In this awesome episode we welcome back one of our returning champions - Gil Roberts from Brickbridge Consulting! Aside from being a long-standing and incredibly active Podio Partner, Gil and the team have also led the charge in helping Citrix leverage the power of Podio inside their new Workspace product. Gil and his team have successful taken home top prizes in all of the Citrix hackathons (proving once and for all that Podio developers have the skills!).
This is a really interesting discussion that goers beyond just Podio and to the heart of how we are navigating the best practices around work, the office and technology in our new reality (post/during Covid). We dive into workspace, talk about how the environment is focussed on the individual and the individual's day-to-day journey in their job, and how Podio sits at the heart of so much of the workflow and automation elements of both workspace and Citrix.
Show Links:
Check out Brickbridge's website: https://www.brickbridgeconsulting.com/
Check out (and subscribe to) Brickbridge's Awesome Citrix Developers' Solutions Podcast
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Watch this episode on YouTube
In this awesome episode we welcome back one of our returning champions - Gil Roberts from Brickbridge Consulting! Aside from being a long-standing and incredibly active Podio Partner, Gil and the team have also led the charge in helping Citrix leverage the power of Podio inside their new Workspace product. Gil and his team have successful taken home top prizes in all of the Citrix hackathons (proving once and for all that Podio developers have the skills!).
This is a really interesting discussion that goers beyond just Podio and to the heart of how we are navigating the best practices around work, the office and technology in our new reality (post/during Covid). We dive into workspace, talk about how the environment is focussed on the individual and the individual's day-to-day journey in their job, and how Podio sits at the heart of so much of the workflow and automation elements of both workspace and Citrix.
Show Links:
Check out Brickbridge's website: https://www.brickbridgeconsulting.com/
Check out (and subscribe to) Brickbridge's Awesome Citrix Developers' Solutions Podcast
Try out smrtPhone for free for 30 Days
Want to be on the show? Register Now
Watch this episode on YouTube
Welcome to powered by podio automation is everything. supercharge your business with podio. Get ready for another episode of supercharged with Jordan Samuel Fleming your weekly dive into the awesome impact workflow and automation you can have on your business when it's powered by podio. Join us each week as we learn from the top podio partners in the world as we investigate system integrations and add ons and hear from real business owners who have implemented podio into their business. Now, join your host Jordan Samuel Fleming, CEO of game changers for this week's episode.
Jordan Fleming:Hey, everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of supercharged I'm your host, Jordan Samuel Fleming, here to talk all about the power of workflow and automation when your business is powered by podio. Now, this episode, I'm joined by Gil from brick bridge consulting, brick bridge, a great friends of the show, we've done group podcast before, I've been on there great podio podcast as well. And in this week's episode, Gil and I really focus in on some of the ways in which Citrix workspace has started the work within the podio ecosystem. For those of you who aren't aware Citrix workspace is a new system that Citrix has brought out. And it's a way of really bringing the different disparate elements of your business process, different systems you use, and bringing it all together so that the end user, your employees, your team members, can really work within a streamlined environment. It's something that I think we're gonna see a lot more about it. And it's really been driven in some ways, by the situation we've been in, you know, the last year, for those of you who may be listening in the future, we have been in lockdown across the world because of the corona virus pandemic. And that has brought about a real focus on working from home remote working on ways of allowing flexibility in the way you work, but also in what does it mean, to be able to have your team work efficiently? What What does it mean, to give them the right tools? And, and it's something we talked about in this podcast? How do you make sure you don't completely lose the human touch the human the human element of working together, you know, we all need breaks throughout the day, we all like to chat to each other and have a little conversation with the person who sits near us or the water cooler moment in the five minutes catching up on the television, we just watched whatever it is working is not just 24 seven work. It is a way of socialising as well and to understand how to do all that. And what that means from a system point of view, what it means from a giving people the right experience and efficiency, but also promoting ways of working together in a more cohesive whole in a in a human the human element is something we really kind of focus in on and discuss and brainstorm in this episode. It's really interesting. I certainly am looking forward to the continued development of this. And it was a great chance for Gil to bring some of his knowledge of Citrix workspace and how it works with podio how it really chimes together with podio. For those of you don't know bridge bridge consultant, which is Gil's company, they have really led the charge in this area, they have won the last two hackathon, as they call them competitions and Citrix promotes. And that is because they really have a sense and understanding through the podio ecosystem of what it is like to drive workflow and and how you kind of build that best case way of people being able to work efficiently, really interesting episode, I think we're gonna try and do more workspace and more episodes around this sort of external and other, you know, third party integration over the next couple seasons of the podcast, so that we can explore all the things that are out there, but let's kick off right now let's join the conversation where Galen and I can really take the charge and start to talk about workspace human to human elements and the way you can best devise systems to work within a human environment. Let's listen in excellent non says but I mean, we're here we are Gil, you know, here we are. And obviously you know you're wearing a number of hats like I am. And one of that I like literally like I am but one of the things and apparently you work for SpaceX as well. So
Gil Roberts:how are we Yeah, oh my gosh, I would I would trade this in for for that SpaceX job, I probably go be a janitor there just to be a part of something as cool as that.
Jordan Fleming:I would tend to agree with you on that. But so yeah, I mean, one of the things that that for those people who don't know this, obviously the SR keys Citrix ecosystem has a number of products, our and most of them play well with podio from a cloud based system now ShareFile, right, signature podio are all sort of part of the suite. But the, the newer kid on the block is this thing called workspace, it may not be a bad idea to give a bit of an overview and understanding of what is all involved in here, because podio really does chime in together on that and Gil here, and his company are probably the leading, leading the charge from a podio ecosystem point of view into workspace. So get why don't we start there and and focus in on that, why don't you give us a little understanding. Oh, thanks,
Gil Roberts:Shawn. I appreciate you having us on again. It's always a pleasure to be on your podcast of love. He is a host. So thank you so much. As for most of us most, I think we've been on a couple times and we do a few different things. So I'll give you a very, very, very brief introduction. So here at brick bridge consulting, we are a Fishel Citrix partner. Based under the authorization it's the CSA programme, Citrix solution advisor, any podio developer listening to this, that has not considered that programme I would do so there's a bunch of new stuff coming out related to podio for CSS, that will make that an advantage. It's not hard to get that silver level. So quick plug for that. But we also have sass frass, which is a proprietary toolkit flow engine and copy and deployment system and patching system for more complicated podio solutions and templates and things of that nature. So please reach out to us. What we've really been focusing on probably since since we learned about in summer of 2019. And over the pandemic has been the workspace with intelligence. Citrix is aligning behind a SAS portfolio, the recent Reich acquisition is huge, that will be brought into this kind of family of products, they've kind of built this holy trinity of workspace podio Reich with ShareFile and right signature as the nougaty Centre. Those products are coming together, they've hired you know, from and you can see these on the updates for those podio developers in that they've hired additional staff at podio and some other things, just to be able to beef their site up. And I think that I think that they're they're pulling some of those development teams closer and closer together. So they're really kind of building this SAS product vertical. And making all these products work nicely together. I Jordan, you and me, and I'm sure everybody else that's done podio development for other people have run into the question of I don't like the podio interface. Right? Like I don't like the way that it looks, Can I check can it can it be red instead of blue or something, you know, something silly like that. Not that people's desires are silly, but come on. workspace solves that problem. Now it is an additional cost, I would not recommend it for small organisations that probably don't have a large production budget for you anyway. So but for those larger and those that deal with organisations, more than 25 people, particularly over 100 people or 50, just depending on what it is. workspace can provide that relief valve of being able to customise the interface
Jordan Fleming:Well, let's let's take this down a step for a second because, I mean, I get from a podio partner perspective, there, there's some things but let's let's focus on an end user perspective for a minute. Like, yes, let's talk about it as though like we got people who are are maybe using podio in their business already, what about with whatever complexity it is, could be very simple, can be quite complex could be 10 people, five people could be 150 people, it doesn't really matter. But the point is, I think and I think this way you're going in some ways. One of the challenges of podio I think is so just about the aesthetics like can I change it? Can I you know, fucking from Blue but actually it's around in your organisation there's almost always either internal or external but mainly internal people who only have to touch a few things. Right and and I think one of the things that podio because of the ecosystem which I love that I'm obviously and for me I can was around it like no nothing business, but because of the kind of works podio works. Based on Citrix Wednesdays, but podio, the workspace, architecture organisation, workspaces, apps items. Because of that, you're, you're in essence, forcing people who may only have to do a couple things a couple times a month to go into podio. And remember where the fuck anything is, yeah, and, and how to do things. And that is a fundamental business issue. That I think is where workspace can really be interesting, where you're not necessarily dropped, you've got a bunch of people who aren't necessarily driving, doing things in podio, every day, if your business is running off of podio, 100%, and everybody's in there doing clicking buttons and doing things great. But for those people who are like running certain processes, but other things happen elsewhere. That's where workspace comes in. Right?
Gil Roberts:Yeah, you're exactly right. And it's actually not just the podio problem, when you talk about people having to go into a system every once in a while, you know, because it's not a part of their daily job. I mean, there is a zillion of these platforms that you go to Zapier and there's like, 3000 of these. It's a variable catalogue of who's who, and it's, you know, organisations are now allowing line of business managers to select software rather than the classic it or CIO suite, or whatever that may be an organisation to do it. So now we got a client they had, they had multiple licences of the same platform, because different managers were buying it. And then they had different implementations, I'm sure the salesperson will love that that's sold, it took us three different implementations. But let's be honest, that's ridiculous. So you know, they had 80 pieces of SaaS software that a call centre person may have to interact with, I asked once every six months and like, and you train them on all those, and I can they get it on their first week, I'm like, they don't remember any of this. They're human beings I like, and you're right, if you're in it 40 hours a week, you know, that's fine, because you're going to get not only the training on the front end, if that happens in your
Jordan Fleming:organisation, but the user, the constant reinforcement of like, you know, yourself with put, like, if so if someone gets, I always say I said someone new the other day, you know, I think there's a two to three months, learn user gap in podio. And if you get over that hump, you can make podio spin on a dime, and you can do anything as quick as you want. I can manoeuvre around podio, lightning quick, do anything I want within seconds, and it's not a problem. But if you don't get over that come because you only use it for a couple things. It is a constant problem. And that is true. And I think this is important. You're right about about other pieces of software that you may have to do a couple things to and with, for me when I my gut instinct on workspace, and its connection to podio. And its connection to other systems is you can finally then for a lot of your team, who may have to flick into different systems, you can bring those things they have to do to them, and let them just work and not have to remember how to log into QuickBooks Online to update this one time log or how to, you know, or do this or jury rig this and that and that you can essentially put it in front of them is that that's correct, right?
Gil Roberts:Yeah, absolutely. And you can expect, especially if you have a organisation that has a decent number of people at it, you can't expect the people down on the front line to remember or even care enough to remember all these little quirks that might be as we kind of like stick these Lego bricks of different SAS software's together, you know, there'll be quirks that come together because they were all made by different people. So they don't always just line up exactly. Where and this I think this is where workspace really is. What we're most excited about is people go home from the job, they work eight hours, right? And then they come home and they sit down on the couch and what do they interact with? Well, it's more software, but that is consumer grade software, where it's, you know, Instagram has spent untold amounts of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions billions. I don't know how much this untold amount of money getting that user experience. exactly correct. Right to make it addictive. Again, and then they turn on the Netflix and they got all these beautiful graphical representations. I mean, you can you can use Netflix, you don't even never seen Netflix before in like five minutes. You're you can't now you're bingeing right. So these are, these are what everybody uses the other 16 hours of the day, and then they show up at their job and it's backwards. Everything is backwards. I got a zillion browser tabs. I got to have You know, 50 passwords. I mean, I don't know how many times I hit Forgot Password at this point. And then they always tell you, or your IT department won't allow you, they always tell you always have different passwords and all this kind of stuff. And it's like, I can't remember random, you know, thank God
Jordan Fleming:for LastPass is all I can say, because that fucking thing saves because I also now have really complex passwords for everything. Yes, because I'm just like, Fuck, I don't care 50 character bad password, all sorts of shit in it.
Gil Roberts:Good luck getting into that hackers, right? Because it's like this long, like, I don't even know my own password.
Jordan Fleming:Except my last pass one. Right? Well, that that one I'm fucked.
Gil Roberts:Yeah, I know. Right. It's gone like your Mazda just turn the lights out. But yeah, exactly. Right. I mean, this is this is happening to everyone. I don't I don't. What we really, we're at a point with software, especially business software, that we got to start realising that there's a human being in the element. And I know a lot of organisations are process driven. And then they encode those processes in the software, we do this as podio developers, but we forget that there's a human being on the other end that goes home and interacts with software every day, you can't get rid of it, right? I mean, we carry around a little software brick in our pocket. And it's, it's, you know, it's everywhere, it truly is started to eat the world. And I think it's that that is, as shown up on at scale, right? So you got even your banks, even these regional banks, even they have nice little pretty apps and stuff on there. And it's hard for people to kind of come backwards into some of these interfaces that business software represents, right? It's very utilitarian, a lot of them are very Spartan.
Jordan Fleming:Well, it's about it's about efficiency of time, right? Because if you're constantly having to bop, like, I know, myself, when I have to, for instance, every once in a while, I have to go to QuickBooks Online. Which, which is in New York? Yeah. I don't have to do it very much anymore. Because we sort of we sort of changed the way we build things. But every once in a while I do. And I and I go, I have to be like, Oh, fuck, how do I do? Like, like, like, I have to kind of give myself a little Oh, yeah, I have to go to do this. To do this, I have to go here. Or I'll give you an example. I when I used to, you know ADP is payroll, please don't sue me ADP. But but their back end was so god awful. That every time I had to run payroll, I would be like, Oh, Jesus, like
Gil Roberts:you always have to have a college class to get through it. And
Jordan Fleming:I only have to do it once a month. So that's the problem. So for me once a month, if I was doing it every friggin day, I probably would just be like, Yeah, whatever. But because I only have to do it once a month, it was a problem. And where I see Citrix from a podio perspective, as well, where you're building an organisation when you're building your business inside of podio, your human element, which is what you just said, right is often we concentrate so much on building the business process. And we're like, you know, that that it's very easy to forget that, oh, but so and so and so and so and so and so only have to do this one thing. So we're bringing into podio, we're training them, we're doing all this stuff. But instead with workspace, you can be sitting, they can be sitting in front of their desk doing shit. And the one thing they have to do can be presented to them inside of workspaces. I understand that you correct me if I'm wrong. Now you can present it to them from podio pushed from podio to workspace, they see the ship they have to do they do the thing they have to do click OK or whatever, whatever it is, and then it goes away. And that is true from a podio perspective, but a Salesforce or QuickBooks or anything like that, so that my working day is no longer having to remember all these different user interfaces and all these things. workspace brings it all together and that's where you're going right Wait, wait wait wait. Quick commercial. It's June 2021. And I am delighted to say we are launching the game changes supercharged masterclass series Have you ever wanted to take your podio to an even greater level Well, we are game changers calm check it out. We will be launching this month a fantastic completely free. masterclass series, modules will show you how podio works, how to build automation, how to integrate communication. Basically we distil a lot of the information and ideas that we've learned from building podio all over the world for the last 10 years. And as a supercharged listener, you get access to some great deals. If you need a little help activating some of these amazing opportunities in podio. Check it out. ww we are game changers calm now. Let's go back to the podcast.
Gil Roberts:Absolutely. So key things to hear when you're talking to your clients to see if this is a fit. And this does not exclude podio, I want to be very, very clear about that there there actually have tied, some things in there some stuff in tech preview, as a partner to sign an NDA can't talk about, but we'll just say be be a little excited as a podio. developer, about how tightly that they're bringing these things together, they should be releasing that q3. So it should be coming soon. But it, it really does allow the work to come to the employee the process to come to the employee, and tell the employee when they should care. Right, and, and specifically what they should care about. So the classic example is a PTO filing a workdays, this huge monolith system, they got a zillion menus, it does more than just HR stuff, which you know, you get the developers creep out of this scope of what's going on. If you're an HR person, you should know how to use that software, period. That's your job, right? But if you're a call centre person, making $10 an hour, you know, telling people that they didn't pay their bill on time. And that's all your whole job is eight hours a day, because you got a headset attached. That's fine. But you don't care about workday. Let's be very honest. They they barely pay you enough to show up. Right? So why are you going to let and then yeah, they always give you the AED training, you know, like day two, while you're there, even day one. And, you know, it's two years later. So what do you do? What actually happens? This is what we do? Are your clients like? Yeah, they're supposed to go to workday and file a PTO. Okay, we got on the whiteboard, great. It's on the flow chart. We go out to the person, the frontline person, and this is a key thing for all po do go talk to the people that actually do the job, not management, not middle management, definitely. And go down there and go, what do you do? They go, Oh, yeah, that workday thing, I forgot my password. I haven't been in there in six months. I just email, you know, Sally, my middle level manager, and she goes in there for me, and files a PTO request, or I, you know, send another email over to HR. And I just emailed them because it's faster, right. And I know how to use email. workday. Yeah, you know, I go on there, you know, I gotta go, we'd stay citizen a room and we all sign in. And we do the benefits once a year. And that's that that's the last time I see it, right, because I get an email with my pay stub. So you know, sometimes they even eliminates itself, right? They're not going to want to do complicated processes, in that modelling live software, and they just want to ask for a day off. And let's be honest, who is the cruel person making them do that? Right? Like, it's a PTO request? How many days do you have? Great, when do you want off? Great, okay, fine. It's done. Right? Like, there's no, there's no reason that I'm going to click all these menus and view balance and send a little request, it's like, Look, especially with remote work, it's even more ridiculous. Right? Like, if you don't say like, it's who it's, I don't know, I don't know who they are, we should find out who are these people
Jordan Fleming:is round them up and beat the shit out of them.
Gil Roberts:tar and feather, right? Bring him down the streets. Because you you are just implementing process for process sake. And that's, that's not 2021 here, right? Like that's, especially with remote work. I mean, that's just shot that right in the foot of it's it's need to be inside of the process workspace helps with that, obviously, you get the pretty interfaces, you can you can actually integrate pieces of software together easier through the interface, because you can make the human being the integration because it becomes so easy. It's so it would just take two different scenarios here very, very quickly. So you could you can tie podio and another piece of software together to do and say take a 30 minute task and we bring it to five minutes. You do the same thing and workspace you can present podio as a card, and then the other system as a card, and then click click. And it's like okay, well, it's still less than a five minute process. We've we've stripped the process down. But instead of us investing 20 or $30,000. In this implementation, we just have the person click it frees up that half hour so we can instead of fully automating and overspending on that or maybe stretching budget or what what have you, we can just reduce and assist the human being who's quite frankly, already doing it manually anyway. So they're going to be very happy. That that that's, that's okay. So what we're able to do is actually present organisations with integrations that otherwise wouldn't be able to afford them because we can make the human being the API connector, right because we can reduce the task down so greatly in that feed. Because let's be honest, most stuff as cool as real time data transfers are most stuff doesn't need to be real time. As long as it gets done. You know, typically within an hour or the workday, it's fine, and if you're feeding them like a hammer drip in workspace. It's, it saves about 15 minutes out of every hour out of every day, that's two hours a day back to the employee in the organisation. So and I'll leave it there because it's a good transition point. We just had our Citrix ready, verification, the Spotify integration for workspace. So you'll be able to go to Citrix ready and have Spotify in and have company playlist go out. And though we're doing some really cool stuff inside of workspace, because you're like, Okay, we're giving the employee back two hours a day, right? That's a lot. What are we going to do with those two hours? Well, obviously, you can feed them more work. And that's, that's a part of it, the company needs to realise ROI and utilise that resource to be able to get more work done. But two hours is a lot of time well. And what you don't want to do with workspace is get them condition that every time a little notification goes off, they're like, Damn, I got more work, right. So what we're looking at doing and some of these things that we're doing is poor.
Jordan Fleming:Sometimes it's just a five minute Boogie that everybody can have,
Gil Roberts:you know, just something fun. And again, with the remote work thing, that kind of water cooler ping pong table. hissing,
Jordan Fleming:I was gonna back you up on that. 100% I've been remote working for live in office, obviously, but most of my team remote working so nobody's even me. Um, but I do think that one thing I've noticed for the people who have been forced into remote working, right, like, I've been doing it for fucking so long, that and so this was my team that for us, like when this all happened, we're like our status quo, right? Yeah, nothing's changed. But, but a lot of my friends who work for big, bigger companies, etc. And they who are suddenly like, I'm working from home, like they were used to going in an office. One of the things that I did notice some of them saying, Well, you know, on WhatsApp chats and shit like that, which never really occurred to me, was how much people rely on little things breaking up their day, because they're in the office. Right? And when you're at home, I presume you don't have kids who are breaking up your fucking Bay. But when you're at home, and you're sitting in front of a computer and your computer is there 24 seven now your work environment is now there, it becomes a lot easier to be sucked into the working too much. And yeah, and getting you know and and and i think you know that that balance and finding good balance is a key part of remote working. And maybe something as simple as, as blasting a Bon Jovi song every day, you know, you know, having Bon Jovi Mondays is something Why?
Gil Roberts:The we do metal Mondays around here, so they started, right, but the what? You're on the point, you're on a point, which is how do you human beings actually work in an office setting, you know, senior management, or more particularly middle management, I'm beating up on you guys would love to see little robots show up exactly on time, maybe, you know, early is on time on time is late kind of mentality. And late is never acceptable, you know, that kind of that kind of mentality. And to sit down and just work varied hours and take their scheduled lunches and those kinds of things. And and that's that's just not how human beings work. Human beings work. They work in bursts, especially if they're creative human beings, they work quickly. And then they got to take a break, right? And the more creative the job role, the more that you have to allow people to just stop working for a second, go do something else, and come back, right. And I think we're moving into more and more creative work. And getting rid of the paper. I mean, the software is chewing up all the administrative paperwork, stuff, particularly workspace. So it's it's one of those things where like, as we move people into creative work, which is probably the highest value add work, we're going to have to allow them to step away even at random to just ponder and mould. This is an addition be new to anybody, you get stuck on a problem, what's the best thing to do stop working on it? Now, go, you know, go play some ping pong at the watercooler chat. Another element that's missing with when people just kind of wandering around the office and talking to each other is that networking element, it feels much more transactional via chat, and the meetings are much more transactional. So, you know, having something else to talk about besides work is a great thing that we've been trying to impress upon and get into the workspace experience. It's like, Did you hear that playlist? It was terrible, right? Even if it was terrible, something just give them something to talk about. About besides their job, because as I've seen, as people get more transactional, they tend to get more combative with each other because they're like, well, I'm just trying to do my job, right? Well, I'm trying to do my job, right? And now this this isn't that instead, let's have a conversation about man, they've released an album, stupid metal playlist, right? I hate that music, you know, and just let them give them something to talk about, even if they like it or hate it or whatever. Just you know, they're human beings. In the end, we're not we haven't been turned into the aeons robots yet with a with a neuron. So we'll we'll you know, maybe soon. But right now, you know, people, people have a life outside of work. And what's it's funny, going back to what you're saying that the lines bore a lot of people, a lot of people need that separation, and then the distraction like they need it, they really needed to do their best for you, like, how does the distraction do there, but it really does cuz you got allow people to kind of come off of a task, let let that settle into their brain, that you know, sleep, you know, the old sleep on it mentality, you know, just let people do something else for a little while. And maybe that's more work, which we can present that in workspace, maybe they can move to another task, maybe go knock out some paperwork stuff, or they get stuck on a creative task, or, you know, just have a, just have a plain conversation with another human being. I mean, a lot of people have more time with their people that they work with, and sometimes with their children and spouses. So what's given these people something to talk about, they're stuck together, either physically or virtually, a lot, a lot of hours. And look, you're going to talk to somebody for so long for you run out of topics, right, so we need to just pepper in what we call employer or Dane distraction. So the employer still has control over what's going on. With that. So that can be so you know, obviously, we don't want any, no people want anything crazy or anything like that in there. But, you know, the employer can at least keep it focused and what we are seeing and Citrix is coming out with some of this stuff, too, as a part of the packages, well being, hey, you know, we can see you've been working for six hours straight, we're going to pause your feed, and you're going to go you know, maybe because we can tell if there's something urgent in there or not. But we're gonna we're gonna go make you take a break, you need to take a break, right? Like, let's, let's be honest, you're a human being not a robot, go take a break, here is a 15 minute yoga session, video, you can click on it, do that take a break, or, or, hey, with pay periods coming up, here's some importance about investing in a retirement plan, or get on Spotify play while
Jordan Fleming:you've taken the fucking fun out of this. Well, these are the that's kind of under the wealth as you go with pay periods coming up. Here's a link to a really cool hoverboard, you can buy
Gil Roberts:stuff, hold on. So that's kind of under the well being banner, we also have kind of under the distraction banner, which is news articles. So Spotify just published, we should be at the time of this recording. By the time that this recording drops, we should have New York Times, and we can edit and we'll be able to edit into the future additions, which type of articles come through. So when I was in the finance world, it was really good to be able to talk about I don't know, financial current events to clients and partners. And it's during the day your sales guys. So you know, you're not really watching the news, a whole bunch of trying to hustle the phone. So having some of those news articles just kind of come through so that you have something to talk about with people outside the organisation. So it doesn't seem like you guys are like some kind of factory that's trying to get people's money. So just having some personality and something that's to talk about, and the employer being able to suggest and just allow for distraction and controlling that right. So they're not just wandering all over the internet, they're actually being fed, something that's relevant to the job may not be direct, but it's relevant to ego, man, everybody, I talked to an XYZ organisation, they seem to know what they're talking about, because all of them know the current events, right? Everybody's understanding what's going on out in the world seems like a pretty well put together organisation now it would be considered a distraction. Otherwise, but really, it's it's an improvement around the ability for those. Okay, so you have distractions, last thing that we're going to be working on, I should say we got two more, and I'll leave it that. Another thing is is also setting so there's the set and then the setting that the person's in. So a lot of people work in buildings, they have coffee shops downstairs as people returned to work. So what we're going to be bringing into workspace is the ability to order the coffee and then and pay for it in workspace for the employee or the employer, give credits to the employee they can buy and if it's kind of a we were co working situation at coffee can show up on the person's desk or sandwich or whatever they're buying, or they can go down there and it's it's set up. So some of the things that we're working Right now as Uber Eats some of the other POS system apps, so that people can purchase these things directly through that workspace experience. Now podio is not left out. And all this a lot of this stuff, we're actually using podio as the back end, at least for testing some of these integrations to show functionality. So So, you know, keep that in mind, there's a kind of ready made system as us podio developers, that if we don't want to have to deal with some large corporation or large piece of software, you can go do it yourself in podio, and get that same effect that a client would see over on the workspace side. Okay. Lastly, and I think this is the funnest part. Because we can track everything that's going on in workspace, we can actually gamify the feed. So hey, you're way ahead, Jordan, here's a $10 gift card. Thanks for being a great employee and knocking out your work for the day. Right? Hey, you're you're super far ahead, there's really nothing left in the queue, we're gonna go ahead and release, you just keep an eye on your phone. Right, we just put you on call. And then when the work starts to come in, again, we can pull you back in during a work day, you know, so so being able to give people like take an hour break, you're way ahead for the day. And you can think about that, especially on frontline employees how much they would appreciate that. And now you're adding value to their job without having to affect the bottom line with a bunch of raises and bonuses that are only upwards beyond his raises and bonuses. only temporary Lee motivate employees. But how cool is it? If I work really hard right now, I might be able to skate an hour in the afternoon, guess what people do this anyway? Right? Like this happened before the panda people would get stuff done and go, Hey, Bob, can I can I jump out? You know, an hour, I gotta go pick up my kid or whatever. Right? So what do they do they they do their work really quickly. And it's done. And as you know, creative work. And task based work is much more project oriented. So it's outcome oriented, not, you know, put your butt in a chair and hold the chair down for eight hours, right? And just just sit there. Even if you have no work, don't leave your chair, I've been at an employer that was like that, they literally was like read the instruction manual, if you ran out of work, that's what they wanted you to do. It's like, I can only read that so many times. Right? Before I go insane. So you know, my work is done. Right? You paid me to do the job, I've done the job, can I can I bounce like 15 minutes early, because I got to go to college, this when I was in college, and I know that chair might roll away, you have to sit in it you have sitting in here. And that's
Jordan Fleming:you're asked to be an effective employee, your ass has to be in that seat for this many hours. And that's simply not true.
Gil Roberts:And remote work is Pierce that. Right? It's just blown that whole equation. So anybody that's continuing to spout that stuff is lost and backwards. So how do we how do we allow for that? And and that extends? And I'll make the final point with this. that extends to what you're you're saying? So it, you know it really the future of work is really about people accomplishing tasks efficiently, in a manner that is to process but not of process, right? Like you're than I am, I'm a human being that's adding creative value as a part of the process, not a cog in the wheel. Right. That's the I and and it's it's so cool to be able to be able, especially as a podio developer, to see the process modelling and go, you know what, let's take a pause. There's a human being involved, they have kids, they have other things that they do during the day, right? How can we design for a human being to actually work in the software? So a lot of times what we start with, and it's a huge advice that I know a lot of people do this but to really really buy into it sell out and buy into this. Go What do you want your employees day to look like? And I'm not talking about that they show up on time and they leave on time and they hold a chair down with their but we're talking about what what is it that's actually going on? How many parents do you have his employees? Oh, well, most of my employees are parents. Guess what? They're in remote work and there's going to be a kids run around I don't know how many zoom meetings I've been on a kid's yabbering in the background. You know one parent is up in one room you know this is how my wife is she's got the nice office I'm up in the in the storage room. You got to do that fellas so yeah, it's it's one of those things where like she's there as part of the deal is the kids down there well that's where all the toys are right so she you know, I got to take the kid upstairs and sometimes parents have to just do what has to be necessary. But you know, I don't want to be that parent that like locks the kid in the room that latchkey kid thing right where you walk in the room and then you know his problems later. I just I feel terrible, right? So you got to get it done. So So you're gonna have kids running around in the background, give them a mode of work that allows them to be creative, right, which is really hard with a distraction. And kid, it could be many other distractions and allow them to have the work come to them. Because guess what, you're not going to remember to do that stupid stuff and work day to make a PTO request, or, oh, yeah, I have this one system that this client uses, and they send messages there. And I never check in and then they get mad. And they're literally the only client that uses like, you know, they're trying to use kik, to get ahold of you. And you're like, I, you know, you're the only person that does this. And then they get mad, you're not using my mode of communication, like, you're the only person that uses it, right? Well, hey, you can be like, you know, what, that's fine. And just put that integration in pops up in the fee could be popping as a podio item, and just just allow people to work as they are a lot of work to come to them. And, and I'll start eliminating all those crazy browser tabs that you have open?
Jordan Fleming:Well, I think, you know, bring it back down back to the kind of audio element here just to close out I think, you know, and I and I'm glad we're talking, you know, I've wanted to talk about this for a bit because it is a, it is a potentially exciting thing, because a lot of people are going to use other systems in their business other than podio, QuickBooks Online, whatever, like podio is brilliant at doing a tonne of things, but it's not going to do everything in your life. Sadly, there's that you're going to use calendly or QuickBooks Online or anything else like that. And I think that so that's one issue. And then the second issue is, you're going to, for any organisation that has more than one or two people in it, chances are, you're going to have some people whose role is defined in a way where they don't need to do a lot of things in podio, or in these other systems, they only need to do a few things. So the question then becomes, how do we make the most effective use of our podio systems as well, and is not necessarily bringing in these four people who only have to do one thing a month, because it is just not efficient or effective to them. And it's going to cause friction, and it's going to cause problems. And it's going to do all these sorts of things. And that's where I think, setting aside developer notions, and whatever it is you want, as a developer to do, from a pure business owner point of view. I love what I like about this. And what I'm thinking thinking is very interesting, if you are someone who's who's using or building podio, in your organisation is identifying, you know, our Do we have a lot of people do we have a bunch of things, who people who don't really need to be in podio. But I still want them to see the do the occasional thing, I need them to see a task given to them, that tells them to do something, or I need them to do whatever it is and you can you can look at it as podio. And then you can look at the other systems you're using and look at it there. And the moment that quest that the answer that question becomes, yeah, geez, we got quite a few of these things, then I think workspace becomes an interesting opportunity, because you can you can centralise and focus in a way that nothing else really can do.
Gil Roberts:So here is and to extend that out further. And yes. I like to justify why should if they only do four things a year in a system or something once a month, kind of like your QuickBooks experience, and ADP experiences, it's like, here's a better question, why should they even care? Right? I mean, what are you asking them to do? You say, I'm gonna train you once. And then two years later, you need to do a whole bunch of stuff. Like, what? What kind of sick game is that? Right? Like, nobody's gonna remember that. So it doesn't help because guess what they're gonna do, they're gonna email other people in the organisation, they're going to go bother people at their desk, if it's virtual, they're going to try to set up a meeting and then now you're spending, you know, hundreds of dollars. And then if it gets so bad hrs are like, well, we need to retrain, and then you're gonna, you know, spend 10 or $15,000, gathering everybody in the room if it's any sizable organisation. And guess what, two weeks later, it's gone. It's gone. Right? So stop, stop it. Designer with a human being, there's a human being that's going to use this. So now I want to flip over on podio. And there's podio as a unique way to be able to also help address this. So because because podio developers know podio of course, there is an opportunity to use podio as a way to bridge gaps inside of something like a workspace or really even Salesforce or any of these other platforms people are using podio is there to be able to be a nice little gap filler. So sometimes what we do is we might have a system that has a client that has a work Have a system and they didn't want to pay for some kind of module because it's zillion dollars over at workday or whatever. And not to beat up workday, there's, there's plenty of other good work days a good system, but you know, they may not want to pay for that module, you as the podio developer can go make a little thing that bridges the gap, you don't want to pay$100,000 for a PTO system, you can pay a pojo to over a couple grand, and they're going to be more than happy to make a quick PTO system, right? A few grand for something like that one time where they want to licence at these model is to open up all the sections, you know, the micro transaction model is starting to get into the business side of the software, everything subscription, everything has to be unlocked with more pay, you know, more more payments and stuff like that. So podio is uniquely positioned to build what we like to call store brand applications or generic applications that accomplish the same task. And this comes back to what you're saying, if it is in a another platform that is more user friendly workspace or otherwise, no one has to see podio sitting in the back, you can have like a bot account, it comes in and performs the work. So you have this beautiful system of record that is podio that can fill in gaps very easily with the workflow automations as well. So there's going to be a gigantic opportunity for podio developers to build all either industry specific or universal store brand generic apps, you know, you got you got the we have Kroger around here we have the Kroger macaroni and cheese, and then you can pay an extra two bucks for the craft right? Get it's probably the same factory that makes both just the boxes are different. So you know, it does the same outcome, you get the macaroni and cheese, right? Like you get the same outcome, regardless of what you're using. But this you know, as the mandalas go towards more subscription, more pay for feature, we have this unique proposition to go, Oh, no, it's super cheap. You want to PTO app a couple grand one time, five bucks a month, whatever, right? And it's that's going to be everywhere. Even if they've bought the monolith, they may still go with you. And then you just go talk to the monolith, right? So there's going to be a gigantic opportunity for podio developers to become more creative when it comes to application building. And that's going to find its way into the Citrix ready marketplace. So that this the Citrix sales team and other Citrix partners can sell those applications on the podio developers behalf to mix into solutions. So
Jordan Fleming:I think that's a that's a whole other conversation that I think, you know, I think is worth Maybe another time, but I mean, I think, um, you know, my we were we can close on just the concept here of you know, if you know, there is the Citrix workspace is a is a product that is fully kind of into the Citrix, you know, ecosystem, it's a it's a way and it's and it's got a potentially really interesting use case, if your business is using podio and or other systems. And you've got this, this need for potentially, you know, to streamline the user experience so that, you know, these five people don't have to be inside of these big systems because they only see once in a while and I think that's probably what I would recommend, you know, take a look at it guys. people listening will post some blog, the links into this blog. And obviously if you've got any questions about workspace and and how that can integrate, then I do encourage everybody to reach out to Gil and his team at brick bridge. We'll be posting everybody's posting the contact links on the podcast information. And I do absolutely encourage you to talk to them. There's nobody who's done as much in the the podio ecosystem and Citrix partner ecosystem with workspace as Gil and the break bridge team. So please do check them out. Gail, we got a We got a call to stop there. Thank you so much for being on This Week. I thank you so much, Jordan.
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