Customer Interview: Guilhem D, The French Engineering Student

Category: Productivity and Technology

Tags: AI ToolsEngineering StudentFeature RequestsRecall AppWorkflow Optimization

Entities: Aldo San FranciscoGitHub CopilotGMNotionObsidianRecallRolls-Royce eloquence contestSWorld Economic Forum

Transcript

00:00

Hi everyone, I'm S uh one of the co-founders of Recall. I'm really excited to be doing our second live customer interview.

And today I have GM. Did I I got did I get it right?

I got it right. We have GM.

He is an engineering

00:15

student from France. Today we're just going to go through um a bit of his background, a bit of his workflow, some of his feature requests, and also discuss a little bit about how we're planning on involving recall.

So that's enough about me. Uh over to you, G.

Yeah, good. Well, thanks a lot to have

00:30

me here. Uh, so my name is GM.

I'm as as S said, I'm a student in engineering in France, general engineering. Uh, I'm 20 years old.

I I am in an apprentichip at a space, a very very big satellite

00:46

company. It's really cool.

And, uh, currently I'm also an intern in Spain in a tech company. Uh, it's kind of cool.

And uh yeah I and uh yeah about recall but like this year um in France I discovered uh the Rolls-Royce eloquence

01:03

contest it's a contest between a lot of engineering school especially in Tulus uh where I am studying. The target is to just do a good presentation in front of a very very high qualified person.

I

01:19

participate in it with a friend, but the only problem is that I had I it's about I had two weeks to prepare all my my speech. Yeah, it was a really tight timing and I had to find something really cool.

So, I choose my subject um

01:34

space degrees handling and management. I tried to to do some research but uh it was really hard to find good information without wasting my time because like there is some cool YouTube video but they are like two or three hours long and I don't had this time sadly.

So uh

01:52

at first I tried to code my own solution. I love that.

I love that. That was like okay I have a problem.

Let me just uh bold a let me let me instead of watching a 2hour video, I'll bold something to help me watch it more efficiently like a classic engineer.

02:08

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

I I tried to code a solution to take a YouTube video and to do a transcript, but it was better than most free tools, but still not enough for me. Uh I found a Reddit post about uh some AI tools uh who can

02:25

do basically what I needed and uh I was like yeah why not let's try this one and it was really cool and um really it was really really good um I I could do all my research really quickly really efficiently

02:41

uh to to do the full speech at the end and just to to give sly the the conclusion I finished fourth instead of in the top three. But yeah, it was still good experience.

That's amazing. What's a what's an

02:56

amazing result. So yeah, you should be proud of that.

Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, it was really cool and uh I still continue to use recall for other stuff. Okay.

I mean I I obviously this is live so I didn't know your story. That's amazing.

I'm so happy to hear that

03:14

recall could be helpful for you when you know you were under crunch crunch time. um would you be comfortable sharing your screen and maybe walking us through how you use recall today any of your workflows and we can sort of just take it from there.

Yeah. Yeah, of course.

Of course. Just

03:29

let me share the screen. Okay.

So, uh there is a lot of cards uh you can ignore them for now. Uh but uh basically um my workflow uh I have explained it um in details on the discord server.

So if

03:46

you haven't joined it, please join it. But uh yeah, my workflow is like I found something that I want information.

So for example, at this time it was about satellite space. I have a personal preference for GitHub

04:02

copilot now. But like I ask I ask him like can you create me on Google about uh

04:18

I I has just a random question for example this I take the question I put it on perlexity I try to look on Google or so on YouTube and I take directly I don't waste any time I just look directly at the sources I take the

04:33

sources that are interesting to me. So, for example, this one um about the World Economic Forum, I remember it was really good.

I create a new card, I paste it, and uh what as we say in France, it's uh it's all good.

04:48

Here we go. So, now you've entered it in recall.

What's next? What's your typical sort of workflow inside recall?

Well, inside recall um my my workflow is like I skip totally uh the uh this part

05:04

on the left. Then yeah, I look at the notebook.

I read what it say when there is um some um concept linked uh to other article. Uh I look at all the connection that I have.

I try to see a map of what

05:21

uh what I'm sticking as content. So I'm just going to show like for example this the connection part of I love it absolutely there is a lot of interesting thing such as on this article there was link to some

05:37

corporations world economic forum of course because they are the author but air astroscale there was a lot of information that I could have missed if it was just me reading the article and it's even more useful when I go to the graph view specifically on this car and

05:55

that I try to look at other information. So for example, I was looking at space debris.

I look at the space debris topic and I see that I have other um information linked about it. So for example, this one

06:10

have a lot of information and I go I can go really deep inside the rabbit hole to find the good information that I need to use it correctly. That's amazing.

I'm so glad you actually find the connections helpful. I personally love them and when I have time I'm so delighted when I'm like oh I

06:27

didn't realize this or like oh that's so cool that it's related but I also know it's not for everyone and also at the same time there's honestly a lot more work that we need to do on our graph. So ideally, you know, we'll revamp the visual element so it's a bit more uh intuitive, a bit easier to navigate and

06:44

maybe even we'll have a way that you can summarize that graph. So without you needing to spend time to click, expand, explore, you could like very quickly know ah space debris is related to these five other topics and maybe these other related concepts came up in these articles.

And I wonder, do you ever use the chat

07:01

or the quiz feature with your studying? Is that something that comes up or not really?

It's more for research for the chat. Um I have used it yes a lot currently uh in my internship in Spain.

Well there is some website who are in Portuguese or in Spanish and like

07:18

sometimes I have difficulties to understand exactly what they are saying. So I put the website on recall and I ask like what do they say or anything to so that I can understand and then be better uh when I talk to the client for

07:34

example but yeah. Okay.

Okay. Awesome.

And if you take us back to your homepage uh is is mainly the topics that you're looking at research topics. Are there any fun personal topics that you use or primarily recall is about saving time when researching?

Well, at first I was

07:52

really into just saving times, being efficient and everything very engineering way to think, but I I start to to be more on some fun side like for example there is science fiction uh this

08:07

YouTube channel primer really great but there is another YouTube channel that I love which is um al Aldo San Francisco it's a French YouTube channel and he made very long and very interesting video but like I have

08:23

difficulties to find all the interesting links. So for example, let's look at this one.

It's a very very very long YouTube video. I won't do all of it.

Um but it's really related to some deep and artistic information like you can see

08:41

Clive Ber you can see Akira there is really deep subject and I I love recall because it's able to make me improve also this this side the more

08:57

cultural side let's say so for example this it's really interesting I I love this this feature I love recall for this. And I wonder, have you ever used Obsidian or any other graph uh style note takingaking apps or was recall the

09:12

first? Well, I've tried Obsidian uh and I absolutely hated it because uh uh it's it's just I hated it because I wasn't competent enough in how this work uh and I wasn't taking my time to understand to

09:30

try to make this work. Okay.

I was just curious. I know like a lot of people once they get the hang of Obsidian, it's very addictive and they can only sort of take their notes in there.

And I was curious because we're about to launch hopefully this week actually a way to bulk import your markdown notes. So I guess just a couple

09:47

a couple other questions. I noticed that you added your content by clicking create new and pasting in your link.

Do you ever use uh the browser extension or do you use the recall mobile app? Uh I have both the mobile app and the extension.

For the person who don't know

10:03

uh it's really really really useful. Very good.

Like I click on the extension and it basically do the same but even quicker I think. Recall on my phone I don't use it to add data, add information.

I use it to read my information mostly. Uh but yeah.

10:21

Okay. Awesome.

Um I guess like a couple final questions. any wish lists or feature requests or particular areas you would love recall to expand into?

Uh well, I'd say it would be to be able to import like a batch of content uh

10:39

instead of just taking one PDF file to after the other because it takes a long time or just when I import a bunch of um cards uh that they all get a a good notebook at the end. Even if it takes

10:54

time, I I don't care. I put it I can take all of them and put them into recall.

But sadly uh for for example this one where there is everything but there is no notebook. And I'm I'm very lazy.

I don't want to

11:10

go to each one create a notebook or Yeah. Or maybe another one would be to be able to directly import video instead of putting them into YouTube then into recall but uh it would take a lot of space.

So I understand why not the case.

11:29

So so just custom following the first one is like bulk document upload. So like bulk PDF upload.

And then the second let's let's go back to that other card. Yes.

The one that didn't have Yeah. So, you're aware like if you click chats, if you go to the chat tab, uh, and you

11:45

click concise summary. Yeah.

Well, now you know. Yes.

No, don't do them. No, it's it's a bad design.

It's a bad design. And now you click add to notebook.

Honestly, our UI in UX really needs

12:00

really needs a lot of work. And now it's in there.

So, I I'm glad you now you know. So, with the browser extension, it's the default action in here.

It should also be your default action which you can pick in your setting that can be detailed, concise or reader only. But when you bulk import, so if you import

12:17

all of your bookmarks, it won't automatically create the summary. You have to do this.

Go to chat, click it, add it to notebook. It's pretty painful honestly.

Yes, I'm sorry. It's it's not intuitive.

It is not you. It is really not you.

Um,

12:32

but the reason we do that is the AI costs, right? So, we're trying to figure out how to make sure it's sustainable.

Sustainable. Yeah.

Just see the list of there is a lot of content. I feel a bit shameful when I add a lot of content because I

12:49

know the cost are very very expensive. No, no, no, no, no.

You don't feel shameful. Like, this is why we built recall.

Like, the fact that you're using it and adding so much content is amazing. So, do not hold back.

Uh, for anyone who's watching, we do set a $50 AI limit, which means if a user reaches

13:06

the $50 cost limit, they'll sort of get a little notification thing that they got to reset it and you just pop me an email. You have you have you have emailed me already.

I remember. But for anyone watching, it's no like don't like don't hold back.

Just email us at support getrecall.ai and we will just

13:23

reenable it. The the last question, your last feature request, would it be to upload MP4 videos instead of YouTube?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. MP4.

Yeah. Because it would be so much more useful to just like, oh, I have to put all the content

13:38

onto YouTube and then I can send it to record. I actually we just discussed this one.

U we were going to so after we do markdown from Obsidian and Notion, which will launch this week, I think we'll just do a list of URLs. So that'll be um like if

13:54

you can have a CSV of URLs and then I think next we might go to the MP4. So fingers crossed it it will come.

Uh so let's see. Um um any advice that you would give to new users who are just just getting started with recall and maybe looking for ways to uh get utility

14:12

out of it or build a workflow around recall. I think at first like try to find what's your problem and what you want to solve.

uh like for example if it's school or anything uh and try to create a workflow that can be uh replicated uh and do like

14:30

over and over and over again uh at first um and then when you import cards uh instead of like what I did to just import the card and just ignore it um I have beun to import the card and add my

14:46

own tags. So for example like this is my school it was my school year this is was this is the topic so it's more um organized uh because like recall organization is really great to be honest it's really really really good

15:02

but um my my mind is saying no we have to organize it in another way in a different way so I I think yeah yeah just try to find the correct organization for the tags uh so it feel right for your brain uh but

15:17

Yeah, that's excellent. I feel the same.

Like organization, it's so personal and like sometimes it works. I'm like, oh, that's the perfect place I'd want to put it.

And sometimes I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I've really got to spend some time to to find a system that works for me.

Do it before importing a bunch of cards

15:33

because I am regretting uh like my hundred of cards I have to manually tag because I forget. Well, then maybe maybe the feature request you'll really like is we want to do bulk tag management so you can just like select a whole bunch of cards.

15:50

Yeah. And then add a tag.

Yes. I I I think we definitely need it because we need a balance.

If we're doing bulk import, we need to have bulk management. You know, it it needs to balance.

So, uh hopefully that will also come come soon. I'm I'm particularly excited

16:06

about bulk bulk management or smarter management of your cards. Um but awesome.

Thank you so much for taking your time. I thought this was amazing.

I had a lot of fun. I appreciate you also sharing, you know, your workflow and taking time out of your studies to to meet with me.

So hopefully this is this

16:22

will be helpful for future recall users and yeah, really just uh appreciate it. So thank you.

Thanks a lot for your time and for this application also. I love recall and I'm excited for all the f the future features.