Live - The Future of Obsidian with CEO Stephan Ango and Andy Polaine

# [[Live - The Future of Obsidian with CEO Stephan Ango and Andy Polaine]] <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TkNTuFF2t-c" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> ## Pre-production ### Thumbnail ![[The Future of Obsidian with CEO Stephan Ango - v4.png]] ### Title 1. direction of obsidian (85) 2. future of obsidian (85) ### Hook ### Talking points - Introduce [[Stephan Ango]] - Designer and engineer - Most recently the CEO of Obsidian - Obsidian stuff: Minimal, Hider, and Web Clipper - Previously: Lumi (platform to help ecommerce companies produce custom packaging), Inkodye - Here to help me interview Stephan is [[Andy Polaine]] - Designer, educator, writer, design leadership coach - He's co-authored a book called *Service Design: From Insight to Implementation*, hosts a podcast called *Power of Ten*. - He's my DM - we play D&D every Thursday (shout out TWC) - and most importantly, a good friend. We actually met because of Obsidian! - Why Obsidian? - How did Stephan get started with Obsidian? - Did you try other tools? - You said in your announcement post that using Obsidian has been life-changing for you. How has Obsidian changed your life? - Joining the Obsidian team - Projects: [Minimal](https://github.com/kepano/obsidian-minimal), [Hider](https://stephanango.com/hider), [Obsidian Web Clipper](https://stephanango.com/obsidian-web-clipper) - How did the switch happen, from contributing a community theme to becoming the CEO? - What made you decide to join the team? - *Andy: How's it been to move from a designer/developer to being a manager?* - How big is the team? Who's part of it? - What's Obsidian great at right now? - Why do you think Obsidian has gained the following that it has? - *Andy: What are the biggest challenges facing Obsidian, especially given all the clones springing up. (I mean, Obsidian is not the first wiki-linked Markdown viewer – Notational Velocity was the first I think).* - Stephan's design philosophy - ["] [Great tools choose to be bad at some things](https://stephanango.com/choose-to-be-bad). - related: *[Design is compromise](https://stephanango.com/design-is-compromise).* - What does this mean? - What should Obsidian be bad at? - (Currently: task management, sharing) - Good at: privacy, extensibility, longevity of notes - Bad at: same things, but flip side. - [Making the default as good as vanilla](https://stephanango.com/vanilla) - *Andy: [The computer show](https://stephanango.com/computer-show)* - The future and direction of Obsidian - What's not changing? - Free for personal use - Built on durable, open file formats without lock-in - Private, offline-first, E2E encrypted - Endlessly customizable via API/plugins - User-supported - Licat and Silver aren't going anywhere. - What's changing? - Change in business model? SaaS platform? - [x] Any plans to grow the team? - What are the next strategic hires you plan to make? - Any plans to consider external investors? - Any community initiatives you'd consider? - Product features - How do you [find the right problems to solve](https://stephanango.com/solving-problem-finding)? (Make people care enough to find problems.) - [Obsidian roadmap](https://trello.com/b/Psqfqp7I/obsidian-roadmap) - What can you tell us about your plans for tasks? - Performance improvements? - Focus on sharing? - Core plugins vs. community plugins: any community ones you want to reimplement or sherlock? - Canvas and alternative UIs - AI? - What's a physical object on your desk right now that is a daily driver but also just a pleasure to use? ### Stuff *not* to mention - Obsidian going open source (not off the table but Stephan would prefer not to rehash what Licat and Silver have already said) - https://forum.obsidian.md/t/open-sourcing-of-obsidian/1515/11 ### Q&A > [!question] @[email protected] > Would love to know how they see the future of Obsidian in relation to it's core. We have tonnes of amazing plugins, but at the heart it all revolves around the foundation that is Obsidian. What do they see as core features for Obsidian? Also what would they like to see the community do more of? Or do that we're not doing just yet. ![[Stephan Ango#Knives]] - Etherpad - Dropbox - Sync - GitHub ### Does he know? - [In this Global documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iILW8CxCLbM&ab_channel=GlobalKnivesAUNZ), Mino Tsuchida (aka Mr. Global) talks about: - how much he cares about quality: CATRA machine to measure quality relentlessly - sharpening and maintaining knives, not just creating them - 75% of the buyers of Global knives in England were men, and he found out it was because they liked "the sexy point" of Global knives - He added grooves to the knife to spark curiosity and stop people from associating an all-steel knife with coldness. ### Related videos and resources Stephan Ango: https://stephanango.com/ ### Pinned comment ``` ``` ### Timestamps 00:00 Introducing Stephan Ango 01:38 Introducing Andy Polaine 02:54 Other tools used before Obsidian 09:20 Notational Velocity and futureproofness 12:00 Dealing with Obsidian clones 15:00 What's Obsidian bad at? 17:09 How plugins transform an app 22:15 Joining the Obsidian team 29:00 Stephan's background in building tools 31:50 Obsidian roadmap, metadata 36:22 Growing on Obsidian team 39:27 Enshittification due to venture capital 41:11 Sharing, Sync, Publish 47:02 Task management and prioritization 50:08 AI in Obsidian 56:40 Accessibility in Obsidian 58:25 Tags vs links? 01:04:15 Message to the community ## Post-production - [ ] Create captions using Rev, then edit them. - [ ] Take a thumbnail photo and create one for YouTube (1280 x 720). - [ ] Add description. - [ ] Include the title and any keywords in the first few sentences, but in a natural way. - [ ] Add related videos and resources as links. - [ ] Add end screen. - [ ] Add cards if necessary. - [ ] Add chapters/timestamps for YouTube if longer than 5 minutes. - [ ] Add mid-roll ads/check monetization settings. - [ ] Add pinned comment. - [ ] Post video preview on Patreon. - [ ] Schedule on YouTube. - [ ] Add video to relevant playlist(s), or create a playlist if necessary. - [ ] Promote on Twitter/LinkedIn as appropriate. - [ ] Create a blog post on [site](https://nicolevanderhoeven.com). - [ ] Add to video-database. - [ ] Add to other notes in my vault as appropriate.