Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey there.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: Welcome back to Rogue startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt here. I'm joined by Ed Fray Fogel. In this episode, Ed and I talk through all things bootstrapping, personal branding, and social media growth trajectory here in a non zero interest rate environment. I think a headwind that a lot of us are facing and just generally catch up. Ed has been a longtime friend, investor, advisor, and someone that I love to check in on because he's got a really great perspective on kind of bootstrapping versus funding and kind of a little bit broader, kind of macro market that we're in and the things that we're all seeing as a result of that. So I hope you enjoy this conversation.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: With Ed Fry Vogel.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Okay, Ed, so we're going to talk about at least two things today. One is, I want to talk about in person events, because you run an in person event associated with your business, and we're gonna talk about personal brand and its potential detriment to a company. But let's save that one because it's a little more spicy for later. But Opencage, you guys do geocoding?
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Yeah, we do geocoding. We provide an API for geocoding. So our target audience is software developers that need geocoding.
So we have our site, and we have some media associated with the site. But the reality is, Craig, despite what you might read in the newspapers or whatever, geocoding is kind of boring.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: No way.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: To try to make it more interesting. We also do run an event series which is called GeoMob. And I've actually been running that now for almost 15 years.
And basically, it's a meet up for location based service software developers.
And in conjunction with that, then when COVID started, we started a podcast hosted, of course, on Castos. And if I can slap myself on the back a little bit here, this very week, our 200th episode of the podcast is about to come out there.
Thank you very much. If anyone out there is into location based services and what's happening, the geospatial technology scene, please give that a listen. Yeah, and we've been running this event for a long time. Originally, at that time, I was living in London, and it was just in London. And now actually, we do it in many different European cities. And it's not just me running it in different cities, different people run it, or whatever, but it's become quite an interesting kind of community.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: So just to take half a step, maybe not back, but above that, I think one of the challenges that a lot of people have, myself included is marketing that you can't attribute growth or ROI to. How do you guys think about, like, okay, we're going to run this event. It's for the betterment of the community, and maybe it helps our brand a little bit or something. But do you all think about what's our ROI on all your time and money spent on this?
[00:02:59] Speaker A: I do think about it, but I've come to the sad conclusion that there's no chance we can measure it. Right, okay.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Or do you care about it then?
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Well, basically. So there are two solutions to that. One is I keep the event.
It's not that I'm spending, I am spending some time on the event, on organizing it and things, but I'm not spending a lot of money on the event. The event intentionally is kind of kept very informal, okay. Also, because our audience of software developers or whatever, they don't really want a big slick production. They care about interesting talks and topics and stuff and things like that.
But it is a big point of frustration that be at the podcast or the event, very occasionally people give me feedback. They're like, oh, I found out about your business because of the event or whatever. But usually that's not the case.
I just kind of take it on good faith that by doing these things, people are becoming aware of the brand. I do some actually very basic guerrilla tactics to make to push the brand. So of course, we present ourselves as a sponsor of the event and things like that. But definitely with the audience of software developers.
If I'm always just hyping my brand, people turn off very quickly. No one wants that. So, for example, what I do is at the event, we have some talks, and then we go to the pub and people can drink beers on my tab. Okay? And the way that the tab works is I give everyone my business card, and then I tell the bartender, anyone who shows you my business card gets a drink on my tab. And so that way everyone now has my business card.
I definitely see I make connections through that. And ultimately, there's some element of faith that in the very long term, these connections will turn into meaningful business relationships.
I will say this, though, as well, Craig, running the event and the podcast is a great door opener in the sense that I can contact anyone in the industry now and say, hey, do you want to come talk at my event or would you like to be a guest on the podcast? And that's a much easier conversation than saying like, hey, would you like to buy a lot of geocoding? Right?
And then we start having a dialogue and then at some point people are like, oh, what do you do? Oh, that's interesting. Oh, actually we need that. Rather than me kicking the door opening saying like, hey, I'm here to sell you geocoding.
That doesn't really work. Yeah.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: I think this is the reality of a lot of marketing and growth these days, is there's not a clear, solid line between an activity and customers.
It's more infrequent to have a direct line between an activity and customers. And there's things like a podcast or a YouTube channel or events or sponsoring other people or whatever it is, to get your name out there and hope good things will happen in the future.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: The thing is, all of those things, particularly the podcast, but also, of course, the in person events, whatever, they're very authentic, right? They can't be faked. And people have gotten so numb online. And I guess offline ads don't work like just generic banner ads or whatever. Maybe that works in some marginal way in terms of awareness, but I don't know, especially for our target audience. I mean, 100% of my audience uses an ad blocker, right? 100%.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: So I need to find ways that get the message across that actually this audience in a way that they want to receive it.
I think tools like the podcast, it is very authentic. And what we do, for example, on the podcast is we have interviews, we have guests, but then every fourth or fifth or 6th episode is myself and my co host talking about our businesses and our problems. And then people start to follow the story and maybe themes come up again and again. And all of a sudden people have kind of emotional attachment to your business. Or at the very least it's a differentiator versus my five competitors or whatever, it's at least something emotionally that they can kind of hang their coat on and be like, okay, this one is the one I like versus the other.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: Didn't. I didn't mean to segue too early into the personal stuff, but I think this is something that you and I emailed about, which is like founders being active on social media or podcasts or YouTube or whatever, as the face of the brand and the good and the bad that comes from that.
For context, I go back and forth on it. I think sometimes I can and should be like the face of the brand and the person that's out there promoting castos, and that I am important in the growth of the brand some point. And sometimes, like you pointed out, it's a liability. Like if we ever want to go sell the company in the like, Craig is not transferable. You know what I mean? I'll go and I'll stay and whatever, but at some point I wouldn't, and I surely just won't be with. Maybe I'll be with Castus forever, I don't know. But it's probably more likely that at some point I won't be the person running the business.
And if we've built growth on a personal brand, like, how valuable and transferable is the business, if that's what it's built on.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: But then at the same time, you're.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Saying you bring this authenticity to it. I don't know. There's surely a middle ground there.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: Well, yes, I should say. I hope, at least in my efforts, I'm trying to make it not about me, but about the problem we're trying to solve and what we're doing. And the branding is always about the company, not about me.
But this is something I really struggle with because I see all the people on social media, on Twitter or whatever, or for example, on LinkedIn. I mean, on LinkedIn, it is very difficult to promote a company. And all the advisors say, like, oh, no, it has to be from your personal account. And I'm like, well, how is that scalable, man?
So first of all, they're like, oh, well, the step one, you need to hire a virtual assistant and give them access to your LinkedIn account. I'm like, I mean, I don't feel great about that one, but okay, imagine I overcome that hurdle.
But where is this going? Because exactly, if in five years I want to sell my business, are we also selling my LinkedIn account, if that's the primary sales channel or my Twitter account or whatever.
And I do get it in that people have emotional attachments to other people and you don't really have an attachment so much to a company or brand, or it's much easier to build the attachment to a person.
But I think a lot of people in the bootstrapper community are kind of overdoing it, being about them. And I can tell you, especially in my field, obviously, this may vary from industry to industry, but none of my customers care who runs the service at all. They care that the service works well. They care that it does what they need. They care that the price is reasonable. And I think I try to use my event or whatever as a way that they become familiar with the brand so that they try the service, but no one's going to buy because they like me. Absolutely not.
Maybe because they like me. I'm going to be on the candidate list, but then the service has to deliver and if it delivers, then maybe they'll purchase. But I don't know. I think a lot of founders are going way too far in this direction of like, it's about me.
I don't know, it just leaves a bad feeling in my stomach that it's not going to end.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: Know, I think you said it, like, if I think about my kind of ambition with it is just how can I get castos into the conversation? How can I get us into the sphere of somebody who wants to start a podcast or wants to do something different with their podcast?
If I can be that spokesperson to do that, I think it has to be me. It can't be the company because I don't follow any companies on Twitter and LinkedIn is definitely not the place for it.
Yeah, but I do think there's a limit either in terms of time or kind of scalability that I think this is like a viable path.
It might get us another million bucks, but it's not going to get us ten more million.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I think at some point you've got to make it the brand as an example in our terms of our social media. So I'm always thinking about our space is geospatial. So I'm like, how can we prove that we're the geospatial experts as an example?
We used to do it on Twitter, now we do it on Mastodon because that's kind of where our audience is. But we do a trivia contest once a week, once a month, a geotrivia contest where we post kind of a trivia question, but usually with the twist, and then people reply and there's not just one answer, but it's multiple kind of answers and things, and it creates a little competition or whatever. But I could do that under my own account.
Right. And probably in the beginning it would have been more successful, but it's much better to do it under the company account. Now the company account is kind of really growing and surging and I feel much better about that. Then it shouldn't be about me, the individual, because now, of course, at some point I'm not going to run that. I'm going to have someone else run that once a month or whatever, and they're going to do it on the company account. And it's just not.
I don't know.
You talked about YouTube, literally, you see these people who are like, it's their YouTube channel, it's their.
And obviously, Craig, when you've got aesthetic material like yourself to work with. I understand why you take that forward, but I don't know, man.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: I think at the end of the day, it's a tool. That's how I think about it. IT's a tool in our marketing tool belt. It's not the only one. Is it the most important one? No.
Is it a pretty easy one to do? Some know. Can I put out a podcast episode under my own name every or most weeks? Yep. Can I post on LinkedIn once a day and on Twitter a few times a week? Yes. Does that help? I'll tell you where 100% it helps is every single sales conversation I get on for Castos Productions, the second thing somebody says is I ask, hey, how'd you find out about SDL?
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Okay. And then I looked you up on LinkedIn 100% of the time. And so if I don't have a presence on LinkedIn, or I'm talking about garbage that isn't related, then they're like, hell is this guy?
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: How do I trust them, Craig?
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Of course. Obviously I have a page on LinkedIn. I'm not saying the founders should not have a page on LinkedIn. The question is, do you every day spend an hour on LinkedIn? And is it like, every day you can see these people where it's obvious they're kind of forcing the content, and it's just like, hey, guys, today ate breakfast, and that made me reflect on peace in the Middle East. And you're just like, come on, man. What is this shit? Honestly, I go on LinkedIn to look up people, but I don't browse LinkedIn because it's garbage. It's all garbage. It's all this.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Okay, so I saw something the other day that was amazing. It's called Silico Valley. Have you seen this?
[00:16:00] Speaker A: No, what is this?
[00:16:01] Speaker B: It is the most amazing piece of marketing I've seen in, like, a really long time. I just put in the chat here. So it's like a front end design company that built this. It's kind of like Oregon trail for startups. It's like you're a venture funded startup. If you do this, then what happens? If you do this, then what happens?
[00:16:20] Speaker A: And it's just like, it's just a.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: Page, and it has run rate and funding and buttons, levers you can pull in the business, and it's great. This is the kind of marketing I wish we could do. How can we do some, right?
[00:16:34] Speaker A: But it's not about the founder. It's about the tool and the use case for the user.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Yes, 100%.
I'll tell you who I see doing this really well right now is Matt wincing, right, with these calculators he's building. And he's building all these calculators and he's putting them out there. But then a company like us could build a calculator. And we're thinking about this and talking to Matt about it is like, how could we build? How much money can you make from your podcast?
Good. That's pretty good marketing and that belongs under the company. But I think this was a really good example for me of like, you're not on the hamster wheel of churning out blog posts that whatever, have whatever kind of, kind of value. This is interesting and has personality and has brand to it.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: First of all, I should say I'm a fan of that. I'm actually an investor in his startup, both directly and via tiny seed. So obviously I'm cheering for him to win. But he used to have a podcast and actually I used to listen to the podcast because it was great, because a, I would learn it was a good podcast, but also as a way to keep tabs on how he's doing. And at some point they got burned out, right? And they stopped doing the podcast. And that's the thing that with this, when it's about the founder, I'm not saying theirs was just about them as founders, but at some point you get burned out and then you stop.
And that's why I think the emphasis should be much more on the voice of the business, not the voice of the founder, depending on the industry. Again, I can totally see the case, Craig, in your know, when your customers are people who are trying to promote themselves, then it makes sense for you to do it because to serve an example for them.
But in other cases, I do think at some point, people put in all this effort and this continually posting and videos, and at some point the crash comes and then would it have been better if they had from the beginning been slow but steady in the voice of the company rather than push, push, push in the voice of the individual?
[00:19:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: Obviously everyone will have to know for themselves and for their business and for their industry or whatever. But I don't know, I'm a bit hesitant, actually. Actually, in the last year, I've kind of reduced all my own personal stuff. Like, I quit Twitter.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: I pretty much quit Twitter, too. What do you think is going to happen there?
I saw something that's going to be paid.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: I was like, what could be? Don't know. Don't care. I think at some point Musk will be out. We'll leave under his own volition or be bought out or someone, some private equity company will take it over. There will continue to be a thing called Twitter. But the magic's over. The people have left. I mean, especially like in our niche. The software developers, particularly in Europe, have moved to, you know, I get it, that's that not everyone's cup of tea or whatever, but the move has been made and people are not going back. And frankly, the few times I now look on mean, I don't do it on my personal account, but we do still have a company account in case people DM us about problems or it's, the product has become bad, man. It's just videos or whatever. Like if I want to watch videos, I'll go to YouTube and it's all like non relevant videos and it's not where I want to hang out anymore.
I've made the move to Mastron. I've slightly made the move to Mastron. I've also made the move to just reducing my consumption of social media quite a lot, which was probably a good think. Full credit to Elon.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: I think so. Thank you, Elon.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: But you know what, another thing though, Craig, I say this because here we are on rogue startups, right? And I can tell you, I loved rogue startups for some reason. This was like one of the first podcasts I ever listened to. I think we met at Microcomp like five years ago, six years ago, and you're like, oh, I have a podcast. And so I started listening to it and I really got into following the story of you and Dave. And every week it became part of my know, while I'm at the gym, I listened to the podcast and it was really sad when Dave stopped when you first, you guys kind know, you started publishing a bit less and then finally Dave stopped. And I get it. People get tired and get burned and, and just know life events come up. I totally get it. But it is kind of sad, man. I feel like over the last couple of years, all of the first generation of Bootstrap podcasts have kind of, many of them have kind of gone quiet or stopped. And it's weird. It's like losing a friend.
[00:21:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, for me too, right? I mean, Dave, Dave and I talked almost every week for eight, like, yeah. And I totally get know, I think in kind of current incantation you can say like, it's just not that interesting. I don't have that much going on anymore. I don't want to share what's going on with me because it's not all sunshine and roses. I'm not speaking for Dave. I'm speaking for like, sometimes I don't want to do the podcast because I just don't have anything good to say. It's like, fuck.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: No, I get it. You got to find the balance of what you can share and what you can't and how frequently.
I'm not saying it's easy. It's not easy.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: But all I'm saying is there are a lot of different founders and companies or whatever where I felt like I was on the journey with them. And then it's like from one week to the next, you're like, yeah, the bus ends here. And you're like, what?
We didn't get to the destination, man. Come on.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: And there's not another bus to take you the rest of way.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: I'm in the parking lot outside Terminal three.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: I'll tell you from my perspective.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: I.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: Started the podcast just to try to be in this world because I was listening to a bunch of tropical MBA and Pat Flyn and startups. For the rest of us, I was like, fuck, I just want to be like those guys. And so I started a podcast and then Dave was like my third guest, and that went a long way. And I think to a degree, I've gone from the learner to the person that knows something. I know some stuff about running a business and fundraising and hiring and all this kind of stuff. And so now I think it sounds really douchey, but it's kind of like my obligation to be the person that shares what I know to help other people. Because a whole shit ton of people have helped me through their podcast and through their YouTube and stuff like that. And that's about the only reason I still do know. I don't think that me having a successful podcast will really grow. Castos, I don't care about my personal brand, really, but I think it's pretty cool if I can share one thing that helps somebody else out. That's the reason that I wanted to keep doing the podcast.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: Well, first of all, I think that's wonderful. And frankly, I've learned so much from your podcast, from many of the others. I mean, I listen to podcasts all the time and it is one of my main channels.
And one thing I love about it also is it's so immediate.
I guess a lot of media is this way, but I can remember I've spent my entire career in Europe, and when the internet first started 98 when I started working. People would say like, oh, in Europe, we're like five years behind California or whatever. And now the podcast comes out. I listen to it the same time everyone else listens to it, right? The new ideas, the tactics or whatever, we get them exactly the same day, and it's gotten so much faster and it's really useful. Also, if you live in a place, you live somewhere where you're not, maybe you don't have a local community or whatever to connect with, and you're getting the same lessons from these absolute masters.
And that's so powerful. That's so powerful. Which is why it's hurtful when all of a sudden the podcast ends and you're like, wait, hang on, wait. We're just getting going here, man.
I don't know. I'm hopeful for a comeback.
Dave, are you mean? I think we could take this thing in a different direction, kind of a plot twist. Dave comes.
You know, the whole season was all a bad dream or something.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Maybe something like, oh, Dave, if you're so, let's do what. Something you said really struck a nerve is being in remote locations. And I think I've always kind of lived in this part of my life, physically kind of disconnected. FirsT I was like nights and weekends and had a day job and all this kind of stuff. Then we moved to France. Nobody that I knew was doing it where I lived. Now we're in Rhode Island. Nobody that I know does.
I really, really miss that. I'll go to conferences. I went to a marketing conference last week, and it's just like going to know. It's like, man, just like a whole group of people that do exactly what I do.
When we first started talking, you asked if I missed living in Europe, and the answer is like, definitely. And we're considering moving back.
But I only want to move somewhere where there are going to be people that do this because really, really miss.
Let's all go to the same coworking place. Or like you all have the Barcelona.
I don't know if you still have it, like the monthly lunch or whatever. And I would just kill for that. I think it's the thing, as we do remote for a long time, the in person thing is so important.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: It is. It's critical. It really is.
But.
Well, first of all, yes, Craig, you should come back to Europe, obviously, because.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: We got to get the scene going here.
We're going to before next September for sure.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: The scene is actually quite strong. And actually in two weeks we got microcomp Europe coming up. So I'm really looking forward to.
So I don't know where we're going here, Craig. I feel like I'm kind of rambling beyond saying, first of all, people should not. I think founders should be very hesitant, unless their industry demands it, to really push themselves as the marketing channel. But then if you do and you have a podcast and I have committed to your story, you got to keep going.
Come on, man. You can't leave me hanging here.
But I think that is kind of really the crux of the dilemma, man.
This is exactly it. It's so dangerous to get on that treadmill.
Then you start and you're gone, and you start to see the results, but then it's like you can never get off. And if you do, you're going to disappoint your audience. Right?
How does that play out during your acquisition? If someone buys your business, what's going to happen there?
Are you setting the business up for failure? The minute you pull the plug on your podcast or on your YouTube channel or whatever, your inspirational LinkedIn quote of the day or whatever, it is your thing to.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: I'd love to hear folks listening that work at Fe International or quietlight or wherever, or folks who have done this, I'd love to hear their experiences, because I think mostly you're like, it's liability more than an asset, probably, to companies.
But, yeah, I don't know. I have a question for you about in person events, because something that I would love to do is do small in person events. How would you think about whether it's castos or anybody listening, like, abstract away the ideas in the framework about starting local kind of small meetups?
[00:29:36] Speaker A: Well, I can just say I do it and I love it. But the reason I love it is because it provides a social outlet for me as a way to meet people and things like that. As I said, it's not because I can immediately measure the marketing value of it.
And frankly, in some ways, it's very similar to starting a podcast in the sense of it's not that you do one event and then all of a sudden the money comes rolling in. It's more like you need to create a process that's maintainable and keep it going. And I'm sure the advice, anyone who does a podcast the first 20 episodes, you're going to get very little feedback, right? You got to keep it going. You got to create consistency.
And that's something, actually, I think a lot about with our events, but also with our business, is how do we do processes that are maintainable.
How do we keep it simple? How do we keep it affordable?
I don't know. Quick, you should maybe do it. How can we delegate to volunteers and things? So now we have different cities, and basically we have very loose. I'm like, look, here's my advice, and here are the lessons I've learned along the way, and here are one or two firm rules that we have. So, like, in our case, we say you cannot charge people to speak and you cannot charge the attendees. But if you stay within that framework, then you can open geomob. If you want to start Geomab. Rhode Island. Let's go, Craig.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Okay, so do you all license it or do they.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: No, we don't.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: Under your kind of umbrella?
[00:31:14] Speaker A: Yeah, they kind of run it under Umbrella. Because the thing is, if someone wants to have the local event, they can do it without me, right?
The only thing they're getting from me is that they get the name and we promote it in our channels to our audience, and we have a website, and we'll feature their event on the website and things like this. So there's a very minimal level of infrastructure. But if I try to impose all kind of rules, at some point the people are just going to be like, screw this, I'll just do it myself and give it a different name. Right? Yeah. And also, people are doing this in all different countries, whatever. And I don't know what's normal in their country in terms of what time they should have it at or what type of venue, or should they serve food or not serve food.
That's up to them. That's up to them. What I do tell them, though, is, here's what I've learned in the ten plus years that we've been doing it.
But one thing I do see, we have had some people who are like, oh, I want to do it in my city. And we're going to do, of course, we're going to have food and all this stuff, and I'm going to get the biggest speakers, and I'm going to make it this whole big production. And those people start with the best of intentions, and they have a big bang event, and then a year later they're like, this is a lot of work, actually, and I'm kind of busy.
And what I always tell people is, it's better to do less, but do the basics well and not have a big production and just get the wheels turning and get it going. And it's much more about the consistency and the repetitions than it is about each individual event being some major big thing.
At least in our case, that's kind of what we're striving.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: So let me give a couple for instances. So, like, say we want to do an event, we would do it in Boston, or like one of the suburbs of Boston.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Rent a bar maybe, or rent a little conference space and then go to the bar afterwards, have a couple of speakers, have it be a couple of hours, one evening.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: Perfect.
That's exactly my event. Oh, my God, Craig. I do my event. I mean, okay, Boston is probably more expensive, but for example, last night we had the event in Barcelona. Basically for step one is I find a venue that I can use for free. So in our case, university or a co working space or whatever, and say, look, I'm going to bring 25, 50 people, of course, I'm going to feature, say thank you, and if the venue host wants to very briefly say hello at the beginning and tell us why their co working space is great. Fantastic. Then we have a few talks and then we go to a bar and I pay for the drinks. And the whole thing cost me 250 euro, 500 euro maybe. And if it's a big crowd or whatever. So I intentionally keep it very low production value.
And then as we started going, people always like, oh, can you make videos? Can you? No, because that's a lot of work.
To make videos is a lot of work. Like someone needs to have the equipment, someone needs to know what they're doing.
I try to keep it as bare bones as possible.
And then afterwards, what I do, of course, I take pictures at the event, and then afterwards I post some pictures on the social media or whatever, and then people see the event and that's it. That's kind of all I do.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: How often do you do them in each location, like the one in Barcelona or the one in London?
[00:34:53] Speaker A: It totally depends on the city in terms of. Obviously, a city like London is huge and there's a lot of things going on and we've been doing it there for ten years. So people are volunteering and we have a very established community, Barcelona, we might have like two a year. London, we might have four or five a year, it depends. It's also driven heavily by. Do people volunteer to speak?
Of course. I will chase people or try to get people, or there are certain people I want to talk with, I'll contact them. But the ideal scenario is that you kind of create the flywheel where enough people are coming to the event. And at the event, anyone who's new, I'm like, oh, are you going to speak at the next one? I try to line up the speakers and get them going, and we kind of intentionally keep the talks very short. Each talk is 15 minutes, so that way, even if the speaker is terrible, which sometimes they are, you can kind of sit through it, and we just get four or five different talks, and that's kind of it.
I could imagine this could work really well for castus in the sense of you have a meet up of local podcasters where they talk about their problems and whatever. And probably the challenge with this event would be podcasters like to talk. So pretty hard to keep people short.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Pretty tough.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Yeah, 15 minutes.
But I will say this, though, Craig.
One thing I have noticed is post COVID and the switch to working from home and stuff. People want events. People want to go to events.
Exactly. People are working at home three days a week, five days a week, whatever. People are desperate to now actually go out and make contact so you can really feel it in the audience. I mean, since COVID the event has been bigger than ever with no change to the recipe or promotion or anything. It's just people are kind of hungry to make connections.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: Yeah, totally.
I very much am. I mean, work here at home all day, and then the kids come home, and that's life. And we have stuff on the weekends and, yeah, to go and be with people is amazing when I get the chance, so, yeah, definitely we're not the only ones hungry for it, probably. Yeah.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: The key is define a recipe and can you then repeat that in the different cities or regions or know, I think it could be a good.
It's kind of a.
Right. Right.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: Cool. So, Ed, you're going to microconf Europe in two weeks. So this episode will go out before then, I think, or right around that time. So folks who want to catch up with you, you'll be there.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: I will be there. I'm really looking forward to it. We're back in Lisbon, which I think is a great venue.
It's at a very nice hotel.
I'm ready, man. People are hungry for events, and no one's hungrier than.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I'm jealous. I'd love to be there.
Maybe next year. We'll be there. Cool. Ed, best place for folks to connect with you and chat it up is Mastodon.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: Mastodon is the best place. Or you can just email me if you can't figure it out. Then you can check out my LinkedIn page, where I don't think you're going to find any inspirational quotes or stories, know, pictures of how my breakfast inspired me or anything. Like, could probably. You could at least connect with me there.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: All right, fair enough. Fair enough. It was good to catch up, but thank you.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: Wait, Craig. Of course they should also listen to my podcast, which, if they're interested in geo stuff. The Geomab podcast.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: Sounds good. Sounds good. It's good to catch up, man. Thank you.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: Take it easy. Bye.
