The Shows

Speaker 0: Hello, and welcome to the 2nd episode of Digging the Rabbit Hole. This is a series where we dive into the conception creation and initial feedback around directors TV, this platform, which you are watching this show on. And joining me today is my friend and colleague. Bryant, would you like to introduce yourself?

Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. I so for a long time, I was the resident YouTube guy, but now that we've got some more faces, happy to be a part of the SIEV. I'm Bryant, a developer advocate here at Directus, and, yeah, create a ton of videos and content. You'll find me on the 100 apps series.

Speaker 0: A 100 apps and some other upcoming series as well, short hops, the joy of theming, which will be announced the day this goes live so that these these exist, and others as well. Absolutely. In this chat, I wanted to talk a little bit about what actually gets made. We've already spoken about the conception of directors TV and in the future we'll talk about the process of actually getting stuff built. But there's this bit in the middle of actually thinking up shows and then as a team deciding which ones get commissioned into seasons.

So I thought we could talk a little bit about that. And what better place to start? Yeah. Thank you. What better place to start than actually, I wanna talk about a 100 apps in a 100 hours.

Could we actually open with you describing what the series is?

Speaker 1: Yeah. So a 100 apps, 100 hours is basically me speed running, building a full app or or getting as far along as I can using Directus and whatever other tools are available at that point, whether it's, Nux for the front end or, even I I think some of the episodes make some chat gpt in there to, like, speed things along, but it's definitely like an meant to be entertainment, and a good showcase of, like, what is actually possible with tools like Directus. Like, what can you achieve in an hour?

Speaker 0: And it's it's actually quite novel as well because it isn't an educational series. It's not like step by step come with me. I figured it out. You know, I'm gonna show you how to do it. No.

We're watching you sweat for an hour figuring out how to do

Speaker 1: it. Yeah. I it like, when I first started, and I can't remember exactly what the like, the foundational, like, hey, this is what we're gonna do moment was. It was just like, hey, we're I wanna build some cool stuff. We're gonna record it.

I I think that's how this started.

Speaker 0: I actually looked back at the pitch note for a 100 apps in a 100 hours, and the show was definitely originally called Brian Build Cool Shit, and it turned into a 100 apps in a 100 hours. I looked at the history of the pitch, which is kinda funny.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's awesome to see how these things evolve. But, like, the I I can remember that, like, recording, like, the first couple of episodes, I was really, like, concerned because, you know, a lot of the other educational content that we do is is very polished and robust and, like, hey. We're gonna get you from point a to point b.

But, like, what what they see in a 100 apps, 100 hours is is just me sweating through the real, like, warts and all. Like, there's there's no editing in between, like, the graphics and, like, the intros and everything. It's it's just, you know, one hour of me talking to myself as I build something.

Speaker 0: And there are other show formats, of course. I think 100 Apps in a 100 Hours is probably one of the examples of a more novel format that we currently have. We definitely got some more in the works that I don't even think we will have announced by the time this show goes out. But we have, you know, I think quite a lot of our series at the moment are like straight up interview format. The specifics of what who is being interviewed and the topic in which they're being interviewed change from series to series.

We have quite a lot of series based content trace talks where John and Pedro talk to engineering leaders about their career leading to being, you know, it's engineering leaders. There's learning things I love to hate, which is my series where it's nothing to do with directors. We just Yep. I I get people in who who are my friends, who know about tech that has some kind of reason I've been avoiding it and try and help me understand. And I hope that that helps the audience understand that's not conceited.

I really do not know about these topics, and I really seek to learn about them in the time together.

Speaker 1: I really dig the concept of that one of, like, hey, like, convince me. There's, like, that one meme that's like, there's a guy in the park, and it's like, hey. GraphQL is bad. Like, convince me, or GraphQL is great. Convince me.

So I I love the concept of that one.

Speaker 0: Do you wanna know what? Convincing is a degree. Like, the way that show opens is I say, right. Let me level set. Here's what I think I know about the topic.

So we're not gonna go from 0. Like, here's what I think I know about the topic. Help me get to that. And here are my skepticism or uncertainties. Help me navigate those.

So it's not even convincing. Like, we did an episode AI for devs, and I was like, I'm not not trying to convince me to use AI tools here in my development practice. I just wanna see how people use it and challenge some of the assumptions I have, which was successfully done. Web 3, it wasn't convinced me, you know, that I that I wanna build web 3 apps. It's I just do not understand how they they work.

Yeah.

Speaker 1: It turned the light on for me. Exactly.

Speaker 0: So that there's that series. There's, beyond the call where Esther interviews people who build directors extensions about the extensions that they've built in their journey, their journey using direct. So so they all have different vibes, but that is an interview format. Then we have quite instructional educational content like stack up or like quick connect, which is all about or make it real time, which are like step by step tutorials that you can pause and, you know, do yourself and and they are definitely more polished and considered.

Speaker 1: I think, hey, like, one of the questions that I I probably already know the answer to this, but it, like, yeah, the expectations for Directus TV, right, would probably be like, hey. Here's a bunch of content that's exclusively focused on Directus. And, you know, as what the ringleader of the Directus TV circus, I guess you could call it, That's, hey, that's cool, I guess. It's very organized and and well constructed, but, you know, there's a lot of different content, and not all of it's specifically about direct us. Like Exactly.

Was that decision made?

Speaker 0: Because then you're only drawing people who already wanna know about direct us. You know, learning things I love to hate is an example of a show where I think in one of the 5 episodes, there is there is like an obvious lead back to direct assist the GraphQL episode. And it was about like the selective querying. And the fact that you can do that with direct to says REST API as well. But other than that, that is just a general interest series because we know you and I, as people who do developer relations, that we know what we want to watch, we know what our peers want to watch and find interesting.

Don't get me wrong, enough of that content needs to help people discover and understand and be successful with and expand their usage of director. Sure. But that is not every show. At that point, you know, you're basically just building out tutorials and various ilks. And it's very self serving.

And that isn't what we're doing here. We're trying to, you know, well, what are we trying to do? It depends on the show, right? So, you know, I think all of our shows exist to do one of a number of things or one or more of a number of things. To educate absolutely, to build relationships with with our guests for the interview series.

We have to highlight stories from our community members and give them a platform where we have a reasonable sized platform. You know, we can we can boost them or simply to entertain because they're fun. And they're interesting. And there's more of those coming up too. So depends on the show, right?

The balance needs to be that it's net positive for directors, but just by providing that content is net is net benefit.

Speaker 1: So also that needs to be very interesting and fun to do some of these shows as well.

Speaker 0: Yeah. Absolutely. I'm having a blast putting shows together, whether I'm doing it from, like, an operational standpoint and other people are, like, recording raw footage and conceptualizing them or I'm the person putting them together as well. So we take some time to talk about and actually, I wanna ask you, I wanna set the scene. Answer ask the question answer the question and ask you what you think because I'm curious.

Right? So in our in our next episode, we're gonna talk a bit about the process from pitch to release of a of a series. But just focusing in on that first step, we get an idea. And we have a space internally where we ask people to pitch internally. So not just ever, I'm not just marketing, but across the org, sales success engineering, great.

Pitch a show idea, and we can help people, you know, navigate it. And every time they people want to pitch, we ask them to actually fill in a quite annoying format. Like we ask them to put in work upfront. We ask them to give us the rough concept. Think about the format.

Think about who is the audience of this because not every show is for developers, I think especially not going forward. You know, many shows are there for technical people, but not all software developers. What does it aim to do for us? Like, what is what does directors get out of this? Are we gonna be educating, building relationships, you know, building positive community and so on or entertaining.

We say, who is gonna be involved in this? Is it just you? Is it you and guests? Is it you and other colleagues and so on? What's the length of a season?

Speaker 1: And It's crucial to that part.

Speaker 0: Yeah. I think so too. And outline the first three episodes. And that obviously requires stepping back and really having a think upfront. And I'm kind of curious, like, we also this information upfront to once we go, all share a vision of how the show is going to materialize.

How has that been for you? I'm curious as someone who has pitched many shows. So,

Speaker 1: it like, for me, ideas come from many different places. And, like, some of the pitches that I've put together have obviously been, like, very, I would call, weak just because it's like, hey. An idea pops into

Speaker 0: my light on detail.

Speaker 1: There you go. Light on detail. Right? Because it's either like, it's popped up by, a trigger on some other content that I was watching. Like, hey.

This could be a, you know, like, a watching a game show, for instance. Oh, hey. This might make a interesting series around x, y, and z on direct to CV or on a walk with my kids. So as far as, like, the the pitching process, like, it creating the ideas, I take influences everywhere. So, like, the ideas never stop.

As far as, like, which ones to pursue, I I think, like, I use it as a holding tank and then let it sit for a day. Yeah. And then if I come back if I come back to it and I'm like, hey. I really wanna pursue this. This is this is still good, then I would flesh it out.

So there's a lot for me in there that are, like, half baked, But, you're not saying it's not a great idea, but just, like, other ideas were

Speaker 0: Yeah. Better or or they take more time. Because, I mean, that's also worth noting. You know, the initial release of directors TV and the initial slate of shows, which I'll call the winter slate, right, the winter 2023 slate. As today, on the day of this release, we've announced our spring slate for 2024.

They take a different amount of effort. When we launched directors TV, it was 6 weeks from conception to release. And there was quite a lot of new content. I think we created 8 new shows, we had some content already that we that we packaged up and released on directors TV as well. And that's how we kind of seeded our initial content.

And our initial release was a ton of interview content because interview content doesn't take a lot of effort. Once you have a guest committed and you have a rough format outlined, which you can do in a couple of bullet points, you can rinse and repeat that that format and generate lots of fantastic content. Instructional content, however, takes a lot more time. 100 acts in a 100 hours is an incredible format. Like, I'm I'm so happy with how you've, like, formatted it because it is quite a high impact series, both in terms of entertainment and I would say education, not in terms of how to build use cases, but understanding that these use cases can be built in direct us.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I look at it as inspiration

Speaker 0: is what I'm sure. But the in its very conception, the format is low on time. You know, there's maybe I I I mean, how much prep do you do before you hit record and spend an hour?

Speaker 1: Do you know? On on things like Netflix or Airbnb, like, obviously, users of those applications, so I've got a fair bit of what's going on. For some of the other ones, like a PIM or some of the other use cases, just like a a quick Google search. And I wanted to keep it that way. And, you know, we've we've had a a fair bit of feedback from folks that are like, hey.

I'm I'm expecting educational content, but that's kind of, like, you know, goes against the grain of the the concept of the show of, like What

Speaker 0: what what do you mean? Feedback in a later episode, but 100 acts in a 100 hours will feature in that because you've hit you've hit on something really interesting around meeting expectations. But we're doing something new, so we're also having to rebuild the expectations and and correct expectations and

Speaker 1: Yeah. Too. And that's that plays into, like, the ideas as well. It's like, hey. Is this gonna be well received?

You know? One of the one of the other shows that I had a ton of fun recording was dev thoughts, which are, like, dev dad jokes, but, essentially, they were

Speaker 0: 2 of them.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. They were stolen from SNL, the old, Jack Handy deep thoughts skit, for those who who are familiar with SNL. But, like, our audience is, you know, international. And without knowing that skit from SNL, does this land or not?

You know? So there was there's a lot of that that factors into, like, should we pursue this show or not?

Speaker 0: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. No. I I I think you nailed it there.

But what's interesting, though, is this feel like the initial release of director's TV was a little light on technical content. Actually, it was a lot of interviews and that's that is because it only took 6 weeks to materialize. But as we produce our as we release our spring slate and work on our summer and even our 4th slate at this point in time, really, we're getting to fill out these different content types, including more novel, really, really, I think quite exciting formats that are just gonna I think they're gonna be hits like I really I the things I would love to watch. And so, yeah, I'm just so I'm so excited for folks to enjoy our spring slate of shows and to see what else we have coming. Some of those more novel formats, though, will take a lot more production time.

And that's why now that has to be factored in to the length of a season to whether it can even go ahead and the timeline on which we can produce it as well. Thank you, Brian, for joining me. I've had a blast talking about this.

Speaker 1: Well, this is the first time that we've this is kind of like our postmortem internally. Right? Because we developed this thing in 6 weeks, hit the ground running, and and since then, it's been both feet on the gas. Like, hey. Let's keep going.

You know, let's deliver new content. So We're we're now where we're at is is been yeah. This is fun.

Speaker 0: I agree. And, yeah, I we're now at the point where we have enough content that is produced that is going out. You know, it's hit it's it's done. It's it's the editing is finished. It's ready, but it is scheduled to go when it goes.

But we are now looking ahead. And so we have time now and only now really to to look at and talk about how this all came about. And I I I'm talking about it. It's quite nice to, you know, revalidate some of those decisions we previously made. And as we finish out the season with some initial feedback from our audience and our communities and our customers, It'll be interesting to see how the future of directors TV may, even if it's just process driven or, you know, changing what we commission or the ratios of education versus entertainment versus interview and, you know, community highlighting and all of that, how that may change over time.

Last month, I looked at the numbers. Last month, we released over 8 shows, we released 27 episodes and about 12 hours of content, which is wild. Mind blowing. Exactly. Right?

Exactly. Wicked, thank you so much for joining me, and thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you in the next episode. Bye for now. Yeah.

Thanks, Kevin.