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Tom’s Tips Podcast S3E8: Zach, MagHub, and Robert Pattinson

Written by Zach Gilbert

Published: 08/31/2020

Announcer:

Hey, everyone, welcome to Tom’s Tips Podcast, your place for obscure movie references, cat facts, and everything MagHub related. And now, your host, MagHub Product Manager, Tom Bellen.

Tom:

Hello everyone and welcome to the 9.6 Tom’s Tips Podcast. I am your host Bellen, Product Manager for Aysling joined by always Zach Gilbert, Marketing Director for Aysling. Say hello to the Jugheads Zach.

Zach:

First of all, you called yourself Bellen.

Tom:

Did I?

Zach:

You didn’t even say Tom Bellen. You were just like Bellen.

Tom:

I’m thinking about going to a single name. I think it’s pretty cool.

Zach:

Okay.

Tom:

Sorry, Jugheads. Another rough start to the podcast This is two in a row. I blame it on just the world as it is right now. I am currently doing this podcast from my home because our daycare is closed this week because they’re getting ready for… We had a soft launch these first two months, so now they’re doing the big launch with all the schools and all this other stuff, so they’re taking the week to relax and get things in order. I am literally sitting on a bed and I’m flanked by both of my cats. They’re big fans of the pod. They like the cat facts, so don’t worry, we have one of those today. It’s a good time. Are you in the office right now?

Zach:

No, I’m at my home, but I actually have a podcast studio at my home. So, I’m here at my home.

Tom:

Well, okay. So, obviously this is your top podcast. That’s just not even a question. What other, for your podcast studio, are there other podcasts that you’re making right now that you want to let other people know? You want to plug? You want to plug a podcast while on my podcast?

Zach:

So gracious of you. Thank you. I do guest star in quite a few podcasts that are marketing related, but I am starting my own podcast and it’s called the Never Ending Backlog podcast. It’s an eighties take on The NeverEnding Story, but I can’t call it that for obvious reasons. Basically, all it is, is its made for gamers, so if you enjoy games. It could be board, PC, video, it doesn’t really matter; but essentially a big problem in the game industry or gamers is there’s a lot of services out there that allow you to bundle games. One is called Humble Bundle and it’s basically a developer will sell a group of games, maybe 30 games, really cheap and people just buy them in bulk and they just buy a lot of them and thus causes a backlog. 9 out of 10 times, most people just don’t play those other games.

Zach:

So for me, I have a massive backlog of well over a thousand plus games that have never been played and I feel like that does not do justice to the developers that made it, to the other people that might love this game, and also to myself. I get in this routine where I only play five or six games a week and there’s so many more out there I’ve never touched it and I own them. They’re readily available.

Zach:

My podcast is a daily podcast Monday through Friday, and basically I take 10 to 15 minutes and I just review a game. I play it for a couple of hours and I just share my thoughts on it. It’s very much a rating service based on do I keep it or delete it because I can’t give four or five stars because I’ve only played it for a couple of hours and sometimes some games need days to fully get the full picture out of it. That’s what I’m doing.

Tom:

I wonder if there’s a service, I know there’s the basic ratings, oh, this game has five stars, but all those different things you have to five stars; and a side note, the fact that you have time to only play five or six games a week. I’m sorry with your massively business life you’re playing as many games like some of us have time to maybe sleep. I’d be interested to know if you put in your personality traits it’d more recommend the game for you. I don’t have any services like that, as you’re building that to be you have a 10,000 backlog game. Is there anything out there that does that of these are the previous games that I’ve ranked by this, so thus… I don’t know. Just wondering. Maybe you can build that into your podcast.

Zach:

That why I do stuff like that. I really don’t want to jump into software. This is a way to keep me accountable for actually playing all these games that… Oftentimes I have to defend it to my wife that I’m buying another bundle games. She’ll be like, “You don’t play enough games.” It’s like, “Yeah, she’s right.” So, this is my way of saying, “Oh, but I do play all of them now.”

Zach:

It’s a really great service and I I’m just having fun with it. It’s good. clean fun.

Tom:
Just flip that on her. She says like, you don’t play enough games. And it’s like, well, honey, I can’t clean the dishes cause you sell yourself, said I don’t play enough games. So I need to play the games. That’s what she’s saying. You really need to just play more games completely and shut down the rest of your life. She said it herself. I’m sure that’s what she meant by that comment of, “You don’t play enough games.”

Tom:

That’s exactly it. Recently, what’s like a gem of your backlog that you played, that you were… Let’s share with this group.

Zach:

I’ve recorded 10 episodes. I didn’t publish them yet, because I actually want to have a backlog of podcasts before I get started. I’m doing a soft launch September 14th, just so everybody knows. You’ll see it on all the major podcasts services. I have a website, a YouTube channel, stuff like that, so it’s going to be out there quite a bit. I do have some guests joining us as well. Some developers from the games that I’m actually playing, which I think is pretty cool to meet them.

Zach:

A lot of them are indie games, but I will say there’s a game, there’s two of them, actually, that I’ve been thoroughly enjoying. They’re not my type of game. Then this is been a self-realization is, oh man, my wife is absolutely right that I need to stop buying these games because I just buy them and realize that these are not the type of games I normally play and I’ve quickly realized that my first week has been nothing but games that’s like, I will probably never play this again. It’s like, ooh, that hits the wallet, and that hits just my, man, self-realization I probably should just stop buying these games even though they are amazing deals and the money does go to charity. So, I feel less bad about it, but I will say number one has been Back to the Future, the Adventure Game, Episode One.

Zach:

It picks up after Back to the Future Three and it’s an adventure game, so it’s very slow pace. It doesn’t require quick reflexes, but if you enjoy the storyline of Back to the Future, then you will thoroughly love this game because it has all the original voice actors. It’s a very cool way to experience what Back to Future Four would have been and Five and Six, as well. Highly recommend it, if you like the Back to Future movies. I do not like adventure games, so the game is completely lost on me, but it is phenomenal so far.

Tom:

That’s a drain. The whole thing is interesting of things that are in the backlog, things you haven’t gotten to and sometimes I feel like that’s a lot of some of our products. I think that we release a lot of things and people want to get used to it and use it, but they don’t get to, so that’s what this podcast can be about. All the features that you haven’t gotten to, that you’re missing out on, and so when we think about the Maghub and the release we know that we release a lot of stuff and sometimes people can’t get to it. So, one great way to find out what you should be using is listen to this podcast. It’s almost like a Maghub backlog. Maybe we should add that to ours of have you a backlog section to our back podcasts? Did you use this feature yet? Here’s some things that haven’t gotten used that should be used. So maybe we’ll spin it all in there.

Tom:

Thinking about that of not putting some Maghub features into your backlog, look it forward to 9.6 and the things that you can do. We actually made it pretty easy this release of making sure that you won’t use these features because we’re really just continuing to expand on features that we’ve released over the last month, which really is the dashboard. In this release, we really still are focusing on this dashboard and we’re trying to do a better job with that going forward of just focusing on certain areas and getting those items done, because instead of doing a bunch of different things, because then some people lose out on, oh, I’ll look at this now and I can’t get that later.

Tom:

This release, really our goal is to complete, if you will, the new dashboard. What that means is any gadget that is currently on the old dashboard will be available in some form of widget. It also means the public dashboard. So, the public sales dashboard we had for a while, we’re revamping that completely to basically allow you to take one of your dashboards that you have and show it on a big screen. This will include basically any widget we have along with the Metabase widgets. In our old public sales dashboard, you were limited to what you could display and you couldn’t really be full screen and you had not as much control about what the look and feel was. This you have total control. So, that’s a big, big push. And again, as we think towards October, our 9.7 release, the plan for us is… And Peter’s very excited. You can hear him in the background maybe. What you can also find is that we’re going to be removing the current dashboard page.

Tom:

Our new dashboard will become your new homepage. We’re going to do that automatically. So we’re giving people a month, a warning that says, “Hey, look, start moving your items over.” I know I’ve talked to some groups, they’re already starting to help build it for their users. We’re going to be taking away old pages for navigation purposes, so if you’ve been having to click on my calendar, my agenda, my sales center, my tickets, those pages will simply just become widgets. Instead of maybe having to go to four separate pages, you can just have one widget with your calendar, your tickets, your agenda, all right there; because as we look back, we started this project last summer, really when we started discovery of what we wanted to do and one of the big things was, hey, we have a lot of people that say, “It takes too many too much time. I have to go to too many different pages to get information. I want it all in one spot.”

Tom:

They liked the idea of the Sales Center, but, Sales Center didn’t have everything we wanted. So, this was really the brainchild of that, of reducing the places you navigate to and being able to have more control of the information they have. So, that’s a big push for this release.

Tom:

One of the items, too, that I’m actually excited about, which probably no one else is, is we’re looking to add an e-transaction page. We know that it can be tough for customers trying to find electronic transactions that have failed or succeeded. We have the summary report, but this page will allow you to actually see that data more right there in your system. So you can see everything that failed fail today. Not maybe the sexiest feature, but I think one of those things that people like.

Tom:

Hopefully people watched the Metabase reporting webinar we just had recently. We went over this because I think we’re also adding some more things into that, and we’re going to make a lot of these Metabase reports easier for people to grab so they don’t have to build it themselves. So again, that’s not really changes to the code in our system, but ways that we can take things that we’ve had there for a while and bring them to the forefront, like Zach is bringing these games from the backlog to the forefront.

Tom:

That really is the big push of 9.6, completing the dashboard and bringing these things more so people start using them and getting ready for the 9.7 where we can finally get rid of the current dashboard page and my dream of getting rid of that profile picture. That profile picture is going away. I don’t even care if every user demands it back. I will not allow it that. I want that picture gone. So, with that Zach, and actually if everyone requested back, we probably would bring it back, but I’m just saying my opinion. So, Zach, what’s your favorite thing going into 9.6?

Zach:

I really like the dashboard stuff. I really enjoy the public dashboard. I think that’s a really cool service. I can imagine us putting up a TV in our office and just having all the dashboard new users and user engagement and stuff on there and that’s a really cool way of doing it. Just also the dashboards in general, they’re really neat. I think we got a lot of great feedback from the last webinar, the data reports and Metabase, and we’ve seen a lot of people want a lot of reports that might not be inside Maghub, or maybe they are and you just haven’t found them. We can point you to that direction as well, but there’s also a lot of cool ones you can build with Metabase. I think we are definitely on the Metabase train here at the office now.

Tom:

Yeah. I think it’s been a while. It gets tricky with the data and you think building only reports, but if you actually do look at the Metabase report builder and he really is just we’re trying to make it, so we give you the tables you need to go to. We have a huge amount of tables, which is good and bad. You see just all these tables and you’re just like, “I don’t know where to go,” but really there’s only a few you’d probably need to as a user. So, focusing on that, and then it’s just adding filters that you want and the filter controls are way more powerful than some that we have in the site. It is actually something we’re looking to do in the future, taking how Metabase builds reports and taking some of the things we liked from that into our own report building system. So, some of that.

Tom:

I think, we’re going to somewhat make it even more a cohesive environment. If you were building a system for some Metabase it might like look the same. Even for us internally, we have reports, I’m sure like a lot of our customers use. We use the same port. We have regular meetings and we have, right now, a spreadsheet where everyone has to go and update that, and with this tool that we’re having with the dashboard, we’re probably going to be able to eliminate that extra time of adding to a spreadsheet, which, when you get to it, is what this is all about is, hey, you put something into a system so you get more out of it. I think we’re going to solve even our own problems with the dashboard.

Tom:

But speaking to problems that we actually have at our office. Recently, Zach and I had got into a big fight and it might lead to some major disfunction and it involves about a very important person, which is Robert Pattinson. I don’t know if you can tell we talked about movies here. We both, I think, have seen The Batman trailer. Did you see the new Batman trailers. Zach? I’m sure you did.

Tom:

No? Did you say no? Or you have, sorry?

Zach:

I said I have.

Tom:

You have. So you know, I was intrigued by it. I like it. I particularly enjoy Paul Dano as the creepy guy. Anytime Paul Dano’s in something, even though it was little miss sunshine, I was terrified because Paul Dano just overall is a creepy guy. So, I think he’s going to do a very good job in the villain spot. It was interesting. You see Colin Farrell basically on my attractiveness level and how that’s going to go. Jeffrey Wright is amazing and everything. Then it gets the Robert Patterson and I think it was a good casting of it. I think if you look at it, I think it can… I don’t know. I think he’s going to do a good job. I was intrigued by it, but I know, Zach, that you hate him with a passion, very vehemently. What are your problems with Robert Pattinson?

Zach:

I don’t hate him and I’m not saying he was not a good casting. Here’s the thing, this is a big thing for me. I’m not a fan of Batman movies, not a fan at all. I think I was a fan of Michael Keaton ones, sure. I was even sometimes a fan of the George Clooney and Val Kilmer ones, which is crazy, but I was a fan of them because those came out around when I was younger. Just like Star Wars, Episode One came out when I was younger. So I got to see the scenes in theater, similar to how my family saw when they were younger. It’s a cool thing. So, I relate to that, not necessarily like, oh, this is a really quality movie, not; but the thing I have probably is Batman always sticks to the same thing.

Zach:

Batman, doesn’t try to mix it up. The Batman cartoons did. Batman Beyond was a different cartoon than the original Batman Legacy Series. They mixed us up there, in the cartoon world, but in the movies it’s always we’re going to have a Joker. Got to have a Joker, guys. Got to have a Joker in some way, shape, or form. Go for a Joker. Batman’s got to be moody. No doubt there. Got to be rich. Yep. And got to have a love interest. Okay. And that’s every Batman movie ever made and it just gets old, for me. It’s Like stop rebooting another Batman movie or choose something different. Throw a different person in there. Do something crazy. I do like the fact that they are going to the detective series moreso, which I like that less superhero more he’s solving crimes. I think that’s phenomenal.

Zach:

I don’t think necessarily Robert Pattinson’s a bad choice for that. I can’t think of someone that I would really prefer better, but as an actor, not a big fan of him and everyone’s going to say like, “Oh, it’s because he’s in Twilight. You don’t like it.” Nope. I can only say I’ve only seen the first Twilight movie and I heard that was the best one out of all of them, so that says something. But honestly, I just think he’s one of those overtly moody characters that feels like his acting prowess is always based on the fact that he’s extremely moody and you can take it down a step probably and still be a really great actor. I’m sure he’s a great person. There’s no doubt there. It’s just I think his acting style is not what I relate to. There are other people that I relate to moreso. I think it’d be really cool to have Batman to be Joseph Gordon Levitt. I think that’d be phenomenal. It’s weird. It’s a weird twist, but you know what? Joseph Gordon Levitt has a lot of acting chops and you probably love him, too, Tom, because he’s in Christopher Nolan films. So, you probably love that about him, don’t you?

Tom:

First, there’s a lot to digest there. I opened a bigger can of worms than even thought. I do like Joseph Gordon Levitt and I do like Christopher Nolan films and I thought his Batman’s were very good. I also am a huge Christian Bale fan. As far as ranking Batman’s from an acting level ability completely, obviously it’s Christian Bale, number one by far. Then I think Michael Keaton, and then I’ll probably go Val Kilmer over George Clooney. Not ranking Batman’s necessarily, even though I think that actually is a fair ranking for me. I think Robert Pattinson said would fall in the middle of that range. I would argue he’s probably a better actor than Val Kilmer and George Clooney. I’m not a huge George Clooney fan. From an acting standpoint, I don’t really think he does anything interesting or different.

Tom:

Joseph Gordon Levitt, it would be interesting. If they had carried over, which I think if you look at the end of the original Batman’s that was where they were going with it, but they probably killed that storyline. They wanted to start over. That would have been interesting carry over of him being a new Batman. I actually did see that new Power movie. It was on Netflix with Joseph Gordon Levitt. So, I have no problem with Joseph Gordon Levitt. He’s a very good actor, but Robin Pattinson, I just think sometimes he does… I haven’t seen any of the Twilight films In fact, if you’ve seen a Twilight film, I don’t know how to deal with that emotionally, but I just think it’s like anything. Ben Affleck was trash. I guess it’s just the society we are today. As soon as someone’s casting, everyone hates them as a person, but I’m excited for it mainly because of Paul Dano, to be honest.

Tom:

I think similar to Heath ledger and how he carried that Batman series, or that second film, I have a feeling that Paul Dano is going to be the big reason why people are going to really like this Batman, because he’s creeps me out. Anything he’s in, he’s very, very good. Thinking about Rob Pattinson from a, and I don’t know if there’s anything else you want to get off your chest. Zach, it seems like you’re in a mood. Feel free now. We can do Tom’s Tips Therapy podcast. There’s a lot there.

Zach:

I’m not moody. I’m sharing my-

Tom:

You’re being a big Robert Pattinson right now. Very moody.

Zach:

I do like Paul Dana as well, though. So, if that makes you feel better, I’m a big fan.

Tom:

You want them to make up a villain? I guess that’s the thing, too. Most of these reboots, they always bring back a villain because there’s only so many, but I guess they’ve done Riddler and Penguin again, but I don’t know.

Zach:

There are so many other bad guys out there and even some of them haven’t been touched. Okay, let’s just say it. Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze was scary and terrifying. It was just an awful experience in so many ways, but it didn’t follow anything of the cartoons or even the comic books. It’s like, you know what? Reboot Mr. Freeze. That’d be cool. Or there’s just a ton of villains.

Tom:

Yeah. I think that is a thing of Batman everything they’ve done already in the Batman series that they have done. Yeah. They’ve already done Penguin before. They’ve done Riddler before. I don’t know if there’ll be Joker yet again, obviously with all this stuff, but yes, there are other ones. You can reboot the whole George Clooney one. Reboot them all. Poison Ivy’s in in there, too. The weird Bane guy. Yes.

Tom:

But a thing about Rob Pattinson, too, is, one of the things though, probably where … Because I think he thinks of as more as an indie actor, but he put himself in one thing. So, the trivia question for this is really just what was Robert Pattinson’s first film? What was his first original film as an actor that put them on the map? Pretty big role, so if you can Tweet that us at Maghub, let us know. @Maghub for the answer, what Robert Pattinson’s first film was, and you can win a prize.

Tom:

As far as a cat fact, because I’m sitting here with two cats, sticking in the Robert Pattinson and obsession Twilight world, I was looking this up that there was a famous cat and his name was Monkey, Monk Monkey. If you look him up, didn’t realize this, he was the vampire cat because his canines grew so big and he was a black cat. Basically, he looked like Dracula, like a vampire, like a regular Robert Pattinson. So look that up. I think it was years ago. The time of 2015 when he was internet fame before people moved on to probably the next cat of internet fame, but he was a vampire guy and his name was Monkey.

Tom:

That’s all we have today. This was an enlightening podcast for games. We got a lot of Zach’s off his chest, which I think is good for his mental health for the weekend. I’m looking forward to this release to be going out in early September and a big part of this too, with all this data is let’s remember the Fall Forum. Zach, is there anything you want to let people know about the Fall Forum that’s coming up soon before next podcast?

Zach:

Sure. It is digital this year. It’s $50 a ticket. We are signing up people right now. If you pay the $50 for your ticket, you get access to both days, entered into drawings, get to partake in Tom’s various groups and sessions. There is a class track for every department at your media publishing business. It’s not just for the sales team. I know a lot of times Maghub is thought as just the ad sales platform. It does so much more than that, just like the Maghub Fall Forum. Get your production people out and get your finance people out of their offices and let’s all go and attend. It Should be a really great time. You will receive a $50 credit off your Fall Forum ticket for next year as well.

Zach:

Right now we are planning on basically moving everything from this year, which was planned for Chicago. It’ll be next year, assuming everything continues in a strong progression towards safety and security; but if not, then we’ll do another digital one next year and you’ll get a $50 credit for that one, which will probably just be free.

Zach:

You’re going to get some great free stuff. It’s going to be a really fun time. I know we always enjoy doing it. This is not like digital Maghub University that we hosted earlier this year. This is very much interaction that are go-to meetings more so than go to webinars. It’s you speaking back and forth, asking questions, learning from your peers, getting tips and tricks. And really our whole goal is just get you to use the system more so you can leverage it more, get more out of your investment, really just use it to its full extent. It’s a Cloud based platform to manage your media publishing business and in a time where everybody’s remote or working digitally, it is, should be, and we’ve heard from a lot of groups that is their number one used tool right now because it does help their businesses communicate and stay in touch. That’s what our whole goal with the forum is to just keep on getting you guys working together and using the platform to the fullest extent.

Tom:

I will be running, if people want to, the billion payable section, which is the excitement. I got some interesting things plan. I’m not going to just talk about how to create an invoice. It’s going to get weird. I’m going to get crazy with it and expect to look for me if you’re going to sign up for it. Expect a lot of Metabase, a lot of reports, and just a lot of Robert Pattinson.

Tom:

All right. Well, thank you everyone for joining. We look forward to releasing and the feedback on that and have a great rest of your day.

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