Click here for the video version on YouTube!
With Roam Fund, Roam Scholars Program, APIs and Multiplayer Roam coming up, there's still some things I'd like to figure out:
Introducing the first (of many) RoamFM hangouts, this talk will be about monetization models, premium graphs and defining the 'Roam Creator'.
This hangout is simple:
I've set this event for 2 hours just in case, but if we end earlier/later, will leave the room up accordingly.
The objectives are:
I'll be exploring different models, where future of Roam might go for money-making, and how creators can fit in there. Will share my own findings and predictions, and I want to have it open up for discussion.
Click here for the video version on YouTube!
With Roam Fund, Roam Scholars Program, APIs and Multiplayer Roam coming up, there's still some things I'd like to figure out:
Introducing the first (of many) RoamFM hangouts, this talk will be about monetization models, premium graphs and defining the 'Roam Creator'.
This hangout is simple:
I've set this event for 2 hours just in case, but if we end earlier/later, will leave the room up accordingly.
The objectives are:
I'll be exploring different models, where future of Roam might go for money-making, and how creators can fit in there. Will share my own findings and predictions, and I want to have it open up for discussion.
This episode is going to be different. Recently we had the first ever RoamFM hangout. Talking about Rome, creators and monetization from redefining what an author is to premium knowledge based graphs, creator possibilities, and types of potential jobs using Roam, myself and 10 other Romans go deep on what it means to give back to the world. Through Rome. Great stuff. So if you are one of the 10, thank you very much for being there. I'm overloading the audio version here, but note that this is taken directly from the video, which is available on YouTube. So expect pauses from screen-sharing and clicking through the graph and all of that. If you'd like to see these screen shares, notes and more. It's best to check out the YouTube link in the show notes to this episode. I just think a podcast version of this will be very helpful for the avid note taker. So without further ado, keep roaming your thoughts and enjoy this RoamFM conversation on Roam Creators and Monetization. Yeah, let's just go straight into it. Alright. So, uh, welcome to RoamFM's first ever. A hangout slash talk slash discussion, uh, slash otium, the word I would like to call or the word I would like to, um, use to describe the environment that I want to, uh, embrace in this discussion. So otium is the pursuit of intellectual curiosity. It is a word normally used in Roman forums from ages of ages ago. You have buildings where people are people who are broad in their fields specialists, uh, in their careers. They come in and they know if you walk through the doors, you can strike up a conversation with anyone on any topic, in any level of depth, any level of width in terms of your curiosity. And you can engage in conversation. That is the environment that I want to create. So if you don't know much about Roam, if you haven't really been using about using roam for that long, perfectly fine. If you're a highly technical, if you're not that technical. I I'm just asking welcoming to you as I am to everybody else. So welcome. I want to talk about, uh, roam creators, and in relation to that, what the future of Rome, uh, can potentially be. So, uh, some people who are here early, they've already seen the screen, so welcome to my private Rome. Uh, yeah, clearly I don't have anything that is confidential on here. I think. But it should be okay. So on my sidebar, you have the information, uh, that is on the eventbrite page. So this is the, essentially the narrative that we are trying to go through. So this is pretty simple. I want to start things off with my thoughts on the future of Roam, from the perspective of a creator, if you're in the middle of wanting to create. Say, write a book or start an online course or build a community that is based off of a roam graph or do you know, engage in public speaking, but you have your roam graph up to present, you know, things like that, all the possibilities, um, this in relation to what Rome research will be doing in the future. So from multiplayer to API to, um, to hyper graphic features. Can I quote other people's blocks into my graphs? What are the possibilities behind that we first have to define what is a Roam creator? So zooming in on this first one. So, uh, to me, a Roam creator is an individual who uses Roam to create something, to create X, right. We can have many different examples, but. The most base level is an individual. The uses roam the tool for network thought to create something. So the foundation of their work is based off of their usage of the tool Roam, which means that with a universal tool like room research, especially with the people who are participating in this group right now, our uses will be completely different. So my uses are completely different from yours. Matt's uses are completely different as you're based off of, you know, you're doing your Roam for teamwork course. Right. And RJs is completely different. Coaching for singers Rob's is completely different, et cetera, et cetera. Yes. I will be calling out people in this group because I know you guys, so it will be all hope. You guys don't find that too embarrassing or too awkward. So what can it be? The more that we engage in this topic or no more that we have it circulating in our heads. I really want to ask everybody here. If you want to speak up right now is perfectly fine as well. You can always interrupt me if you want to say something, expanding on the possibilities. And I spelled that wrong, of a creator, what can they comprise of? What do they need? Do they need an audience? Do they need the tools that he need? Prerequisite skills? Do they need to be a writer first? Do they need to have technical skills beforehand, et cetera? So expanding onto this, what can you make of Roam graphs? I've already explained or described a few and some we can get into, uh, in greater detail with a few examples. So going into this, uh, presentations or keynotes or public speaking's public speaking events, I believe we have. Tracy in the chat. Yes. Yes. She's in here. Hello, Tracy. Um, where you've had the virtual summit for Roaman journals and in the midst of the virtual summit for Roman journals. So you've had a panel of multiple members who are showcasing the way that they use their Roame to show how they journal. In that way or in that section, I remember watching this myself, so I'm pretty sure I have a good memory of it. Brandon Toner showed his Roam graph and use the presentation shortcuts to go back and forth between a bullet points to showcase different parts of his workflow, or is it his use case? How he journals in Rome? So that's one way to create an experience, especially. You create an event, people come in and then you present people to Roam. The next one is diagrams, workflows and models. I think with the advent of drawing, you can create something here or there, right? You can create network taught a networked model, skinned, create drawings. You can create anything you want, quick sketches. Uh, I'm sure that I think Conor tagged Excalidraw recently, just this morning to see if there's a way to create an API, to make this a little bit more robust. So for those who are more visual and they prefer a more artistic way of articulating what they're trying to express, this is probably a very important one. A paired this as well is a mermaid diagrams. I'm sure somebody else can chime in on this. Cause I'm not a, I, not that technical enough to know how to use mermaid diagrams, but. We have, from a previous episode of RoamFM, we have a Kahlil Corazo who rebuilt the business model canvas as a diagram within row. So in depth talk can, I'm sure that I can actually bring it up right here in that talk. Kaleo used the. The business model, canvas and rebuilt it in Roam. And this was once again, referenced in another episode of RoamFM, um, uh, with the founder of Rome, CN, Jesse, who saw that and saw its potential. So use cases already is that those in the entrepreneurial space, those in the startup space find value in diagrams shown in a room graphs because. Once they can find ways to do by directional linking from the way that they actually structured they startup to structured their team on the business model, canvas in a room graph that can, that could connect with everything else that works within the company. So that's one way to articulate value for a roam graph and how it applies to that startup. So these are one of many examples, right. Uh, but let's go a little bit lighter on the examples. So books. It's going to be a very fascinating one to dive into, and I'm sure a few of us are avid writers here. Uh, if you are using Roam, I'm sure you have written thousands of words, uh, in what I call the Rome Itch. So the Roam Itch is the addiction or the want to want to write something in Rome because you know that there's this like, possibility, like, Ooh, what's going to link today, right? Or what's going to surface up today or from my, from the thoughts that I've penned down within my graph. How will I meet myself on this day moving forward, or what will I Delta a block to a different day and, uh, send messages to my future self. So that to remind them of what their past self has learned, you know, examples like this. But back to this example books, we have the standard definition of a book, which I will quickly. Describe or demonstrate here. And I don't want to be, I don't want to degrade people in this way, but to really give a quick answer sample, this is a book. A book is a closed context of information with a narrative. You have the tables of contents, the tables of contents represent bullet points. That spread out and detailed towards more and more blocks, more and more sources of information related to references that are brought all the way through all the way to the back. So if you think about it, each and every bullet point is its own page. And this is one graph. The, the, the disadvantage of a book is that as we all know here is we're all, all in Rome users. It is very unlinked. So. Even if I'm reading this book, even if I'm following the narrative, even if I'm following the voice of the researcher in this hand, this is actually altruism by Matthieu Ricard. If anyone's interested in, um, then what if we could find a way to visualize all the contents of this book in a way where they can be linked to one another and create. A open book or a linked book where what you see on your screen is a 3D version linked of everything that is written here. Oh, I just realize I have marginalia on the side. Oh, that's interesting. So, as an example, if I have a linked version of this book, Then the text for this book will be within the graph and any annotations will be my own personal notes. So under the notion of, Oh, I just said the bad word, uh, under the concept of Sonke Ahrens is how to take smart notes. Annotations are my own blocks, resultant or nested under the references of the books that I am linking. So back to this, if you're a creator, What should you consider? If you are a creator, then you should consider an unlinked and linked version. And we already have a great example of this right now with, uh, Luca Dellanna. I believe that's his name really sing a book called Equitas city, which I will buy us very, very soon, which is fantastic. Which is amazing, right? So I'm just seeing some activity in the chat. So I will probably adress that in a bit, uh, where I might as well, just show it to you right now. And I think this is the correct direction for it. So he is selling his book in ebook format and ebook plus roam format and then ebook plus Rome plus premium content format. So, what this means is that he is selling an unlinked version of the information and a unlinked and linked version of the information. The way that he wrote it was that he gave a quick primer as to what Roam is. And then from there he created a linked one. He introduced the linked version. But,
Rob Haisfield:um, I, can I, can I just interject in here or do you, I mean, what I'm really curious about with his book, um, because he has an unlinked version of it that you can just read linearly and a linked version of it. I mean, is he just as, I mean, I bought it because I want to see, but. I mean, is he essentially just going to be like adding tags to each of the subhead, like each of the subheadings in any, in all the chapters and just like letting you sort the book like that, or, I mean, cause like Roam organization is very different than just adding links to a linear thing.
Norman Chella:Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I, that's actually a very good question and I have to say that it depends because it's up to the author to see how they will organize their notes. Right. So the assumption is that. At least, at least how I would do it would be if, if I have the unlinked book and then in the wrong graph, I have the start here or the book narrative as a favorite on the sidebar of the graph for the people who are already used to reading the book from the unlinked way. And then it's up to you to explore the contents of that graph in your own way. So let's, let's actually, let's explore that. So I all, let me explain to you what I mean. So let's go back to here. So let's say this is an example book, right? You have your initial version, which is the unlinked, which is a PDF or a mobi or on Kindle or something like that. And then you have the, and then you have the linked. So on the linked you would have. The start here page, which probably explains something like, Oh, uh, go through this graph the book way. And Rob you and I actually talked about this in our episode, on RoamFM, where we have to cater to the different behaviors. Of people exploring something. So there are those who would fall for rabbit holes. They see something that's pretty interesting. Let's just say, Ergodicity. And then that somehow connects to a gamification. Right. And then that's something I'll connect to say. I don't know, like a Mark Robinson or something like that. That's one example. What. The author has to do when you're doing something like a linked version is to introduce multiple ways to explore the graph. So like the above, this is the standard way. And the next one is to go by themes and topics a bit like the, uh, what do you call it? The index a bit like the index of a book. You have all the key words and then you can explore it from there. This is very important because if Rob you and I bought that same book, and then we are given different sessions to explore the graph ourselves, we will search differently. Like you will be interested in something completely different within the same graph. I will be something I'll be interested in something else that'll be very interested. So we have to cater for that, like themes and topics. It could even be resources. It could be further reading. People might only be high touch. They would only go into the graph to search for, you know, ABC or a certain resource or a certain academic paper. And they would go and leave. I believe. It was who was it? There was a, there was discussion recently on Twitter. Uh, brought up by Joel Chan where a lot of academics would go into and read somebody else's paper. To find people at the frontier of that field to connect with them. So that's already very purposeful behavior behind them trying to search a piece of content. We have to cater for them as authors in Roam. So that's probably one way to do that. I mean, if he's just going to, if the person is just going to like add tags on top of the book, I think that's a really, really big, like really bad thing to do. I wouldn't say bad. Maybe there's a lot more potential behind that it's like lacking. Now you're just emulating the book format and I think that's not enough. So hopefully that gets your mind thinking.
Rob Haisfield:Yeah. I mean, I guess just some of my doubts there, um, and I can largely shut up after this, but I just think this is such an interesting area, you know, is that like with my public roam graph, you know, like I was, I haven't been working on it as much lately, but when I was working on it, like, I um, was using a lot of page references, a lot of block references and organizing things kind of with that. Like, my goal was, I want people to find information that they're looking for, even if they don't know what they're looking for relatively quickly. Um, problem with that though is, uh, one aspect yeah. In particular, is that block references, I think, uh, tend to be relatively low signal for the reader, you know, like they, they see a block reference and the block reference would bring them to some other area of the text, you know, but like you click on you, but like, you never know when to click on that with like a page title. You it's generally a little bit higher signal is especially if you take, uh, Andy's notes about, um, Evergreen note titles seriously, where like the page style is supposed to give people like a scent of like this I'm on the right path here and I want to follow this. So it's like, I almost wonder, like, I, I'm not sure if Rome really even is the best way to do something like this. Or if something like obsidian publish would be better for a nonlinear book,
Norman Chella:it could be. One way to do that is if there's a. Like an API from Rome to Obsidan publish. It could be possible. And actually now that you've brought that up, if something like Andy's notes promotes you to pick, say atomic ideas as page titles, then maybe you have to rewrite the page headings for a book. If it's a linked version, right. So I think I, hopefully I expressed it well enough. Like if I, like, if I go through any book, these titles or these headings, um, they don't drive home the point. They only give you a tease as to what this chapter will be about or what this paragraph will be about. And the assumed behavior is that you will just continue reading. But if your goal is to capture. People's time on your graph each and every page needs to stand on its own. Each page needs to connect very, very well. So your goal is to, you know, make it be so attractive that each page is like, Ooh, what about this? Ooh, what about this? Not to, not, not to the point of like being all clickbaity, but, but more of according to what you said, like Andy's notes, like to have atomic ideas as page titles, maybe, maybe that's one way to consider it. Never thought about that. Actually, I actually should write that down. So, uh, let me see a quick look at the chat. Uh, cause sometimes I, okay. I'm seeing some points on copyright. Ah, yeah. Uh, I will be bringing up copyright later on. Uh, cause that is something that we do have to consider for certain services. That I think that would make a Roam career, but maybe are impossible, uh, because of copyright issues. So maybe not even research, just any book. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Um, let's see. so as I'm just reading this out loud, uh, for the recording, uh, Brian Toh says, I'm not sure about how the graph looks like. I think the graph also needs to detail how the writer wrote the book, micro details and the thinking to go into the graph and you can sell in the process of thinking really well. So, yeah. Um, uh, annotations and even versions of how the book came to be is probably one way of looking at it. Like that's actually a. A possible, that's actually one way to actually, uh, see if it's worth even doing a book version, like a graph version of the book in the first place. Because if you just find the exact same text in the graph and nothing more, it's, it's a pretty shallow graph. You have to say like, like there's elements of rewriting the page titles. There's also elements of. Making sure that there are things beyond the book that you can find that it's worth paying extra. So in the case of the Ergodicity book, that's nine pounds, nine euros, and an extra 20, 20 euros. That's, that's quite a jump, right? That's like three times the price. Like what do you, as, as a, as a consumer of something like this, What do you expect from adding a buying something that's worth three times as much as just buying the book by itself? Things like link references, things like annotations, things, like what happened in between things like where did the author mess up? Like what did it result in failures, et cetera. So meta details is actually very, very great. Yeah. So as a, uh, just to check, um, Oh, that's actually, yeah, reading the Roam graph version will be pretty good. I will try to save the chat for the text, chat for this video and put it in the notes for this. And after that, I'll copy it over to the RoamFM graph. So anyone wants to refer to the transcript, which I will do a transcript of this call as well. Then I will do it there. So. That's on books.
Mat McGann:Got some thoughts Norman. When I think about a book, um, it's like someone's got their brain with all their thoughts and knowledge in it. And you could think of that as a, um, Let me feel people call their databases a second brain or whatever it might be. But, um, when they go to write a book, I kind of see that as trying to flatten their whole complicated network of ideas into a one, one dimensional line, essentially, so that they can hold your hand and walk you through all these ideas and hopefully have fun along the way, and you can enjoy it, whatever it might be. So, um, There's this problem of mapping one dimension to like a, a graph, right. And the natural way to do that. Like if you didn't have to start with a book, I would imagine the natural way would be the graph exists. It's like a mini Wikipedia or something. Right. Everything's connected all the concepts and then there's a start here, but then it's essentially just sort of tracing a journey through that. Graph like jumping from plot to plot or whatever it might be. Um, and that opens up a different opportunity, which is multiple stories, among the same, um, network. Right? So this is just the new idea or something, but given a knowledge base, Um, yeah, maybe we can turn it around just to be interesting, but rather than a book and then just linking things, uh, start with a knowledge base and then you can have multiple books, which are each different journeys through the graph.
Norman Chella:That's actually pretty good point to do it actually. Yeah. Okay. I got it. Okay. Right. Yeah. So it's like, just like, if I don't know why I have to, my immediate image that comes to my mind is as like. A galaxy. And then your goal is to get from one side of the galaxy to the other, but then just many different ways to do it, but it's still the same galaxy. So yeah, I like a knowledge base. And then you have all the knowledge is the same, but multiple books and narratives through that, like multiple threads. Oh, wow. I think that like tripled or quadrupled the work behind writing the book in the first place, because then yeah,
Mat McGann:If you had the question in the first place, it'd be quite straightforward. Much more easy to write the book. Then, then there probably is now just write a book from scratch and it might be easier.
Norman Chella:Um, exactly. So you might have to think of like, what is the primary most easiest narrative to think of through this knowledge base and then have that as your Amazon Kindle. So book whatever, but then. That's obviously the easiest one to follow. So that's for the masses to read, but then once you're in the graph, you have more multiple different perspectives, multiple different versions, multi, multiple different narratives bolted up from books, or that we're already unwinding the definition of a book at this point. That's insane.
R.J. Nestor:Norman. Do you mind if I normally, do you mind if I jump in here for a second, one of the things that comes to my mind, because I do so much coaching of, of creativity is a lot of the hangup for people, is that they don't, you know, they look at a book and they don't understand how you get to a finished book. Uh, the it's one of the reasons that people love. Cause I also come from theater, leave love the behind the scenes kind of stuff is they love to see how things are put together. I think this concept that we're kind of fleshing out here really feeds into that. There's a lot of desire to know how things are put together. And it's really good for the world, too, for people to see that the creative process is not a linear process. You know, you have a, you have a, there's a lot of chaos by design and should be so that I don't know necessarily know that it is more work per se, to have the graph. In addition to the book, the graph is the, the reason the book was able to come to be. And so I think that you're absolutely right, that. It's cool to be able to see different potential journeys. It's cool to see directions you may have started and then not follow continued down, uh, or, you know, various things like that. I think that's just in my experience with the way people like to watch behind the scenes stuff and be engaged with behind the scenes stuff. And, and I think that that would be something that would be really valuable and useful and interesting to people.
Rob Haisfield:Yeah, I think it's, I think it's cool being able to go down those paths, but. Um, I also just want to point out how incredibly challenging it is to write in a nonlinear way for other people to read and enjoy, you know, like a Andy Matuschak, I think is one of the few people. Successful at this. Um, I think, but even then, like I talked to a lot of people who were like, I just can't really find myself enjoying this. I prefer just reading like a long linear thing. And like that, I think that to an extent just means that a nonlinear book is for, and who's interested in that sort of thing. Yeah,
R.J. Nestor:it's true. Yeah. I agree.
Rob Haisfield:I have my, um, you know, I've. Since more or less ditched my public roam in favor of a I'm in favor of a digital garden. That's just based on pages, which I write in obsidian. Um, and you know, I'm trying to do nonlinear writing, but like, again, it's just, it's very, very challenging to do it in a way that's comprehensible to others. Note titles, page titles that you link through are incredibly important, but, um, Yeah, I don't know. I think there's just a lot to be said about this digital medium,
Mat McGann:Random in some of Taleb's writing he talks about, um, he kind of gets angry at these modern authors who would, um, who sort of write a book that's that's highly structured. That's sort of encroaching on textbooks and his he's disgusted by that. He's disgusted by a lot of things, but he's disgusted by that because, um, to him, it's all about the narrative and it's, it can go anywhere at once. And it's like the main concern there is really keeping someone's attention and it just there's, you don't need that access to all the other information like you would in a wikipedia kind of set up, it's all about just getting someone's attention and taking them from a to B. And so I think you're right, Rob, you just maybe just have to focus on that single journey and hope you can utilize the things in some other way.
Norman Chella:So wait, wait, I'll wait about, about that. What if the book is the chosen narrative, the primary narrative for the book, but the graph that comes with it, it's not a graph of that book. It's a graph of the authors findings in that field. And every other parallel narrative comes in there. So you do have the behind the scenes, you do have the annotations, you do have the failures, but the purpose of the graph is not to showcase. Oh, it's just a linked version of the book, but rather the foundation of which that book comes to to fruition, maybe that's one way to like angle it.
R.J. Nestor:What I was meaning. And that the idea of being that and I've pre and Rob's right there may, the market may be limited for that because people do need the narrative. I'm thinking because I have three kids of the frozen 2 on Disney plus there's frozen 2. There's also the making of frozen 2. But of course, yeah, the documentarians doing the making of frozen too also created their own narrative through that. It isn't as though the it's just a big old pile of here's what they did. Um, That said for myself when I'm creating and writing in Rome, whether it be creative writing or just content creation or whatever, the path that's laid down there. I don't know that my particular path be interesting to anybody else, but I know that I am interested in seeing the way the journeys that other people have. So there may be, it may be the case that, like Rob said, there's just the sort of thing that's interesting to the people that it's interesting to. Um, but I do think that there is. At least a market. Uh, and, and like was said in the chat here, I think that there is value to in the vulnerability component. Being able to show that the creative process is not a linear process and the way that a lot of times it's perceived to be. So as a coach from the coaching standpoint, that to me is a really useful and interesting angle.
Rob Haisfield:I also want to point out that, um, Another challenge of nonlinear books. And, and so I, I will say, I think that this direction of like the Roam, the Roam graph being like the behind the scenes of the research, like. That builds the book and maybe even like linking out that research to sections in the book. So that way people like are able to know, like, it's kind of like in a really big set of footnotes, like, um, but I think that, uh, something to point out is that that's a challenge with, uh, this nonlinear format is, uh, the idea of like prerequisite knowledge. You know, like if you're just looking through all the backlinks for a subject, a lot of times you're not going to get the prerequisite knowledge and you're going to jump in halfway through, um, you know, in, so it's not really building in a reliable way. And I think that's a challenge that any nonlinear writer, writer needs to consider. I think that Nick Milo's lights kit, which he uses with obsidian publish is actually. Um, one of the ones that's maybe a little bit better at this than others. Uh, just in the sense that he actually like on his pages, he'll like include a button that's essentially saying next, you know, to sort of have like little linear, some linear flows within the, uh, hyperlinked graph.
Tracy Winchell:Until we are better at, um, managing images in Rome. Yeah all this is an academic game that week. We can, we can say it's a crime shame that people, people don't, uh, that, that too many people pay attention to the eye candy, but it's reality. You know, people expect an online to be rich in video and images or some sort of audio, but they prefer the eye candy. And whether that's that's diagrams. Or, um, a quick snapshot of a messy notebook where you actually worked through a problem or a whiteboard or whatever. Um, pictures are a must, uh, as part of the structure of any sort of long form writing in Rome
Rob Haisfield:to that point. Um, Art of game design is a book that I think does this illustrates that point really well? Um, it's like sorta like a textbook. It really should not have been written as a linear book. It would have been great in a non linear format, but it's like, um, but it's like they have this index, they have these X pages, right. Which, you know, have lots of subheadings that are very descriptive. But like when you're flipping through this book, you see, first thing you see on every page or the headings and the pictures and the call out like boxes of texts that are in like different colors and stuff. So it's like re so my point here is that it's really easy when you're flipping through this to see very quickly. This is what I'm looking for. I'm interested in this. So I'm going to stop on this page and like explore it a little bit, you know, like, uh, it it's like giving the there's there's cues beyond just the texts. Like I think things like having headers are incredibly important for letting people quickly skim it. It's interesting. See an image skim a page is this interesting, you know, and on and on.
Norman Chella:Yeah, that, uh, the mediums that go beyond writing, uh, yeah. Are, are highly important. And I think the use case goes beyond that even like far, not only for any book, but like academia for scientific research. Think of one of my previous episodes with Cherry Sun was a greater support for images because she dealt with a lot with her. Her cultures, which he is working on. I think she's working on fetal cells. I believe like for research, like biological research, it's just, you know, amazing stuff. But when you have limitations in doing scientific research, because you cannot say upload, or he cannot view images properly, they're not formatted properly, or you can't really shared them out loud, uh, shared them out to other people then that not only harms the experience of the Roam creator in adding value to the graph, but it also harms the experience of the consumer or the reader going through to graph and thinking, Oh, like you're explaining this, but I don't see a diagram. I don't see a visual aid. I don't hear an aural aid. Right. You hear an interview with somebody else, but where's the conversation like I would like to hear proof. I would like to see findings beyond writing. Um, actually, uh, A quick question, actually, for Rob, I know you're doing your garden and Obsidian publish. Do they have support for like really good support for beyond writing, like visual mediums?
Rob Haisfield:Oh, um, yeah, I don't know yet. I'm not using them Obsidian published for my garden. I'm using a Jack. Somebody made an, I made a few hacks on top of it with the help of people that actually know how to do those hacks. Um, but it's honestly, there's. I've put a lot of thought into what I think would be a really good UX for a nonlinear, uh, digital garden. I'm not there yet just because I'm not technical enough to make it. If one of you is then I'd love to talk to you about it. But I think that there's a lot of things that could be done. Um, again, beyond texts that, uh, with the UX that makes sense nonlinear reading better, because again, it's just kind of getting at this idea of, I want to help. I think of this nonlinear writing as a book that rearranges it's pages for you based on your interests, you know? Um, and I think that's kind of its best format, at least in my head. Um, And, and part of that means you need to encourage certain exploratory behaviors and readers readers. Aren't used to just clicking on a ton of links from a page that takes one to two minutes to read on its own, you know, um, It's like, there's just, um, I, but yeah, there's a lot of exploration that needs to be on like a hover previews. For example, that's something that helps people explore better because that reduces the effort necessary to click on a link and see if it's worthwhile. Right. Um, but you know, if you add too many of these exploratory measures, then people lose track of where they were get absolutely lost. I don't know. I think there's a lot to be done there, but, uh, but no, uh, I think that obsidian obsidian does allow for like images. I'm pretty sure it allows for YouTube embeds. Um, but beyond that, like if someone really wanted to hack together a nonlinear, like a nonlinear book that has some level of structure to it, a guided track that's. And that's one of the products that I'm working on. It's like a client company, a I'm working on their onboarding right now, but that's really like one of the best places to go for that. Um, it's not going to be a pretty website, but it'll be a website site.
Norman Chella:Uh, just, uh, looking at the chat, Mridula saying. Just thinking about what everyone was saying about nonlinearity. I think a possibility is to have, say an appendix button, which allows people to go through a rabbit hole if they wish similar to a latex button at the bottom of a slide where you can go to the mathematical appendix, if anyone wants to see during a presentation. Okay. Like an appendix button. So I'm not really familiar with this, but I'm assuming it's a bit like. It's sort of like a popup table of contents or like a popup narrative that allows me to explore in a certain linear fashion. To prevent me from getting lost. Is that close to what's being described?
Mridula Duggal:Yeah, it's similar so often. So I can only tell you because I'm coming from an academic perspective. So I have to do a lot of presentations, right. And we have during the presentation, you're not going to take everyone through your derivations of how you got to a specific formula. Right? So what I, what we often end up doing is against the big formula that we arrived at. You kind of have a little button over there which can like take you to like a 15 slide, right at the end of your presentation, which is the appendix where you have all the step by steps written out. So in case anyone is interested, they can go through the derivation if they really want.
Norman Chella:So, so if you look at, let's say, if you transpose that into a book, Would you say have an appendix button for each chapter or each block or each paragraph? That would be interesting.
Mridula Duggal:Yeah. Why not? Because a lot of books do, right. A lot of books have like endnotes or footnotes, which you mean like, okay, you can find this footnote now from here, go to base and know. So,
Norman Chella:but, but the thing is right, but the thing is with a, with a book it's, it's very surface level, all they'll will say is something like, Oh, I got it from this source. And then that's it. Right? It'll prompt you to go further reading or whatever. Right. It will just tell you, Oh, I got it from this, this, if you do the same in a roam graph, not only can you do something like. Uh, this is the source where I got it from. You can also nest the blocks underneath to say, how did I arrive at this paragraph? Or how did I arrive at this block? What did I ref? What did I reference from anything else to arrive in this final form of this book? And I think that's, that's maybe one way to, to, to address what Rob mentioned about like, not getting too lost if you give too many exploratory options, but rather limit the amount of exploratory options to. If you have arrived at this chapter, this is a button to take you to, how did I arrive at this chapter? I can maybe limit the amount of references to however, number of blocks or fields or whatever. Maybe that's the one way to do it. So I wish I had, like, I wish I'm really good at Rome roam drawing tool. I don't know if you saw on Twitter, my roam drawing sucks. So I'm just gonna pretend it, it. I'm not, I'm just, I'm a great drawing, but I would assume that it would be like a one timeline, which is the book. And then the graph is a, a notch on each chapter and you limit the amount of notches from each notch so that people don't get too lost. And then we are essentially
Mridula Duggal:it's like describing is like a centipede if you want. Okay.
Norman Chella:Yeah. I mean, like a centipede, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I said to Pete. Yeah. And then if, if we're going by the centipede analogy, If each section is two legs, then you can think of two different ways of exploring that same block. Right? It could be one scientific one, which is, Oh, you go to the index of the resource or academic piece that you should read for further reading. This is for the people who would like to read that. And the other way is what is the anecdote or what was the conversation that prompted you to arrive at this block? Now that will be pretty fascinating because one that is quite creative in terms of how, or like the behind the scenes of that block and two you limit, right. It's only just those two ways, right? It could be that, um, I that's, this, this is why I'm bringing this up. Um, because this kind of model, or this kind of framework, or this kind of referencing sources to arrive at these blocks, it's not just for a book. It could even, it could be for a talk. It could be for a scientific paper. It could be for the makings of a video or a film. Right. Um, you have different ways to arrive at each section of this finished piece. This finished product may be one way to prevent people from getting too lost is to only limit exploratory options per section to like two to three. And then. Not let the graph grow too big from there. Yeah. So maybe a bit of a rant or a little bit of a crazy deep dive into what is possible, but, um, as much as I'm saying this out loud, uh, I think it's good that people are really, really talking about this. So, you know, if anyone has any extra notes, If anyone has any extra notes from this talk from your own personal graph. I mean, I'm going to put this up on the RoamFM graph and totally just add it in later on, you can give me a Mark down file and I can just edit it and put it under your name. Um, and we can swiftly move on. Cause uh, books took quite a number of time. So let me switch back to sharing. So, um, A lot of what we just talked about will also, uh, would also applied to research deep dives. I don't have a proper name for it, but I just called it research deep dives, academics. I'm sure do. Mridula you could probably chime in if you, if you'd like, um, when you have research, when you want to do research on a field, you want to make sure that. You have all the resources set, you have a hypothesis. You want to explain it, you have an abstract. And then from there you write it out. Maybe there's a way to do it. Like a, some kind of workflow. Sure. But then when you have a roam graph version, Oh, you probably would want to do this more in a collaborative manner with a team or by yourself. Uh, but it's a lot easier, but, but maybe if you could, I could just ask you something like. What was the difference between you researching something with, and without Rome? Like, were there any changes in your workflow as a result?
Mridula Duggal:So I think the biggest change for me, and I think I've said this several times before is that I was someone who used to only use paper and pen and use that. And I think one of the biggest issues I had was. Because I was thinking about like different angles of approaching the same problem. I would often have random thoughts and yeah. And I have an issue that if, if I'm thought that it doesn't fit on a particular page, it's not going to go on paper at all and I'm going to lose the thought. Yeah. And I think that's something, that's an issue that I grew up and kind of dealt with for me. Right. Because that's at that point because I took care of the organization, but sort of speak, I was able to like, just dump my thoughts. And then as in when their rights, like would block reference them and go back and forth between. Because I'm working on multiple papers at the same time, which are kind of related, uh, it becomes easier to just go back and be like, Oh, could they say something I thought about with respect to this paper, but it's also, you know, and for the other paper that I'm working on and I can kind of link those ideas. So I think that was the big change in the way that I was working. With and with our room.
Norman Chella:Uh, so to, to, to check that graph is the graph. If you're doing your research in, is your personal graph, right? Yep. Okay. All right. So it's not like a, like a collaborative team graph or anything like that. Like it's not one where you have multiple authors.
Mridula Duggal:Not right now, because my co-author's unfortunately don't use roam, but,
Norman Chella:Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's an important distinction there and, okay. Yeah. Okay. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah. Yeah. That, that's very, very important distinction because later on, we probably have to start talking about. Different types of entities that actually interact with a roam graph, for example, number of authors, are there any clients, uh, who's the audience, et cetera. So if you, if it's a private graph and the only constant connection between all these papers, all these thoughts are what you think of and your attention, like what you choose to pay attention to. Then I guess that makes perfect sense. So like, Deep dive research deep dives are definitely your specialty. So if anything, if you have any notes on this, like, I would love to see them, uh, later on, uh, after this. So, um, moving on to courses. So we have quite a few, uh, participants in this call that have courses as well. RJ, I'm adding yours in, cause I know you are coming up with one later on, um, and. Uh, from Tracy's Roaman journals, too, Mat, uh, uh, teamwork roam online course, too. You know CortexFutura's and of course, Nat's, uh, courses are definitely one of the the most interesting ways to build, say under the core of an information product courses or online courses, right. There are really, really good ways of doing that. So. And this is just, these are just examples. So I, I'm not sure if anyone here in the chat has anything to say about what are the implications behind making, uh, an online course about Roam and making an online course that's built on top of Roam. There's a huge distinction there because if you have a cohort or a group, and they're all sharing the knowledge base in one shared room graph, what are the implications? So, you know, that's something to give you something to think about really. Uh, so paid talks as well. Uh, so this is one example. So thank you guys for being here and Rob's recent one, uh, on queries. So if you're a power user of query, so I'm sure that you've been to, uh, Rob's talk as well, more and more people are finding value in being in this closed event space where we talk about Rome, or we talk about things surrounding Rome or things that can overlap with Roam research, the tool. And, or the team and, or the future of the tool. So that's another way of creating things and communities as well. So communities is more of a, of a, a product or the result of findings on a roam graph that have second order effects. So if you have a community, you define your audience, for example, um, Uh, Oh my goodness. Academic Roaming on circle as well as Nat's course community. So they're all built on the community and they're everything in common is in Rome. So. If you're a Roam creator and you're trying to build a group and it has to be an and Rome is involved in, in some way you have to define what is the involvement of Rome? Is it just, everyone has a Rome graph and you come together or is it that community is built on top of a knowledge base. Uh, and that knowledge base is built on Rome technology. Another example is Roam CN. So I'll just put Jesse's here. So to give an update, Uh, Rome CN is the Rome China community. And to have over 200 members adding contributions to the shared Rome, China Rome graph. So think of the implications of a collective intelligence. When you have the resultant blocks of over 200 members using Rome research, I need to ask Jessie about how she actually, uh, inputs the information. Is it a matter of just like submitting markdown files or is it just a matter of telling people, Oh, I'd like to update or do they actually have 200 authors on the same graph? Cause that's a, that's, that's a whole other set of problems right there. So while we're talking through this, just have a think to yourself. What else can you make with a roam graph? And you can totally, uh, interject if you'd like.
Rob Haisfield:Well, well, so I'm really curious about this idea of online courses built on top of Rome, you know, like, so not about Rome, but on top of Rome. Right. And I guess part of my curiosity there. It has to do with this relative difficulty, uh, for new users, you know? So it's like, um, I've tried doing collaborative databases before, like, uh, like one time working with the client. Um, I actually made like a quarterly report for them in a Rome database and, uh, and the challenging thing. Yeah. In order to really use that. Well, People need to know how to use Rome. Well, you know, like, and, and like, they need to know, um, One, they need to know, like even just proper roam navigation, you know, like that you can open up pages, you can open up stuff in the sidebar, et cetera. They need to understand proper indentation, you know, um, in order to make sure that when you add in a whole lot of users, that the knowledge is still going to be structured. But then there also needs to be like some sort of common just agreed upon practices, you know? Cause like Rome, doesn't just handle that for you. Like you maybe need to say like, Oh, we're going to, when you make a page, like try to build it on top of a index page or something, you know, like, like just stuff like that. Like, like it feels as though Rome is. It's very challenging to create a collaborative knowledge database on for if people don't know how to use Rome, uh, at the start. And also if they don't have some common agreed upon rules. So I'm, so I'm just curious, people's thoughts about that, especially Mat. Uh, since I know you've been talking about, uh, publicly about collaboration and Rome, um, I know that there's things like queries you can do to. Uh, make pseudo notifications and all that, but like, it still seems to require a lot of, um, agreed upon workflow knowledge.
Mat McGann:Yeah. Yeah. Well, our team is small, which is helps this four of us, um, that are using it. Uh, one, one breakthrough that I made was, uh, That you can't use daily notes at all. Like that, that just ruins everything. And, uh, so I, I think I talked about this on our call with Norman. Um, team graph has to be inside out, so you don't put stuff into daily notes and then kind of point to stuff out in the sort of knowledge base. You have to put things into the knowledge base and then pull them in. And display them on, on the daily notes. I found that that means that someone just enters and then on that day, it's sort of just showing them the important things that's happening in the knowledge base relevant to that day. So once input goes out into the knowledge base itself, it's slightly easier because it's essentially like a Wikipedia thing. And if you had a whole bunch of, well, that's how Wikipedia has made now that I think about it. But, um, people naturally. Uh, build their own pages and, and conceptualize things. However, they would like. Um, and they're kind of free to do that on the outskirts and, um, um, things like tech sprints with built into Roam as well. They're highly structured and everyone sort of as agreed on how that should work. And that's quite easy because no one wants to break that. Cause it, it breaks how everything works. So, um, One, one thing, when you said building on indexes, that's probably the hardest thing, which is you don't necessarily know when new things have been built and, uh, what to look for to find certain things that that's a continual challenge that, um, that we're working on.
Norman Chella:Yeah. Uh, that our, our episodes coming out soon, by the way, uh, I'm working on that and, um, I'll be doing the transcript. So don't, don't worry about that. Cause I used the transcript to actually edit the episodes, so that's fine. Um, but yeah, I remember, I remember when I heard the analogy of, uh, when trying to understand, uh, team roam, so this is from our, uh, episode, uh, uh, upcoming episode, rather that huge differences in defining what a collaborative graph can be. And that's because of that inside out an analogy. Normally, we always start as a private graph. Like for personal graphs, we always start in daily notes. It's always, it's always from there. And I think that's because you start, uh, each and every day is a reset and you start the day with the daily notes, with an empty page, and then you implement the system. But when you have a team graph or when you have a collaborative graph, and this is from like how I understood it from our conversation. Um, the systems are already in place and people are working to make it happen when they opened the graph. So
Mat McGann:Not necessarily though, the, the systems, uh, emerge. Right. And, and I think one of the keys to doing a team graph is that you need to be okay with chaos. There's going to be a minimum amount of chaos. Absolutely. And, uh, by volume, maybe even, maybe even like 50% of your pages are. Junk, but that's okay. They're not important if no one's linking to them. Right. So yeah, I picture it as kind of like a, um, like a, just a, just a star field or something just like the night sky. And then as people link things up and reference things, you start to get the structure as it pulls together. And, um, it's fine that not everything is linked up. Um, once you, once you accept that, You have to sort of tread the barrier, the, the edge of chaos, and that's where all that the beauty is. Cause then you get all the nice connections and the structure emerges. And so trying to fight for a structure won't work. I think we failed trying to enforce the structure.
Norman Chella:I can't wait to work on that episode cause uh, Just to see how different it is from then. And now once you've been building your course, so.
Rob Haisfield:Tracy, I'm, I'm curious, uh, your take on this too, because if I'm not wrong, you're on the roam team in a support role. Uh, so no. Oh, okay. I thought you were for some reason. Um, nevermind then
Norman Chella:now, well, what were you going to ask actually,
Rob Haisfield:well, I was going to ask the, um, I know that the Rome team uses a, a collaborative database and I've also seen them talk a little bit about how they do just about everything. I think from the daily notes, which is opposite that you was talking about. So I I'm, I mean, it's not like there's a lot of ways to skin, a cat, of course, you know, but, uh, especially within Rome, that's kinda like what characterizes Rome, but, um, but, but yeah, it, I just thought that was interesting.
Norman Chella:Oh, that will be really fascinating to see how the Roam research team uses Roam research to do collaborative work. Like I think the biggest, the most interesting thing to see what are the overlaps between Mat's system and the Roam Research system? I think that'll be pretty cool.
Rob Haisfield:I mean, Juvoni uh, I don't know if any of you follow Giovanni on, on Twitter. But he's talked a little bit about, um, the differences between obsidians, uh, the differences between obsidians product development and Rome's product development. And I saw that, um, I saw Cato Minor posts, one point that he felt like, um, a year in or however long he's been in it. And it feels like it's more beta now than it was before, because there's just so many, like half finished feature, half baked ideas and all that, you know, and, and Juvoni was saying like, he thinks part of that's just because like, Rome uses Rome to develop Rome. And that inherently does lead to a certain amount of non-structure. But yeah.
Norman Chella:I think I saw that exact tweet before.
Brian Toh:The funny thing also is that, um, I know that the Roam team themselves, they have multiple graphs, so not just their own team graph, but they also have their own personal graphs that they're working. Doing their own individual notes and their own individual thinking on. And you can see this also in the way that Conor does it, because like Conor was kind of like, um, he, sometimes he puts things out. He puts things out there and he's thinking on Twitter, but he's not. Yeah. Uh, just thinking about, um, within the graph itself, and then when you don't think within the graph itself, Other people can not see you, the rest of your team can't, can't see it. And, uh, yeah, just, it's just interesting to see.
Norman Chella:No, no. It's it's that's no, it's not that I'm shocked. It's just that, I'm just wondering about the implications of that. Right? Cause normally we would think, Oh, all information about this team is closed within this one shared graph, but then. Naturally speaking, if you're on the Roam Research team, you're probably going to have your own personal graph anyway. And then anything related to the company that you work for in this case, Rome, we have a company graph. But Conor being Conor he's going to be tweeting a ton each and every day because conversations lie at the foundation of all of his thinking processes and his way of gaining conversation is all of his tweet threads and all of his findings and all of the flaws and the improvements and the hacks from other people that he finds and discovers on Twitter. I mean, I can't believe that he only just found out about 42, just a couple of days ago that that blew my mind. Yeah. But yeah,
Brian Toh:Purposefully like, um, ignoring it for what goes on, on what he needs to do.
Norman Chella:Yeah. Oh, okay. I thought he'd be keeping tabs cause. I mean, it'd be pretty cool to just like,
Brian Toh:yes, yes.
Norman Chella:Yeah. Check out a few features here and there, but yeah. Um, collaborative graphs probably still in progress. We're seeing many different ways. Like Mat's system is different from Roam Research's team system. I'm sure we're seeing hybrids as well. If they're going to have personal graphs plus their social media, Twitter graphs and their shared graphs, um, I will ask Jessie for her, how she does her roam CN graph. And maybe that can spark some ideas for anyone thinking of doing something collaborative. And I think that's very important for everybody here in case you want to do something that involves another person other than yourself, going into a graph. So that's, uh, I will bring it up later.
Brian Toh:I would like to share so on community graphs that, um, that there was one for the, I was in the last building a second brain cohort and I set up a community graph where we can just kind of like much. And the thing that I kind of found is with that is the idea of engagement where, because there are no pings, there's no programmable attention of any sort that, um, It just kind of died. and similarly to how you use a forum, you would usually only be like, from my perspective, I think I'm only usually active in a forum that I am already invested in, or I have prior communication with. And it's not, it's interesting to see other people's notes, uh, and different perspectives on the same thing. But if it's not connected to what I am learning or what is, what my main kind of focus or output is, if it's, if that community graph is not connected to my own personal graph and having to jump back and forth is, is a huge deal as well.
Norman Chella:That's friction, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Jumping back and forth.
Mat McGann:Yeah. My, my, my personal is completely separate from my company and it kills me every day. So, um,
Norman Chella:Wait. So actually actually on that, on that note, Matt, how, what percentage of your blocks built in your personal graph would you want to have copied over to your team graph? Like, do you think a lot about work-related stuff in your private graph and then you, you normally have like the, the situation where you're like, Oh yeah, I should just copy these over.
Mat McGann:Well, I made my, I had my personal graph and obviously I had my work stuff in there and then I thought. I want to move everything I want to do like a health horizon graph.
Norman Chella:Yeah.
Mat McGann:So I built that. And then one day I sat down and went, all right. And I just Mo like copied and pasted everything I'd mentioned about health horizon on my personal across, and from that day, they've been totally. sealed from each other that, that anything to do with authorize and just goes in that, the company one and, um, hopefully they can solve graph linking one day.
Norman Chella:Yeah. Yeah. When it gets hypergraphic, uh, then Brian's problem from that will be gone? Cause you can just easily link between graphs. Um, anyone with a Roam graph will be the audience for any Roam creator. Because anyone with access to another person's room graph will want to link it back to that block. So they're most likely to want to, you know, pay for access or want to access for that later on. So yeah. Then we don't have situations where, you know, you're, you're thinking of like, Oh, I ended up thinking about work today in my private graph. Oh, I should just copy over to blocks instead of that, you could just like, just block referred over to the team graph, then it will make perfect sense. Um, I will bring that up later on, uh, after this, uh, Cause I wanted to talk about filtering like filtered graphs, because I think that's one way to consider like hypergraphic possibilities, but yeah, back to this. So we are already one hour plus in, but you know, you don't have to, if you're like, if you want to go to sleep, right. If you want to take a break to have a coffee or sleep, or if you have an appointment or something like that, I'm not forcing you to stay. So, you know, please, uh, uh, it is a. It's it's for you to come and go. So if you only interested in staying and that's fantastic, but yeah. Uh, thank you Brian, and if anyone else it says has any extra notes as they are hearing this conversation, as they're writing away in their own personal graphs and are willing to add it. And, uh, I will email you guys later on in which page to add this on, and then I can just nest it under your name as a page, and then we can talk about it later on. So. Um, in relation to everything that we talked about just now, then it comes to what are the different types of graphs that we can actually create. So we've already started deciding on, um, packaging value through the format of a graph, but then there's different types of graphs. So for example, if you have a primary graph, our primary graph is you selling access to a graph. Or the value add is, or the end goal is the consumer or the audience wanting to gain access to a graph. So the graph is the product. That's what I mean by a primary graph. A secondary graph is when you have a graph that uses that is the back end or the thinking engine for a creator to sell something or to make something. So an example would be if you have the author from before and he used a roam graph to create a book. Then that graph is now secondary. You're not selling the graph, but the person is the book that is based off of the graph. Um, an example would be, uh, if R.J.'s his coaching system is based on graph, the value added would be. Him selling his coaching services through people, but then the CRM, the setting up the calls and interactions, the transcripts, and all of the resources will be in a graph then technically in your business, your graph is secondary. So that's one way to think about it. And tertiary is when value is added towards a client's graph, which I will bring up later on. But think of this as a consultant. If you have someone who has a graph and they are having trouble doing a graph, or they are having trouble trying to gain more value out of their own graph. You come in as an outsider and you add value to the graph or you pay, or like they pay you to help with their graph. I'm seeing examples, examples of this, like. Uh, growing over time, just little prompts of tweets here and there are people needing help with all the chaos in their own graphs. Would you be willing for someone to come in and see how things are doing if your graph and see if you can make more sense of it? There is actually some level of interest, so that graph becomes tertiary. So you can think about that, uh, over time and a inspiration for this tertiary graph would be that, uh, Conor quote tweeted this, which is the, which is what he calls the state of X graph. Um, essentially if someone who is trying to build an industry report on a field would interview 30 experts, summarize all the findings, compiled their research and, and put them all in a roam graph. Then. Uh, then either someone wants to get an access to that. And then from there they would, you know, either pay that person to further add more value into that graph. That graph becomes tertiary initially it's primary, and then it becomes tertiary. So that's one example. Yeah. So many different ways to think about it. Uh, and that leads to what are the different kinds of jobs? Uh, creators redundant. Cause it can be anything. So consultant we've already just, just mentioned, can you be a roam consultant? It could be possible, right? It could actually be possible. Like if someone, if a company reaches out to you and says, Hey, I'm interested in starting a roam research graph database, but I don't know what's the best system or I have a startup and I want to get it set up. hat's the best way. If I have a startup, a four person team, I approach Mat because Mat has a system on doing a startup system on his. Own graph database. I want that for my own team. How do I do that? So you act as a consultant. Another one is the librarian. So the librarian is when you have a, for example, a, an employee or a member of your team managing your graph for you. So an in an in house consultant, essentially the inhouse Roam, or the person in charge of the Roam database. They are in charge of doing linked references. They're in charge of doing findings. They're in charge of stuff, the deltas, the queries, et cetera. They're in charge of ensuring that all the information is up to date and they're in charge of, you know, all the attributes and the metadata if necessary. Um, it's a lot of information wrangling, which can potentially turn into a service and this may be coming in for way later. Oh, good night. Good night, man. This may be coming in for later, but I think we're going to be seeing more of this in the future. The more that Roam research becomes really mainstream, or it becomes very normal in terms of parking all of your knowledge in that one graph. The scribe is the rudimentary version of that. Um, I act as the scribe a lot for a lot of my RoamFM episodes because I want clean transcriptions. I would add transcriptions of each episode into that. So I act as the scribe, writing down what people have said in each episode and putting it in a graph for everybody to see. So that's a very basic level, a job, and, Oh, manager's the same as before. And, uh, as mentioned before the presentations, et cetera. The Rome, orator or lecturer, someone who performs information or expresses information or someone who does a keynote on a field with a roam graph, uh, as, uh, as like an assistant or as the way to compliment them, trying to explain it. Um, yeah. Uh, other, uh, other, um, Other observations include Roam as part of a job description. I need to find a tweet for this, but I remember that listen notes to the podcast company is starting to host all of their knowledge on to run research. And one of the prerequisites was experience of not Roam research, the tool. And I believe this was just earlier year. So we are seeing room research actually held as a requirement for a job, which is. Pretty interesting. I don't know. Oh, podcasts notes. Yeah. Okay. Thanks Brian. Yeah. Not listen notes to the podcast notes. Ironically, the podcast guy, I didn't know the name of the company, so we've already started podcast notes anyway, so podcast notes and, um, yeah, So I won't go through most of these other than, uh, let's see. Yeah. So other use cases include a roam as a service, which, uh, which I believe. We did brought up the copyright issue. So it does apply here as well. I did bring it up as a service to scribe a book into Roam format, but then how do you pay the author? Where are the rights? What are the borders between copyright? Like how do they gain ownership of this linked graph that everyone can get access to it and ref refer back there. That's right. Like, what is the. Where is the border behind, like them being able to protect their own IP. So scribing as a service for a book, turning into a room format, probably impossible. Uh, for now there's an article about about Google doing, trying to do the same, trying to digitized every single publication. I think it's over like one, how many millions of books, but they can't release it. So they have an archive of digitized books, That cannot release it. It's like in a warehouse somewhere it's like in a storehouse all the way in Google HQ or whatever, but they can't release it because how do you pay all of the authors? Right? How do you pay, uh, all of the writers as well? And that does bring into question the moral values of authorship. So I'll, I'll bring this up again. And what I mean by this is. And I don't know if anyone's going to have any thoughts on this. So I brought up this, of course I was, uh, having lunch with a friend and it was a group of us. And then one of the people there is a PhD and I brought up Roam Research because obviously I like to pitch a roam research to everybody else, because if you are a roam research user, you're going to do this naturally it's as natural as breathing. So I brought up the notion of. The unlinked and linked books discussion that we brought up earlier. I just thought that, Oh, you know, to my friend, my PhD friend, if you were to write a book, what if you do a linked version? And he was worried from a moral standpoint in that, in doing so, uh, we start and we have to start redefining what is an author. So if you're an author and you have your books on Rome, Are you an author of a book or are you an author of a knowledge base? So it's, it's, it's a bit, a little bit different there because when you have something, as you know, all the behind the scenes information, all their research notes, the annotations, et cetera, put onto this one graph for everybody to gain access to it goes beyond just writing a book and then getting it sold to other people. It goes to I'm selling my entire experience as a package. Are you going to pay for my package. Sounds pretty weird innuendo right there, but are you going to pay for that experience and putting it on a public graph and exploring it on your own. So it changes the definition a little bit. So I just thought that maybe don't even have to discuss it, but as Rome creators, the possibilities of what is considered a creation through Roam have broadened. But to what extent can you say, put a paywall behind a graph? To what extent can you make this book free? But the full experience is a premium. To what extent can you build an online course and then have members on the shared graph or not? Right. Do you want them to be? uh, and, um, And yeah, in the future, we have to think about these things because, because there are elements like the, uh, the Roam API coming up. So there's going to be thei roam Depot with a marketplace, all these creators and developers and workers trying to build extra additions, add ons on top of one's roam graph. So it's not going to be just writers and creators on a public graph. It's going to be people. Building like people like people like roamhacker, like people like 42 do like building things like 42, but yeah, it's going to be a paid option potentially right. On a marketplace. So that's going to be a whole other can of worms to open. Cause then what to think about the implications behind? How do you pay for someone who, how do you pay for this tool? That's going to be in used every single graph in like 80% of all the roam graphs in the world. Right. Like the think about that, I'm sure Connor and the team are thinking about it, but the roam api there's multiplayer, there's hyper graphic features like filtering, uh, like reffing referencing a, a block outside of the graph into somebody else's graph. And I wanted to bring up the notion of filtering. So filtering is when or a filtered graph is when I have my private graph. And I create a premium graph in my account, and this will house, this will house all of the premium information. I would like people to pay for, for example, the linked version of the book or every single piece that I created. Write a linked version of that. Let's just say, but instead of copying over all the information from graph one block to the other. This graph will, will have the sole purpose of only filtering or referencing or block referencing all of the relevant blocks in my private graph. So it's only a graph full of block references and nothing more, and maybe pages for navigating through, say a narrative or navigating through different exploratory options. It could be possible. So that was pretty much all of my notes. Right. Like, I've been thinking about this for so long. Uh, I'm seeing notes from, uh, one of the writers of everything, the everything bundle who wrote about Roam research's possibilities from, uh, redefining what a writer can be, what a writer can do, what an author can do do can they do a paid membership subscription thing, uh, for their roam graph and many more, more so with that said, That is pretty much it, like, if you are going to be a Rome creator, if you're going to use Rome to create something that represents you, what would it be and how would Rome be involved in it? That is the closing question. So, yeah. Is there a, would anyone like to add anything?
Prab Randhawa:Hey guys, this is Prab can you, can you hear me? okay. Perfect. Um, so I, I was trying to remember where I look up, I saw this, uh, I started in between, I think Conor retweeted it, but somebody was able to figure out the content creator, getting paid on code in github and What they were essentially doing from my understanding, and maybe not fully accurate, but what they were doing is installing Gumroad on top of github repo, and then the content creators themselves can sort of do their license or sell their code into the larger network. And that may be a potentially a parallel in the near future. Maybe a medium future where. Yeah, a creator once the APIs and stuff are available, a creator by Gumroad or a similar tool and sort of license or sell to the broader community graph. That could be just one way I thought I wanted to share, but it could be, it could be very interesting. Definitely.
Norman Chella:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's single a lot of, a lot of synchronicity between, um, uh, Gumroad and Rome. That's actually a very good point. Like if you could actually build the landing page and the transactions, et cetera on Gumroad. And that is the layer on top of the service that you're giving, which is for example, the licensing of a tool or something like that. I think that. Yeah. I think that opens up possibilities. Like hopefully we can get that out, like, and test it up to see if it's possible. At most we can do with a Gumroad is I think Shu Omi is doing this where you pay for access to his notes, which is on a graph. Like, you know, it's. It's straightforward. It's understandable. Right. But then how can Gumroad tape, how can gum road care for licensing per usage of a tool? And if they worked it out, I think there'll be a fantastic, I think I would love to hear Conor's take on that actually. Like, can he implement that or is that just going to be an API thing? It might just be, it might just be API thing. Hmm. Okay. Right.
Brian Toh:I mean, there's, there's the assumption that the graph is not evergreen. The graph is carved like fixed in a fixed state already. It's just linked is, uh, it's what you call the second, uh, secondary already. It's linked. It's linked already. It's just, it is final and there's no further updates. Unless it is you kind of like, you make an entire new graph, like this version, this graph version one, this graph.
Norman Chella:Yeah.
Brian Toh:And then you, you, you charge for the next, the next, uh, like you kick everyone out and then everyone that pays for, to get accessible to all you just take version two. And then, um, only these laws can be seen by these particular people.
Norman Chella:Oh god limit access to blocks? It is. I'm sure it could work. Like I I've had a few discussions on Twitter on a pay per block view, which is yeah. Insane. Um, yeah, but I think
Brian Toh:The guys are also the ones that, I mean, to me one block does not really make much a difference. What matters is the context of the block? What matters are the links that the block goes to? I don't care for the right thing. The one block in itself, as much as I care for the Automic, like a little bit, but no, I don't care. I care for the context. I care for the links, which is why I would, I would go into a graph. And if not, I'll just kind of Google it.
Norman Chella:See. Yeah. See, that's funny to me. Right? So that's why I think pay per block is too, too, too atomic that is worthless. Like you would want to pay per even page or just pay for the whole graph because the assumption is that every single block within that graph helps with allowing this one block that you're interested in a be complete. I that's that's the, like, I mean, I, I don't know, like it's maybe pay per blocks a little bit too much right now. Cause we're not even, we are not even at that stage yet. Like this might be thinking a little bit too far ahead. It's just that on what Prab was saying, uh, licensing via Gumroad it can work. I'm assuming that updates can also, you know, update really well. If you need like extra, uh, Extra additions to whatever the service or whatever the tool can be. They can add it to your graph. And I think it'll be pretty easy. So, yeah,
Tracy Winchell:that's right up. Rob's alley because, uh, it's sort of a gamification. Do you earn points to get, to see that missing piece of that graph? Or do you actually buy it?
Norman Chella:Oh, like a pay to win thing. Yeah.
Prab Randhawa:Another tricky one is, uh, I don't know where I saw this. I think it was yesterday. I was buying something on gumroad. Yeah. I think it was a Gumroad product. To be honest, I think they were doing a seminar or webinar or something like that. And the question had asked me is what do you think this is worth? And I was like, Oh my God, what? Um, that was a very clever question to ask.
Norman Chella:I mean, yeah, that's very Gumroad thing though. Right? It's like, there's like the, there's like the base price and then there's like the minimum price. Right. Which is like the like$5 plus or something like that. It's like, Oh, you can pay how much you want. Right. It's like, what do you think?
Prab Randhawa:Is it, I think I thought it was creative. I think something like that could also work because, uh, from the content creator perspective, it's often. Um, where to price your product or service is, uh, especially for new beginners is quite the, it's quite the challenge. So what that does is sort of punted until you've tried to figure out what people are comfortable paying and maybe go for that range.
Norman Chella:Yeah. It also serves as a very good wide net as well, because I mean, it's, there's like biases against trying to price ourselves. Or trying to value ourselves and we put ourselves as a price that's a little bit too low. And then sometimes we have customers or a certain subset of the audience who thinks that we are worth more than the price that we put on ourselves. So I think it's, it's pretty interesting. I'm just wondering from a roam perspective, can you do that per block? I think no. And I think it would just be easier to just do that for access and then that's it. And then maybe have a fluctuating price. Like the, one of the things I was thinking of was if like, if I just put myself as an example, cause I'm planning to do this anyway. I'm planning to create a premium graph of every potential book, every potential fictional story, every potential article I've ever, written, linked with each other into one graph. And it's a fluctuating price, or it's a price that increases over time. The more I put a completed product in, um, to balance against that, like undervaluing of myself. Like that's, that's one way of looking at it and I was going to test it, uh, later on, uh, over time. But it's, it's good to know that maybe Rome doesn't even have to care about this part because you have Gumroad tech or somebody else is going to come in with like a really good payment system that works really well. Like, are we going to pay with credit? Right. If I put like a thousand dollars into block access dollars or something like that, then I can take bits of premium from other people's graphs, et cetera.
Rob Haisfield:I don't think this is in any way sustainable for the author, you know, it's just like a lot of work. Um, you know, like I, I honestly think that something to the tune of, you know, like the sort of system I implement. I implemented with roamhacker for Rome privacy mode. I think that could work pretty well with sharing a public graph where you're essentially saying, like here's a list of the pages that I don't want people to see. Um, and it's just going to. Make it, so they can't see anything that's tagged with that pager indented beneath it. Like, it's the same thing as essentially like late, like really just this idea of being able to write a query, you know, and say like the results of this query will not show up for pers for a person. Right. You know, I think that's the general idea, uh, that makes this sort of easier. Like I see a lot of people get hung up on things like a first degree and second degree connections and all that. Um, honestly, I think just that indentation side of things, numbers a lot, uh, it like, like, I mean, I don't know. I think that. A lot of users, a surprising amount of users. I'm working on a video on this right now, but like a surprising number of users just don't understand. But indentation literally is how you convey connections in Rome and like that you kind of just have to do indentation, You know, like they don't get that. Right. Um, but, but it's like, that's just how it works, you know? So like I, so like I think a system like that. I would just sort of drive people to do a little bit better within Rome. I think that any public Rome writers should be doing something like that.
Norman Chella:Yeah. So some level of standards, uh, in a public roam graph will be fantastic. I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we are in the beginning stages of, from like very, very early stages only just got out of the beta. Like, um, and then the API beta, or I guess you could say the beta API, has only just come out. So maybe there's a way to fix all these things or fix all of these different mindsets. Uh, uh, some people may just choose not to index so much. Maybe they choose to visualize it in a little bit differently. Maybe they choose to be very page heavy. Oh, I prefer block heavy. I prefer indentation. That's just how I work a lot more and a lot of block refs. I mean, we talked about this on Twitter, but like, um, the, as much as the power of Rome lies indentation, which is probably the most empirical way of showcasing, Hey, this block is related. It doesn't seem that way at first glance, like to. Like at the surface level, it just looks like. A bullet point in a bullet point, but in robe and indentation meets so much, and then you just have to worry about teaching them. So, yeah, I'm excited for that video actually. So yeah. Now, um, we, we are finishing up, but if you want to, you all want to chat perfectly. Uh, I'm perfectly up for it, but I just wanted to close off with a little announcement for RoamFM itself. Um, uh, I, I will test out. Uh, one of the Rome creator business models by making the RoamFM graph premium. And what I'll be doing is I'll be doing the show notes and the transcript, uh, up for free on public, on my own website. But if you want to see the linked version, it will be in the RoamFM graph. So people can still get access to the information, but I'll just have it in the RoamFM I'm graph. Um, if you're in this call, Hey, you, you, you get access for free. So don't, don't worry about it. Uh, I, I want us to be like the, I want to be the Guinea pig for a paid graph over time. So the current, the current thought process is as Conor, we'll put it into variable. Cause even he read, he write, come into this as well. It's a$5, one time price to get access to the graph. So I'll be running that for quite a while. And then later on, I might just do like just$1 a month subscription for anyone else outside of this call later on. And for previous guests on the show, it will be free access. So, I mean, we have already a couple of people who have already guessed it on the show here. Uh, so you don't have to worry about it. Um, but for guests who have been on the show, it will be free. So. I have all your emails. So later on, I'll give you instructions or I'll let you know, right? Like, Hey, you now have access to the graphs. It is now closed, but you have access as a viewer. Um, and the reason why is because I want to Oh, okay. Yeah. See you Rob. Yeah. Um, and the reason why is because I want to make this sustainable, uh, Roam FM is becoming a lot bigger than just a podcast. Uh, It's more like a beacon of attraction for weird Romans too. Oh, he's doing the, I saw that Brian's doing a hand version of my logo. Um, so RoamFM is becoming a lot bigger than just the podcast. It's becoming this account that people follow for just welcoming people into the community. And I want to sustain that. Which is why I want to put a pay wall behind the biggest time time-suck of the entirety of RoamFM, which is the maintenance of the graph. So with the payments, what I'm doing is I will, I will use that to sustain more talks like this. So you guys are, you guys are all in, so you guys can come in for free. Of course, and
Tracy Winchell:Dude I'll pay. Nice to have access to mine just to proof it, but if I need to know something from another guest, why shouldn't I pay for that too?
Prab Randhawa:You can make us the payment Guinea pigs.
Tracy Winchell:I'm proud of you. And I think this is a great idea. Just make sure that you understand that, that when I buy, when I buy somebody else's interview, um, that's valuable to me. So make sure you give your friends the option to support you.
Norman Chella:Okay. Sure.
R.J. Nestor:Yes. Agreed a hundred percent.
Norman Chella:Alright, well, I will. Okay. So what I'll do is I'll, I will, uh, it's it's going to be on Gumroad. So Prab thanks for the amazing coincidence and bring up Gumroad. Um, but I will, I will do a. Um, I'll add a coupon for get a for those who attended the call to cap it for free, but up to you even want to do a lot more. Um, this just that in the beginning, it will be like a one time price later on will be subscribed. Cause I've been talking with them another upcoming guest who is another fellow podcaster, uh, Alban from Buzzsprout, uh, that we might do like a subscription to like. Different tiers for just access. And then another one is a little bit higher for events like these. Um, I will play the role of librarian, scribe and deep thinker through maintenance of this RoamFM graph. So being able to. Sustain, like have food on the table to allow me to do this would be fantastic. So that's, that's my big announcement. So I'm just letting you guys know beforehand. So there'll be new pages within the graph. So one is like one is called Rome Interesting. And another one is called future of Rome. So Rome interesting. It's just interesting connections that I find just by running around the graph and seeing what happens and Future of Rome is more on specific elements of the transcripts of episodes that I feel would be very important. If you want to think about what is happening in the future of Rome research, or maybe it's just tweets that I'm noticing from here and there. So think of it as like a curated feed of anything Roam related and you guys have access to it. So. Yeah. And, um, you guys, honestly, thank you so much for being here. Uh, I don't want to take too much of your time. So the talk is officially over. Uh, if you want to message me whatever, you can always tweet at me or just DM me. Uh, I like either on my personal Twitter, a Twitter account or my RoamFM account. So this will be, uh, fantastic. And yeah. Thank you.
Tracy Winchell:So if anybody's interested in doing, um, a course, um, I, um, happy to share what I'm learning in that space. So I'm happy to just visit with you about, about that. Promised that for sure early on. Um, if I can just share, um, even data. About, um, how I put things together, uh, to sort of pave the way I'm happy. I'm happy to have that conversation with you and tell you that you know, what the numbers are, what we're, what hasn't worked yet, uh, where I'm headed. So, uh, I just want us to want us to be able to support ourselves in this community, and I'm really proud of you Norman. Thanks for putting this together.
Norman Chella:Thank you now. Uh, the floor is open. So if anyone wants to bring up anything perfectly fine, I'll I will stay here until the last member is standing. Uh, otherwise Tracy, we can probably like, think about that as like a talk or another Roam FM hangout, and then bring an audience in to talk about like findings behind trying to set up a Rome, Rome of course. Um, cause I'm sure a bigger audience will be interested in like, a large use case or example, if you're willing to share the numbers.
Tracy Winchell:Sure, happy to do that. It seems a bit meta, to do this, I'm sure I've been toying with the idea to create a Roam graph to create a Roam course.
Norman Chella:You could do that. Collaboratively actually is a really good idea.
R.J. Nestor:I know. I was just, when I was doing the task management course, I was just literally just making it all up as I went. I mean, I think it turned out okay. But it was, I didn't know what I was doing. I've never been worked on teachable. Well, thanks. I appreciate it. I mean, I've taught stuff before, um, I appreciate it. I knew how to structure it stuff, but I'd never done it that way before. And I certainly didn't, you know, so, no, I think that would be a really valuable resource.
Tracy Winchell:Yeah. Yeah. Maybe even a separate group or something too, because for me, the hardest part was, uh, between my ears, like, and, and I've got 30 something years of experience in video editing and that was stressful for me. Um, but yeah, I actually had a coach in terms of content creation who helped me put together the marketing pieces, but the actual creation of the course, it's the hardest thing I've ever done. And I've, I've, I've done some really cool high stress, high profile, a winner take all everybody's watching stuff. And it's the hardest thing I've done easily.
Norman Chella:Yeah. I, I don't know. I, I've not, I've never been in like, I've thought about making courses before about to make it surrounding her Roam to me is I'm completely like blind about it. I have no clue what to even consider. At first I would think that it's the same principles. That's just starting any online course or creating the materials for an online course, except that. I would think of the Roam as secondary. So I just use it as the backend. I wouldn't show their Roam graph to the user, but then if you want to make it primary, then it's like hybrid, right? It's like the product course and the primary, which is the graph that people get access to. Oh wow. Even managing that sounds like a load.
Tracy Winchell:You. In my experience, you can either build a journal and a graph about building a course, or you can build the dang course. I tried to do both and it just wasn't possible to take my interstitial frustrations and put them in a form that I've felt comfortable sharing. You know, cause I thought about it and I thought, yeah, you crazy girl, you used to get a build is stupid. so I don't know.
R.J. Nestor:Sorry. It's so easy to head down those, uh, those pathways. Cause there, especially with Rome, there's like. Oh, a trillion different potential applications of the thing. And so every, every little journey is a potential new aspect of the course. And, you know, just the mere act of figuring out what to which, I mean it's central to any kind of teaching and instruction, but it's still a, you know, Rome itself has a lot of that going on. And I think that that's, as I'm doing the course, that's coming up, that I'm working on the, your road to Rome. That's a. I'm I'm, I'm doing it because I love doing that kind of stuff. But figuring out when I'm trying to help people recognize what their own journey through the thing is, it's hard because you don't, you've got to cover a lot of stuff, but you also got to not cover a lot more stuff and figuring out what you're covering and what you're not covering is is, is a real challenge.
Tracy Winchell:Oh, it's even more insidious to me because those rabbit trails become an excuse for. Doing something else instead of alone. It's total Steven Pressfield resistance.
Norman Chella:Oh, and now it's like bi-directional resistance, which is insane.
Tracy Winchell:Yeah. So to me, there almost needs to be more than just teaching in tutorial. There needs to be a support group for us, you know, first, second, and third time, a product creators, even inside this very narrow niche of Rome.
Norman Chella:Yeah. I'm seeing, I'm seeing the, the teaching model of building a second brain or Rite of passage. I think Brian, you can probably chime in on this, uh, the way they do their cohorts is definitely 10 out of 10. It's closed off groups within a number of weeks. You have the course and then you have the, the. The intimate instructions from the instructor themselves. Maybe it's like closed sessions where they're talking to each other and the support group is fellow students. Um, yes.
Tracy Winchell:That's, that's probably going to be my, my premium journaling product. That's the, that's going to be the up, sell from, Uh, the Roman journal, self pay scores.
Norman Chella:Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that's probably the best bet. Um, so like in my head, if hyper graphic features come out, if you have a graph for your course, that premium section, that premium version people can block ref their interstitial journaling. As examples, they block graph them into that graph as examples. So previous cohorts can showcase how they have journaled to success or how they have started, or start the habit of journaling. You ask them like, Hey, can you block ref the first day that you started journaling? Because my students are having trouble trying to start with like, what's the best way to do that. And if they could share a block that they don't mind sharing, you know, it's like a little bit of vulnerability, but enough to get things going. Then you can show that as a case study of this is how people start journaling. You don't have to be flawless at journaling from day one. Don't worry. Right? The most successful as journal people more successful are writers who start journalling. They start with crap on their first block, right? They start like barely anything like a mess up of words. Like if I like, if I could potentially block ref the very first diary entry. From like 10 years ago, 15 years ago into your graph, it might help somebody because I mean, to be fair, I was a very different person from like 10 years ago. So even, I don't want to read my own notes, but, um, but it's, it's not even about the content itself. It's about the proof of action and the proof of action from someone relatable. Which is very, very important. Uh, and yeah, and the use case of journaling that vulnerability helps with being relatable. So I think, uh, I, I think like once you go, once we go hypergraphic, like you can go so many different options. Like I am just waiting, I can't wait to go hyper graphic. Like I wanna, I want to ref other people's blocks so hard. Okay. So the thing is, okay, so here's something right. And, and. I mean, I've been recording this entire time and we'll probably, I'm going to post this somewhere on YouTube of whatever. It's okay. I'll just have this out here. Um, I act very differently as RoamFM Twitter and as someone who is doing like an episode with someone and, uh, Tracy, you can probably relate or chime in, um, I'm a lot more calmer when I'm just talking, say with just you one on one, and we're getting very introspective on certain things. We're getting deeper on serious issues, et cetera. When we're in a group setting and I'm talking about Rome, like my voice goes like, okay, crazy. It's insane. And that reflects a lot in my Twitter account. Like I make a lot of random jokes. I banter with people. Even if I have moments where I do a long tweet threads stuff, like things that are very exciting to me, roam related half of the time, I feel like I'm just messing around. And for some reason that's attracted people. Yeah. But, um, I mean, I'm sure that's valuable in some way, because, uh, there, there is a certain that there is a certain, uh, There's a certain image or impression of Roman cult, uh, in that the barrier to becoming part of it can be scary to some people who are starting up rooting for the first time. Yeah. It can be definitely like I can attest to that. Um Hmm. Well, to be fair, I think I was there before someone actually coined it, which is weird. Yeah. Anyway, so. Even just seeing the hashtag everywhere. Right? It's like, you're meant to, it sounds like it, it's almost like a mandate. Like it is mandatory for you to tweet anything about Rome research by hashtagging roam cult. And I made a joke tweet, like maybe last month or something like if this tweet, if a tweet is talking about roam without tagging roam research or hashtagging roam cult, is it a tweet about roam research? And I set that as a, like a joke. I just I'm just, you know, I jest. But I remember thinking to myself after I wrote that tweet because obviously I thought it was funny. Isn't it true? Right. Like in my head I was like, Oh yeah, it could be. Yeah. So I think
Tracy Winchell:that's true because it's funny because it's true. Yeah. Yeah. So I got to hop off. I wish I could sit here all day long and visit with you guys. Thank you so much for putting this together. It's so good to see y'all some of my face.
Norman Chella:No worries. Thank you, Tracy.
Brian Toh:Yeah, that's actually a couple minutes, like two framework per se. I kind of want to be able to try and work on the, I kind of want to hear your opinions on if that's okay.
Norman Chella:Sure. Yeah.
Brian Toh:I think first things first, like as a creator, like your creator is not just within your content, your create is not just within the text. I think that the links themselves are the monetizer. I like what you're monetizing. You're not monetizing the content itself because like all my things would be writing and like essentially, essentially all database of knowledge is the sum of what you think about something and like, just, and, and what, and your references. And it's interesting that you mention the work of a librarian because why can't I sell a graph? Because I'm not selling content. The content is is belongs to someone else. I'm not selling the content. I'm not giving them the entire book, but I'm selling them the connections the book is being based on. So essentially if I say I've got ergodicity, right. And I'm thinking of ergodicity I'm explaining, where did this come from? Who is this person? Who is this person at first said, this what inspired him? And I'm changing all these things organically. In an ever-growing kind of format. Wouldn't that be um, kind of wouldn't that be a modern, digestible uh, thing in itself? I'm not monetizing the ergodicity, the book, I'm monetizing my notes on the book and that's the concept with our digital garden, but in additional, because the digital garden is one that kind of captures thinking in your own words. Right. Like a Andy also kind of put evergreen notes are atomic and they are in your own words. That's, that's how he phrased it. Yeah. You're not monetizing content. You're monetizing being able to link the references. You're monetizing having a personal, not just a personal Wiki, but your own personal, and that is your, So that's something I was thinking about along this costs. Like the links themselves are something that as, a product. Yeah. And, um, so sometimes what they do have you guys watch it, midnight gospel on Netflix is like this kind of podcasting show. It's like a cartoon and it goes very deep. And I think it would be very interesting to count just like have say, like. Uh, do you guys know a Netflix party? It's just this extension that allows you to sync with your thing, that kind of things. Imagine, imagine watching a film and then with some phone extension or just having the graph next to it. Because right now, Roam is a very text-based thing, but what if we go in opposite direction of like, instead of trying to transcribe a book, but we are trans, we are taking from visual audio to text. We are using as the movie plays, we are going towards, uh, like the notes are, are showing up a lot. Okay. Right. Okay. In the sidebar. And then you're, and then the guy sees something, he gets, this guy sees something. It's just like, they're like, mm. They just pause. And then you, then you go, you go for your exploration. That kind of thing. I think, I, I think that it will be something that is very cool. And it's something that I would like to experiment, um, in the future I, in the future. Yeah. And especially for dance movement, because if I'm able to do, if I'm able to break down dance movement into like choreography and then to segment the blocks and I'm able to search the blocks individual blocks and thread them together and be able to interpret and, um, dissect my own movement, there'll be. That would be crazy for me. And the second thing was instead of thinking of like a book as kind of, so there's like one monetization framework of that I was thinking about just having, and you can probably do that for your, for your podcast itself. Actually, I think the original thought link reference was, um, was Roam FM's graph with like, I was listening to the podcast while looking at your transcript. I think the first few episodes I was looking at a transcript and, uh, And then I think at the point of time, you set it as read only. So I kind of copy and paste into my own graph. And then I was able to tag, I was able to just like, I was able to just double, parentheses, and like double records. And I was able to just see like, Oh, you're talking to, I can't remember who I think time. Yeah, and you're talking to, and I was able to such like, see every single instance of what she has said as I am listening to the thing. It just creates a new visual experience for listening to a podcast or listening to something and thinking about that. Um, second thing is like, I'm working on an ebook. It's like, it's called so busy, just like little, little bits of like my own soul. And I'm thinking I am going to start working on the organically from. A graph in itself. And like what I mentioned in the chat where it's kind of where the daily notes are going to be sort, like my change log. And again, usually from the roam change log in itself. um, where. I'm working on the book and as I am working on a book itself. The network itself goes organically. It goes in this direction and ankles, little bit by little bit, little bit. And then the changes are being shown. I think, I think that would be something worth monetizing itself because there's content that, and my own research would go into that. Yeah. That my own research and my own notes will go into that. I think that's something worth monetizing stuff because it's, instead of building it backwards from a book, you are building it ground up to a book. And that's the first building block and people can see the context and people can see that. So I thought that was that's something I intend to do. And I'm going to try and Guinea pig that as well.
Norman Chella:So a couple of things, there are number of points, but in the very beginning, I do agree to a certain extent what we're selling is not knowledge. What we're selling is the articulation of said knowledge. So if like, we'll just take a very good example. Okay. So let's say I, it Brian, you, you, you. Like pick a topic that you really like to write about. Let's just say dance let's say dance. Okay. Let's say dance and Oh, okay. R.J. see ya.
R.J. Nestor:Take care.
Norman Chella:Well, we'll head off in a bit. We'll head off in a bit, but, but I, I do want to close off. I'll probably wanna close off into points. Okay. So. Because I'm sure everybody else who is watching this up until now will want to hear. Okay. So the first one is, uh, we are selling the articulation and the connection of all of the, uh, Knowledge and insights that we gained as a result of our journey through the same knowledge. Right? It's like, so as much as someone would pay to access this graph knowledge, it's not, they're paying to access this graph of true tacit knowledge. It's more like they are paying to access our version of that knowledge. Like the conclusions that we came to. Right. So I do agree. And the example I was going to bring up was like, okay, Brian, let's say you write a book about that dance. Right? And let's say Nassim, Taleb writes a book about dance. Okay. How, who would sell more books on dance? I mean,
Brian Toh:of course he would, but that is in a sense just then that also boils down to the marketing and no longer put up because of how you market your own personal journey, I guess.
Norman Chella:But then we know Taleb. I assume talent. By the way that he articulates any topics. Right? So the way that you would write about dance would be maybe with more visual aid, maybe with more anecdotes, with more stories because you actually dance, right? Tyler May be not a dancer, right? He's a dead lifter, right. He talks a lot of stuff on Twitter, which is fantastic, but he will be extremely technical. He'd be looking at academic papers. He articulated, he would articulate the topic way differently than you would, and that would attract a different set of audiences, so that can justify putting a price on it because people want to know what Taleb would think about this topic, right? Yep. Okay. So the second one was, I think, I think I missed one, but, but on the, on the concept of trying to sell or put a price on a graph growing from from the Genesis block all the way to its completion. I have a feeling you can do that. And then closest model will be crowdfunding. So imagine that you have a landing page for saying, Hey, I'm going to write a book about the following. Okay. You have to write down everything down to detail. I'm not talking about like the actual blocks. I'm talking about a timeline, like people like you're asking people to commit, to pay money, to be with you all the way until the end. Right. They need to know what they're paying for. So it's like if, say you. Let's say it's like 200 pages, 20 stories. Let's say, I don't know something like that. Right. You want to know like what's happening every week? What are you doing? Week three. What are you doing in month one? What are you doing? Month two. It's a bit like investing towards this result, this intended output. And the reason why is because if I'm paying for an empty graph on day one, I want to know why I'm there in the first place. Like I want like I'm I paid to see the first block on day one of your page, right? Like, are you going to do a live stream? Can I talk to you when you're writing these blocks? Um, you're doing a change log, right. So I can keep up with it. So that's perfectly fine. What can I expect? What am I paying for? Right. Like, I want to commit. Through my money. I want to commit through the experience of this graph growing over time. So I want to be there with you when you had a bad day in writing. I want there to be with you when you are researching this following story or this following topic. I want to be there with you when you have like a live chat with your fans and followers on the second week of the second month. To get an update, like what's happening. If you're making any changes, I want to know. Right. So it's a bit like crowdfunding, right? It would be cool. Like you're crowdfunding new graphs. I think that'd be pretty awesome.
Brian Toh:So why can't that just be a finished product? The way that I kind of envisioned it was like the, now that you mention crowdfunding. I think it is, but it's like at the same time, I just kind of feel like, man, I'm just a little shit. Just, I just, I, I'm not going to sell it for, I'm just going to sell it for like five,$10.
Norman Chella:So that's the thing. That's the finished product, right? The finished part is the journey.
Brian Toh:Yeah. Yeah. Then I'm telling kind of capsulate the journey.
Norman Chella:Yep. But, but here's the thing you're asking people to pay from day one, right? If you're halfway through the journey, you're three months in and you want other people to pay, do they, how do I justify paying the second half for the same amount?
Brian Toh:I don't really understand. What, what do you mean
Norman Chella:So, like we said, like where we are selling that journey, right. The encapsulated journey. right. Let's just say six months. Right? Okay. You, you market to people and you're like, okay, I I'm, I'm running this book. I'm ready to get in public. In this graph, You pay, you get access to it. You simple$5, something like that. Right. Pretty simple. Three months in lots and lots of. Setups delays, maybe live chats, life events talks to everything. That's three months of experience that has already passed. Now you can't access it anymore if I just found your book for the first time I want to pay. Yeah. Right. So
Brian Toh:just the book, the graph itself is also kind of a finished product.
Norman Chella:Okay. So then now we're talking about, is it ends there? It's just like, okay. So now I only paying for access. Yup. Okay. Okay. So then, so then it's less about, so now it's less about crowdfunding now it's more about, Hey, do you want access to this graph? This is what I will do. Right. And that's it. Yep. Yeah. I think it will work.
Brian Toh:I think this was kind of the rough idea, but I like all the other, all my inputs. I am constantly block, referencing my own journals. And like, kind of the purpose of this is like I'm writing about, um, chapters of just puts all and then goes and does in different styles, metaphorical narratives, um, just even live conversations that I have. Yeah. And just writing, writing all this different stuff. And it's really like, I don't tend to really make big bucks if this is just kind of something that I really wanted to do for myself and my own soul, My own soul. I just thought it would be cool. And that like, do they just have like, got me thinking on and off a lot, like, Hmm. I think, I think that'd be cool too.
Norman Chella:Yeah. It's, it's a possibility, right? It's an option, right? It's an option. And it's only really like putting a price on it. It's it depends on your willingness and your vulnerability in doing so, and maybe someone it might help somebody else to see your journey and growing that craft. Like, it'll be like, seeing, like, it'll be like, it'll be like you getting the seeds for a flower and someone paying to see you nurture it. Yup. Right.
Brian Toh:I'm looking at a bit like streaming, like where I'm just kind of doing things, but. Is being recorded and like people are watching me do things like watching them for something that wasn't even like retrospective. I actually do have one question for you. Like, do you dive into other Roam graphs and like what makes you want to dive in to their roam graph?
Norman Chella:Um, I, I was about to start reaching out to people to see if they would want me to like individual private graphs, if they would want me to look into their private graphs, um, And I think you were one of the people who actually asked, uh, but then there's one other person as well. So I was actually going to reach out about that. Uh, but that's for another time. Um, so, so for, for the, for the person watching this video, um, yes, this is recorded. Okay. So, so probably Brian doing all, all in, right. We're going all in. I did, I did mention in the information for this event recording. Okay, perfect. Okay. So anyway, um, yeah. That I made a joke tweet. I made a tweet out and said, do people want me to look into their graphs to bring up any prompts, bring up any questions, bring up any blocks of interest, anything like that? So a couple of people, um, uh, brought up, uh, interest in such and, uh, I haven't actually formally done it. The most I've done is with public graphs, but those are already all, shall we say, public shared databases. It's just, you know, it's just, uh, a deposit of knowledge. I can't really play around with that, that much. Right. It's just something like, Oh, that's cool. You know, like a, like a public book, like
Brian Toh:Brendan's one. And you just kind of go in and just
Norman Chella:like, Oh, that's cool. Yeah. It's like, Oh you, yeah, this is, this is more about, this is something more intimate and something maybe even private and confidential. So like, I have to be very careful about it. So, but I'll at least talk, I'll at least talk to you through what I think I might do. So say that, uh, let's say that I'm, I'm doing this to your graph, right? Let's say that you invite me as an author or a viewer to your graph. And I'm like, okay. Uh, I would probably ask you, what do you expect from me as I'm talking out loud while going through your graph. And then in response to that answer, I will start picking up blocks of interest. So it'll be like, Oh, why is this block nested under this block? What does this mean? Oh, this is about a story. Oh, there's a block ref here. What does that mean? Oh, why do you, why did you embed this block under this, underneath this block? Right. And. These are important because one, it gives me it, sorry, this is important because it gives me two points of interest. One is the content that is within each block. And to how you view Rome features. Your rationale for block references may be different from how I view Roam block references. And maybe you don't even use embeds. Maybe you don't even use pages. I don't know. Right. I mean, you just right. See, like, see your pages at all. Like, I'm going to ask you why. Right. I'm going to ask you why not? I'm going to ask you like, Oh, this person's name keeps coming up. Why? Right. Like I see, I see the word sad or I see the word crying a lot. Right? Like the last seven days I see the word depressed a lot. What does that mean? Tell me, right. Okay. So. I'm going to play the role of the questioner inside your head, and I'll ask you why. And from there it will be a conversation where we, the, both of us play the third party observer of your private room graph. So I will force you to confront your thoughts.
Brian Toh:Yeah. That's also fun. I love it.
Norman Chella:So, so that's what I think would happen. Okay. And then the service then would just be like just the conversation and. And a transcript and a backup of the talk, right? So I'll just give you all the files. There'll be up to you, what you want to do with it, like the transcript and everything. And then you can do whatever you want with that. And I'll just leave it at that because all I'm looking for in that moment is the engagement behind, like, I'm not gonna copy stuff from their blocks. Cause I think that's too personal. Is that too much against my principle, but, but there's gold in the conversation between you and me. If I look into your graph and I find things that I resonate with, and then I'll write it into my own graph thinking, Oh, I was just looking at Brian's graph today. He talked about the following. What do I feel about it? Why do I disagree with him? Why do I agree with him? What is this reminds me of, if I would have faced this same situation in my private graph, how would I address it? Right? Yeah. If I had a, a lot of chaos due to the following feelings or do the following fields, how would I address it? Who should I talk to, to help address this? Right. Like if I, if, if, for example, we're talking about Alexander technique and you brought it up a lot in your graph, and then we leave the conversation. I might just bring up Michael Ashcroft right. I might just bring up somebody else. I might just bring up with somebody else. The conversation where me and you talking about your graph and this is the secret behind RoamFM. Yeah, the conversations conversations can be linked. Yeah. You can do it by directional, linking in conversations. That is the secret behind this podcast. And that is the secret behind how I use Roam Research. Like there's a reason why I play around a lot on Twitter. Like everyone's conversations, everything is a conversations. If everything is a conversation, then everything can be linked. And that is a secret. So like, you know, that's my thought process. Yeah. No worries. Yeah. And we'll probably end this off. So, uh, yeah. We'll see, Brian, thanks so much. Ah, yeah, it, it, it is quite far.