

The Omni Show
The Omni Group
Connect with the amazing community surrounding the Omni Group’s award-winning products.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jan 9, 2019 • 23min
Derek Reiff, Front-end Web Developer
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

Dec 12, 2018 • 28min
Tim Wood, Chief Technology Officer
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

Nov 28, 2018 • 31min
Molly Reed, Chief Operating Officer
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

Nov 14, 2018 • 52min
Live from Swift by Northwest
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!

Oct 31, 2018 • 28min
How We Built OmniFocus for the Web
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.

Oct 17, 2018 • 37min
Rey Worthington, OmniGraffle Engineer
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Rey Worthington — software developer, rock climber, cat enjoyer — talks about bringing Mojave Dark Mode support to OmniGraffle and OmniPlan.
She also talks about how to make NSPredicateEditor look right on a sheet. And about growing up in the “Texas of California,” going to school at University of Pacific, and making her way to The Omni Group via meeting the folks at their Macworld Expo booth.
Then we talk about climbing, and about (most importantly, of course!) her cats, Spark and Blaze.
You can find Rey on Twitter @nothe.
Some other people, places, and things mentioned:
Dark Mode
Radar
Visual Effect Views
Zombies
NSPredicateEditor
Ken Case
Mojave
Layers
Tracy, CA
In-N-Out Burgers
Stockton, CA
University of the Pacific
Abraham Lincoln
Macworld Expo
Civilization
University Village
World of Warcraft

Oct 3, 2018 • 31min
Michelle Knee, Software Test Pilot
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Michelle Knee — tester, game player, wrangler of ragdoll cats — talks about testing all of Omni’s many websites, including OmniFocus for the Web.
Michelle also talks about the special challenges in testing websites: defeating browser caching, the problem children (iPhone SE and iPhone 8 Plus), responsive design mode bugs, and testing on multiple operating systems.
Then we talk about games. And Hawaii. And mystery knit-alongs. And — most critically — her cats Calvin and Hobbes.
You can find Michelle on Twitter @mec2973 and on Micro.blog.
Some other people, places, and things mentioned:
Gen Con
Scrabble
Purdue University
Steven Covey
objc.io: Inside Omni
Maui
Kentucky
Space Needle
Ragdoll cat
Calvin and Hobbes comic
Statler and Waldorf
Waldorf Salad
Waldorf Hotel
Watergate Salad

Sep 24, 2018 • 26min
OmniFocus 3 for Mac: Launch Day, New Design
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Ken Case, CEO of The Omni Group, Dave Messent, OmniFocus Product Manager, and Joel Page, User Experience Designer, join the show for a special episode to celebrate the launch of OmniFocus 3 for Mac and to talk about its new design.
The early OmniFocus 3 for Mac designs are kind of like a concept car — futuristic, interesting, beautiful, but not necessarily something you could actually drive.
We talk about going from those early designs to the app that actually ships, and we talk about the various parts of the app, how they changed and why.
You can find Ken Case at The Omni Group and @kcase on Twitter. You can find Dave Messent @dmessent on Twitter.
To hear more about new features in the app, listen to the previous episode OmniFocus 3 for Mac: New Features.

Sep 5, 2018 • 32min
Grayson West, Design Manager
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Grayson West — who just might be a superhero (you can tell by the name) — manages design, the website, and marketing at Omni from his headquarters on the fourth floor, high above Lake Union.
Grayson started as a graphic designer at Omni 15 years ago and moved into management four years ago. In his youth he was an international bicycle racer, and lately he’s become a CrossFit trainer and kiteboarder.
And — most importantly! — he’s a cat person.
Some other people, places, and things mentioned:
Cherokee Nation
Mad Men
Apple Design Awards
OmniFocus 3 for iOS
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)
Northern Arizona University
Color theory
Flagstaff, Arizona
Gannett
Sphinx
Vulcans
Macworld Expo
OmniGraphSketcher
OmniOutliner
OmniGraffle
Macworld magazine
Ken Case
iPad or Bust!
Kettlebells
Tour de France
Grenoble, France
La Ventana
Baja California Sur
Lake Washington
Puget Sound
Norwegian Forest Cat
Omni cat pictures
Calvin the cat

Aug 22, 2018 • 21min
OmniFocus 3 for Mac: New Features
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Ken Case, CEO of The Omni Group, and Dave Messent, OmniFocus product manager, join the show for a special episode to talk about OmniFocus 3 for Mac and how it’s gaining new features that first appeared in OmniFocus 3 for iOS.
Some of these new features include tags, fancy repeating tasks, the Forecast tag, and enhanced custom perspectives.
We also talk about features that were not brought over to the Mac — since they were already there. But then some of those things were improved. :)
You can find Ken Case at The Omni Group and @kcase on Twitter. You can find Dave Messent @dmessent on Twitter.
For more about OmniFocus 3 for Mac, read the Omni Roadmap 2018 — particularly the second half, which concentrates on OmniFocus — and listen to a previous episode of the show where Ken Case talks about the roadmap.