Simplifying Tech Through Empathy and Understanding with Frank Bravo

0:00 Frank: One of the things that concerns me about,

0:02 you know, is it going to be ubiquitous to everybody is understanding and getting down to a set of terminology that everybody can understand.

0:28 Brad: Welcome,

0:28 everybody,

0:29 to another episode of the How Many CTOs Does It Take podcast.

0:32 My name is Brad Hefta-Gaub,

0:33 and my trusty co-host Scott Porat is not here today. He was called away on business,

0:37 but have no fear.

0:39 You won't just be listening to me.

0:41 We have an excellent guest with us today,

0:43 Frank Bravo.

0:44 Frank, would you like to introduce yourself and tell the audience a little bit about what brought you here?

0:48 Frank: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Brad.

0:50 I really appreciate it. I've enjoyed listening to your podcast.

0:53 And being a guest is awesome.

0:55 So I'm Frank Bravo.

0:56 I am a technologist from the San Francisco Bay Area.

0:59 I've been in technology since the early 90s. I was lucky to have a computer growing up, which is for somebody my age is very uncommon.

1:08 So my dad had a job where he needed a computer at home.

1:12 So I got the benefit of it and I took to it pretty early and was building databases to track.

1:18 How the San Francisco Giants were doing day in and day out.

1:22 Back then, they weren't doing very well.

1:24 Right now, they're not doing very well.

1:26 So everything kind of comes full circle.

1:28 I worked for 30 years in local media as CTO of a hyper-local media company,

1:34 took them online.

1:36 We were the first newspaper to publish our entire editorial content on the web. That was in 1994. So.

1:43 So pre-Google,

1:44 pre-Yahoo, pre-browsers, all that kind of good stuff.

1:47 We were kind of at that bleeding edge of technology.

1:50 Fast forward,

1:51 I left that job a year ago to go work for a legal services startup where I am the CTO there and doing the same sort of things, bringing innovation to a system that doesn't have a lot of innovation.

2:05 Lawyers have done the same thing the same way for years and years and years.

2:08 but my through line in all of this has been making technology simple i have a podcast your tech makeover at yourtechmakeover.com that talks about how to make technology simple and it's meant for people who aren't technologists and it's not for people that are dumb because just because you don't understand technology that doesn't mean you're dumb it's just that you don't understand technology maybe you weren't growing up with it maybe it wasn't something that was introduced at an early age

2:34 age but you know it should be simple because technology should be a simple thing and when it works well it should just work and you shouldn't have to fight with it yeah

2:43 Brad: Love it. Love it. Well,

2:44 actually,

2:45 it's fascinating to imagine that you were in the early, early days of the Internet and you stuck with the same organization for 30 years.

2:56 That's been quite a ride, quite a lot has changed.

3:01 Frank: It is crazy. I mean, so in the Bay Area there,

3:04 I realized after I'd been at the company for quite a few years that changing jobs was probably not something in my future just because, you know, if you're staying somewhere for that long,

3:15 people aren't going to necessarily look at you. And at some point, I just kind of resigned myself to local media was where I was going to be.

3:22 Brad: Yeah.

3:22 Frank: The person who I went to work for at ProLegal actually was a client of mine.

3:26 So I've done consulting work for the last 25 years or so.

3:29 And he was a client of mine who he's serial entrepreneur,

3:33 always coming up with new ideas. I've worked on a lot of his projects and but he never hired me because he was not willing to take me away from the sure thing,

3:41 which was local media.

3:43 So go figure there. Right.

3:45 So,

3:45 you know, about two years ago, he's like,

3:48 hey, you know what?

3:49 This is my sure thing.

3:50 I am.

3:50 I'm sure that this is going to be the one that's going to take off and I want you to come work for me. So it started that kind of transition. And of course, leaving someplace after so long,

3:59 I couldn't just give two weeks notice. It was

4:01 Brad: Yeah.

4:02 Frank: definitely not a peace out type situation.

4:04 So I made sure that they were set up properly so that they had the tools they needed to do the things that they needed to do, which was always my concept because, you know, no.

4:16 good technologists and no good CTO should leave a company without being able to run if they weren't around.

4:23 And I always made sure that that was the case.

4:26 Brad: That's great.

4:26 That's good.

4:27 I'm sure that they appreciated that, your contribution over the years and the fact that you left them in a good state.

4:33 And I'm sure that your new role probably appreciates that as well.

4:36 Frank: Yeah, no,

4:37 he does.

4:38 And then the great thing about him is that he knows how I work and it was the easiest interview that I've ever done.

4:44 Brad: Do you want to talk a little bit about what are you, so obviously you were doing like local media,

4:48 now you're working on a legal services team as the CTO. Do you want to say anything about what the shape of that technology and product looks like and what is the role of a CTO at a legal services firm?

5:01 Frank: We are a very small company. We are about 15 people right now.

5:05 ProLegal has been around for about seven years. We started as a...

5:09 a funding company.

5:10 So we would give advances on people's personal injury accidents and their judgments to be able to get by while they're waiting for their judgment.

5:22 About two years ago,

5:23 the CEO decided,

5:25 you know what,

5:25 this is a good business,

5:26 but I've seen so much in law that they need help in other areas.

5:31 So the first thing that I did was I am in the process of

5:36 of taking an old ancient ACT database,

5:39 which anybody who's been around in technology long enough probably has an ACT database in their past,

5:44 and we're converting that to a new CRM system that I've built.

5:48 We've been able to basically capture all that information and put it in. So that was kind of job number one. But job number two was creating the tools that the law firms need in order to interact with us.

6:02 and interact with their clients.

6:03 So the biggest thing, so about a year ago,

6:06 nine months ago, we launched ProLegalSuite, which is a suite of different products that law firms can use.

6:12 Some of it is free to the law firm.

6:14 So for instance,

6:15 if a client needs a ride to a court case or to a medical appointment,

6:19 they can come to us, we can schedule that ride for them, and that ride is on a lien against their judgment.

6:25 So there's no out of...

6:27 pocket costs for anybody at that point. So we've built, I built systems that interact with Uber and Lyft that we're able to go schedule those rides,

6:36 get the people to where they need to go. And then ultimately when the case settles, we get paid and everybody's happy about

6:44 Brad: that. Yeah, sure.

6:44 Frank: So a lot of the stuff that I've done in the last year has been supporting that kind of a process.

6:50 We have other things on the roadmap,

6:51 not a lot that I can talk about yet,

6:53 but

6:54 Brad: Sure.

6:54 Frank: But our company moves very fast,

6:56 and that's the great thing about being at a small startup who has been bootstrapped and is cash flow positive,

7:02 that we can make decisions and then just get it done.

7:05 Brad: You said you've listened to the podcast before, and we always kind of have a joke about how long does it take before we mention AI and sort of the changes to AI.

7:16 One thing that I think is interesting about.

7:18 What I'm hearing you say is something that we've talked a little bit about on this podcast before, about this idea that there are these very, I don't want to say niche, but there are these very like targeted businesses that have like very specific business practices, business sort of like internal systems, internal like behaviors and practices.

7:43 to make the business successful and make the business do its thing and that there's just so much

7:51 opportunity now in the golden age of building software that I believe we're in now to actually build improved automation around these things in a way that in the past like you said you've built the CRM like in the past it's like oh well why am I not just using Salesforce but then customizing it and the answer to that question I assume is it never gets quite right you know there's something specific so is there anything else you want to say about that

8:18 Frank: yeah

8:18 Brad: How about

8:18 Frank: so

8:18 Brad: that?

8:19 Frank: I mean so yes I'll bring it back to AI but at the newspaper we built our own CMS system and we started building that in 1996 so that was pre WordPress and had my partner and I been smart about it we would have gone out to market with it but neither of us wanted to be that kind of software as a service type company that the WordPress and Wix of the world have become especially for

8:44 for news media who don't have a lot of money to throw around.

8:47 But fast forward now to where we are today and we use AI all the time. I use AI literally all day long.

8:55 For our funding business,

8:56 we use AI all the time because there's a lot of documents to go through that we have trained our own models in order to go out and look at those documents and then say,

9:06 yes,

9:07 this is a good case that we can.

9:09 we can give an advance against or no,

9:11 this is not a good case and this is why.

9:14 In my imagination, perfect world,

9:17 that's all built into our CRM system where we can dump that in and have data across all the ones that we funded and all the ones that we didn't fund and be able to say that in this state for this kind of an accident with this kind of a policy,

9:32 this is what you should do.

9:34 Or at least have a, you know, recommendation of what to do.

9:38 As far as using AI every day in my world,

9:41 I use, I've used it to build the CRM itself,

9:46 which, you know, I wish I had that years ago when we were building the content management system.

9:52 But nothing goes out without my review.

9:55 So that's, that's the thing. And I know you guys have talked about that a lot. And that is the one thing that I am.

9:59 I am absolutely, you know, I need to be able to look at that code.

10:03 I've actually written checks so that the code writes the way I write because I've been doing this for so long that my PHP skills are not those of different frameworks and such.

10:16 It's old school PHP.

10:18 And if the bot starts writing things that I can't understand,

10:21 then that's not going to be good for anybody once it needs to be.

10:25 To be fixed.

10:26 Brad: Yeah, I love it.

10:27 I mean, obviously,

10:27 using AI to both build the software that makes sense for you, using the AI to help do the analysis,

10:34 and I think that you're, I'm assuming that you're touching on that kind of space that we've also talked about and a lot of people are talking about right now,

10:41 which is this notion that sure the LLMs have built this sort of like general like suck everything off the internet knowledge.

10:51 But what they are missing is the specific context that makes pro-legal services successful.

10:58 You know, talking about I mean, I can be I can begin to imagine,

11:02 you know, like you were saying, like,

11:03 oh, in this state, this type of an accident,

11:05 this type of fact pattern,

11:06 it's going to be a good case to loan against these in a different state with this different fact pattern. It's not. And that's like this core knowledge that.

11:16 your your company for legal services have built up over its lifetime that's

11:21 Frank: Right.

11:21 Brad: not going to exist out there in the public internet and so you like you say you've got to train your own model to basically do this very specific thing and and keep that close to your vest basically

11:30 Frank: Yeah,

11:31 exactly.

11:32 And I think that's the one thing from a funding standpoint that makes pro-legal very different than our competitors.

11:37 I mean, I'm sure they're doing the same sort of analysis,

11:39 whether or not they're doing it with AI,

11:41 I don't know.

11:42 You know, the person is still in the mix with that because obviously we're not going to go just by what it says.

11:48 And it's taken a long time to kind of train it to understand what we think is a good case to advance where it might say,

11:58 oh, yeah, go ahead and advance that case.

12:00 But we would never do that.

12:02 Brad: Yeah,

12:02 interesting.

12:03 Well,

12:04 so we just kind of dove into the deep end of like,

12:06 how are you building technology systems?

12:09 for a legal services company but your podcast you focus on more explaining these kind of technical issues to non-technical people and I'm just kind of curious as I think about it are you you know it's a small team that you're with do you find that in in the context not just of your podcast but even in the context of the work you're doing are you the propeller head that's constantly trying to like

12:34 code switch and explain to the non-propelled heads what what it means to have the AI do the analysis versus having the human in the loop talk a little bit about that

12:43 Frank: Yeah, I mean, that has always been my thing.

12:45 I mean, even when I started, I started as a designer at a newspaper and I was there for about six months and the CEO came to me and said,

12:54 hey, you know what?

12:55 You seem like you understand technology a little bit. We're going to go hire somebody.

12:59 or you can be that person and I was like oh well I can be that person I guess you know why not I don't I know technology so I spent the better part of the first you know five or six years of my career not only explaining the technology but building that technology as well so you know now I am that IT person so again in a small company which I've always worked in small companies

13:23 When you have 15 people,

13:26 I'm going to be the most technologically advanced person there only because I've seen it all.

13:31 I've done it for so long. I'm an IT generalist, you know, so I am the one that is going to be able to explain to them why their mouse didn't connect to the computer or why their Zoom phone is ringing on their cell phone but not their computer. You know, all those kind of things because I've seen all that and I can explain it to them.

13:50 in a way that they're going to understand.

13:51 That was, that's the biggest thing is I try not to talk down to people who don't understand the technology where a lot of technologists will talk down to them. You know, you don't understand it.

14:02 The joke was always,

14:04 oh,

14:04 you know, IT is going to make us fill out a ticket.

14:07 Well,

14:07 it's not, we're not making you fill out a ticket because we want to put a roadmap, a roadblock in front of you, but it's because we need the information from you so that we can give you an answer.

14:16 that's not, you know, a million characters long and you have to figure out what we're talking about.

14:21 Brad: Yeah.

14:22 Frank: And I do that in my podcast. So I mean, like, I've covered things like I just recorded an episode about sharing photos.

14:29 So, you know, that's something that we do every day, but there's right ways and wrong ways of doing that.

14:34 You know, you could go to someplace,

14:36 take 50 photos and text it to your friend.

14:38 That's fine,

14:39 unless your friend, you know, hates texting.

14:42 But the right way to do that would be to set up some sort of sharing or put it into a drive or put it into a...

14:48 shared album or whatever it might be that I just try to explain that and not that people couldn't go out to the internet and find that but I find that sometimes just explaining it in a very simple way is better than having to read through it

15:02 Brad: It's interesting.

15:03 That's a great example, like sharing photos.

15:05 And I'm kind of curious,

15:07 do you think that it's that I would think there's like I can think of at least three things that are hard about explaining.

15:13 a simple thing like that to a non-technical person and i'm curious if so my you know the things that come to my mind are well just

15:25 just sort of like framing the problem space and being able to say like these are the different ways you could do that right and and that like even beginning to say like what create a share right or um and then there's issue of sort of like the vocabulary itself the words that are used to describe these things and

15:46 Frank: Well,

15:46 Brad: then of i guess

15:47 Frank: course,

15:47 Brad: the or

15:47 Frank: the acronyms.

15:48 Brad: the acronyms exactly or the next um

15:51 And the next thing that's similar to that would be just sort of what you mentioned earlier about cutting it down to the to the.

15:58 essential words right it's like Right. wasn't that isn't that isn't that like a classic uh mark twain quote i i i would have written a shorter letter but i didn't have time or

16:07 Frank: Yeah,

16:08 something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

16:09 Brad: yeah so

16:09 Frank: Yeah,

16:10 Brad: what of

16:10 Frank: no,

16:10 Brad: those

16:10 Frank: you're absolutely.

16:11 Brad: three things what's is are those the hard parts about it or what's hardest or

16:15 Frank: You know, I think that for a non-technical person,

16:19 the hardest thing is understanding what even the question is that they want to ask.

16:24 So as I thought about the episode about the photo sharing,

16:28 for instance, you know, I'm a Mac guy because I want to be I'm a Windows person because I have to be and I always lean Apple products first.

16:38 But if you're not an Apple household,

16:41 then that decision is going to be a very different decision of how you share files. If somebody were to just sit down at a at a browser.

16:50 type in how do I share my photos you know they're not going to think oh how do I share my photos because I'm on an iPhone and I need to share it with an Android user so I think that's the hardest thing and that's what I try to get to first is you know all these things all these ways are possible to do this but you need to know where you are first and then you need to know where you're going so if you're an Android user I'm an Apple user

17:15 you know i'm going to share it differently than with you than i would with my son who's an apple user and i think that that's what technologists don't always think about they're like always already to the solution of oh you just create a share you do this you do that without explaining that there's steps that you have to go through before that

17:34 Brad: Do you think that, is it getting easier to describe these things or is it harder because the things keep?

17:41 there's more things or or is it just always been it always been how it is

17:46 Frank: I don't know that it's any harder.

17:50 I mean, I feel like the technology is easier to use for the most part, but coming up with the right solution maybe is harder because there's so much of it. You know, 25 years ago, there was only one way to do certain things.

18:06 things. Now there's 10.

18:08 And what is the right solution for you at that moment is, is a hard question to answer. I mean, even, even in building the CRM system that we've built, you know, there's lots of different ways we could do different things, store the images,

18:24 you know, all those sorts of things. But what's the right answer today?

18:28 It may not be the right answer tomorrow,

18:30 but it's coming up with, okay, well,

18:32 my best guess.

18:33 guess is that this is the thing that's going to survive and coming up with that answer is probably the hardest thing so

18:40 Brad: Yeah.

18:41 Where are you coming up with your topics for this?

18:46 Frank: I've uh I've leaned on all the years of experience of helping um my neighbors my my father I mean a lot honestly a lot of the things are my dad calling and saying hey

18:58 Hey,

18:59 how do you do this?

19:00 And I'm like,

19:01 oh, hey,

19:01 that's a great idea.

19:02 So I take that and other things that I've done for clients over the years and things that just I'm interested in, like I just did back on photos,

19:13 I just did about backing up photos.

19:16 And I was like, you know, I know how I backup photos, but I wonder if there's something better out there.

19:22 And lo and behold,

19:24 did you know that?

19:25 that if you're a prime member,

19:26 you get free unlimited photo storage for any still image.

19:31 Brad: I

19:31 Frank: I

19:32 Brad: didn't know did that.

19:32 Frank: not know that prior to doing that episode.

19:35 And it's more of what is interesting to me and what I think other people might be interested in.

19:41 And then I take all those ideas,

19:43 I throw it into the model that I've trained to help me come up with topics and say, you know, this is what I'm thinking,

19:50 you know what I've done in the past.

19:51 past, come up with a list of, you know, 30 things that might be good.

19:56 And then I go through them. We,

19:58 the

19:59 I and I stopped short of saying he or she,

20:02 but AI helped me, you know, put together a good list.

20:08 And then we put together an order and try to put together dates that make sense to release them at certain times.

20:16 Like it doesn't make a lot of sense to do photo sharing in the middle of March.

20:21 You know, that's definitely an end of year thing.

20:23 People take a lot of photos towards the end of the year.

20:26 here that's when it's on the mind of a lot of people so that's that's kind of how i've done it for the last you know few years that i've done this this podcast yeah

20:34 Brad: Have you gotten feedback around this? Have somebody come to you and said,

20:37 oh, my God, I'm so glad you explained this to me. I've been banging my head against the wall on that.

20:42 And what's the most interesting story in that space?

20:46 Frank: so i've had clients come to me um a lot of times clients will say hey can you cover this on a podcast in the future

20:52 Way,

20:54 way back when I did something about computers and children and in their households.

21:03 So again.

21:05 Personal story,

21:05 a Mac guy,

21:06 my kids had Macs in their rooms at a pretty early age because I knew I could kind of tie them down to what was appropriate at each of their ages.

21:17 So that episode was something that the people that I work with in schools,

21:23 they were like, we're going to send this to every one of our family members because we think it's important that they understand.

21:30 this technology that they understand how to make their kids safe online. And actually, now that I'm talking about it,

21:37 it's probably an episode that I should redo because it has been so long. Right.

21:42 Brad: Yeah, yeah,

21:43 especially especially with all the recent news about social media and and now, you know, the kind of the.

21:51 uh similar concerns about um usage of ai by

21:55 Frank: Mm

21:55 Brad: by hmm. children as well

21:56 Frank: Yeah.

21:56 Brad: definitely that'd be pretty topical i am curious do you think that you know one of the one of the ideas that's kind of out in the zeitgeist right now is this idea that technology

22:09 figures and companies and tech companies in general or people behind tech is are sort of like losing the trust of the

22:17 Frank: Hmm.

22:17 Brad: of the masses um and seeing how you're you know in Silicon Valley um do you and and you seem to be at least with this podcast it feels like you're kind of trying to not necessarily address that concern but you're at least trying to

22:33 sort of like make some of these technology things more approachable.

22:38 Frank: Mm-hmm.

22:38 Brad: What's your,

22:39 you know, without necessarily getting into a big political debate,

22:42 I'm just kind of curious what your take on that concept of people kind of resisting tech these days.

22:50 Frank: Yeah, well,

22:51 I mean, I find it interesting like that the CEO of OpenAI came out and this was a little while ago and said, oh, yeah, the government needs to come in and regulate us.

23:01 Well,

23:02 you know what?

23:02 You guys should probably regulate yourselves because that's where the real regulation is going to come in. The government's not going to be able to regulate everybody to the same degree and it's going to be decades before that regulation comes in. So it's up to you guys to.

23:16 is to be able to regulate yourself.

23:17 I mean, even the case against Meta that just settled,

23:20 you know, that's been going on for years and years.

23:23 So everybody knew, or at least it was pretty obvious if you're in technology where that case was heading. And it was just going to be a matter of how much money Meta was going to have to pay.

23:33 And Meta could have very easily come out and said, oh yeah,

23:37 we have all these tools.

23:38 We can put those in place, but

23:39 Brad: Yeah.

23:40 Frank: that.

23:41 hurts their bottom line.

23:43 I did a episode about move fast and break things because, you know, early technology, that was always the thing, right?

23:51 Let's go see how many eggs we can break and we know that we're going to be able to get something out of this.

23:56 And I got to thinking about that and how that relates to the common person who's using that technology and

24:02 Brad: Yeah.

24:03 Frank: where that kind of breaks down.

24:05 And I've always

24:06 It's always been cautious about what I build and how I build it and make sure it's measured and make sure it's well

24:11 Brad: Yeah.

24:11 Frank: planned out because having to go back and fix those things is a pain,

24:16 but also having to deal with the customer side of it is also not something that's super fun to do either.

24:22 So, you know, so I have been thinking about that and I don't know what the right answer is. I mean, other than the technology companies policing themselves.

24:32 I don't think there's much hope for anything else, at least not in the near future.

24:36 Brad: Do you think that part of that frustration or resistance to technology, do you think it comes from this sort of like the more direct thing that you're addressing with your podcast of like people just don't understand it? Like is I mean, it seems like it would be human nature to, you know, resist things you don't understand.

24:59 Frank: Yeah, I mean, I think that's definitely a part of it. I think that

25:02 If you don't understand the technology,

25:05 you're only going to use a small percentage of it and then it's going to become difficult because if you're only using part of what an iPhone can do or part of what a Android device can do,

25:16 you're basically using a smart phone at the

25:20 Brad: end Right.

25:20 Frank: of the day and you're going to be.

25:23 you're going to be upset that you're paying $1,000 for that phone, or in the case of the Apple new phone,

25:29 $2,000 for that new phone.

25:31 So you're going to have that kind of

25:32 Brad: Well,

25:32 Frank: resentment.

25:33 Brad: it's twice the phone,

25:33 Frank: It

25:33 Brad: you know.

25:34 Frank: is twice the phone and twice the things that go wrong with it potentially.

25:40 But yeah,

25:40 I mean, I think that you expect these devices to work a certain way and when they don't, you get frustrated with them and then it's the heck with it. I'm just not going to use it.

25:49 that I'm going to put it by the side or I'm going to use just the bare minimum the stuff I do understand and not even realize what you can actually do with these devices that will make your life easier.

26:01 Brad: Yeah, I think that like the fact that.

26:04 you and i have both seen like such a large progression of of technology growth you know work you know both of us were started in industry before the internet really was a thing right at the kind of the beginning of it you know and now it's just it's just the air we breathe right like i mean

26:24 It is interesting when you stop and ponder that for a second to think like, wow,

26:30 a lot has changed.

26:32 Frank: Well, think about 25 years ago.

26:33 I mean, as we come up on the anniversary of September 11th, the technology that we use today to alert people about certain things is vastly different than it was just 25 years ago. And 25 years ago, I mean, to somebody our age doesn't seem like that long ago.

26:50 But it's a lifetime for a huge percentage of the population who have not seen that migration of technology.

26:58 So, I mean, even looking back at what some of the news reports and the things around the September 11th, it's pretty amazing how far we've come in such a short amount of time.

27:08 Brad: Yeah.

27:09 And I do feel like, is it? Yes, that makes a ton of sense. And I also feel like maybe there's a point where.

27:16 like technology becomes ubiquitous enough ubiquitous enough that we almost like stop thinking of it as technology right like i like i feel like most people don't necessarily think of the internet as technology like

27:35 Frank: Right.

27:35 Brad: it's it's just there right it just exists right um and

27:41 they're to your point like the mobile phone like

27:45 Frank: Mm

27:45 Brad: you

27:45 Frank: -hmm.

27:45 Brad: know when

27:47 when you and I were, I mean, mobile phones really only became practical in the mid 90s, really.

27:53 Frank: Right?

27:53 Brad: I mean, they existed before that, but they weren't nearly practical and they certainly weren't smartphones until the 2000s. And so even the idea that all of us are carrying around these,

28:04 you know, computers in our pockets as technologists, that's how I think about it. I mean,

28:09 like my first computer was a VIC-20 and had three kilobytes of memory and I was trying to.

28:13 Explain to my mother-in-law that this phone here,

28:16 you know, this iPhone is is essentially a billion times more memory than my first computer. And like even trying to think about that is.

28:27 but but she doesn't think about it more than oh yeah that's a phone that's my phone it's a phone right

28:34 Frank: so yeah yeah well and

28:35 Brad: that

28:35 Frank: and and it's your camera it's probably the best camera that a lot of us have ever owned

28:39 Brad: yeah that's right right and so those parts of it it's just camera it's a phone it's just always connected right those are the parts that feel like the air we breathe until it goes off the rails a little bit like you're in a dead zone or you know you don't

28:54 you're to your point about like are you really using all the features of your

28:58 Frank: Right.

28:58 Brad: of your of your of the best camera ever i mean i know i'm not i know that it's the it's a better camera than i've ever had and yet i still don't even take advantage of all of the features that make it a great camera

29:09 Frank: Right.

29:09 Yeah,

29:09 no,

29:10 I totally agree with that. Yeah,

29:11 I mean, I had on the podcast, I had a person who I've known for a lot of years come on and he's taught cell phone camera classes and

29:20 he's a great photographer but he's like yeah most people are not using their phones even to a little bit of their potential as it comes to photography and but I think one of the things that concerns me about you know is it going to be ubiquitous to everybody is understanding and getting down to a set of terminology that everybody can understand I've told the story probably people have heard this but

29:47 I had an AT&T salesperson come to my door to sell me Wi-Fi.

29:51 And I said, no,

29:53 you're not selling me Wi-Fi. You're selling the internet access to me. He's like,

29:57 no,

29:57 no, no, no.

29:57 I'm selling Wi-Fi.

29:58 I'm like,

29:59 no,

29:59 let me explain.

30:00 And he went away and he was not a happy camper.

30:02 He stood out front of my house kind of looking around like I don't even know what to do next.

30:07 But if the salespeople who are trying to sell people the technology come in.

30:12 and say,

30:12 well,

30:13 I'm going to sell you Wi-Fi, and then they come in and they,

30:15 you buy the Wi-Fi, and then something doesn't work.

30:18 Maybe it's a TV that you plugged in.

30:20 Maybe it's, maybe it is something that's Wi-Fi. They call me and say,

30:24 hey, you know what? My Wi-Fi is not working.

30:26 Well, what about your Wi-Fi is not working?

30:28 Is it, you know, is the modem, what's the modem? You know, is the internet,

30:32 what's the internet?

30:32 You know, so you get that kind of oddness

30:34 Brad: Yeah.

30:35 Frank: in that conversation.

30:37 And that if you don't understand those pieces and if the people who are selling them aren't explaining them correctly to begin with,

30:43 then it just becomes hard to have that conversation.

30:47 Brad: Right,

30:47 Frank: If you and I can have a conversation because we speak basically the same language because we've done it for so long.

30:53 Brad: right.

30:53 Frank: But to your mother-in-law,

30:55 to my dad,

30:55 to my mom,

30:56 I mean, if my mom's using a piece of technology,

30:59 I assume that everybody in the world is using the technology.

31:01 That's how it was with Facebook. When she got on Facebook.

31:03 On Facebook, I knew everybody in the world had Facebook and

31:06 Brad: Yeah,

31:07 Frank: now she's really good with it because she's taken the time to understand how to use the technology.

31:13 Brad: that's a really interesting point about how vernacular changes what.

31:20 We end up basically bundling everything together into Wi-Fi, you know, and so, yes, it's the Wi-Fi router. It could be your computer that's having a problem.

31:29 It could be the Wi-Fi router.

31:30 It could be the, like you said,

31:33 the modem that's connecting the Wi-Fi router to whatever the Internet service provider.

31:38 Frank: Yeah,

31:38 Brad: It could be,

31:38 Frank: if they're two different devices,

31:39 sure.

31:40 Brad: or yeah, it could be the same device. It could be and it could be that there's a problem upstream in a particular service provider.

31:46 and

31:46 Frank: Mm

31:47 Brad: and so

31:47 Frank: -hmm.

31:47 Brad: much of that is going to be opaque to the average person that they and it's interesting i had not i hadn't really thought about the fact that people would just use the term wi-fi to refer to that entire upstream chain but of course that's what they're going to call it because that's it it won the branding debate that it's

32:06 Frank: Yeah.

32:06 Brad: it's

32:06 Frank: Yeah. Cause

32:07 Brad: the thing

32:07 Frank: how many actually now?

32:07 Brad: it's the thing that is the most universal and the stuff behind it upstream upstream

32:12 is where all the divergence comes from is it is

32:15 Frank: Yeah.

32:15 Brad: it is it fiber behind there is it you know is it is it going over your cable system is it going over a satellite system you know that's that's multiple different ways to actually connect to the internet but for sure your your laptop's connecting by wi-fi yeah

32:30 Frank: Your laptop is, but, you know, I mean, my desktop machine is hardwired because hardwire is always going to be better than that.

32:37 that and

32:37 Brad: Yeah.

32:38 Frank: if i go help somebody with their technology and they have a printer that's wireless and i can plug it in i'm plugging that thing in a hundred percent of the time because i know that wired connection is going to be much better and they kind of look at me like no everything's wireless and yeah everything can be wireless but i have wires running all through my house because i know that my apple tv is going to work better and always

33:02 As long as I have internet access on wire where wireless,

33:06 it may get flaky and you just don't know.

33:08 Brad: You realize that you're triggering me here since, you know, years I worked at Real Networks and the biggest thing that I feel like I can't believe it hasn't been solved yet is, you know, is buffering. And it's like that was the bane of my existence 20 years ago working on the early,

33:27 early streaming.

33:28 streaming and and we still run into it even though we have amazing you know here we are having a live conversation with very high quality video and that's the early stuff that we helped build and it's gotten so much better and yet every once in a while there's

33:42 Frank: Yeah,

33:42 Brad: there's

33:42 Frank: you flip

33:43 Brad: a buffer

33:43 Frank: on Netflix and it's like spin,

33:45 spin,

33:45 spin,

33:45 spin, spin. Okay,

33:46 now we're going to start.

33:47 And a lot of that is, you know, what else is drawing your internet access?

33:52 What else is happening upstream that you don't?

33:55 You don't know about,

33:55 and are you downloading that 8K video across a pretty bad connection?

34:01 And all those things cause that buffering to happen. But to a user,

34:05 it's this TV show isn't loading and I just want my TV show to

34:11 Brad: My

34:11 Frank: load. So

34:11 Brad: Netflix isn't

34:11 Frank: my

34:11 Brad: working.

34:12 Frank: Netflix isn't working.

34:13 Exactly,

34:13 exactly.

34:14 Brad: Yeah. And they're all probably calling it Netflix even if it could be Apple TV or Hulu.

34:20 Right?

34:20 Frank: Yeah,

34:20 Brad: Because Netflix

34:21 Frank: right.

34:21 Brad: dominated

34:21 Frank: Exactly.

34:21 Brad: the brand name.

34:23 Frank: Totally.

34:23 Brad: You know, my Netflix,

34:25 my Hulu,

34:25 my Netflix.

34:26 Frank: Yeah.

34:26 All of that.

34:27 Yeah. My Apple TV or is it my Apple TV?

34:29 I'm not sure which one it is.

34:31 Brad: Right,

34:31 exactly.

34:33 What here, let's pivot a little bit. What advice would you give CTOs or engineering managers when they think about constituents that they need to work with who aren't going to be as technical as them?

34:47 Do you have any like kind of like advice on how to how to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders?

34:57 Frank: I think there's a couple of things.

34:59 One is...

35:00 make sure you understand the question that you're being asked because so often I know I do this all the time I think I know what question they're asking and I try to answer that question in my head before I fully hear their question so you know understanding the technology question that they're asking is important second is explain it like a fifth grader you know they don't need unless they're a

35:25 very high end engineer they're going to want something that is pretty simple you know don't say take the rj45 cable that's connected to your modem and plug it into the back of your computer jack you know take the cable that looks like a phone and plug it into the place that looks that way in the back of your computer so i always try to not dumb it down but at least make it obvious that

35:50 They don't need to know that that's an RJ45 cable.

35:54 They don't need to know it's a Cat5, Cat6, Cat5e, whatever it might be.

35:57 They just need to know that that's an Ethernet cable that goes from point A to point B.

36:01 As far as explaining the technology,

36:04 again,

36:04 I think it's using words that are not overly hyped,

36:08 not overly confusing acronyms. I had somebody that I worked with for a while that he loved acronyms.

36:16 and he would talk in acronyms and

36:19 Brad: Mm

36:19 Frank: I'd

36:19 Brad: -hmm.

36:19 Frank: be all like okay I got to remember later on to go back and figure out what that acronym meant because I had no idea other than context what he was talking about and I just I think that so often we read about things that are in acronyms and we understand what an acronym is and what they mean but not everybody does so understanding that as well and then

36:43 I think third is that the person is just trying to do their job.

36:47 You know, at the end of the day, the customer support person just wants to be able to log into the CRM system,

36:53 just wants to be able to take a phone call over the Zoom phone,

36:57 just wants to be able to clock in and clock out.

37:00 And when those kind of things don't work and they may not be able to explain why it's not working,

37:06 really understand,

37:08 you know, why it's not working. A pro legal.

37:10 Well, we have everything connected through our office IP address and certain IP addresses we've whitelisted because I didn't want a bunch of stuff out on the Internet.

37:18 So we've gotten tools that allow people who are remote to be able to log in and inevitably somebody will call and be all like,

37:26 I can't log in to do my time card.

37:29 And it's like,

37:30 oh, have you launched the TailScale app so that you can get online?

37:33 Like,

37:33 oh,

37:33 yeah,

37:34 that's right.

37:34 I don't do it that often.

37:36 That is something I need to do.

37:37 So again,

37:38 knowing how knowing what question they're really asking, they're not really necessarily asking, how come I can't do my time card?

37:47 It's

37:47 Brad: Yeah

37:47 Frank: backing up and making sure that they understand that and at the end of the day,

37:51 it's troubleshooting, right?

37:52 I mean, we've all done troubleshooting. If you've been in this business for any amount of time,

37:57 you've done either hardware or software or both.

37:59 both.

38:00 I've had the luxury of doing both, you know, that I'm a true generalist in that I know a lot about a lot of different things.

38:06 And the first thing I always jump to is by troubleshooting skills,

38:09 because at the end of the day,

38:11 everything is a troubleshooting problem that has to get solved,

38:15 whether it's a piece of software that's not working,

38:17 whether it's a system that we're building, that we're needing to try to figure out, you know, what's the best way, what features, all those sorts of things.

38:25 things or is it my computer's not connecting to the wi-fi

38:28 Brad: Yeah, it's so interesting you say that one of the things that obviously most of my career has been building software that is then sold to other people and one of the and so your comments about troubleshooting resonate with me early on in my career I worked for a startup that.

38:47 we made everybody in the company do a shift on an on-call tech support line and

38:55 Frank: That's a great

38:55 Brad: it

38:55 Frank: idea.

38:56 Brad: was an amazing eye-opener for the developers building the software like it significantly increased their empathy for like oh well we need to make sure we build the software so that these problems aren't hard right

39:10 Frank: Yeah,

39:11 you know, and that's the thing about.

39:13 Being in small companies that I've gotten to experience is that I was not only the internal tech support,

39:20 but I'm the external tech support as well.

39:21 So if somebody had a problem or has a problem,

39:24 they're most likely calling me because the customer service person isn't going to understand how to explain to somebody why this ride couldn't get scheduled the way that it got scheduled or why back at the newspaper, why I couldn't log in or why I couldn't leave a.

39:39 Leave a comment, you know, an editorial person isn't going to want to be that person because they're out reporting the news.

39:44 And as a small IT department, we were the ones that worked with those people. And I think that you're absolutely right.

39:52 We're building the tools and understanding the tools and then hearing firsthand,

39:57 which I think is really lost on a lot of.

39:59 companies now is there's so many layers of people between the customer service person and the person building the software or the hardware that the game of telephone inevitably gets messed up.

40:13 Brad: Yeah, a game of telephone is a big problem with it. The other problem that I think that you can address is if the people that built the software get a little taste of like the real contact with the customer,

40:24 they're going to just better understand the customer's needs and build their software better.

40:29 Frank: I think you're absolutely right.

40:30 I mean, as a developer,

40:32 I think that the best things that developers can do is actually having that conversation with the customer.

40:39 As you're going to have a internal dev person or a salesperson or a project manager say,

40:44 this is the feature that we want to build.

40:47 Well,

40:47 that may not be the feature we need to build, but that's the one that we want to build and being able to talk to the customer and be able to understand from them.

40:55 So like right now at ProLegal, I'm working on a project that when it's done, it's going to be massive and hopefully life changing for law firms.

41:03 But I think I know the right answers, but I'm not a lawyer.

41:08 I'm not

41:08 Brad: Right,

41:08 Frank: somebody in

41:08 Brad: right.

41:09 Frank: a law firm.

41:09 So I can only take my technology brain,

41:12 put it on it and say, this is what I would build if everything else was equal.

41:17 So now we've prototyped it. We're taking it around to law firms and saying,

41:21 hey,

41:22 if we built this,

41:23 would you buy it?

41:24 And if we built this and you bought it, what features are missing? Because that.

41:30 That is going to get us the best product to roll out in the shortest amount of time as opposed to pushing out what we think is the best thing and

41:38 Brad: For sure.

41:38 Frank: then chasing the chasing the product.

41:41 Brad: Yeah,

41:41 for sure.

41:42 Definitely like test it to make sure you've done some form of testing before you like commit to the full build.

41:47 Yeah,

41:48 for sure.

41:48 Frank: And that's something that AI has done amazingly with.

41:51 So, you know, I spent a lot of time writing up the documentation on it.

41:55 And then I turned it loose and I said,

41:57 hey,

41:58 go build me a prototype.

41:59 Brad: Yeah.

42:00 Frank: And, you know, I know that in previous episodes you've talked about AI being your partner in this and not a I mean, it's a tool, but not necessarily a tool like a hammer.

42:10 It's truly a partner to be able to talk about, you know, why would we do it this way or tell me why I shouldn't do it this way and convince me.

42:19 And I think that's where.

42:21 a lot of people who use technology kind of miss the boat on it because

42:25 Brad: Right.

42:25 Frank: AI will say hey go do it this way and they'll say oh okay and I've seen this with people trying to build apps it's like yeah can I build an app with just AI you absolutely can will it work probably is it going to be scalable no is it going to work tomorrow probably not but if if you took it brought me into that

42:47 hold and said hey you know let's think about these steps because I know how to build an app or I know how to build this website then we're asking it the right question and that that AI can now have a conversation with us where I can push back I mean there's a lot of times where I'll just say flat out say no you're being dumb let's do it this way Right. unless you can convince me otherwise and

43:09 Brad: Yeah.

43:09 Frank: very rarely does it come back and say oh yeah you know what I am right and this is why

43:14 Brad: It's

43:14 Frank: It's like,

43:14 Brad: great.

43:15 Frank: no,

43:15 okay,

43:15 yeah, your way sounds good too.

43:17 Brad: Yeah, right.

43:18 Well, there's a lot of threads to pull on there.

43:20 I mean, one of the I think that, you know, you're kind of speaking to the notion a little bit of the AI psychosis of like, if you tell AI you want to build something, it'll be like, that's a fantastic idea. Let's build it, you know?

43:34 Yeah,

43:34 another it's funny, I want to rewind a little bit. One of the other things that you when you were talking about troubleshooting, one of the other things that

43:41 that I guess I have feel like I've learned in my career is that it's really hard to troubleshoot if it's one of the hardest things about troubleshooting.

43:55 is, and I think you said this earlier,

43:57 is that you've got to really understand the problem that the person is describing or the challenge that they have or the thing that the question that they're asking.

44:05 And as that relates to, again,

44:08 as I mentioned in my career, building software that's then sold to other people,

44:12 I don't, there's oftentimes that I've never met the person that's using the software and I will never meet them and I don't even know their name. I just know they're having a problem with it.

44:20 with it and i will say that well done telemetry where your where your software is just gathering the data of the users not not their personal data but how they use your software and and having good you know sort of telemetry and traceability around problems

44:41 You might not know that there's a problem, but when you hear there's a problem,

44:45 if you can turn to the troubleshooting and the telemetry and say,

44:49 well, tell me telemetry, what actually happened here?

44:53 That's as a as the propeller head nerd technology guy,

44:57 that is so much more useful than the customer who just says it didn't work. It crashed. Right.

45:03 Like that one drives me crazy. It crashed. Right.

45:05 Frank: Yeah.

45:06 Brad: What, did it really crash?

45:08 Frank: It's akin to somebody who is an eyewitness at a crime,

45:11 right?

45:12 I mean, they see what they think they've seen, but not necessarily of what actually happened because they are, you know, oh, I was working in this program and then I got a blue screen or I was working on this website and then I got this error page.

45:27 Did I take a screenshot of that error page?

45:29 No.

45:29 Do I know what I was doing just before that?

45:32 Yeah, maybe not.

45:33 You know, do I know what I was trying to do?

45:36 That's probably something,

45:37 but it's not necessarily the thing that caused the problem.

45:40 So yeah,

45:41 you're right.

45:41 And that's what the tools can do now is we can collect that kind of data or it's easier to collect that kind of data and then run through it to try to figure out, okay,

45:51 user A did this and we know because we can see it in the logs that they did.

45:57 did this exactly.

45:59 Now let's go figure out why it did that and

46:01 Brad: Exactly.

46:01 Frank: be able to make that full loop back to it.

46:04 Brad: Yeah, I wish I had telemetry for all the other problems that I have to troubleshoot in my life.

46:10 Frank: yeah right right exactly exactly yeah the sprinklers aren't working why are the sprinklers not working i don't know they just aren't working

46:17 Brad: Right,

46:18 exactly.

46:19 Exactly.

46:21 Well, this is a super fun conversation,

46:24 Frank.

46:25 Yeah.

46:25 Frank: yeah i've enjoyed this brad thank you

46:26 Brad: Yeah,

46:27 yeah.

46:28 How do you want to wrap this up?

46:30 How do we, where do we?

46:31 Where do we want, we kind of went all over the place from local journalism to legal services to how to troubleshoot things with non-technical people to how to build correct telemetry. What's the through line?

46:45 What's the thread to all this that ties it all together,

46:47 Frank: Frank? You know, that's the hard thing about my technical life and my career is that I have been I've been all over the place with things,

46:55 you know, I mean.

46:56 The technology in a newspaper is not that different than a technology at a major corporation.

47:01 It's just a smaller scale and the money that you have to be able to do with it.

47:06 But the through line is understanding the technology that you're working with and understanding the people that are using that technology, whether it be internal people or external people,

47:17 and being able to talk to them on a level that they can understand that it's not.

47:23 over talking to them it's not making it more confusing than it has to be and that's that's kind of the thing that I feel like I've done since the beginning of my career and something I try to do every day every time I get on a call every time I write a piece of software and I sit down and go do something I think okay well how's the end user potentially going to use this and are they going to be technical or not are they going to be able to

47:48 answer the questions or not.

47:51 Real quick story.

47:52 The first thing that I did before I really got into technology the way I am now is I taught a class at the San Carlos Senior Center.

48:01 So this was in the mid 90s and I was teaching internet to seniors and I had one of the seniors come up to me and say, oh my gosh, Frank,

48:10 if you could teach this to us and we are understanding this,

48:13 that's a gift.

48:14 gift.

48:14 And

48:14 Brad: Wow.

48:15 Frank: you should really use that in your life.

48:18 And that's kind of has stuck with me all these years. And that is what the podcast is about. That is how I explain things to people.

48:26 That is how I kind of live my technology life.

48:29 Brad: I love it. I think that's, I think it's, I mean, obviously you're, you've, you've touched lives there and that's compelling.

48:35 And I love the summary that it's about, you know, understand the technology, but understand the people using the technology.

48:41 technology and

48:41 Frank: Yeah.

48:41 Brad: connect them with the technology by you know like connecting with them at their level and

48:47 Frank: Yeah.

48:47 Brad: sounds like you've got a long history of doing that well where should our listeners find you frank why don't you give us the alphabet soup of all the cool things you're doing and what the best place to connect with you is

48:57 Frank: Sure.

48:58 So you can definitely find me on LinkedIn.

49:00 You can search for Frank Bravo.

49:01 It's spelled exactly like it sounds.

49:04 You can also do a Google search for Frank Bravo or go to frankbravo.com.

49:07 .com. That'll take you places that I am.

49:10 Or you could check out yourtechmakeover.com where you'll find my podcast,

49:14 which comes out every other week.

49:16 Brad: I love it. That sounds great.

49:18 Okay,

49:18 well, thanks for another coming on and talking to me, Frank. I really enjoyed this

49:22 Frank: Thanks.

49:22 Brad: conversation.

49:22 Frank: I appreciate the time.

49:23 Brad: And thanks to all the listeners for listening to another episode of the HowManyCTOsDoesItTake podcast.

49:27 And go check out yourtechmakeover.com. Right, did I get that right?

49:32 Frank: That is right.

49:33 Brad: Awesome. I love

49:34 Frank: Awesome.

49:34 Brad: it.

49:34 Frank: Thank you much.

49:34 Brad: All right. Have a good time,

49:36 Frank.

49:36 We'll talk to you again soon.

49:38 Bye.

49:38 This episode of the How Many CTOs Does It Take podcast was produced and edited by Saffron Heptacow.

49:44 Our theme song was AI generated by Brad.

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50:08 Thanks for listening.