Listen to the Atlassian’s Loom podcast to hear Arjuna Rivera, Senior Solutions Engineer at Atlassian discuss the advantages of streamlining communication with functional and customizable video messages. Explore how Loom can enable you to record key information via camera, microphone and desktop screen, then quickly edit and share it across your organization.
Kevin Howard
Okay, welcome back to the CarahCast the podcast from Carahsoft, the trusted government IT solutions provider. Subscribe to get the latest technology updates in the public sector. My name is Kevin Howard, your host from the Carahsoft production team, and on behalf of Atlassian, we would like to welcome you today's podcast. Today's podcast is going to be focused around Loom, which is a new software that, in Atlassian product suite, transforms how agencies can collaborate through video messaging. Arjuna River joins me here today in the Carahsoft office. He's the Senior Solutions Engineer at Atlassian. He's going to be discussing how agencies can be taking advantage of this powerful tool that Atlassian has recently acquired. Thank you for joining me.
Arjuna Rivera
Awesome. Thank you for having me.
Kevin Howard
Awesome. So, to get in after me doing a little research of it myself, but for the viewers and the listeners at home, what would you say is kind of like a generic answer of what Loom is?
Arjuna Rivera
Yeah, so it could be as simple as a Loom is a screen recorder and video capture the more complex answer that we usually like to share is about how people work, right? So, it really provides a more asynchronous video communication, allowing you or any user to record and share video messages easily.
Kevin Howard
Okay, interesting. so similar? Is it similar or far different, compared to like Microsoft, Teams or Zoom? Is it more short form video formatting?
Arjuna Rivera
It is in a bit, so it really is not meant to have, you know, kind of that teams or slack, you know, recording capabilities, but more to facilitate communication, for avoiding meetings, right? So, when you hear team, you're thinking, oh, we're getting on some sort of meeting and so forth like that. And that's where the async, the asynchronous comes in and relates to, hey, I need to send this quick message to Kevin about, you know, what we're working on. I'm gonna record a two-to-three-minute Loom to avoid a 15-to-30-minute phone call.
Kevin Howard
Interesting, interesting. So, I mean, that kind of goes into my second point of what problem was Loom created to solve. So, kind of, as you just mentioned, of hey, rather than wasting several time or several hours into extensive meeting, say, breaking down of, hey, here's a project I need you to do, and here's kind of an intro of how you can do it.
Arjuna Rivera
Yeah, and then that's, and that's just a quick example. I have many more to go through so, but yeah, no, absolutely. So, the problem is, we need to find a way to efficiently conduct asynchronous communication. And what I mean by asynchronous is when you're on, when we're talking, like, where, right now, this is considered synchronous, right? Real, live, in person, or even remote when you're on a zoom, or some other type of meeting or conference software that's also synchronous. But what about that time in between those meetings, right? And that's where asynchronous communication and so Loom helps reduce that reliance on those time-consuming meetings and then late and enabling more flexible work schedules.
Kevin Howard
Awesome, awesome. It seems to fit very well into the Atlassian ecosystem. So far, absolutely. So, from some of your research, have you used it personally?
Arjuna Rivera
I was going to ask you the same question.
Kevin Howard
I have yet to looking forward to it. We saw kind of our introductory video of how it works, and I think we can even use it in our day-to-day life here at Carahsoft to kind of enhance productivity and kind of that down time. What you're saying of, hey, rolling out different projects or working on the same initiatives, being able to look back at something and say, hey, this is what we need to do.
Arjuna Rivera
Yeah, I, personally, I use it every day, like I literally, if I may not be sending a zoom a Loom every day. But when you're working with teams in your Confluence pages, you can easily just click to add a Loom to whatever context you know they're talking about. So, if we're doing like account planning, and our account executive wants to add some additional context to what he's posting in Confluence, you can easily just add a quick two-minute zoom as part of that. When I demo, when I'm meeting with our C level executives, I will typically prep that demo and record a Loom so A, I have it already in place for me to review and see how I can improve. And B, if we wanted to, we could actually send that particular Loom out. So yeah, and then my colleagues are constantly you. Using Looms to send messages. You know that need a little bit more than just kind of what you type in Slack.
Kevin Howard
Awesome, awesome. Going into and maybe you didn't have as much familiarity about Loom before, but how has it evolved since its inception? How have you seen since becoming a part of Atlassian now, yeah, of kind of migrating with the tools as well.
Arjuna Rivera
Absolutely, yeah. So when I came to Atlas the first time I actually heard of Loom, and I was excited, because I was pretty tired of using Quick Time to record in my screen and doing, you know, kind of screen capture, and in voice over, we now had a product called Loom that you can easily just hit a button and start recording. So again, never had a lot of experience with Loom, but since I've joined at last year, and now it's about a year, and in six months, I've seen what was the typical kind of screen recorder and video capture now become a core component of Confluence and the JIRA user experience, right? So, it's in integrating the Atlassian, broader system of work vision by adding that level of interactivity, you know, within our product. So ultimately, this integration aims to kind of deliver that unified user experience across all of our suite of products.
Kevin Howard
Perfect. Even from seeing that brief introduction that we did see, it seems very similar to some of the Atlassian core tools of how much you can customize something and not just use something out of the box. So, going into that collaboration with Atlassian tool suite is, how do you think that Loom has been compatible with Atlassian mission to kind of unleash the potential in every team? How can it improve what normal JIRA users or Confluence users, are using it on an everyday basis.
Arjuna Rivera
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Loom is a natural fit, all right. It really aligns to your earlier point around Atlassian mission to enhance the future of work through asynchronous communication tools with support with both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. So how are teams working together to get kind of their jobs done. So overall, really driving that, that productivity and innovation. I mean, you really have to, you really have to see it, though. Kevin, I mean, it is. It's so much fun to use first and foremost. But when you are, like, say, an engineer working you can actually create a JIRA or a bug ticket right from Loom, so you record what your software is doing. Everybody else the project team has context about what that piece of code you're working on does, and then right from Loom, you can easily say, okay, well, I want to issue a JIRA issue, you know, from the product. So just seeing that tight integration has been awesome.
Kevin Howard
Awesome. So just for my myself and for the listeners and viewers at home, is Loom when, when you're talking about some of those short format video interactions that you're having, rather like a teams or a Microsoft or a zoom, is it, is it able to screen share as well of what you're doing within Confluence or is it, is it just recording yourself?
Arjuna Rivera
Well, no, no, you can. You can record your screen, of course, record your audio, your video, one of the great capabilities, and I'm not sure if we're going to get to it, but leveraging the Atlassian intelligence and AI, so zoom will provide transcripts of the particular recording. Again, it doesn't have to be a short form, like I record hour long demos, right? So, in zoom, I mean in Loom, and it has given me a full transcript. It actually tracks real time, like as you're watching where the where the key is. It actually does some artificial intelligence, like removal of some repeated words, like UMS. You know, for this, I wonder how many UMS we have on this podcast. So, you know, things like that. It's, it's a great productivity tool to be able to really kind of clean up. You can edit your video in Loom itself, so you can go ahead and scrub and clean up some things. So again, that's, that's where you go, above and beyond what maybe some basic features you may find in other products. Loom really kind of leans into providing a more polished video as well as, you know, screen recording. You know.
Kevin Howard
Awesome, awesome, awesome. So, seems like very customizable but easy to use out of the box as well.
Arjuna Rivera
Absolutely yes, yes.
Kevin Howard
Awesome. From kind of the acquisition of Atlassian bringing Loom on a couple months ago. What do you think are some of the upcoming features that either have been announced or. What do you think is next for Loom and Atlassian?
Arjuna Rivera
Oh, okay, yeah, that's, that's, that's a great question. I know that Atlassian has, has been interested in Loom, I think since Loom first came out in, like, in 2016 so there's always been this kind of, hey, we're gonna, you know, be a customer to you and kind of see how your product goes. And then I think, in in what 23 or so is it? 24 in regards to the acquisition? So, from a road map perspective, the number one thing is that tight integration. So, wherever you're, you are within the Atlassian suite, we want to be able to give you access to Loom right within the product. So again, if I wasn't clear before, there is a desktop client that is always kind of sitting resident and ready to record. But also, within our products, you can go ahead and invoke the Loom client right from within where you're working. So, think about streamlining your work product and being able to kind of bring that out. So, I see further integration, further leveraging the Atlassian intelligence and AI within Loom, and then ultimately bringing that from an analytics standpoint. So, our Atlassian analytics, our data warehouse, bringing that kind of metrics in so people can kind of see how many Looms are occurring, how many meetings are we saving? How much time does that actually equate to, you know, from a productivity enhancement standpoint? So that's where I see us evolving this particular capability, you know, through that, through that integration.
Kevin Howard
That's awesome to hear. And as I keep on going back to how easy some of the tools within Atlassian are able to be used right out of the box, but being able to be able to customize as well. Do you see Loom users from the Atlassian standpoint, as technical as yourself, or any sorts of teams can use Loom for marketing to sales?
Arjuna Rivera
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. I mean, what we're what we're bringing, from an Atlassian standpoint, is that unified user experience, regardless of if you're engineers, right? So, for sure, if you're an engineer, being able to visually log JIRA issues is just an awesome capability. But when you look at leaders who can use videos to connect with their employees at scale, versus, you know, companywide emails, sales teams who can send tailored video updates to clients and HR teams who can onboard new employees with personalized welcome videos, I mean, there's just the promise is unlimited. When you think about how we need to communicate out, either to an individual or to, you know, a group of people, what do they say? Right? A video is worth 1000 words. So, I mean, that's the power of Loom. When we talk about the ease of hitting a button, recording yourself or your screen, and then being able to send that out.
Kevin Howard
Awesome. It seems like with everything that we've kind of talked about today, not only it's a no brainer within the Atlassian tool suite, but definitely tons of different ways that agencies that we talk to on a daily basis can use this to enhance their productivity, to save time, to cut down on that useless time. Yes. So, I wanted to thank you again for coming today, and want to thank you to everyone out there that's listening. So, thank you Arjuna Rivera for coming. Anybody that is listening or watching, don't forget to like comment and subscribe to CarahCast. Be sure to listen to our other discussions as well as we're going to have plenty here in the near future. If you'd like any more information about Atlassian and how we can assist your organization with Loom or with any of the other tools, please visit www.carahsoft.com or contact us at atlassian@carahsoft.com, via email. Thanks again, everyone.
Arjuna Rivera
Thank you.