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The WebWell Podcast, Episode 11 - "Introducing Michael Hall"
46 Plays1 year ago
Hey there, WebWell Podcast fans! We're back with another episode that takes a peek into the workings of Cascade. This time, we're bringing you a closer look at one of our awesome developers, Michael Hall. In this chat, we'll find out what Michael was up to before he joined the Cascade Web Development crew and what cool innovations he's currently cooking up.
We'll be taking a stroll down memory lane with Michael, hearing about his life before he joined our team. From his early career moves to the moments that led him to where he is today, you'll get a glimpse into his journey that's as relaxed as a Sunday morning coffee.
And, speaking of today, Michael has some pretty exciting projects in the works here at Cascade. We'll give you an insider's view into the cutting-edge stuff he's got on the go.
So, kick back, relax, and join us on The WebWell Podcast as we chat with Michael Hall about web development and the cool things happening right now.
Follow us wherever you listen to podcasts!! We'd also love to hear what you think... please share your questions and comments with webwell@cascadewebdev.com
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Transcript
Introduction to the Web Well Podcast
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the Web Well podcast brought to you by Cascade Web Development. I'm one of your hosts, Simon, along with Ben. And we can't wait to dive into all things internet, tech, web development, and web design.
00:00:20
Speaker
We'll also be discussing how we balance work and life and exploring the fascinating world of internet innovation. So whether you're a tech enthusiast or just looking for some entertainment, join us on this exciting journey as we explore the ever-changing landscape of the web. Thanks for tuning in. Let's get started.
Meet the Guest: Michael Hall
00:00:40
Speaker
All right, everyone. Welcome to the Web Well podcast, episode number 11. We are joined with, of course, Ben, my co-host,
00:00:50
Speaker
And our special guest today, Michael Hall. Welcome, Michael. Thank you.
00:00:56
Speaker
For all those listeners, he waved, because we're still getting used to this podcast environment where we're assuming you're not watching. But if you did, you would have seen that. So welcome, Michael. You are our last guest. We've had Stefanon twice, we've had Paul. And then a few episodes ago, we had Christy introducing her. So maybe for all the listeners, maybe you can give us a little background. Let's start with...
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah, let's start with background and then we'll do this in reverse order from our notes. We'll start with background, what you were doing before Cascade, what brought you to Cascade, what you're doing now, if you want to give us the synopsis.
Michael's Early Tech Passion
00:01:38
Speaker
Sure, I'll jump way back, just because it kind of all runs together.
00:01:44
Speaker
Started with computers probably age five or six because they were really cool. And my mom wanted to be a writer. She wrote stuff. So she picked up a Mac, a Mac plus back in like 86. You don't want to know what a Mac costs in 1986, let alone what that translates to in today's dollars, but it more than a nice iPhone anyway.
00:02:04
Speaker
So, uh, I spent a lot of time playing with computers and learning how they worked and doing things. And the web showed up in the nineties is something I could play with. And so I fiddled around and built websites and had fun with it. It's like buddy and I literally one night, you know, instead of watching movies, we're fiddling around like, Hey, can we build a website? And at that point in the nineties, you could get free web hosting and we spun up a little website that was dumb. And.
00:02:33
Speaker
We spun up actual real ones later for a little while. We had one for our scout group we were part of and did things and did that.
OSU College of Forestry Experience
00:02:42
Speaker
So I actually ended up turning it into a job by working for a college of forestry down at OSU. One of the kind of the selling points that made them want to hire me is that I had some PHP MySQL knowledge.
00:02:56
Speaker
And they had an internal bug tracking system that they no longer had anybody that knew how to maintain and run. The guy that built it went and moved on to a different job. And so I got hired as a student employee and kind of one of the, Hey, this is, you know, everybody kind of had different angles that they worked into and different specialties. And they're like, uh, you can make this work. And I'm like, sure.
00:03:20
Speaker
And it was a great learning opportunity because I was definitely thrown into the deep end and I was like, this is a tool that's in use and here have access to the live database and all everything. So. And now Michael, you weren't at the school. You didn't attend the School of Forestry. Is that right?
00:03:35
Speaker
Correct. I was not a forestry major at all. I was in the CS program. I actually ended up there. I had a buddy who basically, one of my friends, long story. Anyway, I met a guy and helped him with his homework. He was a CS business major and they made him take C and he was lost and didn't care. So I helped him with his homework, got him passed. And that summer he dropped me an email. It was like, Hey, we have openings at the college of forestry help desk where I work. I think he'd be great.
00:04:04
Speaker
And I was like, that sounds cool, tell me more. And so that's how
Transition to Cascade Web Development
00:04:10
Speaker
I ended up there. So yeah, no real forestry background or anything there, didn't take any classes there, but worked there for a couple of years. And like I said, learned a bunch, got to, I did, I built up and added features to that whole help desk system that we ran there, revamped the laptop reservation system that we had and built there.
00:04:32
Speaker
So it was a fun break between updating and installing Windows XP, which was a lot of the rest of our job. That's awesome. So what after that, what brought you then, I guess, to Cascade?
00:04:46
Speaker
Sure. So, middle step worked for doing kind of the same sort of thing for a photo lab down in Selwood that no longer exists that I was doing web stuff we sold photos online so it was basically supporting one program, but I was also the only guy that really knew how computers work so some days I'd be building that managing orders and other days I'd be writing network cable or you know fixing a printer.
00:05:09
Speaker
But they closed in 09 and a lab in Texas bought the part of the business that I did, which was the web order stuff since we had a decent customer base and didn't need any physical stuff, right? Nothing physical went through what I did. I just took orders and did it. So they wanted to maintain that customer base. So I worked there and then I wrote it down because I can never remember.
00:05:32
Speaker
Early 2011, I got forwarded a job posting for Cascade Web Development and I emailed Fritz, no longer involved with our company, but back and forth, we did some back and forth. I sent him some demo code that resulted in me coming in for an interview with Fritz and Ben and Stefan in the old rail car. And by a month or two after that, I was doing contract work.
00:06:00
Speaker
That continued until late summer, early fall of 2012. We got hired on full time and so been full time here since then. And in the middle there, didn't we send you to Boise to work for bodybuilding.com? Yes. So that would have been fall of 11 because
00:06:23
Speaker
Yeah, it was right around Thanksgiving of 2011. Fritz had somehow found a subcontract through bodybuilding.com. They still exist. There's some weird stories. If you've been on the internet long enough, you've seen bodybuilding.com forum stories. So hunt those down. They're kind of amusing.
00:06:43
Speaker
They were looking for some PHP help. They were trying to move away from PHP and nobody there that even knew PHP would admit to it because then they get stuck working on it. It was actually kind of hilarious. Like I'd ask questions and people would literally try to avoid having to answer because they didn't want to be involved.
00:07:00
Speaker
But yeah, I spent three or four days over there. It was a really interesting kind of team and huge group. They had tons of people. They had subcontractors from Costa Rica that they'd flown up in as well. So I spent an evening where we went out and was riding around in the bodybuilding.com Hummer, which they had given to some of the Costa Rican guys that had come in. So hilarious group. We drove around and went back. So yeah.
00:07:29
Speaker
Definitely an interesting, fun experience. Learned some stuff there. It was kind of the first time I got dumped into Agile, which was very big. They were very big into Scrum and Agile and things. And we kind of took and used some of those pieces internally, but kind of discovered we were more Agile just being small and doing what we were doing than adding an entire framework and system like they were using.
00:07:53
Speaker
Let's rewind. Bodybuilding.com, you mentioned this Hummer. I get this mental picture. You're not short. Just for listeners' sake, I thought I'd come in at six foot and be average. No, I'm the shortest person on the team, except Christy, obviously.
Role and Experiences at Cascade
00:08:13
Speaker
I just pictured bodybuilders. Was this team
00:08:17
Speaker
Like were they pumping iron or was it just the product? Well, the people I was hanging out with, I would not say. There were people on site who were, I don't know if they were full on bodybuilders or play bodybuilders for pictures. I would say that while very cool, the people I interacted with for the most part would not be described as bodybuilders.
00:08:40
Speaker
I just had that picture though like you said Boise right so you there's probably like how many hummers in Boise you know not as many with with decals and things on the side so no offense Michael what a letdown bodybuilder hummer rolls up and Michael jumps out
00:09:01
Speaker
With four or five guys from Costa Rica, because we're all trying to hit the convenience store because, you know, we're all staying in hotels and stuff. So, you know, we all hung out at the brew pub. And then, you know, it's like before we go back to the hotels, we're like, you know, everybody wants snacks or drinks or something.
00:09:20
Speaker
That's awesome. All right. So we got kind of the glimpse of how you came in. I know at the time we've talked to Ben about this, including Stefan, too. So at the time, Cascade starting out was
00:09:35
Speaker
Shoot, 2000, that was like 11 or 12 years old, right, Ben? Yeah, it throws a brand live, trying to bring brand live to life and spawning that within, within Cascades. So it was, it looked and felt a lot different than it does today. That was my very first demo project that Fritz sent me. I went back trying to find these dates. So I went back in my personal email. It was like, okay, Fritz, first email Fritz sent me and I'm reading through the thread and I was literally making front end chat widget.
00:10:05
Speaker
for brand live. And a lot of the very early contract stuff that I did was doing theming and that basically reworking and writing a back and forth chat system and PHP, which I'm sure is terribly inefficient. And I'm glad that I don't have the code to look at now, but it worked. And I remember doing a lot of those original themes as he would bring in, it's like, oh, we got this new client. We need to launch it in a week. Here's what it needs to look like and recoloring things.
00:10:36
Speaker
transparent PNGs for corners and other terrible things that we no longer have to deal with. Wow. So fast forward to today. What's your role with Cascade at this point? And give us kind of a synopsis of what a day-to-day is for you right now.
00:10:52
Speaker
Sure. I always just write down developer or web developer when I have to fill things out, but I went and looked at my contract and I'm a strategist slash developer. So that's officially, apparently what I do.
00:11:06
Speaker
And it makes sense. So there's kind of a couple different buckets it breaks down into. On projects, at this point I'm doing everything, you know, Ben brings me in on initial client meetings where we're scoping out, hey, is this a project that's even a good fit? Are we going to be able to, you know, do what this client wants in a way that, you know,
00:11:29
Speaker
uh good for both sides and so from initial scoping and strategy of you know what's going to be involved what problem does the client have or problems that we can address and fix and what i like to do and the the big advantage i found in being involved that early is that
00:11:50
Speaker
We didn't always find out the problem. We'd always come up with solutions. It wasn't always a solution to the real problem. Clients don't always know what they want. So being able to get in early on the strategy phase and figure out, you know, obviously you want a website, but what does it need to do and how are we going to get there?
00:12:09
Speaker
Um, once we get there, I actually do, you know, building it out. So, you know, a lot of the websites that's, you know, build it up from a design, whether Simon, you've done the design or a third party design has come in or the client sometimes themselves have design, but, um, you know, plan out, build the entire website, launch and maintain it.
00:12:28
Speaker
And then the other chunk of things I do is internal EG development, where whether it's just new features we come up with, sometimes it's just as a team, we're like, hey, it'd be great if we could do X or Y and do that, or it's stuff that's driven by clients where clients are like, oh, well, we need to be able to do X, can you do X? And then we're like, well, we could do X and that makes sense to build into Evergreen because other people might want to do that and it makes life better for everyone.
00:12:57
Speaker
And I'm sorry to cut you off there, but just for the audience, EEG refers to Evergreen, which is our development platform. And so with that work, as you outlined, Michael, some of that's driven by the organization, you and Stefan and Paul, kind of coming up with the product roadmap, if you will.
00:13:17
Speaker
And then also clients that have requests that come in that fall outside of the current capabilities of Evergreen. If you could unpack that a little bit more in terms of as you're going down that path, how much of that information is actually shared with the client? Is it even relevant to them whether or not it's available code or not?
00:13:37
Speaker
And then as you work through that, I also hear our development team often talk about like we built this capability and then we try and force that lower into the source code. So I'm not sure how much of that our audience would be able to digest, but I've seen and heard over the years about a lot of these features that might happen sort of at the website level. And then over time, we try and force that down into the core evergreen code such that it can be deployed on all of the websites that are built upon the platform.
00:14:07
Speaker
Like so many of my answers, it depends. Our clients have a great range of technical knowledge and I don't know the best way to say it, but caring. Some of our clients do not care for the tech details and that would bore them. They wouldn't have the conversation. Others love it and we have clients who have like
00:14:26
Speaker
Here's the database diagram I drew up, you know, we can work from here and go from here. So it really depends on the tech level stuff. I'm trying to think of some good examples. We had clients who basically wanted to be able to put, you know, different types of content, multiple places on a page, which eventually for people that use Evergreen led to blocks.
00:14:45
Speaker
But I mean, that's a great example of how I got into upgrading and innovating on Evergreen is people asked for things and I didn't see a way to do it with the given tools. And so it was like, well, what can we do to get this end result? And so came up with ways to do it without changing Evergreen at just the site level.
00:15:10
Speaker
which worked and let people do things and we used it. But as we then took and refined that, we're like, this could be better. And if we built this in and built Evergreen around these ideas, it gives us a lot more power to do things, which in turn gives clients the ability to do a lot of things. And so tools that we ended up building, because somebody wanted to be able to put things multiple places on a page with different parts,
00:15:38
Speaker
led to future clients going, oh, well, we'd want to do this, this and this, which then led to content blocks and other things. So it's been, I mean, I think everybody on the call could agree it's been a good thing and led to, you know, more innovation and more pieces of things there.
00:15:58
Speaker
But yeah, lots of things start out as, hey, something for this one site and whether or not it's fully integrated with Evergreen or something that's just kind of tacked in just for that site. If we end up using it a lot, we want to build it in.
00:16:14
Speaker
You
Innovations in Evergreen Platform
00:16:15
Speaker
know, whether it's as simple as, hey, I want to be able to customize what the URL is, you know, clients like, Hey, we're doing a special promotion. We want it to, are you all to be our domain name.com slash special 2012 or something. It's like, Oh, well, you know, we can force that in by hard coding it somewhere. And now it's an option in evergreen. You can do it to any page you want.
00:16:37
Speaker
So a lot of development stuff kind of works like that where the first time it's, oh, well, you know, we can hard code or, you know, write an exception for that. As if it keeps happening, let's build it in, make it there. And it all depends on, you know, is this something a client is going to be able to want to get in and control? Is this a switch that we want to kind of reserves? Cause it would give the client the ability to break things they might not feel comfortable with and they come to us, but now we've got a nice toggle switch to do that sort of thing.
00:17:10
Speaker
There were a lot of points there that I cover cover most of them. Yeah, yeah, I just think kind of shows the fluid nature of how we operate because I think, you know, I've used the analogy before, you know, if you think about having a bike, if you're if you're a person working in a bike shop, right, you have some one person who assembles a bike, right, comes in a box, it's partially built, you put the wheels on, you put the handlebars, make sure, you know, every the
00:17:32
Speaker
shifters and breaks work. And heck for all I know, a lot of that stuff's pre-dialed anyway. So it's one thing to assemble a bike, right? And to grow, use a, you know, grow simplification. If you're using a lightweight platform like Squarespace or Wix, possibly in WordPress, you're kind of assembling a website with a finite number of tools. And the, on the other end of the extreme is, hey, I want a bike built custom and I want to go in and have them fit me and
00:17:59
Speaker
and create a custom geometry frame that's specific to my needs, and then highly customize the build kit, the drivetrain, the wheels, et cetera. And so I like to think of the work we're doing as much more as that custom bike builder as compared to a bike assembler. And I love the fact that when clients do come to our team with needs, it's not, well, the system won't let me do that so dead end.
00:18:23
Speaker
It or the system will let me do that. So let me do some, you know, oftentimes very much one off custom programming that will be hard for that developer to evolve in time, let alone if that developer hands this open source website to somebody else. You know, we've all opened the bowl of spaghetti type websites where it's like, I can't.
00:18:42
Speaker
I can't help you. Too many weird decisions were made upstream. And it's empowering, but also, you know, we're sort of on the spot when someone says, I want this. If we can't do it, I just love, you know, like, it's almost like Paul and Michael kind of perk up like, oh, tell me more.
00:18:58
Speaker
and give me a couple days and come back and show the client. Some clients get, that's kind of magical, especially if they've been used to being told, no, we can't do it, or they've been disappointed with custom programming in the past. But those that get it are just like, no.
00:19:14
Speaker
coming back for more and coming back for more. So it's very empowering. And I get the sense that over the years, one of the key reasons that our development team has been so incredibly loyal is because not only are they building the next website that Cascade's delivering, but they're also continuing to innovate and build the thing that these websites are built upon.
00:19:36
Speaker
So it's been a unique aspect of Cascade and one that's really been fun to watch Michael and Paul and stuff and find their way and continue to evolve upon the platform's capabilities.
00:19:51
Speaker
So something you started to allude to there, Ben, and I don't want to add on with the analogies because you and I just get carried away with that. But Michael had said tools, right? So when I work with clients, and again, in my role, I'm kind of that front-end line of translation from developer speak to normal client speak.
00:20:13
Speaker
And I refer to Evergreen as kind of like a toolbox, right? And so there's these tools that allow you to administer content, to show photos, to sell things or whatever. We build and we have tools that are just standard, a hammer, pliers, whatever, right? They're in the toolbox. And sometimes you have to modify them for the brand, for the use, right? Those are easy. And then sometimes, Michael, you get to look in that toolbox and be like, there is no tool for this.
00:20:41
Speaker
What is the issue? What is a problem solve here? And create the tool, which is the magic, I think Ben's referring to. So last week, Ben and I were chatting about this podcast, about kind of these ideas of what we could present to you, Michael, and the question came up.
00:21:02
Speaker
is you've now lived in this evergreen world where this toolbox either you made or modify or can create new tools for. Can you imagine a world where that wasn't the case? And can you think for a second of those disadvantages? And then in turn, can you think of the advantages, like for our client's sake,
00:21:26
Speaker
I know that I was on a conference call and I'll come back to these questions too in a second because this is long winded. I was on a call and a client was like, man, I really wish it did this. And I was like, so I qualified it a little more. And then I slacked you. This was,
00:21:42
Speaker
I won't name the client, but so I slacked you. I said, Hey, Michael, can you on this site, can you go tweak this thing? And you're like, yeah, let me, let me look at it. Like two seconds later, you're like done. And then I refreshed my screen while I've been sharing it and showed her what we did. And she was just like, what you seriously, like, I know it was like a minor change, but like, it was just that we were able to do that. And so again, going back, can you imagine a world without being able to make those tools too?
00:22:12
Speaker
Can you think of the advantages or disadvantages for our clients? And then three, ready for the last one is how many people did we have to go talk to about that one change and you were able just to make it, right? So how fast we can do that. So I'll leave you with those questions.
00:22:28
Speaker
So I can't imagine because when I started, I was in that world. Obviously as a new employee, Stefan wasn't like, oh here, just go have free reign to edit EG and do whatever you'd like to it. So that led to a lot of things. So I thought about digging it up. I did not dig back far enough to figure out when Stefan was like, okay, stop bugging me with these ideas, just go ahead and do it. But it definitely was not the first week.
00:22:58
Speaker
I definitely, I feel trapped when I don't know how all the tools work. I like to know how all the moving parts work. So, and with Evergreen now, I've got a pretty good idea. I mean, I've been doing PHP for 20 years. I've been doing Evergreen for 10. I know where those parts are and how to do it. And that's why when you send me something like that, it was also probably for a site that I worked on recently, or at least knew right where to look.
00:23:26
Speaker
I like knowing how to do it. When I wasn't playing with that Mac Plus back in the 80s, I was literally tearing toys apart with a screwdriver. This was back when toys had screws and you could take them apart. It wasn't all just glue.
00:23:38
Speaker
see how they worked. So if I know how all the pieces work or just you know have it broken up into parts enough where it's like even if I don't know how the individual piece works I know that it's labeled as there's a box over here and in that is the part that does this um it's there. So when I started Evergreen was really frustrating because Stefan was like here you can just you know use it do this part and I'm like I don't understand why doing this part works
00:24:04
Speaker
And I could do it. And I could do it. But I dug around enough. And finally, I had redexes. If I can trace through and see how it all is doing it, instead of just knowing how does it, then I can work better. So if I wasn't working in Evergreen doing this, I would probably either be really frustrated or working with another system where I'd learned enough to be able to do this sort of thing. So if I didn't have Evergreen, I'd make a different Evergreen.
00:24:32
Speaker
Nice. Well, not to stroke your ego at all, Michael, but I've been on calls with you where a client complains or not, not complains, but kind of is sharing hurdles or barriers that they're trying to overcome. We're trying to problem solve this. And I think you have a pretty rad skill at, and I say skill because you've honed it and worked on it where like maybe early on you didn't just say yes,
00:24:58
Speaker
but now it's kind of like you're not afraid of saying no or better put qualifying the need. Can you talk about how you do that with clients where you're able to actually hear them and almost say no, it's really this or qualify that? It comes back to what I was just saying. I don't like to be wrong. You could ask anybody that's dealt with me,
00:25:23
Speaker
But to get there, I don't put forth something as being correct unless I think I can back it up or have something do it. So I will qualify almost everything until I have the information to be very sure that I'm gonna be right about it.
00:25:39
Speaker
Um, you can ask my wife, it's really annoying to argue with me because I won't argue it if I don't think that I'm right, unless I'm just goofing off and having fun with it. So with clients and when he was like, I want, I I'll sit there and ask questions early on. And I'm hoping it's less now. Ben would often have to tell me, you know, back up, we're an early strategy. We don't need to dig down this far into the weeds. Um, but you know.
00:26:01
Speaker
I want to, right? I mean, and that's what I do. Eventually I'm going to, and it's that same thing. I need to tear it apart and figure out how the different parts work. And once I know how the part works, and that's a lot easier now. It's like, I don't need to, you know, go check five things in Evergreen before I can answer questions. Like, I've got a general idea how everything's going to work. I've built enough sites that if somebody's like, oh, hey, you know, and we want to sell products and do this, my brain immediately is like, okay, we have like 18 questions. I need to have some answer at some point. I've learned now, I don't need them all now.
00:26:30
Speaker
but need to talk to the client office like, hey, can we get an example of your SKUs? What kind of variance do you have? It's like, if you're selling t-shirts, it's pretty easy. You probably got color size design, but if you're selling t-shirts in, you know, fancy cars, there's a huge difference and you're going to market and sell and list those and inventory them differently.
00:26:51
Speaker
So yeah, I can, I can say that Michael has definitely made my job easier in the sense that he is, he's always thinking, you know, quite a ways down the path or this notion of edge cases, right? Like, okay, here's now I've got a sense of what the 80% of users are going to want to do, but what happens if they fall outside of that on either end of the spectrum and watching him go deep on that is fantastic. And I think that was one of the pitfalls. And maybe Michael can reflect on this a little bit. I think one of the
00:27:19
Speaker
The challenges that we faced as an organization in delivering really top level service to our clients when Michael joined us is that we used to have a layer of client services between the developer and the client. So when a new client came in, I usually got out of the way, which is in everyone's best interest typically, and would hand that client off to a strategy director. And that strategy director would then take it quite a ways down the path and really frame out the scope of the project.
00:27:49
Speaker
We had incredible people that were in that role over the years, but those folks weren't nearly as technical as Michael or Paul. And so Michael and Paul would often receive this scope of work and look at it and say, where did this come from? What about all of these things that you didn't consider? And then we're sitting there going, client's excited about it. We've got a fixed budget. We know the timeline. Make it work.
00:28:11
Speaker
And I don't know why Michael and Paul stuck around all those years, but we finally accepted the feedback we were getting from them about the time you came on, Simon, which was, I need you guys to get out of the way and let me talk to the client. And then a couple of things that came out of that. One,
00:28:29
Speaker
the developers reviewing our clients as truly clients and building relationships with them instead of folks that were just complaining or voicing problems, right? And I think that was huge, that human connection piece. Two, Michael and Paul both are good at talking to humans and code, which is unusual. And maybe it took some time to get there and cutting their teeth on a bunch of less technical and almost always less experienced members of our team taking nothing away from them. But they were really good at talking to the client
00:28:58
Speaker
And then three, it was a lot more efficient because you didn't have that extra layer of personnel and the extra cost associated with that. And so I've really been tickled in the last three plus years to watch Michael and Paul really kind of like warm up to the client instead of being like, oh, that's the client that always complains about this or complains about that. Instead, they got to understand, no, these are real problems. And when it works, there's also this huge euphoric upside of client is fired up.
00:29:24
Speaker
And I had a role in that, and they get to see the delight in their work. So yeah, I don't know if you want to share any thoughts on that, Michael, of some of those challenges when there was that barrier between you and your ability to work directly with the client to get to the root of those challenges.
00:29:40
Speaker
I'm going to jump back. You listed a bunch there, but probably not as much with this group, but definitely with developers and just other kind of computery people. One of the things that we love to joke about is the client, and I love our clients, but we'll say things. I'll ask a question is like, you know, is there ever a time where, you know, there's more than one? It's like, well, almost never. No, it's almost always like 90% of the time is this. And I'm like,
00:30:03
Speaker
that doesn't be no good because if you want that other five or ten percent if there's just one that does it it needs to be built to accommodate that you you can tell me yeah no all of our products have a sales price and or you know never go on sale oh except the t-shirts the t-shirts go on sale every june and i'm like
00:30:21
Speaker
If you want that to happen, that's information I need and I need to be able to do things. And Simon, that may go back to what you're talking about where I'm going to dig in and ask those questions, partly because I've been doing this. On the project managers, Ben, I think that you said everything that I would say about it. I really loved and enjoyed, I think almost every project manager I worked with, you know,
00:30:41
Speaker
they're all great people did things but they're not going to ask those same questions that I am and they're not going to build it and at some level they do it. I mean I can remember times where it's like I get something and be like why are we doing it this way?
00:30:58
Speaker
And then I would talk to the project manager and like, oh, well, because we did this something almost exactly like this for a different client, but they had a different problem. It's like, you can't slot in this solution. I mean, you can, it's just not the right solution. Going back, I like to be right. So if it's not the right solution, that annoys me. So that's where I would start pushing back and be like, well, why don't we do it this way?
00:31:21
Speaker
I also kind of came in with, believe it or not, a bit of the imposter syndrome. I was like, oh, well, somebody said to do it this way. I guess we'll do it that way. There's probably a reason. I've discovered there's not always a reason, but sometimes there is, which is a learning curve that I had to take.
00:31:36
Speaker
And so, you know, again, a lot of that's just experience getting there. I'm guessing, you know, some of those project managers that they kept doing it could, you know, we had one who could have ended up doing programming stuff and learning the stuff that we do. He went in another direction and did other things, but yeah, a lot of it's just, you know, the experience. I mean, if I had too much experiences, most of our project managers did, I'd be doing it the same way. It's like, oh, well, here's a solution. Let's plug it in and make it work.
00:32:02
Speaker
Awesome. Good stuff. I started at the beginning. I don't know if I missed part of the second part there, but. No, I think you got a lot of that. And I think, I think for any of our listeners who maybe can't relate to that, just imagine going to the mechanic for your car and talking to the front desk person, but trying to relay a message to the mechanic about your car, you know, and then that message get.
00:32:27
Speaker
you know comes back to you but through that front end front desk person you're like well can i just ask them can i just can i just go back there and just talk to them well it's even worse simon because sometimes it's like you brought someone else's car in and you know there's a problem
00:32:43
Speaker
right because the person the person the client talking to us may or may not have the full technical background on everything that they need their website to do so you add multiple people to that game a telephone and
00:32:59
Speaker
stuff gets lost or gets simplified into, well, you know, here's a solution, we'll have a form. And then that's the answer. As soon as, you know, lots of times if you don't know how stuff works, if you have something that looks like an answer, it's really easy to grab onto. And then that gets really frustrating because you tell me you need a form and I'm like, great, that's like telling an architect you need a building. So do you need a work shed or a skyscraper?
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah. Well, as a designer, and like you said, sometimes I hand over designs to you and just say, can you do this? That is one of the more fun aspects, I think, of my job, is I'll be able to kind of explore this concept, design, functionality, and then hand it off to you and then be like, what can I get away with? And watch those gears start shifting in your head of like,
00:33:52
Speaker
All right, what am I looking at? You're looking at it like, yeah, I can do that. I can do this. And it's a fun process for me, just so you know, Michael, too. That is probably one of the more fun aspects of my job, is handing something over to you and really challenging you, maybe sometimes, not all the time. Sometimes it's like, oh, I've done that before, no big deal.
00:34:12
Speaker
But other times, like, what can I get away with, Michael? And then you're like, dial it back, Simon. We can go here, you know? So that's what I said. Usually, I give you your options. Like, we could do that. Here's the reasons you probably don't want to. I mean, we've looked into stuff. It's like, well, Apple's got this cool thing. And then you have to realize that a lot of our clients don't have Apple budget.
00:34:33
Speaker
Ah, yep, yep. It's like, yes, that is a very cool thing. There is probably 700 photos that were involved with that. Each of them is perfect and the shadow is done. And I bet the photographer charged a whole lot for that. So while that is a cool thing, what if we did something else? Or, hey, cool, that'll be great. I'd love to be able to build and do that.
00:34:55
Speaker
Well, even specifically with the example you gave is, Simon, do you think you could do this? Could you change it to this? And I'm like, ooh, then I could do it. And you're like, okay, I could do it if it's this. So I love, it's been fun getting to be in this role where I'm working directly with the mechanic, if you will, of the site and being able to hand off stuff and be challenged and challenge you as well. So currently,
00:35:22
Speaker
Michael, what is, you had mentioned some innovation stuff. What are some of the innovating things you're doing right now? Last week we did have, or last week, it was two weeks ago, we had Stephan and we did talk about products and our approach to it. So we mentioned a few of them, but if you wouldn't mind, what are some of the things in Evergreen you're working on right now?
Development of Multi-site Features
00:35:43
Speaker
So probably the biggest thing is we've been working on something we're currently calling multi-site. And this is kind of funny. I'm not going to throw out client names, but we had somebody come out that they wanted just a small one-off site. They'd hosted it elsewhere before, but wanted it to bring it in. And the big ask was, hey, it will be great if I could control it from the same administrative page, not have a second login.
00:36:08
Speaker
be able to do things. And I wanna use these same blocks, evergreen talk blocks are kind of reusable templates you can use if you want to have the same look of content. So, or just a thing, drop the same form onto a page. You could have a block that brings in, hey, select three products or select products and I'll put those in a slider there. Think of it as a variable of something you want to put on the page that you get to define somewhere else.
00:36:37
Speaker
So I looked at that and was like, huh, well, obviously we could rewrite Evergreen to do this, but how could we just do this as a one-off thing to make it work to do this? And so I played around with it and it worked. I don't even know if we'd launched that and somebody else was like, oh, we want basically the same thing with a lot of the similar wants.
00:37:02
Speaker
somebody else before we made it too far yet. So at this point we've got three clients who we know want something like this and as we're looking I was like
00:37:10
Speaker
Well, it definitely makes a lot more sense to build this into Evergreen. But now we have, you know, three different people's worth of ideas. We have a good idea. We can do the scoping and strategy on what does it need to do? What do people care about? And what's different than just having a second site, right? The easy answer is don't like just spin up a new site. We know how to build websites, just build two websites.
00:37:35
Speaker
So the answer that we have is single point of management is a very big piece and reusing of existing pieces is a big piece. And another piece we discovered is some stuff they want to share between sites, right?
00:37:50
Speaker
And we looked at that and we're like, well, we can work on that. So what we've now got set up in Evergreen is very soon you'd be able to say, hey, I've got multiple sites. I've got, you know, cascadewebdev.com. And as a spinoff, I've got, hey, we could do it with a podcast, right? A podcast site could be part of a multi-site, could spin off.
00:38:11
Speaker
That could be its own domain name, could be a subdomain. That part doesn't matter. But when it comes to managing it down to the module level, and again, very evergreen specific, we get to pick, hey, these modules are going to be split. If you make an entry, it's for a specific site. This other module, I want it to be shared across things. Any site could pull that. So if we were using our Cascade web dev example, maybe our team module that has a little entry for each person here,
00:38:40
Speaker
could be accessible by both sites then you could list it out you could have it so that the podcast site you know has a little you know bio picture of each one of us that's present on each episode or something like that pulling from the same source so you know you change the photo one place changes in both but same advantage of single point of management
00:39:03
Speaker
both places. And then kind of the same thing that Evergreen does in general is everybody wants it to be a little different when you customize it. So like I said, maybe you need a module that's kind of a split where, you know, it's done. We've got the control, it's there at a site level, we can come in and say, hey, this module needs to be special and kind of share things in a different way between sites. So that's the quick version of multi-site.
00:39:29
Speaker
And currently, again, we don't have to say the name, but currently it's a distributor who is managing multiple brands, right? So it's kind of like parent site, if you will, and then brand sites under that, or not even under it, but just next to it. So the idea, again, from a user perspective, being able to log in,
00:39:48
Speaker
And somehow, again, I'm not kind of telling you what it's going to look like, because I don't know if we 100% know yet. But toggle, kind of toggle between or switch between experiences. And there's indicators, whether it's color or names. And then the modules, which are the tools that build the site, would then shift based on which brand, if you will, or site I'm working on. That is super cool.
00:40:17
Speaker
I don't know if we've ever talked about this, Ben, but can we think of other applications or better put industries for multi-site like health organizations where there's the main company and then potentially like the nonprofits or other ones under those? Can you think of others that may benefit from that?
00:40:38
Speaker
Well, I think Mike has got a great example with one of our clients that was one of the early ones where essentially you've got a nonprofit with lots of other nonprofits that sort of spin out of it. And so instead of thinking about it in that way, the way I think about it,
00:40:55
Speaker
having one source of truth with this large data set that is then parsed off by brand, but instead it's like, wait, we've got essentially one administrator updating this website. So if we could have them go into one location and get access to reduced number of web properties out there, and maybe there are fewer elements that are moving from one site to the other, like blog posts or videos or
00:41:20
Speaker
other types of assets that are being distributed amongst websites. But on the one hand, hey, I've got a single point of access as an administrator, so I don't have to go into, you know, five different web properties that allows them to reduce their hosting costs because it can all be stored in one, you know, more robust hosting arrangement.
00:41:38
Speaker
And then another example is one that we're talking to another client about currently where they're like, hey, we want to we want to launch another brand site that's owned by the same holding company looks different feels different, very different user experience, but we want to allow our customers, the dealer to have access to a single dealer portal.
00:41:58
Speaker
from the website and from that portal, we want them to have access to one or many different dealer environments for the various brands we carry. And so in that case, you're like, oh, okay, so the information we're making available to multiple web properties looks different than this one where it started with
00:42:15
Speaker
distributor of many brands and then parsing those out for brand sites, but they're still depending on who the user is. And I think a lot of people sort of ignore or don't pay as much attention to the administrator as a key user, right? I view them as
00:42:32
Speaker
vitally important in terms of consideration, but you've got the end user, if it's a public facing website, you've got anyone invited to any kind of a secure environment, and then you've got the administrator. So the multi-site approach can support those three user types in very different ways.
00:42:52
Speaker
Wow, yeah. Michael, what other tools are you currently working on? I know there's a few, like I had mentioned, Stefan had talked about what are you doing specifically.
Simplifying Content Management
00:43:03
Speaker
Sure, it's been pushed a little bit back as we're trying to get multi-site out as that's actually tied to a client wants and an actual deadline. Whereas this other one is more of an internal, we poked around with it and used it for some internal work to make life easier. And it was like, that's a great idea. You know, how can we build on that? And that's the ability to edit and control things on the front end as opposed to having to go into the back end. There's definitely times where like you're looking at a specific page and be like,
00:43:33
Speaker
oh I need to update that or you know you see something wrong it's like well why did we put that typo there or something it's like okay hop to the back end and get there and you know that could be multiple clicks and you get distracted on the way and you're already there on the front end so we're playing around with front end tooling where
00:43:52
Speaker
Again, not defined. This is less defined than multisite, so I don't want to promise too much, but at some level, being able to click in and say, hey, I'm logged in and as administrator, I want to be able to change and save this content and the content I want to pick and choose. I want to just be able to click or click and click down through a tree and be able to save and
00:44:13
Speaker
Now I've saved it, reloaded, and it's there. So front end content administration, I guess would be a good way to describe that as we're working through it.
00:44:24
Speaker
A long one, yeah. I can think of a lot of clients that like turnover is a big deal right now. So imagine a new administrator coming in and just saying, where is this? This right here is dated, this needs to change or whatever, where is it, right? And instead of like having to wait for developers or for me to reply back, that tool I think would be really special to be able to like click in and just quickly change something that visually is just isolated. It's one spot, let's do this real quick.
00:44:52
Speaker
And then even to go back to multi-site, Ben, one of the things I was thinking about between multi-site front-end editing, I can't imagine if you're on a call with Squarespace or any of the other WordPress sites, I couldn't imagine where to start if I said,
00:45:16
Speaker
I want this capability, right? Like, you would just have to Google search it and just try to find plug-in and plug-in and plug-in if it was available. So, the idea that we can actually kind of look at this problem, this need, and back it up and support it and create, you know, some foundation and create a tool is pretty cool.
00:45:39
Speaker
So I guess to wrap it up, Michael, the question that I added late to the notes, and I kind of qualified it with you to better understand what it was, but what gets you up in
Passion for Problem Solving and Learning
00:45:53
Speaker
the morning? What wakes you up? And if you listen to this podcast, all the listeners, you probably heard it in his voice. You could probably hear it when he was talking about like old job to new job. But Michael, what gets you up in the morning?
00:46:07
Speaker
I think I mentioned earlier, I like solving puzzles and problems and knowing how things work. I don't do well in a situation where it's like, here sit here and do X. I definitely would not do well on an assembly line, punching widgets out of something because half the time I'd be figuring out how to make a better widget puncher or why the widgets looked like that.
00:46:30
Speaker
So I liked it. And that's something I don't think I hit on, but I kind of did the setup for it. When I worked at the photo lab, while there were, you know, new and interesting things, it was one product. And a lot of what I did was support that one product and deal with clients. And those clients were not always as nice and helpful as our clients here. It was much more we were seen as like, you know, a service that you
00:46:56
Speaker
It was totally cool to call and yell about the fact that you did something wrong and their photos weren't working. When it was usually someone else, not my fault, but I was someone that you could be upset with. So one of the things I've always said I liked about this is that it's always new stuff, right? It's like, we get a new client and all of a sudden I'm in a world where I'm learning some level about what that client does, which could be all sorts of different things.
00:47:21
Speaker
And then there's new solutions. And everything on the web always has new options. I mean, as far as fast-moving technology, I was making fun of transparent PNG corners, which 12 years ago, 15 years ago, that was how you did design if you wanted fancy corners across web browsers. Now we have all sorts of better and new options. And there's always new things coming. So those are the kind of things that keep me doing this. That's awesome.
00:47:50
Speaker
Well, Michael, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. I know this is pulling you out of, not your comfort zone, but pulling you out of your normal dev mode and having to really talk about kind of your role and where you've been. Ben, I don't know if you have anything to add, otherwise I think we're good for this episode.
00:48:10
Speaker
Yeah, I just love the opportunity for our audience, our clients to get to know our team better. So closing the loop, I won't say saving the best for last by any sense, but having everybody on here to kind of share their story and their journey. And like you said, what an important last question. Why do these folks stay here this long is one that I've just been delighted to witness and I like to hear
00:48:35
Speaker
the answer to that question so we can do more of why they stay and avoid some of the stuff that might cause them to move on. So Michael, thanks for sharing your story with us and so much good work over the years and just really enjoy interacting with you and all the positive feedback I get from clients. It's fun to see this story continue to unfold each day.
00:48:57
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's great. You handle the parts that I don't want to deal with. I don't mind talking to clients. Talking to clients is easy. I don't like telling people how much stuff's going to cost. I don't like dealing with people with their angry things that I don't feel are my fault. I don't like going out and finding new work and selling things. It's like if somebody's interested, but you handle those pieces and obviously the parts of things that as far as paperwork and everything that Christy handles.
00:49:25
Speaker
I get to do the fun part that I feel that I'm good at and I enjoy. Excellent. Excellent. We're grateful for you. Well, yeah, that wraps up kind of the whole team model here. We each play a part and hopefully continue to do this for years to come.
00:49:40
Speaker
Listeners, as always, thank you for joining. Please, we'd love to hear what you think, feedback, questions. You can email us at webwell at cascadewebdev.com. Otherwise, like all podcasts, please like and share. Thank you. Thank you.