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5 minute read
Summary
On this episode of Catching Up with, The Collab Collective's Craig Durr talks with David Maldow, Founder and CEO of Let’s Do Video, at Zoomtopia 2024. Their engaging conversation covers the latest developments in Zoom's productivity tools, including AI-first features and innovative apps that aim to redefine workflows in the workplace.
Their Discussion Covers:
- Zoom Tasks: David Maldow explains how AI consolidates tasks across apps and emails, while Craig Durr shares his excitement about adapting it into his workflow.
- Zoom Docs: David Maldow compares Zoom Docs to Notion, highlighting AI-driven templates, with Craig Durr noting its appeal to tech-savvy users.
- Workflow Automation: Craig Durr likens Zoom’s automation to Zapier, as David Maldow underscores its chatbot-like functionality for streamlining processes.
- AI Companion: David Maldow describes how the AI panel enables conversational input, with Craig Durr emphasizing its productivity potential.
Transcript
Craig Durr: Everyone, this is Craig Durr, Chief Analyst and Founder of the Collab Collective. We are here at Zoomtopia. We're at this after hours event, after the key notes, and I’m joined by my good friend, David Maldow.
David Maldow: Hey, hey, I’m David Maldow, CEO of Let’s Do Video.
Craig Durr: Now, I’ve had the chance to go into his boardroom. If you have a chance, follow him on YouTube. You've got some of the best videos I see there, which is walking through some of these use cases and some of these things. You got some great vendor intros. That's great, right?
David Maldow: Yeah
Craig Durr: But this time, we're going to talk about a unique area of Zoom that we found really interesting, right? What are we going to talk about?
David Maldow: The apps within Zoom Workplace.
Craig Durr: And just like we talk about individuals working together as a team, we thought we'd talk about the apps working together just like you might in a game of foosball. So join us for a game of foosball as we talk about this.
Alright, so the first thing we had going on at this event was a new app that was announced, right?
David Maldow: Yes
Craig Durr: It was Tasks. Yes, tell me what your impression was of that.
David Maldow: Task is very exciting because it reaches across all the other apps. And pulls all your tasks. You think, you know, “I've had tasks in this app before.” This is different. Everything's AI-first in this. And it looks in your emails, it looks in your meeting summaries, it looks in your chat. It looks everywhere and says, “This is a task,” and puts it in a task list for you.
Craig Durr: And you have a chance to go back and edit it. Now, it’s a pretty powerful story.
Here's the thing I'm personally gonna want to try to figure this out, just like when I first was introduced to meeting summaries, I have to learn to trust it. I got to be able to understand that it's going to pick up all my tasks. So like right now, my workflow is–I have a pad of paper and then I put them into another application right now. So I need to use this as my application to do it over. I think it can work, but I'm excited to do this. What's key is–it's what I'm working within that Zoom environment really does, right?
David Maldow: Yes, the key for all these apps is that they're all part of Zoom Workplace.
Craig Durr: Right, exactly. But now here's the next thing. One of the things that came up. We've talked about this in the past. They talked to us about Zoom Docs. But Zoom Docs have become more generally available at this point in time. It's only been a month or two. And you actually have a big news right now, right?
David Maldow: I’ve been playing with Zoom Docs. I'm actually going to make a series of videos on my YouTube about different things you can do with Zoom Docs. I think people might have a misunderstanding that it's a word processor.
Craig Durr: That’s exactly the problem.
David Maldow: And it's not. It's more like Notion.
Craig Durr: Exactly, thank you.
David Maldow: You can use it to create anything–charts, tables, plans, to-dos. It's like a mini workplace within the workplace.
Craig Durr: I agree with that.
I think your idea of calling it Notion is the right idea. I think it's going to really appeal to a combination of two things: a young audience group and kind of a West Coast tech group mindset, right?
David Maldow: Yeah
Craig Durr: I mean, a lot of people are still embedded in terms of Microsoft Office 365 productivity, and those might really drive their use cases. But if they're open to this idea of this open relationship database used as information gathering is good. And here's the two things I liked about it. One, they showed a use case of taking a meeting summary and dragging it to a doc. And AI would automatically create the document on that meeting summary.
David Maldow: Yep
Craig Durr: That's pretty powerful.
David Maldow: And pulls to-dos from it and pulls tasks from it
Craig Durr: Exactly. That was great. The second thing I think they would really help is when I use Notion for myself. Personally, it's when I've tapped into people that might already have a pre-established structure. It might be like a wiki, or it might be something else. I think what's going to be key for adoption is for them to have great use cases or templates for people to help drive and use. Because otherwise, if you're looking at a big, blank piece of paper to diminish
David Maldow: You know, and something I've noticed–a little tip of using Docs, it has templates in there. And I was a little confused by the templates because there's like, twelve of them, and I wasn't sure which one I should use. I'm not using the templates, I'm using the AI.
So I’ll send this to the AI, “I want to create a document that looks like this and that. I don't know which template to use, just create it for me.” And it creates exactly what I want it to.
Craig Durr: That is great. I never thought about it that way.
David Maldow: You don’t even need the templates.
Craig Durr: I didn’t even think about that. What else did they have coming out? So besides tasks and documents, what they announced before was workflow automation.
David Maldow: Yes
Craig Durr: Are you familiar with this one?
David Maldow: Yeah, that reminds me of what chatbots do in streams. They see something in the chat and know what to do next with it.
Craig Durr: And if you want to draw a parallel to other applications, I think of this as being very similar to Zapier or very similar to Make.com, where you have an automatic trigger and other automatic things. I think that's the main key idea here.
David Maldow: One more thought on Docs. There was one thing I didn't like about Docs. I actually created a video, which I haven't published yet, and before I had a chance to complain about it, Zoom fixed it.
So my problem was–I went into Docs and I wrote a big prompt, “I want a document that does this and this and this,” and it hit enter and it created the document and deleted my prompt. And I’m used to using ChatGPT to have a conversation about the document, so I got really mad. And I said, “What I want is I want to paddle on the side with my AI companion talking about the doc. And that's what they just gave us.
Craig Durr: They bring AI front and center.
Well, okay… much like my foosball game. Well, I should say they are doing much better than my foosball game. I'm losing two nothing here, right? Alright, let's go ahead and wrap this update. I really appreciate the insights. We're gonna look forward to some of these videos from you, right?
David Maldow: Yes, on my YouTube channel.
Craig Durr: Okay, perfect. Everyone, this is Craig Durr from The Collab Collective; Dave Maldow from Let's Do Video, here at Zoomtopia.
