In this episode, we talk with David Crandall, a software architect and fractional CTO. As someone involved in Data Architecture since the mid-nineties, he has been obsessive with note-taking, having done so for 25+ years(!). Roam fits the bill for writing all his thoughts!

We talked about:

  • The Dark times: how he found Roam, moving abroad with 26 luggage bags and more
  • David’s workflows: Meeting notes, habit tracking and anti-productivity
  • Why he dislikes non-contextual metadata
  • Predicting the future of Roam from a software architect’s perspective, and #roamcult

Enjoy!

Check out the full transcript here

Timestamps

  • 2:28 25 Years of Note-taking and discovering Roam
  • 5:40 What caught his attention, and the Daily Notes page
  • 8:52 Transferring all his analog notes in
  • 9:40 Moving a family of six to Cozumel, Mexico
  • 13:12 David’s workflow, and learning Roam in quarantine
  • 17:02 Meeting notes: David’s process for turning nouns into pages
  • 20:20 Non-contextual tagging and why David hates it
  • 24:12 Finding value from graph overview + suggestions
  • 26:37 How David uses Roam to track his habits
  • 32:02 Being anti-productive
  • 34:06 David’s main Twitter account and Minecraft
  • 36:18 Future Roaman Jrs.
  • 38:21 The future of Roam and David’s accurate prediction
  • 42:09 The way we interact with Roam will change
  • 46:14 The potential of #roamcult in this future
  • 51:29 Networked social media, Visa and threaded conversation
  • 54:30 What scares David about the hive mind concept
  • 55:29 Describing Roam as a Jarvis [[How would you describe Roam to someone who hasn’t started using it?]]
  • 57:28 [[What does Roam mean to you?]], Roam’s use in counseling, therapy, and vulnerability