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Stratum, a New Field Data Recording Application - Ep 172
281 Plays3 years ago
Today we talk with Cora Woolsey about how and why she set out to founded an archeological technology company. She tells us the ins and outs of starting the business, her motivations for building new software, and gives us details about the process.
For rough transcripts of this episode go to www.archpodnet.com/archaeotech/172
Transcripts
- Segment 1
- Segment 2
- Segment 3
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- Chris Webster
- Twitter: @archeowebby
- Email: chris@archaeologypodcastnetwork.com
- Paul Zimmerman
- Twitter: @lugal
- Email: paul@lugal.com
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello and welcome to the Archaeotech Podcast, Episode 172. I'm your host, Chris Webster, with my co-host, Paul Zimmerman. Today we talk to Dr. Cora Woolsey, the founder of Archaeosoft and creator of the field data collection application Stratum.
Hosts' Current Lives and Activities
00:00:21
Speaker
Let's get to it.
00:00:24
Speaker
All right, welcome from the high desert of, well, not so high as Reno, but the desert of Quartzsite, Arizona. Paul, how's it going?
00:00:31
Speaker
hits going okay. I've been really busy the last week or so helping a friend with a non-archaeological project, but this friend reached out to me because he's an archaeologist himself and we worked on projects together since 1994. The stuff that I'm doing now is a lot of GIS and a lot of computer stuff and it ticks all the boxes of things I've been doing forever. So I'm busy with that.
00:00:56
Speaker
How's Arizona treating you? Not too bad. We came out here for an RVing event in Lake Havasu City a couple of weeks ago. And then a lot of people were coming down to court site because there's a big RV show down here. There's probably thousands of RVs out here in the desert. It's kind of thinned out now, but a lot of people down here just to go to the show and it's kind of their annual get together kind of thing. And we'd never been here and we're fully self-contained in our RV. So we figured let's go down and stretch the legs on the solar and the other tanks and stuff a bit more and see how it goes.
00:01:25
Speaker
Yeah. So here we are. And we're going to be here for a little while longer. So it's all fun. Awesome. And I will give an update, hopefully in like a month or so, for those of you that are also digital nomads or remote workers or whatever you're doing, I should have my Starlink internet satellite dish, the version two, not gen two of version one, but version two, the square one that doesn't hold as many cats. Look that up if you don't know what I'm talking about.
00:01:50
Speaker
And apparently the dishes are self-heated and the cats have been sitting on them. So there you go, in the winter. But anyway, I'm getting the square one. That's the new generation. Pulls less power if you're on solar like we are, which is nice. And it has a smaller footprint and a smaller dish. So all that is really cool. But I should get that mid-February 2022 as you're listening to this in real time and have a little bit of a digital nomad report on that. So where are you going to keep the cats?
00:02:17
Speaker
I know, right? Where are the cats going to go?
Meet Dr. Cora Woolsey and Archaeosoft
00:02:20
Speaker
Speaking of, I guess, doing things remotely and outside and all those things, we have a special guest today. She's going to talk about her software and her company, and Cora Woolsey. Welcome to the show.
00:02:35
Speaker
Hello, how are you? Good, good. So we put probably Stratum in the title and Archaeosoft is the name of your company, but let's just talk right off the bat. Tell us a little about yourself. Where do you come from? What brings you to archaeology and digital recording and all that? Okay. Well, myself, let's see. So I have a doctorate in archaeology.
00:02:56
Speaker
So I kind of got started a bit late in life on being an academic and being an archaeologist. And so because of that, I had a whole bunch of stuff that kind of happened earlier. And it was hard for me not to bring all that into archaeology.
00:03:14
Speaker
So when I started doing archaeology, I kept kind of seeing these places where we could improve efficiencies, kind of bring in other methodologies, just make it a little bit more rounded and solve problems. And so that's caused me a little bit of trouble in my archaeological career, because sometimes people don't really want to bring in other disciplines or other methodologies.
00:03:40
Speaker
But it's also really been helpful to kind of come at everything from like a fresh approach and, or I try to anyway, I try to come at everything kind of, I guess, just thinking outside the box as much as I can. And so, so after I graduated with my PhD, I really didn't know where I was going to go. I thought I was just going to kind of do what you do, get a job at a university or do cultural resource management, whatever. And that didn't really happen.
00:04:08
Speaker
because my husband works at St. Thomas University here in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. And I mean, this is a common problem for academic couples. Like we couldn't really go anywhere because of course getting a job like that, that's sort of like winning the lottery. So yeah. Yeah. So I had to kind of scramble to find something here in Fredericton and it's a small town. There just isn't a lot going on for archeology.
The Journey of Archaeosoft and Stratum
00:04:37
Speaker
So yeah, I basically applied for the one professor job that came up and didn't get it. So I started taking on these postdocs that people were just, they just needed general researchers. And I started just like pulling in all of this new kind of methodologies and like, I was working on digital technologies in the health sector and other places. And I just got this idea that we could take all of this and just kind of wholesale apply it to archaeology.
00:05:04
Speaker
So I got this postdoc two years ago to work specifically on that in the computer science faculty at the University of New Brunswick. And it's been really great. So I've had a chance to just really develop this idea and make a company. So it's been fantastic.
00:05:24
Speaker
Nice. Okay, great. Well, let's talk about that company a little bit, Archaeosoft, and then we'll get into the software. When did you start Archaeosoft? And I guess if you were to tell us your mission statement and vision for this company, what is it? Okay, so I started Archaeosoft last year in June.
00:05:42
Speaker
I believe it was created. Oh no, it was a little earlier than that. I had gone through an accelerator, which was a real trip. Yeah, I'd never been through one before and I had to cram a lot of stuff into my poor, overworked brain really fast.
00:05:58
Speaker
But as part of that, I created a company and so that was pretty great. The company was created to basically get this software developed that I wanted to develop for archaeologists in the field.
00:06:14
Speaker
a ton of research on whether this was something people wanted. And it turns out this was basically like a unicorn. Like this is what they call it in the startup world where basically everyone is crying out for something and they, you know, they're already trying to implement it, but it's not working super well. And so, and so if you bring along the right product, there's a high
00:06:37
Speaker
uptake or hopefully there's a high uptake. So I was really encouraged by a lot of people to get this company started right now, get development started right now. So we started the company to develop that software. Of course, I'll never be happy with just one project, so eventually it'll probably go elsewhere. But for now, that's what it is. That's what we do. We develop a product called Stratum.
00:07:03
Speaker
Okay. Awesome. All right. Well, let's talk about Stratum because I'm pretty excited to talk about this. We've looked at your website and I have been in the, I guess, getting archaeologists to go digital space for probably 10 years now in various capacities with various companies, including my own and other people's. And it's definitely an uphill battle. So I'm interested in
00:07:29
Speaker
Well, we're going to talk about Stratum over the course of this podcast, but one of the things I want to talk to you about first is you did user, I guess, questionnaires, right? You talk to people who, not user, but people who could be users of this software and ask them, as you said, like, what is, you know, is this, is this a space that's needed? I'm curious as to
00:07:51
Speaker
why they said yes, only because there seems to be other things on the market, even from some of the commonly available stuff like Esri's collector and things like that, which I definitely have a lot of opinions on. But what were some of the things that the feedback that you got where people said, yeah, what's available now is not
Technical Challenges and Solutions
00:08:07
Speaker
working. So we need this. That's what I'm curious about.
00:08:10
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So, so that was a really interesting experience. And I think I went into it kind of like assuming like what you, you were just saying that people are already using stuff and they're just not going to like, we would be kind of adding something else to an existing market. But what I found and this really blew my mind was that people are using other things like they're, they're using S3 collector and survey one, two, three. And a Venza is like a huge one.
00:08:40
Speaker
But the issues that people are having, so those softwares work really well, and you could never really compete with them because they have such a huge suite of things that kind of go along with them. But what I found people were experiencing was that on the back end, there's just a ton of work you still have to do. And there's never a state, it seems like, where these softwares really meet the specific requirements of archaeologists.
00:09:08
Speaker
So like for instance, I heard that people loved that they could customize survey one, two, three. So they put a lot of work into customizing it and that was great. They were able to sort of capture the fields that they wanted to capture, but then they'd still have to organize all that data when they would get back to the office. And so you'd still have this situation
00:09:30
Speaker
where you would get you'd get back to your hotel room or whatever, and you'd be spending until nine or 10 at night organizing the data that you got. And this is a place where archaeologists are just hurting, because it was okay when our field seasons were from like May to
00:09:48
Speaker
October. But that's just not the way it is anymore. And the two partners who have come on as investors and partners in the company, they have 12 month field seasons now. And they don't have time to be organizing this. They don't have a season where they just put in huge long hours and then
00:10:08
Speaker
you know, when they're done, they get lots of time to spend with their families or whatever. And that kind of makes it worth it for them. It's just not like that anymore. So what archaeologists really are hurting for is a software that kind of gets at what our specific requirements are. And those, those are like reporting specifically, they're reporting and they're mapping and putting out the right kind of map. So, you know, it's awesome having the ability to customize, but
00:10:35
Speaker
We have specific map types that we need over and over and over again. So having that and then on the other side of it, going back to the office and being able to just have that output that works for what we're trying to do. So a huge thing that I wanted to put into this was automatically generated reports.
00:10:58
Speaker
So you have your artifact catalog just ready to go. There's no reason that can't be already done for you. And your photo catalog, so easy. That stuff is so easy. It's just that a lot of these softwares just don't think to make them because they're not on the ground archeologists. Yeah. Well, this is a great point to pause a little bit and talk about some of the stuff you were talking about because I have so many questions.
00:11:28
Speaker
So first off, mapping. I got a question on that. So I've seen mapping tackled before on basically non-submeter GPS type things like Trimbles and other type devices that will do the mapping on there where you can produce shapefiles. I've seen people try to do this on tablets. I actually use a tablet-based program called TouchGIS, which happens to work fairly well to actually produce shapefiles, allow you to do those feature classes and stuff like that.
00:11:56
Speaker
I'm curious as to what your guys' capabilities are, because this is a FileMaker-based program, right? Okay. That's a whole can of worms. Yeah. I'm just curious about the can of worms you want to talk about. Yeah. I love talking about cans of worms. It's a complex problem.
00:12:15
Speaker
It is. Okay, so there's a couple things there. So first of all, yeah, FileMaker cannot handle that. So we're basically using FileMaker right now just as a database. So not as an interface. Now, the mapping part is tough. So we struggled with it for quite a long time. If we were going to do online mapping, that's not as hard because there's all kinds of tools that already exist. You can just integrate them pretty easily.
00:12:42
Speaker
Sure. It's the online part that's hard. Well, so I don't know what it's like where you are, but here, there are whole swaths of our province that aren't covered by anything. Personally, I've made the mistake before of
00:12:58
Speaker
having all of the data I was going to need on a cell phone and then getting somewhere and being like, Oh my God, I don't even know where the project is because I can't, I, so having to like drive a hundred miles to where there was cell phone coverage just to retrieve the damn numbers that I could put on my GPS.
00:13:17
Speaker
So offline is super duper important. And so just to start from there. And then we want to make use of kind of what's out there, but we don't want to be nuts about it. We don't want to have a software that's going to overload anybody's devices.
00:13:39
Speaker
And it needs to kind of be integrated into all these other things. And that's
Stratum's Target Audience and Features
00:13:44
Speaker
an issue. It turns out that's an issue. So if you just have something like AVENZA, well, you know, that does one thing. That program does one thing really, really well.
00:13:54
Speaker
But if you try and take that and integrate it into a bunch of other things, you're going to run into problems. So we would like to do something like what Avenza does, but we're not going to pretend to be Avenza. We can't do that as well. So finding where that line is so that our software doesn't get too big. And this is kind of an exploration, can we say, about what we can get away with. A lot's going to get revealed, I think, in the field testing phase, which is coming up.
00:14:23
Speaker
So yeah, so I don't know if that answered exactly what you were asking but No, it's getting there. It's definitely getting there. It's a whole thing. It really is. Yeah. Yeah And here's the other thing is that like there are gonna be people who who want GIS keep it like our GIS capability and that's cool We can't replace our GIS. That's that's an amazing software that everyone is
00:14:49
Speaker
who wants it and needs it should have access to. But what we can do is we can create a mapping software that knows what archaeologists basically want, don't have a bunch of bells and whistles, and will generate a map
00:15:05
Speaker
fairly easily from the data that you collect that is going to meet regulatory requirements. So if you want to use ArcGIS, yes, do it. Like, you know, absolutely add that to your suite of tools. But I mean, I talked to a lot of people that all they wanted was just Google Earth that worked a little better than Google Earth and that would make a map that they could hand in with a report and that's it. So.
00:15:29
Speaker
Theoretically, you could set all of that up. You could have a settings place for exactly what you want the map to look like, and then it just puts out an image. You're done. You don't have to go to ArcGIS if you don't have time or whatever.
00:15:47
Speaker
All right. Well, that is a great place to take a break. We have so many more questions for you. Paul's little digital hand was raising just before I said this. So, I mean, we are just like chomping at the bit because we love talking about this stuff. Not that we want to grill you. We just love talking about this stuff. Well, I do too. Probably a little of both. So. There you go. All right. So let's take a break and we'll pick this up on the other side back in a minute.
00:16:10
Speaker
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00:16:29
Speaker
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Future Plans and Commercialization
00:16:49
Speaker
Hi, welcome back to The Architect Podcast, episode 172. Today, we're talking to Cora Woolsey about her company, Archeo Soft, and her product, her software Stratum. And Cora, as you were explaining what the problems you were trying to solve with the software dawned on me, I wasn't entirely clear. Maybe you could explain this for me and our listeners. Who is intended to use the software? Is it going to be something that you want in the hands of every field tech?
00:17:16
Speaker
It's supposed to be in the hands of project managers. How is this supposed to be used actually in the field? Yeah, that's an awesome question. So I mean, originally I thought, oh, this will be something everybody can use and we'll design it for every user in mind. So doing that customer discovery that I had done, so like talking to people about what they needed, I quickly realized there was a difference between field techs and project managers, for instance.
00:17:43
Speaker
and that they were going to need really different things. So I'd like to have a version for everybody, but this is really geared towards project managers and people who are, I guess, in supervising projects. So not just project managers, but people who are authorized to take the notes and authorized to change notes that someone else has taken, that kind of thing.
00:18:05
Speaker
But I wanted to just mention that one thing that that customer discovery revealed was that FieldText are a dramatically underutilized source of note taking. So now there's a reason why we don't always give FieldText the chance to take notes. We need specific information and, you know, like we, like we need to take good, really good notes that, that are scientifically valid and so on. And so if we kind of just give it to,
00:18:33
Speaker
somebody who doesn't necessarily have that basis yet. That's just not doing the best archaeology. But field text can take notes. They can be given tasks to kind of write down and keep track of.
00:18:49
Speaker
without having to take all the notes. So one thing that I was really hoping to do, so a big part of this software is that you have a project that you create or whatever, others can link to your project. So you have your project manager and then your supervisors and they all have access, they're all taking their own data on whatever.
00:19:11
Speaker
And then you can have, this is my vision for it anyway, it's not developed yet, but you can have field text that can also link to projects and you can select what kinds of data they can take. So for instance, if you want them to record levels, depths,
00:19:28
Speaker
But you don't necessarily want them describing the stratigraphy itself. Well, you know, that's like, that's a task that you take off your own roster. So that kind of thing can dramatically reduce the amount of work that supervisors have to do. And one thing that I, I mean, I've seen this myself and I talk to people who experience this kind of all the time is that you often have one person who's supposed to take notes for a whole site and you'll have your, your crew just kind of sitting around.
00:19:54
Speaker
waiting for you to finish up sometimes. And that's not cool. Those field techs can be helping you with that process.
00:20:04
Speaker
you know, like something like depth is labor intensive. Like if you take depths on, you know, a hundred test pits in a day, that's, that's pretty labor intensive. So if you can hand that off to somebody who can at the same time be learning as they're using the software, I mean, that's a win-win. Yeah, no, absolutely. I'd certainly agree with that. That, uh,
00:20:24
Speaker
If we're using these tools to be more efficient in the field and to be better recorders of this inherently destructive process, it makes sense to meet out tasks to the various individuals in the most efficient manner so you can get that data recorded as properly and as intensely as adequate as you can. I have a follow-up question. I don't know if you've tackled this yet, but especially if you start handing out
00:20:52
Speaker
you know, reduce task sets on your tablets that go to the field tax. You then have an issue of of syncing all that data together. Have you started to attack the problem of syncing data into a common database? Well, I mean, only conceptually. So like, I mean, there is a database that everyone works on. And like that one is really a development problem and and trying to just work out the logistics and make the data go in the right place. And that's not really my specialty.
00:21:22
Speaker
My specialty is designing the database and figuring out what needs to be automated and stuff. But yeah, that has to happen. And this is another problem with things like Collector and Survey123 is that you often find these syncing problems. So absolutely that needs to be fixed.
00:21:45
Speaker
If we can't fix it, then we should just scrap our software because that's the whole point is to sync that stuff. So yeah, it may come to that. We'll see. Well, you actually raised another issue there, too, that you're doing one part of the development. Who all do you have involved in this and what kinds of how are the tasks broken up between, you know, front end development, database development, overall product strategy and so on?
00:22:09
Speaker
Well, I have an amazing team, so I was very lucky to find a developer who's just really great at problem solving. So his name is Jeff Mundy and he's also at the University of New Brunswick. His specialty is gaming and basically
00:22:25
Speaker
gaming everything. So he's done a whole bunch of things like creating kind of scenarios that are basically games, but so people can train within those scenarios. So he created one for nurses, I think, who are in training.
00:22:41
Speaker
His whole thing is these 3D worlds, virtual reality, all the stuff. And so this has really stretched him because he's had to look at databases, which is a whole world. I did not realize this, but databases is like in the digital, like not just in the data collection world, but in the designing them, like it's a whole thing. And there are people who specialize in databases.
00:23:07
Speaker
he had to work very hard to get up on that. And then the mapping, like that's, as you know, there are a lot of specializations within mapping. So trying to get up on that, I think was a challenge for him and his team. And then all this other stuff where we had to, we had to really sort through, like I have this idea about how the data should be collected and I
00:23:27
Speaker
I made a prototype in FileMaker Pro to kind of show how that was supposed to happen, but it turns out that doesn't translate super easily to the world of development. So having to kind of figure out all that has been
00:23:44
Speaker
It's been a real challenge for Jeff, but he's incredibly versatile and he's really good at, he teaches at UNB, so he's able to kind of snag promising students and bring them in. And so he's been able to bring in the kind of expertise that we need to make it happen. But not going to lie, there were some hiccups, so just getting the mapping up and running took a while.
00:24:07
Speaker
I can imagine. Speaking of some of the other things you guys are doing, in the first segment, you mentioned wanting to have... I think terminology is a little different up there, but we'll just talk about this. You mentioned wanting to have export reports, basically, of some sort. You have artifact tables. You want to be able to just produce that in a usable format.
00:24:29
Speaker
In my experience with working with different clients that have different expectations, when you try to dictate and say, okay, when you collect this, we're going to export it this way, it seems like nine times out of 10, each client is going to be like, yeah, but I want this one little thing to be different.
00:24:45
Speaker
I'm wondering how you're handling that. Are you coding exports for clients? Are you saying this is how we export? And when you buy this product, this is what you get, which is there's nothing wrong with that because it'd be nice if everybody came to some kind of a standard. Or do you have some sort of engine where they can sort of build their own export? What's what you're handling in that situation?
00:25:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, again, great question. So I mean, you need to give the users the options that are going to allow them to use it the way they're going to need to use it. So we want to make these reports, but we also recognize we need to give them the ability to export to a number of formats. So like, you know, the
00:25:27
Speaker
all of these tables that we're going to be using need to be exportable as Excel spreadsheets. Like that's just, that's non-negotiable. And then, you know, if people are doing mapping, they need to have the ability to get that into some kind of GIS program. So yeah, and it turns out that that's actually not as easy as I thought it was to sort of turn these things into, into these different file formats. But
00:25:51
Speaker
You know, I mean, this is one of the things I really like about my team that I have is that like we, they tell me these things. They say, okay, exporting, exporting things is not that easy. And, and can you live without it? And, you know, and I will say, well, I'll tell you what I.
00:26:10
Speaker
can live without when it comes up, but this one is one I can't live without. And so then they will just kind of work on trying to make it happen. So they're, they're, they've been really good about understanding that I, I know what I want and I'm not going to budge on it. And then, but I will budge where, where we can. So yeah, it's like a good negotiation there, I guess, but, but absolutely like the, the ability for users to, to use this data the way they need to, that's non-negotiable.
00:26:40
Speaker
Okay, nice. Paul? I'm actually kind of curious about your process then in terms of the software development because we've all been involved in software development, all three of us, and having that pick list of these are features that are non-negotiable, these are things that I'd like to have, how you roll them out, how you decide which ones are more important or more critically need to be done now than other ones. What's your roadmap look like?
00:27:08
Speaker
Oh man, it is all over the place. So let's see how best to answer that. And I don't mean the specifics of like, you don't have to go into all the planned features. I mean, or how do you develop that roadmap and how do you, how do you work through that with your team? Well,
00:27:23
Speaker
I mean, let me just start by saying that I'm not an easy person to work with all the time. So I have a pretty strong personality and Jeff has been just wonderful about kind of just accommodating that right from the beginning.
00:27:39
Speaker
But so I guess basically what our process is, is I build a prototype and they look at the prototype, they're responsible for looking at the prototype and reproducing it. And a lot of times I realize they're not actually doing that. They've decided to go in another direction. And I'm taking a different approach with it than I have in the past where I've just, I've just been waiting to see what happens. I mean, maybe they come up with stuff that's better than what I came up with. And sometimes that has definitely been the case.
00:28:09
Speaker
And sometimes it hasn't. So for instance, after this interview, I have to go and have like basically an all nighter where we figure out some of these tables that they left till the very end because they didn't think they were important. So that kind of thing, I mean, they've had tremendous patience with me and I try to make sure I always have patience with them and what they're talking about and what their issues are with what's going on. And we just talk a lot. So we show each other stuff a lot and
00:28:39
Speaker
They tell me about what their world is like and I tell them about what the archaeology world is like. I think one of the first times I went down the road of official software development, not just some offhand form building using a form building application, which that was my first foray into things.
00:28:57
Speaker
When I went into real software development, we had an Indian software development company. And I was basically up at one, two o'clock in the morning, many nights out of many, many days, teaching them archaeology so they could understand what we're trying to do. And I did the same thing you were doing. I would put together prototypes using this. I found an app that allowed me to mock up screens and different flows and things in ways I wanted to see them, which was pretty cool.
00:29:23
Speaker
And we'd basically try to translate that. They're working on database stuff. So I totally understand where you're coming from here. This is speaking, giving me PTSD on that little project. But I'm wondering, in the last few minutes of this segment, where do you think you guys are in your development cycle? I know you're using this in the field, like real data collection coming up here shortly in the summertime.
00:29:48
Speaker
But where are you in your development process? Would you say like a version one was we're selling this to people and they're using it out in the field You know, would you say you're a point five point six point four? Okay, so I'm terrible with tech release of terminology so I'm gonna steer clear that but
00:30:11
Speaker
Okay. So here's where we are. We have developed a prototype, but the prototype is kind of an ongoing work of art. And so we are about to finish our quote unquote field ready version.
00:30:27
Speaker
So that means that somebody could conceivably put it on a tablet and take it into the field and conceivably collect data. Would I say it's actually ready? No, I would not, but we're going to take the next little while to really tighten it up in preparation for the field season starting in April.
00:30:45
Speaker
And so at that point, real archaeologists are going to take this thing and collect real data and they're going to expect real results. And I'm really afraid of this. Just, you know, full disclosure.
00:31:01
Speaker
I'm dreading this. So because, oh my gosh, the last thing I want to do is impact anyone's project with my terrible software. It's not going to be terrible though. It's going to be great. So they take it out in the field. They get heavily supported because it's definitely going to have issues. And we, we update it kind of in real time because, you know, we have to offer that kind of support to archeologists because it's just, you can't, you can't just not collect the data.
00:31:29
Speaker
And after this, so this field testing should last for four months, I'm going to say. And at the end of it, we're going to have a ton of data. We're going to analyze it and we're going to change what we need to change and update it, get a really amazing graphic designer to come in and fancy it up.
00:31:50
Speaker
And then we're on to the commercial version. So we are ready to have early adopters. I'm going to say as early as July, but that's going to be a little bit inconvenient for a lot of people because they're going to want it from the beginning of their field season. But we may be looking for early adopters, but then that commercial version we're expecting will be ready for the field season in 2023.
00:32:14
Speaker
Okay. Well, we're going to close out this segment, but I'll just tell you one thing that I heard time and time again, when I had an office in Reno, Nevada in a coworking facility, most of the people there, I was like the only archeologist as they would expect, but most of the people there were, you know, remote working software developers or working on their own projects in various ways. And there was always a mantra that said, if you wait until your version one is ready to release it, then you waited too long.
00:32:43
Speaker
Cause it's never ready. I just got this lecture from my developer today. He's experienced. He seems to know what he's talking about. That's right. That's right. All right. Well, on that note, let's take a break and we'll come back and wrap up this discussion about archaeo soft and stratum with Cora Woolsey back in a minute.
00:33:09
Speaker
Welcome back to the Archaeotech podcast, episode 172. And we are talking with Cora Woolsey of Archaeosoft about her product Stratum, a field data recording software. And speaking of the field aspect of that, you've mentioned going into some field trials here in April. How did you... Well, to be blunt about it, how did you find guinea pigs for this software?
00:33:31
Speaker
Was that a challenge? Did you get some pushback on that or were people jumping at the chance to try something new? I mean, that is no archaeologist ever, but I'm curious.
00:33:41
Speaker
Well, okay. I'm super lucky because some of the people who have been interested in this from before it was even a project have been really supportive. They're archaeologists. They're pretty big firms here in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and they have signed up. So they're going to be testing this thing. So one of those companies is Boreas Heritage in Nova Scotia.
00:34:05
Speaker
And they're a partner in the developments. They contributed some capital and they've been really supportive through this whole project. And so they have a crew, I'm not exactly sure how big it is, but at least 10 people and probably sometimes at least as big as 20. So that's going to be amazing. And they're one of these companies that works from, you know,
00:34:27
Speaker
probably january to december so april is when they're really gonna kick off and then the other partner slash investor slash archaeologist is colbert so colbert consulting is probably the well they are the biggest archaeology consulting firm here in new brenzwick
00:34:44
Speaker
And they sometimes have crews as big as 20 people as well. So we're going to have a good little kind of group giving us test data. And they, I mean, they're just super excited to have it. And I'm telling you, I have warned them. I have told them they're going to be growing pains. Some of those growing pains may feel more like broken bones.
00:35:03
Speaker
So, but they're, they are gung ho. So that's really exciting. And then the third, the third partner that we have in this is the province of New Brunswick. So, so they have an archeology branch and they have a, they have a crew of all First Nations people, indigenous people.
00:35:20
Speaker
And they have a contract with us to get this thing out there and get them using it. And so they're going to be, they have agreed to be our test subjects as well. So yeah, it's going to be amazing. It's also going to be really hectic.
00:35:35
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds like it. That point of the First Nations field crew is interesting because I was wondering, do you have any particular outreach in this reaching out to First Nations indigenous shareholders, stakeholders in the archaeology in your design of your software?
00:35:55
Speaker
Yeah, so that is a really big topic and concern at ArchioSoft. So we're all extremely committed to making sure that we don't create a software that reifies harmful archeological practices. And to me, like I see that as a danger with something like this. So technology can be incredibly uplifting.
00:36:22
Speaker
And it can also be incredibly harmful and lock people into harmful ways of doing things. So we're working right now to get as much input from Indigenous groups as we can, but this is a really slow process. And I knew it would be slow because, you know, for one thing, archaeology just isn't the top of most Indigenous groups list.
00:36:44
Speaker
And for another thing, in the software development business, we tend to think we need to move super fast. But that timescale just isn't really practical when you're trying to negotiate, get input, really include people.
00:37:02
Speaker
And so we're definitely finding it challenging, but we remain really committed to it because it has to happen. I'm not sure what it's like where you are, but in Canada, this is like a huge priority, is trying to bring Indigenous voices into various industries. And we've been trying to bring Indigenous voices into archaeology for a while with
00:37:26
Speaker
limited success, I would say. So we do have, you know, a lot of indigenous archaeologists now, but, you know, oftentimes they end up as professors, so they don't really have an impact on sort of the industrial side of archaeology. We have this crew that operates in New Brunswick that is First Nations, which is really, it's really great. I worked with them and it was quite an experience, very different from the archaeology I'm used to.
00:37:55
Speaker
But the issue there is that they had hoped that these groups would create kind of an environment for indigenous people to kind of start as text and gradually build themselves into archaeologists that could be permitted. But what's really happened is that they have stayed labor and they never have really moved on to the university setting.
00:38:19
Speaker
because of a lot of barriers. And so have they actually brought in indigenous voices? It's debatable. So we've certainly brought in a lot of indigenous voices that have been pissed off that they have to work such long hours. Like that's for sure. But like we need people who are changing policy and creating methodologies that we can follow.
00:38:44
Speaker
So trying to bring those voices in, we think we can do with this software if we can create these partnerships. And that's really the crux of it. So that's what we're working on right now. And it is going slow. Well, that's what everybody says. It's trying to improve our field is that those partnerships are the hardest thing to build. So I'm glad that you're baking that into the product and into the company.
00:39:10
Speaker
Well, I have a sort of related question, which is that ArcheoSoft is a female-led company. And if you look at our back catalog on ArcheoTech here, almost all of our guests have been male, even though I know that there are a lot of women and non-binary people who are doing very good work in things that we're interested in on this podcast, has
00:39:35
Speaker
being a female led company pose any particular challenges? Do you feel overlooked, dismissed in any way? Has it been problematic or has it not been an issue?
00:39:46
Speaker
No, we have not been overlooked, but let's not forget. Let's not forget we're at the beginning. So no, I would say that at the stage we're at being a woman led company is highly beneficial. Like we look good to all of the programs that are trying to promote diversity and you know, it's great. I really appreciate that those programs exist.
00:40:11
Speaker
But we haven't yet encountered kind of the next phase where we're trying to get people to implement this technology. And I don't know, to be perfectly honest, I don't know if it's going to be important to people or not. I have certainly found in archaeology, there have been times when being a woman
00:40:34
Speaker
was advantageous and there were times when it was definitely not. And so I don't know in some ways where we're at right now, where I'm at,
00:40:46
Speaker
Having made space in my life to create this is very much the result of having been shut out of certain places. And probably not just because I'm a woman, probably also because I have a kind of abrasive personality. But nevertheless, so where this software is right now probably could not have happened without my being a woman and without my having had some of those experiences that came from being a woman in archaeology.
00:41:13
Speaker
I know that's a really complicated answer to what you asked. It's a complicated topic. It really is. Sexism is not like second wave sexism anymore. You can't just qualify it the way you used to be able to. There's a lot of dynamics at play.
00:41:33
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that could be a podcast all on its own, I'm sure you're aware. Yeah, absolutely. For sure. For sure. And like I said, even where we certainly don't select on this podcast for cishet and males to be on the guests here, but the preponderance of people who've wanted to be here with us have been. And so,
00:41:54
Speaker
That is something that always just kind of itches in the back of my brain that, what are we doing wrong about this? How is our outreach not aligned with the world that we work in? Because we both work with very competent, very strong, very intelligent women, and it's not reflected here as much as it should be. So yeah, I'm glad to hear that in your case, it's been for the most part a positive.
00:42:20
Speaker
though I suspect that there's a lot to unpack in the prior experiences in the field and I'd like to help get you to where you are. Yeah, I think it's really interesting that you've had mostly male guests on your show. I think
00:42:36
Speaker
It is possible that women often feel like they will be vulnerable if they have too much to say. I think that they tend to have a lot to say, but if they say it publicly. I remember when I was still a PhD student and the site I was working on was a little bit sensitive.
00:42:55
Speaker
And I was giving a talk on it. I was really excited to give a talk. And they had asked me if I would do some radio interviews ahead of time to promote it. And I wouldn't. I just couldn't do it. I was very afraid to do that because I was afraid that I would say the wrong thing. And I think that women more than men maybe fear that, maybe fear saying the wrong thing in a public forum.
00:43:19
Speaker
And I think that might be something that maybe it is in other things, but in archaeology, I think that's a real thing that happens with women because they can get so attacked for the things that they say.
00:43:34
Speaker
That's been my experience anyway. I feel like that is almost directly tied to the other problem I can see. Because when Paul was saying that, we've had mostly men, I actually hadn't really thought about that too much, to be honest, which is my fault. I really should think about that a lot. But then when I think about how do we find our guests,
00:43:52
Speaker
Typically, I'm seeing news articles or papers in a journal and some headline or something like that strikes my interest and then I start reading the article. I don't even look who the author is until I'm interested in what I'm reading. Then I find that and it seems like
00:44:09
Speaker
I don't know, just based on the people we've had on here that nine times out of 10, it seems like it's a male author that has done that. And that's why we're contacting that person. Because we rarely get contacted by people that find us and say, oh yeah, can I come on your podcast? Just because
00:44:26
Speaker
Well, scientists in general aren't that forward with their doing that kind of thing, which is another problem in and of itself. So we're usually reaching out and saying, which is why I appreciate you reaching out back to me and saying, hey, I'm ready to talk about this now. Let's do an interview. That was fantastic. I love that forward, I guess, looking in and wanting to do this.
00:44:46
Speaker
Well, I really appreciate that you let me come on your show. And I think, I mean, I think that's really interesting. I think you're right that like a lot of times when we're looking for the experts and the people who can talk about a specific thing.
00:45:03
Speaker
Yeah, often they are males. And I think that the reason, this is going to maybe sound weird to some people, but I think the reason is that that worry about talking and saying the wrong thing starts at a project level, at a site level.
00:45:23
Speaker
And just the dialogue that you have with the people who are there and how relationships kind of play out. And then, and that's why you don't end up seeing women kind of calling themselves experts in various things. And just as a point of context, during the course of developing this, all three of the women who had started archaeo soft experienced massive, massive problems with male colleagues.
00:45:51
Speaker
And this is just, we just, we were just like, yep, this is just how it is. And we just had to support each other. And so right from the beginning in archaeo soft, we knew we had to kind of bake into it how to deal with that kind of thing. And that like, you know, harassment, you know, inappropriate stuff is just not tolerated. So yeah.
00:46:11
Speaker
Well, I feel like I should announce a conflict of interest here for me, but I also feel like I need to put you guys together because I've been consulting for the last five years with a company called WildNote and they did not start out in the archaeology space. They started out more in the biology space. In fact, none of the people that work there except for me as a consultant and my wife works for customer service are archaeologists. Everybody else is either developers or they work in some other space.
00:46:40
Speaker
I interviewed the founder there. Her name is Kristin and it's mostly a women-led company. There's a few male employees, but it's almost all women and they're in San Luis Obispo, California. They've been, like I said, in business for, I don't know, probably six years now, five or six years, give or take.
00:46:57
Speaker
they're still on the road and still doing things. But I feel like I should just put you guys together because you have similar outlooks and similar progressions and things like that. And maybe just talking to Kristin about being a CEO, a founder of a tech company.
00:47:16
Speaker
software and all that stuff. I would love that. Yeah. I've been hearing about wild nose. I haven't actually used it myself. I've been hearing about it. And I mean, people have such great things to say about it. So yeah, we don't actually see ourselves as a competitor.
00:47:30
Speaker
Yeah, you're right. And that's why I was hesitant to almost say that because in some aspects, you're doing similar things, you're targeting similar audience, but in other aspects, you're doing it in a different way. So it comes down to something I've always said, because I worked for another competitor before Wild Note and helped them develop out some stuff. And I'm like, it doesn't hurt this space to have more options because different
00:47:52
Speaker
areas around the world, around even our own countries are going to want to do things a little bit differently and have some different creative ways of wanting to do stuff. And to be honest, competition just makes better products. So that is common in every industry. The more players you have, the more those players step up their game and just make a better product for the end users. So I'm all for it, having more players in the space because it just makes the field better and makes our data recording better in the long run.
00:48:19
Speaker
Hmm. I mean, I agree. I agree with you. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I think that's about all the time we have in this podcast. I would love to have you back when you're ready to talk about and you've, you've recovered, you're in therapy from your first field session.
00:48:37
Speaker
I mean, that's going to be stressful, whether it's a success or not, to be honest. And it's going to be awesome either way. I mean, there's definitely going to be things. I mean, the reason you do this is to find holes and deficiencies and things you can plug and places where you can make it better. So just listening to the feedback and iterating and moving on from there is the name of the game and something that's expected.
00:49:03
Speaker
it's going to be positive either way. So looking forward to having you back when you're ready to talk about how that first experience went, even if it's in the fall, wait for the whole season, whatever it is. But we'd love to have some regular updates from ArchioSoft on the Archiotech podcast.
00:49:18
Speaker
Oh, wicked. I would love to come back. This has been super fun. Yeah. Well, it's been great having you. This is, again, I love saying it when we have a good guess that I learned a lot. And it was really interesting to hear how you're attacking these sets of problems. And I wish you a lot of good luck with this upcoming season. Thank you.
00:49:37
Speaker
All right, and with that, we will end this podcast. Again, go check out the links in the show notes to the website that we have for Stratum and Archiosoft and see what you think and look forward to more updates in the future. Thank you, Cora, for coming on the show. Thank you.
00:49:57
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Archaeotech Podcast. Links to items mentioned on the show are in the show notes at www.archpodnet.com slash archaeotech. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com and paul at lugall.com. Support the show by becoming a member at archpodnet.com slash members. The music is a song called Off Road and is licensed free from Apple. Thanks for listening.
00:50:23
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster and Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.