I think you just missed one important aspect which is the "Research" part of Roams name.
It may not be well known, but it's not for show. Roam was founded with an objective (I think Conor has described vision of it as it being a prosthetic for thought or something like that), which they don't feel like they have accomplished with what they released. I think specially how collaboration works.
I wouldn't be surprised if in couple of years Roam has become dramatically different.
We've no insight into their process, their ideation or the results of their experiments which I think it's a shame, but I find it beautiful that there are founders so focused on solving a problem.
One of the engineers recently posted something on the Slack which addresses this as well:
"Roam is much more a research company than most people realize. A significant portion of our effort and time go towards research into new and better approaches to augment (individual & collective) intellect. This research is really important and sometimes really fruitful (for example: the set of features that propelled Roam and arguably renewed the TFT landscape in 2019/2020 started from a period of intense research by Conor&Josh). However, almost by definition, the outputs of research cannot be guaranteed to happen within a particular period of time. We currently (and over the past few years) have had a number of research directions, and, from the public POV, this can look like no work was done. (Additionally, this high emphasis on research also means that roadmaps do not work that great for us :sweat_smile:)"
I think I touch it a bit where I'm referencing the early beginnings of Roam. But yeah that's an interesting anecdote. I agree Roam's approach for building a product isn't taken from the ordinary playbook, which is pretty cool.
This was such a nice walk down memory lane. I was Conor's assistant in 2020, and this really brings me back. Roam is an elegant tool, and I still use it daily. I think of it like a sober LSD trip through the interconnections of my mind. Roam is one tool of many that extends the computation of my brain. It takes skill to weld, and it's not for the weak.
It sounds like you were at the heart of the events! To be honest I used Roam for a year or so and then ditched it as soon as the hype faded. I guess I got into a vortex, trying to make the best use of it—backlinks, tags, morning pages, to-dos, etc. instead of just using it as I need.
I returned to Roam as part of my research for this post, and it slowly became a habit, but this time not forcefully. I think I've now found a good rhythm that works for me, especially for outlining ideas for potential posts.
On February 27th 2020 I started using Roam, I know because I logged it in Roam as my first entry. Since this was an app in a long history that once started with GrandView and then many, many more (Zoot was the one I used for a long time) and would be used for crucial info, I checked with the company and received, within a day, a very convincing answer from Conor White-Sullivan, brief and to-the-point. That sort of convinced me and now, 32k Roam pages later, still does.
I experimented with several of the other tools and will keep doing that. I like Obsedian for writing longer pieces (which I used to do in Scrivener) but for the (combination of) information Roam remains the unbeaten champion.
Nice piece, BTW - I particulary liked the 'The desire to build an empire, instead of a small village is one of the biggest evils in tech.'
It'll be interesting over the next year to see what happens when all of Roam's early $500 believer plans expire. Mine is up in October. I've been gone for a long time.
Great article.
I think you just missed one important aspect which is the "Research" part of Roams name.
It may not be well known, but it's not for show. Roam was founded with an objective (I think Conor has described vision of it as it being a prosthetic for thought or something like that), which they don't feel like they have accomplished with what they released. I think specially how collaboration works.
I wouldn't be surprised if in couple of years Roam has become dramatically different.
We've no insight into their process, their ideation or the results of their experiments which I think it's a shame, but I find it beautiful that there are founders so focused on solving a problem.
One of the engineers recently posted something on the Slack which addresses this as well:
"Roam is much more a research company than most people realize. A significant portion of our effort and time go towards research into new and better approaches to augment (individual & collective) intellect. This research is really important and sometimes really fruitful (for example: the set of features that propelled Roam and arguably renewed the TFT landscape in 2019/2020 started from a period of intense research by Conor&Josh). However, almost by definition, the outputs of research cannot be guaranteed to happen within a particular period of time. We currently (and over the past few years) have had a number of research directions, and, from the public POV, this can look like no work was done. (Additionally, this high emphasis on research also means that roadmaps do not work that great for us :sweat_smile:)"
I think I touch it a bit where I'm referencing the early beginnings of Roam. But yeah that's an interesting anecdote. I agree Roam's approach for building a product isn't taken from the ordinary playbook, which is pretty cool.
This was such a nice walk down memory lane. I was Conor's assistant in 2020, and this really brings me back. Roam is an elegant tool, and I still use it daily. I think of it like a sober LSD trip through the interconnections of my mind. Roam is one tool of many that extends the computation of my brain. It takes skill to weld, and it's not for the weak.
Thanks Jesse!
It sounds like you were at the heart of the events! To be honest I used Roam for a year or so and then ditched it as soon as the hype faded. I guess I got into a vortex, trying to make the best use of it—backlinks, tags, morning pages, to-dos, etc. instead of just using it as I need.
I returned to Roam as part of my research for this post, and it slowly became a habit, but this time not forcefully. I think I've now found a good rhythm that works for me, especially for outlining ideas for potential posts.
On February 27th 2020 I started using Roam, I know because I logged it in Roam as my first entry. Since this was an app in a long history that once started with GrandView and then many, many more (Zoot was the one I used for a long time) and would be used for crucial info, I checked with the company and received, within a day, a very convincing answer from Conor White-Sullivan, brief and to-the-point. That sort of convinced me and now, 32k Roam pages later, still does.
I experimented with several of the other tools and will keep doing that. I like Obsedian for writing longer pieces (which I used to do in Scrivener) but for the (combination of) information Roam remains the unbeaten champion.
Nice piece, BTW - I particulary liked the 'The desire to build an empire, instead of a small village is one of the biggest evils in tech.'
It'll be interesting over the next year to see what happens when all of Roam's early $500 believer plans expire. Mine is up in October. I've been gone for a long time.
I will buy another 5 year believer plan.
Did you migrated to a different tool?
Obsidian first and now Tana.