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.

This week we welcome on the show Nat Eliason, founder of Growth Machine. Nat was a blogger, app developer and digital nomad for years before creating his current company. Now he uses Airtable internally to help businesses master their content strategy and development on any subject or market segment.

Growth Machine is currently a 7 person team of people working together with the common goal of enabling businesses to tell a content story with their message. Things have been going so well that Nat’s recent time has been taken by hiring more people to double their team size. He talks about the pros and cons of transferring to being a founder that runs the company instead of doing the majority of his work “in the trenches.”

Nat lists the top tools used in the company including Zapier, Asana and (obviously) Airtable. The company is using Airtable particularly to help streamline a “writer matchmaking” service that allows them to find good writers quickly for each project or subject matter. As part of the development process, Growth Machine opened the door to writers on every subject to figuratively raise their hand and become a part of their database of writers, so that when the company has a need for a particular subject they can connect their clients to the work quickly via their writers database.

The Airtable walkthrough Nat shares is a personal CRM he built to keep track of contacts in his circle. The base allows for categorizing contacts based on their primary work industry, interests and location. Filtering contacts based on these things then becomes an easy task, and Nat actually used the feature to find people in his circles that do sales as he was looking for a new team member in that field.

His base also tracks the company each contact works with, and “how they met” in order to provide a quick memory jogger and give easy icebreakers when re-connecting. He also takes random notes on relevant details of the relationship with each person he includes in his CRM. 

The brilliance of Nat’s personal CRM he built within Airtable is that he made it to match his way of working, and kept the whole thing very simple (and free). 

Visit the Growth Machine website for blog articles and resources | 

Learn more about Nat on his personal blog | 

Connect with Nat on twitter | @nateliason

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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 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.

This episode we welcome Anton Preisinger, founder and director of Northwest Hospitality, a non-profit focused on simple needs outreach for the homeless. Based in Washington state, he focuses on decentralized service and bringing real help to people wherever they are.

The majority of Northwest Hospitality’s backend is done with Airtable. He has one primary management database that covers several aspects of the work. During his showcase of this base, Anton talks about various challenges and issues he came across while developing the base, then what he did to find solutions to each one categorically. 

The base helps the non-profit to do things differently than is traditionally done by allowing various metrics to be tracked and updated without a large hassle, including gift cards and supplies inventory distributed to homeless people in the community. Anton shows how some of these metrics are interacted with within the Airtable framework, and how efforts from volunteers are organized.

Airtable Blocks has played a big part in expanding the possibilities with the base also, and Anton goes more in depth on the various functions and uses for each block added to the base.

Anton is currently developing a base to distribute haircut vouchers to homeless people that is simple and streamlined, without a lot of paperwork or other churn that normally accompanies the process of getting needs met in an organized way. He describes his enthusiasm for Airtable by saying that “each time you make a new base it’s like Christmas!”

Learn more about Northwest Hospitality and contribute or volunteer on their website | 

Find Anton and his other bases in Airtable Universe | 

UPDATE Jan 2020: Anton informed us that an additional resource to help the homeless has been added to their website that overlays a slick UI on an Airtable backend. You can see it here! 

Sign up for the BuiltOnAir newsletter! | 

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 https://openside.com

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each week, 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.

This week we welcome Robert DeLanghe, a workflow consultant from Brooklyn, NY. 

Robert is a polymath whose experiences and interests have spanned the gambit from the arts to data, design, manufacturing, coding, and more. His academic background is in Architecture and Sculpture. When he moved to New York City in 2013, he immersed himself in the maker scene and specialized in digital fabrication collaborations with artists and designers. Then he worked in production management at Roll & Hill, a luxury lighting design and fabrication studio. This drew him into the world of reporting and data analysis, which he continues to explore in his current pursuits. In his own words, he works better in a state of “constant frustration”.

Onscreen, Robert gives us a peek under the hood of his awesome Rock Paper Scissors game that he built in Airtable. His creation is the winner of Airtable’s recent Formula Contest, and Robert illustrates how he leverages Airtable’s forms, formulas, and Page Designer block – plus his own analytical skill and creativity – to construct this delightful diversion. He also gives us a sneak peek into his next game-building project in Airtable: a base that allows you and your friends to play blackjack!

Play Rock Paper Scissors! | 

View Robert’s bases on Airtable Universe | 

Check out more of Robert’s work on his website | 

Sign up for the BuiltOnAir newsletter! |

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 https://openside.com.

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each week, 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.

This week we welcome Remy Margerum from Santa Barbara, CA. Remy is CFO of Nomad Goods, who describe themselves – appropriately – as “the Patagonia of iPhone accessories”. 

Nomad sells their sleek cases, cables, and other gear on their own e-commerce website as well as via wholesale channels, so their product and order management system needs to be able to handle inputs and calculations for a myriad of scenarios.

Although Remy’s official title deals with Finances, his systems and data science background allows to lend a lot to the evolution of Nomad’s internal operations. He has created an astounding base in Airtable that functions as an enterprise resource planning solution for Nomad.

Remy leads us through a thorough deep-dive into the Nomad Goods Backend base. He walks us through the general structure of adding products and placing a wholesale order. We take a look at some of the advanced functions he’s built into the base and how they use Page Designer to generate shipping documents. Remy also discusses their approach to keeping their data secure in Airtable, while allowing their team the flexibility to use data however they need.

Visit the Nomad Goods store | 

Sign up for the BuiltOnAir newsletter! |

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 https://openside.com.

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each week, 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.

This episode, we welcome Vincent Tang from Orlando, Florida. Vincent is an e-commerce product manager and workflow specialist. He works for a company that builds and designs restaurants, and he has helped hundreds of restaurants grow from concept to successful franchise.

Vincent built out his company’s product database and purchase-order system through Airtable. During his free time, he loves to explore new tools and writes popular blogs on them. He even writes his own software – some of which is used by hundreds of Airtable users! He speaks at technical developer conferences and has won multiple hackathons.

During his demo, Vincents shows us two Airtable tools he’s created: one that allow non-Airtable users to collaborate on data from Airtable in Google Sheet, and another that allows you to download and rename images stored in Airtable. He also gives us a tour of an Airtable CRM he built for a nonprofit that helps rehabilitate homeless back into society. 

Vincent gives us a three part demo:

• A tool he’s created to quickly collaborate with non-Airtable users via Google Sheets

• A tool he’s created to bulk download and rename images uploaded to Airtable

• A CRM base he built for a nonprofit organization that helps rehabilitate homeless back into society

Visit Vincent’s website and blog | 

Demo slides | 

Bulk image downloader |

Sign up for the BuiltOnAir newsletter! |

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 https://openside.com

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each week, 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.

This week, we welcome Mack McGowen from Garden Valley, Texas. Mack is Solutions Development Manager at MercyShips, a non-profit whose fully-equipped floating hospital ship provides free surgeries and medical care to patients in Africa and other places around the globe where healthcare may otherwise be unavailable. Additionally, they also provide training to local doctors and nurses in their host nation.

Mack is super passionate about working for an organization that makes such an impact on the quality of life for others. As Solutions Development Manager, Mack’s job is to scope out ideas and projects to improve the structure and systems that make MercyShips run. Although his duties do occasionally include putting out fires (hopefully not literally), Mack spends a lot of time building for the future, instead of being reactionary.

To help facilitate internal meetings more smoothly, Mack built an Airtable base that integrates with Table2Site, an app that allows you to build no-code websites using Airtable as a CMS. His website acts a collaboration tool that people can use on their phone or laptops during meetings to identify their “pains, gains, and goals”. This more concrete approach to brainstorming has allowed their meetings to become more potent and ensure everyone’s voice is heard equally.

Visit builtonair.com to sign up for the BuiltOnAir mailing list, where you can get weekly updates on new podcast episodes and other fun Airtable things.

Watch more about MercyShips | 

Get involved with MercyShips |

Read Mac’s post on his Airtable brainstorming tool | 

Sign up for the BuiltOnAir newsletter! |

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 https://openside.com.

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each week, 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.

Sherman Sanders is a founding member of the Gryphon Games and Comics Cooperative in Fort Collins, CO. Now in its thirteenth year, Gryphon has evolved beyond a store into a popular play space. They host programs most days of the week for Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, and more. Most recently, Gryphon is working on transitioning to a co-op to further their connection with the local gaming community they’ve cultivated over the years.

Sherman has found that Airtable is the perfect tool to manage game nights at Gryphon. His base Gryphon Guild Ventures tracks event dates, player attendance, and even rewards for frequent participants. His shop employees are trained to keep the base updated during their shifts via forms so Sherman can enjoy his evenings off and know exactly how game night went.

Sherman also shares another base, Forbidden Lands, which is a slick RPG campaign organizer he built for his personal games. He makes great use of the Kanban View to share info with his Players that he can update live as the campaign unfolds. 

Check out Sherman’s base on Airtable Universe | 

Explore Gryphon’s products and events | 

Sign up for the BuiltOnAir newsletter! 

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 https://openside.com.

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each week, 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.

Will Christensen lives in Athens, GA and is the co-founder, innovation at DataAutomation, a systems integration and automation company that helps businesses become more efficient. Data Automation services all kinds of clients, but their particular niche is in the close-knit community of e-commerce.

Before rebuilding their clients’ systems, Will and his team do an automation audit of a company’s existing process, and speak to as many employees as possible to learn what is working and what isn’t at a micro level. Reception to new, automated systems can necessitate a huge culture shift in a company, and Will is conscious of how to facilitate that shift.

At Data Automation, Will mainly uses Airtable as part of an app stack whenever they need user to be able to easily and quickly view or edit data, and it’s also helpful for mapping and lookup tables.

During his demo, Will shows us an awesome website he built called Seller Software, a “handy-dandy software directory for Amazon Sellers”. It’s an aggregation of several hundred hours of research and curation on almost every Amazon Seller app out there.

The Airtable magic happens behind the scenes, as he had built out an Airtable base with all this app data in it that he wanted to use as a content management system for the website. Naturally, being a fan of DIY integrated solutions, Will built his own custom plugin to connect his base to the back end of his site, allowing him to combine the flexibility and power of Wordpress themes with the database capabilities and easy editing of Airtable. So as he continues to update the software directory in Airtable, changes are seamlessly pushed to the Seller Software website.

Email Will if you’re interested in learning more about the Wordpress + Airtable integration shown in his demo | [email protected]

Data Automation’s site | 

Round Sphere tech incubator | 

Sign up for the BuiltOnAir newsletter! |

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 week, 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.

Jon Gann is an Events & Organizational Strategist from Washington, DC. Jon is probably best known for his contributions in the film festival world, and he’s done a lot to catalyze the sharing of institutional knowledge in what can be a fairly opaque industry. 

After attending many fests as a filmmaker himself, Jon started the DC SHORTS film festival and is a founding Board Member of the Film Festival Alliance, the first professional organization for film festivals.

Jon has since turned to consulting to help film festivals and other organizations improve almost any facet of their event planning and process. Since finding Airtable, he uses it often as tool to help improve data organization and sharing amongst event teams.

He gives us a super-potent demo of a version of his Airtable base name “Fest Runner”, which does an elegant job of capturing the thousands of data points needed to plan and execute a film festival – from films submissions, to scheduling, to filmmaker airport pickups, and beyond.

Check out more of Jon’s work and services | 

Get his FestRunner base on Airtable Universe | 

Sign up for the BuiltOnAir newsletter! https://builtonair.com/subscribe

View the video demo from this episode | https://youtu.be/y5fwKI7_N5k 

BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. Visit https://openside.com for products and services that will take your Airtable to the next level. Use promo code BUILTONAIR for a one-time $20 credit off of any purchase.

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each week, 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.

This episode features Sam Coster, co-founder of Butterscotch Shenanigans, an independent video game studio based in St. Louis, Missouri. 

Butterscotch’s origin story is unique – it was created by three brothers (Sam, Seth, and Adam) who all had a wealth of unrelated formal education but minimal industry experience. Sam talks about their evolution as a studio, how they’re learning to run a better business, and how their creative process flows.

Sam shows us the Airtable base he built to develop the structure and flow of their newest game, Levelhead, down to the music tracks for each level.

And as a quick bonus, Sam shows us a personal base build called “The WhereHouse”, where he used his phone to easily photograph and catalog all the random items in his basement, so he’d never double-buy super glue again.

Butterscotch’s latest release, Levelhead, is available in April 2019. Levelhead is a level-building platformer where players become designers, and can share what they’ve built with the world.

Get Levelhead on Steam 

View all things Butterscotch Shenanigans 

Sign up for the BuiltOnAir newsletter!

View the video demo from this episode 

BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. Visit https://openside.com for products and services that will take your Airtable to the next level. Use promo code BUILTONAIR for a one-time $20 credit off of any purchase.