navarre.aiClarisTalk AI · the FileMaker AI podcast
Claris Engage – Part 3
The last of our three parts. This features deep conversations with two amazing people from Beezwax: Vince Mennano and Julian Nadel.
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Transcript
Transcribed by machine (whisper, large model), 5,635 words. Names and product terms are sometimes misheard; the audio is the record.
Claris Talk. Claris Engage 2024 has wrapped, and I am here with my excellent friend, Enzo Vincenzo Manano. Hey, Matt. Nice to see you. I so much like calling you Enzo. If you're going to have a name, that's what people should call you. I sometimes go by Enzo. Do you? Yeah. Usually Vince, but yeah. Vincenzo, Vince, Vinny, Vincent, Enzo. Anything? No, yeah. Congratulations are in order, sir. Thank you very much. You won an award. You won, I think it's kind of funny, you won the Lifetime Achievement Award, which is pretty cool. But you have, I know for a fact, you have so much more that you're in the middle of doing right now. Yes. I hope it's not over. I hope it continues. And I was very honored.
And it's funny how it was announced because Andy said, I'm not even in the room. I remember. And there you were. And then it's like, oh, okay, well, whoever that is is not here. So then when the name was announced, I was like. Oh, my God, that is me. I'm here. That was cool. Yeah, for sure. So actually, we talked, was it at Antwerp? I think it was. Yes. Yeah, about Inspector Pro, which is coming along. Yeah, we're still working on it. We hope to have a preview release for anybody in ETS. And then we're hoping to ship as soon as they ship the next release. So lots of work has been done since Antwerp. We're still moving along. People who I showed it to. They're incredibly excited about it.
They can't wait to get their hands on it. So, yeah, we hope to get it out there. I was blown away. Yeah, maybe we'll just leave it as a teaser. We talked about it a little bit in detail last time about what it does. So people could go back and listen. Yeah, for sure. So what did you think of the conference? How much did you hate it? Like you were telling me. No, I didn't hate it at all. As a matter of fact, it was exciting to see that, you know, the statement of, uh, developers, you know, mean so much to Clarisse, you know, together we, together we build. Oh, I see. You're showing me your shirt here together. We build incredible things. Yeah, exactly. I just didn't remember the exact wording.
And, uh, and Brad reiterated that. And I find that's definitely extremely important because as a community, we have talented developers, they're doing amazing things and, and, you know, Clarisse is innovating and. Yeah. And cranking out new, new, new things and new features that we leverage for, you know, customer solutions. And I think together we're growing, we're building cool stuff. And that was reiterated. Um, we also had kind of like a, a more longish term kind of agenda or goal or plan. So, you know, short-term and long-term marketing and both and, and development. Yeah. It's interesting. Like I, one of the things they announced is 100 consecutive quarters of profitability.
Yeah. Which definitely, yeah, you know, is a thing. Channeling, channeling Dominique Coupy. Remember every, every, every, every conference there would be how many quarters of profitability. I do remember that. I, I, I, I miss Bill Epling too. I had, I had, uh, Dave Knight and I talked a little bit ago. We had some of the same stuff too, that we talked about. Um, and like pondering how these other technologies that I thought were really exciting, like Amazon honeycode gone. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. What happens to the people who went full tilt on that? You know? I have no idea, but, and I, I think I, some people may have worried about FileMaker, but it's here. It's not gonna, it's not gonna go any, any way.
Yeah. Yeah. It's been how many years? 39. 39. Yeah. Wow. I started 39 years ago. Okay. Version one. That's that's amazing. But you know, it wasn't a database development environment back then. It was flat file, pop file and you know, place to enter your mom's recipes or something and then, but people build real applications with that, I think starting in three, when it became relational. And then semi-relational in three, fully relational in seven, it was fully relational in three, no semi-relational in three. What are you talking about? Yeah. Semi-relational in three, fully relational in seven. Okay. Yeah. That's how I remember it. I might be wrong. Um, let's look it up.
Yeah. Well, uh, it was, it was, it had lookups before version three and actual relationships in three and in seven, you had the graph, right? Okay. Yeah. I might be wrong, but in three, it was. Still one file, um, one table per file. Yeah. Yeah. And that changed in seven too. Yeah. Um, but actually the other thing I talk about a lot is what it used to be. And like the long history we have doesn't really matter. What matters is how we're staying current with what's going on now, what best practices were, we're thinking about now, how we're changing our, our, um, our thoughts. You had a great, we just had lunch and you talked about something that you do at beeswax, um, which is fascinating to really.
I'm going to actually talk with you about this. Cause I, you know, what else we're going to do, um, as a way to really ensure performance and reliability, leveraging the new transaction feature, and also kind of a different way of doing data modeling when you have a WAN solution, uh, uh, that needs to be performing. How was that for summary? Yeah. I mean, we've been doing this for, for years and we have it in production systems and, uh, uh, Andrew Chonky had a session at, at, at DEVCON, the user's sandbox, I believe it was called. And, uh, it's all about, uh, the local file and, uh, you know, we're always looking for a good name for it, but, um, I encourage people to, to watch that recording or, or watch for, you know, podcasts or, or, uh, blog posts for beeswax.
I did a number of sessions on transactions, like over the last couple of years. Um, yeah, you've been on it for a long time. Yeah. I think, I think what I, what I focused on is in the, is in the transactional part. What Andrew focused on is, is the, uh, actual interface and opportunities that it presents, you know, so that's, that's what it is. But basically this, to summarize it, what it is, is, um, a file, a file maker file with just tables and fields. And that file is then locked down and, and then, and then, and then inserted into a container in a, in a table, in a single record in the hosted file. Right. And when you open the hosted file, as part of the startup process, it, uh, it deploys that file, sets, uh, to a temp directory and sets a variable, a global file, uh, reference to it, variable, uh, external reference.
And then you can instance a table of occurrences on the graph. And the reason you do that is to, to, to edit data, to enter data, right. And validate data. Yeah. So all that happens locally, um, where it's ridiculously fast, obviously. Yeah. And you have complete control and you're not locking any records on the server. That's that's right. So the, the structure of the file, like how many tables and fields and. I mean, if you look at, yeah, I mean, if you look at an example, let's say you have, uh, you know, I keep going through the example of a concert tour. Let's say you have a tour and you've got concert dates and you need to edit that tour, maybe the, some of the dates are shifted or, you know, whatever details about each tour, you could edit that record, its parent record and all its child concert tour records and, and edit it in a card window and you can add tour dates.
You can cancel tour dates, change the dates of any of those records as you're doing that in that card window, all that data is local, there's no traffic going to the server. Right. And then when you're done, you validate the data, pack it up as a Jason, uh, you know, payload, send it to the server and transact it. And the reason you transact it is so that you, we denormalize data and store it so that it's, uh, it's cashed. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you also transacted because someone else might have been editing at the same time. So you have to check for that. Yeah. There's, you know, like again, our, our approach, uh, we've, and we check this with clients, you know, does it bother you that, you know, someone else could be changing the record and we have, you know, things that we can do for that, which is, uh, you know, we can check the modification count of the, of the, of the parent record.
We can check a hash. Yeah. A hash of the only certain fields, because again, if all you're concerned about is the, the concert tour dates, someone else can be entering some other details about the, the, the, you know, the, that concert, uh, you know, con, uh, contract or whatever. And those might not conflict that, that one got edited that way. And the other stuff is being edited by someone else. So it's a lot of, a lot of things to consider, but in the end it's the last one in wins and we, and we audit. So like whatever the situation is, we can accommodate what the client needs. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. This, I, uh, I've done things like this before, but this gets to the next level for sure.
And then, so the, the table, the local table would just need like a few relationships and you can populate them with whatever you guess you don't know if you want to, if you want to show like a parent record with data in the portal, you could grab that, you know, from the, from the server and then populate it so you can see what you're editing. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. So it doesn't need much structure. Yeah. Let's say the pro the, the concert table has, you know, 50 fields. Um, you know, you might, you might be editing only a couple of the fields in that, in that concert table. Yeah. Yeah. And then you might be editing a handful of fields.
Um, the, in the tour dates table and, uh, you only need those fields that you're going to be entering data. You don't need to replicate the whole schema of both of those tables. Yeah. So it's very lightweight. Yeah. Only what you need to do for creation or edit. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's really great. Our team loves it. This is, I, I would file this under, you're adding complexity and overhead to set it up and to get used to using it. Um, but then you're saving yourself a ton of time to do, to use this for a lot of other things. It's a design pattern. Yeah. It's a design pattern. Again. Again, Red's presentation focuses on, you know, some, uh, really cool and innovative ways that it can benefit the, the user experience.
Um, but transactionally, it's also great because when you denormalize data and you store it transactionally, uh, you can, you know, you can guarantee that the data is accurate. And, uh, and that point, you know, if you're, you're showing a list of concerts, you can show, you know, how many tour dates there are, et cetera. And that's all stored at the, at the concert level. Yeah. And, and ridiculously fast. Like, I think, yeah, I like the phrase you said. It has to scroll like butter. Yes. Like butter. Yes. What are the thoughts from the conference? Well, I mean, everybody says this, but you know, it's great to see people. It's just, it's so different. You know, it's like, what did we say?
It's like, uh, it's like augmented, you know, reality. Yeah. It's not better than vision pro, but you know. Yeah. So you bought a vision pro and I tried it out. We should maybe even talk about that for a minute. Yeah. Why not? Right. Yeah. Um, uh, I wasn't, I don't think anything can really prepare you for what it's like to try this thing. Uh, I was absolutely blown away by like how perfect, how perfect the, the virtual objects stay in space. Like you put it on and the Apple logo appears in front of you and we turn your head as fast as you want, whatever direction you want. It is there as though it's on the wall, like as though it's a sticker and all the screens and every single thing that you do are there.
Right. So you can, uh, like in the, you can have like a movie off to the right. And so if you look to the right, there's a movie playing in the middle, you can have your whole file maker application. And on the left, you might have your email. Yep. And so you can either use your eyes to turn or your head to turn. And then to select something, you use your eyes to select it and then just use your little pinch gesture. But it was amazing. Yeah. It's great. I mean, not only are the things spatially placed by where you're sitting, but you can actually walk into another room and have a placement, something like what we were talking about before. Which is, you can have an entertainment area and that screen is sitting there waiting for you.
So it was like from a spatial perspective, it knows exactly how many feet away it is from you. Yeah. And it's, and it basically stays there. At the demo, I was sitting in a chair, but yeah, it is a, it is, has a local battery pack, right? For a few hours of battery. And then if you're in a chair and working with it, you can plug it in and then have forever battery. So yes, correct. Um, I think I, did I get myself off topic? We're going to talk about one other thing. I think the conference, like seeing people at the conference was absolutely amazing. Um, uh, I guess one other question for you, how many of these have you been coming to like 11, 12? Well, all of them.
25. Yeah. All of them. And, uh, yeah, it's, uh, and we had, uh, you know, Jerry Robin, myself and Stephen Blackwell and Jerry Robin, um, was not here this year. Spiritually. Spiritually. Yeah. I talked to him over the phone and, uh, yeah, it was great. And in my, in my heart, Jerry Robin's always here. So. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I mean, he's not, he's not gone. It's just, he just wasn't here present in person. He had other important things to do. So. Thanks so much for your time, Vince. Yeah. You're welcome, Matt. And see you at the next one. Yes. Well, or probably one in Europe. Cause you know, hopefully you go to those there. Yes. I will be at, uh, dot FMP and, uh, you know, additional other conferences that are coming up.
Yeah. You said there's going to be one in France. Yeah. They haven't announced it yet, but yes. Yeah. That's coming up. Yep. There's one in Montreal. There's one in Montreal that I'm going back to my hometown. Yes. And so looking forward to that. The Italy one we've talked about, you and I've been there. Yeah. Uh, Sweden, Antwerp, wherever they hold that one, engage you. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks again. Thank you, Matt. The conference is over and I just had this nice discussion with Vince and now we're talking about business with Julie Nadell. Hey, nice to see you. So you're the owner of beeswax. Yes. And, uh, most of us in the community came to, uh, came to, uh, found or came to like, own our companies by being FileMaker nerds and then tried to figure out how to be business people.
You didn't do that. I want to hear about your path. No, I did the same. Oh, did you? Yeah. Cause you're, you're such a business person though. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. That, that part appealed to me early on, but I was working in a youth center, uh, using FileMaker Pro to organize the volunteers to help the kids with their homework. Back in the sixties. Roughly. And, uh, right out of college as part of AmeriCorps. Nice. Domestic Peace Corps. Okay. And, um, and it was a very satisfying way to help that organization. Yeah. And I just sort of had that moment of like, okay, I can do this for other organizations. Yeah. But, uh, but actually, yeah, it was, it was, it was at the same time that I was developing a interest in organization development and was like, oh, is that, you know, is that the career I want to get into?
But, um, when I started, you know, meeting... Meeting people in that field, people like 15, 20 years older than me and seeing what it was going, how it was going for them to get work in the field. And this watcher was happening for me as a FileMaker dev, walking in, you know, being just... You mean it was like really hard for them to get work or what? Hard. Yeah. Compared to walking in with FileMaker and just immediately being treated as an expert as a 25. And it was like working with everybody in the organization in a really, you know, high level, you know, the pay was good. So, so I put the, the idea of organization development aside, but not lost, just tangential.
Okay. Because the, the sort of thought was, for one thing, organization development also thought of as, um, uh, organizational behavior, industrial psychology, um, basically the overlap between business and psychology. See, these are three phrases that most FileMaker developers just would never use. Well, here we go. Let's do it. So, so it's, so it was, um, to, to help organizations in their effort to be the best place to work is sort of the OED consultant. It's, it's like how, how it feels to be human at work and how, and how the management and operations facilitate that, that, that the person shows up in a way that is self-directed and satisfying and a fulfillment of their work.
But they want to contribute rather than an imposed gig, right? We're not talking about P&L at all. We're talking about human, meaningful things. The, the, the feeling of being, you know, we spent a lot of time at work and it might as well feel, you know, satisfying. Yeah, absolutely. So, so I, so I, I knew that I was interested in that and I felt a couple things. One that on a good day in, in subtle ways, while these terms, may not be used much in the file making community, we are doing a ground level version of OED that when we are implementing a system, we are affecting the culture, right? We're, we're, we're. Of the client. Of the client. Yeah. You know, we're, we're sort of by the nature of custom work, we are manifesting their view of themselves.
Yeah. And, and, and in meaningful ways, like how information is shared. Is a big part of culture. Yeah. Right. Who sees what, why, you know, sort of what, what, what agendas we, we deliver to when we build an interface, when we build a report. So I, so I have been excited about that, the ground up level version of, of studying organization development and helping in that way. Was that your degree, by the way? It, I was contemplating. Okay. But, but FileMaker was too compelling. Compelling. So I put this aside. Oh, I see, I see. And, but I, but I kept the, you know, the flavor of it as part of my own trajectory. And so the other part to your, to your initial question was I had an instinct towards business.
And so I said, look, if I, if I have this sense of the ideal workplace. Yeah. And I come from, you know, sort of a idealistic, you know, UC Santa Cruz studying utopia sort of vantage, I should vet it. Right. How much is this is like, isn't it pretty to think so versus actually can work. In a, you know, professional setting in a, in a, in a for-profit endeavor. Um, so I set upon the assignment to see if I could practice what I preach, build an organization that would start from the ground level, committed to having the best possible work experience. So you build that, sold it, and then started a beeswax. I got to go for the humor. It's good. It's good to see you.
So, so when, when was this, uh, when was all this? This is, it's, I'm on year 28 with beeswax. Yeah. Yeah. So this is like, those are that kind of early for a year and a half kind of thinking. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And you guys are such a power player in the industry. God, all the things that happened for your company, just this conference. I know, right? With Vince winning the award and being featured in the keynote and, uh, I don't know, the five or six other things, I think. Yeah, it was great. And, and, and, and I will say just. So true to true to mission, the, the part of the little goodbyes on our, our text thread this morning that definitely were the most gratifying, if I may say so was the, the, the, the couple echoes of people, you know, heading off to the airport.
The highlight for me of this kind of con was, was spending time with you all. Yeah. Oh, definitely the same for me as well. Yeah. I got more questions about the business thing though. Right? So the, all these things that you set upon your, the words you put on were so eloquent. It was really great to hear. So how has that. Evolved over all these 28 years? What were the, what were some of the things that were, went wrong and, and how are you, how has it matured? Um, the, the, the goal of making a company structure work for every individual on their terms is, uh, requiring of a lot of effort of management. I, yeah, every employee enjoying employment on their terms.
Yeah. That's a huge. Yeah. So, um. Um, so, you know, you, you, you commented that I, I came to this from business. Um, I was actually pretty good at FileMaker by the way. Yeah. And I liked it, but I couldn't do both. I couldn't, I couldn't be this, um, oriented around the experience of the staff and also be a tech lead. But I knew if I did the other part well, I would attract great talent. Absolutely. As we've seen. And you've done that. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I, I created the base where the. Uh, the, the profile of FileMaker developer that I think is very effective, particularly for smaller projects, I mean really all levels, but, but there's, there's a, there's a certain way to win with small projects, which requires low overhead management wise.
So you need a lot built into that one dev, you need somebody who is able to handle the business assignment, the, the analysis, the design, the development, the understanding of budget and being able to speak to it responsibly with the client. So that's such an interesting thing that a lot of people don't, a lot of other developers or any developers don't have the understanding of the business part, not just how to write code. Yeah, no, we're consulting, we're all, we wear all those hats and especially one person has to wear all of them for a small project to be, you know, business-wise viable. Yeah. So, but that persona, as you may have encountered along the way, can be a little bit, you know, eclectic kind of person, right?
A little bit of a personality, right? Hopefully. Um, so. So, so that, you know, in order to make a home for that kind of person, I, I really had to be in my sort of leadership, leadership from behind and a lot, spending a lot of energy, um, with, uh, the tracking of what each, each be needed and how we could best accommodate it. Yeah. And. And like having people who can, who love the things that they do to where the, where the other person doesn't have those skills or interests or whatever kind of a thing. I don't know. Maybe that's oversimplifying it. Repeat the question. So I guess one of the things I thought about when I, when I ran Appworks is I, if an employee didn't really like a particular role that they had, I tried to figure out a way to find out what they really wanted to do and then have other people in the company, um, find a way, find the people in the company who wanted to do the things that, that were being abandoned kind of a thing that, but I think you're talking about next level from that.
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's really the holistic of every aspect of the employment, you know, configuration and, and you know, what, what tech stack and what, you know, schedule and what kind of client, um, and how they want to work with, with others in their organization and the clients. So I was tracking a lot of that and, and sort of to your question about challenges that there was a, there was a limit to how much I could scale that way. And we went far, but you know, a lot of BSWACs' growth in the, in, in, in the last, you know, several years has because other leaders in BSWACs have, have complimented this agenda with a bit more normalization. So now I feel like we have, for a while now have had a really good blend of, you know, human centricity, but also, uh, corporate culture.
Yeah. Right. There's, there's a lot of structure in place. There's a lot of, you know, we have been hiring more full time employee, you know, just sort of like not juggling as much. I mean, for instance, one of the, one of the, the hard things to juggle was people would do work with BSWACs and have their own. They have their own private gigs going on, right. That persona is going to have that. And I accommodated that a lot and happy to do so, but it also, you know, all sorts of challenging moments came up around that, right? Like, are they prioritizing the other work over BSWACs work? A person will naturally do whatever pays the most, right? Well, it's, it's certainly attention and, and, and, and in order to get that fair for everybody, it took a lot of effort, you know, a lot of trust building, right?
It's just a lot of personal contact, contact with each person. Mm-hmm . Yeah. Hard to scale. Um, but thanks to other leaders at BSWACs, we've again complimented that and extended it to, you know, to be able to get to the size we're at now. Um, and meanwhile, I've been working on more of our systems to sort of institutionalize my, my view of, of culture as manifest in database. Yeah. And, uh, that will have to be a different podcast. Oh, so we can schedule that one, huh? Uh, um, come work for BSWACs and find out. Uh, okay. Well, the gauntlet's been thrown down. On that note, do you hire old, experienced developers who are so set in their ways like me? Um, it's the right question and yes, and, you know, this, this is, this, what I've described is sort of like a way of understanding what works with us well now.
Yeah. Right? The, the experienced developer who brings all of that skill and, and that well-roundedness. Mm-hmm. Is definitely better to apply. Hmm. And also, we want to juggle less, right? We are looking for people who are not going to have a whole bunch of other work going on. Right. For instance, people who are ready to work with structure maybe more than they had to. Yeah. Sure, sure, sure. Right? And, and want to. Right? Mm-hmm. You know, I think the trade-offs obviously work for the people who are at the company, and it's a, it's, that's, that's the way to think about the, should I apply? Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's a great question. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Is, am, am I, is it worth it for me as, as the senior, you know, senior established developer.
Yeah. To, to sort of give up some of the, you know, sort of whimsy of the independent life. Right? Mm-hmm. Of just, you know, I, whatever, whatever. Sure. And make sure I'm checking my email every day. Right? Being responsible to, to a, a different layer of, of operational expect. Yeah. Expectation. Yeah. Yep. And can, can be, you know, generally we like if you can work on a. Yeah. You know, Pacific Standard Time. Right. Schedule. More or less. I mean, we accommodate things. Yeah. But, you know, we try, try to. I'm already out. Normalize. I'm 10 hours ahead of you, so. Wait. I mean, and we do that. And we have to. And I have a great job, so. And we, I, I heard, I heard, I heard.
The, you know, again, we've, we do orient, organize around talent. So, you know, there's, in, in that, in that hiring question. Mm-hmm. The balance between this person's really hot shit and there's a couple things that we need to accommodate. That happens. Yeah. So, if you're, if you're asking, like, how, how to frame our invitation. Mm-hmm. It would be that balance of. Mm-hmm. Strong and dependent professional skills. Multifacetedness. And, you know, interested in showing up in a. Right. In a more normalized. Yeah, yeah. Institution. So, let's change gears and then I think we need to wrap. 'Cause you gotta get to the airport. Yeah. So, bringing young developers in the community, which is always kind of difficult to do.
Yeah. I've been really lucky in my training classes. Yeah. With people that have been, like, either adults and wanting to get into FileMaker or actually legit young people who want to get into the community and work. And I love, I love having them come through the class and then send them to companies like yours to apply. So what, what, what, what do you guys do, obviously, I only have a small little dent in that. What do you do to bring younger people into the community? Spend a lot. Mm-hmm. I think that's been the biggest thing that my, my colleagues help me get comfortable with. Mm-hmm. Is in, it's just worth it. Yeah. And it's been paying off for us. Yeah. Is that you just have to keep 'em on the bench for a while, while having billable people and really good managers spending time paying attention to them.
So by spend a lot, you mean hire them and then don't expect them to be billable for a while. That's what I mean. Okay. That's what I mean. Okay. And. Well, what about getting 'em in the first place? Oh. Um, um, well, bring it on. Um, we, our method has been a couple internship programs. Mm-hmm. Um, through universities. Mm-hmm. And so that's gone well for us. Um, uh, but not, you know, not hugely. It's been a couple at a time. Mm-hmm. Um, and we are, you know, always receptive to other, uh, influxes. Mm-hmm. Um, but, you know, a lot of it has been because those programs have gone well, actually we just hired two people, um, through a, a university relationship and one of them was just a college buddy.
Hmm. Mm-hmm. So we, yeah, the, the biggest source of hiring for us these days, which I think has been great for, for all these reasons has been referral, the referral hiring. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Is our biggest source of, of. Okay. New, new staff. Um, and, and so that we have put that investment in the training program. Yeah. Means that when one college grad who went through our internship program is talking to his college buddy. Mm-hmm. Who's really bright and got a CS degree. Yeah. He, he has a good story to tell. Yeah. Um, and so that's, that's the way we're gonna help them cultivate. Yeah. Their arrival in the company. I think I could talk to you for another hour or two.
Exactly. But I'm gonna let, I'm gonna let you go. This has been a really awesome conversation. Thanks, Julian. Yeah. Pleasure.