Prompt engineering and reflecting on 2024

In this episode, Andrew talks about his recent deep dive on prompt engineering and the way the AI product landscape is shaking out. Sean talks about his recent trip to Philly for a cybersecurity marketing conference. Then the guys reflect on 2024 and their goals for 2025.

Links:

• Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins
• Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/
• MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/
• Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun
• Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/
• Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/
• Worth Driving: https://worthdriving.com/

For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Transcript:
00:00:00.00

Sean

two, one, happy birthday Austin, yay.

00:00:02.11

Andrew

Happy birthday, Austin!

00:00:05.29

Sean

How was your recording last week? How'd it go?

00:00:09.74

Andrew

I thought it went really well. um guess you tell me, have you had a chance to listen to it yet?

00:00:13.54

Sean

Yeah, my train from Pennsylvania, from Philadelphia to Virginia last week got very delayed, so.

00:00:20.11

Andrew

Oh no, I'm sorry.

00:00:21.26

Sean

said in the terminal and listened to it. was good. It was, yeah, thought he was super insightful.

00:00:28.35

Andrew

Yeah, Alex was awesome.

00:00:28.63

Sean

I feel like he's beginning, you were a little, what is it like? like like starstruck felt like i was like wow didn't see me like this so before it was good i thought he gave you like really good feedback i thought but i mean there were things i learned from it being someone who's never looked at the stack in the brick stuff and yeah i think it was it was helpful and then i saw the new meta monster update today or that you sent down i was like wow it is way better than before

00:00:36.26

Andrew

Oh, that's funny. Yeah.

00:00:57.50

Sean

and

00:00:59.34

Andrew

Well, that's good. At least I'm taking what I'm being taught and internalizing it and not it's not just going in one ear and out the other.

00:01:05.30

Sean

Yeah.

00:01:07.62

Sean

Right, right.

00:01:08.30

Sean

Like our podcasts usually do.

00:01:09.72

Andrew

Yeah, I tried to also do some of the pulling the slingshot back, as Alex says, some of the anticipation building with the actual release of the podcast episode. So tried to like hype that up. Austin said it worked on him. I'm not sure it made a big difference on our analytics, I think. Yeah.

00:01:33.43

Andrew

You know, I think we had. You know, it's performing better than our average podcast episode, but I think that's as much about like Alex retweeting it as it is anything else. So, you know.

00:01:46.91

Sean

Well, the real magic is, let's see how many people isn't today is right. So hello, new listeners. Austin is Andrew's co-founder, or I'm going to last name.

00:01:51.97

Andrew

Hey, that'd be cool.

00:01:57.22

Andrew

Yep. Austin's my co-founder on MetaMonster. He's the one responsible for making the product look great and function. Well, I'm just the guy who talks about it and is trying to talk about it better, trying to talk about it more good.

00:02:13.12

Sean

Yeah, hell yeah.

00:02:14.59

Andrew

Yeah. How was Philly?

00:02:16.99

Sean

It was good. I went to, so I went to cybersecurity marketing, the cyber marketing conference or cybersecurity marketing conference held by the cybersecurity marketing society. was good. A lot of, mean, no, this is the third time actually.

00:02:27.82

Andrew

Is this their first time doing an in-person conference? Oh, wow. I thought they were all virtual before.

00:02:34.02

Sean

The society, sorry, this is their, this is their third conference. They've done a bunch of like in-person events. Yeah. The society's grown. There's like 500 people at this conference.

00:02:42.76

Andrew

Cool.

00:02:43.91

Sean

yeah, I get to hang hang out with people that I don't usually get to see. And it's weird. It's, it's like the only conference I've ever been to. That's, I think that's i've ever, ever really been to that's not a security conference.

00:02:54.04

Andrew

Hmm.

00:02:54.63

Sean

So it's a whole other sort of vibe.

00:02:56.73

Andrew

Wait, but isn't it, I mean, it's still a security adjacent conference, right?

00:03:01.68

Sean

For sure.

00:03:01.98

Andrew

But it's not hackers talking about like the new vulnerabilities they discovered and like how they reverse engineered some crazy low level protocol or something.

00:03:02.04

Sean

For sure. For sure. But it's not like, you know, it's not like RSA. It's not like i can not be solid. It's yeah. Yeah.

00:03:10.97

Sean

Right.

00:03:14.32

Sean

right right exactly exactly and and it's not like it's also it's also not cyber security vendors trying to sell you on their product

00:03:24.38

Andrew

Right.

00:03:24.67

Sean

like RSA and Black Hat.

00:03:26.34

Andrew

Okay.

00:03:27.48

Sean

And it's also, it's a society it's like a society conference, so it's not, I guess it's almost like the DEFCON, like in that case, like the DEFCON of cybersecurity marketing, like you don't really go to sell anything there, you're not, your customers, I mean, I guess my client customers are there, but I also try not to do any of that.

00:03:32.18

Andrew

What does that mean?

00:03:38.60

Andrew

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

00:03:48.90

Sean

yeah There's obviously vendors and sponsors and stuff. We're a sponsor as well. i I literally was just like, I don't want to, like I also would like to attend the conference. So I gave up my booth and switched it out with a 360 camera and just let people use a 360 camera there.

00:04:02.45

Sean

And then went ahead and hung out with people there, but it was good.

00:04:01.81

Andrew

Oh, that'...