The Reception

Speaker 0: Hello, and welcome to the final episode of digging the rabbit hole. This is a series that is born out of getting a lot of questions about how this has all come together. And today, John is joining me, to talk about some initial feedback we got. John, would you like to introduce yourself?

Speaker 1: Yeah. Thanks, Kevin. Glad to be part of the series. John Daniels, one of the team members here at Directus. Been here for about 2 years, so it's exciting to see where Directus was when we started to now where we are with, Directus TV and where we are with the platform.

Speaker 0: Awesome. And, of course, you're you're part of our field team, I suppose, is one way to frame it.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Definitely part of the field team. I help teach about Directus, you know, work with our enterprise customers, kind of everything.

Speaker 0: Excellent. And so Directus TV has now existed for a couple of months. And you obviously are, you know, in the same way that as developer relations person, I mean, with the community, in my Discord and our GitHub, you're in with customers and enterprise users of directors. And I just thought we could use this last episode to be a little bit reflective perhaps about some of the early feedback that we've got about the platform.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Some, yeah, some of the early feedback has been great. My most favorite piece of feedback is when I hop on a a call with somebody I've never met before, and they say, hey.

I've seen your face before on videos. So that's always pretty fun. It makes me feel more important than I am, but that's some good feedback, which means it it does let me know that people are watching the videos, which is cool, especially because the videos that I'm in are a little bit more nondirectus focused, and it means they're just watching our content. So that's been some of the feedback that I enjoy, but also feedback more so around Directus TV in general has been it's been it's been widely popular at least from the people that I'm talking to. People talk about all the different types of series that are on there.

They do appreciate the Direct us focused ones and the non direct us focused ones. But they really love the fact that the ones that are focused on direct us kind of showcase the the flexibility of the platform. Yeah. That's always that's always been one of our problems is you can do so much with Directus, and and, you know, how do you show all of that? And so I think a series like 100 apps, 100 hours is really beneficial both for people who are starting to explore Directus, but also for me as I'm talking to these people.

Because because I'll talk to people who are trying to build an Airbnb clone or trying to build a swag platform. And so it's great for me. If they haven't seen it, I'll send it to them and they'll they love it because it's typically right up their alley. But a lot of times, they'll come in having seen those episodes. And so feedback in general has been fantastic.

People love the entertaining value of it because it's not just a bunch of people, you know, training and being kind of boring. That's not who we are. And it's also making me famous, which is really awesome.

Speaker 0: Well, there we go. There we go. You know, it's interesting you mentioned a 100 apps, 100 hours. You know, I would say and and we've alluded to this in episodes before this. That's probably been our series that's also had the most criticism, and it's pretty clear what the criticism is and where it comes from.

And it comes from not meeting people's expectations with what they are or what they're expecting to see. They're expecting Right. Like purely educational, instructional, best practice driven content because that is what companies do. Right? That is what companies do when they're trying to educate people in creating content around their product.

That isn't the goal of a 100 apps in a 100 hours. It is Yeah. It is an entertainment show where we watch Brian sweat for 60 minutes, try and figure it out against the clock. There may sometimes not be best practices being honored. I mean, certainly isn't instructional.

And that's interesting. Maybe it's a sign that actually there's a demand for, you know, instructional content around building out use cases. But, yeah, it's just interesting that that isn't quite people aren't quite understanding that even having watched a fair amount of the video itself.

Speaker 1: Yeah. That's actually a really good that's a fair point, I think. Whereas the the people I'm talking to, they're looking for a platform they can use to build these platforms or build their products. Mhmm. And so they're really just looking to see if Directus can do that.

And so the people that I'm talking to are coming to coming to us watching these videos saying, can Directus do this? And we say, hey. We've, you know, we've built this really tiny version of this app in an hour. Mhmm.

Speaker 0: And

Speaker 1: so I I guess the people that I'm talking to just wanna see that that's something that people do in Directus. So they can see that someone's trying to build a this clone or whatever. So, but I can totally understand where people want to actually then dive deeper and understand what is the step by steps that I need

Speaker 0: Yeah.

Speaker 1: To build an Airbnb clone. But if you look at something like that, that would be a whole series in itself, just building one of those clones the proper way. I mean, there's it took Airbnb, you know, 6 months probably to to develop a prototype. And so that would be a lot more than a a 60 minute session. But that that's I totally understand that where typical people would be or people who know Directus want to then dive deeper into actually doing that work.

Speaker 0: And I suppose there's 2 outcomes there in terms of future content. One of them is, yes. Okay. We will build out these use cases, you know, and and help you build them as well. I fear, you know, considering the first season of a 100 apps in a 100 hours is 10 episodes.

That's effectively 10 series worth of content and we're just not equipped to to do that realistically. The other side is, and this is a series that we're planning, you know, and I think it's a pretty, pretty natural thing to create, which is a set of short demos where directors is being used well as these use cases. So maybe there's something where, well, historically, we haven't had that much use case based content. Now we have something but it is almost it has this baggage of being this entertainment show where that might not be where people are expecting, expecting it to go. So maybe there's a strict back version, which is just and here's the endpoint maybe.

Yeah. Yeah. That's certainly interesting.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, obviously, any technology needs the the actual training on the product. And so I'd love to see us get to that point where we do release these hey. Build a build a very simple CMS in 5 minutes, or here's direct us in 5 minutes, and here's direct us in 30 minutes. I'd love to even see a certification training program eventually, but, obviously, with a smaller team that that takes a whole different workload there too.

But I think over time, we'll add more and more much like our YouTube videos were back in the day focused on Directus and how to use Directus. We'll bring that content back into Directus TV because it's it's what we wanna do and it's what people are asking

Speaker 0: for as well. Absolutely. And, you know, some of what you're describing is in the works as well in various guises. But, yeah, more instructional, more walk through content, more use case driven inspiration as Brian called it in a previous episode, less instruction, maybe inspiration would be a better word. Yeah.

Interesting. I agree, though. From my side, the feedback generally has been pretty good. You know, not every and here's the thing, not every season, not every series has to be for everyone. So, you know, we have a lot of interview based content.

Some people are just not interested in the interview format. That's totally cool. Some people just want instruction. Some people want effectively demos in some form or another, whether it's the whole, you know, the whole platform, whether it's discrete parts of the platform or whether it's use cases or case studies or things like that. And some people wanna be entertained.

And the lovely thing about this platform we've got is we don't have to double down on any one of those. We just need to always have our eye on making sure the ratios are right. And we also spoke about this in an earlier episode. I don't believe the ratio is right today. The byproduct of this whole platform having come about in 6 weeks is that there was a lot more interview content created and less instructional content because one is easier to make than the other.

But we're addressing that, we're addressing that. There are a lot of shows, There are a lot of shows in the works. The day this releases, we announce our spring slate, but we're already working on the summer and the full slate of content as well, which is really exciting.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, people just want less John and and more instructions, and I totally get that. You know? There's There's only so much Why

Speaker 0: not instruction from John?

Speaker 1: Yeah. That'd be kind of interesting because I'm on the the I'm on the side of the house that's kind of I always tell people I'm middle level technical. Like, I understand how to use direct us, but I'm not gonna go and build that Airbnb clone. So that would actually probably be an interesting series, honestly, is watch a middle level technical person build an Airbnb clone or something like that. So that would probably be entertaining.

Speaker 0: There actually was there is a series pitch with this vibe, but it is, it's Matt Matt who isn't a developer. It's definitely I think we're all everyone who works with directors is quite technically minded. Like, we are technical problem solvers. The amount of code with which we can do that with varies from individual to individual and team to team. But, yeah, that's a really interesting format too.

But, yeah, there there's so much. Have you, you know, have you got any other the answer can be no, but has there been any other kind of top line feedback that you've got that could be interesting? Yeah.

Speaker 1: I think, I think the top line feedback is exactly what you just mentioned. Not every show is for every person. I mean, even myself, I I try and watch every episode of everything that comes out, but there's there's certainly some series that I tend to gravitate towards. So I think that's the good feedback is, not every not every series is for every person, but every person can try and find a series that that fits for them or that they enjoy. So that's one of the pieces of feedback.

Obviously, I haven't heard necessarily too much of the I need to dive deeper into these topics, but I'm talking to people who are traditionally newer to direct us. But I can understand that feedback. But then in general, people are watching it, and they're they're glad that we have it. They're glad that we have this content platform, both for the entertainment value, but also for the educational value in the hey. You know, Directus can do what I think it can do, and I can see a really quick video about that.

So I think the feedback in general has just been that people enjoy the fact that we have it and the fact that there's something that they can find,

Speaker 0: you

Speaker 1: know, value in, whether it's a couple series or one series or there's probably a few people out there who watch every series. So I think the feedback in general has been great. And it's been great for me when again, just to reiterate, when people come and and start to learn about Directus to just point them to a video. You know? Just be like, go watch this series.

Go watch this episode. You know, it's fantastic. So that's been great for me too.

Speaker 0: And as an educator, the person who looks after our docs or lead leading the team who look after our docs, it's very much the same the same there as well, which is the more content we can create that's valuable and solves people's problems, the more reference material we have when that content can help people and the less time we can spend doing the almost, like, repetitive education, right, because we have collateral to back it up. And, yeah, director's TV definitely plays an important part of that. In terms of feedback also, you know, we we track some basic metrics, simple things, what gets watched, how long of each thing gets watched, do people watch stuff and then end up elsewhere on our website, and does that turn into results for us? Absolutely. As part of having our own media platform is that we we know.

You know, we we can build build in that analytics and tweak that for our own purposes. There is currently an issue on the GitHub repo for the website to implement a feedback widget like on our documentation so we can get a more rich feedback about how people are finding individual shows and episodes, but that's that's later. For now it's just what's being watched, for how long, does it turn into some form of outcome, and of course the fact that we can use it to help educate people, or inspire them or entertain them or to build relationships and highlight community stories.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. No. I think it's been great. And and there's even things on there like scenescapes, which I think we only have 2 of right now.

But even though one of the scenes is outside of my window, I'll even put it on sometimes. Or when I'm traveling, I'll put it on and just listen to music and play. So I think, again, the fact that there's we're trying to create series for everybody and for all types of things is awesome.

Speaker 0: Yeah. And, of course, the other scene scapes is here in Berlin with me. Yeah. Really fun. Thank you so much, John, for joining joining me, and thanks for tuning in to Digging the Rabbit Hole.

We hope you found this series insightful. We may well we may well renew it for another season when there's interesting developments. But for now, thank you very much. Enjoy all the other content we have here on directors TV and I'll see you we'll see you in our respective next video hosts.

Speaker 1: Thanks, everyone.