[00:00:00.00] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.10] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.29] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.27] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.21] - 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 thank you so much for joining us.
[00:00:24.07] - Taylor
Welcome back.
[00:00:24.25] - Gordon
We weren't with you last week. We did explain it the week before. But for those who weren't with us for that one, I was in Blackpool at a magic convention for the last, well, about five days of last week. So we were unable to do an episode because I wasn't here. But I shall come on to that in a moment. What's your week been like?
[00:00:46.29] - Taylor
My week has been really interesting. I've been up to lots of things, getting things organised and also working on some new projects.
[00:00:53.10] - Gordon
Very good. All right, let's get straight into our topics. Would you like to go first or shall I?
[00:00:58.10] - Taylor
I'll go first this week.
[00:00:59.07] - Gordon
Off you go.
[00:01:00.00] - Taylor
So this week I want to talk about a... It's called an ambient dashboard. Some people know them as home dashboards or TVs on the wall dashboard, magic mirrors. And the idea is you essentially have or you take a TV, a lot of people turn them vertical, and you put things like your calendar on there. You put the date and time. And it's essentially an interactive, to a point, display that can show you anything you want, really. In the past, a lot of people use them for calendars, for to-do lists, grocery lists. And I've always wanted to do this because I just think it's really useful. I have so much data to me from my home and from all of the tools that I use for business and personal. And I decided I'm going to do it. So I ordered a Fire TV stick and so you run a set up kiosk mode, which is essentially a way to display a web page and just that's all it does. There's no browser bar, you can't see anything, it just loads and it looks a bit like an app.
[00:02:14.27] - Taylor
A lot of people use it in things like sports clubs where you go in and it will show you the upcoming timetable or if there's any notices and it looks like it's on some sort of PowerPoint, essentially. And it's the same idea. And I've been setting up my own dashboard to be able to show my upcoming calendar events. So if I've got meetings or if I've got playing tennis or squash, it has the time I need to leave and how long the traffic will take. It has things like my heating, so it shows me all of the heating in the flat, but also it shows me the current temperature and also if it is heating and what the target temperature is; the humidity, so I can monitor that. Then things like my activity rings and if my washing machine is on, it will have a little status that says "32 minutes," and it means I know, "okay, cool, the washing machine is going to be done in 32 minutes." If the door is unlocked, again, it's good to know. I can see at a glance. It's basically just something there that I don't have to touch. It automatically updates in the background for me, but I can keep tabs on things without actually having to have things open on my computer, having to keep checking my phone, having to be sent notifications.
[00:03:30.28] - Taylor
I can see it from anywhere in the living room, really. And again, it's one of those things you can just set up, look at a glance when you need it. And then when I leave the flat, I have an automation up to just turn the TV off and the fire stick. And then when I come home, it will relaunch and it will be there ready when I need it.
[00:03:51.20] - Gordon
It's like an up to date whiteboard, really, isn't it? Where you can make notes and things that are important that are coming up, but it's automated. It does it for you and it updates itself. Why did you decide to write your own application or web page for this rather than, for example, creating a home assistant dashboard and just pointing at that?
[00:04:15.22] - Taylor
Yeah, so a lot of people have done this and they use a Home Assistant dashboard. The reason I created my own page and a pull in from Home Assistant was because I wanted to be able to add other integrations. I wanted to be able to add things from ClickUp; things from any API, essentially, I can pull data from; anything from my phone; any of the services and tools that I use. So for example, there's a really good app called parcel, which allows you to track the status of all your parcels that you've been delivered, and they actually have an API available. Now, you could integrate this into Home Assistant. You can pretty much integrate most APIs via webhooks and things like that. However, the UI is a bit clunky. You're limited to the widgets and the UIs that they have. Everything has to be put on a grid. And because I can code, because I want to have more control over where everything is displayed, being able to pull in from a travel time API and being able to completely change the entire screen so that if I'm still at home and I need to leave and it's going to take 10 minutes and there's currently eight minutes until the event, well, I can take the whole screen and just show a big red, you need to leave, which you just can't do with these other services.
[00:05:40.08] - Taylor
There's other services rather than Home Assistant that do these things. And again, they're more geared to people that can't code or don't want to. But for me, I wanted to have full control, be able to integrate with anything I wanted and be able to control what displays - I can have things on the weekend show that don't need to be shown during the week or vice versa. And so for me, being able to have full control was the biggest upside.
[00:06:06.23] - Gordon
That's very good. And have you got a way, I guess not easily, to use a link so that you can go to another page and see other data? Is there a way to set that up? Maybe you can trigger it using your voice or something.
[00:06:25.01] - Taylor
So I could send triggers from other places. Again, it's just sending a web hook. So if you had, because it's a web page, if you had your page listening for a certain endpoint and you then trigger it from anywhere, from your phone, from a button that you then trigger an endpoint to, you could do that. You could have it on a Timer, so you could say every five minutes, change the screen, and you could then have a whole page for your finances. If you've got Stripe payments and you've got a product that you can see real time data, you could see orders come in. There is also, you can use the remote. It is essentially a browser, so you can navigate it and you click on buttons. The experience is limited. Essentially, I have a keyboard with the left and right arrow keys and the enter button. So, I could add buttons that I could press and it would then toggle and I could manually do it. But yeah, there's lots of different ways I could do it if I wanted to.
[00:07:30.07] - Gordon
I mean, that sounds like a really good use case for a touch screen, doesn't it?
[00:07:35.11] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:07:35.26] - Gordon
Being able to have this display and then being able to touch on it to see other things.
[00:07:41.05] - Taylor
I mean, a lot of this was I had a spare TV that I didn't need anymore and I want to make use of it. And I also always wanted to have this dashboard always on available for me. So I just made use of what I've got. And obviously, if you're going to do it from scratch, then yeah, you probably would buy a better TV. I've had to hack my way around to be able to turn the TV on and off with a smart plug because it doesn't detect the firestick turning on and off automatically. But whatever you've got, you make use of it.
[00:08:14.26] - Gordon
Yeah, of course. That's really useful. And I look forward to seeing the progress of it and how it changes over time.
[00:08:22.25] - Taylor
And the nice thing, because it's a website, I can do all the development on my computer and I can actually preview it in my computer before having to push the changes. So once you push the changes, it goes to the live site, but I can see all the changes on my computer.
[00:08:38.17] - Gordon
And I'm guessing you could also view the page on your computer or your phone wherever you happen to be as well, which is quite cool. That's really good. Anything else you want to say on that?
[00:08:49.26] - Taylor
I don't think so. I got the idea from people that have posted on social media. Our friend Marc also had one for his business where he had lots of metrics. His were more business-focused because they were in the office. But I love the idea of them to look up and see things that were updating in real-time and live.
[00:09:09.16] - Gordon
Very good. So my topic today, we're going to talk about Blackpool a little bit more. I went to Blackpool last week on the Wednesday, and the first day of the conference was the Thursday. So it was Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So a day longer than it has been in the past. And these days are taken up of getting up for breakfast. I was getting up about 10 past 8-ish, down for breakfast with everyone else. We had a long table for the whole of our group, which was really nice. We could just sit down and have breakfast, discuss what we were going to be doing that day, and then go and get ready to leave. And then we were heading up to the winter gardens, and there were talks, there were lectures, they were not the talks, lectures. They were shows. There were a lot of people selling magic, things that they'd come up with. A lot of people, about 5,000 magicians with multiple things happening at the same time. So you had to pick and choose. I was a VIP. I paid extra to be a VIP, as did all of our group, which meant that we basically got to go into lectures and things 10 minutes before everyone else who wasn't a VIP.
[00:10:33.26] - Gordon
So we were pretty much guaranteed a seat for any lecture we wanted to go to, which it was about £90 more to get that. But the benefit was that we could be sitting down chatting and go, "oh, look at the time we got to go. We got the lecture in 20 minutes." And just be able to walk straight in without queuing and walking past this huge long queue. For some of them, they were really, really big. And then in the evenings, there were shows. There were, again, a selection of shows you could go to. And then the main show in the theatre, which they had two sittings, an early one and a later one. And then back to the hotel to have drinks and getting to bed really late because you're chatting with people, you're talking magic, you're talking about what happened during that day, showing people what you've got, showing things that you've learnt, not getting to bed until about four o'clock in the morning, getting up at eight o'clock in the morning to go for breakfast, and so it continues. So my sleep is very much in debit at the moment, and I'm still recovering even now, even though it was nearly a week ago.
[00:11:47.00] - Gordon
But yeah, your body gets a bit bombarded with weird eating times, lots of alcohol, which I don't normally do, but I was having lots of Bacardi and cokes and Bailey's when I didn't want to have a big drink. So yeah, I had a lovely, lovely time. But the main takeaway for what I want to talk about today is taking action. We've spoken about this before, but you come away from these events with lots of ideas, lots of new things to play with, lots of ways that you can improve your business. And if you just let them sit there and do nothing, then you are wasting an opportunity. You want to start using what you've learnt. You want to start talking to people that you've spoken to, make contact with them. If you've said you're going to send them something or you're going to talk to them about something, do it. Put it in your diary. Make sure... I can never get that word. Diaryise? Put it in your diary.
[00:12:52.16] - Taylor
Diarise.
[00:12:53.11] - Gordon
That's the word. Diarise. A meeting with them. Make sure you get it in the diary. Make sure you follow up. If you have made contacts and networking for a product or a service or something like that, get in contact with them, follow up. It's this time now where you look at it and you go, "Do you know what? I'm really tired. I had pretty much a week off work," except it's not, obviously, because it's part of work, but you've had a week out of the office. And now you feel like, "Do you know what? I just I want to relax and do something different and not think about it." And by the time you come back to thinking about it, several months have passed. And sometimes the iron that was hot is now stone cold, and it's past the point when you need to actually do something. So make sure you come away, make a list of points that you need to look at, things you need to do, and then just work your way through them. Otherwise, as I said, you've got lots of missed opportunities, and sometimes you will have defeated the reason for going.
[00:14:06.02] - Gordon
We have this with WordCamp. It's quite a tiring experience, but it's a lot of fun, and you come away with lots of great ideas. But unless you take action on them, you forget them. You maybe don't do what you need to do to push your business forward or to make your service better or to improve something that you're already doing, a process maybe. So, yeah, it's a really important point. What do you think?
[00:14:37.09] - Taylor
Yeah, I think it's definitely important, and it's also important to make notes at the time. Having to try and hold on to those thoughts and then remember them later when you go, "Oh, what was that great idea I had?" It's also going prepared, making sure you're prepared when you go. And so making sure you've got a place to put all your notes. Do you know where you need to put them? How are you going to open it up when you've had a couple of drinks and you can easily write down that idea? Whether it's a voice note, whether it's something on your phone, whether you just send yourself an email. Make sure you know what that is because you don't want to be in the moment and go, "Where do I put this?" And then you put it in one place, and the next time you come to have an idea, you put it in another place because you just pulled to the closest thing you've got, whether it's a napkin or whatever.
[00:15:27.11] - Gordon
Yeah, it's good. It's about having a process again, isn't it? Process for making notes on things to improve. We've got our WordCamp coming up soon. I think it's June. And that is... I've got two... We've got two... No, you've got one. Conventions before that, which we'll tell you about another time. I've got two, and then I've got that one as well. So that's going to be four that I'm going to this year, that I've got planned anyway. So that's going to be a good time for us. We need to plan our travel for that. But it's time where you quite often have a drink, let your hair down, as it were, which is, again, it's part of the process. It's part of the experience. But yes, I had a great time. But the takeaway for me, and the point I wanted to make is make sure to take action with anything that you've learnt or have bought or a contact that you've made. Otherwise, you're going to lose that opportunity. That's everything for me.
[00:16:29.16] - Taylor
And me as well.
[00:16:30.10] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. As always, if you're on YouTube, please like, share, subscribe, and leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you.
[00:16:38.11] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.
[00:16:43.11] - Gordon
And if you would prefer to listen to us, we're on all the major podcast platforms. Just ask your podcast provider or smart speaker to play "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," and you'll get the latest episode. We will be back with you next week at 1pm on Friday. Until then, my name is Gordon, and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:17:29.14] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:17:29.26] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:17:29.28] - Taylor
Bye.
