I mean, plus, I mean, if you think about it, those that went to design school were taught. If you're gonna design something to follow this really, really process, right, Imagine yourself. This was designed school and showing, like delivering your work half done. You'd fail? Yeah,

because you didn't, like, go through the whole process. And I think some of it might be that I think also some It might be designers resistance to want it to wanting to show lift the hood, open the kimono a little bit, like, you know, show what's going on. And it had perfect stuff work. But it's also because, like, design almost didn't really have a seat at the table. And, yeah, you know, for once again, like it was just polishing art

for a while. Yeah, I think that you're hitting on two things there. I think part of it is there's a lot of vulnerability, Um, in opening yourself up to Okay, this is kind of the direction of moving in. It's not done. We can't have the final critique, but this is where it's going. What do you think? What adjustments would you make and getting somebody that's involved in that process. There's also a lot of overhead on the business side of like understanding that process and understanding What is, Ah, valid critique and what is not like I don't like this color. Okay, We're not really to that point right now.

This is You have a place holder, um, or I wanted color. And this is all black and white. Well, yeah, because we're still coming up with ideas on what? The colors. That's That's a good point. It's a lot easier for basically anyone to judge design, especially early. Um, very difficult. You gotta have somebody who's an expert or at least up up to par on code two. Be able to look at something and say You're doing You're on the right path that you're not on the right path like engineering wise, so it's a lot more difficult.

Um, there's just so many weird things that happens subjectively in another person's mind when they see a design early on. So there's that. I'm sure that has, you know, added to we don't want to show and tell like everything is perfect, you know? I mean, developers don't want to show 1/2 done project either? Sure. Um, I spend some time this last year is the campus director here at the iron Yard and working with students as they go through that they work on their final projects, getting them comfortable with the idea of okay, like, yes, it's not gonna be the thing that you envisioned two and 1/2 weeks ago when you started on this journey.

But look at all the things you've done. It's so easy to focus on the negative space and get caught up in that, um and I think this is just something that's that's wired into our brains like hardwired at this point. Um, evolutionarily speaking, it doesn't matter how many good things happen to you during the day. The one bad thing might have killed you. It might still kill you. So you still need to be thinking about if he ran into a lie in five minutes ago and took off running that lines possibly still chasing you unless one of your buddies is his meal right now. So I think just evolutionary, really. Our brains have selected to that point where we focus on the bad things more than we do. Uh, the good things that come back to the vulnerability of like a I want to show something is not done. Um, yeah, maybe that's it. Now we turn the podcast into evolutionarily evolutionary biology.

Well, it's It's also really it's gotta be chaotic for a lot of, let's say, traditional graphic design or Web design agencies who would use a process for so long. And it worked so well. Quote unquote worked that it worked right, and they learned how they staffed against it. They build a structure, proposals against it and then to see the market now changing where people do realize now. And, you know, I'm gonna get your insight on what happens when people actually do really embraced this and get everyone at the same table sitting next to each other. But it's really it's really hard, like to like, completely forget about everything that you were trained in, everything that you knew, Yeah,

and, um, and do it differently. Uh, also,

I think that's why so many development shop say they do agile. But it's just waterfall that's chaotic. They're not actually, I see that I'm feeling that is pretty common. Yeah, it's hard to really change the way, fundamentally change the way you think about the way the world exists and when everything you've done is okay, we gather requirements. We do some sort of design where that's actual visual design, with designers or an architect architect ing the system. Then we hand it off to somebody build, and we test it on doing Q and fix all the bugs that we found. And then we deploy it and everyone is happy. It's hard to break that cycle. I mean, to some extent, is basically a lot of agile.

And implementation is just that big cycle that I talked about broken down into a two big chunk. So it's two weeks of waterfall. Um, yeah, yeah, Humans are creatures of habit. It's really hard to change. Yeah, understatement

of the day today that you know when when people do are able to, you know, break down those barriers of it. I mean, you get the best workers like you said earlier, like whether you're an engineer or front of developer designer, you've chosen to care about this thing that you're working on. So if you get if, if everyone's there. Regardless of what flavor you are, you're more bound to have a better product, right, instead of just delivered, working and avoid and delivering it over the fence.

Yeah, I always want to be working with people that are passionate about what it is that they do. Um, and I think every project that I've ever worked on the tat people that are really passionate about the area that they specialize in, it's always been better. They've always made some contribution. It's that thing you could end up with somebody going off into a room and developing something or designing something and come back with it. And it's gonna be great for the way that person thinks it's gonna fit their brain. Um, but you take that and you put three people in a room. Um, it's not gonna be something that any one of those people can lay complete claim to. Um, but it's gonna be better, because it's gonna be the sum of all affairs eating. One of them could have produced their 100%. Um,

and while it might not be the 300% off three people together, it's still gonna be 200% or 250% of what any one of them would have done. Yeah, just the extra context. This is the challenge of the current year thing of politics in the U. S. Like the fact that everybody doesn't think exactly like you think, and everybody doesn't have exact worldview. You have, uh, really makes it hard to get anything done. And you have to you have to be willing to embrace that. Those differences in orderto make something that whether it's software, a product or, um, yeah,

it's always really. Actually, I know we're saying it's hard to adopt, you know, like kind of how your brain normally thinks about it. But once I started realized what the benefits were of using more of an agile approach, more transparent. Show the process as you go with design. I was very relieved because I thought it was it was just so much pressure. Um, and you're working. You're working for a long time without showing something, and you're nervous, like the whole time you want to get it right. You don't want to make a mistake. You don't want to make an assumption that's that's wrong.

And then you you know, after you spent all this time, you sort of, like, reveal it. And then, you know, uh, sometimes it crashes and burns. Yeah, and that's exciting. Hate that. So I love, you know, working with our clients. And,

you know, we have a lot of really lightweight touchpoints, but people are generally seeing designed, like, every day. Um and that makes me feel a lot more confident in the decision to design decisions that I'm making. Because I know I don't have toe wonder about that. I'm sort of like I understand that we are in alignment with the direction that's going, and we're all sort of like, Yes, we're trying These different

things were Irureta. Yeah, it's a relief if the human brain is wired in a way we talked about and you're thinking about Well, how's my designer developer doing on a day by day basis? Imagine what? What a human brain thinks. If they are waiting weeks or months for that first, A little Yeah, it was the trust and the fear and the anxiety,

and yeah, I mean, there there's two sides to that. Like Rick was saying, If you're the designer designing something or you're the developer developing something and you go off and go work on it. It's almost like you put up a dam and the water is just catching up behind it. It's just more and more and more pressure until you finally realize. Okay, here's what I've worked on and then you don't know. I think the key point too agile is just having the shortened feedback loops. Exactly. This comes something all we're talking about recently on one of the podcasts about user testing And how does that fit in like testing in general, it's not user testing in the technical sense or the formal sense, but by saying, Okay, here's something concept we're working on. This is the direction we're taking it.

Do you think we should course correct? Um, does this is this where you thought we were going? Rice. It's giving you that little bit of feedbacks. You could make smaller adjustments instead of all our adjustments as you go rather

than yeah, and it gets all the people in the right conversations. I mean, you know, being in Bingol toe have engineering and design and product management, and the first meetings and pose the last meetings, like, actually steers the project in a better way, like, you know, being able to collaborate with engineer, like, every day versus, like, the last part of the project. Whatever. I mean, let's get better

work. Yeah, I've worked on, uh, come into some legacy projects where maybe somebody they were working on it and they were kind of Here's the general direction. We want to go back. All right, I got to go off and work on it. Um, And then you come in a year later and you're like, Okay, this doesn't do what would originally talked about it all. It's completely off course. And you're like, Oh, but and then starts backing up how he did it on you. Look at it.

And you see logically how he got from his point A to point B, but not to point C, which is where everybody thought they were going. Right, because every step along the way, every day there's 100 little decisions. And if you're off 1/10 of a percent on every one of those, every one of those decisions compounds just enough to push you away. The trajectory, it just keeps going further for this way and over, like the thing that is the real killer. Is that the amount of time that you're going in that trajectory before you have a touch point to stopping course? Correct? Yeah, correcting that 10th of a percent that was off when it's 1/10 of a percent, nothing else.

But once that's become 10 15 2030% off to the side. Now it's like, OK, do we really want to, like, build our way back over to where, where we thought we were going? Or do we want to just scrap this and say, You know what? Some costs? We've already paid it. Lesson learned was trying to get it right just where so many projects end up with the idea of Okay, just scrap this. Let's start over.

It's interesting to on the agency side, and we talk about this a lot, but I remember when I worked in behavior in New York City, a lot of the work we did was editorial design for like, a lot of news properties. And from what I could remember, we were hired a lot by marketing department's not product partners, and the reason why is because of the time agency had all the expertise and they didn't have all the stuff in house to design and build on all that. They didn't have all these teams built up yet. I have to think now and maybe you can tell me from wrong. But it seems like in today's world, like a fun size work on an astronaut could do work with. Some marketing team doesn't know what they're doing. When we were in the product team with engineers, people like you, you know, people would design and like all these intersections of things.

And so we can't just be doing this thing that people used to do way over here in the middle of left field. You have to be like, you know, willing to, you know, work.

Yeah, that's changed a lot, even in the time. So I joined the Tribune and tooth out the fall of 2010 and from that time to now it's it's changed dramatically because then, like a ah, news at the Data Interactive or something like that would generally be either completely driven by somebody with technical skills. Hey, I found this cool data set is there. What interesting can we display with it? Or it would be the Okay. We've been reporting this story for the last nine months. There's some data in it that we used to inform the stories he wrote about it, and we think we could make a visual on it. Can you do that in the next three weeks? It was entirely tail in. We've got this done. Let's let's slap a burden.

Um, and it was that was brutal cycle toe to try to come back. And it came from a well meaning place. Like like every shop, Um, regardless of size. There's always more work to do than there are people for hours in the day to do it. Um, when you see people that are busy, like, what can I do to help us? Okay, well, I'll just keep this information to myself, and then I'll come in with. Here's the fully formed solution that I thought of based on the thing I saw last week,

not based on what's actually the right choice. I'm sure you're pretty good at selecting your clients. Maybe you don't have this anymore, but I'm sure you've had the clients that come through there like, Hey, we want to do X. And here's how we're gonna implement. You're like, Okay, that's great. We're gonna take five steps back and see if we end up in that same space, right? Right. Um, to be aligned on the approach is, uh you know it even if even if they're just sort of like telling it to you.

Um And even if you end up agreeing with it, it's still like the rationale needs to be kind of in parallel with both teams, I think for sure. Um, you were saying Was that a reference? Thio Portland. You have put a bird on making sure you say what I thought he said, Yeah. Um, yeah. I don't know. Something you're saying to you about Thio riff on Portlandia, right, That's for just a second. I I actually think that that's the outcome that happens a lot of times when I join maps were the thing. We've got data that has points we can put on map.

Put a map on it. Yeah, I actually printed shirts that were put a map on, but the end result was just like the end result in that skit. You put a map on it and it doesn't work. Everyone is like throwing shit up, just like Oh, no, no, no. This was the worst decision ever. Yeah, that's a good point that you specifically the map thing says, I never thought about that. And I think I get a little excited every time there is an opportunity to put a map, it actually fits.

Yeah, great. Yeah, but there'd be some people I'm trying to think of a good example of something that we had that was bad. But the first question, I mean, this is the first question any designer developers are almost always ask is. Okay, Well, why do you think we should have him up? Why? Um uh, when I was at the Tribune, Ryan Murphy did a map that showed all of the wastewater disposal sites for a fracking and, like, a map is really good at showing that.

And I'm like, Oh, wait. Look at the concentration of those wastewater sites here, here, here. How close it is to where I live. Yeah, um, Or when the chemical plant exploded in west Texas, Um, we had all of the data on where the chemical plants that had similar ratings were and how long it had been since they have been inspected. Like to be able to say, Oh, look, this is where my kids go to school,

and there's a plant that could blow up that's 1/2 a mile away. Oh, wow. Like that, That is actually really powerful, but just random. Um, no, uh, police crime police crime report to be kind of cool, but it actually wouldn't work with the l. A Times tried this. The only times got all the crime report data from the LAPD and was gonna make a guess where all of the crimes were vast. Vast majority of crimes were committed. Neighborhoods no, right across the street from the L.

A. Times right across the street from the L. A. Times was downtown L A P D. They would get in and be filling out. Therefore, I was required to put a zip code on it. They'd put the zip code of I looked at the Dallas data with time and half the time the location would be something like, um, past the, uh, the walnut tree in the empty lot on the 500 block of whatever street. So it's like, completely useless. It seems like all there's an address field. Let's do

something. One day you'll be able to plug that into Google maps and we'll

find out. Yeah, is getting closer. That's scary. Uh, well, I'm excited for your new venture, man. Sounds like you. Yeah, but you are, Uh, sounds like a lot of fun. And, uh, and good luck building your team. Yeah,

that's it's gonna be fun. I'm getting to work with a lot of really, really talented people. Um, a lot of folks that I've I've respected people that I'm friends with, um, that we know each other through various communities. Um, and to have the opportunity to work with all of them at the same time, it's pretty awesome.

It's cool to have a company that's doing things like that here, too. I don't Yeah, I know of anyone

else is doing that. When I talked to the, uh, who's now my boss, Um, the VP of engineering. When I found out this was going on, the very first conversation we had, um, he's like, Well, let your internet like Well, uh, twofold. I might be interested in depending on, Like, what positions are available here,

What you're looking for. Um, but more importantly, I don't know if you are. How are y'all coming to Austin? Like, what's this gonna look like? You have seen so many companies that come in and like, stamp here. We've got an office here. Um, and that's their whole goal. I talkto a big company that everyone would recognize. A few years ago, they showed up in a local meet up trying to recruit. And it was people from the management team,

um, who were in from San Francisco. And I'm like, Well, what brings you to Austin? All markets really good here. We really wanted to be involved in it, and we couldn't find office space for the team we want to spend up in anywhere in the Bay area. Yeah, so I was like, literally, they were gonna keep all of the product and project management out in San Francisco. Those people were already hired and they were looking to hire 203 100 engineers here that we're just going to be the people. Here's the ticket you implement today. It has like a duchess such a an exploitative way of coming to Austin. So I see somebody like Conde Nast him in my radar went up immediately,

like, Okay. Is this gonna be the place you send your tickets too? Yeah, but that was how I started the conversation with, uh, with it. So it was kind of, um he's like, Oh, no, this is what we're doing. And that's part of their water. Ask, Do you know, like,

why? Why Austin then for them, if it's not, you know the reason that you described earlier, but they need to expand and expanding in New York or San Francisco. Those were saturated markets. Sure, coming to Austin is a good place. There's some interesting media things happening here. Um, and they wanted to try their hand at, ah, company. That wasn't just in New York. Okay, so it's not just the barbecue.

It's other reasons. I think the barbecue sauce. Yeah, well, that's very interesting that you bring that up just because, um, kind of been a topic. You know, there's things that come attached to the notion off where you're based, and, um, we kind of threw the a journey of just discussing it. Kind of realized that it's just changing so much like where you are from and where you work. The city that you live in like good work can come out of, like these non like Mecca Tech hub places now because well, because of a lot of reasons.

But it's it's cool that there, you know, looking, looking elsewhere, for sure, I'm a big fan of ah, Huma Cloyd. Um, he was wrote the gaping void Blawg back in the day does the ah, former marketing guy that left New York and went to London and started drawing comics on the back of business cards. That was his thing. And he came of age as it were, um, as a brand during the manifesto air early, two thousands, and he wrote the,

um what was it? What you call it the huge rain manifesto or something like that. Um, what's what? He called it, But it turned into his book. Ignore everybody, Um, and he was talking about, um, whether or not you should follow. The crowds are no. And he was like the sheep follow the crowds. Like if the sheep and marketing are in New York, the sheep in programming skin off ownership are in San Francisco. Um,

he's like the, uh you have to figure out what you want to be. You wanna be a sheep or do you wanna be a wolf like want? The price of one is boredom. The price of another is loneliness and, like, What do you want to do? But I think it's a cool thing about Austin. Is it? Kind of has that perfect blaze get balance right now, we'll see if it stays with companies like Conde Nast. But there, the people that are here, for the most part, have chosen to live in Austin rather than I followed. My job toast to New York just gives a totally different vibe on the people that are here.

I feel are almost like more well rounded people because there's more to life than just your startup. There's more life than just design. There's more to life than just programming like barbeque barbecue. There's good barbecue. There's good music. Yeah, um, there's Barton Springs pool. Yeah, it's It's great here, But don't don't move. Don't move. We've got another summer's air. Horrible. They're they're the worst ever. It's like it's actually three months 110 degrees with 80% humidity.

Yeah, don't look at up to try to verify. I could I think I could get my feet one time walking on the sidewalk barefoot, and I can see that you could cook your feet anyway. Don't live here. You could put your feet. The new tagline. Tagline. Keep Austin weird. You could burn your feet. Uh, Travis, we're about out of time, man. Thank you so much for coming here today. Especially as I know you're fighting a fighting a cold man.

Uh, I appreciate you coming over. Um, any, uh, anything you want to leave two people think about or else even Just, uh, where can they follow you? And look, you up on dhe, see your handsome mug. Uh uh. If they want to follow me everywhere except for Snapchat, get on there. May I? Am that somebody has to use twice.

Good. Already. I, like, went to register. I just have this consistent hand. Yeah, but Auntie Spice good. Most everywhere. So that is the one place I'm not, um, but T's Weiss. Good. It's spelled exactly like it sounds guy. So nice they named a place I don't know why I do these things. I always regret it later.

Listen to what it might do. Are you gonna participate in the Henry put off? Um, I love going to that, But, man, that's a lot of pressure. I've seen some people go out, you know, like and I'm like who that would be me round one I've never been doing. I'm gonna try to do what you gotta go there is actually it's actually right in our backyard. Thio of our office.

It's right. I always

want to goto It's so much fun. Yeah, but don't come to Austin. You could burn your feet. Don't come for the punt off anyway.

Yeah, follow Travis. Uh, thank you guys very much. Goodbye. Hey, thanks so much for listening today. This is Rick. I'm sure you've all heard of envisioned. The product is practically synonymous with screen design. We're stuck. That envision is now a sponsor of hustle. Something we love about envision is that they are so highly involved in the community. These guys really care about where design is going and the support creative loads of design. Resource is you like kids designed, process and interview articles on their block, which is great for just general inspiration when building products.

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