[00:00:09.160] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:10.020] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:10.660] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:12.490] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:14.470] - Gordon
Welcome to "This Week With." So, it's been another week in lockdown. My hair is getting longer, at this rate I'm going to be like a hippie. Although what's happened to your hair, Taylor?
[00:00:25.660] - Taylor
I got a haircut because it was just all over the place. It was coming out the sides, just yeah, it was too long. So I needed a bit of a trim.
[00:00:33.700] - Gordon
I have to say, it looks very well done. I mean, who did that for you?
[00:00:37.480] - Taylor
That would be you.
[00:00:38.470] - Gordon
That would be me. Yes. And he's threatening to do my hair. So next week, if you see me with a hat on, then you'll know that things didn't go so well. But that is to come. Anyway, we hope you've all had a good week. It's been another busy week here in this house for two businesses. Shall I start?
[00:01:03.400] - Taylor
Yeah, I think you should start this week.
[00:01:05.740] - Gordon
So, this week I've been looking at Online Booking Assistant, it's a software service that I offer. It's designed for people who take bookings on the internet. So magicians, entertainers, plus other businesses. We have a circus that use it. We have...
[00:01:30.130] - Taylor
Themed parties, type people.
[00:01:31.930] - Gordon
Yeah, theme parties. So entertainers would use it. But also it could be used for people who have, you know, hairdressers could use it, it would work for them, although it's not designed for them. And this is something I've been running now for about 11 years and it helps me to take bookings from my website. And it's, it does get updates, but it hasn't been updated in a while as far as the look goes. So this week we decided that it was time for a bit of a makeover. So we looked at it. I brought Taylor in to help me with it. Do you want to tell them what you did?
[00:02:16.390] - Taylor
So I went through and I found new icons for some of the different actions that you could do within the service. So 'edit,' 'delete,' kind of 'on and off switches,' just making it, bringing it up to date, really so it was more modern and it wasn't these kind of 90s retro images that were used.
[00:02:42.940] - Gordon
It wasn't that old to be fair. I mean, anything old to Taylor is the '90s because he was born in the year 2000. But it did needed a bit of a refresh. And there's been newer technology, there's been new design styles. This is, the icons we went for were all flat design. So there's no 3D, there's no shadows, it's all flat; material design. And it does look a lot better. It's very odd because I use it every single day, as do most of my customers, because of how it's been designed. It's been designed, not, I say every single day, it's being used for my "MagiCalls" at the moment, it's normally used for my normal bookings, but they've stopped currently so we've been using it for the MagiCalls. And it's weird to see something that you see pretty much every day and you've just, it's become second nature to use, and you see it's suddenly changed. It's, all of a sudden it's got these this new look to it, which is really odd. And the other thing we did, which I may have mentioned last week, is we've now integrated the email checker. So when people go on to a web form to fill in the contact and say, "yes, I'm interested," it will check their email address for them at that moment and it will say whether it's a valid email address or not; it's actually checking if the domain name exists, it's checking if the emails will get through. Which means that people, quite often, they don't mean to, but they'll make a mistake by typing gmail.con or something, just, you know, with a few letters wrong or one letter wrong. Which means that they won't get any emails because their email is wrong. It will just bounce and they'll never know. They'll just think it's me being rude and not emailing them back.
[00:04:38.770] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:04:39.790] - Gordon
So that was quite a good thing that I spent time doing this week and that's going to benefit me, and all my customers even more when we get back to using it.
[00:04:50.950] - Taylor
And also mobile as well. We're trying to sort that out as well.
[00:04:54.250] - Gordon
Yeah, so mobile responsiveness. There wasn't such a thing as a mobile friendly version of it when it was built because it wasn't needed. But we're looking at converting it and that's a slightly bigger job. So that's an ongoing job now. We've got a menu system that needs looking at.
[00:05:09.770] - Taylor
So, yeah.
[00:05:10.490] - Gordon
So that's OBA.
[00:05:11.990] - Taylor
So this week I have been looking into APIs and trying to work out how they work and learning them for the first time. So this is the first time I've ever used an API.
[00:05:21.650] - Gordon
So do you want to explain what an API is for those who may not know?
[00:05:24.680] - Taylor
So an API is normally a request for normally data from a, from somewhere. That can be from another website, from another server. And you're, you send a request basically to get the data. And then with that data, you can do what you please, basically.
[00:05:44.510] - Gordon
So it's a way for servers and different websites to talk to each other and exchange information.
[00:05:50.630] - Taylor
So I was working on my networking group website, and one of the ideas that one of the members had was to add the weather for the next meeting.
[00:06:03.710] - Gordon
Ok.
[00:06:03.710] - Taylor
So we currently show when the next meeting is, it says "next meeting is," and then it automatically puts in next Thursday's date. And one of the members said, "why not add the weather for that." So then people can see, oh ok, the weather is going to be sunny on that day and it's going to be 15 degrees and sun rises at four or five a.m.
[00:06:22.790] - Gordon
And the sunrise is important because these are breakfast meetings. So it's nice to know if you're going to be driving while it's light or driving while it's dark.
[00:06:33.530] - Taylor
And so I was working with this API and basically was trying to import the data from the API website and then display it on the website in a nice little dropdown. And it has like an icon and stuff like that with a, you know. And this automatically updates so when the API server updates there, to say the weather is going to be a tiny bit different than what they expected, it will automatically update on our website, and I don't have to do anything.
[00:07:05.390] - Gordon
Which is really cool.
[00:07:06.380] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:07:07.640] - Gordon
And this is going to be something that's going to be of use to other people I'm guessing.
[00:07:11.960] - Taylor
So, yes. So what I've decided to do is, I'm going to put it into a plug-in and I'm then going to put it on the WordPress repository so people, other people can use it if they want to. So there were other weather plug-ins already available that people had already written. However, they were normally either getting the current time, current weather so right now or they were getting a forecast of the next seven days.
[00:07:38.960] - Gordon
Ok.
[00:07:39.200] - Taylor
And I didn't want that. I only wanted...
[00:07:41.150] - Gordon
A specific day for the meeting.
[00:07:43.610] - Taylor
And I couldn't find anything that did that. So I decided to write my own custom plug-in to do this. And, you know, maybe someone out there would like to be able to do something similar if they have meetings on a specific day, I don't know. You know, that could be quite useful.
[00:08:00.110] - Gordon
So if people want to see your plug-in at work. It's not actually finished as a plug-in yet, that's still ongoing. We'll let you know when it's ready. But if people want to see it, how do they see it?
[00:08:11.000] - Taylor
They can go to BNI-Lightning.co.uk.
[00:08:15.140] - Gordon
Which is your BNI group, 'Lightning.'
[00:08:16.850] - Taylor
Yeah, my chapter.
[00:08:17.790] - Gordon
And there's actually a really cool, I don't know what type of plane it is.
[00:08:23.300] - Taylor
It's a Lightning plane, hence the name.
[00:08:25.520] - Gordon
Oh, ok. It's called a Lightning plane. And actually, as you scroll down the screen the plane will fly down the screen, it's very cool. So have a look at that. So you've got the weather to look at, which is the top right.
[00:08:38.870] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:08:39.410] - Gordon
Just mouse over the date of the next meeting, and then scroll down, you'll see the Lightning plane move. It's really cool. It's...
[00:08:47.870] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:08:48.290] - Gordon
You've done a good job there.
[00:08:49.490] - Taylor
I'm pleased with it.
[00:08:50.690] - Gordon
Really good. So something else I've been working on this week is a 'chat bot.' Now, for those of you who don't know what a chat bot is, it's a computer chat system. It's actually one of the original ways that people were trying to find out if they could trick, not trick, but convince people that they were talking to a real human. Have you heard of Eliza?
[00:09:18.080] - Taylor
No.
[00:09:18.620] - Gordon
So Eliza is like the first ever computer programme. It was designed to listen to the input of somebody typing, and it would respond in a way that was hopefully human-like. And the idea was to try and see if they could build a computer that would sound and be like a human. And then it got forgotten for years and, well many, many years. And now it's come back and it's really popular. So this is for different uses. I use chat bots already on my website, but this is a specific purpose that I've created this one; this is for Facebook. So my Gordon's Magic Facebook page, which is facebook.com/children'sentertainer, that has a 'chat now' button which goes into Messenger, and you will, first of all, talk to my chat bot and I've programmed this so that it basically will try and answer any questions you have, it will give you information. And then if at any point you find that you're asking something that it doesn't know about, you can then request that it hands over to a human. So it will then hand over to me basically. And there was no easy way of knowing that someone had handed over to me. I could have it send me an email, but that's no good, because if someone's waiting and I'm available, then I'm going to miss them because I won't know unless I'm checking my email at that moment. So I've actually used an API.
[00:10:50.240] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:10:50.930] - Gordon
To link into a system called 'pushover.net,' which is a notification system and it works really well. So you get a push notification on your devices. I've got it on my phone, which also then brings it to my watch, it also comes to my computer. So as soon as somebody says "I'd like to talk to a human," I get a push notification and if I'm available, I can then go straight into my Facebook page and I can chat to this customer live, which is exactly what they are expecting. And everything else hopefully, they've been through a process, you can, on the chat bot I've programmed it so you can actually make an enquiry and it will send me all of the details of that enquiry to my email, as well as sending a push notification to let me know that someone's done this so that I can jump on it and make sure I get the information they need back to them really quickly. And chat bots are becoming very clever, very integrated with other software and a really useful way of giving people information that they need that is very similar without actually taking away from your day. So it's an automated way of doing that. And as you know, if you've watched our previous episodes, we like automation. We like the way of, the idea of being able to have things happen and react to people and give them the information they need and do what they want to do, without us actually having to do it. Automation is definitely the way to go; we've said that before and chat bot is the next step for us to be able to do that.
[00:12:33.010] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:12:33.710] - Gordon
So that's really good. And the service that I am using is actually one that I am now a re-seller for. So if you are looking to have a chat bot that you want to put on your Facebook messenger or on your website, then please get in contact with Drayson Design and I can talk you through what we can do for you. And if you're worried about the programming side, don't, I can do that for you as well.
[00:12:57.290] - Taylor
That sounds pretty good, yeah.
[00:12:58.440] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:12:59.060] - Taylor
There's two types of kind of chat bots aren't there? There's the pre, uh, workflow, type of pre-programmed responses. So what you've done, for example, so based on the answers they give, they go down a specific route. And there's also, which is less common and more advanced, which is kind of A.I. and machine learning. And so it uses data and it gathers data and then based on that, it tries, it decides and says, "OK, so we're here. What should I reply?"
[00:13:32.060] - Gordon
Yes.
[00:13:32.420] - Taylor
A bit like Siri, Siri uses machine learning, stuff like that, that would be an example of a kind of user...
[00:13:37.880] - Gordon
Siri is like a chat bot, in fact, but it's only answering one question at a time basically.
[00:13:44.150] - Taylor
Yeah. But that's the other sort of chat bot you could have.
[00:13:47.090] - Gordon
You could.
[00:13:47.090] - Taylor
But obviously it's more advanced and...
[00:13:48.110] - Gordon
It is. And in fact the chat bot I do have already, that I've been working on this week, does have a little bit of that functionality in. So it's listening out for keywords and it knows what to do with those keywords. And then if it doesn't know, it'll just say, "I don't know quite how to help you on this. Can you rephrase the question or would you like to talk to Gordon?"
[00:14:09.230] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:14:10.070] - Gordon
So, yeah, chat bot, really good.
[00:14:11.600] - Taylor
So I was reading some, reading on the news for this week.
[00:14:16.520] - Gordon
Ok.
[00:14:16.520] - Taylor
And Jack Dorsey, the owner of Twitter or the CEO of Twitter, founder.
[00:14:21.740] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:14:22.400] - Taylor
He has made a statement to say that after the lockdown and after this coronavirus that, you know, most of the Twitter employees will continue working from home, apart from people that can't. So people that manage servers, the Twitter server and stuff, obviously they can't work from home because the servers are in a secure location.
[00:14:43.700] - Gordon
They need physical access to them.
[00:14:45.200] - Taylor
But for people that can work from home, so any developers and stuff like that, he said that they can carry on working from home because they've found that it is a much better way of working and they're able to do it. And I think that if you can do it, that it's a great, great idea to do because it increases, it can improve and increase your lifestyle because you don't have the commute that you don't want to do, most people don't want to do.
[00:15:11.740] - Gordon
That will save money as well, as well as time.
[00:15:15.250] - Taylor
Offices. You don't have to have as big an office, if you don't have as many staff and they're working from home.
[00:15:19.270] - Gordon
Which saves money for the company.
[00:15:20.690] - Taylor
People enjoy it more. You're more likely to get better morale because people enjoy working from home because they can choose when they want to work and things like that.
[00:15:29.200] - Gordon
Yep. Which works well I think if there is a specific job they do that can be monitored from your boss, for example.
[00:15:38.150] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:15:39.310] - Gordon
A creative job is a lot more difficult to work from home because someone could say, "yes, it's spent, I spent three hours creating this drawing," which took them five minutes, and then they skived off for the rest of the time. That's a, that's more of a problem. Whereas if you've got a system in place that allows you to log what people are doing, and how much time they're spending, and the employees have got the trust of the bosses to do the job, I think it's going to be a great way of doing it. And I think there's going to be an awful lot of companies who, because they've been forced into doing it, have now found out that, yes, we can actually have people working at home and it's going to work great for us.
[00:16:25.960] - Taylor
Yeah. And, you know, it will improve. I mean, people's online presence online connections, you know, people that didn't really, maybe people that use paper, like shops and stuff that use paper or offices that use a lot of paper, now have to go digital and everything has to be online. And it's forced them to do that and, you know, that's made things better for them. Everything's accessible.
[00:16:46.720] - Gordon
That can only that can only help with the internet as well, because it will force the government and those who are internet providers to upgrade the speed in the whole of the country, if people are working at home and rely on their internet. We've spoken before about how our internet here is probably the minimum you would ever get anywhere. And we would like to increase it, we just don't have the ability to because we haven't got the cables that are needed coming to our house.
[00:17:17.677] - Taylor
Yep.
[00:17:18.190] - Gordon
So this could help with that as well.
[00:17:20.890] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:17:21.940] - Gordon
Yeah it's a really, it's... For me, as a magician, it's a terrible time because I can't go out and do shows. But if you look at the number of shows that I am doing, which are from my office in front of a camera, it's opened up my marketplace to the whole world. I'm not limited now to who I can get to in a certain time and have a maximum radius of the amount of people I can get to.
[00:17:55.300] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:17:55.630] - Gordon
I can do shows in Australia in the morning and you know, America in the afternoon, and UK in the evening. It is going to be possible for me to do this. And it's not something I would have even considered doing before we had the lockdown. But it may be something that I'll want to continue offering as a service after we are able to get back to doing normal shows.
[00:18:21.410] - Taylor
Yeah, maybe, for example, if someone has a party that, you know, isn't magic, but they want their kid to have a bit of magic for their birthday, you can just have a five, ten minute call with them and it can be at a reduced rate because obviously it's not a full show and it's only for the family.
[00:18:37.480] - Gordon
There's less equipment needed, there's no travel needed. And as long as I'm set up for it, it's not going to be a major hassle... oh pardon me, it's not going to be a major hassle either. So it's really interesting, actually, how something good can potentially come out of such a horrible situation.
[00:18:56.120] - Taylor
I agree.
[00:18:57.700] - Gordon
Is there anything else that you have on your list for today to talk about?
[00:19:01.570] - Taylor
I have been working with a company who produce merchandise, embroidery merchandise.
[00:19:10.540] - Gordon
Oh, yeah.
[00:19:11.440] - Taylor
And I...
[00:19:12.340] - Gordon
We can mention them actually, this is a friend of ours, Rob Gaffney, who runs customshirtsandmore.com, fantastic service. He does, I haven't got one on, but he does all of my branded shirts and all of my branded jumpers and so forth.
[00:19:27.910] - Taylor
So this week I decided that for my networking meetings and for any client meetings and things like that, it...
[00:19:36.340] - Gordon
Zoom calls.
[00:19:37.030] - Taylor
Yeah, it'd be quite nice to have, you know, just a bit of advertisement for my company. So I have got my company logo and text embroidered onto a hoodie, which should be here any time now, really. So I'm looking forward to that, and I can show you that next week.
[00:19:55.930] - Gordon
And if you're wondering what that sound is, one of our neighbours has just started mowing the lawn, so I do apologise for that. I hope it's not too distracting. I think we're just about coming to the end of our...
[00:20:05.860] - Taylor
Yeah, I think that's everything.
[00:20:05.860] - Gordon
Of our "This Week With." As always, if you have any questions or you have something that you'd like us to talk about, then please let us know. You can contact us both on Facebook and on YouTube. We have our own URL now for Facebook, which is facebook.com/groups/thisweekwith. We'll probably still leave the bit.ly link on the screen here so it'll make it nice and easy for you to get to because the other one is still quite a long link. So please make sure you like us and subscribe on face, on YouTube. If you like us on Facebook, that when we do our live streams you will be alerted so that you can see that we are live streaming and hopefully join us live. Or if not, watch when you have the time.
[00:21:04.740] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:21:05.500] - Gordon
So follow, like, subscribe. Thank you very much for watching. My name's Gordon. My company is draysondesign.com.
[00:21:13.150] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor and I am thecreativetinker.co... .com sorry, thecreativetinker.com.
[00:21:20.440] - Gordon
And we'll see you next week.
[00:21:23.610] - Taylor
Goodbye.
[00:21:23.850] - Gordon
Goodbye.
