Welcome to Valuu Community: The Forum for Fractional Tech Leaders and Digital Workspace Enthusiasts to Connect, Learn, and Grow

Ryan Purvis 00:01:23
Hello, and welcome to the digital workspace works Podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host supported by producer Heather Bicknell. In this series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field story from the frontlines. The problems they face, how they solve them. The areas they're focused on from technology, people and processes to the approaches they took that will help you to get to the scripts with a digital workspace inner workings.

Heather Bicknell 00:01:53
How are you doing?

Ryan Purvis 00:01:54
Very good. Thanks. Very good, very excited. All it's all coming together. So we, obviously, you would know this, but not many people know this, we've now launched the value community without even telling people about and we've already had a few people signing up for it, which is great. And when I say a few mean one or two, but that's okay. So this will replace our Slack community that didn't go anywhere. And the reason why I didn't go anywhere, because I just think it didn't have any value. But I've, we've focused a lot on value for this community. So I think it'll be integral in that we've got some training material, we've got, obviously, the chats and the posts related to this podcast, we've got another series we putting together. And then we have the value exists community in there as well. So I think it's going to be quite an interesting place to be. And we're using circle, which I've been quite impressed with, I think the experience with circles with better than the experience I had with Slack. It's very exciting.

Heather Bicknell 00:02:50
Yeah, I saw that it was awesome. That tool was was new to me, is it? How do you come? How'd you come across? Why did you land on circle?

Ryan Purvis 00:03:01
Tom? So Tom, and I were chatting about, like, I remember this was before Episode or, or in the episode, we just cut it out. But he, he was the king, he's he's kind of a good guy to go to when needed thinking about stuff, because he's probably spent the time researching it. So we were we were chatting about CRMs. And he made some recommendations on that. And then we're discussing about communities. Because obviously being an MVP, your your MVP status is very much driven by your network, or your commitment to the community. So empowering cloud is is a 3000 member, I think, community economy, executive members he gave me. But when we were chatting about it, he said, look it you know, we build something custom for what we're doing. But if you're really looking for a good platform, the so called looks to be pretty much, you know, one of the better options now. So just to get on face value, I signed up, I spent a couple late nights, putting it together. And that which is what the you know, the result is, and when I was looking at it, they were actually they were other vendors that do it. I mean, it's not they're not the only one, there are others. But one of the sunk cost fallacy is your heartbeat through tomorrow to stick it out. There are a few nuances to that. I'm not entirely blown away by it. But that's just my initial sense. But you know what I like when it comes to the mobile app, mobile app experiences good. So far, I've asked him if I can change the logo on the mobile app, because it's right now it's a circle logo. It's not the value logo. But I think that'll come with comparing it to some of the other networking metrics I'm involved in with their apps. It's a pretty good experience in comparison. So yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to getting people in there. And the other thing which which didn't work very well with the with the slack group, is I didn't have a community manager. I'm basically, I'm pretty worried. I've Got someone in mind for that. I'm just waiting to chat to her about it. And I think that'll help as well just to have a person talking to people and make sure they're okay. And make sure there's content coming through. And not just content that's generated, put through like RSS feeds and that sort of stuff. But like a daily topic. That's something I mean, I'm I'm open to suggestions. And then obviously, our contactable in there as well you. So you can just come and chat to us there. And then the other thing, which I thought was really cool, and I didn't think about at all, as you can come on this morning, is there's an option to go live in there. So we could actually just do a live broadcast. And there was quite a scary concept, because normally we do this a record. Share. Yeah. But yeah, I think it'd be fun. Oh, very cool. How

Heather Bicknell 00:05:35
are you? hoping it'll be used sort of overtime? What's the vision?

Ryan Purvis 00:05:41
So a couple of things. One, there's, there's the interaction of members. So I think one of the challenges I have a Slack, we had about 19 people in there, give or take, but the people didn't network. You know, it kind of had a few people chat, and then you know, maybe there's something happened, but it kind of fizzles out pretty quickly. And I think it's because, you know, at that stage, not everyone was using Slack or teams like they would be now the so that's that's one aspect I think will improve being in circle. And another slide technology thing. I think it's just that that people are a little bit more comfortable that with that stuff. Now across the board. We've got the training courses, which was something I couldn't really do at the time. And we've now developed a whole bunch, we've got five, there'll be really now got another seven in the pipeline. Those are mostly painful, but we're not charging a huge amount of money. But these are things that I see all the time that I just wish people knew, or at least had some information on, that they could help to. So well, we'll test that and see how that goes. And we then also have the values x community, which is a place for people that want to do a bit more than what they're doing to go to. So that's a community for fractional interims by time, people with experience, that don't necessarily be an exec, but if you know something, you've done something for a while you know a lot about it, you can help somebody, then that's, you know, that's what that group is for. And that's got its own tiers, as well. So we have the sort of the community tier, and that's really access to the opportunities that come through. So when we get a client that comes through and says I want a an expert on machine learning, to coach our CTO, or CEO on this, one day, a week, four days a week, whatever it is, for a month departments, you know, whatever those things are, those opportunities come through. Same as interim, you know, may need a CMO for six months while they find the CMO and help hire somebody, or part time person which, which they're not big enough yet for CTO, but they'll probably happy to have someone come in and coach the lead developer on strategy, which is what I had this morning was one of those. So it's for that. And I think there's a as much as the markets very slow going into the summer period where everyone goes on holiday for six weeks, there are people that are looking not necessarily go hire a very senior person, but they're looking for someone they can go to and get that expertise. For a period of time, we'll do a lot more of that community in the sense of helping them out to get set up and an endless really using. If anyone's interested in joining, they can always reach out to me, but it's really to build up the brand or the people involved. So we're very different with other communities in that respect. It's not about it's not as much as value execs exists as a brand. It's actually the members we want to build the brand around. But a customer can just come to value execs to find the person, if that makes any sense. And we don't get involved in the commercial stuff, we just, you know, once we got the opportunity, we connect them up with a few candidates on a blind basis. And they pick the ones they want to talk to. And then from there, and it's up to them to, to agree the commercials, which looked a bit different in the market, a lot of these guys tried to control everything, we just want to, you know, get people connected with the right people with the right opportunities. And then we have a mastermind, which I'm formulating now. So that's also there available to complete a survey on, I've got a few ideas on what the mastermind would look like. But I just want a few people to tell me what they what they're looking for. And it'll be a very limited amount of like five or 10 at a time. And they're my kind of idea on it is that you're gonna go and get, you know, let's say it's five people, you're gonna get them coached for three months by an expert that could be coached by, you know, a CIO that could be coached by, you know, business coach, whatever the topics are. And then there'll be an accountability exercise, like what is you want to go out and be a fractional CTO that doesn't follow startups? Well, you need to go and get five, you don't go to go to AngelList, go and find five go off and do the work. Like I met one guy a couple weeks ago. He said he's done a few exits, and he just started so we can get equity. He doesn't, he doesn't need the salary, he just wants equity. And he's willing to slice that for work. And I think that's a great model, I think you can, if you've got the money, and you can be invested for the long term like that the equity upside, then I think, you know, do it. And then we'll we'll obviously, you know, do what we can to promote them to this podcast and the other series that we're doing. So yeah, it's, as I say, very exciting. Very exciting.

Heather Bicknell 00:10:26
And can anyone join and sign up?

Ryan Purvis 00:10:30
Well, I mean, it's, so you gotta have some expertise. I'm not going to

Heather Bicknell 00:10:35
in the general community, not just for the community.

Ryan Purvis 00:10:40
Yes, it's a general community to sign up, you know, anyone who's listening now can just come to the community overvalued AI, and join. And they'll get instant access to the channels for this podcast and the new series that we're doing. Plus all the general stuff that we have. And then I've what I thought you ask is, can you just join value execs? Well, you can have a joint bank that exists, but there is a there is a conversation that I want to have. Warren, we want to have just to make sure that we're not wasting each other's time. And that's not meant to be flippant. You could be a 20 year old who's who's who's very keen, and you just don't have the work experience but you're prepared to put the time and the rest of You know, I wouldn't say no to that person per se. But I'm just going to make sure that there is that kind of attitude and that kind of stuff. But, you know, once that's through, and there's a couple of things that we do we onboard that the person that is building a good community. So

Heather Bicknell 00:11:40
I should say if anyone doesn't, isn't too keen on downloading a new, I think you can use it in browser as well. Yeah.

Ryan Purvis 00:11:47
Yeah, it works quite well that I used in Safari and in Chrome for what I've been doing the last couple months. So yeah, it works. Well.

Heather Bicknell 00:11:55
That's great. Very, very exciting stuff. Well, anything else you want to add on that? Or anything else? That's new for you?

Ryan Purvis 00:12:05
No, I think that was the most important thing I wanted to chat about. I think that I think we were we've got such good you know, from a podcast point of view we've done so well. With with listenership I think there needs to be a place to put for people to come to. I'm hoping so they see that, you know, people will see the community airs. And it's it's kind of my debate on whether we get sponsored, or we try and monetize the podcast on it. And we don't have to, because the community works, then. That's correct. I think that's that's almost a better thing. And it's not a it's not an either, or, it's, you know, let's see what works. With what we're doing.

Heather Bicknell 00:12:48
Yeah, it'd be great to get a bit of, you know, community, people talking, exchanging ideas, I was looking the other night, just at some technology news sections, because I've been feeling a little bit like, there's so much sameness coming out right now. And just looking through the feed of articles in the technology section, it was like 100, it was, you know, 95%, or AI, just AI and it's exciting stuff. And it's new stuff. And I get it, but it's also like the hype train for that just keeps on going. And I feel like everyone's starting to get a little bit of that, you know, topic fatigue, AI fatigue, it's like, yeah, we're following it, but there's only so much you can consume. So like, I don't want to just keep talking about AI, I probably could. But what else is happening? I want to know, if people, you know, thinking and feeling and experiencing more and like the world of today, where as a lot of the AI stuff is sort of you know, we're on the fringes of it. Right? It's more about tomorrow, which the features are is exciting to speculate about. But yeah, just love to hear what else is on people's minds right now.

Ryan Purvis 00:13:57
Yeah, it's funny, you said, because I think as much as AI is doing a lot of stuff, it's, you still have the same problems, for the most part. So, you know, it's all good and well, to go and, and you see a lot of LinkedIn, like, here's an AI to help you write content. Here's an AI that, you know, does your work faster with?

Heather Bicknell 00:14:15
Images? Yeah, for each specialisation. Yeah.

Ryan Purvis 00:14:19
Which is, which is fine. I mean, you know, that's the nature of the course. But I still think you've got to, like some of the training courses that we've put together, you still need to build trust with people, you still need to, like we did with with what we do with value, you know, bear for realisation, you still have to know how to recognise it, and you just have to know what to do with it. So an AI is not going to solve that problem for you, in today's world, but I think there is a need to stop talking about it. And talk more about expertise and skills and actually listening to a very good video by a guy that I really like Adam Amanzi amante, who runs acquisition.com. And he was saying that entrepreneurs that are successful, people that are successful, should rather say, have skills and leverage and skills come. He used to say experiences more, but he said actually experience comes to your skills anyway. So as long as you got skills, and you've got leverage, you'll do well. And you just got to figure out how to apply those skills to the rich. And I think that's where my irritation, probably with, with all this general AI stuff is it's kind of negating the need is you still have to skill yourself up in order to use that stuff and to actually know if the AI is valuable or not. And I think that's the thing that's gonna come back and bite a few people or a few whatever's who haven't, you know, fully understood what they're working with, or how to get the most out of it. There's not going to it's unsolvable that much like no tool has ever been this little bit.

Heather Bicknell 00:15:53
Yeah, I totally agree. And reminds me a little bit of thinking about maybe some famous artists throughout history, think of like Picasso's style and him kind of taking it in a new direction. But he was able to do that because he had the fundamentals of being an incredible artists already and that's what allowed him so it gave him the knowledge to spin off and create his own, you know, style that continues to influence people for, you know, many, many years to come. So sort of akin to that I think that, yeah, definitely, it's just to have the style without substance.

Ryan Purvis 00:16:28
Yeah, and it's good point. Because if you look at the majority that does all the immigration, and they were talking about how zoom, they put zoom in now, and they can zoom out and all that kind of stuff. Okay, so to use your example, you can go through something. And he could change his mind halfway through during it and do something different, which makes it creative. Where the AI will only take specific, most of the generality that's been built now is using patterns of what it seemed before to generate the new pattern. So it doesn't have the creativity popped up. So yes, it can go replicate the Mona Lisa, for example, and merge that with probably another famous painting to give you a new painting. That's the combination of the two. But it's not going to be creative, in the sense that it had a wisp of inspiration and do something different. That hadn't been seen before. Whatever it is, this is going to merge two, two things together in a in a way that mathematically makes sense. That put us doing weighing statistics and averages and, and whatever progressions. So yeah, it's interesting. In that respect,

Heather Bicknell 00:17:38
Yeah, completely agree. So what you quality of what you put in has a huge impact on the quality of what you put out, but also the, what, you know, the limits of, of what it's capable of, and raised a lot of interesting questions around, what is art and all that. All that fun stuff that people love to debate as well. And what's copyright? Yeah.

Ryan Purvis 00:18:02
Well, interesting. Yeah. I mean, someone was asked me that question, is it because generated by AI is copyrighted? And I actually don't know the answer they actually asked, are relevant expert on that and see what he says? Because I don't know. It's probably the same as you come up with a math formula. Could you copyright that math formula, if you took if you if you put five numbers together and you and you did a multiplication or something? Can you copyright that? Because it's really the things you've put together to get an answer? I think you'd have to probably do a lot more than just spit up some text, I think you have to probably put down the idea and where the, where the ideas take you and all that kind of stuff. But I don't think you can necessarily generate all that

Heather Bicknell 00:18:47
without traceability to with a lot of stuff. For usability. traceability, traceability?

Ryan Purvis 00:18:56
Well, I mean, someone would argue that there's nothing, nothing's new. No, I mean, you know, this day and age because we have so much information, everything has been thought of it just has to be applied differently. That's the innovation. I don't know how true that is. Because we don't know what we don't know. But in reality, you know, for Most Topics, you could catch it up to give you an answer, and we'll come back with an answer whether you know, what's right or wrong is going to be the question. But yeah, in that respect, you're getting the causes quicker than you would have if you had to research something.

Heather Bicknell 00:19:31
True. Yeah. And now there's lots of interesting conversations happening as well, particularly in education around tools to try to detect when AI is being used versus

Ryan Purvis 00:19:45
Well, this is this is a longer conversation than the two minutes we have left. Yeah, the fundamental problem with education is education is an archaic approach. It doesn't make sense. Like, if you look at where we are, today, the world will be due for 90% of the jobs that you do. The education system isn't like gearing You up for it. In fact, not even the jobs, the lifestyle will be live, you know, no one's teaching, okay? I mean, I'm making very big generalisations, I haven't research any of that stuff. But absolutely, my kids being taught stuff at school, and the school that I went to a couple of weeks ago and a couple other schools and students I've spoken to, yeah, the ability to analyse data the ability to make critical decisions the ability to look okay reading and writing and line stuff thinking you know, that that's that's always going to be a given everyone needs to learn to read and write to do math to whatever degree and I think, you know, art and music and all that stuff is important, even other languages, but doing it in a eight hours a day format, and everyone does it the same. And everyone gets it in the same format that everyone has to respond to the same format. I think that's what a standardised because what what else could you have done 100 years ago. But now, I mean, that's talking to my mother in law in the car today. I mean, you know, my kids know how to use a cell phone and already use tablets. I mean it two to five, but they don't use a remote control on a TV because tactically it's different. Yeah. Wow. You know, they're just and they know how to ask Alexa to play music and how Alexa turn the TV on and all that then I mean that already TV remote is because we can we ask them to pass to us but And then like also, like when we should you know, when should I be worried? Well, you know, six, seven, you know, that's when they start using that kind of stuff. So it's like, okay, that's not so bad. But, you know, in the same token, I saved a whole bunch of kids, you didn't know us excellent. 12. That made me nervous. I mean, I wrote my first piece of software at 12. So, okay, I was the one interview classmate, or one and 60 in the class, but, you know, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, do these things that we use all the time, you know, the Google version sheets, I don't know what slide or whatever it's called in Google workspace. But that's sort of that's that sort of knowledge and capability. You got to just have no, you can't be so put on the backburner that you waiting for school teacher, but you have to learn that yourself. Anyway, I mean, that's let's say it's a longer discussion.

Heather Bicknell 00:22:13
Yeah, definitely. Interesting stuff for sure. So people want to sign up again, for the value community. What was that? You're all they should go to?

Ryan Purvis 00:22:28
community.value.ai.

Heather Bicknell 00:22:30
Great. And that's value va l u u?

Ryan Purvis 00:22:33
Yes. Yes. Sorry. Whenever I say value, it's always spelled to u's. Yeah.

Heather Bicknell 00:22:38
The assumption now and that will be the dominant

Ryan Purvis 00:22:42
because I put them in like miro boards. Everything is spelled with to us and I keep some sentences spelt wrong does not spell wrong at all my companies.

Heather Bicknell 00:22:50
Okay, the joys of branding.

Ryan Purvis 00:22:51
Yeah, yes, yes. Well, that's, that's what I want to do. I want to own the brand like Coca Cola owns,

Heather Bicknell 00:22:57
needs to be honourable. So

Ryan Purvis 00:23:00
Super thanks for the catch up.

Heather Bicknell 00:23:03
Yeah. Until next time, bye.

Ryan Purvis 00:23:09
Thank you for listening to today's episode, and the big news app producer, editor. Thank you, Heather. For your hard work on this episode. Please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes or the Google Play Store. Follow us on Twitter at the DW W podcast. The show notes and transcripts will be available on the website https://www.digitalworkspace.works/. Please also visit our website https://www.digitalworkspace.works/ and subscribe to our newsletter. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please share with your friends and colleagues.