Less Friction, More Flow — Evolving Design Materials Evaluation & Communication

This transcription was made in part by an automated service, in some areas it may contain errors. 

Verda: [00:00:00] Today's episode of Break Some Dishes is brought to you by ecos.

Welcome to break some dishes, defying the rules to inspire design. I'm Verta Alexander.

Jon: And I'm John Strassman. Welcome. Welcome. We have two very cool guests with us today. Wait, wait.

Verda: Even bigger

Jon: than that. We're live. We're in person.

Verda: Oh, we're looking at our guests right

Jon: across the

Verda: table

Jon: from us. Yeah, we're live at the podcast lounge at Necon 2025.

That's right. How about that? Day two. Everybody looks pretty, pretty good. Nobody looks to be too worn down yet, but, uh, this is exciting. You're right. I was really underplaying that, but I'm really excited that we have two guests as well. We don't a lot of, we don't really have two guests very often, so now we're really, we gotta keep track of these two.

We have two guests and in [00:01:00] person, two guests and in person, and we're gonna. We're gonna break some damn dishes today with Paul Shari and Kathleen Egan of Eadies Co-founders of ecos. And this is gonna be fun because I gotta tell you something, everybody knows Ecos, but it's rare that you find somebody who can really tell you exactly what Eeds does.

So today we're talking with Paul and Kathleen and I've given them both very firm instructions. Not to be too technical. Paul, your assignment today, should you choose to accept it is not to, to, to engage in too much engineer speak. You need to speak to us like we're third graders. Which is the way Virta speaks to me most of the time.

So anyway, welcome Paul. Welcome Kathleen. Thank you. Thanks. We're really excited to be here. Ready to talk data. [00:02:00] Who is not ready to dock data? Ver DA

Verda: data drives our decisions. Data is good. We're ready to talk. Impact. Oh, even better. Oh, data impact. How about that and how does data drive impact? There you go.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Jon: So let me start out. By giving what I would consider a very layman's description of Eeds. Right? And so if you, anybody who knows me knows that I've been an advocate of Eeds for a while. I think it's an amazing platform. It's an amazing tech platform. Um, and I use it a lot. And I don't know if I always use it the way it's intended to be used, but I think it's such an amazing collection of data for the industry.

Ecos is basically. I'm really nervous describing Eeds in my terminology with Paul looking at me right now. So you're good, Paul. Act normal, please. Good. Yeah, look away. Listen, I hope to do it justice, but if I don't, you guys are here to correct me. Eeds is really [00:03:00] a an amazing workflow tool for a designer who is trying to specify the right product for their project, and it gives the designer an opportunity.

To specify, to look for product through a number of different, I don't know, search engines. Would you call 'em search engines? Filters, or lenses or filters? Filters or lenses? Yeah, filters. Yeah. So if I'm a designer and I'm working on a, a, a conference room and I wanna find conference tables, and my client has told me this is gonna be a lead.

Project, I can actually search under the certification if I want to. I can search under lead certification. If it's a well project, I can search for product using the Well Filter.

Verda: You can also search along the common materials framework. Like I could search for tables that it's. That contribute to social equity.

Yeah. Where companies are stepping up along those lines, which is great.

Jon: Yeah. Yeah. And you can of course, search by brand and you can search by [00:04:00] subcategory. Right. And you can compare. So you can, if you're working on a project, you can collect. The, these companies or these products as you search for them, and you can store them, keep 'em in A-A-P-A-P-D-F, and you can compare, right?

So if you're thinking about two different conference room tables, you can actually compare them by certifications and choose the one that you think is more desirable for your project. Huge time saver because the alternative, right? The alternative to this is, oh, I gotta spec a conference room table. I want it to be sustainable.

Um, I guess I'm just gonna start calling manufacturers and hope that I talk to a salesperson that has all the answers, and I guess it's gonna take me about two weeks, you know, to get hold of everybody and get all the information I need. I mean, I can get the actual certification. The, the certificate right off of the EcoMedia website, I can download it.

So as far as a time saver, [00:05:00] it's, it's tremendous.

Verda: So how does that sound, Paul? Is that about, how'd about Right? How do

Paul: that's, that's it. Ugh. Because I was that first person work short, shortest podcast ever. I'm, I'm a, I'm a lazy engineer, so I just wanted to make it easy to find, like the way you said, buy, lead, buy certification, buy a conference room table, and then have everything apples to apple, so it's not a scavenger hunt.

How did you, how did you. How did you start this? Just lots of spreadsheets. I had a a tab spreadsheet for every source of data, and then I had to cross reference it, create pivot tables, and every client wanted that spreadsheet, so I started giving it to them. They broke it. Spreadsheets are, and then every month we just start.

Looking for new data. The, the data refreshes every day. The shape of the data in this industry evolves just as fast as all the certifications and rating systems do.

Jon: Yeah, and I think another thing that people don't understand about Eeds is, you know, that data, it's like its own living thing, right? So if I am a manufacturer and I get, uh, a new certification, I don't have to.

Call Ecos and say, Hey, I got a new certification. Do [00:06:00] I need to, uh, email you the certificates? You guys can download it, write the computers, communicate automatically, things update automatically, which is, I think, crazy.

Paul: Yeah. I mean, SES and others give us the data on a, on a monthly feed. Sometimes they're API, sometimes they're five five, but we do that work so that everyone doesn't have to spend the time, the valuable, the billable time on a scavenger hunt.

They get to actually, like Verta said, do the impact. We're in this for the impact. We're in this to make it more scalable. And the only way to make this more scalable is not by more complexity. It has to be through simplicity.

Verda: We want designers to stop saying that. Sustainable sustainability takes more time.

Paul: Exactly. Yeah.

Verda: And this tool helps. By the time I streamline the process,

Paul: you said, you know, gonna make some phone calls. By the time you've done leaving the first voicemail, you could already have 15 conference tables evaluated.

Jon: Yeah,

Paul: and run the answer, and then it is still hard to be creative and pick the right table for the right reason and show it to the client because they get to pick, right?

Jon: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think one of the [00:07:00] first questions that we have written down here to talk about is why is it so hard? Why, why, why is it so hard today? Right? Why is it so hard for manufacturers today?

Kathleen: It's a tough business, as you guys know, before sustainability even shows up on the radar. Um, it is, uh, tough to build a great building, do a great remodel, make all the different constituents equally happy.

So for a lot of folks, sustainability is. Another layer, um, of complexity and data and another language, um, that they don't all speak. Manufacturers have not historically, deeply invested in either technology or the team required to do sustainability, right? So they're sort of under gunned, um, outta the gate.

And, uh, it's hard. The data's hard, the communication's hard, and they're trying to serve a lot of different. Personas you mentioned the designer view you described. Great. How eeds works for the designer. We [00:08:00] also have project managers, construction team members, architects, the whole gamut, um, of project team folks who have different needs.

So the manufacturers trying to serve all those needs with a staff and a budget. That's probably too small. So edis helps them by putting the data in one place, automating it, as you said, and then helping them communicate it out. It's really a multiplayer game here, right? There's no one person deciding anything in our industry.

Um, and so to enable each person to do their job with the data they need, that's hard for, for manufacturers.

Jon: Yeah. Yeah. I just. The data just, I mean, just I think a lot of people, it's counterintuitive. You don't really think that you're gonna have to manage data to design sustainably. Right. You don't think that you have to do math to do that, but, but the certifications and the labels, you know, they're [00:09:00]complicated.

They really are. I, I have, uh, conversations with manufacturers all the time and, and they're saying, well, we, you know, we think we need to get a certification. Uh, we're not sure you know which one to get. And, you know, they're expensive, they're time consuming. They, they burn a lot of resources. And I think a lot of manufacturers.

Get these certifications and they don't really know what to do with 'em. Right. And I, and I do think that Eeds, is it, you guys kind of keep the certifications and the data like on the easiest to reach bookshelf because I, I had a client. Uh, not too long ago that we were talking about EPDs, EPDs EPDs, and they were really, uh, puzzled by EPDs and they were really trying to figure out if they needed to get an EPD, right?

And, uh, throughout this conversation, which went for many days, uh, back and forth, finally somebody says, Hey, guess what? Um, I was on the [00:10:00]company intranet site and I found that we have 43. EPDs 43 and just like laying around, right? Like they, so I think that eed also, I didn't mention it, but I think that there is also a problem getting these certificates and these and these labels, and then the company doesn't, or the manufacturer doesn't have a strategy to how they're gonna share that information.

And it literally is like having a really expensive book. I'm putting it on a shelf somewhere that you, that you eventually forget about and it collects dust.

Kathleen: Yeah. It reminds me of a quote Orson Wells said about making movies that you made a great movie. Congratulations. That's 1% of the work. The other 99% is bringing that movie.

Out to the public. Um, and the EPDs probably a little more than 1% of the work. Mm. But communicating it and how you make it part of your strategy, getting it to the right people and the EPD itself is pretty confusing. So parsing it to get what people [00:11:00] want when they need it. Yeah. Is significant work that is under invested in Yeah.

Yeah. Compared to the upfront part. Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna

Verda: say. And then there's the designer, they don't often know what to do with the EPD either. Yeah. My, my kind of story of all of this data and database type stuff is, you know, as designers, I think we have, we have a little chip on our shoulders. We, we get a little conceited and we think that we can solve any problem through design.

And we tasked ourself, this was. During the pandemic, partially it was, we were trying to keep people busy, but we had an intern and we tasked her 10 hours a week. She was, she was in Boston remote and to, to develop a database of products. We wanted to, we, we, we thought let's start with our 30 top products that we always specify, materials, products, and let's put 'em in a database.

And I couldn't believe how long. It took her how many questions she had, how hard it was for her to get the, and we, we ch we, we redid the spreadsheet like five different times. [00:12:00] Like different, these, no, these, this column's more important, these columns forget about these columns. And it's like, you know, super long, super long list.

Mm-hmm. Right. And then at the end of the day, we finished it sort of. Nothing was apples to apples. It didn't really help us serve us in any way. And then it, it's collecting dust. Yeah.

Kathleen: And how fast was it out of date,

Verda: right?

Jon: Oh,

Verda: pretty much within a few months.

Jon: Yeah. Yeah. You were like, you don't know how much work that is.

And Paul's shaking his head like, nobody understands how much work a spreadsheet is better than Paul, I think. Yeah.

Paul: I mean. We, we now have 1.2 million products. That's 1.2 million rows in a spreadsheet with 3,600 attributes and it's updated every week. And, and that's not everything. That is nowhere near everything that we need to make really good holistic design decisions if we want a sustainable built environment.

Jon: How can, man, I mean now that we're talking about spreadsheets and I think that's, this industry really struggles [00:13:00] because we have design firms that all have their own. Spreadsheet. And you know, I have clients that, that share these spreadsheets with me and they're like, we get one of these every week. And you know, I think that what happens is you get a, a, a designer has a conversation with a salesperson and the salesperson gets that spreadsheet, the salesperson brings a spreadsheet back to the marketing team, right?

And now the marketing team has to drop everything that they're doing right. And, and go through that spreadsheet and fill it out. Um, and it's a crazy. Uh, resource burn and it's frustrating, right? And they, they jump through hoops to get it. Finished in time, and then next week they go through the exercise all over again.

Verda: Well, and on top of that, like when we were doing this, we had, we had a questionnaire for the manufacturer, so the, and the manufacturers probably get 10 of these a day, and I, I got some complaints about it. And, and so they're, they're repeatedly giving information to like 30 different designers versus one platform that collects the data [00:14:00] automatically.

In, in your dream world, you two, how would, how do, how do you see designers utilizing this?

Paul: I mean it just, just going there, doing, it's

Verda: free, right?

Paul: It's free. It's, you go there, you can search by whatever filtration methodology your firm has or your client that you're serving with, your firm has. You can analyze it through whatever lens is.

Ratified through our common mature framework, lead, whatever, and then you can document it very quickly. And now because of the need for spreadsheets, I thought we were gonna be done with spreadsheets. I have a little PTSD, but we have a button now. It's like download CSV. So we give you all that raw data back.

So if you do wanna manipulate it into a spreadsheet. You can do that if you so choose. The spreadsheet to get all the data together is one part of the problem, but it's also then mapping that data to the rating systems and the rubrics that we have now, the CMF and others, and that's the how can a

Jon: designer who wants to hand out a spreadsheet, how can they lean on eeds instead of that spreadsheet?

I

Paul: mean, if you think about the columns in the spreadsheet, you know [00:15:00] what factors, whether it's BMA level or EPD or an LCA. If you look at our left hand navigation, those are essentially all your spreadsheet questionnaires. Mm. And if you wanna know how many people have achieved said thing, like, I need a chair that has a C two C and BMA level three, and you know, HPD.

With those three filters defined, you'll actually know how many total brands have products that meet that guideline. And as you start getting into a category and the subcategory, you might not wanna put that into your spreadsheet because we can tell you that there's nothing on the market that exists.

Like, sometimes we have wishes and those wishes literally have nothing that can back them up.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Paul: So it's a good thing to strive for, but we have to be realistic. 'cause our, our clients want us to have three bidders. They wanna have some competition in the marketplace. I think moving one step forward with a million people is sometimes better than having 12 people run a marathon that nobody else wants to run.

Verda: Great analogy. Yeah.

Jon: No marathons for me. Thank you very much.[00:16:00]

Ecos is host to the world's largest database of sustainable building product data, and they help building product manufacturers meet related client needs, trusted by thousands of leading brands, pros, and institutions across the industry to enable better buying decisions and reduce the impact of our built world.

One product. One project, one building at a time.

Let's talk about the manufacturer's perspective too for just a minute, because I think that there's a lot of confusion on on the manufacturing side because you have manufacturers, I think, that are on eds and they don't know that they're. On Eeds?

Kathleen: Well, it depends who at the manufacturer [00:17:00] you're talking about.

Um, we have a hundred brands that are customers. We have about 10,000 brands that are part of our free program. Yeah. So every stakeholder has a version of being, um, in eComm or using it for free. And then we offer additional services, um, to most of those stakeholders. So those a hundred manufacturers have white glove data management, and not everybody at every company.

Knows about it. So you had said in the beginning, everyone knows Ecos we're, we're here today to try to make that true. Um, it's, it's not 100% true. Yeah. Um, you know, we meet people every day who, who love it and use it all day and, you know, can't believe they're meeting us. Um, and then we meet people who are part of a customer team who are struggling.

With the exact thing we try to fix. So I think, you know, there are a lot of different teams within manufacturers. Many are remote and they're not at hq, they're out in the field. Um, and so they don't all always know about it. Uh, we're, we're [00:18:00] working to change that through, through training and awareness. Um, and I, I'll just say one more thing about the spreadsheets.

There, there are some people saying death to spreadsheets. Mm-hmm. Um, uh, has been set at conferences. Um, I don't. I think spreadsheets are gonna die. I think they have a very important role. Um, Paul mentioned some of the, the ways they should be used, what they should not be used for is sharing a lot of complex information that changes frequently.

Mm-hmm. With lots of people. Yeah. And, um, making updates to it and then having to update that whole group. They're, they're, they're not very good for that. Then you have versions and breaking the spreadsheet, so,

Jon: so what are they good for? What, what is it that you think, what's the value in your opinion?

Kathleen: We, we let people download the data out of our system into a spreadsheet and if they wanna do some special analysis.

Uh, because every building is a snowflake, right? They can take that and, and do their own analysis. They're very good for shuttling data. So if we're taking in data, whether it's a certifier or a [00:19:00] manufacturer, and they don't know JSON, right? They're not programmers. Most of the people we work with are, um, reluctant data engineers like you, John.

Yeah. Um, that, that, you know, they didn't go to school for engineering. So, uh, spreadsheets are a great way to take large volumes of data. Vet it and get it in the system and then create one version of the truth in an enterprise SaaS system that can be shared more broadly. So if someone is saying that the spreadsheets I'd be, I'd be suspicious of that.

Verda: I absolutely agree. Spread. I love spreadsheets and, and we use them all the time. You're gonna. If you're gonna compare three carpets, but the, but the ideal thing is that you control the, what did you call those? The,

Paul: the columns? Yeah, the attributes. The attributes. Attributes, yeah. I called them columns. You call them attributes.

I love that

Verda: word. But yeah, so we can control the attributes, lower, low embodied carbon, you know, health, you know, healthy materials, red list, free, all those things. We can, and then we can compare those three carpets. Yeah. Caught price, you know, like all all that stuff. Yeah. We, we do that every day. Yeah. Yeah.

As designers,

Jon: I've even. [00:20:00] Gone onto the EcoMedia platform and pulled up a particular declare label because I am working on a declare label for one of my clients, and I wanna see how they did on their declare label. Sure. So I, I just feel like EcoMedia is, it's, you know, the more you use it, the more comfortable you get with it.

The, the more ways you find that it can, it can help you in different situations, which I think it's kind of cool,

Kathleen: just like sustainability in general, the more designers and specifiers. Work on sustainability, the more comfortable they'll be on the next project. So with all if there's fits and starts, um, it, it's harder.

Jon: Yeah.

Kathleen: Where it becomes consistent part of the business. A competitive advantage, not just a ethos. Um, I think it will get easier for everybody. So

Verda: many designers say it takes more time to design sustainability, but I would argue that maybe, maybe on that first project or second project mm-hmm. But after that, you know, yeah.

You know, you know the [00:21:00] products to go to and, and you know, and you know the resources and the tools to use that, that helps streamline that

Jon: process. Yeah. Can you just describe for us the difference between, um. A manu. The data that I'll see from a manufacturer who is on EED free and the one that you is getting what you call white, the white glove data.

Paul: Yeah. So when we think about all the things on left hand navigation, those certification eco bodies send us lots of data that's most of that 1.2 million, but a lot of times they don't have a picture. They don't have, uh, link back to the product page a lot. A lot of times, because the certification bodies were not designed to be marketing sites, they were just at a certain level.

The other thing you'll notice is that. The certifications actually live at a long list of different levels of the company, and EPD can cover almost everything within entire product category. Then there'll be a collection, a bim, a level certificate might have 15 products. So what we try to do for our manufacturers is start with their catalog.

That's how they go to market. That's what they want verted to fall in love with. They want John to [00:22:00] fall in love with. Then we basically layer all those data points, those attributes into that product catalog. And we're one of the only groups out there that does it at that level because we know to make a product get specified, you need to give them all the attributes plus all the other things that brands do, which is the colorways and all the other things.

We don't wanna get into that, that's, that's better handled on their marketing site. But we do wanna make sure all the questions about does this product align with lead or well common material framework, social. That has to be made easy because there's so many other things a designer has to juggle with, including the client's preferences that might change once or twice.

I don't know if Vetas ever experienced a client changing their mind. Never. Never, never. I don't like that. I don't like the color of that table. I don't want different chairs. I want chrome. You know, finish on my furniture, and then they find out, oh, Chrome's not really that great. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's a just a, it's a different level of detail, but we empower their entire catalog to tell the sustainability story as if an engineer was with them.

But no salesperson wants the engineer along. So if

Jon: I'm a [00:23:00] manufacturer and I'm, and I wanna pay for this white glove treatment, what I'll, what will, what will happen is that a designer will basically have a better experience. Interacting with my product line. Right. There'll be better photographs, better descriptions.

Yeah. Um, more complete, more comprehensive. It won't be, yeah, yeah. It'll,

Paul: it converts from scavenger hunting for data. Yeah. To storytelling.

Jon: Okay.

Paul: That's more, and that's what we wanna do. It's curated. It's a hundred percent the right way. You know, it's like going to a real shop for, for, you know, Chanel or going to off of fifth, you know, in Saxon going through and like find, trying to find a blouse in a, in a whole store.

It's like

Kathleen: for the manufacturer, you, you said, um, you know, how is it different for the manufacturer? Has it different for the designer, the manufacturer? The data is just one element of what we're doing for them. It's an important element. It's the foundation, but upon that, they get their own. Selling portal.

So now their sales team, their dealers or distributors, [00:24:00] their outside reps, everybody. Can go to a commonplace and consistently get the data. And now that manufacturer can track that. So what they would like to know is, what does my customer want? And it's hard to answer that except for anecdotally. Mm-hmm.

Um, when you get the reps coming back and say, Hey, everybody's asking for this, um, you know, E-P-D-S-C-S, whatever it is, the data. Can be so much more powerful because it's now tracking demand. And so the manufacturer who is our customer, gets a demand signal and can actually see who from which team are looking at which products and what are they doing with them.

Are they running lead? Are they running the CMF? Um. What, what kind of eco labels are they searching for? That's a

Jon: report that you generate and share with your clients.

Kathleen: It's a live dashboard. That's a real, real time view of demand in the market. Yeah. Yeah. So if knowing what your customer wants is important, you don't [00:25:00] wanna leave that to chance.

Right. You wanna get consistent data. Um, and it happens to often be biased toward their best customers because you guys know who are the big, um, property owners who are always asking about sustainability, banks and tech, healthcare, some of the very best customers. So you now get this window into what they want.

And it is, uh, not a guess. It's actual data. Data.

Verda: Yeah. Wow, that's great for Manu. Manufacturers are always wanting to, to read our minds and get, get some insight. Oh, of course. Right? Yeah. They wanna sell their product to us. Yeah, it's great.

Jon: So a manufacturer, based on on the feedback that you're providing, they could actually see that, oh, we have a particular product line that is getting more searches than any other product line that we carry.

Right? Absolutely.

Paul: Product collections, product categories, it's crazy. Eco labels. And then also what we do inside the system is we do that analysis, so we're offloading the, the bo most boring part of sustainability, which is lead [00:26:00]documentation. Yeah. Well, documentation. All that's automated on behalf of the brand to help the, the design firm.

It's also, basically it's providing, you know, about 30 to 40,000 people, a free sustainability intern. That's smarter than any. Top-notch consultant in the industry. 'cause no top-notch consultant can wake up with all this data just floating around in their head. Yeah. So we're basically, we want to simplify sustainability to scale and this is the best way to do it in our, in our opinion.

Verda: So I'd love to hear from both of you, what gets you out of bed in the morning as it relates to this job, this business that you have created for yourself. Paul, we've talked many years ago and you basically, you were. A one man shop just entering data for who knows how long. What, what, what keeps you guys going, doing this?

Paul: Well, every day there's a couple thousand people that we help find the things that normally would've taken me a, a flight or go around the world and basically manage a spreadsheet. So to us every day, that's, people use our site. You know, we're, we're not the Batman, they're the Batman. [00:27:00] Right. We're the Alfred.

We make the tool that makes it better and easier. And we've, last year when we looked at the analytics, we were used in 200 countries. That was, that we're not, we're not multilingual yet, but it's like we get used all the time and that makes us really happy. And the brands that have done the hard work to get the certification, they're getting orders, they're getting put on finished schedules to, to me, that's the only way we make the built environment greener.

As a consultant, I could talk. To we're building all day long, but until that plumber comes in and puts in that, you know, pint, urinal, that building's not saving any water because Paul said we should save water. So that's what's most important to us, at least for me. Yeah,

Verda: that's, yeah. I mean, we need, we need the tools.

Yeah.

Kathleen: Kathleen, how about you? For me, it's, it's two things. One is, um, our team, we, we have an amazing team of people who are, um, working at a startup, which is not easy. They're trying to do, um, something really hard and they could all get higher paying jobs at other places, but they're on this mission with us.

And so, uh, tons of, uh, [00:28:00] appreciation for them. Uh, and the second one is just this promise of network effects. So we're doing. Um, we're we're breaking startup 1 0 1 rule, which is focus on one particular population or persona with a problem and solve that problem deeply. We made the strategic decision to try to serve both the sellers on the manufacturer side and the project team who are representing the buyers.

And so what we're hoping to do is create. A virtual cycle of network effects, where if there's more transparency, that means there's more supply of sustainable materials that will lead to more demand from you guys because it gets easier and easier, and then that demand comes back to the manufacturers who could create even more supply until.

The whole industry is sustainable and transparent, and anybody who's not goes out of business and that's all that's left are great companies making great, sustainable, transparent [00:29:00] products.

Jon: Mm, I know what else gets Kathleen up every day. It's a tasty wave because she's a. She's a badass surfer.

Kathleen: Oh, that's cool.

Surfing is therapy. Yeah, it is a way to balance the, uh, stress. Where do you surf? I live at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, so about. 120 feet from my house is, is a beach and a wave. A beach and a wave. Yeah. It's a difficult spot. So I sometimes I'm cold. It's, well, there's no getting around the cold unless you get on an airplane.

Um, but it is, uh, amazing even when it's terrible. It's, it's still amazing. Um, and then just south of my house is where John and I had a really nice experience surfing. He was the, uh, the, the high wave count of the day and, uh, persistence. Yeah, it was persistence. Yeah. Nice. It, it changes your mind, you know?

I really think it's, uh, there's a neurological effect to it that I am addicted to. Yeah. Oh,

Verda: I bet. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well last question. What is next for [00:30:00] ECEs?

Kathleen: Well, I'll share, um, our new feature that we are just launching on LinkedIn today. And we sat in your session here yesterday where a bunch of designers complained about the silos.

And that everybody is working in their own little spreadsheet. And the work to tr connect them and share across teams is, is really tough. And people brought up the contractor, the manufacturer, the architect, and all the people they have to share the data with. So what we've released is, um, our first step toward optimizing this process with collaboration.

So now when you get a great set of sustainable products, you can share it with your team. Unlimited number of team members can now see. So they're all looking at the same thing. Nobody's on the wrong version. There's just one version. It brings all the sustainability data with it. So you can have the common material framework, the lead credits, all of the certifications, um, and now the team members can vote.

They can vote, thumbs up, thumbs down, and they can leave [00:31:00]comments. So if you've created the project, you don't have to parse through emails and notes from um, meetings. All the comments are right there. And then if you love that project, you get the feedback and it gets tuned and perfected. Now you could clone it.

And use it in your next project. So you don't even have to do all that research before. So we're hungry for feedback. Um, we are sharing projects with anybody who signs up. So if you sign up and say, share with me, um, a sustainable flooring package or a sustainable, you know, panel package, our experts will build you, um, a sample project and we'll share it with you, and then you could create your own and share it with whoever you like.

That's great. That's

Verda: really cool. All right, listeners, were you listening? We would love some feedback. E Omed would love some feedback, and we'd love to know if you've, if you've heard of Ecomms before today and if you're using it and how you're using it.

Jon: Yeah, so reach out. When is the launch date for that?

Kathleen: We're launching collaboration at newan [00:32:00] today, June 10th, and it's generally [email protected].

Jon: Ah, perfect, perfect. So

Verda: by the time you hear this, it will be, it'll be a, yeah, I'm, I'm part of eco meetings.

Jon: I'm not lying and I'm not just saying it because you two people are here with me, but I am, cannot wait.

To check that out. That's the kind of data nerd that I've become. Reluctantly. Yeah. I'm not just another pretty face. I don't know if you two know that you were just being difficult, have a lot of data. You

Verda: do like data. I do like

Jon: data. There's a lot of data. Bouncing around in this head, just so you guys know that, that's why the hair is standing up.

That's why the hair stands up. Yeah. You,

Verda: you

Jon: need a spreadsheet, John. You don't, you don't need moose. You don't need moose. I need attributes. That's what I need. I need more attributes. I,

Kathleen: I dubbed John the reluctant data engineer. Yes,

Jon: yes. That is so fitting. So very fitting. Well, thank you guys. This was, thanks having us.

This was really a lot of fun. Um, I hope you feel that we were able to peel away some layers of eeds and, and really put it out there. Um, and I [00:33:00] really hope that people give it a shot if you've never, ever tried eeds because you're terrified that it's, it's gonna be complicated. Let me just explain that. If I can get on there and do it.

Anybody can. The thing it is user friendly. I mean, it's so intuitive. So, um, thank you guys for sharing with us today. Really great habit, and

Verda: I loved hearing about your vision and how you see the world designers specifying in the world and in the future. I think it's, it's what we need. So thank you guys so much for providing an incredible tool to this industry.

Yeah.

Kathleen: Thank you for having us and I wanna thank John for being a power user.

Jon: Yeah, how about that?

Kathleen: And, and he brings up eco meetings when he is on other, um, uh, podcasts and webinars and, you know, we're, we, we work kind of quietly, we don't have a lot of marketing budgets, so we really do appreciate deeply when, um, other folks share what we're up to.

So thank you guys for featuring us and for sharing

Jon: that. Yeah,

Kathleen: you're welcome. Thanks. So you can visit this, [00:34:00] um, on our [email protected], create a project and share it with your whole team

Jon: eec.com.

Verda: John I. Love NeoCon and I love, love, love doing podcasts in person, in those little podcast booth. I just feel so professional.

Jon: You're professional, Virta.

Verda: Absolutely. I feel even more professional.

Jon: I, I really enjoyed doing it at NeoCon. I, man, you know, it's, you always get the energy of the event. It kind of, it kind of seeps into the episode.

I think, you know, there's a buzz, there's an energy. Um, certainly. Having a chance to talk with Kathleen and Paul about Eeds, um, was a lot of fun. I'll tell you something, we make fun of data, you know, we make fun of it. We're like, oh, boring data, boring engineering, [00:35:00] speak, you know, but, but I really enjoyed that conversation and I felt like we really helped people understand what edis does.

Verda: Totally. I absolutely agree. Uh, one thing I love about in-person podcasts is I get a better sense of the personality of the people we're talking with. And these two are very special people and I think they're, they've just got. They just really wanna do good and give to this industry. And I think this platform is such a gift.

Jon: Yeah, it's a gift. And

Verda: I mean, Paul has put so much of his own personal sweat, blood, and tears into that. Yeah. And Kathleen, boy, she is a firecracker. We had such a great conversation afterwards. It might be the start of season seven, right? Oh yeah. Surfing women. Surfing. Right.

Jon: I think we, we touched on it.

Winning sports. I don't know. Yeah, I think we touched on it. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, real quickly before we, before we let everyone go, you know, the, the challenge to something like edis is, it really is, in [00:36:00] my opinion, a brilliant piece of technology for the industry. The challenge is that, you know, we all have such limited amount of time and, uh, limited attention.

Like how do you educate the industry on just how valuable ECOS is? That's a challenge. You know, you can't just put a, a little ad on LinkedIn or you can't just, you know, mention it in 30. You really have to do what we did and you have to talk about it, and, and that's not easy to market. Yeah. You know, that's the only challenge.

Verda: Yeah, I agree. And a lot of people are not, it's not clear what EED does, but we do need a common language. We need a, a way to compare apples to apples and, and be able to research products quickly so that sustainably doesn't take extra time and, and eco meetings. Is is doing just that. Yeah.

Jon: So we're getting there.

Verda: We are. Thank you Ecos for

Jon: [00:37:00] helping our industry. Thank you. Thanks to Kathleen Egan and Paul Shari of Ecos. Co-founders of Ecos for joining us. In today's episode, we'd love to hear more about the issues that you'd like us to address. Be sure to let us know by leaving positive reviews wherever you listen to your

Verda: podcast.

Break Some Dishes is a surround podcast by Sandow Design Group. Thanks to the team behind the scenes. This episode is produced by Rob Schulte and edited by Rob Adler.

Jon: Thanks to Master and Dynamic for the official headphones of the surround network. You can hear other podcasts like [email protected].