00:00.60 archpodnet All right welcome from the high desert of well not so high as reno but the desert of quatzite Arizona Paul how's it going. 00:09.24 Paul It's going. Okay I've been really busy the last week or so helping a friend with a non-areological project. But this friend reached out to me because we've been. He's an archeologist himself and we'd worked on projects together since 1994 and 00:18.35 archpodnet E. 00:24.30 Paul Stuff that I'm doing now is a lot of Gis and a lot of computer stuff and you know it ticks all the boxes of things I've been doing forever. So keeping busy with that. How's ah, how's Arizona treating you. 00:28.53 archpodnet Right? right? up your alley? Yeah, not too bad. We. We came out here for ah, an rving event in Lake Havisoo City a couple weeks ago and then we. A lot of people were coming down to court site because there's a big ah Rv show down here. There's probably thousands of rvs out here in the desert. It's kind of thinned out now but a lot of people down here just to go to the show and it's kind of their annual. You know, get together kind of thing and we'd never been here and we're fully self-contained in Rv so we figured let's go down and stretch the legs on the solar and the other tanks and stuff a bit more and. And see how it goes so yeah, so here we are and we're gonna be here for a little while longer. So. It's all fun and I will give an update hopefully in like a month or so for those of you that are also digital nomads or or remote workers or whatever you're doing I should have my starlink internet. 01:07.30 Paul Awesome. 01:21.73 archpodnet Satellite dish the version 2 not gen 2 of version 1 but version 2 the square one that doesn't hold as many cats look that up if you don't know what I'm talking about and apparently the dishes are self-heated and the cats have been sitting on them so there you go in the winter. Um, but anyway I'm getting the square one. That's the new generation. 01:27.79 Paul Ah. 01:41.22 archpodnet Ah, pulls less power if you're on solar like we are which is nice and and has a smaller footprint and a smaller dish. So all that is really cool but I should get that mid-february twenty twenty two as you're listening to this in real time and have a little bit of a a digital nomad report on that. So but speaking of doing things. 01:56.87 Paul Where you going to keep the cats. 02:00.73 archpodnet I know right? like where are the cats going to go so but speaking of I guess doing things remotely and outside and all those things we have a special guest today that's going to talk. She's going to talk about her software and her company and Quora. 02:17.92 Cora Woolsey Hello How are you. 02:18.15 archpodnet Wolsley welcome to the show. Good good. So we put probably stratum in the title and Archeosoft is the name of your company but let's just talk right? off the bat tell us a little about yourself where do you Where do you come from what brings you to archeology and and and digital recording and all that. 02:35.71 Cora Woolsey Okay, well myself, let's see so I I have ah a doctorate in archeology and um so I I kind of got started a bit late in life on being an academic and being an archeologist. 02:42.47 archpodnet Click. 02:50.59 archpodnet Um. 02:52.63 Cora Woolsey And so because of that I had a whole bunch of stuff that kind of happened earlier and and it's hard. It was hard for me not to bring all that into Archeology. So when I started doing Archeology. Um. I I kept kind of seeing these places where we could improve efficiencies kind of bring in other methodologies. Um, just just make it a little bit more rounded and um and and solve problems and so um. So that's caused me a little bit of trouble in my archeological career because sometimes people don't really want to bring in other other disciplines or other methodologies. But but it's also ah, really been helpful. 03:33.44 Paul Way up. 03:39.24 Cora Woolsey To to kind of come at everything from like a fresh approach and or I try to anyway I try to come at everything kind of I guess just thinking outside the box as much as I can and um, and so so after I graduated with my Ph d. I Really didn't know where I was going to go I thought I was just going to kind of do what you do ah get a job at a University or um, do cultural resource management. Whatever and that didn't really happen. 04:05.31 archpodnet M. 04:10.00 Cora Woolsey Because ah my husband works at St Thomas University here in frederickton New Brunswick canada and I mean this is a common problem for academic couples like we couldn't really go anywhere because of course getting a job like that that's sort of like winning the lottery. So um. 04:16.17 archpodnet Okay. 04:26.57 archpodnet Yeah. 04:26.81 Paul The. 04:29.32 Cora Woolsey Yeah, so I had to kind of scramble to find something here in frederickton and it's a small town there just isn't a lot going on for archaeology. So yeah I basically applied for the 1 professor job that came up and didn't get it. so um so I started taking on these postdocs that um. People were just they just needed general researchers and I started just like pulling in all of this new kind of ah methodologies and like I was working on digital technologies in the health sector and and other places and I just um I just got this idea that we could take. All of this and just kind of wholesale apply it to archaeology. So um, so so I got this postdoc um, ah, two years ago to work specifically on that. Um in the computer science faculty at at the University Of New Brunswick and it's been really great. So I've had a chance to just really. Develop this this idea and um and make a company so it's been fantastic. 05:30.30 archpodnet Nice, Okay, great. Well let's talk about that company a little bit Archeosoft and then we'll get into the software What to when did you start? Archeosoft and I guess if you were to tell us your mission statement and vision for this company. 05:47.97 Cora Woolsey Okay, so I started Archeosoft last year in June I believe it was it was created. Oh no, it was a little earlier than that I I had gone through an accelerator which was a real trip. Yeah I'd never been through one before um and I had to. 05:48.60 archpodnet What is it. 05:54.12 archpodnet Okay. 05:59.92 archpodnet Nice, yeah. 06:07.75 Cora Woolsey Cram A lot of stuff into my poor overworked brain really fast and but as part of that I created a company and so that was that was pretty great and um and like the company was created to basically get this. Um this software developed that I wanted to. 06:11.15 archpodnet But yeah. 06:26.30 Cora Woolsey Develop for archaeologists in the field and I'd done a ton of research on whether this was something people wanted and turns out this was basically like a unicorn like this is what they call it in the startup world where basically everyone is crying out for something. Um. 06:40.37 archpodnet Um. 06:42.96 Cora Woolsey And you know they're already trying to implement it. But it's not working super well and so and so if you bring along the right product. Um, there's a high. Uptake or hopefully there's a high uptake. So So I was really encouraged by a lot of people to like get this company started right now get development started right now so we started the company to develop that Software. Um. Of course we you know I'll never be happy with just one project So Eventually, it'll probably go elsewhere. But for now that's that's what it is. That's what we do. We develop a product called stratum. 07:20.60 archpodnet Okay, awesome. Paul it sounds like you were gonna have a question so I asked. 07:29.18 Paul No sorry I just had some noise here. Yeah. 07:34.81 archpodnet I'll keep it going. Ah all right? Well, let's talk about stratum because I'm pretty excited to talk about this I've we've looked at your website and I have been I've been in the I guess getting archeologists to go digital space for probably 10 years now in various capacities. With various companies including my own and other peoples and it's ah it's definitely an uphill battle. So I'm interested in. Well we're going to talk about stratum over the course of this podcast but 1 of the things I want to talk to you about first is you did user I guess. Questionnaires right? You talk to people who not user but people people who could be users of this software and ask them as you said like what is you know is this ah is this a space that's needed I'm curious as to why they said yes only because. There seems to be other things on the market even from some of the commonly available stuff like Esri's collector and things like that which I definitely have a lot of opinions on but what were some of the things that the feedback that you got where people said? Yeah what's available now is not working so we need this. That's what I'm curious about. 08:39.50 Cora Woolsey Yeah, okay, so so that was a really interesting experience and I I think I went into it kind of like assuming like what you you were just saying that people are already using stuff and they're just not going to like we would be kind of adding something new. 08:49.65 archpodnet Um, yeah. 08:58.72 Cora Woolsey Else to an existing market. But what I found um and this really blew my mind was that um people people are using other things like they're they're using s 3 collector in survey one 2 3 and a venza is like a huge one but the the issues that people are having so those softwares work really well. 09:11.55 archpodnet Yeah here. John. 09:18.62 Cora Woolsey Um, and you could never really compete with them because they have such a huge suite of things that kind of go along with them. But what people what I found people were experiencing was that um on the back end. There's just a ton of work. You still have to do and like there's never there's never a state. It seems like where where these. Softwares really meet the the specific requirements of archaeologists. So like. For instance I heard um that that people loved that they could customize survey 1 2 3 um, but but they so they put a lot of work into customizing it and that was. Great. They were able to sort of capture the fields that they that they wanted to capture. But then they'd have to they still have to like organize all that data when they would get back to the to the office and so you'd still have this situation where you would get you'd get back to your hotel room or whatever and you'd be spending until. 10:04.90 archpodnet Yeah. 10:05.16 Paul And. 10:15.78 Cora Woolsey 9 or 10 at night organizing the data that you got and this is the place where archeologists are just hurting because it was okay when our field seasons were from like may to october. Um, but that's just not the way it is anymore. 10:17.19 archpodnet No. 10:31.16 Cora Woolsey And you know like the the 2 people who have or sorry the 2 partners who have come on as investors and partners in the company like they have twelve month field seasons now and so and they don't have time to be organizing this. They don't have like a ah season where they just you know put in huge long hours and then. 10:39.69 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 10:50.54 Cora Woolsey You know when they're done. They get lots of time to spend with their families or whatever and that kind of makes it worth it for them. It's just not like that anymore. So ah, so what? Archaeologists really are hurting for is a software that kind of gets at what our specific requirements are and those those are. 10:52.28 archpodnet Right. 11:09.20 Cora Woolsey Like reporting specifically they're reporting and they're mapping and and and putting out the right kind of map so you know it's awesome. Having the ability to customize. But you know we have specific map types that we need over and over and over again and then so having that and then on the other side of it going back to the office. 11:10.30 archpodnet Sure. 11:28.61 Cora Woolsey And being able to just have that output that works for what we're trying to do um so like a ah huge thing that I wanted to put into this was automatically generated reports so you have your your artifact catalog just ready to go. There's no reason. 11:40.82 archpodnet Oh yeah. 11:41.20 Paul Me. 11:47.65 Cora Woolsey That can't be already done for you. Um, and you know your photo catalog so easy that stuff is so easy. It's just that's these a lot of these softwares Just don't They don't think to to make them because they're not on the ground archeologists. 12:01.89 archpodnet Yeah, well this is a great point to pause a little bit and talk about some of the stuff you were talking about because I have so many questions. So first off mapping I got a question on that. So I've seen mapping tackled before on. Basically. 12:10.34 Cora Woolsey Okay. 12:21.58 archpodnet Non-submeter Gps type things like trimbles and you know other type devices that will do the the mapping on there where you can produce shapefiles I've seen people try to do this on tablets I actually use a tablet-based program called touchgis which happens to work. You know fairly well to actually produce shapefiles. To do those feature classes and stuff like that I'm curious as to what your guys' capabilities are because this is a filemaker based program right. 12:45.49 Cora Woolsey Ah, okay, that's that's a whole can of worms so that? Yeah yeah, yeah I love talking about cancers and worms. So yeah, it is okay so there's a couple things there. 12:50.39 archpodnet Ah, yeah, yeah, I'm just curious about the mapping. Let's just talk about that. 12:52.21 Paul That came awards you want to talk about. 12:57.72 archpodnet Ah, yeah, it's a complex problem. Yeah. 13:05.90 Cora Woolsey So first of all, yeah filemaker cannot handle that. So so we were basically using filemaker right now just as a database so not not as an interface. Um now the mapping part is tough so we struggled with it for quite a long time. 13:11.61 Paul And. 13:11.63 archpodnet Okay, got it? yeah. 13:21.69 Cora Woolsey The online like if we were gonna do online mapping. That's not as hard because there's all kinds of tools that already exist you can just integrate them pretty easily but ah well so I don't know what it's like where you are but here like there are whole swaths of our province that. 13:25.68 Paul Listen. 13:27.75 archpodnet Sure it's the online part that's hard. Yeah. 13:37.00 archpodnet Oh yeah, for sure. 13:39.73 Cora Woolsey Aren't covered by anything and so like you know I've made personally I've made the mistake before of having all of the data I was going to need on a cell phone and then getting somewhere and being like oh my god I don't even know where the project is because I can't i. So having to like drive one hundred miles to where there was cell phone coverage just to retrieve the damn numbers that I could put in my Gps. So um, so so offline is super duper important. Um, and so so just to yeah to start from there and then um. 14:00.22 Paul Ah, good. 14:01.64 archpodnet I've been there. Yep. Yeah, yeah. 14:15.42 Cora Woolsey We like we want to. We want to make use of kind of what's out there but we don't want to be nuts about it like we don't want to have a software that's going to overload. Anybody's devices. Um and like it needs to kind of be integrated into all these other things and that. That's an issue turns out that's an issue. So if you have just have something like a venza well you know that does 1 thing that that program does 1 thing really really well. But if you try and take that and integrate it into a bunch of other things you're going to run into problems. So like we would like to do something like what a venza does. But. 14:39.78 archpodnet Yeah. 14:53.75 Cora Woolsey We're not going to pretend to be a venza like we can't do that as well. So so finding where that line is so their software doesn't get too big and this is kind of an exploration. Can we say about what we can get away with um. 14:54.27 archpodnet He. 15:04.80 archpodnet Yeah. 15:10.34 Cora Woolsey Ah, lot's gonna get revealed I think in the field testing phase which is coming up. So yeah, so I don't know if that answered exactly what you were asking but mappings a whole thing. Yeah, and here's the other thing is that. 15:14.60 archpodnet Okay. 15:20.24 archpodnet No, it's getting there. It's definitely getting there. It really is yeah. 15:24.13 Paul Oh yeah. 15:30.34 Cora Woolsey Like there are going to be people who who want um gis keep it like art gis capability and that's cool. We can't replace Arcgis. That's that's an amazing software that everyone who wants it and needs it should have access to but what we can do is um we can. 15:35.52 archpodnet So yeah. 15:48.87 Cora Woolsey Create a mapping software that knows what archaeologists basically wants want don't don't have a bunch of bells and whistles and will generate a map fairly easily from the data that you collect that is going to meet regulatory requirements. So if you want to use Arcgis Yes, do it like you know. 15:51.73 archpodnet M. 16:02.91 archpodnet Sure. 16:08.77 Cora Woolsey Ah, absolutely add that to your suite of tools. But I mean I talked to a lot of people that all they wanted was just Google earth that worked a little better than Google earth and that would make a map that they could hand in with the report and that's it. So theoretically. 16:17.42 archpodnet Um, wow. 16:20.64 Paul No. 16:24.31 Cora Woolsey You could you could set all of that up. You could You could have a settings um place for you know exactly what you want the map to look like and then kind of it just puts out an image. You're done. You don't have to go to rgis if you you know don't have time or whatever. 16:31.69 archpodnet You know. 16:39.86 archpodnet Paul is it super quick or should we go to break first. Okay, got it I'll take the transition then all right? Well that is a great place to take a break. We have. So many more questions for you. Paul's little digital hand was raising just before I said this. So I mean we are just like chomping at the bit because we love talking about this stuff not that we want to grill you. We just love talking about this stuff. It's probably a little of both there. You go all right? So let's take a break and we'll pick this up on the other side back in a minute. 16:56.99 Cora Woolsey Present. 17:03.78 Cora Woolsey Well I do too. So ah.