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Hey, we have a guest on. You want to introduce yourself briefly?

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Hi, I'm Laurel. I'm a product manager at Pivotal.

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Here's my question for both of you. Now, you know, here in Amsterdam, the spring is back,

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which means from my desk, starting at about 3 p.m., the sun is directly in my eyes. Now,

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I have blinds, but they're a mystery to me. I figured out how to get them to go all the way up,

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but I can't get them down. So my question to you is, is this because I am blind deficient,

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or does everyone have trouble with blinds?

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I definitely have trouble with blinds, especially if they're the ones that have

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multiple lines in them.

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Oh, yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah. Sounds like you have to move.

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Yeah.

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I mean, you just have to burn the house down, salt the earth to get a new house.

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Yeah. I mean, it's a great house, but these blinds are intolerable.

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No, it's a losing proposition.

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How about yourself, Richard? How are your blind skills?

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Not good. They always seem, yeah, I mean, you're right, Laurel. When it's got the two handles,

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I mean, I actually just opened the blinds here in our Seattle office, and they just have one little

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thing that, a little metal chain to pull them up and down. That's straightforward. But when there's

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like the open, close, and up and down, that's a lot of sophistication for me.

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Exactly. That's what I have is you can, these blinds can come down from the top. You know

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what I mean? Like you can put a hole, not a hole, but you know, you can have the top

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of them come down. Or you can have the bottom of them come down. And I think something got

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all confused.

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That's so fancy.

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Yeah. I'm impressed.

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Yeah. See where this fanciness got me? I just need some good old, good old, are they

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Venetian blinds? That would be funny if you were in Venice and had those, but just, I like

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those ones that just make a lot of noise when you move them back and forth and have a big

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dumb chain on them. They always work well.

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I feel like next week's podcast will be, I have a sheet in my window now, and that's how

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I now block light.

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That's right.

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I'm going to be like my country friends back in Texas and just put a bunch of foil up in

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the window. I was never really sure what that does, but that was very popular. You just line

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your window with foil.

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We're a week away.

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That's right. Maybe the theory was that like deflects the heat. I don't know. It seems like

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it more like it would cook you inside. Well, anyhow, well, we have, we'll come back to a longer

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introduction to our guest, and per usual, we have a few news items to go over before that. Feel

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free to weigh in if you are anyway thrilled by that guest, or maybe now you're consumed

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by trying to get your blinds to work, which I know I would be if I hadn't given up hope

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on these blinds. I think maybe another indication of the trouble you're going to have with blinds

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is the pull. There's always a dongle thing at the end of the pull. I think the fancier it

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is, the worst your blind experience is going to be. You know, because when I was in college,

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you would just have that really cheap kind of like white bell at the bottom, you know,

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the little pull. And this one has like, it's got like a little black thing with a contoured

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finger thing, and then it has some clear plastic dropping down, almost like a little sample

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perfume bottle. And I don't know, I don't trust it. Anyways.

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Seems like Europe's really agreeing with you. It's a good move for you.

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Other than that, everything's working out great.

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You should just move to London, where we could work together in the same office, and you don't

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need blinds because we don't have the sun.

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Oh, yeah. Huh.

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Solve it at the root. That's right. Get to the base of it.

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This is our cosmological solution to this problem.

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I think that's a good idea. It sounds like a lot cheaper and a lot more efficient than

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just figuring out how these damn things work. Anyways, you know, the opposite of that, things

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that work really well, a new version of Pivotal Cloud Foundry came out. Now, I saw one of the

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things listed was Steeltoe has been modified, maybe updated, improved. What's the story with

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that .NET guy?

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Yeah. So Steeltoe, part of a lot of different parts of this release. So there's, you know,

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if you want to talk to MongoDB, you want to do more health profiles for your .NET apps,

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you want to have different service discovery, like your HashiCorp console, instead of using

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some of the pieces that already came as part of the Netflix stack. So some good stuff there.

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There's some great things for platform automation and PCF25. The first introduction

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of things like Istio for service mesh capability, be able to do weighted routing. So you could

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have some traffic go to this version, some traffic go to that version. So lots of good

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stuff in this release now available. We announced that a couple of weeks ago at the Cloud Foundry

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Summit. We're actually bumped into Laurel, so it's all fortuitous.

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Yeah. I was interested to see the weighted routing there because I've been at several spring

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tours recently. I was down in South Africa last week. And, you know, the question

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of, uh, so if you're going to be deploying things frequently, isn't that going to break

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everything? And then I'll have to find a new job. You know, the first thing I tell them

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is that programmers are in high demand, so it'll be fine. Uh, but, but yeah, it's nice

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to have sort of a secure ways of releasing things, especially like blue green deploys.

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And then I guess you could also do like your AB testing, not only, uh, you're deploying,

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but being able to have multiple versions of something, whether it's for rolling upgrades

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or, uh, testing new features is, uh, quite thrilling. That's a, that's a new thing that

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we've got to use in the past few years. Are there any other exciting things in, uh, that

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new release?

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No, tons of, uh, different parts of, Hey, sure. Windows Server 2019 support and other

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pieces like that. I also noticed that last week after the release, we followed up with

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some cool open source stuff. There's some posts on the pivotal blog about the new metric store

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that we added to open source cloud foundry for a time series database on, on log and metric

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information that you can use to analyze. And then we also kind of quietly announced that

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we added support for sidecars in the cloud foundry platform so that you can have containers

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deployed with sort of side containers that might do, you know, analytics stuff or monitoring

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stuff. And it's a cool service mesh pattern. I think it might surprise people that that's

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coming to the cloud foundry itself.

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That will be nice. Now at the same time, uh, last, well, that was at the same time, but

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during, since we recorded last time, that period of the passage of time, uh, there was also

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a bunch of, uh, there was Google next, I guess they call it Google cloud next. Is it just

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Google cloud next or Google next?

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I think it's Google cloud next.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was watching the coverage from there and I was thinking

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like, I bet if I was still an analyst and living in Austin, I w I would be down there.

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I wonder that that's not the one they give out free stuff at though. Right.

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I don't know if there's as much of that anymore. You remember like five,

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10 years ago, like, Hey, reach out to your chair. Oh, it's a laptop. Like that used to

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be the thing at these big conferences. I don't see that anymore.

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Yeah. That was like the only, I mean, you know, speaking many years, I think the, uh,

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the statue statute, it's not a statue. It'd be fun if you went to a park and there was

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a statue of limitations, uh, somewhere, but the, the, uh, the statute of limitations I

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think is expired. So really the only reason I wanted to go to Google IO was to get the

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free stuff. Uh, when I was an analyst, I don't know, just have people walking around

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with those, uh, those gloves on their feet and other things like that, but you get a

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free Chromebook. It's pretty awesome. Uh, anyhow, uh, they had their, uh, their Google

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cloud next thing. And I think, I think for me, there were many, many announcements, but

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there was, uh, how do you say it? Anthos. They had their, uh, a multi-cloud, um, manager

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thing, which I think having read the docs more extensively than when I rambled on about it

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unknowingly last week on my other podcast. Uh, I, it's, it's basically a, uh, let's see,

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a multi-cluster Kubernetes manager, uh, which, which sounds like, uh, sounds like fun. And

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then there's also a, uh, I forget the name of the startup it's based on, but there's a way

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of mark migrating, uh, workloads, uh, between various clusters, which also seems, seems handy.

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And, uh, it struck me as like all the way back to, um, I mean, we, uh, ourselves and

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many other people and, you know, with there's, there's a whole little community of people who

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work on this multi-cloud problem. And, uh, it was reminding me that in the past couple of

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years, all the work, this larger community has been doing, we're finally delivering on

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like what people wanted from cloud in like 2009 or 2010. Like, remember they used to talk

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about bursting all the time. And then you had, uh, you had things like in Stratius and

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right scale and you had all, I mean, you still have those, but, uh, or right scale at least.

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And, uh, you had all these things that were going to be, as we used to call it, the, uh,

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manager of managers, the mom for your cloud. But that seems like a normal thing that you

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do nowadays.

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Yeah, no, it does. So it's interesting. We'll see how well they can pull off the sort of,

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Hey, we'll run this platform on every cloud sort of deal. It's obviously increasingly

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a popular thing. They also announced, uh,

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cloud run kind of a version of K native. That's just running kind of containers and

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serverless fashion, which is pretty neat. There's a blog post we'll link to in the

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notes. I think they have 122 announcements from the conference. Some of those are

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like, we serve salmon on Thursday. Like that was, I don't think all of them were

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tech related, but it was a pretty impressive set of stuff as, as these shows are

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getting to be the for same with Microsoft, the same with Amazon, just a blitz of

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information, probably a lot of long tail stuff that some people may not use,

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but it's just the sort of overwhelming set of announcements to show how serious

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they are.

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Salmon on Wednesday, uh, pork belly on Tuesday.

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That's, that's getting, that's getting to the, uh, the, uh, not category, the, the scale

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of like a, a Jared blog post describing what's in a release where he's, he's just

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like, let me give you a five page summary and then let's get into the 80 pages of

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releases. It's not really that long, but he's very thorough.

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Put on your slippers, get some hot cocoa, dig in.

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Yeah. I was, I was, uh, they recycled plastic here, uh, which I don't know why that's notable.

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Oddly enough, it's hard to recycle metal here in Amsterdam, but I was walking to recycle the,

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uh, the plastic and I passed by this guy. He was, he was clearly a Dutch guy and he had, uh, he had a

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Carhartt jacket on, you know, with the, um, what would you call that Carhartt color? The tan, the

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like North Carolina dirt tan. I don't know what that is. And, uh, but he was, he was totally smoking

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like a Sherlock Holmes pipe. It was, it was quite picturesque and, uh, he was still there when I came

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back. So I got to see him coming from the front as well, but it made me, it made me think just

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briefly like, boy, I bet it's fun to smoke a pipe.

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Yeah. Have you smoked a pipe before?

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Uh, gosh, I don't think I have.

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Laurel, are you a pipe smoker?

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I would. I'm like almost 30 years old and I think my parents would have a heart attack

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if I told them I was smoking pipes.

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All right. So that's not a new habit you'll be picking up. Good to know.

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Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like it would be a whole lifestyle you'd have to take on.

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Of course.

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Like you'd have to get new clothes. You need new friends. Like it's a whole life shift.

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New friends. Exactly. And you got, you got, somehow you have these new containers that you

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got to put your loose tobacco in and there's, there's that move where you're like

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tapping your pipe all the time. Kind of like it's one of those, uh, spent espresso things

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that you're always jamming on.

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Yeah. I'm not ready for it.

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Too bad. There's not like a tobacco alternative that isn't like gross.

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Maybe bubbles. That would be fun for kids. Uh, well also, uh, there was a, man, there's

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all been all sorts of platforming releases, but first, you know, I haven't had a chance to

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look over the, the Stack Overflow dev survey. How, how are 90,000 developers doing? Have

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you, have you looked at it?

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Yeah, they seem mostly happy. So Stack Overflow runs this annual survey. They sure they had

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amazingly 90,000 developers chiming in on stuff and it's the usual, like, Hey, where are you

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based? How much do you make? How much education you've had? Those are really interesting.

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Then it's a sort of, what are your favorite programming languages? JavaScript kind of wins every

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year for most, uh, most folks and which web frameworks are most popular and kind of other

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frameworks you like using spring. Luckily people like using spring, which is nice for us. And

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which databases do you prefer? And, you know, kind of how much open source do you contribute

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and how often, and how often of course, do you use Stack Overflow? So tons of stuff. It's really

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worth digging through this. If you're in developer relations, if you're in the enterprise and thinking

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about what it's going to take to attract people and what kind of skills are out there. And if

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you're a software vendor, it's a nice insight into what a lot of developers care about and

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what motivates them. So absolutely worth digging through for almost everybody.

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Yeah. I'll have to take a look at it. I've, I've been, I've been sort of like, uh, slightly

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wondering why mainframe programmers are not liked anymore and programming in general, maybe

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not the programmers. I'll see, have to see how the great languages of RPG and COBOL rank. No

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one ever mentions for Fortran. Fortran. I don't even know how to pronounce it. It's Fortran,

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right? Yeah. And it's gotta be like Fortran 78 or something. I forget that. I love, I love

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a language that's so, uh, uh, glacial is the wrong word. It's not monolithic. It's so like,

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uh, austere or something that it's, it's version numbers are in years and often decades. That's,

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that's a good look. Kind of like a pipe. Well, also there was a, there was a new version of

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Kubernetes out and, uh, I have to admit I'm not up to speed on it. I know, I know there was, uh,

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some more windows node support in there. I mean, that one actually wasn't in there until now,

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right? Not officially. No, we're, we're coming out with some things soon from a pivotal

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perspective to support that as well as a lot of people are now going to quick rally around that to

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pull in those windows workloads into, into Kubernetes. So yeah, exciting stuff, you know,

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the usual sort of patches and updates and that constant reminder of this regular rhythm of updates

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and hopefully who are listeners are using products that make it easy to update. Yeah. Because you

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don't, you don't want to, uh, do your slow rolling upgrades. I guess you would call that a stumbling

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upgrade. That's right. No stumbling. Now also there was, there was a, uh, this might've been since last

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time we recorded, but Confluent had, uh, their conference, which I know cause, uh, James Water was

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up there presenting. So I've been trying to find his presentation. He's got that, that great old,

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the new slide that's been everywhere now. Now I'm sure they announced some things, but I want to ask

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you. So is, is like, is like Kafka, like, is everyone into that and very popular or is it just

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because I follow James Watters and Twitter? I think it's everywhere. Uh, from non-just Twitter, uh, it

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seems to be extremely popular, Confluent. The company's doing extremely well, it seems. And a lot

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of our customers at Pivotal are talking about Kafka, putting it in. So no, I mean, it's objectively

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successful and it's just a new way of thinking though, for a lot of folks, it does not replace

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your ESB. It does not replace your messaging bus. You have to think differently about how you process

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data and what the role of your clients are. So it's exciting stuff. It's a new way of thinking

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about it and offers some new opportunities, but it's not a drop-in replacement. It really shouldn't

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be. You should be rethinking your data integration.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of the most popular questions at the, the SpringOne tours. So,

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so is, is kind of around that basically a lot of the presentations that people like, uh, uh, you

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know, Mark, uh, there and, uh, and Josh Long and, and other people do is all around event-based

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architectures. And then, uh, inevitably during the, we have this thing at the events at the

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end of the first day, the ask me anything. Uh, I always feel weird saying that, like, I don't

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know why, but anyways, it's a, it's a Q and a with whoever pan, whatever speakers are

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available. And, uh, you can almost set your watch to about five to eight minutes. Someone

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will ask about transactions. And then, uh, the, the speakers still haven't trained themselves

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not to give a snarky answer. So their answer is equally predictable. They'll, they'll look

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at each other and pass the mic around and someone will, you know, that thing where like, you're

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like cool person and you're holding the mic, like really loose, kind of like a limp, loose

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limp way of holding it. And then you're like, don't do them is pretty much what they say.

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And then of course someone gives a more serious answer, but it's, it's evident of like, you

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know, there's an interest in doing event-based things, but as you say, it's not like it's

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just, uh, instantly replaceable. And, uh, I think, I think they, uh, they were using some

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funny term, the speakers for it. You have, um, what is it? You have eventual consistency

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is what the no SQL kids started off with. And I think, I think what they start to use

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now to be jokey is, uh, instant inconsistency, uh, which I guess is technically true, but

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anyhow, yeah. Event-based architecture is very popular. Well, I think that's, uh, that's all

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the major news, uh, that we have for now, I guess just one small announcement, uh, and,

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and, and our, uh, our conference stuff as usual. So my, uh, my little booklet, Monolithic

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Transformation, uh, it showed up in Spring Safari. So if you didn't want to lead Jen yourself

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to Pivotal to get a copy, you can go, uh, you can go in there and read it. And I've, I,

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there's one five-star review for it now, and I'll let, I'll let the listeners guess who

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left it, but I'm pretty sure what it says is this is the best book ever. Uh, I think

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exactly. That's right. My, my, my mom totally has a Safari account. She uses it to keep up

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with, uh, advancements in corporate accounting into her retirement, just a little hobby thing,

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you know, no, no big deal. Uh, and then also, uh, I've mentioned several times, we still have

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many spring tours going on. I think in two weeks, uh, we'll be in Istanbul. And then, uh, I think

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there's some back in the U S and, um, there's one in Paris at some point. No, I think that's

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already happened. So unless you have a time machine, you can't go to that one. Uh, and the, uh, the

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call for papers closed on SpringOne platform, right on Friday. It did. Unless you know people.

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Yes. Yes. That's, that's, that's what I tell everyone. Yeah. But anyways, uh, you, you should

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come to that. That's an Austin, October 7th and 10th. It was hard to convince the South Africans

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to come to that. They told me it was quite a haul, but they should come anyways. It'll

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be fun. That's right. So with that, uh, guest, why don't you more formally introduce yourself?

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What do you do around here? Gosh, I think I'm, um, so again, I'm Laurel Gray. I'm a product

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manager. I've been working with Pivotal, um, for the last almost four years. And right now

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I'm working in, uh, open source cloud foundry as the product manager for the cloud foundry

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services, API team.

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Awesome. So I bumped into you at a CF summit. You were doing this great presentation on the

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independent services marketplace. I think the PM of that work, what is that? So what problem

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are we trying to solve there? Yeah, that's a really great question. I'm actually working

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really closely with the product manager who is working on the independent services marketplace

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or ISM. Uh, his name is Matt and he's brilliant. Uh, he actually used to be the product manager

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for the team that I'm currently working on. We did a little bit of a switcheroo so that he

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could focus more on ISM. Um, basically I'll talk a little bit about how the team breaks up,

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uh, but, um, before doing that, I think the more important question is like, what problem

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is it trying to solve? So what I think, uh, we've learned over the last year, uh, and I

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think we've done it for like a bit longer as well, is that most of the people who are using

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cloud foundry are not just using one foundation. A lot of times they have multiple foundations

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and, uh, it's very difficult for them when they have multiple foundations to be managing

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and operating many different services across those foundations. So the ISM team basically

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spun out of a discovery effort that the cloud foundry services API team started, um, to uncover

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what, you know, like what problems were people encountering when managing multiple foundations.

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And so, um, ISM, the independent services marketplace aims to be, uh, one place for you to, you being

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a platform engineer who is operating a platform for, um, many different teams or tenants at your

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company to be able to curate and manage a marketplace of services for people so that you don't have

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to be, um, updating and writing a ton of scripts that are all touching the APIs for different

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cloud foundry foundations, um, in order to do that.

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Interesting. What's your team? So what's your team as a whole do if you're kind of working

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together on this services marketplace, what's the services API team do?

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Yeah. So the services API team, we're really focused on making the developer and platform

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engineer experience using cloud foundry, um, like specifically services on cloud foundry.

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Awesome. And the, we'll do various things, including, um, work with the open service broker API also called

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OSBAPI, which is, I think my favorite acronym, uh, to make changes to that spec so that platforms and

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brokers are sharing, uh, the right information with each other in order to solve user problems. So, um,

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um, a good example is like, uh, for a change that we made recently was people have dashboards that they have

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with their service providers. Like, let's say you have some kind of, um, database service instance that you have

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from an external service provider and you would like to have the platform, uh, pass information to that

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service provider, uh, so that you can actually identify which, um, foundation or which, um, service or

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which application it's bound to. Um, so we'll, we'll work with OSBAPI to get changes into OSBAPI so that

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there is, um, a contract for cloud foundry to pass that information to the broker. And then we also

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then make the changes to the platform to actually, uh, introduce the change that the platform being

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cloud foundry is passing that information that way, like as a developer or as a platform operator,

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when you're looking at this external dashboard, you're seeing the names of instances or the names of,

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um, the space where those instances are located instead of having to look at GUIDs all of the time.

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That's neat. That's cool. So have you been on that particular team a while?

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No.

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Is your journey at Pivotal, like what's your journey at Pivotal been like?

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That's a great question. I actually started off as a product manager for Pivotal Labs in New York,

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and then I was in Washington DC for, uh, a year and change, I think. And then I moved to the London

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office where I was also in Pivotal Labs. And then after about three years in labs, um, I started to

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feel like I wasn't learning as much as I really wanted to be learning. And so what I decided to do

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is move into Pivotal R&D so that I could actually see what XP and Agile look like at scale and get,

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uh, you know, back into some kind of industry and not just be a consultant.

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Hmm. So what, what, uh, as, as far as like product managing all of that, who are the,

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how do you think about who like the users or customers or whatever are? Cause you know,

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usually you hear about, uh, you have plenty about product managers where someone's like,

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you know, I want to get some groceries delivered to my house in two hours.

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But, uh, but in your case, it's sort of like, I don't know, developers or not even only developers,

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like also people who are writing services or something. So like, what, what's that like?

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That must be slightly exotic.

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Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Uh, I actually think I worked on a product that was

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very similar to the, let me deliver the groceries to you in two hours. Um, and like you said, it's so

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much easier to find people just like literally on the street or you like go into a Starbucks and you

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give people Amazon gift cards if they'll answer questions to you. Um, it's much easier to find

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those types of users who are using grocery apps rather than finding users who are using like, um,

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you know, like cloud boundary, for example, like there aren't, there, there are lots of people

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using cloud boundary, but like compared to the number of people buying groceries, it's not nearly as

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high. And you probably have to give them like laptops instead of Starbucks cards to motivate them.

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New Google Chrome.

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Exactly. Yeah.

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I wish, uh, we actually do. Um, so as a, as a product manager, we actually don't have a designer

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on the team. So, um, I do think a lot about like how might we engage with users and for open source

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consumers of cloud foundry who are not selling their own proprietary version of cloud foundry.

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We offer 50 pound Amazon vouchers for a 45 minute interview with us, uh, which has been really awesome

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and helpful for us getting people to, you know, like, um, jump onto a zoom call and have a chat with

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us. And, um, we've been doing a lot of like remote, um, prototype interviews where they're, we're having

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them drive our screen, um, and use the terminal that we have that has a prototype binary already

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installed into it, uh, which has been really cool. Um, but yeah, I think what I found finding users

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for cloud foundry is a lot of it is based on relationships and like getting to know people,

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for example, at CF summit, um, and just forming relationships with folks within companies who

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are excited and willing to introduce you to their teams of platform engineers or their teams of CF

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developers who exist within the company. Hmm. That makes sense.

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How do you tackle that? So, I mean, when you go into these, so help me teach us a little bit about

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that experimentation with users. Are you going in with a set of hypotheses or you just want to see

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what they're doing and how they do it? And then you kind of pull some feedback from that. How do you,

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how do you plot this out? And when do you go in and get user research? Like talk, talk us through

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that, especially if they're an enterprise customer who's listening, who says we're trying to get

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better at actually doing more user centered design. How do you even start? What's the process there?

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That is a great question. I think the first step is to identify who, well, there's a couple of

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different steps, but my favorite thing to do is to put pressure on myself and also on the rest of the

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team to identify what we want to test by having some interviews already set up. So, um, for example,

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we have an interview already set up this Wednesday with a platform engineer from, um, actually a

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pivotal customer. And, um, we had that set up before we knew what we even wanted to test. And then

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we kind of like backwards calculate from that, how much time we have. And then what we'll do as a team

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is we, um, determined our top priority thing that we have, that is either a question that we need to

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have answered or, you know, reworded differently, an assumption that we have, or reworded slightly

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differently, like a hypothesis that we'd like to test. Um, and we'll have a prioritized list of those,

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choose the top one we'd like to move forward with, and then design some kind of experiments,

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um, that would then tell us, uh, basically like, um, how to proceed, like how to move forward,

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uh, given some threshold or indicator that we're really looking for coming out of those interviews.

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So, so what's like, what, uh, do you have an example of like a hypothesis you would run through?

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Yeah. Um, we, uh, we actually have one that we're running through this week, which is

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as, uh, the CF, um, services API team, something that we're really interested about in this, um,

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world that is not one foundation, but like the world everyone exists in today where you're not

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even thinking about foundations, you're thinking about regions or whatever. Um, we're really interested

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in like how people think about their cloud topology and we think kind of putting it back into like

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the language that our team uses, which is really about foundations. We believe that the majority of

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the services that people want to offer are going to be multi-foundational and not just like one-offs.

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I want to offer one, my SQL, uh, service offering here and another one over there, but we think that

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it'll be more like, okay, I want all of my, my SQL, uh, I would like all of my, um, foundations

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or platforms within, uh, us East to all be hooked up to this, my SQL broker over here. Um, how might

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I do that? So what we're doing this week is we, we actually kind of did it kind of backwards. Uh,

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we decided what decision we want to make and what the indicator is for that decision to be made. So

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for example, um, we, we said that like if shared service offerings is greater than 60% for out of

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for four out of the six platform engineers that we're going to be testing with, um, we'd like to

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consider, um, moving forward by removing the cloud foundry marketplace and making external services the

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norm. This is, I mean, that might sound crazy, but, um, that that's something that we'd like to

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consider. And then if it's actually less than 40%, then we'd like to view going forward, external

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services as more of an enhancement, um, on top of cloud founder, where we'd still really want to make

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sure that we're truly supporting the CF marketplace experience. Um, and then based off of that decision

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and that indicator, we then came up with some kind of like, um, interview script and also almost like

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a game where we're having people move things around, um, visually within a, like a Google drawing doc.

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Hmm. And, and so is it like you were saying, you kind of take on the role of, uh, of a, of a designer

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since you don't have one on your team. Is that, is that like on purpose or are you just like, uh,

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haven't, haven't found one yet?

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Uh, well, I think something that is very hard to hire for is people who have excellent design chops,

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who are like a full stack, like super into user research, also really good visual and also pretty

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good at, um, uh, like, uh, products, more interact, interaction design, um, hiring people who have those

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skills for a world where a lot of the design work is more on the research side and more on the systems

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thinking side. I think it can be really difficult. So we've, if there are any designers listening,

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uh, who are interested in amazing design jobs at pivotal working with me and with other amazing

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product managers, um, in London, just apply because we're always looking for designers. I think finding

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those skills, um, with also the desire to be working on that kind of stuff can be really difficult to

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find. Um, and so, because our biggest need on the team right now is really to make sure that we have,

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um, that we're making like, um, data founded decisions. And especially as we're trying to,

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as we're thinking about these really complex things, like moving the services outside of the cloud

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controller, maybe, or, um, how might we integrate with ISM or how might we integrate with other, uh,

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solutions that are out there in the future. A lot of those decisions, although they might seem

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technical at first should be really driven by user need. Um, and so that's just where my focus has been

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recently. Um, and that means that, you know, like other product manager-y things tend to get put

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aside. Um, since this is the primary need for the team right now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know,

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cause I was thinking I, to put it in a totally jokey way, whenever I go over the, uh, the sort

387
00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:52,660
of, uh, balance team idea of the three primary roles, you know, I like to remind people or tell

388
00:30:52,660 --> 00:30:57,580
people that the designer surely tells you when you should stop using Serif this year. Cause that's

389
00:30:57,580 --> 00:31:02,700
out. And when there's no more drop shadow on, on your button, but you know, they actually do real

390
00:31:02,700 --> 00:31:07,940
design as it were, as, as you were covering. And so I was thinking like, what would, uh, you know,

391
00:31:07,940 --> 00:31:13,480
in the world of APIs and services, like maybe a designer comes up with really cool camel casing

392
00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:17,560
for an API name. Like, it's just such a weird, I mean, that would be the jerky thing, but like,

393
00:31:17,580 --> 00:31:25,140
it is, that's such a very specific role to be a designer for services stuff as, as, as you were

394
00:31:25,140 --> 00:31:29,360
saying. Right. So it seems like what you would fall back, not fall back on, but it's, again,

395
00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:35,100
it's that core role that you would have of really, um, I'm never quite sure if user research is the

396
00:31:35,100 --> 00:31:39,120
right term nowadays. Cause I don't follow this stuff very much, but like basically knowing how

397
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:43,860
to research what a user base is doing and who they are and what their actual needs are and distilling

398
00:31:43,860 --> 00:31:50,000
that down to, uh, here's, here's what the user needs, uh, so to speak, which seems a lot more

399
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:56,760
plausible than like, you know, being like a really cool API designer. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure there's

400
00:31:56,760 --> 00:32:01,960
like some slick, like you said, interesting things to do with, um, API design or with like CLI design.

401
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:08,240
And I find myself, um, reaching out to a lot of the designers that we do have that are in other

402
00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:13,960
offices to ask them for feedback on certain commands before we test with users. Cause I, uh,

403
00:32:13,960 --> 00:32:19,500
I'm definitely not an API designer or a CLI designer. And I'm also, uh, I have, I wasn't a

404
00:32:19,500 --> 00:32:24,700
developer by trade before I joined pivotal. And so a lot of that is not as second nature as it is

405
00:32:24,700 --> 00:32:28,780
for other people. Man. Well, you know, my experience using command lines is they could

406
00:32:28,780 --> 00:32:35,040
use a lot of designers and, and, and I'm sure, I'm sure you see this, uh, I'm sure both of you

407
00:32:35,040 --> 00:32:40,040
see this, like, um, you know, when, when, when you see a really well-designed command line

408
00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:46,200
interface, you, you can tell cause mostly they're terrible. Like, and they have very, very obscure

409
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:50,380
things and like, it's very confusing, but sometimes they, uh, they make a lot of sense.

410
00:32:50,700 --> 00:32:56,060
So there is a good, there's a way to design them. Well, describe my management style right

411
00:32:56,060 --> 00:33:02,340
there. That's good. Obscure flags on an equally obscure command. Yeah. Uh, Laura, when you were

412
00:33:02,340 --> 00:33:07,540
talking about the user research, you were making me wonder, can you think of a case where after

413
00:33:07,540 --> 00:33:11,260
doing user research, you actually did like a one 80 and I was like, wow, aren't we were

414
00:33:11,260 --> 00:33:17,600
completely off on that? Is there anything with that? That's a really good question. I've been

415
00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:22,180
thinking about that a lot within as, especially working with other product managers and pivotal

416
00:33:22,180 --> 00:33:26,560
right now, who've been talking about solving for these needs for quite some time too, where,

417
00:33:26,940 --> 00:33:34,520
um, I haven't found it so much with, in R and D, but certainly on labs engagements before

418
00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:42,580
there were many products that, um, when we started, uh, engaging with the clients and doing user

419
00:33:42,580 --> 00:33:46,480
research with them, it became really apparent that the users didn't actually need that they

420
00:33:46,480 --> 00:33:51,460
were, uh, like didn't have a need for the thing that was already being built. Um,

421
00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:58,340
that's a bummer. Yeah. But it's also kind of exciting. So like, um, I'm trying to think of

422
00:33:58,340 --> 00:34:04,240
a really good example was I was working with a team that had been building a data lake for six months

423
00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:11,340
and they only had it in, um, it wasn't in production and they'd been building it for a while. And we were,

424
00:34:11,340 --> 00:34:15,220
I just joined the team and I was like, Oh, why are you building this? And they had a whole bunch of

425
00:34:15,220 --> 00:34:20,860
reasons why. And then, um, they were, they hadn't been doing user research, but they, when I brought

426
00:34:20,860 --> 00:34:26,260
it up with them, they were all really interested in talking with users for the data lake that they

427
00:34:26,260 --> 00:34:30,500
were building, um, and learning what they could do to make it better, which was really cool.

428
00:34:31,060 --> 00:34:36,380
Um, so we set up interviews and the users that they had were actually developers literally in the same

429
00:34:36,380 --> 00:34:42,040
room as them, uh, who they just hadn't been having conversations with before. Um, so we set up some

430
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:46,580
interviews and then we synthesized the research altogether. And what really came out was like

431
00:34:46,580 --> 00:34:52,820
all of these developers actually really needed a lot of help, uh, setting up their, um, like figuring

432
00:34:52,820 --> 00:34:59,740
out how, out, how to use the platform, like the, the cloud boundary platform that this team had also set

433
00:34:59,740 --> 00:35:04,760
up and didn't necessarily need access to a data lake because they just weren't in a place where they

434
00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:11,480
needed that at all. And so the team I was working with was, um, I think a little deflated about the

435
00:35:11,480 --> 00:35:16,600
data lake, but then they got really excited and like built out a wiki and started doing a bit more

436
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:21,700
more education with the, um, development teams in the office around like how to use the platform.

437
00:35:21,700 --> 00:35:26,680
So I think like it, it can be, it can be kind of disappointing, but at the same time you end up

438
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:32,400
learning things that you don't expect. That's great. When you're doing, you know, in your product

439
00:35:32,400 --> 00:35:36,220
management experience and this sort of design thing, and you make me even go back to the ISM and

440
00:35:36,220 --> 00:35:40,100
thinking about that is what do you do when you're dealing with something that has a fairly established

441
00:35:40,100 --> 00:35:44,840
either set of expectations or user base and you're trying to evolve that. So whether you're doing

442
00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:49,220
that with the open service broker API, or we're doing this with a service marketplace or any of

443
00:35:49,220 --> 00:35:53,680
your labs engagements, when it's not just like novel, new greenfield, let's build some crazy new

444
00:35:53,680 --> 00:35:58,260
thing, but like, Hey, a lot of people know and love, or even hate this thing, but they know it,

445
00:35:58,420 --> 00:36:02,380
but we have to have to evolve it. How does that change? Maybe how you research or how you introduce

446
00:36:02,380 --> 00:36:07,900
changes? What's been your approach to that? Oh, that's a really good question. I think,

447
00:36:08,200 --> 00:36:18,160
I think a lot of the first principles remain the same, which is making sure that you have users who

448
00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:23,400
have needs and that you are building solutions that, and testing that those solutions are meeting those

449
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:28,960
needs iteratively as those solutions become like higher fidelity from like maybe some kind of mock

450
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:35,540
prototype out to actual working software. Um, I think when it comes to things that already exist,

451
00:36:35,540 --> 00:36:41,340
something I found interesting is challenging assumptions based on research that people have

452
00:36:41,340 --> 00:36:49,300
done in the past. So like some people might, um, hold strongly like, Oh, we tried to do this,

453
00:36:49,300 --> 00:36:53,220
you know, like you like bring up something that came up in like user research and they'll be like, Oh,

454
00:36:53,260 --> 00:36:57,760
wait, this came up, um, five years ago and we decided not to move forward with it because blah,

455
00:36:57,760 --> 00:37:04,440
blah, blah. And I think that that can be a really interesting place. Uh, you know, it's not like

456
00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:09,640
a greenfield product. And so, um, the people who've been working on this product for some time have a

457
00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:13,820
bit more, uh, understanding of the users and also an understanding of the history. And then also

458
00:37:13,820 --> 00:37:19,420
sometimes need to be like a little bit shaken up. And that, um, in my mind means like you just

459
00:37:19,420 --> 00:37:23,100
continue, continue doing like the same thing you would do otherwise, which is user research and

460
00:37:23,100 --> 00:37:28,360
gathering data and gathering evidence and using that to like, um, have conversations with people

461
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:33,460
instead of just having opinions or talking about old, uh, data or old assumptions.

462
00:37:33,940 --> 00:37:39,260
Yeah. That reminds me, uh, when, when I was at Dell, I was helping out with a, uh, a Linux desktop for

463
00:37:39,260 --> 00:37:45,060
developers and coincidentally enough, it was, it was, uh, at the time, like a pivotal labs talk that I'd

464
00:37:45,060 --> 00:37:50,240
seen where, uh, I think they use chef and, and, you know, in labs, you like want to get the, uh,

465
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:55,860
the same setup in your environment, uh, every day if you're working on a certain, uh, what do you call

466
00:37:55,860 --> 00:38:00,720
it? Client. And so there was this, there was this like, here's the image for our developer,

467
00:38:00,720 --> 00:38:06,720
uh, in environment. It wasn't an image, but they would automate doing that. And I thought that was

468
00:38:06,720 --> 00:38:11,280
really cool. So I was like, we should put that on our developer laptop. And then, and then after

469
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:18,120
about five minutes of user research, it turned out no one cared and, and, and more. And, but the reason

470
00:38:18,120 --> 00:38:23,140
they didn't care is because it wasn't, uh, I mean, it is cool, but they had this more immediate need

471
00:38:23,140 --> 00:38:28,440
of like, I want to be able to get a Linux desktop, like, and just solving that problem was enough of a,

472
00:38:28,500 --> 00:38:33,160
uh, an issue that, you know, anything else that happened in the future would be, uh, would be nice.

473
00:38:33,240 --> 00:38:39,120
But that was, that was the provenance of, you know, flying cars and things like that. Uh, but it was,

474
00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:44,240
it was a good lesson in just like, yeah, maybe I shouldn't be attached to these ideas. And, uh,

475
00:38:44,240 --> 00:38:50,020
and now there's a nice Linux desktop, which is good. People love that. So, uh, you know,

476
00:38:50,020 --> 00:38:56,840
now that we've gone this long, uh, and just to ask, uh, uh, a very basic question, which I, I still,

477
00:38:56,840 --> 00:38:59,500
uh, babble around. So what does a product manager do?

478
00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:06,300
That's a great question. I think you will get a different answer depending upon which product

479
00:39:06,300 --> 00:39:12,880
manager you talk with. In my opinion, a product manager, uh, the role of the product manager is to

480
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:19,720
help the team make decisions with the right amount of information and not only just make the decisions,

481
00:39:19,720 --> 00:39:24,880
but also make the right decisions being like you're prioritizing what decisions have to be made and

482
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:31,540
how much time you need to dedicate to making that decision. I find that product managers who don't

483
00:39:31,540 --> 00:39:40,060
necessarily view that as their role, there's a lot of, um, almost like time that the team spends spinning

484
00:39:40,060 --> 00:39:46,780
and waiting for decisions to be made where it's almost better just to make a decision, uh, rather than

485
00:39:46,780 --> 00:39:52,720
try and find all of the perfect and 100% of the information that you need to have in order to

486
00:39:52,720 --> 00:39:59,720
feel 100% confident that you're making the decision the right way. Uh, yeah. Yeah. That's interesting

487
00:39:59,720 --> 00:40:06,060
because the, the, the briefest way, uh, I know of to summarize it is like you prioritize the backlog,

488
00:40:06,060 --> 00:40:11,160
which almost sounds dismissive, but on the other hand, it's a lot of what you just said,

489
00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:17,020
right. Which, and, and I think, I think, I think what's hard to explain is like, um,

490
00:40:17,100 --> 00:40:23,720
how much, how much work goes into that, like knowing, knowing what it is you're going to do

491
00:40:23,720 --> 00:40:29,720
this week and why you're going to do it. And then, and then I, I mean, I, maybe I'm interpolating if

492
00:40:29,720 --> 00:40:33,000
that's the right word too much, but it seems like, like you were talking about earlier, if,

493
00:40:33,380 --> 00:40:36,960
if you succeed or fail, then you've got to know how to interpret that for next week,

494
00:40:36,960 --> 00:40:39,240
uh, as it were, or the next release cycle.

495
00:40:40,020 --> 00:40:45,140
Yes. You can't just like go out and try to learn stuff. You have to know why you're trying to learn

496
00:40:45,140 --> 00:40:49,520
that stuff and know what kind of decision you think you might have to make based off of it,

497
00:40:49,520 --> 00:40:51,060
on it so that it's actually actionable.

498
00:40:51,600 --> 00:40:57,520
Right. So there's basically setting the priorities essentially. Uh, I don't know.

499
00:40:57,660 --> 00:41:01,920
It's an even simpler way of putting it. Yeah. It's also funny. Cause like at pivotal,

500
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:07,080
we think so much about, um, like balanced team and servant leadership. So like a lot of times it's

501
00:41:07,080 --> 00:41:12,260
not the product manager setting the priorities for the team as the product manager, helping facilitate

502
00:41:12,260 --> 00:41:18,120
the prioritization of things and bringing in all of the right voices to help make that decision.

503
00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:24,280
And like just getting people to a point where the team can move forward with one thing.

504
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:27,600
Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, with our, our culture is very,

505
00:41:27,660 --> 00:41:34,320
uh, what do they say? Consensus based. It's almost like passive voice by design to more have,

506
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:38,160
more have, uh, people, uh, agree to things. We, before we were recording, we were talking

507
00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:42,120
about this book, the culture map. It'd be fun to find, uh, where that maps into things, but

508
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:47,100
yeah, and that makes it. And then, and then another aspect of like product management I hear about

509
00:41:47,100 --> 00:41:52,280
every now and then I'm always curious about is like, uh, sometimes product managers are the,

510
00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:58,480
uh, to you, to use a nonjudgmental word or the, they're the interface to the rest of the business.

511
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:02,760
And then the, the funny way of putting it is sort of like they hold back everyone else from

512
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:07,880
bothering the team. But does that, does that kind of fit into the, uh, the product manager role as you

513
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:14,780
know it? That's a really good question. I think, uh, the way I've been framing it for myself is that

514
00:42:14,780 --> 00:42:22,080
it should really be a balanced leadership team of like a PM in theory, a designer and, uh, uh,

515
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:27,560
the anchor or the tech lead for the team that interface to the business and have conversations

516
00:42:27,560 --> 00:42:32,800
with stakeholders as a group. Um, but it's really the role of the product manager to make sure that

517
00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:37,260
the business's goals are being prioritized against the user's needs.

518
00:42:38,260 --> 00:42:42,800
So, so on, on, uh, now that you've worked on, you know, with the, uh, the two hour grocery stuff

519
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:47,180
and then you got, you got, you got the, uh, the, the lower level, the plumbing going on,

520
00:42:47,180 --> 00:42:51,460
like between those two and other experience, like what's, what's your role on, on the team that

521
00:42:51,460 --> 00:42:55,380
sort of like you wish existed or is everything perfect? I mean,

522
00:42:56,020 --> 00:43:04,800
Hmm. That's a really good question. I think, um, I know we have exploratory testers

523
00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:10,300
at Pivotal who work on Pivotal tracker, I think on some more complicated products, uh, I was working

524
00:43:10,300 --> 00:43:19,980
on a non green field product for a grocery company in the UK. And, um, there were times where I was

525
00:43:19,980 --> 00:43:23,840
like, Oh man, I really wish we had like exploratory testers who could really dig in and like, just make

526
00:43:23,840 --> 00:43:28,340
things sure that what we're going to be delivering doesn't have any bugs rather than just the PM doing

527
00:43:28,340 --> 00:43:32,420
acceptance and us trusting the tests. Like I feel like more exploratory testing could be valuable

528
00:43:32,420 --> 00:43:37,080
there. I also feel that way with, um, cloud foundry too, cause it, it can be like a really

529
00:43:37,080 --> 00:43:47,980
complex product. Um, I also have a desire to have someone come in and just help us, um, make sure

530
00:43:47,980 --> 00:43:53,060
that we're like scheduling, uh, like help out with more of the administration of like scheduling

531
00:43:53,060 --> 00:44:00,040
the user interviews and like really handholding the users, um, through the process when we're

532
00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:05,800
interviewing them. I find that, um, something small, like even just like thanking people after

533
00:44:05,800 --> 00:44:11,400
they've participated or sharing, um, uh, tidbit about how their feedback was really helpful is

534
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:16,060
something that means a lot, but takes extra time away from other things. And sometimes I'll

535
00:44:16,060 --> 00:44:21,220
deprioritize it and then remember later to do it. I just wish someone was there to like really focus

536
00:44:21,220 --> 00:44:25,040
in on that. Maybe that's a designer, but I also feel like it's unfair to just put that on designers.

537
00:44:25,040 --> 00:44:29,440
It really should be on the team to make sure that that's happening. Um, I think I need that role in

538
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:34,860
my life. That would be great. Like a thank you note writer. Yeah. Yeah. Or just the entirety of

539
00:44:34,860 --> 00:44:38,220
it. Like, like, as you were going over it, I was thinking, you know, it's sort of like a, uh,

540
00:44:38,220 --> 00:44:43,880
like a master of ceremonies, like an MC or I never, I think this is French. What is it? I always want

541
00:44:43,880 --> 00:44:49,960
to say major domo, but the major domo, I, what I need to look up what that, that is. That might be

542
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:55,480
like from my computer background process thinking, wasn't that an email list manager? Do either of

543
00:44:55,480 --> 00:45:00,920
you remember that? I'm gonna have to look that up. Uh, but yeah, or the, the air traffic controller

544
00:45:00,920 --> 00:45:06,120
people say, or, uh, I remember, uh, the Kroger people, I was talking with Kroger about how they

545
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:11,540
manage their, their warehouses to ship the groceries around. And they were saying that, um, uh, there's

546
00:45:11,540 --> 00:45:16,520
one role that they call, I think they call it the bus driver or something. And all that role does

547
00:45:16,520 --> 00:45:21,000
is make sure trucks don't run into each other. Like as they're coming and going, they have to

548
00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:25,980
schedule all the trucks moving around. But yeah, there, I imagine there's a tremendous amount of,

549
00:45:25,980 --> 00:45:32,280
uh, just coordination and then, and then, yeah, no, I like, I like your, your, I don't know what a

550
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:38,080
literal metaphor is other than an oxymoron, but your, uh, your sort of symbolic example of, uh,

551
00:45:38,300 --> 00:45:42,720
thank you notes. Like there's all this stuff that just gets left out. That would be nice to have

552
00:45:42,720 --> 00:45:48,960
the thank you note writer. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the really important thing long-term that

553
00:45:48,960 --> 00:45:54,880
in the short term, when there's other fires that you have to put out, um, falls to the wayside.

554
00:45:54,880 --> 00:46:00,100
Oh yeah. It's, it's the, uh, the much forgotten of part of the Eisenhower matrix, right? The urgent,

555
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:04,760
but no important, but not urgent. I forget what you're supposed to do with that. I think, I think

556
00:46:04,760 --> 00:46:10,380
basically as with all, uh, how to get things done, prioritization things, it all amounts to what

557
00:46:10,380 --> 00:46:14,660
do we need to get done tomorrow. That's pretty much what happens. I guess, I think you're supposed

558
00:46:14,660 --> 00:46:20,500
to delegate the important, but not urgent if I remember, but, uh, I think so too. That's the

559
00:46:20,500 --> 00:46:26,940
whole point you're saying is who would I delegate it to? I honestly think we probably have all of the

560
00:46:26,940 --> 00:46:32,420
right people already within pivotal or within like the open source group of, you know, like people who

561
00:46:32,420 --> 00:46:36,920
are working on open source cloud boundary for all of these things. It's just a matter of, um,

562
00:46:37,880 --> 00:46:43,080
some higher level coordination of moving people around and finding places for them that are

563
00:46:43,080 --> 00:46:48,200
interesting and valuable. I think it's sometimes we all get stuck in our own little teams and forget

564
00:46:48,200 --> 00:46:54,140
about the people who are glue between the teams or people who are a little, um, auxiliary to the team

565
00:46:54,140 --> 00:46:56,040
who could come in and out with those things.

566
00:46:56,040 --> 00:47:01,600
Then you got the major domo and you got the glue major domo, just glue everywhere.

567
00:47:04,660 --> 00:47:13,000
Well, I've entertained myself. Well, uh, thanks for being on. It's always fun to, uh, to talk, go all

568
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:18,080
the way from, uh, from an API thing up to, uh, glue. So, so that's, that's great. It's, it's been

569
00:47:18,080 --> 00:47:23,920
informative. So if people, uh, well, one, if people wanted to, were eager to volunteer to do some, uh, user

570
00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:28,560
testing with you, like what, uh, how, how could they get ahold of that? Like how can they tell you?

571
00:47:28,980 --> 00:47:34,200
That would be amazing. So if they're open source cloud foundry users, they can find me on the

572
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:43,000
open source cloud foundry slack at Laurel, or they could come into the hashtag SAP I channel for

573
00:47:43,000 --> 00:47:47,520
SAPI services API, and just let us know that they're interested in participating. And then if

574
00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:53,620
they're keen on the independent services marketplace, they can email ISM at pivotal.io.

575
00:47:54,080 --> 00:47:59,040
And you have any other, uh, engaged with my brand type of things you want to give out? You got a blog,

576
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:00,800
Twitter, whatever.

577
00:48:01,020 --> 00:48:07,220
I do not have a blog and I tweet very rarely, but people can find me on Twitter if they'd like at

578
00:48:07,220 --> 00:48:10,180
L A U R Z C A.

579
00:48:10,500 --> 00:48:15,800
There you go. Yeah. I recently, I think, I think I cut all my, the people I follow on Twitter down

580
00:48:15,800 --> 00:48:20,960
to maybe like 120. I don't know if I'm that low yet, but man, it's like so much nicer.

581
00:48:21,360 --> 00:48:25,200
Like everyone's always complaining about how much of a downer it is, but all you got to do

582
00:48:25,200 --> 00:48:30,580
is just, uh, not follow depressing people. And then I'm checking right now to see if you still

583
00:48:30,580 --> 00:48:34,720
follow me. You're still in there. Okay. I'm looking right now just to be safe. You're,

584
00:48:34,760 --> 00:48:38,660
you're like one of the most cheery people in there. You never know.

585
00:48:39,640 --> 00:48:45,920
There could be a story about like a cat fell into like a, a box of rusty nails and you would find

586
00:48:45,920 --> 00:48:48,500
some positive thing like, Oh, Hey, we found a box of nails.

587
00:48:48,500 --> 00:48:52,380
That's right. We found a box of nails and this cat is now adding to its experiences.

588
00:48:56,860 --> 00:48:59,220
I interrupted you though. Uh, Laura, what were you saying?

589
00:48:59,480 --> 00:49:05,440
I was just going to say, um, unfollowing people. I love unfollowing people. I also get a sense of

590
00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:10,860
social anxiety because I know people out there have apps that tell them when they're unfollowed.

591
00:49:11,060 --> 00:49:15,720
Yeah, that's true. I, I, I feel like, you know, cause there's that mute option and I feel like I

592
00:49:15,720 --> 00:49:20,940
could do that. And so I, yeah, I'll, I'll, uh, I'll dither. And then I just think like, ah, I should,

593
00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:23,260
I should be brave and just insult them.

594
00:49:23,260 --> 00:49:23,480
Be brave.

595
00:49:23,660 --> 00:49:24,040
That's right.

596
00:49:24,040 --> 00:49:24,940
Yeah, cut ties.

597
00:49:25,920 --> 00:49:28,760
That's right. Be brave. No less people.

598
00:49:29,520 --> 00:49:30,020
That's right.

599
00:49:31,120 --> 00:49:36,020
That's, that's how I'm going to, that's how I'm going to, uh, I'm going to add this rotor spin

600
00:49:36,020 --> 00:49:43,220
on introversion. I'm being brave by not talking with people. That's, there you go. Cat in a box

601
00:49:43,220 --> 00:49:49,820
of rusty nails. All right. Well, uh, as always, this has been Pivotal Conversations. Thanks for

602
00:49:49,820 --> 00:49:54,940
listening. Uh, if you want to get this, uh, this episode and all the other old ones, you can kind

603
00:49:54,940 --> 00:49:58,720
of comb through them at your, uh, your leisure. We're coming up, uh, might be spring break,

604
00:49:59,020 --> 00:50:03,300
depending on where you live. You're traveling around, you're driving. If you're like me,

605
00:50:03,400 --> 00:50:07,400
all your family falls asleep and you're like, ah, I can finally listen to something they would

606
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:12,160
never want to listen to. You could listen to our back catalog. You could go to soundcloud.com

607
00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:18,300
slash Pivotal Conversations. And, uh, you know, there's lots of stuff in there, I suppose.

608
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:22,720
Uh, and then I'll put the show notes, uh, every Thursday or so they get posted formally and

609
00:50:22,720 --> 00:50:29,580
they'll be at pivotal.io slash podcast. And, uh, with that, we'll see everyone next time. Bye-bye.