The Omni Show

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Alex Lindsay’s company Pixel Corps does livestreaming for companies, organizations, and governments — and they use OmniGraffle to design and document their (necessarily) complex setups and to communicate with clients. Alex tells us how. If you listen to podcasts, you probably know Alex Lindsay from MacBreak Weekly. You may not have known that Alex worked for Industrial Light and Magic back in the day — and, yes, he worked on a Star Wars movie. :) This episode is kind of a party. Brent is joined by two co-hosts: Ken Case, CEO of the Omni Group, and Mark Boszko, the intrepid producer of this very podcast. You can find Alex on Twitter @alexlindsay. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: OmniGraffle Eric Bowers Alex’s wiring diagram Dungeons and Dragons Lucasfilm Ltd. Skywalker Ranch John Knoll Animatics Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) Comic Sans Papyrus National Geographic AutoCAD Blackmagic Switcher The Orphanage Leo Laporte TWiT Xserve

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com On January 29 we published the Omni Roadmap 2020, where we look back at 2019 and look forward to all the good things planned for this year. Ken Case, CEO of the Omni Group — and author of the roadmap — joins the show to go into further detail. We got a lot done in 2019! We introduced OmniFocus for the Web, improved performance in OmniGraffle, added support for Omni Automation to OmniPlan, and adopted the big new features that Apple announced at least year’s WWDC: Dark Mode, context menus, multiple windows on iPad, and more. Our plans for 2020 are ambitious, too: we’ll have Omni Automation support in all our apps, including OmniFocus. We’ll add a new, simpler sign-in licensing option. We’ll publish OmniPlan 4, with great new features such as interval tracking, so you can track your costs over time. We’re also going to continue to review our user interfaces to make navigation easier. The roadmap says “We want easy navigation, so everything in the app feels like it’s right at your fingertips — whether your fingertips are using the mouse, touch screen, or a hardware keyboard.” So, yes, that includes better keyboard support on iPads. :) And, like every year, we expect that Apple will announce new features at WWDC, and we will have surprise work to do. Which we don’t mind — it’s part of the fun of making apps! (We love those new features as much as you do.) You can find Ken on Twitter @kcase and on our Slack group. You can also find @omnigroup on Twitter and on Micro.blog. Previous roadmap blog posts: 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Jason Atwood is COO and one of the founders of Arkus, Inc., a Salesforce consulting partner. He’s a long-time OmniFocus user — and everybody at his company uses OmniFocus. Jason’s view is that standardizing on a premium productivity platform is as important as standardizing on an email system. Jason says, “This is the best-of-breed productivity tool. Because I want people at Arkus to be able to satisfy our clients, to be on top of it, to be extremely good at what they do, I want to give them the best tool.” The Arkus Boot Camp for new employees includes OmniFocus training — but it doesn’t stop there: education continues, with new tips, ideas, and even podcast episodes about using OmniFocus. This is a key part of the system that leads to his clients asking, “How is it you guys are so good?” You can find Jason on Twitter @jasonmatwood and at arkusinc.com. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: OmniFocus Salesforce Kinkless GTD John Gruber Palm Pilot GTD Merlin Mann Slack Arkus podcast: CloudFocus Weekly Kenya

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Eric Bowers — mortgage loan officer by day, novelist by night — talks about using OmniFocus to help people buy homes and to keep up with writing his novel. As a recent Florida transplant, he also uses OmniFocus to keep up with pool maintenance — a perfect case for recurring tasks. OmniFocus is Eric’s centralized brain. He uses it everywhere, and he’s customized it a bit — he has his own Next perspective, for instance. But he’s also mindful of his favorite advice: keep it as simple as possible so that you can get your work done. Eventually we start talking about music, because of course we do. Eric plays bass and sings, and he loves grunge. :) You can find Eric on his website: bowersvoice.com. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: Florida WWDC Learn OmniFocus Tim Stringer OmniGraffle OmniOutliner MindNode OmniPlan Philadelphia Saloon Dogs Tampa, Florida Discovery Park Rose Orchard Josh Hughes Alice in Chains The Police Cream Screaming Trees Nearly Lost You Dirt Would? Singles University District

Join John Gruber, a professional blogger behind Daring Fireball, as he dives into his long-time love for OmniOutliner. He shares how he uses it for meticulous project planning, including recent server changes. John also reminisces about early web technologies, comparing them to today's fast-paced digital landscape. With a blend of humor, he discusses 90s consumer experiences and the importance of organization in both personal and professional realms. Expect engaging storytelling sprinkled with nostalgia and practical insights!

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Jim Correia — OmniFocus engineer, man-about-town — joins the show to talk about some of the things he and the team have been working on since WWDC: Dark Mode, multiple windows, and Shortcuts. We also talk about his humble beginnings with his trusty TI-99/4A by his side, his search for exotic mesons, and his work at Bare Bones on BBEdit and Yojimbo. Jim’s also a runner and dog-partner to Rosie (who’s widely recognized as the best dog). You can find Jim on Twitter @jimcorreia. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: Evan McNulty OmniFocus BBEdit Automator Tim Wood Yojimbo Mailsmith Rich Siegel Akira Kurosawa Steve Kalkwarf Nova Texas Instruments TI-99/4A Brookhaven National Laboratory Exotic mesons Superconducting Super Collider Luke Adamson National Science Foundation HyperCard Sears, Roebuck, and Company UserLand Software Team in Training Curt Clifton Rosie the Good, Busy Dog

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com April Ramm is Email Support Lead and the longest-running Support Human — now with nine years at Omni! We talk about how she triages and categorizes support email, making sure that people who need urgent help go to the top of the list. We also talk about doing phone support, about working remotely several days a week — and about her art: she makes beautiful wire-wrapped jewelry with semi-precious stones. Here are a couple of photos: You can see more on her Etsy store Niamh Gone Wired. You can also find her on Twitter @aprilramm and on Instagram. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: OmniPlan Brian Covey Ken Case MacTech Conference QS/1 pharmacy software Mississippi River Lexmark Minot, North Dakota Minneapolis YMCA Village People Song Sounders S2 Copper Nickel Labradorite Niamh Gone Wired Kent Third Thursday Art Walk Urban Unglued Tacoma Maker’s Mercantile Lapidary

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Christopher Harrington, Director of Creative Strategy at Gartner, joins the show to talk about how he’s used OmniGraffle since the early days of the app. That OmniGraffle is an open-ended, general-purpose tool has been a big part of its appeal to Christopher: he can do the many different things he needs to do with it. We also talk about user experience, otters, and Prince. Christopher is a joyful member of the Purple Family. Content warning: In the course of talking about user experience, Christopher discusses the user experience of his partner Bill as he undergoes treatment for cancer. The user experience is presented as exemplary, as the kind of thing designers can set up when they care about users. Nevertheless, we realize this may be a topic that some people would rather not hear about. If that’s you, please skip this episode, or stop listening when we switch to that topic. You can find Christopher on Twitter @octothorpe. You can also follow his bot The Shaboogie Bot on Twitter and listen to past episodes of his podcast with Maggie McFee: Ruining it for Everyone. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: Gartner OmniGraffle Dave Chappelle Prince OmniOutliner OmniFocus GTD Manhattan Greenwich, CT Stamford, CT Tweetbot Sketch OmniWeb NeXT Deutsche Bank Verizon NYNEX Disney theme parks Nielsen Norman Group BBEdit Inverse-square law Enya Olof Hellman Japanese River Otters Seattle Aquarium Maggie McFee

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Aaron Kwong — jet-setter, Vegas enthusiast, Corgi catcher — joins the show to talk about testing OmniPlan and about the differences between verifying bug fixes and doing exploratory testing. Aaron started in support and was the OmniPlan PM before moving over to testing OmniPlan. He’s lived in Connecticut and Alaska, and he went to school at the now-defunct (totally not his fault!) Art Institute of Seattle. Aaron also stars in the show’s host’s favorite Omni video: Monte Carlo Simulation. You can find Aaron on Twitter @kwongkwong. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: OmniPlan Little Snitch Ainsley Bourque Olson Monte Carlo Video Liz Marley Art Institute of Seattle Apple Store at Alderwood Mall Avid Final Cut Pro Media 100 MiniDV Mac LC III Mac Performa 6400 Starcraft Maelstrom Power Computing Macs Tim Ekl Monaco Juneau, Alaska Connecticut Hong Kong Vietnam U2 iPod Johnny Cash Buddy Cash the cover band Corgi

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Indie developer Daniel Jalkut writes some apps you might use: MarsEdit, FastScripts, Black Ink, and others. He also does contract work — and he and his wife have a couple kids. He’s a busy man! Naturally he uses OmniFocus to keep on track. Daniel talks about how he uses OmniFocus, including his possibly unique way of working with Siri. We also talk about how Daniel worked at Apple in the ’90s before returning to school to study music. You can find Daniel pretty much all over the web: at his blog Bitsplitting, at his company Red Sweater, on Twitter @danielpunkass and on Micro.blog. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: MarsEdit Core Intuition Manton Reece Black Ink FastScripts Rhapsody AppleScript MacOS 9 Gus Mueller OmniFocus Daniel’s Reminders-to-OmniFocus Script - Reminder Plumbing Living in the Forecast view Omni Automation Sal Soghoian Shortcuts What Apple events can do Cabrillo Community College Gil Amelio Steve Jobs City College of San Francisco San Francisco State