BuiltOnAir

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

In this episode, we chat with Jeremy Oglesby, a software developer, and Airtable Community Leader. Jeremy recalls his experience searching for a way to simplify the data-entry process for cataloging equipment for his job, and how that search led him to Airtable. Today, Jeremy is a familiar presence on the Airtable Community forums, and he uses his adept knowledge to help newbies and developers alike in troubleshooting their own bases. He explains how he uses Airtable for just about anything, including scoring board game results. That’s right, Jeremy walks us through an Airtable base he made to ease the game-night headache of accurately reporting the winner after a game of “7 Wonders,” a complex board game with so many variables in the scorecard that only a database would do.

Visit Jeremy’s website and portfolio.

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BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

Today on the podcast, we chat with Chris Dancy. Chris’s lifestyle of tracking personal data - from his heart rate and step count to social interactions and household inventory - has earned him the moniker of “The Most Connected Man on Earth”. Seriously, Google the words, “Most Connected”, and see who comes up!

Chris has made a name for himself as a speaker, author, and professional in the technology and health care industries. He has been featured across numerous platforms including Showtime’s ‘Dark Net’, the BBC, NPR, and Wired Magazine. When our interview was scheduled, Chris’s impressive resume and the topic of his “Life Stack” - which he has been tracking in Airtable now for over a year - was to be the primary focus of our chat. Enter coronavirus.

With many of his events postponed due to the pandemic, Chris decided to use the extra time to do something to serve his community. Using Airtable, he created a “Neighborhood Volunteer and Help System”. The Base makes use of form views to capture submissions from neighbors, who can share what resources and skills they have to offer in the event of an emergency. He shared a link to the base on NextDoor (a neighborhood-based social media platform), and then a templated version with the Airtable Community. Airtable themselves reached out to Chris and published the template on the Airtable Universe. It is now being used in neighborhoods across the globe.

In today’s episode, Chris demos his Covid-19 Neighborhood Base, as well as his “Life Stack”. All of his data is color-coded and categorized according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - making it visually appealing and easy to sort through. This episode is surely not one to be missed!

Chris's Website 

Neighborhood Support for COVID19 - Universe

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BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

In this episode, we’re joined by Kuovonne Vorderbruggen, who discusses with us her journey from teaching herself coding to ultimately producing multiple scripts recognized by Airtable and the Airtable Community for their merit. Drawing on her experience as a technical writer, Kuovonne’s scripts come well-documented with detailed explanations of the script’s methodology, and have a consistent, intuitive structure which makes them easy to follow. We discuss the joys and headaches that come with problem-solving through coding. Later, Kuovonne shares her spectacular process to create preformatted, multi-page PDFs using a combination of Airtable, Excel, Microsoft Access, and Word. With Airtable as the user-friendly database, Kuovonne shows us how she’s able to ultimately get dozens of records exported from Airtable to be displayed perfectly with rich text in Word with the aid of Visual Basic coding. While it’s a bit of a complicated process, it’s an excellent example of how Airtable can be used as just one step in a larger workflow to accomplish something great.

Visit Kuovonne’s website and portfolio

Check out a couple of Kuovonne’s scripts shared on the Airtable Community forums:

New Record Wizard

Delete Empty Records

Record Info Helper Function

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BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

On today’s episode, we speak with Bill French: technology innovator and entrepreneur. Bill founded Global Technologies Corporation in 1981, giving him over 30 years of experience in software products and services. You may recognize his name from the Airtable Community Forum, where he regularly shares his advice, professional insight and tools he has built with Airtable.

When a company using Airtable reached out for Bill’s help in 2016, he was quickly compelled by the product’s logical and sleek design. He could see the value that a “no-code” environment provides users. However, Bill also expertly points out that “no-code” is also code for “potentially limiting”, which is where he comes in.

When it comes to adding new features, Bill often tells his clients to “add plumbing, rather than a second kitchen sink”. He thoughtfully applies this to Airtable’s new scripting block. If Airtable is a kitchen sink, the scripting block is new plumbing allowing us to build what we want. We discuss the block at length, and get to see some of the awesome things he has built.

Bill shows us a few scripts he has written for the new block, complete with many tips and tricks. He demonstrates “BlockChaining”, in which he is able to run one block after another. Check out the show notes for a link to the post Bill wrote about this. He also shows us “Dot”. “Dot” is a program he wrote in the scripting block, which he calls a tribute to an early program called dBase, which was navigated by a dot prompt line. Dot allows Bill to drill down into his tables to sift through his data in more advanced ways.

Learn more about Bill and Global Technologies Corporation

Bill’s Airtable Community Forum Profile

Bill’s Post About BlockChaining

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BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at https://openside.com 

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

On today’s episode, we speak with Gabe Caldwell - Director of Partnerships at Formstack. You may have heard of Formstack before; they are a huge player in document automation, esignatures, and data collection. And now, thanks to Airtable’s recent release of 5 new partner blocks, Formstack Documents can seamlessly become part of your Airtable base.

Since the release of the block, Gabe says they’ve been delighted to see the various use cases and creative ways Airtable users are employing the integration. From invoices and proposals to letters or receipts, Gabe walks us through how easy it is to create documents from your Airtable records with the Formstack Documents Block. After just a few steps to create your account and connect it to Airtable, your document templates are pulled directly into the block in your base.

From here, users can select a record - or multiple records - to fill in their document template. You can even save these documents right back to the records in your base; a feature that is noticeably missing from Airtable’s native Page Designer.

It doesn’t stop there, either. Formstack offers tons of tools to automate your processes; including Formstack Sign, and Formstack Forms. Check out the show notes to learn more about Formstack and the exciting new integration with Airtable.

About Formstack

Formstack's Airtable Integration

Airtable's Blog Post About New Partner Blocks

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BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at https://openside.com 

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

In this Bonus Episode, we explore Airtable in Spanish. This is our first Spanish episode for the Spanish speaking community. Please be aware there is a slight disconnect from our audio to video. 

We are joined by Elias Gomez, from Bilbao Spain. He is a technology and Wordpress developer as well as a DJ. In this episode, we learn about Elias' love for Airtable and how he uses it to run his entire DJ Events business, from managing his song library, his customers and events, to invoicing and sales. It’s a great insight to using Airtable to run a complete business all in one place.

English:

Elias is 36 years old and lives in Bilbao, Spain. He studied Application Development and has worked a short period as a programmer, starting his own Web Development Studio called Estuio NS, where he has worked for more than 10 years, especially with Wordpress and now has a podcast covering it.

On the other hand, one of his passions has turned into a career: music.  Since 2004, Elias has been a professional DJ, having done more than a decade of weddings and events, completing more than 600 parties and events.

In addition, as a fan of technology, he has started a podcast about the internet and technology, is a former Google Product Expert, a member of the Wordpress Community in Bilbao, among many other interests.

Spanish:

Elías tiene 36 años y vive en Bilbao. Estudio Desarrollo de Aplicaciones Informáticas, y tras trabajar un breve tiempo como programador, fundio su propio estudio de diseño y desarrollo web llamado Estudio NS, en el que ha trabajado más de 10 años, especialmente con WordPress y ahora teine un podcast.

Por otro lado, una de sus pasiones se ha convertido en una actividad laboral: la música. Desde 2004 Elias es Dj profesional, y lleva más de una década amenizando bodas y eventos como Dj animador, habiendo realizado más de 600 eventos y fiestas.

Además, una de sus aficiones es la tecnología, lo que se ha llevado a empezar un podcast sobre internet y tecnología, a formar parte del programa Expertos de Productos de Google, y a ser miembro de la comunidad WordPress Bilbao, entre otras muchas cosas.

See more on Elias here. 

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BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

In this episode, we chat with Hannah Wiginton of Abilene, Texas, the Communications and Grants Director for New Horizons, a non-profit organization for foster families. We discuss the various programs New Horizons offers for prospective foster parents, as well as for the foster kids themselves, from family placement to counseling. In addition to her work at New Horizons, Hannah also freelances as a web designer and content creator. Hanna gives us a rundown of how she’s able to balance these two careers, and the day-to-day experience as both a non-profit grant writer, as well as a freelancer. Later, Hannah walks us through her Book Tracker Airtable base, which has allowed her to stay organized around her third passion: reading. Her base tracks the books she’s read, books she’s been recommended, and the ones next on her “to read” list. Her base employs a metrics table and several views to give her the rewarding feedback of not only how many books she’s read year-over-year, but the number of words too! Hannah put her base on the Airtable Universe to help others who need a simple way to set a goal, like reading more, and tracking their progress on reaching it.

Learn more about New Horizons. 

Visit Hannah’s website and portfolio.

Copy Hannah’s Book Tracker base from the Airtable Universe. 

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View the video demo from this episode  

BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

In this episode, we’re joined by Christine Prefontaine, the co-founder of Loup Design & Innovation and co-inventor of StoryEngine.io. Loup is a consultancy with a mission to help private sector and non-profit firms alike better serve their clients through “human-centered design,” which places an emphasis on open communication and frequent reflective learning. In order to help her own clients reach their goals of becoming stronger teams, Christine began using Airtable to help keep her own team on track. We briefly go over two articles written by Loup team members, which discuss their strategies for project and asset management, with Airtable as the CRM. Christine walks us through their CRM base, which allows the team to group tasks and subtasks together from all phases of a project, from ideation to completion. Later, Christine shares how her team was able to use an Airtable base with just one table to track interviewees across the run of a community outreach project or recruitment process.

Read the article on Program Management

And the article on Asset Management

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BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

In today’s episode, we speak with Victor Feliciano, a true jack of all trades with expertise in Operations Management. Victor has run a national call center in the hospitality industry, owned his own pool league, and now is the founder of Master Book Flippers: an online service that helps Amazon Book Sellers source their products.

After getting frustrated with the limitations of Google Sheets and Excel, Victor found Airtable and began using it to manage his book inventory in the summer of 2017. Since then, he’s added numerous bells and whistles and even has started helping other online booksellers to create and manage their own Airtable databases.

The Base Victor shares with us today is his Customers and Subscription Tracker, where he has expertly made use of junction tables to accurately track his subscriptions and the versions and rates of each. Included in this base is a Daily Emails Table, where he uses Zapier to automate the sending of links to the individual bases he creates for each of his customers.

Another great feature of Victor’s base is his creative use of Views. As a workaround for the lack of organizational tools when it comes to a base with many Views, Victor uses emojis in his View names to break the list into easily distinguishable sections.

Check out the show notes for links to learn more about Master Book Flippers and Victor’s Airtable Consulting.

Learn more about Master Book Flippers

Victor’s Airtable Consulting

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View the video demo from this episode 

BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

In this episode, we talk to Chris Ortolano of MilwaukieRIP, a community outreach organization that works with urban planners and other community members on land use and transportation planning efforts in Milwaukie and Portland, Oregon. Chris has been active in his community for over 20 years, and specializes in summarizing for the greater public the important takeaways from the many, many public meetings relating to a planning project. We discuss some of the biggest issues faced by Milwaukie today, the benefits of infill development, and the challenges to creating affordable neighborhoods through city-driven initiatives. Chris shares his perspective on common roadblocks to the implementation of planning initiatives, such as access to public transit and community weariness to change.

In a major city like Milwaukie, there could be many different agencies attempting to tackle pressing issues like housing affordability at once, but these agencies may not always be working in tandem. Chris shares with us his solution, which uses Airtable to store, categorize, and share information on the numerous planning efforts going on in the City. His Urban Planning Tracker base allows him to have a contact list, a meeting tracker, and a precedent library in an all-in-one easy-to-use solution.

See Milwaukie RIP’s Facebook page

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn

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View the video demo from this episode  

BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com.