[00:00:09.480] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:10.540] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:10.960] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:13.000] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:15.500] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And welcome to you all. It's been an interesting week, hasn't it?
[00:00:29.540] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:00:29.960] - Gordon
Weather's been a bit sort of on and off, really. It's a little bit strange with the weather going from being really nice to horrible, and that in fact goes into my topic, which we will come to very shortly. Before we get started, any news that you have to report?
[00:00:50.120] - Taylor
Only that there has been a discord music bot that has been sent a cease and desist letter from YouTube or from Google. And they're basically cracking down on these music bots that allow you to play music through YouTube and other platforms like Spotify and things like that. And they're the first and the biggest one that have received letters, or that we know about. So yeah, looks like they've started to take action.
[00:01:21.760] - Gordon
Okay. And that's Discord who are taking action or its...?
[00:01:25.160] - Taylor
No, Google themselves. So people can create bots for their servers so you can reply to people, you can have like ranks and things like that. And one of them is you can play like music, for example, from Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music.
[00:01:39.980] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:01:40.520] - Taylor
Or through YouTube. But apparently that goes against terms of service. So they've been sent a letter to take it down, basically.
[00:01:48.360] - Gordon
Right. Okay. Very interesting. I don't think I've got any news this week, so let's get straight into the topic... Oh, before we do, the reason that you are looking at Discord and so on is because you've started streaming there haven't you?
[00:02:03.660] - Taylor
Yes. I mean, I used it a lot before that just that, just to chat to friends and in the servers that I'm in, but yeah, I've started streaming and I'm part of...
[00:02:12.480] - Gordon
Do you want to talk about that as a topic either this week or maybe next week.
[00:02:17.080] - Taylor
Yeah, next week's fine.
[00:02:18.120] - Gordon
Perfect. We'll do that then. Good. And you can find out all about Taylor's streaming there. So would you like to start?
[00:02:24.900] - Taylor
You can start this week.
[00:02:26.040] - Gordon
Okay. So my topic for this week is adapting the way you work. Now, things have been changing a lot recently and everyone has had to make changes. Everyone's had to adapt to the 'new normal,' as it is. And I found that that's been more relevant to my magic than to the design side. So, I would use to not ever take on outside shows. There's so many problems with performing shows outside. You don't have any control over the weather. You don't have, you might have flying bugs. You might have an aeroplane going overhead, which obviously is going to distract everybody. There's lots... There might be wind, which is going to take what you're using and blow it away. You can't put anything down anywhere, because that might get blown away. It might rain halfway through the show, and there are lots and lots of reasons why doing shows outside is not a great idea, and that's why I've never really done them. The only outside shows I used to do were park shows, which I did during this last month in August and I did two of them and they have a big trailer and I set up on the trailer, I have sound equipment, and then everyone just comes and sits; there's chairs and there's grass and people bring rugs and mats and so on and sit down with them to enjoy the show. And that's normally really good. But it means that I'm also undercover. So if I need to, you know, shelter or there's a lot of sound equipment and that can be put under cover very quickly. And so that's fine. However, just recently I've been getting lots of bookings and enquiries for people who want to have parties in the garden. Now it's understandable because we've got this pandemic still with us and people are feeling a lot more, a lot safer if they are in the open air and there's lots of ventilation which you find in gardens a lot. And so I can understand the reason for it. The problem is, all of the reasons I stated before still apply, and if I don't take on these bookings, then I'm not going to get as many bookings as I used to get, because that's what people want. So I've got to adapt what I do, change what I do and make it work in an outside environment. And that's always been really difficult for me because there's always been a stigma. I had some really bad experiences doing shows when I first started out, outdoors, you know before I had the experience of knowing that it was never going to be a great show. And so changing my way of thinking to actually embrace doing shows outdoors has been really difficult for me, and I've not enjoyed them as much.
[00:05:44.080] - Taylor
Okay.
[00:05:44.660] - Gordon
And think it's because of all the reasons I stated, you know they're still relevant. However, I did have a show this week on the Tuesday just before school went back, and that was a garden show. And my garden or outdoor shows stipulate that I must have cover, so that's going to be some sort of gazebo or a sort of a tent or marquee type thing. And when it's a garden, I request a plug socket as well, so I can use it for my sound equipment. As it turns out, I decided not to take my sound equipment on this occasion because there was going to be sort of ten to twelve children, and I figured that we probably don't need sound equipment for that. So I didn't bother with that, which made life a lot easier. But the weather was still a little bit on and off. The grass was damp, and when I got there, there was sort of an open sided marquee, like two gazebos put together. It wasn't, it was just that sort of length. And it was an okay show, you know, the family and the birthday child were all very happy. I came away thinking, "I could have done a lot better if I was able to control the situation more, and the elements and so forth." We also had a trampoline in the garden, which was, you know, a big draw for the kids, you know, they had a trampoline just here. So, you know, if I lost them just for a second and they sort of looked, they went, "ooh trampoline, go and trampoline, let's go and have a bounce." And a couple of the younger ones did actually go and do that. And then not only have I got to do the show for the ones that are with me, the younger ones are bouncing on a trampoline over here making noise, so again it's a big distraction. And it's a very different way of working, and it's a way of working that I find quite difficult. However, tomorrow I have an arena show, which is going to be a new experience for me again, because I'm going to be in a big arena, I'm a 'feature act,' so that could be interesting. And then on the Sunday, I have a park show. And again, I'm in the middle of a park and I have sent them the details, you know, must have cover, but it means I need to take my own power with me because it's a full party that I'm doing, a full two hour party, not just a show. So therefore, I need to have sound for the games and so forth. And it's, you know, the other thing is parking. You can't normally park anywhere near where you're going to be. So if you're in an Arena, I don't know how close I'm going to be able to get, but I'm going to have to trolley all of my equipment to wherever the show is going to be. And the same in the park, the park is going to be, you know we're going to be in the middle of the park somewhere over there. There's going to be a car park, which if it's a nice day, it's going to be pretty full.
[00:08:49.100] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:08:49.100] - Gordon
I've got to take all my equipment, wheel it to where we're going and not move from there. So, you know, it's going to be a challenge. But if I don't adapt and change, I won't be able to do these types of shows for the next, you know, few months, years, who knows? We don't know. So, I think what I'm trying to say is that as a business, we need to make sure that we are checking what is required as far as our services go from customers, and make sure that we are still supplying what they need. Not what we want to give them necessarily, that's normally very different, but what we actually, what our customers actually need. So take a look at your business. Are your customers still needing the services to be delivered in the same way that you have been delivering them forever? Or do you need to tweak it a little bit because things have changed? That is something I've had to do and I will report back on how it went this weekend next week and let you know how it went. Hopefully I will be coming back and telling you how well it went and how wonderful the weather was and... The other thing with the weather is if it's really sunny, either myself or the audience are going to have the sun in their eyes, or they're going to have heat stroke sitting there for an hour. But again, that's all part of doing shows outdoors and that's it, that's all I have to say on that.
[00:10:30.270] - Taylor
Wonderful.
[00:10:30.750] - Gordon
Taylor.
[00:10:31.740] - Taylor
So this week I wanted, well for the past probably a couple of months now, probably about four or five months, I've started really enjoying building stuff. And you know, I've said before, I worked on Oxy Build Challenge, which was a massive project in terms of just scale, complexity, functionality and things like that. And I've been really enjoying it and I've learned a lot from it. And I've got a lot of snippets that I've gained and a lot of stuff that I've built from it. And so I kind of have built up my own collection of snippets that I've, of stuff that I've built really.
[00:11:16.180] - Gordon
So these are little code blocks, maybe sort of five lines, maybe 20 lines, just something that will achieve a particular function.
[00:11:26.160] - Taylor
Yeah, but also whole solutions, so not just snippets. And a while back, I decided to purchase the domain name 'snippetclub.com,' which is basically a website for snippets and tutorials. So yeah, I write a lot of solutions and also come up with a lot of little snippets that are useful and can be put into your own website to add a bit of functionality. And I've decided to kind of release that into the public for people to be able to use, hopefully help other people with similar issues. Whether that be a tutorial or just a snippet.
[00:12:05.860] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:12:06.600] - Taylor
And it's really good fun, I really enjoy it. I enjoy writing the tutorials, and also I enjoy coming up with the solutions.
[00:12:14.650] - Gordon
So are other people going to be able to contribute to this?
[00:12:19.670] - Taylor
So this is going to be a closed site with my friend Alexander, who I'm doing it with. And there may be some friend contributors if they want to guest post, I guess.
[00:12:34.920] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:12:34.920] - Taylor
But for the main part it's going to be a closed platform. However, I would like to add a feature where people can share like snippets and stuff when they're trying to get support. So there are websites out there already that do this, where you can just paste your code in and give someone a link to show them the code that you're trying to work with. And I want to kind of create my own version of this, just so that if I am sharing a quick solution or something that's not snippet worthy, not tutorial worthy or something like that, I can share it there, which then will have a link back to my site where they, you know, hopefully can find more stuff of interest when I've helped them.
[00:13:12.820] - Gordon
Okay, so how big is this site going to be? As in complexity and functionality and so on.
[00:13:20.520] - Taylor
The actual site itself probably won't be that complex. It's just basically a blog site at the moment. We may add a membership side to it in the future, so it'll be, you know, paid content for the tutorials and things like that. And I think, yeah, I think that will just add a bit of complexity, you need like logins and users and then just a paywall. And you know, there are lots of different solutions out there. The solution that I will probably go with is going to be a more custom solution I reckon. So instead of using a membership plug-in, using something like Fluent CRM and Fluent Forms, which is a CRM and a form platform or plug-ins which work together, which allow you to add a lot of flexibility and functionality yourself, and have more control over the way things look and how everything runs and works.
[00:14:17.400] - Gordon
And when is this going to be?
[00:14:20.090] - Taylor
There's no ETA for the membership side of it. For the moment the tutorial snippet site is up and there are tutorials and snippets, and I am adding to them as and when, you know, I have time. The longer ones take a bit more, the tutorial ones take a bit longer to do. But the snippets, you know, I normally just post it with a, the code block and just publish them. But I also publish kind of quick snippets as well for people that I've helped with solutions and then I put a link to the post in the description of that question of someone having help, so that hopefully in the future someone comes back, and it's a site or a post that people can go to, read and yeah.
[00:15:05.320] - Gordon
Okay, so do you want to give the address one more time so people can join, or visit?
[00:15:09.760] - Taylor
Yeah, it's snippetclub.com.
[00:15:11.700] - Gordon
Very good. And I'm sure, if I know Taylor, this site will grow and become quite a useful resource for lots of people, and hopefully the membership bit will, you know, give lots of reasons for Taylor to actually add new content in. Because obviously when you've got some sort of income coming in because people are buying membership, it sort of spurs you on to actually create the content, doesn't it?
[00:15:40.000] - Taylor
Yeah, I mean, I've got tonnes and tonnes of ideas of stuff that I want to build. They mostly just come from my curiosity more than anything and kind of thinking, "is this possible?" You know, "this would be really cool." And also just thinking of ideas for websites that I'd like to build, that if I come up with a solution, it's very easy to implement if I get that kind of website. So you know, sometimes I build stuff that I can't really use at the moment, but obviously there's loads of other people that I know I probably could use it. And if I ever had a site that needed it, I've already done all the hard work.
[00:16:15.860] - Gordon
Yeah. So maybe we'll check back in with you, maybe in a month or so?
[00:16:20.460] - Taylor
I think it would be a bit longer than a month. But when I've got something, I'll talk about it again.
[00:16:26.300] - Gordon
Okay. So for the time being, you can go and check it out: snippetclub.com. And that's everything from me for today. Anything you want to add?
[00:16:36.360] - Taylor
Just that the tutorials mostly will be free until we get the membership side sorted. So you know, if you want to check them out, then they'll always be free for the ones that you see...
[00:16:47.600] - Gordon
Get in now, while you can.
[00:16:48.850] - Taylor
There's nowhere sign up or anything, but just in terms of kind of, yeah, there's no premium or anything yet.
[00:16:58.340] - Gordon
Okay. So that's it for this week. As always, you can, like, share and subscribe on YouTube and on Facebook.
[00:17:06.840] - Taylor
You can also go to our website: thisweekwith.co.uk, where you can find all of our past episodes and also the transcriptions if you prefer to read them or if you're trying to search for something specific. One thing I wanted to say was that next week we wanted to do sort of like a Q&A kind of podcast, where you ask us any type of questions, whether it be business related, whether it be website related, magic related, anything like that. And yeah, we'd love to answer them. Any questions. If you've got more than one, chuck them in the comments, you know, we'd be happy to answer. The more the better, I guess.
[00:17:44.970] - Gordon
Okay. So next week is a question and answer session. Contact us in whatever way you like with your questions, and we'll compile a list of them and read them out. If we don't get any questions, we'll see if we can make some up.
[00:17:59.480] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:18:00.280] - Gordon
Yeah. Or we'll postpone it and come back to it another time.
[00:18:04.660] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:18:04.660] - Gordon
So we'll see you next week at 1pm on Friday. Until then, my name's Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:18:12.740] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from the Creative Tinker.
[00:18:15.620] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:18:16.040] - Taylor
Bye.
