The Chronicles of Curious Characters

My name is Knightwise. I've been a cross-platform geek since the 90s.

I've been podcasting since the beginning of the 20th century, 21st century.

And I've been a long time friend with Conrad and who has decided today to grill me,

put me in the hot seat and fire whatever questions he wants to give. So I'm all yours.

Thank you, Knightwise, for this great introduction. Indeed, we are actually meeting at your place, at your studio.

Very nice for the listeners. Of course, you don't see it, so let me just describe you the venue.

We are sitting at the wooden desk, handmade wooden desk. We have nice wooden, how do you call this? It's... Paneling.

Paneling, thank you. Because it's seven in the morning, to be honest, and Sunday. So my brain is...

Slowly started to build up. Yes, exactly. There are a lot of stage lights behind Knightwise,

so I look at them directly and actually I feel like I'm being filmed as well. And it's,

a beautiful weather outside, birds are singing, you don't hear them now, maybe you will hear

them sometime during this recording.

Yes, and we know each other for for some time. I think we we got to know each other in 2007 2006,

I was still a young and beautiful university student in Maastricht and you were like you said

you were a cross-platform geek and maybe for our listeners if you could explain who and what

not what, but who is a cross-platform geek?

Is that a job? Is that a hobby? What is it?

It's geekery gone wild.

I went on the Internet back in 1993.

And by the time we met, I was already in IT professionally. And I liked to dabble with computers.

One of the things I've always had at the back of my mind as kind of a philosophy is that you could, that you must be able to do with technology what you want. It has to work for you.

And for me, I like to jump around from operating system to operating system. I was never tied to the big religions. I would meet up people and they would go like, yeah, Windows is the best.

You would get your first Mac and he's like Mac is the best, but I always wanted to jump around

between them. So I came up with this cross-platform geek philosophy where in the, in, in the first 20,

years of, of my podcast, the goal was how can I find applications or, or processes or systems that

work across, uh, whatever hardware that you own.

And it doesn't, you, you shouldn't be locked in by, by vendors or brands.

So where they...

Where you had the specialized geeks who would have podcasts and blogs about

just one brand or just one type of hardware.

I would love to piss everybody off at the same time and go like Linux, Windows, Mac at the same time

trying to find solutions. And I remember actually the one person that you pissed at least at that moment long time ago it was me.

Because I was listening to your podcast. What was the the name of the podcast? The Nightcast. The Nightcast. But no, it was also the podcast with

the Aussie Geek Podcast. I started out with the Nightcast in 2005 and I met up with two

other podcasters in the beginning, a Brit and a Canadian. Afterwards, a Brit and a Canadian and

an Australian. And we did the Aussie Geek Podcast. And I remember that moment you were actually

saying something about the superiority of Mac computers.

I was young, I was young and full of it. You were young and I was also young, but I was the poor student who could never afford

a Mac and who always wanted a Mac. So then I said like, how a computer who no one can

afford, well, at least students like me could not afford, can be the best computer? And

And I remember we, I think we, I wrote an email to the show and I don't remember the

content right now or if it was a really long email or a short one, but I remember I wrote

an email and that's how our exchange and friendship started.

Yeah. one of the, one of the few listeners that was in my time zone.

Indeed, yeah. You and, uh, there were so few that, uh, I can actually name a lot of them.

Gerard was there as well, both becoming longtime friends of the show, both having, that's the beauty of podcasting, a profound impact on my life.

A good friendship, uh, Gerard, uh, was essential when I started my own company.

I have learned many, many things from this man and that's how we started. Yeah.

Yeah. I pissed, as my relationships with most people go, mostly I start with by pissing them off

and then we become friends or mortal enemies.

It's like love through hatred, something like that. It is, it is, because I think the most,

I have a couple of people who I have a very high degree of respect for because we clashed.

And I love people who disagree with me and who go toe-to-toe with me,

because then I go like, okay, I have to, I have to, they make an effort to make a statement,

and to clash, and that's always the basis of a good relationship.

And makes you think, okay, maybe there's a different approach.

Maybe what I'm saying, or maybe what they're saying is not necessarily true,

or the truth is somewhere in the middle, right?

The truth is somewhere in the middle. To settle this age-old argument, I still think...

And this has changed over time that the combination of having a closed ecosystem,

where you both build the hardware and software is the best basis for an operating system.

That used to be true in 2007. It has changed over time. I will never say that it was that there is

one of the major brands, Windows, Linux, Mac, that is the best because I still use them every single

day, but back in those days, I came from a windows computer that was, you know, you were

just coming out of XP.

It was a little bit of a disaster.

Um, and then you get your first Mac.

I got my first Mac in 2004.

And of course it's a, it's an eye opener. Looking back, the fact that that machine still

works is quite amazing.

It's quite amazing. So that there's a point in there. Well, you said that XP was a disaster. I remember Windows Millennium.

Oh God, the name that shall not be spoken. I have no idea how many people committed suicide because of this operating system.

I got into IT professionally in 1996. Sorry, in 2000. I got into the biz when I met my wife.

And in 1999, I made the step into a professional role in IT and I worked in a computer shop.

So I really remember Windows 95, okay.

Windows 95 SE, okay. Windows 98 was actually pretty good. Windows 98 Gold was fantastic.

I'm showing my age here. Windows 2000 was revolutionary.

Windows ME was just retarded. It was like, what the, what is this?

Yes, I've well, not suicide, but driven to insanity or at least the massive, the most

massive rollback I've seen in the Windows population.

I remember distinctly Windows ME coming out being a big buzz.

And two, three weeks later, people literally coming back with an OEM copy of Millennium

Going like, do what the frack you want, please install that 98 stuff that you had before, we'll roll back.

Yeah. So you mentioned that your IT career started by you starting to work in a computer shop.

How long did you did you work there and what did you do over the years?

Going back to I'm I was born in in 74 so I'm going towards my my fifth decennium.

I was born the son of a beer salesman who went house to house to sell drinks we had a I have two brothers we had our own company and the family for two generations.

And, um, my, I was the youngest of the three, uh, my two brothers are 12 and

15 years older than I am.

So I came kind of, you know, quite late, quite late. I was, I was, I was the, that was the final release.

I, they were just the two betas.

And, um, I guess my path was set out. I would work in my father's company.

School was a disaster. I've actually never formally finished high school until I was 19 when I was

still in my fourth year.

So I actually still had two years to go, but I had, you know doubled what we

call double a year when you fail a year, you have to take it again.

So I was, I was kind of done with school. So I was 18 and I started to work in my father's company.

And then it was like, wait a minute, I don't really want to do this.

And I decided I'm going to go back to school. So I thought I'd get my remote diploma where, you know, it's like high school by mail.

I'd do that.

So I went to the institution that arranges all of that. And they said like, why don't you become an educator, work with disabled people,

work with child, with children that have had a bad time going to the care sector.

And I went like, I never thought of that. Doesn't sound like a bad plan. So I came back the next day.

During lunch. We were, I had worked in the company in the morning and we ever,

everybody was having the lunch break and I announced, you know, I'm going back to school.

And my parents were furious. I pressed on. I said, this is what I want to do. So I went against my

father's and my mother's wishes, who saw free labor walk out the door, which is not always a

bad thing if you're a small entrepreneur. That's like one third of your slave forces just rebelled.

And I went to school and they were very skeptical and my first term.

This was, you know, me flunking school all over the place and my first term I was, I was the best of the class and I finished three years magna cum laude.

And somehow it clicked. I worked with handicapped people, I worked with disabled people, I worked with longtime drug addicts.

So, I've worked in a psychiatric ward.

I've never seen shit fly like that, literally. It was very adventurous, I can tell you that.

Yeah, yeah, it's like one flew over the cuckoo's nest, a little less graphic, but yeah, I saw

a lot of human feces flying around.

But then, the fourth year, I met my wife, my wife-to-be. And she was absolutely this, this gorgeous, gorgeous girl that I

immediately fell in love with.

And we, we connected. I made her a very romantic mixed tape, which I actually talked into, which

was my technically my very first podcast that scored me the woman of my life.

So I made her a mixtape telling her how I felt and some music.

It was 1993. I was young. It was the thing to do.

And we connected, and the first time I went to her house, I was very nervous because I got to meet her dad.

Her dad was this teacher who was very strict and very intelligent, brilliant, brilliant man.

And I had my first computer by then. I bought a Pentium One to do my reports for school.

And I had a video card, didn't work.

So I had bought it at this store and I asked, you know, yeah, my dad knows something about

computers. And Saskia said, I went, oh, maybe I can ask him. Yeah, sure. Ask him.

So I walked up to this and I said, really? TV card doesn't work. Oh, it's okay. Bring your,

bring your box, bring the beige box next time. We'll take a look at it. So next day I go up,

and, you know, kiss his daughter.

And I've got my little beige box with me and he takes me upstairs to this office.

It's 1993, internet is slowly dawning.

The first Pentium clones are there.

And this guy opens up this door and it's like a room packed with computers, CDs,

CD burners that came straight off the testing line at Phillips, you know, stuff like that.

This was like cat's meow.

And this guy was into computers.

It was an early adopter and he actually helped found one of the bay, one of the main computer stores that I got my machine.

They were good friends.

And he sat me down and we started tinkering and by 9.30 in the evening I came back down and there

was his daughter, my wife, sitting at the kitchen table waiting for me. And this is how it went for.

The next two years. I would go to my girlfriend and her dad would be like enthusiastically

waiting for me and he would be, you know, he pulled me. I was the son he never had,

had, he had three daughters and he was the dad I never had in that role.

So he was my mentor. So he pulled me in.

After a year, he would take me to the shop because on a Sunday he would do the technical

service, you know, the IT repair service that would be done by him and a couple of his friends.

And, uh, he took me along.

So I learned the trade on the job and there was one day where there was a really angry

client who wanted to go to the technical department and complain.

So this guy's flying to the back of the shop and I am near the door and I stop

him and I call him him down. I go like, okay, sir, what's the problem?

This is a problem.

And suddenly I become this firewall in between the technical guys and, and the

store, and I managed to calm this client down and translate the problem and, and,

you know, de-escalate the situation and actually make the customer happy.

Take the customer back to the shop, have him buy something, and take him back to the counter

to wait for his machine.

And the guy leaves, the machine's repaired, and the owner turns to me and he says like,

I got to keep my eye on you. And the day that I got my degree as an educator, I called my mother-in-law

as I, as you do. I graduated. And my mother-in-law, dear woman, says like, oh, that's so nice.

And 20 minutes later, my phone rings and it's the guy from the computer show. He said,

i heard you graduated yeah want to come work for me and the next day i i went into it i worked

there for for two years that's a that's a huge switch between working with disabled people and

people with psychological you know issues and then work with it um during job interviews i've

always used this joke i said i worked with you know psychiatric patients and disabled people

and mentally retarded people, so nothing's changed.

I kind of knew you would say that, but after I said it, then I realized.

I literally, I used that joke during a job interview.

It's a switch, yes and no.

Looking back in hindsight, 2020, I do know that a career is a combination of multiple skills.

I had the commercial skills that I learned at home.

I've been raised in between, you know, always, always customers, always seeing customers,

always seeing how to deal with customers at the social side where I learned to listen,

and active listening is listening to somebody and then reiterating what they're saying,

in terms that they understand or that are translated. And yet the nerdery, well, yeah,

I just got, I got really good schooling. I, we worked at the, the name of the store was Bell's computer store.

And when you work there, it was like you, you, you'd have an enormously high, you would

have a great reference.

It was like at Bells, you learn how to do this.

This was an enormously successful shop.

Uh, they would learn, we would do everything. I don't know that we would build the PCs by hand.

So you will, you would learn at the assembly line with, uh, with the, the, the father of

of the company with Jean teaching you how it's done. And no, no, that's how you do it, that's how you do it.

To this day, if I open up an old beige box, I can say if it's a Bells PC, yes or no.

By the way the cables are organized, there was only one way you did it.

The technical side we learned from Kurt, which was the younger brother of the family.

This is a family owned business.

And Kurt was, artistical was a big thing, but he was really bad with clients,

but he was brilliant with technology, but it was also incredibly impatient.

So he had a very high standard and you had to meet that standard.

So you learn the hard way.

You know, you would.

Reinstall a PC and you go to Cursing, you're like, yeah, I did this. And it went like,

but you didn't do that format. What do you mean format? Oh, you didn't do the auto exec bots.

Right. I'll fix it. No, no, no, we don't fix reinstall. So it was like, you learned. And I

think that that was a combination of having these three skills and making the switch.

And it was 2000, the year, it was the year that you, you, the job interviews would be,

for the professional, for the really big, the bigger companies would have the job interviews

in the Mercedes or in the BMW garages to, to just get a crowd. And I didn't have a degree

in anything. I just said, you know, give me experience. I'll work for it. And that's how I

got started. So you work with the clients, the store, you learned how to assemble hardware.

Yep. What else did you do? And at the technical side, I would do the fixing and stuff like that.

But even at that point, it was starting to go not sideways, but I was starting to go more and more

towards a customer facing role where they would say you're good with clients. So the second year,

they sent me to one of their affiliate stores in, um, in,

Mosmachale, which is, uh, for your listeners, how to explain it's, it's, we have the province of Limburg where, where we

live, we have different mentalities.

When you go up to the, the, the, the side of the river, most you come into it, uh, the more Dutch oriented part of the

country, it's, it's really near the border and the mentality is totally different.

These, these people are ultra assertive. They are, they are for us as Southerners are rude.

And I got shoved there. And I remember physically having at one day, physically having to stop somebody

to, to go back and talk to our technician. I'm going to talk to him and I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

So I had to physically hold him, which was for us a big shock.

But the next day, this guy would come in with like a kilogram of strawberries.

Go like, you fixed my computer. And so I learned pretty quickly, they were like, okay, these people are just, they're

not nuts.

They're not rude. They're just really open with their emotions.

So yeah, that's, that's one of the main, the main things that I did there was either, well,

sell things or, or well translate, you know, the computer doesn't do this.

And then I would have to translate that into something the technician would understand.

And then the technician would blab something.

There's a bad sector on the hard drive.

Fuck how do I explain this to an 80 to a 60 year old woman I said like you have records at home

she said yes I said you sometimes have you know one of the records that has a scratch

so you know it keeps like repeating yes yes same thing with your hard drive oh but then I need a

new one exactly so that's that's the the main thing I did that was an interpreter I love that

And over the years, have you always been in that role or have you done something else?

I've always been in between the customer and the digital side. I've had roles as an IT manager,

an IT coordinator, project manager, a lot of project management work, functional analysts,

literally translating software requirements into something the guys can build. Yeah,

It's always been around that. I don't like the pure technical side and the very commercial side.

I'm really bad at paperwork, so I'm always in the middle, but I always find myself somewhere in that region.

But if I'm not mistaken, you're able also to code, right? You use the command line, you have done some coding.

No, no. Hello, world. I can just manage and I can really write retarded bash scripts.

I do dabble around the command line and I make little tiny retarded scripts, but I'm not a coder at,

I couldn't code to save my life.

And that's one thing I've always found that I'm not really good with programming projects, but I'm really

good with hardware projects.

For some reason, um, I've done a couple of software projects.

I found them really hard to, to, to follow up on because it's too ethereal for me.

So if it's like, you know, shove stuff in a rack or make a VM or port over an app, I'm going like, yeah, I'm fine with that.

And then it's like, we're doing a sprint and there's an iteration and we have to do regression testing.

I go like, yeah, I've done a couple, but some of them were actually both related to chat bots and AI, which was, which was very interesting to do.

But it's not where my heart is, you know, give me, give me a good, a good data center migration any day and I'm a happy man.

So you worked, I guess, in many companies over the years. Yeah.

More or less the same role. Yes.

Based on what you said. And you have worked with different people, both clients and coders and hardware guys and maybe some experience within the data center.

What is one or two experiences or situations that really burned into your mind?

Let me see if I can get some cowboy stories.

One. Yeah.

I worked at one of the big IT firms in Belgium, we have two major ones, as a project manager.

You.

And I already had a lot of experience working with small businesses because,

that's something I had done before. And this big company has all kinds of little satellite

companies that do things, especially around some product or market. And I was there as

as a project manager.

And one day the director comes up to me and says, I'm like, Joe, you kinda, you know,

you know how to work with small businesses, right?

I said, yeah.

You come from a small business, right? Yeah, I come from a family business.

Yeah, we got this little cell here that does IT support to small businesses

and you've got some experience there.

I said, yeah. Well, the guy that does it is leaving and we basically don't know what to do with the place.

Do you want to run this?

So I said like, um, as a, as a manager or something, yeah, as a manager.

And I said like, not really, but I will be, I want to be your crisis manager if you want to.

I said, like, yes, please do. So go, go out and save that company.

So we got a manager on board, which was, which was a guy who had never managed people before.

I was very Zen and very patient. And then they shoved me into this little office and there were like one guy was

surfing Netflix, uh, one guy was poking his nose.

The other guy wasn't there. And the fourth guy was somewhere, but nobody knew, nobody knew where he was.

He was doing something at some client stuff.

So I found this little company that was completely in chaos.

They had put some trainees in there that they didn't manage.

So these guys were just, you know, filling their time because nobody told them what to do.

The guy that was the technician was also the one that answered the phones that went to the

clients, so he was never reachable. There was no documentation.

There bills were billing was not done. It was, it was disaster.

So that one I got to fix. And I remember talking to the younglings as I

called them, and I got two other juniors that

they basically cashiered out of other sub companies.

This was like the bottom of the barrel.

This is where you ended up when, when you really screwed up before they fired you.

And this is what we got.

So I remember setting up a near military organization and I used, uh, an old

police system that we have where you have somebody who is, uh, the, the, the

name is a Wachtmeister and that is the, the person on call is basically at the

the head of the table, he takes the phones and he makes sure that the work is delegated.

It's like a coordinator.

So I told them, these are the, these are the seats. This is the person you are the one on call.

You're the dispatcher.

The first seat on the left is the first engineer. The first engineer takes care of the calls and dispatches the second call.

And then you have the second engineer and so forth. So everybody had roles.

And these kids were young and unexperienced, and they didn't have an idea what was going on.

And I was incredibly strict.

I would be there five minutes before the lines would open to make sure everybody was on time,

to make sure that everybody was dressed right. I sent guys home. This is not how we dress.

IT department with a dress code?

Yes, client-facing dress code. Not a suit, not a tie. Your hair would be okay,

you would smell okay, and your shirt would be clean. And you would always carry a second shirt

in the car. Those were my rules and I started building up this structure and they hated me.

Me, I remember distinctly calling during lunch and nobody answered the phone because they,

were all having lunch.

So I stormed back to the office, went into the lunchroom, there were like 50 people in

there and I went like, you, yeah, everybody pack it up, come with me.

And they were forced to have lunch at their desk for an entire week and they hated me.

You're treating us like kids.

I said, you're behaving like them.

So the educator in me was really coming out. I wasn't power.

I wasn't on a power trip, but I was really trying to give them structure.

And then I started doing what we call the table dance where everybody got to sit in

a different role and they all got accustomed to understand each other's role.

And then at the meantime, we were designing products to sell.

I was going to customers, you know, reconvincing the people, like it's kind of be fine, you know, don't dump us.

And I grew up, and we literally pulled that thing out of the ground, and I'm very proud as today

to see that some of the kids there who have really had a reputation.

One of them, bless him, Alex, such a good guy, and they called him Sexy Lexi,

because he was really, he was a cool guy, was a real friendly guy, but he was a total loose cannon.

And they would say like, you know, he looks good, but there's never, ever anything going

to come from him. Nobody took him seriously. Even, even the management didn't take him seriously.

So I took him under my wing and I motivated him to, to, to get one of those degrees and he got it.

And there was nobody telling him that he did a good job. And once I started doing that, this guy like blossomed and he was motivated and he studied.

And once he got his degree, I told him, you know, go to the big manager, show him, show me our degree.

So I let him do it and.

I remember, you know, he was really proud showing the piece of paper and she was an older woman.

She didn't really pat him on the back, but it was really close. So she said like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And she was looking over his shoulder at me and I was, you know, standing there with my arms crossed

going like, see? And that was a beautiful moment where I proved her wrong. And she said, after

what she said, I didn't know he had it in him. I'm in the biz for 30 years, she said, but I was,

wrong, you know, and that was one of the most satisfying experiences that I had.

The company now has over 25 employees.

The juniors that I have guided through have all grown to successful positions.

Alex just had his first kid and there are some other guys there as well who are brilliant, but unmanaged rough diamonds.

That was, that was the most satisfying. If, if there's any project that I can pick from my

entire career where I say like, this is the one I'm really proud of. It was really hard.

A lot of swearing, I can tell you that, but that was the one that that I really clicked.

Yeah. And how long did it take you from the beginning to the point that you were satisfied

with how the team was structured and performed? I think I did it in about a year. Yeah. And after

a year, I moved on to a different project because I was mentally I was, it asked so much of me,

I had, there were a couple of success stories and there was one that just didn't work and.

That asked a lot of me. That was pretty rough. But in about a year time I managed to clean it up.

Yeah. And also what you said about, you know, managing the team and being a bit harsh,

I think your experience from back working at the psychiatric hospital and the institute,

I think that also helped quite a lot.

Um, the feedback that I got from them afterwards, afterwards, after I left.

I got, I still was in touch with them. And they said, like, in the beginning, it was a little bit of a rough patch. They said, like, you were extremely strict, you know, we, we would come in and they would come in in the morning at 8am. And they would have what I call an orange flag. And orange flag was a little post-it note, because there were rules. You lock down the closets, the compartments with the new hardware, you don't write down passwords on your memo pad, you make sure that the that, you know, there were certain

subset of rules and I would do an inspection and if you had a flaw you would get a post-it,

but there was nothing on the post-it. So they would come into their office and there would be

like three, two post-its, one post-it on their desk and there was nothing and they would have

to come to me and explain what to write on the post-it. I said like, you got two post-its, why?

And yeah, I probably wrote this down. I said, that's right. So that's how I did it. I had

checklists, they had to run through checklists, they had to do like, at the,

beginning of the day, the dispatcher would go like, we do this, this, this.

And it was ridiculous to them in the beginning, especially if they had to repeat, repeat, repeat, but it gave them structure.

And that's something I got from people who are mentally challenged.

They love the structure in their life.

Take away the structure and it's chaos. And that's the technique I use.

It was, it was dumb, but at that moment it worked.

I think we need to talk because I like to have structure, I need structure, if I don't

have rules and structure, my life is chaos.

People call it structure, I think that we need rhythm. Humans can't handle absolute freedom because we don't know what to do.

We have so many choices. Take a look at the world today, you open up your laptop, you have so many things to research,

so many things to watch, there's so many distractions and the only thing that helps you fight against

it is some, I wouldn't call it structure, I call it rhythm.

Some rhythm in your life that says, then we do this, this is something we do now, this

is something we do now.

And when structure becomes rhythm, melody becomes music and there's maybe something something in there.

And after so many years of working in IT and you know, you've been you've been working

with computers day in day out. I think that's how you say it. During the day, at night,

at home. I know that at home you also have quite a lot of let's say IT and you have your

own little home server, stuff like that. And like you said, we are at some point overwhelmed

with all of the IT, all of the information. You know, you go on the internet, you can

find everything that you wish for.

How do you structure your life? How do you stay sane as a human being in surrounded by IT?

The answer that a lot of people think comes right now is something so you know this guy's on a

podcast he knows his shit you know he's no he knows what he knows the answer. I don't. I think

that since getting into IT since the very first days that that I got into technology it's always

been a battle. If they carve something on my gravestone, it will be let technology work

for you instead of the other way around. That is my anthem and has been for so many years.

As humans, it's a constant challenge to deal with this. We have to curate the library of

our mind or maybe the library of our life where we choose what information to consume

and what, what to learn from, and we have to constantly fight against distractions and against content creators or networks or social media

platforms, goading for our attention.

This little square box that we have in the back pocket used to be a magnificent

tool that allowed us to organize our life.

I've, I've been there from the first BlackBerry up until now.

And I've seen this switch where you used to go and there's a Flemish saying that is roughly translated,

I'm going to go on the computer.

And it was, oh my God, the computer.

You would purposely go on the computer to do something. And this technology enabled you to do something.

The computer was a tool.

I've seen the flip happen, especially with smartphones, where the computer is on us.

You know, I'm under the computer. I'm overwhelmed by it. I'm owned by it. It's grabbing away my

attention. It's rotting away my concentration. It's making me feel bad. That's the switch I've

seen. And that's, I think, a constant battle that we need to form today. It's no longer about

being able to use technology. That's people still think, think that's the way, you know,

I know nothing about computers. I don't know nothing about smartphones. I'm not even on

Facebook. I don't know how to use a computer. And I went like, maybe, maybe you got it right.

Maybe the computer doesn't know how to use you because you don't connect with, with that side,

that's grabbing your attention and, and steering your emotions and your perception of reality

towards one side. So, I think that for me personally, it's always this, where is the

added value when I watch this YouTube video do this? What can I learn and what do I want

to learn? But it's really, really hard and from different points, I start to see the

same signals. I've been very lucky to listen to two university professors talking about

the impact of social media on both the,

on the mental health of children.

And this woman was also talking about obesity and anorexia.

And she said like TikTok filters, we've done a correlation between the rise of TikTok filters,

and the rise in eating disorders.

And you can correlate that data. You can see that the perception of reality,

implemented by these filters has a negative effect on younger people who think that this

is the ideal, hence adjust their eating structure. And this is where I don't want to be the old guy

screaming away with computers, but this is where I do see that we have to become more

and more alert that, you know, the computers on us, the computer is controlling technology

is starting to control us. And that is the balance we need to find. And that's on a micro level,

you know, you get up in the morning, what do you do? You know, scroll Instagram for an hour or go

outside for a walk, that's your choice. Or, you know, I don't know, read Twitter and get anxious,

or go on Wikipedia and learn about Robert Coglio, you know, who is he, what did he do?

That's your choice. So it's on a micro level, but also on a macro level where we're literally

seeing that the way social media platforms, and I make my bread and butter with these things,

You know, these are, you know, I work with social media communication, so it's my income.

That I do say from a professional side, it's the greatest advertising platform on the planet.

From a consumer side, I said, this is the crack we need to manage.

This is the addiction we need to manage. This is the trap we need to be very aware of.

When you said that the computers are on us, I looked at your hand.

Yeah. I looked at my hand.

We are wearing computers. We are wearing. These are smart watches.

These are little computers, not even little computers, these are quite powerful computers

that to some extent control us.

They measure our vital signals, they measure our heartbeat, they measure maybe our blood

pressure at some point or something else, saturation as well.

They send that information somewhere, right? Apparently well, they claim it's for us, but we don't know what that information is used

for.

I now, based on our conversation, I feel a bit controlled by a computer.

When I take a look at the smartwatch, love the thing to death.

Main function, not as much telling me what time it is, but waking me up in the morning.

It buzzes, I wake up, and that way I don't wake my wife. It gives me a signal when I need to get up, which is also good.

And it tells me when I got an email. So in essence, I'm being controlled by it.

There's one golden tip that I can give everybody. Turn off all of your notifications.

Choose when you, you want to use technology and choose what alert and what notification, what

interruption of your reality adds to it.

Your kid is on the parking lot at school and you forgot to pick her up.

You might want to have that alert.

Um, some newspaper outlet is pushing some headlines to get clicks.

You really want that. You really want to buzz for that, the

Interruption of your of your day to take a look at that. So this thing interrupts my reality.

My flow of reality at a couple of moments.

I've toned it down to only get what I want to get. And still, I find that in conversation,

I, uh, you, you get the little buzz and you look at your clock. That's, that's one thing I want to

manage, but all the other information that has been gathered, nothing has been done. There's

no added value there. There's nothing there's if my phone would say, and I was maybe, you know,

looks at your, your blood pressure here. Maybe that second coffee is not a good idea.

I would go like okay this is a value but that that value is not there it's more

geared toward how can it interrupt me how can it sell ads to me versus how is it a real added

value but yes computers are on us this is this is uh the the blackberry's dream huh yeah I had

last week we had friends over at our place and they are not tech savvy they don't have smart

watches and i think 10 or 20 minutes into our conversation i received a notification on my

watch so i looked at it five minutes after i got another notification so i looked at it again.

And that was in a you know we were sitting at the table and then i realized they're thinking,

that i'm that they're thinking that i'm looking at the watch like when are you going to leave yeah

And I felt so embarrassed.

I did that five times yesterday, you didn't get it.

When are you guys gonna leave?

Well, you knew we were sleeping over, so no way of getting rid of us.

I like the term that you said, tech-savvy. To this day, tech-savvy still means,

I'm good with technology and I have a lot of it.

You come into a room where there's like five, six PCs and he's like rattling away, always behind

the computer. This guy's tech savvy. Okay. What if, what if the person that leaves his smartphone

behind goes out, take pictures with this camera, comes home and makes really nice pictures of it,

prints them and puts them on the wall or has, or makes a little montage of something he recorded

and sends it to a friend or that goes outside or has a talk and writes up this really beautiful

blog post and then publishes it. What if that guy, maybe that guy is more tech savvy than we are.

He is not controlled by technology. He knows how to use it. Maybe Maybe the new tech-savvy is not having a lot of technology, but having.

Less technology, but using it in a more balanced way. I think that the nerds of tomorrow,

are the ones that are not controlled by their smartphones, by their notifications,

and that, you know, step into the reality of life and use technology as an additional tool.

What it was, let technology work for them instead of what I see today,

mindlessly scrolling zombies.

And, and it really, really scares me to a point or it makes me sad and it's addictive.

I was pulled over last week by a cop on a motorcycle, lights, sirens, the whole shebang, because I was

using my smartphone just to quickly check something behind the wheel.

And I went like, I was driving a 1.5 ton Jeep at a speed of about 90 kilometers an hour.

I passed by a police officer at the side of the road. These guys are dressed in orange, you can't miss him. I didn't see him.

So yeah, I mean, it is surprisingly addictive. So I would, actually you were talking about

the other side of tech savvy, and I completely agree with you,

but I would call those people tech smart because they know how to use technology in a smart way.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a balance between being in control of technology and being controlled by technology.

And I'm not going conspiracy theory, Facebook tipped the American election and all of the things that you can,

pour some COVID over there and you see what happens.

So I'm not going conspiracy theory, but I'm going like you're in a moment like we are right now.

What if I was distracted during our conversation while scrolling TikTok or getting a notification?

That would be a different interview. That would be a different conversation.

And these conversations that we're having right now happening all the time.

I see people sitting on across the table and one of them is talking and the other

one's checking his phone and the other guy's just, you know, and that's like,

we're going out to dinner together. No, you're not.

One of the, one of you is talking and staring out the window and the other one is, you know, looking at an Instagram model, so there's a real,

real divide there between.

So what's interesting, so one thing, obviously, we don't have any phones here. Okay.

And partially because it's the rule, let's say, whenever I have a guest, at least I ask

them to turn off the phone or put them in the airplane mode.

But in that case, I mean, I didn't have to ask you, I forgot, but now I realize we don't

I don't have any phones here.

When we went out for dinner last night with our wives, I didn't even see a phone on the table.

I think I had mine on the table, but we... I don't recall anyone looking at it,

except for me at some point when I realized that I forgot to call my mom because it was her birthday.

It was at 8.40 p.m. and I panicked. And that little smartwatch that you have didn't remind you of that.

But that is... But that's bad. I think at that point it's really bad when a technology needs to remind me to call my mom because it's her birthday.

I mean, I should remember that date. At least that once a year I should remember about it.

I kind of disagree. I'm a fan of augmented reality where we use technology to experience

life to a better degree, to have more moments like that, to be reminded that, you know,

your friend is this or there's that going on. That's something I don't know. That's

an additional value to me. I have this over the ear headphones that, you know, vibrate

on your temple and that's how you hear sound.

Oh, yeah, I have those as well. Yeah, so at least you hear the truck that's going to run you over.

I love to have them because I can experience reality and I can have either music or a podcast over that.

I have noise-canceling headphones, which I love as well, but they take me out of the moment.

My wife's, you know, waving from the other side of the garden, you know, to go like, What?

So I love the idea of augmented reality, of still being in the moment, but being assisted by technology.

So, the smartphone is, it interrupts me, but it might be an augmentation.

But when you go stare at your phone, you are out of the moment, you don't realize it anymore.

Maybe if I would have my smartphone that says, hey, we agreed to get up in the morning and

go out for a walk, or you haven't been out for a walk for a while, or you haven't, have

you taken a look at the lawnmower, is it okay?

Stuff like that, stuff that, well, basically your wife, I'm not being stereotypical, but

sometimes my wife reminds me of things that I forget about because she's more in touch with

reality and I am, I am, you know, floating in cyberspace somewhere.

So I would like to have some technology that takes over some of the roles of that, where it,

what augments me, where it, where it assists me.

But most of that technology is handled by companies who sell ads and who basically sell

your attention and you get a totally skewed

product that is there not to help you but only to suck you in as much and as long as

possible and that's where technology fails us to a degree.

I realized something that well you do have a podcast knightwise.com and the listeners

of this podcast will be able to find the link to your podcast and your website in the show

notes so I invite you.

It's definitely worth to listen to your podcast, and especially that now I'm sometimes a guest

on your podcast as well, sir. Very, very good guest. Let's just, you know, pat each other on the back.

You're passionate about technology, and that's how I know you.

But from what you're saying, and based on our conversation we're having right now,

you are also, in my opinion, passionate about finding the way

how to separate technology from life a bit.

I would say balance. I've seen, and I judge by experience, I've seen myself slide down this

slippery slope. I mean, social media marketing and stuff is part of our bread and butter. So

we are vast advocates of these ad platforms for companies to get their message across and to make

good content and to survive. But when we walk out the door and we become the consumers of said

the technology and then we see the other side of life,

going like this thing's eating away our attention, is taking away our intimate moments,

is pulling away, pulling us from reality.

So yeah, I wouldn't say separate, I would say balance.

But I have found that, well, not taking away technology, you'll never see me read a paper book again.

But to use it in a more directed way, that is something that's my big quest these days.

When we talk about podcasting, I used to be like, more technology, more, more,

you know, this and that and that and that.

And yes, you can play Doom on your calculator now. And yes, you can sync your emails to your phone

and to your smartphone and to your watch to your, I don't know, smart home and God knows what.

I used to be about more and more and more.

The more things that were connected, I loved it.

But now I'm really coming to the point where how can I segmentate this?

How can I split work and life, but also how can I enjoy life more using technology,

but not missing out on things because of technology? That's a big quest.

You mentioned the social media and how you use it for yourself, but also you mentioned

that you're advising customers about how to use social media.

You do have a company associated with that, that you advise customers how to organize

their their companies or their businesses let's say online life.

What do you do exactly? Um, about a couple of years ago, me and my wife started a company because

we saw that a lot of small entrepreneurs were having a really hard time getting

the message across talking about their company on social media.

Most of them were still using were either not on social media or they were using social media, like, like an ad, like an ad folder, just, you know,

putting up pictures of products.

So we started giving talks to entrepreneurs about how to use technology, how to,

more technology, how to do social media. It was really something I like to do.

So we did a lot of awareness, how to tell your digital story online.

These days, it's very much about the story, our own company, The Rangers,

helps entrepreneurs get their message across.

So we take a look at their brand, We take a look at their clients and we take a look at their story.

What do they need to tell to get their story across?

I'm flipping, I'm flipping my, my, my persona here where I now say, which story do you need to tell to grab the attention of your customer?

So I'm really, I'm Jekyll and Hyde here, but that's the, I think that for me in

my life, that gives me balance.

Otherwise I would be a fanatic.

So that's what we do. we take a look at the companies and we look for the story.

You know, what do you do? Who are your customers?

What makes you special? And what is the impact of your product or your service on those customers?

And based on that, we take a look at what are you gonna tell?

What's your story? What do you show? What do you post?

That's a strategic exercise that really goes down to how do you organize your websites?

Which copy do you want to write? We write for people, for your customers.

And there's the training part where especially my wife trains these entrepreneurs

how to use these tools.

She's really patient and she's really good. She's the daughter of our father, my mentor.

She's really good showing these people the power of social media, but not only the power,

but also the content that will make a difference.

So that's something that we do. And then when support is needed,

We jump in, we help them with their social media communication by doing shoots and doing their posts

together with them or writing the copy of their website or even airing a live stream if they want to.

That's the company, but it's very much centered about the quality of the communication and the power of your brand and of your story to connect with customers and to pull them into your business.

So just before, we talked about how to make technology work for you from the user perspective,

let's say a consumer. Now you're also working on the other side. You learn and you teach the

small businesses how to make technology work for them from the other side. Do you think that.

Without users or let's put it differently, with the users of social media or consumers

of social media, if they were not, let's say, spending so much time on social media or spending

it in a different way, would your customers who are the small businesses would have harder

time to use the social media to get new customers?

They do. And that's why quality is so important.

I'm starting in this conversation to see that I'm a real double agent switching battlefield

sides when I close the door, I mean, I fight for my attention and then on the

other hand, I fight for my attention.

Would there be an impact on my customers if end users would use social media less?

Yes, but that's why I tell my customers, don't post a picture of a shoe, post,

a story of what that shoe can do.

Make sure that, that your pro your customers see themselves in this story.

Make sure that you are in this story. Make sure that the services that you give us in this story, make a

connection with these people, show them why.

If the content that you put out there is meaningful, is entertaining, and adds value.

Technology becomes a vessel to get that value across and increase the value of the end users life.

And here comes the balance. The end users, we said, find the way technology can increase the

quality of your life. And to my customers, I say, use technology to get a message across that

that increases the quality of life.

And I think they meet in the middle. So I trim down the noise on one end

and I upgrade the quality of the signal on the other.

And I try to make them connect there. That's my life's work.

You mentioned your life work and I want to do a bit of a switch

because we've been talking about technology.

And whenever we meet, we always talk about technology. Sure, we have no life.

Do you do anything else in your free time?

And I know yesterday we had a conversation that you do not have any free time

because you work day and night and weekends. Yeah.

This is interesting because technology is, when I think about technology, I think about Knightwise.

I know it's you, but who is Knightwise really?

Is it this geeky guy 24 seven who loves technology, who figures out

or has figured out how to use technology in a smart way.

So there was- It was constantly battling to do that. So there was a balance between the organic life.

And the digital life. Is that the person or is there someone else as well there?

Someone else as well there, a piece of knight-wise that does gardening, likes to read or even writes a book.

No, I think technology is is part of my of my very, very cellular structure. I think that I am I'm a digital person, and I will always be around technology. The person behind it is a small boy who is quite insecure, very sensitive at times. And that loves to make people feel things.

I started out my career, career, my passion for podcasting and everything, uh, and public

speaking as the class clown when I was a kid, I wasn't popular during high school.

I went, I didn't go to parties. I went to my first party party wearing a suit and a tie. I was that nerdy.

And when I was 18, I became a DJ and this was a big step because suddenly I went on

stage and I learned that with music, you can control the emotions of people.

And that is a very, very, very powerful tool. And I saw that I can make you feel what I would like to make you feel.

It's not about me. didn't like.

I'm a stage. Sure. I'm a stage sluts. I'm, I love, give me a podium and I'm on it,

but not because of me. I, I like the attention. I won't lie, but I like the power of being able

to make people feel things, being able to make people see things. And that is something that

I always loved to do. So I found, uh, I went, did some radio after that. I found podcasting,

which was like, wow, it's like and technology and it's a stage and I can entertain people and can

make people, I can inspire people. It was a channel for me and I loved doing that. And then I went on

my first public speaking gigs where I would be talking to people about technology and how to use

it and what was dangerous and what was not. And I would, as not being the dry IT coach, I would do

theater, you know, and I would love, I love to, to use my voice and my intonation and my inclination to make people feel things.

And, and that was a big buzz. They would go out and they would be riled up.

They would be really enthusiastic about it. And I love doing that.

And, uh, here at this very table, where we, where we capture, where we, we see

our clients, I have made people tear up by describing their own brand to them.

They're going like, that's, that's my life's work.

And I've, I've been able to capture that to make them see how brilliant it is, what they do.

I have a client, she works with people who are divorcing, divorcing and divorcees, and she's been wrestling with the brand for, for years.

Doesn't know how to call it.

Told me what you did.

And we talked about it and I said like, your brand name is Uitgepraat.

Uitgepraat is a Dutch word that says the conversation's over, but also the discussion's

over. We cleared things up. So it's a double word that says either we stopped talking or

we have resolved the issue. I said, that's your brand name, Uitgepraat. Either you're stuck,

or it's resolved. And this girl teared up right in front of me.

And that is, that is such a beautiful moment. So your question, is there somebody behind that?

Yeah, there's a really little insecure boy who loves to be on stage because he's in control.

He says, I, when I'm on stage, it's my stage and I control what happens and I'm really secure with that.

Put me in the crowd, put me on the spotlight.

It's a different me. I become shy and aside from being this nerdy geek, I just want to make people see how fantastic

they are either as a person or as a brand or as a company and what the possibilities

of technology are for them to tell that story.

I think that that's, that's, that's who I am. Somebody who loves to make people feel good and be aware of how special they are and how,

they have the power to change the world.

And I love cycling, that's it. That's a beautiful description and it paints a very rich image of a person that, you know,

the beginning of our conversation started that you worked with computers and you are a geek.

But I think we circled around.

Emotions we circled around, I still call it, you know, separation between technology and human life.

But you end up with the connection. There is the connection part, exactly, yes.

The mission of us as humans is to connect, to connect with the powers we have inside us,

the talents we have inside us, and the world outside, and how to bring those talents to.

The fold, to the world. There's this classic biblical tale of the three brothers, and I'm

not religious, but I have a very religious family. There are three of us, so my grandparents would

love to take the tale of the three brothers that each get a coin, a couple of coins,

one puts them in the ground, one spends them and one kind of keeps hold of them. So two of them

really dig them down and one of them is spending it to make more coins and to share it with the world.

And that story really stuck with me. I went like this is what we need to do. We need to,

find the time to look into ourselves, what our talents are, what our added value to the planet is,

and see that in others and use technology, which is this magnificent tool that lets us

Talk to the world and we shouldn't forget this.

We have a small box in the back of our pocket that has the power to change the world.

It has, whether that be for the good or for the bad, that's up to you.

But if you have something to say, something to do somehow, somebody to connect to and make a difference.

And you can use this little box, then there's hope.

I think even if someone has a possibility of impacts only one other person's life,

that's huge, that's a really huge accomplishment.

I've been doing this podcast for a long time. I have connected with people over the world.

I have made long lasting friendships.

I have met listeners who go like, yeah, I remember that.

And, and I remember when you did that show and I even, I forgot.

And then I go like, I, if only for a moment, I made you smile there or I did

or I inspired you, then I have captured your attention but I've added value.

Maybe that's to be said, we can make an impact. We have the tool that connects the world.

I thought in 1993, when I did my first dail up, first time I went on the internet,

and I used NetMeeting, which was, NetMeeting is the proto-proto-proto-proto teams.

It's the very first video conferencing stuff. And I called a random guy in Canada,

and I talked to him real time, And he showed me outside that the snow was falling.

And I looked at my computer and I said, this thing is going to change the world.

There's, there's, we are all going to be one big community.

It hasn't turned out like that on a big scale, but I do know that each of us

individually still have the power to either be in the moment and take that

smartphone and turn it upside down and put it away and experience life or pick

up that smartphone and take a look at the technology at your fingertips and change the lives of others.

And I think that's a very good ending to this episode. Knight Weiss, thank you so much for sitting down with me and sharing your story and how

you see technology and humans connecting together in a smart way.

See you.