10 Years of Addigy in MacAdmins: Stories from the Community & What’s Next for Apple IT

Well, thank you for joining us. Wow. Good evening from Sweden, and so many other places. Yeah. We thought this was a very important time and milestone to celebrate. The fact that ten years ago today, I remember starting the first Mac admin Slack channel, for Addigy. And while it how’s how it has evolved from there, we’ve got some highlights of conversations, the evolution of some of the challenges we’ve dealt with in the Apple market. I think it’s a a fun, interesting run down memory lane, not just for Addigy, but for all of you guys, the community. And at the end of the day, as I see all these amazing names, we could not have done any of this stuff without you. I know you hear that in other outlets, but you guys all know that we we really live and breathe within what happens within Mac admins from your feedback and and what you do. So, thank you very much, and, let’s get everything started. I wanna make sure we introduce Nicholas Ponce from our team. You guys all know Nicholas quite well as well as, Andrew Andrew Porzio. They are working with me as we walk through memory lane together. So, Ponce, Andrew, anything to add on your side? Not really. Happy to be here. And, yeah, Hans, as most people know me, MacAdmins. Just call me Nicholas. So, Andrew, anything you wanna say? Yeah. It’s good to see seeing a lot of familiar names, seeing some new ones, so it’s good just good to see everyone here. And people taking, you know, an evening from London, Sweden, all over the US. It’s, it’s it’s it’s truly, humbling. Even going through some of the pictures that we did here, it’s really freaking awesome to see. So thank you for taking a bit of the time today. Alright, Ponce. Let’s start walking down memory lane. Alright. Let’s get it started here, and I’m actually gonna refresh here. Alright. Ten years of epic moments in MacAdmins. Sorry. That’s been This has been such a huge community. I think when it started, none of us knew it was gonna get this impressive. I I think these guys put this particular picture together. This is definitely an older picture as you can tell. Ten years shows, especially the white hair. But, you know, when I started Addigy, this was a labor of love in my spare bedroom. Many of you guys know this story. It was not an independently wealthy at all. My my wife kept us afloat as we were spending the time doing the work, building the product, and and then selling it, and, it’s that feedback loop. So one of the things I tell people is we had one phone in the office. There was one number you called, and so I would answer the phone. And somebody would say, can I speak with support? Sure. What can I help you with? Sales, what can I help you with? If there was a live prospect customer that that was using to provide feedback, we were we were leveraging that time, and we were valuing what was coming from that. And we weren’t hiding behind the chrome of a phone of a phone tree or a complicated website. We wanted to talk to people and iterate. So that’s one of the the the big components there. But, yeah, I definitely have a lot more white hair, and, and I’ve learned a lot along the way along with you guys. So is my team. So, anything you guys wanna add on this? Yeah. Let’s let’s move on to the next slide. You know, obviously, you you started all this, so we’ve all been growing together with you. I think the Slack channel is at twenty five hundred plus members and tens of thousands of questions. There’s just a couple of avatars from the Slack channel. But yeah. I mean, we’ll talk about growing together. Right? Like, that that’s you there at the the partner summit, and I think Mac maybe is that Mac Admins? Or That that’s Mac Admins. So I I remember Carson came with me for that one, and I think he was his first week on the job, but he was a customer of Addigy before that. And there’s my my second one was on the way when I started Addigy, and that’s him there, Lucas. Still has that beautiful smile. And my wife who supported us through the whole process. Not always been happy in that supportive process. It’s it’s definitely a grind and a lot of work, but we couldn’t have done this without her and everybody else and all of you guys. It’s it’s it’s truly inspiring to to look back and think about that. I was gonna say one thing. I was thinking about the Slack channel itself. I remember when it started as a free account, and I don’t think Slack realized that we were gonna go into so much messaging components. So there was a time where it was actually frozen, and nobody could log in until they figured out the the account and the relationship with Slack before it became, you know, fully adopted and and open. But there was definitely a couple weeks where the the entire MacAdmin Slack account was was frozen stuck because of the who’s gonna pay for it? And then yeah. I mean, that’s that’s all thanks to the sponsors, and and we sponsor that community now as well. So big shout out to the MacAdmins community and all you guys. And take a look at that. I mean, I I I didn’t even recognize you when we looked at this picture at first there. Yeah. It’s true. I mean, this was our first small office. It was the three of us cranking away, and, you know, I think you gotta realize when people take risks in you, that’s the ultimate form of of confidence and flattery. I didn’t take it lightly, making sure that our team continue to evolve and and iterate and grow. We outgrew that office really quickly and continue to go from there. But you can kinda see in the corner there, we serve Cuban coffee all day long, and it started with that trend back there where in the afternoon, we’d always make some some Cuban coffee during the day too. But yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And, you know, we actually made a data g sticker because know, I think over ten years, there’s been a number of new family members across the Addigy team and even across our customer base. So that’s been Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. It’s truly awesome to see that. I I I realized there’s a lot of responsibility with our customers, with our team, and our employees. I really believe we we do support a lot of families and a lot of people, and there’s a lot of responsibility given to us, and it’s not taken lightly. So Oh, and we have some questions here, Jason. I actually have one that I know the answer to, but I figured it’d be a good question for you to answer to the to the audience. So first question, what did you originally write Addigy in? Their guess is Go or Java. You wanna take that one? Yeah. I mean, it’s been through a few iterations. On the on the agent side, we actually wrote it in Python, which was a problem because we were using the dependencies of the device itself. And then that had, like, a compiled Python, and then that finally went to Go as an agent. On the infrastructure side, we’ve had a combination, Python originally, Go on the server side as well too. And and we we we’ve built a lot of microservices over time. So, you know, one of the things early on was you didn’t wanna build a monolithic system that was brittle and would would be a single point of failure. But you can get a little too far with microservices as well. But it it the code base has evolved. We’ve changed our front end UI multiple times over from JavaScript and jQuery to, Vue, now Vue three. And rewriting those things with this one term we always use is that if you don’t rewrite your code, somebody else will. And and that’s meant to be our competitors or other employees that are willing to go in there and and and continue to to make evolve code. When I was at Motorola and at other companies, when code got stale, that’s when you knew the business was in trouble. So it’s very important to continue to evolve and scale. I was actually gonna say that quote if you didn’t. So, I’m glad you brought it up because you would constantly remind us of that. And second question here, where did you get the name Addigy from? You know, it’s a great question that always I think people want inspiration from, and it’s true to what we’ve done. I had a business before this that best friends stood around for three months trying to figure out a name, and it it drove me loony. So literally just bought Addigy off eBay for, I think, we got a hundred and fifty bucks, domain and all, and then incorporated it, spent a hundred bucks on making the original logo you see there, and that was it. Let’s get to business. Let’s get to work. And that’s just been the pragmatic approach that we wanna stay focused on is where do we add value? The name is not gonna really, no pun intended to add value. Neither is the the we’ve obviously reiterated our logo as well too. What you guys want and pay for and need from us is delivering the great outcomes, and that’s we have to stay laser focused on. Everything else is just what I call the chrome. Right? So yeah. And and it definitely has gone through a lot of I mean, people like the name Addigy. I Addigy was, especially for my my my Latin employees, has has been a typical, challenge. But we haven’t had any other trademark issues or other international language, gaps with it, generally speaking. So and then the only other thing which I never really thought about was if they alphabetically list the companies, we’re always at the top. Never really took that into account. So I I wish there was a better story behind the name. I know a lot of companies do a good job doing that. We really wanted to focus on our work and and didn’t wanna waste time in areas that weren’t gonna add value. And we do have a question another one last question here before we move on. The people in the picture here, do they still work at Addigy, Jason? They do. They do. I love them to death. Javier Carmona, Jaime. They are, they they they are the core to who we are, and the tenure of our team is phenomenal. Our engineering team ships on average eight releases a day. I know that sounds crazy, but they’re iterative releases. They help keep the quality where we want. Our product team has evolved. I’m eternally proud of of what we do. We’re we’re a very small, nimble, focused organization. We can always get better, but we work really, really hard. Oh, the original current low the original logo and the current logo. That’s a good interesting one. So look at the a there. Right? I I do have mock ups of the original one. That was an iMac that went through some iterations to the a. So if you kinda stare at it a little bit, it’s a little abstract now. That was an iMac. And then the the new logo, the current logo, it’s meant to be an amalgamation of either a laptop that’s opening and or an iPad, tablet, as well. So it’s meant to be both, and it the angular aspect of it gives us a lot to work with. So we’re we’re very happy to have evolved our logo to something that’s really core to what we do. Awesome. Just a follow-up. Interesting. I feel I feel bad, like, if the failure is selfish talk here, but thank you for the nostalgia. No. Let’s get let’s get on the community. Yeah. Let’s go. So that could’ve changed, right, as we’ve gone through it. You know, if you used Atigee a long time ago, you probably will recognize this. So Jason started talking about what what what it was originally written in in Python and Angular. And I think we all remember the Python apocalypse where Mecca was removed. Python, that that drove us bonkers because we had to rewrite all our facts, and that was before AI was really prevalent. So, you know, rewriting all our Python facts to shell scripts, basically. I mean, you you can’t rely upon the state of the system ever. Bash, Python, you know, it’s amazing when you when you deploy to that scale of devices, how many of them are all screwed up. So yeah. You need a binary that’s gonna run by itself. Yeah. Yeah. And this was the first iteration of system updates that that released in Addgy. Obviously, we know DDM is the way now with Apple, and it’s a little bit different, but the same. Right? We’re you know, ten years later, we’re still solving the same problems. We’re still managing Apple devices, making sure they’re patched in on the latest versions. And it’s the same but different. Right? Actually, Sean said that’s not what it looks like. And Andrew, Jason, were talking about this before the call to say, you know, it kinda looks the same to me, kinda looks different. Right? If you look at these images here, drop your drop your feedback in the comments. Andrew Andrew, what was your feedback there? I started in twenty twenty, and when I started, I hated our our interface. It is much better today, I think. Buttons may be in the same place, but that’s about the same thing. Yeah. We’ve we’ve done a lot of work improving the interface with small little UX improvements and big changes here and there and just changing the overall technology around it. Right? So, you know, that we have a dedicated UX team. That’s awesome. Shout out to George. Thank you, Sean. And George, probably not here, but we’ll pass on that feedback. And, you know, they they take a UX and, you know, into everything we do in Addigy, so it’s it’s really nice to have that. Alright. So I think we all are pretty familiar with the product, so we didn’t wanna spend too much time on the product changes and when scripts are coming to the catalog, Jim. But, you know, this is in honor of the community, so we’re gonna we’re gonna jump right into it. You know, this was the day that Jason actually started the January eighteen twenty sixteen, if you can believe it out. Almost a month and ten years since Jason started it and people started joining. And you could see February fifth was a a large new release to production. And if you’re familiar, Jason used to do several YouTube videos and webinars when we launched new features. So you probably remember those days, and that’s that’s what some of these features look like. You so you could see Jason, you know, was, you know, communicating quite often in Slack and advertising all these features. Jason, any other comments on that besides No. I mean, I’m I’m still very active. I just don’t do it as much in the community as you guys know. It’s a lot of internal work with our product team and listening to we we just finished our our we had our our two, customer advisory board meetings, last week. We got a couple more coming up. We’re always trying to get more feedback. But, yeah. I mean, those early days, it was we were trying to move so fast, and we could move very quickly, almost too quickly. It would be like, well, how many people are on the server? Well, let’s just reboot the server and and keep going. Like, you could do that back then. But now we have a lot more responsibility globally. I think it was actually around that time to to two thousand sixteen. Sorry. I’m gonna give you guys a lot more color on a few few things. When was Irma? That was two thousand, like, Hurricane Irma. So being a Miami company, we were all pretty much down here in Miami in those early days when a hurricane was coming or something like that. It was a big risk. So it’d be, like, trying to bribe people to get out of Miami just so we weren’t stuck without power and how to support people outside our city. So early on, you need learn some resiliency. Yeah. Yeah. That was twenty seventeen, Jason. That’s right. Then rebooting reboots. Yep. And then we had this was your second actual summit. I think our first one was a very small cohort, but this was our second. And if you were at the summit, send the message in the chat. That was seven years ago almost to this point. And, yes, I just as Sean mentioned, the one feature that never shipped. You wanna explain that one, Jason? So, yeah, we chartered this this vessel and meant to leave the dock and go on a little sunset cruise and watch a sunset on the water, yet the boat never left the dock. And supposedly, the issue was they got bad fuel and weren’t able to start the engines and leave the dock. So we had a dock party on the boat. You know, to the credit of our customers and our employees, I think we still had just as much fun as ever. The running joke of the boat never leaving the dock, doesn’t go away. But yes. And there was definitely a lot of dancing and fun. Definitely a Miami party. We gotta do one again. Yeah. I I get requests, Jason, to do it again quite often, and I’m sure, in I I would love it. I would wish I would wish I wanna do it. It’s like putting on a wedding every year. That’s the that’s the problem. That’s the challenge. We should do one, though. We’ve we’ve talked a lot about it internally too at an executive level. And we may still even have some partners on the stickers, so from the votes. Alright. So some excerpts from Mac admins. Right? This one is featuring Ben and Tim. So if you’ve been in our channel, you probably know both these great gentlemen. And, you know, there was a software update issue going on, and, you know, they made a joke out of it. I’m not gonna repeat the the word on the webinar, but you can read it here. And Ben very humbly saying no one should have to read that. So that was definitely a great moment. And if you’re interested in any of these conversations, that’s one of the beauties about the MacM and Slack. You can see, basically, the whole history of the Atogee channel at your a click of your mouse there. Slack stands for searchable log of all communication and knowledge. So it’s it’s definitely a helpful resource, and we’ll talk about that. Right? Like, when m one is shipped together, there was Bootstrap issues or is sext and kext issues, and we didn’t make up those acronyms. So Yeah. I mean, I this is when you guys think about when we went from HFS to APFS, I was thinking about that. Those that I forgot which OS update that was, OS upgrade. And the the the amount of brick devices, you may not have felt it as much, but we saw the sheer amount of them across the over like, this this platform of macOS, iOS, MDM, and DDM. Like, everything has gotten a lot more mature and stable, but those early days were were some rough days for all of us, especially you guys out in the field leveraging experiencing this. Celebrating and uplifting one another. Right? Whether it was people taking getting certified with the ACA or I think we now we have the ACP if you’re interested in that too. Like, you know, a lot of people have had lot of different celebrations or congratulations for one reason or another. Yeah. A lot of you guys when we look back, we realized that you onboarded with us before we had any onboarding capabilities, and, the product has changed so much. So definitely wanna make sure that there’s, some ability for you guys to continue learning. Wow, Jim. I didn’t realize there was a Pipedrive Addigy email out there. There’s a there’s a lot of moving parts that fell off the in the process. Yeah. That’s not active, so don’t Yeah. Email all that. So, obviously, we come for the technical expertise, and we stay for the humor. And we’ve all shared different costumes, and I think we even had a Halloween costume contest at one point where someone shared our own Halloween costumes, including myself there as Bob Ross. And Yeah. And he had to get creative during twenty twenty. It was about the time frame, I think. Yes. I had to get creative. Yep. Real expert help every day. Right? Like, you know, Andrew is there regularly. I am there regularly. And and as Jason mentioned, he is there, although his Slack looks like a Christmas tree with all the red lights and messages. But there’s more than just us three in that community. You know, I think our product managers like Selena and Joel and Bryce are are there regularly talking about products and features and what you guys are looking for along with our customer success team like Tim and others in there. So a bunch of our team members are there listening and watching what you guys are saying to see how we can improve the product and how we can improve the UX. And maybe that’s giving feedback to George that you guys are sharing. But, you know, everything you guys contribute and provide, like, we we are really looking at seeing how we can make your guys’ lives easier. And then, you know, here is just a couple quotes I think that we have that that, you know, kinda epitomizes the the community. Right? And this is AJ. He said this channel makes me feel like I have a whole team. When fires break, you know, people jump in with testing fixes and workarounds. Yeah. I mean, in in in back in the day, there was the scenarios, knock on wood, we I don’t know if we’ve I don’t know how many years it’s been since we’ve ever had some outage. But, you know, we used to have outages in the past, and we were definitely not hiding behind it. We were, on top of it. We were communicative and, trying to make sure that we we got things, stable and solid, but at the same time, we’re moving with the same innovation we could be and should be doing. I think that’s the fearful part is when organizations get too scared of change, then, you know, you you you don’t balance things out properly. Alright. And just, you know, a couple more quotes from different people, including myself, actually, and goes with some of the information we shared earlier. So this is from Bruno. Really loving the live desktop feature. I think a lot of our users love that live desktop feature. I’m not quite sure who posted this message, but, you know, I was just thanking us for all the hard work and the success we had. And then, of course, this is in twenty twenty three. I my my daughter was born then. So I just let you guys know I will be stepping away for a little bit there for paternity. I know a couple other community members had children also who stepped away, and were very active as well. So alright. And I think now we’re going into the wards here. Shall we go straight in, or do we wanna say anything else before we Well, I just wanna preamble the fact that I know I’ve said it here a couple times, and, guys, we hear it from the the marketing world overall. But this is a dynamic market. It’s it’s also a niche market that I think very few fully truly understand and to have the depth of knowledge and experience that that you guys have and the the needs that you particularly have to meet, and and the vendor hoping to try to meet those criterias. We cannot do this without you. And, sometimes it’s hard to hear the feedback, but but it’s true, and our team has always listened and understood that that we’re not perfect. We have to keep getting better at everything we do. Hence, we have to listen, with empathy and being humble and just work away at things. And, hopefully, over time, and as a sure trajectory even this year continues to deliver, we cannot do this without you. So, yeah, total community. So with that, let’s let’s give them out. Yeah. Yeah. So Sean said something something village and, you know, as a as a parent, you know, different takes a village. Right? Alright. So let’s get started. Community champion. People people are helping every day, providing code and answers and patience sometimes or just thoughts and prayers here. So Ross and Sean, so big shout out to you guys. We’re gonna be sending you guys some swag, and we’ll be reaching out to you directly about it. So, you know, there’s there’s other winners as well. So just stay to the end of the presentation. If you win, either DM me in Slack or email me or Andrew, and and we’ll get you taken care of. We’ll probably reach out if we don’t hear from you anyway. So yeah. And just FYI, these winners are none of these people are Addigy employees. It’s just so, yeah, Addigy employees are not eligible for this. We you know, this is just something for customers. I mean, guys are doing this for for we’re not paying them. Right? They’re providing all this feedback and help. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s extremely important, and it’s it’s very valuable. Yeah. Yeah. And this was just a quote from Sean that we threw in here, you know, thanking us and, you know, in fact, we we need to thank you. And Tim Pearson asked if they get to give a speech. Maybe we’ll open it up at the end once all the winners are announced, and if any of them wanna give a shout out to anybody or say anything Yeah. Open it up. I’m happy to do that. Awesome. Alright. Most helpful contributor, Tim Pearson and Tyler Williams. Alright. Shout out to Tim and Tyler. We’ll be reaching out to you guys as well. Alright. Best humor under pressure. Alright. And that is that winner goes to Justin Asgar there. Which comes first, the pressure or the humor? I don’t I don’t know which one is first. Alright. We just have one other one that we’re doing. We didn’t get headshots for them either, but this is for the original joiners. So Jim and Justin, I think we’re one of the first group of guys that are still hanging around and either lurking or communicating for ten years, if you guys can believe that. So thank you, Jim and Justin, for joining ten years ago and sticking with us. Yes. I I think before we allow anybody to give a speech, we we you know, this is probably one of the harder things to pick people for to win because there’s several community members and champions we have there that are actively contributing to our community. So it would you know, we probably could have picked, like, fifteen people, but we had to we had course of ten years, like, these people have made a serious long term impact. Right? Let’s let’s let’s be honest about it. And that’s, that’s really important to to me, my family, to all the families I support here at Addigy, and to the rest of the Addigy community. So a big shout out and thanks. And thank you for taking a half hour of your day to to listen to us pontificate on on ten years, but you’re definitely very much part of that journey with us and have shaped, the product, the team, and the community in and of itself. So Alright. So with that said, shall we microphone it? Yeah. Live mic I’m not sure. Not the best of Zoom webinars, so let’s see how we can get, You might have to upgrade them to panelists. Yeah. Jim, panelists. Get ready, guys. You’re gonna be we’re gonna see if your microphones are working. Alright. Jim is now a panelist. Where’s Sean, Ross? Multi panelist. Jim, are you still in Palm Beach? Jupiter. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Yeah, man. Well, thank you for all that you do. And, yeah, it’s it’s it’s definitely been a journey. We haven’t been perfect, but you’ve helped make us a lot better. That’s for sure. You guys rock, man. Love it. It’s been such a great journey. I was thinking, though, back to that. I did an email search, I found some emails between me and Jason back in twenty sixteen. And there’s there’s a couple rocky moments, but but I’m glad we worked through it and worked out and stuck with it. And and you guys have just been such a blessing to my business. And and I just said, you know, September celebrated ten years of Beyond IT, so kinda grew with you guys, over the past ten years. So it’s been a great journey. It’s phenomenal, man. Yeah. Taking care of that family hopefully too. Yeah. For sure. Alright. Well, Ross, Sean? And Tim there’s two Tims. I tried promoting Tim Pearson to the two Tim Pearson’s, but it seem to be getting in here. So There’s obviously two Tim Pearson’s. Yeah. It’s worth having two of them. Are we talking about the same Tim Pearson? Because I can only handle one. This is true. Alright. Well, Ross, Sean, any of you guys have anything? Or Tim’s are actually off. There we go. It looks like the real Tim Pearson. I’m here. Live now? Guys. Hey, Tim. You guys are great. You know that you know I love you all. I don’t have any I don’t have anything to add. You guys are fantastic. Thanks for I mean, look. It’s a Super Bowl parade today. We got a million people downtown Seattle. So I whatever. You know, I You missed that parade for this. Yeah. That’s right. I stayed home so I could do this. So Ross? Yeah. No. We just we just appreciate you being humble and communicative, you know, because we’ve the other other providers who will rename remain nameless, you know, throughout the course of our corporate relationships. Yeah. We used to have you know, be real easy to bend their ear and and talk features and innovate on their platform. And then and then that just sort of fell away over over a while. But I feel like it’s been great working with y’all because you are willing to work with your community. And so as much as, like, you know, I I have I I look forward to continuing to be your your lowest paid QA stress tester. But, like, I appreciate that you’re willing to look at the code I built and adopt some of it sometimes when it’s appropriate and see the see the business use cases from an MSP of our size and scope with the complexity that we’re dealing with. You’re like, okay. Yeah. No. Maybe there’s something that we can we can do to to beef up the platform because of it. So I’m just glad you’re willing work with us. So if if the price I pay for that is is contributing to the community, that’s an easy one to slide by. Awesome. Thank you, Ross. And then that leaves Sean, if you have anything to to add there too, and then we’ll call the session here. Sure. When I started using Addigy, I just had a career pivot of moving from marketing into IT, and the Addigy community on Mac admins was really my first connection into this whole community. And, so, yeah, it wasn’t quite ten years ago, but it’s probably still the community I identify with the most, and it’s been great from teaching me to being a place that I can teach or share and then everything that’s branched out from there. Yeah. I mean, I met Benjamin in the attitude channel, and now I work for him. So you’ve connected me to my paycheck in some ways. Very good. Well, you’ve contributed a lot of scripts, and it helps people learn scripting quite well too in the process. And so I think that’s a apropos way to to wrap things up there, Ponce. Yep. Agreed. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for all the contributions you make to to our Slack channel. And I think as Pedro said it, can’t wait to see what comes in the next ten years. Yeah. That’s exciting. Thank you, guys. Have a great day. Thank you. Bye. Bye.