The Omni Show

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com In the studio are Ken Case, CEO of The Omni Group; Ainsley Bourque Olson, OmniPlan Prime Minster; and Greg Titus, OmniPlan Engineer — and we talk about how OmniPlan came to be and where it’s going. The Story of OmniPlan In the studio are Ken Case, CEO of The Omni Group; Ainsley Bourque Olson, OmniPlan Prime Minster; and Greg Titus, OmniPlan Engineer — and we talk about how OmniPlan came to be and where it’s going. OmniPlan, originally a side project by Greg, found its way into Omni’s circle of productivity apps — before OmniFocus, but after OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle. If you’re interested in helping test OmniPlan — or any Omni app — go to omnigroup.com/test to get started. We appreciate it! And if you’re interested in collaboration between OmniPlan and OmniFocus, please email omniplan@omnigroup.com and we’ll add you to our list and get back to you when we’re ready for help. But first, check out this fun video for OmniPlan’s Monte Carlo Simulation. (We link to this because it’s the host-of-the-show’s favorite.) The video is by our intrepid producer Mark Boszko, and it stars the amazing Aaron Kwong. You can find Ken on Twitter @kcase, Ainsley @ainslaw on Twitter, and Greg @gregtitus on Twitter. We have also done a previous interview show with Ainsley and one with Greg. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: Resource leveling OmniWeb OmniOutliner OmniGraffle OmniDiskSweeper OmniDazzle Lotus Improv NeXT Quantrix Lighthouse Design Sun OmniFocus Kinkless GTD Apple events Objective-C garbage collection Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) Microsoft Project WebDAV Dropbox iCloud MobileMe iDisk Tenon Boeing Gantt charts “iPad or Bust!” Omni Roadmap 2019

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Greg Titus has been at Omni for 25 years — for almost the entire time that there’s been an Omni. Greg’s superpower is creating new things. Sure, everybody likes to think they’re good at creating new things, but Greg’s different: he’s actually good at creating new things. Greg talks about the early days as one of the first people hired. He talks about the days when the money came from contracts, when the apps started out side projects. Those side projects included OmniPlan, which he started working on because a resource scheduling algorithm sounded like a fun thing to write. Which tells you the important thing to know about Greg. That, and this little bit of trivia: the city of Kent, Washington, just outside Seattle, originally known as Titusville, was named for one of Greg’s ancestors. In a boomtown where it seems like everybody came from somewhere else, Greg is one of the rare ones — Northwest by birth. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: Snowzilla Craig Hockenberry Jason Snell 2008 podcast with Greg, Craig, Jason, and Brent Ten year challenge showing OmniFocus Eugene, Oregon OmniPlan OmniFocus for the Web Tim Wood Boeing NeXT Microsoft Cairo Taligent WebObjects William Morris Talent Agency McCaw Cellular Dot-com crash WebScript: Objective-C without the C OmniWeb OmniOutliner OmniGraffle OmniFocus

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Brent hosts The Omni Show and writes blog posts, articles, App Store descriptions, newsletters, and other things for The Omni Group. That is, he normally hosts The Omni Show, but this week we have a guest host, Rose Orchard, who graciously agreed to interview Brent. It’s tempting to say that if words and sentences are involved, then Brent probably works on it. But that seriously underestimates the sheer amount of writing that a software company produces. Brent doesn’t write the manuals: Dave Lonning does. He doesn’t answer all the support email or write support articles: people on Brian Covey’s support team write those. He doesn’t write all the blog posts: Ken Case and others write blog posts too. He doesn’t write all of Inside OmniFocus either: a whole bunch of different authors write for that site. He doesn’t write release notes: the various Prime Ministers write release notes for their respective apps. Even though he doesn’t do all these things, he does, somehow, manage to look busy. Well, somewhat busy. Busy-ish. :) You can find Brent on the web at his long-time blog at inessential.com. And you can find him on the Omni Blog and the Omni Microblog. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: Garfield BBEdit Grayson West Derek Reiff OmniFocus @omnigroup on Twitter Omni’s Facebook page Ken Case’s tweets Inside OmniFocus Markdown MultiMarkdown OmniOutliner MarsEdit Omni’s microblog Omni’s Slack Versions Git Google Chrome NetNewsWire Olof Hellman Daniel Jalkut Maurice Parker Rainier UserLand Frontier Dave Winer Bernard’s Watch Plectrum banjo James Dempsey and the Breakpoints Swift by Northwest Mississippi hill country blues Bottleneck guitar

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com In late January we published our annual roadmap where we look back at the previous year and look forward to the new. Ken Case, roadmap author and CEO of The Omni Group, joins the show to go into more detail and answer listener questions. Last year was a big year and a busy one, with OmniOutliner 3 for iOS, OmniFocus 3 for Mac and iOS, development of OmniFocus for the Web, and lots of important releases for OmniPlan and OmniGraffle. We have a lot planned for 2019, too: we’ve already shipped a few important updates. OmniFocus for the Web is coming soon, and we have some important new features en route: automation for OmniFocus and OmniPlan, shared linked tasks for OmniFocus, and more. This new year will also give us a chance to take some time to review user interface navigation and keyboard control. We’ll take time to fix bugs, including those rare crashing bugs, and increase performance. And we’ll also, surely, have new technology from Apple to work with over the summer, like every year — which is part of the fun of what we 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 roadmaps: 2018 2017 2016 2015 This is our second roadmap special — you can go back and listen to last year’s and see how far we’ve come!

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Rose Orchard hosts the Automators podcast along with David Sparks. With Ryan Dotson she’s written a new book about OmniFocus 3 called Build Your OmniFocus Workflow. Rose, our first interview guest who doesn’t work for Omni, is a big part of the community, and she’s helped many OmniFocus users get more out of the app. You’ll find her on the Omni forum and in our Slack group — she really likes helping people, and she’s great at it. You can also find Rose on her website, on Twitter @rosemaryorchard, and on Micro.blog. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: PodCon David Sparks Vienna, Austria Mac Power Users Focused Jean MacDonald James Dempsey The Weekly Review Ryan Dotson The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Yugoslavia Douglas Adams False friends Disneyland Paris Merlin Mann 43 Folders OmniFocus Getting Things Done® OmniPlan OmniGraffle Microsoft Visio Dr. Drang Keyboard Maestro Sal Soghoian UserLand Frontier OmniOutliner

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Derek Reiff, Front-end Web Developer — and ultra-marathoner! — joins the show to talk about building The Omni Group’s various websites: omnigroup.com, product pages, Inside OmniFocus, and so on. He also talks about JQuery, his favorite text editor, the beauty of Seattle, his dream of the many German Shepherds, and his current love: making pizza. You can find Derek on Twitter @dareiff. PS Happy New Year from The Omni Show! Some other people, places, and things mentioned: Michelle Knee Safari responsive design mode Emacs TextMate Atom Sublime Text React BBEdit Inside OmniFocus Inside OmniGraffle support.omnigroup.com Stenciltown Sass JQuery Vue Expression Engine Django WordPress OmniFocus for the Web Indiana Columbus, Ohio Ballard Fremont Vashon Island German Shepherds Ultramarathon Boston Marathon Breaking the four-minute mile video Gus Mueller’s Pizza Blog Ballard Farmer’s Market Fremont Sunday Market

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com For our holiday episode we’re joined by Tim Wood, founder and CTO of The Omni Group. Tim talks about serving as a resource, educator, and toolmaker for our dozen-ish engineers. Tim also talks about Omni’s frameworks, saving the Mac world from Y2K, soccer fandom, and pottery. You can find Tim on Twitter @tjw. Note: we’re taking a little break after this episode. The next one is scheduled for January 9. Happy holidays! Some other people, places, and things mentioned: OmniOutliner OmniPlan OmniGraffle OmniFocus Ken Case Tim Ekl Jim Correia WebDAV Apache NSCountedSet Subversion CVS Y2K NeXTSTEP Git Jenkins ARC Daniel Jalkut Swift-Evolution The Record episode with Tim Wood Go Kotlin Rust Rose Orchard Chris Parrish Seattle Sounders Emerald City Supporters Craig Hockenberry Seward Park Clay Studio Lake Washington Gus Mueller

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com Molly Reed, COO — who is, in an alternate universe, your favorite coloratura soprano — joins the show to talk about starting at The Omni Group in her early 20s and helping it thrive in the years since. She also talks about socks and sandals (don’t do it), solving problems, opera training, being a woman in tech — and about the beguiling Cleopatra the cat. Molly provides this video of Cleo totally trolling Mara the dog. Some other people, places, and things mentioned: Brian Covey University District Manny’s Impostor Syndrome Meritocracy Classical voice Valkyrie Wagner Mozart Verdi Puccini The Marriage of Figaro University of Puget Sound Mary Curtis Verna University of Washington The Metropolitan Opera La Scala Capitol Hill Ship Canal Aida Bengal cat Anaerobic

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com This episode was recorded at the Swift by Northwest conference in Portland, on October 19, 2018. It’s a panel discussion with people from outside Omni, and we’re stretching a bit from our usual content — but we think you’ll enjoy it anyway! Before the panel, your host Brent Simmons emailed the panelists to ask them about things that provoked strong feelings — positive or negative or both — to use as topics. These did not have to be strictly technical topics, and they weren’t. The panelists: Kaya Thomas is a writer, iOS developer at Slack, and the creator of We Read Too app, a directory of children’s books written by authors of color and featuring characters of color. Daniel Jalkut is a blogger, podcaster, and the developer of MarsEdit, a blogging app. Jaimee Newberry is a writer, speaker, and the CEO of Picture This Clothing, which makes dresses based on hand-drawn and -colored designs — in other words, kids can wear their imaginations. Note: be prepared — the audio is a bit weird in some spots, since it comes from a live recording and Brent is walking around the room. We apologize for that. Also: thanks so much to the conference organizers — the Klein family — for inviting us!

Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com For this special episode we’re joined by Ken Case, CEO; Grayson West, Design Manager; Chris Pruitt, Web Developer; and Mike Davies, Devops Engineer and Guru. We talk about the nine-year-long history of OmniFocus for the Web and how we’re building it. Issues include front-end design, encryption and security, running Objective-C and Swift code on our servers, and writing portions in Python and in React. This show will answer the question, “Is The Omni Group running user-interface-less versions of OmniFocus on some Mac servers?” You can sign up to help test OmniFocus for the Web, if you haven’t already. And you can read more about it in our 2018 roadmap.