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Village Builders

Village Builders alyx MVP meeting

March 1, 2025
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Simone Torrey
Adam Rose
Roarke Clinton
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Summary

Alex Prototype Project Summary

Project Overview

Adam and Simone are developing an AI-based application called "Alex" designed to help combat loneliness and disconnection. This project aims to create a digital companion that facilitates real-world human connections rather than replacing them.

Core Problem Being Addressed

  • Growing disconnection and loneliness, especially among younger generations
  • Health implications of social isolation (including impacts on mortality, heart disease, etc.)
  • Digital-first culture reducing in-person interactions and social skills

Product Concept

Alex is an AI conversation partner with three distinct functions:

  1. Reflection Agent: Helps users reflect on their challenges, emotions, and underlying motivations
  2. Advice Agent: Provides relationship guidance based on expert input about building meaningful connections
  3. Behavior Change Agent: Breaks down connection-building into manageable steps using principles from tiny/atomic habits

The product also includes emotion recognition capabilities and trauma-informed support, offering nervous system regulation techniques when needed.

Current Development Stage

  • Currently at prototype/pre-MVP stage
  • Backend API in progress (built over past ~2 weeks)
  • Need for a simple web interface to interact with the API
  • Previously used a third-party solution (PMFM) but moving to a custom interface

Technical Details

  • Moving from OpenAI's "black box" assistant to a more customizable backend
  • Using Claude as the LLM
  • Implementing an agent framework to manage different AI functions
  • Working on streaming text capability
  • Future plans to incorporate Humi (speech-to-speech with emotion recognition)
  • Eventually will be a mobile app, but starting with web for faster iteration

Immediate Deliverables

  1. Deliverable 1: Simple web interface for internal team to interact with the API
  2. Deliverable 2: Slightly more polished version for limited external testing
  3. Deliverable 3+: Iterative improvements based on testing feedback

Business Model & Context

  • Set up as a public benefit company with a mission-driven focus
  • Intended to work with practitioners (therapists, coaches) and partner organizations
  • Not a replacement for human connection but a tool to facilitate it
  • Positioned against "character AI" apps that may increase isolation
  • Working with advisors including relationship experts

Phase & Timeline

  • Currently in early prototype phase
  • Planning three waves of prototyping before reaching true MVP
  • Immediate goal: web interface within 1-2 weeks
  • Long-term vision includes voice interaction

Distinctive Approach

The team emphasizes that Alex is designed to:

  • Get users to engage in real-world activities, not replace human connection
  • Recognize emotions and provide trauma-informed support
  • Offer a safe, non-judgmental space for users to open up
  • Eventually incorporate voice interaction for more natural engagement

Initiatives

AI Prototype Integration

Integrating the alyx prototype into their Webflow website using APIs and custom code.

Meeting Transcript

00:02:51

Adam Rose: Hello.

00:02:53

Roarke Clinton: Hey, Adam.

00:02:54

Adam Rose: How are you? Hey, must be Rourke. Great to meet you.

00:02:56

Roarke Clinton: Nice to meet you. I am Rourke.

00:02:58

Adam Rose: Yeah, something came up with Simone. She actually isn't going to be able to make it, but I think I can hopefully cover. We'll have to. Have to meet her at a later date.

00:03:07

Roarke Clinton: Right on. Yeah. If. If you guys want to also just have another meeting, I'd be happy to set one up later whenever it feels good. Yeah. Nice to meet you. Nice to get in touch. And I'm sorry that there was such a. I don't know what was going on.

00:03:24

Adam Rose: Yeah, it's frustrating. I've been really conf. Slack just generally confuses me, but I. I definitely know what was going on. I think we just need to figure out if that's the way we want to do it. We can do it that way. We'll just. We just don't have an organization Slack account right now. Like, we just use Google Chat, so it was more of a. Hey, like there's. There's basically like inviting someone into your organization, like as if you were an employee versus this thing called Slack Connect, where you're basically saying, okay, we're going to share a channel between two separate organizations, and that's probably the right way to do it, but it just means we'll have to create our own Slack account, which just means, okay, let's make sure we know what we're getting into on our end.

00:04:11

Adam Rose: So I would just want to take whatever, a few minutes and get it set up right and make sure we're using it right. Because the flip side is if you make us a member, I don't know how you guys use Slack and if there's. Obviously you don't want us having access to things that we shouldn't have access to. That's part of your.

00:04:28

Roarke Clinton: Yeah, so. So just, you know, and this is really valuable feedback because we're building a product or an initiative management system for our clients, which essentially you're going to be able to. You'll have a client portal through IRIS to see the initiatives that we're working on together and to actually have access to that. And that should launch whichever platform we're having communications within. So we've. We've been thinking of that as Slack as, like, our base structure just to like, make that run. And we just invite any client to a specific channel for a specific initiative, and then if there's a new initiative, we'll spin up a new channel on a new thing. So we're consistently staying focused within that I haven't seen anybody else use Slack that way.

00:05:18

Roarke Clinton: But if there are folks like you who are using Google, you know, chat, and you're not really interested in that, or maybe there's an opportunity to find something that works much better for everyone. You know, we're open to that too, but just background information on why I was trying to do that in the beginning in the first place is just to get you guys in one channel to conversation, right?

00:05:45

Adam Rose: Yeah, totally. And I, you know, everyone, every company has kind of got its preferred way to communicate. So we're not opposed to using Slack. It's just a question of like, I mean, I already use it with. There's three other companies or Simone showed you hers. She's in some, you know, group. So we use Slack, but it's not our primary, you know, where we communicate so we can figure it out. It just means, again, we'll have to create our own workspace if that's the way to do it, which is not a big deal. I think we just don't, you know, I don't want yet another thing to pay for. So it's more of like, yeah, there's a free.

00:06:21

Roarke Clinton: I think there's a free version which would work, but yeah, if there's not, then there's something we should talk about in the future. Just let me know what happens. But I just wanted to let you know, I went over the thing, the various documents that I have access to, and I'm just excited to see the premise of this whole idea, you know, like, you know, helping everybody get a village and making sure that everybody accesses that shared connection and social support and feels like they're part of this thing that's going on instead of separate. So very cool that you guys are on that mission. And I wanted to know a little bit about your trajectory, what you're, who you are, what you know. I'll tell you a little bit about me too.

00:07:11

Adam Rose: Sure, yeah. You mean my past trajectory and wherever.

00:07:18

Roarke Clinton: Wherever this project is coming from so that I can ground myself and.

00:07:22

Adam Rose: Sure, yeah. I mean, my, most of my career, you know, I was a software engineer kind of management. Worked in everything from like, I worked on the space station software to telecommunications equipment. Went into. Pivoted hard with a friend and started a company that was a video analytics company and merged with another company. We pivoted into ad tech. So had a whole long slew of like, literally running, you know, as the cto and it was a big ad tech platform. Took the company Public sold it to Adobe, spent five years at Adobe and then left kind of height of the pandemic or 21 and you know, kind of sat for a while as to like, really after I used to joke like, my wife's a therapist and I was like, you know, my wife does Mother Teresa's work and I'm in advertising.

00:08:21

Adam Rose: So, you know, I was like, I just really wanted to do something that felt a little bit more, you know, purposeful. Try to leave the world a better place. So, yeah. And you know, having two now teenage kids and just sort of seeing a lot of the challenges that kids are growing up in terms of being sort of digital first and, you know, a lot of anxiety, a lot of just not defaulting to being in the world. Right. Like very much we like what they just called me and didn't text me, you know, like that kind of thing. And all the ways that, you know, we've sort of learned, but I don't think we've really come to appreciate or just starting to appreciate what that does to our humanity. Right. And how it's easy to just lose that. And it's getting worse.

00:09:10

Adam Rose: And so Simone and I started working on this project. It's worse in that younger generations are feeling a lot more disconnected and lonely than even elderly people, which is sort of the stereotypical like poor lonely grandma. No one comes to see her. And it's, you know, people are more digitally connected than ever, but they feel more disconnected. And so we'd started this project and then that's when the surgeon general came out with this big, you know, loneliness epidemic. It's the biggest epidemic in the country. It's, you know, it's all kinds of data that really backed up. It was a lot of research we already were aware of. But and what kind of got really hooked me that this was a legit problem, not just sort of a first world problem, is that, you know, there's medical implications.

00:09:58

Adam Rose: Like people die, like significantly sooner if they don't feel like they belong. Like, it's that simple. Like people, all the, you know, all the things like diabetes, heart, you know, heart failure, all, you know, heart disease, all these things. Yeah. And then that was also sort of coincident with. And we had ideas and part of what's taken us a while is kind of the AI world was emerging and it was changing so quickly. And were thinking originally like, okay, it's an app and this is, you know, it's going to be more of like a traditional app. And then as the capabilities of AI continue to mature. We were like, holy cow. Like, AI is going to be so good at the nuanced part of this. But, you know, you need an app to kind of round out the kind of more functional parts. Right.

00:10:48

Adam Rose: Like, if I have a conversation and then we glean some, you know, potential to dos or things, like, hey, I should actually go text my friend or apologize for that thing or whatever it is, you know. Well, you probably want something that's more like, okay, pull it out of a conversation. Pull it into some kind of to do list, right? So there's, you know, there's functional kind of traditional functional parts, but the. The whole part of, like, inferring emotion and dissecting dialogue and, you know, and like, that's all AI is kind of wheelhouse and it's really good at pattern identification and, you know, oh, you seem like. You always seem to get really nervous right before going to some. This event or, you know, a social thing or whatever.

00:11:32

Adam Rose: And then I think one of the other things that's unique we're experimenting with is also sort of in the moment. Like, okay, well, here's. Are there certain practices that are a good fit for that thing? Do you want to take a couple breaths before you walk in the front door? Whatever it is. But a lot of it is sort of a combination of reflection, them sort of just saying what's up? And then kind of helping them work through that. Yeah. So that's kind of where it's going. I know I went from sort of my background right into the project, but.

00:12:10

Roarke Clinton: Oh, yeah, please, any. It's all fluid. I am fascinated by that. Your background, being able to accomplish this task. You know, why it became this thing. And it sounds like it's a kind of like a character thing to build character in the world, to support. Support a world which can manifest and. And be much more, I guess, present instead of fear or like, you know, past or future oriented and thinking about each other and thinking about, you know, like, you're. Right now, we're just. There's so many people who just don't have that awareness and there's thoughts are their identity, and they're just like, lost entirely. And. And I think that this is cool. I'm just. So what. What phase are we at right now? Like, is. Is. Is Alex essential? I know this is an mvp. I know that.

00:13:11

Roarke Clinton: I've chatted with it a little bit. What is your. Your ideal?

00:13:19

Adam Rose: Like.

00:13:21

Roarke Clinton: Like MVP usually means like it's making. It's actually making a customer value. Right. It's it's like the minimum amount of things that a customer.

00:13:33

Adam Rose: Right.

00:13:33

Roarke Clinton: Keeps coming back to you for, you know.

00:13:36

Adam Rose: Yeah, so you're right, MVP might be not the right term. It's probably more of a prototype for the purposes, more for the purposes of working with partner. So one of the other things is we're set up as a public benefit company. We're not purely for profit, you know, ourselves as a mission driven organization and we're, you know, planning to have. This isn't a one app's going to come along and solve this problem. Like this is, it's a humanity problem. This isn't just a, you know, so this is one tool in a world of tools and a world of people that have to collectively make this not as much of a problem as it is. And so we're really planning to work with practitioners, whether that's therapists, whether that's coaches, whatever, and, or partner organizations like public health, non profits.

00:14:30

Adam Rose: You know, anyone that sees the value, has constituents that they feel could benefit from something like this, but is not and won't be a replacement for human in the loop like a real therapist or if that's the kind of area that we might be talking about. And so we're still figuring some of that out. Right. Like what's the engagement model if you were working with a therapist? But you know, this has advantages. It's in your pocket and it's. There's also interesting research that shows that people are actually very inclined. They'll open up a lot to an AI because they don't feel like they're going to get judged or they're stigmatized. Yeah, stigmatized. The account. There's no real accountability at the other side of it. So but that can be a good thing.

00:15:20

Adam Rose: It's like, hey, if you're just bottling this up and you never say it to anybody, so you know, it has a role but it's not going to ever replace. Like our thesis is, there is a distinctly unique thing called the human condition and the human spirit. And this isn't a replacement. And also that there's these, I don't know if you've been following like these character AIs like replica and character AI. And so people are like literally making AIs that are acting like their partners and they're getting incredibly addicted and it's like they're positioning it as like a cure for loneliness and it's actually kind of having the exact opposite effect. So we're very cognizant of that and like it's like a tool but the goal is to get you to do things in the real world.

00:16:06

Adam Rose: So figuring out exactly how that like we haven't nailed exactly what that means in terms of the product yet. So. And a lot of that is evolving because as we're talking to more and more partners, you know, you're getting a lot of feedback, also talking to advisors. So we're really very pretty early stage. We have an advisor we're about to bring on who's pretty well known and the. So the product, I think that call it a prototype is really probably more to take to partners to get buy in and understanding of what we're really doing. Right. It's to get feedback, it is to do some user testing. Right. But it probably isn't like a released live product. Maybe it sort of becomes a early access kind of beta type thing or an alpha where you know, we let more and more people in.

00:17:01

Adam Rose: But it's you know, very much just more about fundraising partners, you know. Yeah, that's really more the intended audience.

00:17:12

Roarke Clinton: Okay. And so for this minor, for this stage, this MVP deliverable one, we're thinking about essentially just making it accessible through a web page.

00:17:29

Adam Rose: Yeah, it's like real quick and basic and just to get something because I've been doing a lot of the backend work, got this API set up, I'm iterating on a bunch of stuff but like Simone doesn't even really have an easy way to talk to it right now. Right. It's like literally running in a console or you got to use Postman or something to talk to an API. So it's not really very easy way to, you know, even have anyone that isn't a developer do anything with it interactive.

00:18:00

Roarke Clinton: Okay. So if you were to see like the very first, I guess have that page stood up, what is it just constantly running on it? Do you hit like, do you hit something? Is there some way to like what do you see the user flow as? Like what are their. What are they? Is there a sign in? Is there just a. I mean are we authenticating? Are we just saying like here's a gated page that you can use this password for or is it open?

00:18:32

Adam Rose: I think they need to. So there's two I put in here just straight up like depending on what backend are using, they are going to need to authenticate in some way. Right. Oh, Simone actually said she is available if she is now available if she wants to join. So I will, I assume that's fine with you?

00:18:55

Roarke Clinton: Oh, yeah, for sure. Please bring her on in. There's any. It doesn't look like she has. She should have the link in the email in this video call.

00:19:09

Adam Rose: Yeah, I think she should.

00:19:23

Roarke Clinton: Where are you calling in from, Adam?

00:19:25

Adam Rose: I am in basically Berkeley North.

00:19:28

Roarke Clinton: Nice.

00:19:29

Adam Rose: Yeah. Where are you?

00:19:31

Roarke Clinton: Oahu Kailua.

00:19:34

Adam Rose: Of course. Right on, man.

00:19:36

Roarke Clinton: Hi, how are you?

00:19:37

Adam Rose: Simone, thanks for making it there.

00:19:39

Simone Torrey: Sorry about that.

00:19:42

Roarke Clinton: Oh, you're good. Nice to meet you.

00:19:44

Simone Torrey: Yeah, nice to meet you too.

00:19:47

Adam Rose: Yeah, we mostly did sort of background. I've sort of told Rock a little more of our story, you know, a little bit of my background and then just sort of, you know, how we kind of got to where we're at. So I don't know if you want to chime in and add a little about yourself. And Rock, you didn't share a ton about your background too, so I'd love to hear more about you.

00:20:09

Roarke Clinton: Simone, you want to go first?

00:20:11

Simone Torrey: No, you go ahead. I just got here. I'm still catching my breath.

00:20:18

Roarke Clinton: Yeah. So let's see. I live on Oahu now. I've been here since 2020. I actually grew up here, but I went to school for architecture, industrial design in Syracuse and then I got into tech and I moved to San Francisco and I was there from 2014 to 2020. And I've just been doing. I've done everything from VR startups to, you know, publications to building out blockchain systems and lending platforms and did a bunch of different consulting, support and businesses. And I've worked for like Johnson, aws, Samsung, fdic and I built out most of that. Life was design oriented and infrastructure oriented. Considering all of that. Now I do product management and I've been supporting James in that capacity. I've been. Yeah, so. So my background is a lot of design and a bit of management and a lot of interesting engagements and people.

00:21:35

Roarke Clinton: So I, I've loved to work and live in San Francisco and actually lived for a little bit in Berkeley as well, near the train station and, or the BART station. Excuse me. And yeah, just. I kind of miss it there a little bit. But I've got a lot of family here, so it's my space. But I wanted to resonate a little bit with what you guys are doing and just knowing that the world does need to feel more connected and more trusting and speak more and be clearer and understand itself better. There's definitely a lack of that and feeling separation from one another. And I'm sure that the younger generations feel that with the digital first kind of thing, I feel like I was the first generation that got Facebook in my, like in high school. It came out.

00:22:32

Roarke Clinton: So that was 2008 when I graduated and I was just like, you know, it went from a different. It became a different type of socialization and you had to represent yourself in different ways. And then now it's obviously way different than that. And I'm very curious about how all of the parents actually learn about and figure out the correct, I guess, set of things to teach kids and what they should be sharing, what they should be like. I don't know. Table manners was a big thing for my parents when I was young, but they didn't have to deal with like digital manners or, you know, so it's.

00:23:21

Simone Torrey: I don't know, manners.

00:23:22

Adam Rose: Wow.

00:23:23

Simone Torrey: You've just given me a whole like.

00:23:27

Adam Rose: Get your elbows off that keyboard.

00:23:31

Simone Torrey: No, it's more like, I dare you. Don't share naked pictures.

00:23:37

Adam Rose: Yep.

00:23:38

Roarke Clinton: Yeah.

00:23:39

Simone Torrey: Oh, God, yeah.

00:23:42

Adam Rose: Cool, man. That's awesome. Sounds like you've got a pretty diverse background and a whole bunch of interesting areas. I've worked a ton with aws and I've heard a lot about life on the inside.

00:23:57

Roarke Clinton: I was a consultant for that, so I wasn't on the inside. But you saw it. I was at a design agency. Yeah. And we did a lot of work for them, which is fun.

00:24:09

Adam Rose: Cool.

00:24:09

Roarke Clinton: It was a little crazy too. Like, I'm sure you know.

00:24:13

Adam Rose: I know.

00:24:15

Simone Torrey: So did you overlap with James in San Francisco then? I. I got here 2013 and I met James pretty much, yeah. That year, I think because were both doing this we practice community. I don't know if he ever mentioned that to you.

00:24:35

Roarke Clinton: That's super cool sounding, but no, I didn't hear it from him. Can you elaborate? And no, I didn't overlap with him there. I went to college with him. I studied architecture with him. That's where I met him. Yeah. Oh, awesome.

00:24:48

Simone Torrey: Awesome. Yeah, we practice. Who that. That is a very. It was a. A really interesting community of like, it was a facilitated three month space and we would, you know, were doing it ongoingly. I think I was part of it for almost a year and every three months. So we would meet weekly, I think, and just like spend an hour and a half trying to explore the space in between. Basically the space in between people. This like, you know, energetic psychic, whatever. He, you know, like there's shadow, there's light, there's all sorts of things in that space. And yeah, it was really cool.

00:25:43

Roarke Clinton: You know, I Would have loved one of those communities. I did not know it.

00:25:48

Simone Torrey: Yeah, that was one of my introductions to the Bay Area and one of the reasons why I decided to stay here.

00:25:57

Adam Rose: Yeah, school.

00:26:04

Simone Torrey: So. Yeah. So just a little about my background. I do not have a tech background at all. I'm a trained facilitator, international communicator. I've. I studied international communication. I'm originally from Germany. I studied in Italy, then I lived and worked in Belgium for 10 years and then moved to the UK Egypt after the, after Tahrir Square and before the military coup and then came to the us So I know a thing or two about starting over and building relationships from scratch from you know, first hand experience and facilitating lots and lots of groups in about, you know, 15 years of experience of facilitation and at some point. So I did also start an impact hub I don't know if you heard of. It's a co working space for social entrepreneur and now it's a global network as well for social enterprises.

00:27:09

Simone Torrey: And there was like it started in the UK in 2006 I want to say, or maybe five and then there was a group of us who saw that first space and went I want to create one of those. And then we also got to co create the front, the global franchise network. So that was exciting. That was my first entrepreneurial initiative and then I was a consultant for. I burnt myself out and was a consultant for many years and now trying again to be an entrepreneur and learning, you know, learning to communicate with Adam in like in the tech and the social realm. And it's. We were saying yesterday that part of you know, like what have we been doing for the last two years?

00:28:00

Simone Torrey: Part of it is learning each other's languages and like you know, figuring out a way forward that kind of meets both.

00:28:12

Roarke Clinton: It's. It's interesting to know that we all have our subjective perspectives and nobody knows like words can only take it so far in any way in any relationship. There's words aren't one to one with what happens in reality. Hard to do and really amazing when you can. So.

00:28:38

Adam Rose: Yep, just take some work.

00:28:39

Roarke Clinton: Thank you for that. Yeah. Making. So you started impact Hub one of them in.

00:28:47

Simone Torrey: In Brussels.

00:28:48

Adam Rose: One of them, yeah.

00:28:49

Roarke Clinton: Okay, that must have been really interesting.

00:28:52

Simone Torrey: Yeah. And creating the global network at a time when social innovation or co working wasn't really a thing yet. So that was. Yeah, that was really some cool path carving there.

00:29:09

Roarke Clinton: Well, thank you. Right before you jumped on, I was just kind of getting the blowdown from Adam on What we are building and what we're working towards in the deliverables, kind of getting a sense for who the stakeholders are that this thing is for, that the specific deliverable is for and what the outcome should be like. So as we talked about what type of users for who the partners are or the advisors or stakeholders that you're trying to essentially show this to get buy in or feedback or, you know, work with and describing that phase, just to like ground me a little bit more in that where we are in this product and what stage we're at. Is there anything else you wanted to add to that, Adam or Simone?

00:30:06

Adam Rose: Simone. Did that capture it? I, I, one thing we said was mvp. You pointed out, Rourke, that often means sort of the very minimal thing that you would actually give to customers that they are getting value and they may not, it may not be your sort of like 1.0, but it, and so were just talking a little bit about maybe it's not an MVP that we're building. It might be more of a prototype. We'll put it in front of some users for sure. But I don't think what we're talking about is what we would, you know, release to the public generally. So whatever we want to call it, I just want to make sure it's more important that we understand what it is versus whatever label we want to put on it. But just don't want to mislead you either.

00:30:46

Simone Torrey: Yeah, but ideally it is something that we can build on rather than, you know, I mean, it always happens that you sometimes have to just go like, and throw it away and start over. But ideally it's something we can build on that starts with, yeah, low complexity but can be added on.

00:31:09

Adam Rose: Yeah. And it might be worth knowing that we started down a path of building an app and I sort of stood up, was starting to stand up, you know, a basic app I was using Flutter, which is Google's app toolkit. But you can presumably use that and make it work for the web as well. But we sort of have just backed off of that and said, look, there's so much learning we still need to do and experimentation and whatnot. And let's just get a web. Web is easy. You know, getting an app into people's hands when it's not in the App Store starts getting really difficult and, you know, we need to just iterate quickly.

00:31:46

Adam Rose: And so that's where we sort of took a step back and said, look, let's just, if that's something James and team can help us with and they're proficient in webflow. You know, we're not talking about a super complex thing. If we do rework it or throw parts of it out, or throw the whole thing out even, you know, I don't think we're talking about a massive amount of work, but we'd want to keep that in check or just keep cognizant of the fact that like this isn't necessarily the end product. The flip side of that is I, you know, I've looked a little bit, but I don't know, you know, you presumably can build mobile apps and webflow, but I just don't know what that process really looks like.

00:32:22

Adam Rose: There's tools to help you do it, but I just don't know if that's a really viable path. So we'll eventually have an app. Just, you know, don't want to get sidetracked with that right now.

00:32:35

Roarke Clinton: Yeah, it, I wish, you know, I haven't found a successful one but like a react webflow builder, it'd be sweet if you could build things like that. Anyway, I'm sure there's something coming out, but I, I understand where that is now. Thank you for grounding me. It seems like I'm curious, what have you learned so far? Like, and how complicated is it? Like what, what stage of complexity are we?

00:33:10

Adam Rose: Good question. Relatively early. Simone, I don't know if you want to share. You've been deeper. Simone's been a lot deeper in driving the content side of it. In terms of what experts are we really leaning on, you know, who do we really what bodies of work. Right. Trauma, informed practices like polyvagal theory. Like there's a bunch of, you know, things.

00:33:30

Simone Torrey: Yeah, I can speak to that, sure. So our first prototype was basically like a chatgpt, like a custom GPT that we created a prompt for and slapped it on a ready made interface. How is it called, Adam?

00:33:55

Adam Rose: This thing called pmfm, it's like out of the box. You can just configure and it'll plug.

00:33:59

Simone Torrey: Just like also on the back end, simple chat interface with no feedback. And you know, it had like a, a code but everybody had the same code so we couldn't see it was basically totally anonymous. Like we had seven users use it and you know, use it for 10 minutes and have some conversations with the chat. But yeah, and we basically asked them to just do one into one 10 minute interaction with it because it was just an initial, like let's see how this thing acts. And so the complexity is One in us wanting this thing to do. Three very distinct things. One of them is reflection. So helping a person reflect on what even their inquiry or their question or their, you know, challenge is. So there's like context, there's self reflection, there's you know, maybe like some underlying motivation to dig into.

00:35:12

Simone Torrey: So that's all kind of like that's. We call that now the reflection agent. Then the second part is build drawing from one of our advisors who is a relationship expert, who's written multiple books and you know, this is her life's work basically providing like advice and breaking down how you can create deeper or more meaningful friendships or meet new people or meet your neighbors. You know, there's like a, lots of tips and tricks from like conversation starters to frameworks of, you know, like what makes a good friendship, etc. So that's like the advice part. And then the third is like behavior change. Breaking it down into small manageable steps. Kind of like tiny habits or atomic habits style to get people started and get people feeling they have successful quickly.

00:36:15

Simone Torrey: And also that people can actually build some habits around connecting and reaching out to people rather than just talk to the AI. And then across all of that, the AI needs to have an awareness of when people get activated or triggered. So you know, kind of emotion recognition and be trauma informed and suggest like nervous system regulating practices even in the middle of a conversation or so. And so we're trying to, that's the intention and we're trying to create a way to, for the user to have a seamless conversation across these three agents. And the first one was just one prompt and it was just too complex. It just defaulted to right away providing advice because that's, you know, that's kind of the AI style or what it's biased towards, especially chat GPT it seems.

00:37:26

Simone Torrey: And now we're trying to split it up in three agents through one chat window with the buttons where then a user can, you know, go from. Okay, now I'm done reflecting. I don't want to go any deeper. Like I want suggestions. And now I'm ready to move to action.

00:37:46

Roarke Clinton: Is this, do you see this as something where it's primarily text based or is it something that you are talking to and it's gauging your vocal tonality and your expression and timing.

00:38:04

Simone Torrey: So Adam? Yeah. Yes. And so for now, Adam, can you talk to the streaming part and why we're. Yeah, so there's, I'm just gonna say there is a, an LLM and a There's a company called Humi that has a text to speech or speech to speech that's really good at recognizing emotions. That's what it's built for and we want to eventually use that and we got a free three months grant from them to use their product for free. But. And now you can take over.

00:38:54

Adam Rose: So I. What the. Simone talked a bit about our first version. I don't know how familiar you are with the OpenAI capabilities, but they have something called an assistant where they're managing everything. Like you basically give it your prompt, you can give it supplemental information, whatever, but it's all behind their curtain, right? Like managing the actual chat history. Managing. You have nothing, you know, you don't have no control. It's completely. You don't know what it's doing. So what I've been working on is standing up our own back end. So there's a lot behind this API, but that has, you know, it's an agent framework. So you can actually have different agents that do different things. You can use different LLMs.

00:39:36

Adam Rose: Like we could say Claude is best at this type of task and Humi is really going to be the front end because that's what is talking to the person and it's very emotionally attuned. Managing memory. So all the things you actually would like that happen behind chat GPT, we're going to need control over those things. So I've basically been getting that stood up and this API is sort of the first version of it alive. So right now it doesn't even stream text, it's just you call the LLM, you get the entire block of text, it sends the whole thing back. So before you like audio is all streamed and so I've got to sort of get. Okay, the streaming API has to work, we got to get that working with text and then what is it?

00:40:24

Adam Rose: You know, so we're sort of crawl, walk, run. I would say I'm still crawling but. But starting to try to stand up somewhere in there. But it's going quickly. I mean I've literally been working on this back end for maybe two weeks and got a lot going. So from a big picture it's actually coming together relatively quickly. But there's a whole list of things we need to add on. And I've also been getting it stood up with, you know, a dev staging, production dockerized, you know, all the things to just get something kind of alive. So. Well, yeah, I was just going to say one other thing to add is we did a whole like a Lot of the time we've been working on this, we did interviews with a bunch of people.

00:41:13

Adam Rose: We, you know, so we've been, we did a whole other prototype, community based prototype. So there's been other things we've been experimenting and learning and then. But this is, we really sort of. And it. And it's held for a while. That's a good litmus test. Like we, this product, we've pivoted a lot with the product concept and it's like, no, this really feels like this is the right. This is what's going to work. And so, you know, we're actually building it out now. So a lot of the time was really just learning and becoming, you know, sort of experts, you know, in the domain as well.

00:41:51

Roarke Clinton: Getting excited, rubbing shoulders. Yeah, good. Exactly.

00:41:57

Adam Rose: Getting ready for the big fight. Doesn't have to be a fight.

00:42:03

Roarke Clinton: Big collaborations, big collaboration. Exactly. Yeah. Wow. So I can see where this kind of, this initial deliverable is. Can you walk me through. So it sounds like there's deliverable one and then deliverable two is a must do follow on enhancements. When do you. Do you think like can we like try to break this down into like how. Yeah, time frames, just idea. Maybe like do we get the site put up and then we're able to host Alex and then maybe identify. Like do we need authentication to, you know, on that page or do we want to simplify?

00:42:51

Roarke Clinton: Because using webflow you can essentially, you know, if you are just specifically giving it to a set number of people, then you could actually just give it a simple passcode for that page which would make that dramatically simpler and then you can get that done and then we can stand up an authentication.

00:43:13

Adam Rose: Right.

00:43:14

Roarke Clinton: Or what other parts of this do we want to see? When, where and how.

00:43:18

Adam Rose: Yeah, yeah. The problem with that and what we realized that's what we did with our first prototype is if you don't at least at a minimum have unique user like passcodes. Right.

00:43:31

Simone Torrey: You can't see who inputted which text and you can relate the feedback to the user's experience and it becomes. With seven I could still somewhat tell who was what, you know, but.

00:43:45

Adam Rose: Right. You also though I think maybe more important than what I didn't realize until after is the memory. It's all the back end thinks it's the same person. So like the memories are all getting jumbled together. Like it literally doesn't. Can't delineate. Oh, this is actually Bob and this is Alice. It's like it's just coming in and it's all authenticated as the same person. So we need some way to definitely distinctly identify different people. You could possibly do something if we create a new session every time. Like you know, so you just say, okay, I don't know who it is, but at least it's a different session. This was one conversation. So. But we need something, it has to be separate. Right.

00:44:30

Roarke Clinton: I'm not suggesting it's. It might be the right call to just make authentication work and set that up. My thought is you could also do like. And you know, if you sign into that, you give that password accessibility and then you go and do like a step before Alex, which is give me your email and name. Yeah.

00:44:54

Adam Rose: Or whatever. If we want to keep it.

00:44:55

Roarke Clinton: Yeah. And then each time they do it then it becomes, you know, that whatever code, whatever random thing, that's what we want to do.

00:45:04

Adam Rose: I actually put it this way because I thought at least. So the app I was doing a Firebase app before which is Google's kind of app stack and yeah, it almost came out of the box. It was so easy to authenticate. But if we want to just go directly to a code and we can make sure that we pre provision those codes essentially on the back end or something that we know. Okay, that's user 1, 2, 3, 4. If we can just come up with a way to do that and that's straightforward or more straightforward, then yeah, let's just do that and we can add authentication later. Okay.

00:45:43

Roarke Clinton: Yeah, I'm not suggesting one is more straightforward than the other. I'm just totally like. Right. I'm putting it out there right now so it sounds like one option which could be really good. What about the next things for like deliverable one. What do you see as, you know, what does that look like for you? Highly.

00:46:08

Simone Torrey: Which one? The.

00:46:11

Roarke Clinton: So essentially the IMO is just deliverable one. Just getting it done is putting it up on the site. So getting. What's the URL? I guess what is, you know, is that coming specifically through Alex Dot, you know, what's the. Is there a URL for it? Is there a site that we're pushing? I want to know more like. Yeah, what. What's the background there when somebody shows up, when you send a partner to look at it, what do they see?

00:46:49

Adam Rose: Yeah, I mean I think it would look a lot just like a triple typical chat. Whether it's chat GPT. We might, you know, we could also send you the one that we made, but it's Just, you know, there's an intro message. Hi, I'm Alex. And here's some introductory text. Here's what it. What it's all about. And you know, there. There were. There's typically maybe a couple buttons that are conversation starters. Whether we have to have those, we can decide. But then there's buttons. As far as these three distinct things that Simone mentioned, we would want, you know, distinct buttons to, you know, to essentially inject those things into the chat. But basically a chat window. Right. I mean, that's.

00:47:29

Simone Torrey: That's like the. That's the unimaginative. You know, just like what you can find anywhere version. Yeah.

00:47:41

Roarke Clinton: So the link that you shared with us, this one where we. You basically see Alex on there, that's. That's basically deliverable one is just getting this onto a web page that's a specific URL. Or is it. I'm just trying to like, that was frame how this changes.

00:48:01

Adam Rose: Yeah. So my. My thinking was actually step one is some replacement of this. And that's because this is. This is the thing that's using this pmfm, it's an app builder, but we don't have any direct control. It's like, oh, we wanted a feedback button. Well, we'll get to it when we get to it. You know what I mean? Like, it's not our product. The. Sorry, let me just try to get in here. Yeah, but. Yeah, that's kind of it, I guess there. You know, just looking at it. There's a delete button, there's a attachment button. There's copying the message. So I mean, I think there are details here. We'll just need to like, decide like, okay, do we need that? My take is the very first goal is just to get something that even.

00:48:49

Adam Rose: Simone, we have someone else we're working with, you know, internal team can even talk to the thing that I'm standing up. Right.

00:48:57

Roarke Clinton: Okay.

00:48:57

Adam Rose: And then we'll add some.

00:48:59

Roarke Clinton: Clarify this usable. There wasn't. I didn't realize it. Yeah. Okay, I see that this is PM FM now. This is that profile account. So, Simone, I heard that you know, that thought around. It's the most unimaginative place to start. Where does your mind go? What have you seen? What's your inspiration? What do you want to, you know, imbue and into this right now?

00:49:23

Simone Torrey: I mean, ultimately I want to see use voice because I want to be able to use humi and you know, like just from a prompt engineering perspective, a whole bunch of work to get the thing to recognize you Know, to get the AI, to get Claude in this case to recognize people's emotions is just falls away. Right. It's like a big chunk of our work. And I, yeah, I, I don't know if I have that clear yet, but I, I, it just, there must be something else at some point. I think when we're focused more on the you, you know, UX ui, UX design, I want us to be a little more imaginative 100%.

00:50:22

Roarke Clinton: So what I'm hearing is that just because I'm still putting this all together and just like trying to build a mental model for myself. Adam, you've got the backend running, you've built the system and it is at an infant stage right now, but it's starting to work and there's these different places, different things that we're using that we can plug in soon. That might help a lot. You've been using it KM fm, just to get it running so that we can test it and play with it. But it's limited, it's not useful in the fact that it doesn't give you interface parts that you want. You can't manage it, you can't adjust it. And so what you're looking for is really a custom interface for this and a place that we can essentially start to mold and manage the way that people interact.

00:51:13

Roarke Clinton: The UX of this Alex system.

00:51:19

Simone Torrey: Yes. And the reason why we're switching totally from the picture pf, P fm, whatever it was called, I can't remember it is also because we wanted to move away from the black box chat GPT to a Claude and Claude needs, Claude isn't as ready made basically. Yeah, you don't have your own off.

00:51:48

Adam Rose: The shelf models, like public models that are out there so you could point it at Claude, but it doesn't manage. Then OpenAI has this assistance API and that's what that was built with. But that manages like, that's built for like you're building an actual assistant that you want to give supplemental documentation to make it an expert in something you want to, you know, it'll control the, manage the prompt history and maintain a relationship with the user. So it doesn't, you know, there's just nothing there out of the box. So we really needed to just build our own thing if we're gonna, you know, start plugging in our own models or anything like that.

00:52:27

Roarke Clinton: So that's helping me a lot because I wasn't sure how much design you guys were doing already you wanted help with. And it Sounds like it's gonna be. We're gonna help define the design of that interface, the whole front end. And so I guess what. I mean.

00:52:52

Adam Rose: The part.

00:52:52

Roarke Clinton: The question that you might have posed was like, can we interact with that? And, yeah, we've built platforms that can do that. I've done a bit of work in REACT recently, and I've been working with kind of the next JS system that just came out. So we're weak, personally. I personally can help with that, but I also. We have talent that can help with that. So what I'd like to do is just frame the engagement and understand what you guys would like to see with us, when and how. So we're. We kind of. I don't. Did James tell you about how were working? What are. What our engagements look like? And I don't really know how much you'd work with them.

00:53:44

Simone Torrey: We. We just did a website with James, but that was before the, like, you know, the creative units. The new engagement contract came out. But, yeah.

00:54:00

Roarke Clinton: Awesome. So, yeah, we're. We're building. I'm helping James kind of reframe his business so that he's not thinking about tracking time. He's actually thinking about creating things and designing things and building and being connected and interact and oriented. And so we're. We're doing that in a way which is monthly cadence. And I think that you guys have already essentially dove in with James to define your. Your, I guess, package level. I'm. I haven't really asked him what it is yet, so I'm not sure where. Where he placed you guys. Do you guys know what he said or where you are?

00:54:47

Adam Rose: I don't think we have decided yet. I think.

00:54:49

Roarke Clinton: Oh, you haven't decided yet?

00:54:50

Simone Torrey: No, no.

00:54:51

Adam Rose: That's part of what we're trying to explore, I think, right now. Scope and what does this look like ongoing as well?

00:54:59

Roarke Clinton: Yeah, yeah. So we. We're interested in creating a cadence where, you know, we start out with a bit of, like, these creative units where we're helping you transform. We're not necessarily keeping track of time. We're not necessarily putting those things. We're giving you the. The amount of effort and we're bringing in the talent that can actually manifest the change that you want to see. So. So it's about giving you that. And where we're at right now is just determining what phase you guys are in. So. Or what type of package you want. It sounds like ongoing. It can go up or down. So we have a minimum, I think, package, and I Think he was calling it a Prism package, which is, you know, we have a certain amount of effort that we're put into that and we'll do it.

00:55:57

Roarke Clinton: And then at this, at a point where, you know, we run out of that effort over time during a given month, then we let you know, or we can go up to a larger amount. It's like tokens kind of, you know how like tokens work in various API systems. And so we're looking to help get that going over month to month basis so we don't have to essentially sell a product in a given month. Just like say, hey, this is what we're doing. And then scope, creep and then figure out where we're at and not really know how to, you know, we're trying to sell something before we even know what the problem is. It's like, how does that work? So, yeah, I just wanted to kind of briefly touch on that.

00:56:42

Roarke Clinton: I don't know, I, I kind of want to help land on something with you guys, but I'm not sure where, what kind of effort you want? Like, do you want our team on it? Like the whole time? Do you want us to be putting a little bit of effort in over the, you know, a long period of time? Do you want a lot of effort over a short amount of time? Is it, you know, we're trying to essentially understand that and give you the benefit of the doubt and open that up. So does that make sense or are there any questions with that? So there might be.

00:57:25

Simone Torrey: It does make sense and it's a little bit hard to answer because we're in this prototyping, right. So it seems like for now we just need a simple interface. But once we give it to people, there will always also be some feedback on the interface. Right? Not just on the interaction. Like last time we got a feedback like, oh, the text breaks up in a weird way on mobile. So my sense is there'll be a little more effort to get something workable. That's not the most inspiring yet, but it's workable that we can show to some people and then there'll be maybe some ongoing. And then there'll be at some point a bigger push once we have the AI to a place that it acts in a way that we feel this works.

00:58:28

Roarke Clinton: And then it might drop off in some months. So like, we want to build a model where it's very flexible in that this upcoming month, if you want us to do a lot of effort, we can do that. And the Next month it can be a little bit less or it can be nothing. And then you can pop up in two months and be like, hey, we're back at it. Or, you know, wherever that is. I had something pulled up that I might help. That might help kind of frame this for you. And I'd like a minute just to find it.

00:58:58

Simone Torrey: Did that make sense what I was saying, Adam?

00:59:01

Adam Rose: Yeah, yeah, absolutely spot on. I guess I had one thing to add might be that in this document, in my mind, Deliverable one was really geared at like, as I just said, it's really just so our internal teams can even talk to it again. Because right now Simone's working on prompts and she doesn't even have somewhere. I mean, she can use the playground. But Deliverable two was probably getting back to the bare minimum thing we would possibly go give to some other people to do some more testing outside of our internal team. That was what I was thinking. And then the 3 plus is really more of the, okay, what did we learn? What do we want to do next?

00:59:44

Adam Rose: I think you hit the nail on the head, Rourke, that there's going to be times when it's like, okay, we're focusing on the AI and there's very little that changes in the ui. It's really more what text comes back from the back end. But when we start getting into more. We talked earlier, Simone, before you joined, about like app, like features. Right. Like, oh, maybe you pull out things that were insights and you want to turn them into action items. Well, do we actually put those somewhere and we have a page that's like a task, you know, whatever it looks like. But there will be things that then will we want to experiment with as an actual user interface, user experience thing that is different. So that's all three plus, I think in this, the way I framed this.

01:00:25

Adam Rose: But that's when I think we will want to be doing experimentation and more support. Yeah.

01:00:32

Simone Torrey: So, but basically there will be waves after each Deliverable. There will be kind of a time of testing and then we'll come back with, you know, some insights and like, hey guys, can you do this? And this and this in addition to Deliverable two? Probably. And then Deliverable two goes out to a slightly larger group and they'll be testing and then we'll come back and you know, and somewhere in there is probably a pivot hopefully to voice or an add on or something. So that'll be then a bigger.

01:01:07

Adam Rose: Right.

01:01:09

Simone Torrey: But yeah, they'll probably be like, we're Thinking of doing, like, three waves of prototyping until we get to an MVP that we can show to, you know, substantial funders or even, like, release into the world.

01:01:27

Adam Rose: Okay.

01:01:27

Roarke Clinton: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and I like the cadence that we're talking about and understanding this is something that I've been hoping that were able to communicate because we want to be essentially part of the product team. We want to support with that long term. I'm. I'm looking. I'm gonna need, like, one minute to, like, really focus on finding what I'm trying to show you guys so that we can get a. Get this up in front of each other. Just. That's what I'm. I'm. I don't want to take away from anything, but give me a moment to try to pull it up. I thought it was right here. I'm on our webflow page right now and looking for our files. Okay, now this. Yeah, let me just post this here. Some of this might make.

01:02:46

Roarke Clinton: This was made before we kind of did a little bit of reworking on it and the way we talk about it, but please pull up that link and let it load. It'll take a moment.

01:03:01

Simone Torrey: I got it.

01:03:06

Roarke Clinton: So we have different levels of. Of essentially effort that we can put in. And whenever it says an hour amount, it's just saying up to that amount of hours so that we don't. We can essentially set a limit. We'll. But we work as, you know, we. We bring on talent as we need. It can be more. It can be as many hours as we really want. But if we want to scale down and start with something smaller and then scale up, if we need more attention or down as we need less attention, we can. Does this make any sense? Does this help kind of help you understand what our model looks like A little bit?

01:03:54

Adam Rose: Yeah. Yeah. And you could potentially change, say, oh, we think we're going into sort of a quiet period. Let's dial down to a level one for the next month or two while we do testing, and then we come back and dial it up.

01:04:07

Roarke Clinton: Yep, yep. And so I'm trying to, you know, like, right now, looking at the Alex prototype and where it's at, I'm just. I need to kind of think about what that level would be or how much effort that would take to. To accomplish who I need to be on this project to make it work. I also need to know kind of what you think, you know, get. Get your take on that, like, how much effort you think that'll take. And then we'll kind of land on someplace that feels right for you guys and Right.

01:04:46

Adam Rose: Press.

01:04:47

Roarke Clinton: So I don't really usually. James, this is my first call where I'm. I'm actually in a meeting where I'm selling this particular system. I'm just.

01:05:03

Simone Torrey: You're doing great. You're doing great.

01:05:05

Roarke Clinton: Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

01:05:06

Adam Rose: Shown us that document. But that's okay.

01:05:10

Roarke Clinton: It's. I think it's very useful and transparent.

01:05:15

Simone Torrey: Yeah.

01:05:18

Roarke Clinton: But yeah. So let me know.

01:05:20

Adam Rose: Yeah. One big question in my mind around Scope is James mentioned Xano. That's a backend that is kind of like a firebase. But this first iteration in the way you described it, if they typed in some code technically probably just need a web page. You don't really even need a backend. But when do we really need. This is an app. You're either authenticating and. Or you want to do visualizations that are a bit. You want some other database essentially or some other web endpoints that you're building something that's a little more sophisticated. So it's possible this first version, if we don't need auth even could just be like a static page that collects information, calls an API and puts the response back. Right? Yep. You don't need to talk.

01:06:09

Roarke Clinton: I think that's. That could be that simple and that might help you guys just get on the ground and then we can start doing, you know, we could stand that up and then start doing a little bit of design work and from there we can move on to, you know, whatever state we need, if we need to go more.

01:06:26

Adam Rose: Yeah, yeah, great. And I mean, I appreciate that it's helpful to get a sense of where we're going, but I think once we kind of nail down, okay, this is the first deliverable. Let's just get that going and we'll. We're going to learn through the process a lot. So.

01:06:46

Roarke Clinton: For sure. For sure. Okay.

01:06:48

Simone Torrey: And just, you know, for clarity. So is it. Is it on a month to month really that we upgrade or downgrade or do you guys need a little bit more notice or, you know, both for us budget wise, but also for you guys budget wise and fairness wise. Right. You need to also plan your time and plan your people and all of that. Like what's.

01:07:17

Roarke Clinton: You know, we're just setting this, We're. We've been setting this up in the last two like month or two and so the. We haven't been able to. We haven't pushed it out too far yet. Eventually we would probably say, like, you know, set it up for like in every two, three months. Two months out. Three months out, tell us what you know, what you want, and we'll set that. And right now it's just like, try to do it before the next month.

01:07:47

Simone Torrey: Yeah.

01:07:48

Roarke Clinton: So we're all on the same page. Yeah. But, you know, if we can. If we could pay for it ahead of time, that'd be great, and we can all be aligned and know where we're at, and I can. We can get the talent on board that we need.

01:08:04

Simone Torrey: Yeah, yeah. And we're totally happy, you know, you're prototyping with us. We're happy to prototype with you. And like, the one request is just candor, you know, if something ends up not working for you anymore, and. And before you, like, struggle or get bitter, just let us know, you know?

01:08:23

Roarke Clinton: I love that. Yeah, yeah. That's a. That's a clear communication. Clear, loving communication is the way to go always. So.

01:08:34

Simone Torrey: Yeah, yeah. Because especially as we prototype, we learn things, and then something doesn't work anymore that we thought might work, you know. Cool.

01:08:47

Roarke Clinton: Okay, so just so you're looking at this. This is like the 10 hours, up to 20 hours, up to 40 hours, up to 80 hours. Those are for the entire month. So it's. If, if we're thinking about, like, you know, let's. This upcoming. But even if we wanted to start this month, 10 hours, if were focused in a week, it could go pretty quickly. Right. So just imagine that maybe you guys can, like, look through it and think about it and I'll, you know, we could have a reconnect on that, or we can try to close today and understand where we're at right now. But I'm. I just kind of want to get. Get that in your field and let you understand where we're at, what we can do.

01:09:38

Simone Torrey: And how do you guys feel about. Let's say we go for the 20 hours and then we end up not using hours in one month, do you roll them over? Sorry if you already said that.

01:09:51

Roarke Clinton: I didn't. I didn't say that. No, it's. It's. It's actually not. It's meant to be very much like, you know, we. We do all of what we can do, we can put in all the effort we can for a month, and then we just keep going. So the next month, It's a new 20 hours, and that's where we start.

01:10:12

Adam Rose: Cool. Well, one other thing to think about as well is we have not this was just coming online and were talking to James about website support. Right. Just maintaining changes to the website and I assume we could just bundle work.

01:10:25

Roarke Clinton: Absolutely, yeah. There's no. The reason we're going with this is Scope doesn't matter anymore. It matters. It helps if we say if we don't roll over time, it actually gets you thinking about how you can make use of us. And if we, you know, have it this way, we can say like, okay, let's work on Alex right now or let's work on the website.

01:10:49

Adam Rose: Yeah, that would be great because I think things will come up with the website over time. And it's like, you know, hey, great, we just need to take two hours out of, you know, our prepaid amount, get that done. And it's not sort of a whole separate conversation about an engagement and whatnot. Right.

01:11:05

Roarke Clinton: And that's exactly what I was helping James do as he was doing each saying engagement separately. And so we're really making it so that we can apply, you know, to any scope and move along. But we're transitioning to a thing called initiatives. So this is in my mind, an initiative, the initiative of the Alex prototype. And so I'm, you know, we can have another initiative which is building out the website, or we can have, you know, other types of initiatives that expand in different ways.

01:11:40

Simone Torrey: Cool, cool.

01:11:41

Adam Rose: Great.

01:11:44

Roarke Clinton: So I can. If you want to start there, I can. I need to reach James because I actually don't have the access to our payment system, so I'd have to have him. Him send an invoice for you. But would you like to start this month? How does that.

01:12:02

Adam Rose: Yeah, I think we want to start right away.

01:12:04

Roarke Clinton: Right away. Okay. Ap.

01:12:05

Simone Torrey: Yeah.

01:12:06

Adam Rose: You know, we had on our kind of outstanding and we'd canceled it or pushed it was to talk to James about this very thing and really figure out what's the right level of engagement. So I think probably would be helpful for you to maybe digest and think about Scope. I think our expectation really, I would love in the next, like couple weeks max to have some kind of page up that can at least just hit this API. Right. And 100% just to sort of like, great, somebody people can use the product. Not people meaning Simone. Yeah. And we.

01:12:41

Simone Torrey: Not non. Non developers.

01:12:42

Adam Rose: Non developers and not necessarily public users. But who knows? I, you know, I'd let my wife try it. You know, like inner circle only. Though the one other thing we maybe should mention is we've just started working with another close friend of Ours who is playing a product management role for us. She's very part time, but we had a lot of this very similar conversation yesterday about the deliverables and what does MVP mean and what is. What's the success criteria. And so I think we're working on that as well. I think we'll have a lot more clarity just in the coming weeks. So that might be helpful because we. I think your product management brain was going right to the same questions.

01:13:22

Roarke Clinton: It was what to ask. Well, that sounds really good to me. I will make sure that James sends you guys a proposal or an invoice for March and then I can get started and get our team going and if at all. I mean, I think it feels good. Those types of. The type of goal that you have seems like it aligns. I know, I know that we can accomplish that in a couple of weeks for sure, if not sooner. And I just want to be an iterate in an iterative process with you so we can keep building and making it faster and better. And then, you know. What was your friend's name that you just joined you?

01:14:10

Simone Torrey: Sean.

01:14:11

Adam Rose: Don. Her name is Sean.

01:14:12

Roarke Clinton: S H A W N. Cool Learning. You know, getting her to input, like what those metrics are that we're trying to hit so that we can analyze if we're doing it correctly. And I'd also love her input in part, you know, as we're going along. So we'd probably be inviting all of you. Let's. Do you guys want to try to set up the Slack system? Because we. We should probably do that. Yes.

01:14:40

Adam Rose: Yeah. I think given that James is out and I certainly don't want him to spend his vacation worrying about Slack stuff, why don't we just for now go ahead and do what I had started to do. Like we can create. We just. I hadn't had a chance to look at it, but we can create a free Slack account that we. That should then get included. That would get around your problem because the alternative is we're joining your. Your space. And again, there's just a bunch of access control issues that.

01:15:10

Simone Torrey: But don't you think it will. It will work if we just wait a little bit because were in the space and then you catapulted us out.

01:15:22

Adam Rose: No, were in our space. What I had done was accidentally.

01:15:25

Simone Torrey: I was in this chat space with Rock and.

01:15:29

Adam Rose: Yeah, but it was in our account. So it connects it basically. It's. It's like who would. Who administers that Slack account? It was ours.

01:15:38

Simone Torrey: Oh, that's what so were in our space and then you deleted it.

01:15:42

Adam Rose: I deleted it because I was like, oh, I didn't mean to go create a whole thing. Let me just delete it. And I didn't realize that it was going to pull you in as part of that.

01:15:50

Simone Torrey: Oh, so you created that. The Slack Village.

01:15:54

Adam Rose: All I did was click that button on the bottom instead of saying, you know what I mean? You can either add it. Okay, yeah. And it go. It goes through a whole thing and creates a whole account.

01:16:03

Simone Torrey: Created us. You created a Slack called Village.

01:16:07

Adam Rose: It named it did everything. All I did was click the button and that's what happened. It's like, oh, whoa. Didn't mean to do all that.

01:16:17

Roarke Clinton: Village is out.

01:16:19

Simone Torrey: Developers make those kinds of mistakes.

01:16:22

Adam Rose: A little overzealous there.

01:16:24

Simone Torrey: Not just a non techie thing.

01:16:26

Adam Rose: Oh, that was.

01:16:27

Roarke Clinton: I'm actually fascinated because it is a perfect situation for us since we have our development team in our Slack and we will be applying them in different ways to different initiatives for different clients. We want, you know, I want to know what it's like on your side. You know, what is it actually asking you to do? It sounds like, it sounds like if I do send you a link, you aren't able to just like, hey, sign up for Slack and then it puts you in our. In that specific channel. It actually like asks you to create a Slack.

01:17:04

Simone Torrey: Well, it gives, it gave two options. One was add this channel to an existing Slack that you're a part of, which would have been, you know, all tech is human or the other options you saw on my list or create your own. So it wasn't giving us access to the Iris co Creative Slack.

01:17:26

Roarke Clinton: Got it. Okay.

01:17:29

Adam Rose: If you look at the two links that I put in there, it's pretty clear there's. There's two things. There's like adding just like you would do in any kind of admin, you know, where you manage the users that are in your account. That's one method. And that would put us directly in your Slack. Right. The other is this Slack Connect thing where if you just go to the channel and click Share. That's what I think you did. Right. And, and we get invited, but it can either add to an existing workspace or we create a whole new one. Because it's got to put it.

01:18:01

Simone Torrey: And I, and I know there is an option where. So I, I used to work with Burning man and they, at the beginning they only gave me access as a guest user to like specific channels.

01:18:14

Adam Rose: Right.

01:18:15

Simone Torrey: And then later I Got full access. So there is a, you know, there is a way to just give access to a channel or two.

01:18:23

Roarke Clinton: You just said you sent a link somewhere. Was that.

01:18:26

Adam Rose: And I don't see no thread. If you go back.

01:18:29

Roarke Clinton: Oh, in the email thread.

01:18:30

Adam Rose: Yeah, you know, thread there were two links. So one was Slack Connect. And that's really the intended way when you have two different companies that are both using Slack and you want to have a shared channel. Right. The other is just like again, adding us directly. But that obviously opens up as Simone said, like.

01:18:49

Simone Torrey: Yeah, no, it doesn't open that up. What, what I was saying was they can give us access to only one thread of their Slack.

01:19:01

Adam Rose: Yeah, yeah, we're saying, I just mean you have to make sure you're aware of access. That's all I'm saying. Like you have to do it in a way that you guys are comfortable with. So I think if you want to take a bit to evaluate, totally fine with that. But if we want to get going, I, I'm just saying I'd be fine. Slack account for us to get going. But I, I, I do want to appreciate that you're thinking about this bigger picture and this newer engagement model and so if, but we can.

01:19:29

Simone Torrey: Always invite more people, more of your people to our Slack, you know.

01:19:36

Adam Rose: Yeah.

01:19:38

Simone Torrey: Doesn't cost my user.

01:19:42

Roarke Clinton: Is there a. Let's see.

01:19:46

Simone Torrey: The only thing is we want to.

01:19:48

Roarke Clinton: Do the invite new member to your workspace.

01:19:53

Adam Rose: But again we just, we don't want to accidentally get access to everything. Things we shouldn't have access to.

01:20:00

Roarke Clinton: Yeah.

01:20:06

Adam Rose: So it's okay.

01:20:10

Roarke Clinton: I don't know if I can actually do that, but let me see if I can. It might not be a work.

01:20:19

Adam Rose: Yeah. It depends on even. Yeah. What role you've been assigned. I've stepped in this before and didn't really understand all the details where it's like why can't I just access the thing? And it's because they have these very different models.

01:20:36

Roarke Clinton: All right, so I see a specific thing I'm going to try as. Let's just try as the member and you'll see what it is and then you get to tell me and then obviously the trust fall and it doesn't work right now unless you, I mean, why not? Let's, if you have to be somewhere, we can change or I can do this later. See that one then. So I've sent invites.

01:21:27

Adam Rose: But.

01:21:27

Roarke Clinton: It looks like it's invited you as co. Workers. So I'm not sure if that's going to just open up everything to you. Probably will.

01:21:35

Adam Rose: Probably.

01:21:38

Roarke Clinton: And if it doesn't, then I can just.

01:21:49

Simone Torrey: I think you might also be able to just. Just limit our access once we're in there.

01:22:01

Roarke Clinton: Hey guys. So are you guys able to see basically all the conversations?

01:22:18

Simone Torrey: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

01:22:19

Roarke Clinton: Okay, let's.

01:22:22

Simone Torrey: But we still.

01:22:23

Roarke Clinton: Let me look at. Seeing how I can limit it.

01:22:26

Simone Torrey: But we still have to join the channels and for now we can just ignore them and only you're not automatically part of every channel.

01:22:39

Roarke Clinton: Yeah. Let me just make sure that you see this one.

01:22:42

Adam Rose: Yeah. You browse channels.

01:22:45

Simone Torrey: Some of them were the fun board we're part of.

01:22:48

Adam Rose: Yeah. There is a village Builders Alex. A prototype. I think that's the one you created.

01:22:53

Simone Torrey: Yeah, yeah.

01:22:56

Roarke Clinton: So let me. Let me try that other as well. Oh, you know what? This probably was much more. No, this. I feel like this is what I used before. But it might have required you to have your own. Let's see. Can I. I might. I'm going to try just. Sorry for kicking out, but see if I can do that.

01:23:23

Adam Rose: Probably should. I mean so. And select Connect Settings tab and then under.

01:23:49

Roarke Clinton: All I can do is hide you.

01:23:51

Adam Rose: Oh.

01:23:54

Simone Torrey: We would have to leave.

01:23:56

Roarke Clinton: You might have to leave it. Yeah. Like do some kind of leave function and then I'll invite you again to.

01:24:04

Adam Rose: Yeah, I just closed the tab, but I'll see if I can actually. Yeah, me too.

01:24:09

Simone Torrey: You can just open Slack.

01:24:12

Adam Rose: Okay. Can sign out. I can.

01:24:19

Simone Torrey: That's different.

01:24:20

Adam Rose: Yeah.

01:24:35

Roarke Clinton: I might be able to manage it this way. Go to people. Yeah.

01:24:41

Simone Torrey: Before we leave, see if you can just limit our access.

01:24:56

Adam Rose: And I can leave a channel.

01:25:05

Roarke Clinton: Doesn't look like I can ask you to. Or I can remove you.

01:25:09

Simone Torrey: So but you. And you can change out access. Also.

01:25:18

Roarke Clinton: Doesn'T look like I can change your access from this point. So the only. I did look back and if I had done the other version, it says I can specifically focus you on a channel. But that might have also been the same thing that I did before, which would mean you need a Slack channel or your own Slack platform. So I guess do you guys want to do that or do you want me to change our. Or essentially use your Google Chat. It would be helpful if you did because then we could just have our developers talk with you in this channel if we need to. Let's.

01:25:57

Adam Rose: Let's do that. I'm a little worried that if. Now that I get created accounts for us, I think in your workspace or in your so hopefully you can be.

01:26:09

Simone Torrey: Part of multiple workspaces.

01:26:12

Roarke Clinton: Yeah, I'm in. I'm in many different workspaces, but if you could just. Let me just see if I can even leave myself like, so I know what the process is like.

01:26:27

Adam Rose: If you. The problem is, okay, if you go and click on the Iris Co Creative over the nav over all the channels or. No, sorry, maybe it's not that. It's the. I hover over the little black box to the left of. Looks like the other Slack communities. Their chant that we're in, they're not logged in, at least confused. So.

01:26:52

Simone Torrey: No, no, no, that's not the case. No, you can jump from workspace to workspace.

01:27:01

Roarke Clinton: Yeah, it helps. You don't. Yeah, if you have access, you can jump from one space to another, but it doesn't give access to other people.

01:27:11

Adam Rose: Right.

01:27:13

Roarke Clinton: Okay, let me see if maybe it's in the Irish thing itself.

01:27:18

Simone Torrey: I think maybe I. I know for sure that there is a way for us to just have access to the village builders so that we are in your Iris CRO Co creative. But all we see is this one channel. I know there's a way to do that. And you might just not have the admin permissions. Maybe.

01:27:44

Roarke Clinton: Yeah, I don't. I don't think I do have the admin permissions to remove you. I don't think I have the admin permissions to actually focus you either.

01:27:55

Simone Torrey: So why don't we just log out for now? Because we don't need to solve this today, right?

01:28:03

Roarke Clinton: Nope, we don't.

01:28:04

Simone Torrey: Why don't we just log out and then once you get a hold of James, you can see if maybe. I guess James is the super admin of the Iris Co Creative. Or is it somebody else?

01:28:18

Roarke Clinton: Yeah, it's James.

01:28:20

Simone Torrey: Yeah. So he can probably just change. Yeah, he's in Turkey.

01:28:30

Roarke Clinton: He should be there right now. He's having a. He's having a family vacation, so.

01:28:34

Simone Torrey: Yeah. Yeah.

01:28:37

Roarke Clinton: But yeah, that sounds like a great plan. Thank you, Simone. I like that idea.

01:28:42

Simone Torrey: We'll just sign out.

01:28:43

Adam Rose: We promise we won't sign back.

01:28:46

Simone Torrey: Yeah, we're not going to sign back in.

01:28:49

Roarke Clinton: Yeah, I don't. I didn't think you would, but thank you so much. I'm gonna look into that and I'll get. Get focused and see what. What the true, you know, fixes and then I'll let you know an email and I'll have James send you guys a proposal soon too. Thank you so much. Anything else I can touch on?

01:29:11

Simone Torrey: Are we good so you're confident that we can stand something up that I can play with in the next, like, one, two weeks?

01:29:22

Roarke Clinton: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I am confident. I'm. There's. We have a really good team, and we've got a lot of tools and we're able to tinker and play and get things going. So cool.

01:29:36

Simone Torrey: That's awesome.

01:29:38

Roarke Clinton: I'm looking forward to its evolution, to having. Having good people. I can just tell, like, the way that you guys talk to each other and the way that you talk to me, the type of, you know, development you've had in your past, I'm just excited. I'm very excited to see that. So awesome.

01:29:55

Adam Rose: Thank you for that. We had a great. I mean, the collaboration on the website with James and the folks we worked with was fantastic. So went really, really well. So we had a really great working relationship. So looking forward to more. More of that. Right on.

01:30:12

Roarke Clinton: Well, have a good night.

01:30:13

Adam Rose: Yeah, you too.

01:30:14

Roarke Clinton: I'll catch you guys soon. Okay. Take care.

01:30:16

Adam Rose: Yeah.