Totem Tuesday: July 3rd, 2024
Hey friend—
Something smells goooood up in here.
Like, really good.
I wonder why?
Maybe it's because we're cookin' up another
lip-smackin',
mama-snappin',
oh-so-good it's bout to happen
🎉 TOTEM TUESDAY 🎉
(a feast for the eyes and brain, straight to your inbox)
Alright Tribe—let’s vibe.
One quick announcement before we get started:
Our blog post all about the Unity Mesh Network™ is live!
People have been asking for it, and now it's here.
The Unity Mesh Network™ is a super important (and super cool) part of our tech, and deserves its own dedicated article.
This blog covers all the most frequently asked questions, including what it is, how it works, and shares an example of how it functions in a real-life festival environment.
OK! Enough housekeeping.
Let’s get into it.
This is our weekly progress report to all our favorite people.
Welcome to the Totem Tuesday 3-2-1.
3 things we accomplished,
2 things to learn,
1 thing coming up
Let’s go, Tribe!
(P.S. — if this is your first Totem Tuesday, we highly recommend that you go back and check out the Totem Tuesday archives. Our entire story is detailed extensively in past editions. Have fun 😘)
3 things we accomplished
1) Validation Testing Schedule
This is a big one, y'all....
This week, the team finalized our Validation Testing Schedule for the next month, as part of our continued QA Testing process.
Based off our findings from testing at Bonnaroo, we made some improvements to the Totem Compass that we're ready to validate before product rollout.
Our team will be conducting QA testing in increasingly high-profile areas all around the world. Check out the graphic below for more details!
Each event varies in size and setting to give us a good sample set to validate performance in different kinds of live events & festivals around the world.
Here's a breakdown of our next few testing destinations:
- Rose on the River — Chicago, IL
- Lost in Dreams — Los Angeles, CA
- Tomorrowland — Antwerp, Belgium
Many of you have asked if the entire Totem Team will be at Tomorrowland.
While we will have a few team members attending for continued QA testing, we won't be making an official Totem Tomorrowland debut.
Our team members will be hard at work doing QA on Totem improvements, so that there can be Totems everywhere at Tomorrowland 2025 🫶
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2) Engineering Hires
Our team is growing 🤩
As of this week, two new subject matter experts have joined the Totem engineering team!
Both our new engineers come equipped with a wealth of insight and experience in IoT (Internet of Things), mesh network communications, and bare metal hardware knowledge. They bring decades of experience and some advanced degrees. 🤓
They're already hard at work improving our use of the dual-processing cores on the Totem Compass PCB. This will speed up the response time of virtually all Totem functionality (like crazy-sensitive noise reactivity in Vibe Mode!).
The work they do will also support our testing protocols while we continue QA testing Totem improvements in the wild.
In the short term, this sets us up to move even faster on tech improvements so that we can get to product rollout as quickly as possible.
In the long term, we'll be able to build future features at a quicker pace—based on your product feedback!
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3) Totem Press Roundup
The Totem story is spreading far & wide! 🤓
Last Friday, Carter was interviewed on Fika Bytes, Totem's first-ever podcast feature.
Carter spoke all about Totem's origin story, how going viral forced us to quickly scale our team and processes, and provided helpful advice for startup founders looking to bring their hardware to market.
We've got several more podcast interviews scheduled over the next few weeks, along with a feature interview in The Edge Magazine debuting in early August.
In the meantime, check out this interview featuring Carter & Chase in the Times Free Press earlier this year.
(special shoutout to Ashlyn for stacking our press calendar 🫶)
To all the PR and Comms folks out there: we are open for interviews! Contact press@totemlabs.com for all media inquiries.
2 Things to Learn
1) Customer Questions
We get so many questions from curious customers all around the world, every single week (keep 'em comin!) 💗
Here are a few common questions we've gotten recently, with the answers you're looking for!
What exactly do we mean when we say that the Totem Compass is water resistant?
The Totem Compass is extremely well-protected against water and moisture. It will work perfectly in:
- Outdoor events with high humidity
- Outdoor events with rain
- Outdoor where it's hot and you sweat a ton
It's even fine to get the Totem Compass wet (see gif below of holding the Totem in our HQ sink 😂). That said, we recommend that you avoid water when possible. There's no need to run unnecessary risks—after all, it is an electronic device—and it won't be able to communicate with other Totems (that's just the way this type of radio wave works), so your friends might not be able to find you if your Totem is in the water. In summation: it's fine to get your Totem wet, but try to keep it out of the water when possible.
That QR code is important! How durable is the sticker?
As a design requirement, we chose a QR sticker that is both water-resistant and weather-resistant. Rain, sweat, and dust will not affect the QR sticker's appearance, adhesion, or functionality.
The housing also has a recessed area (see picture below) that holds the sticker to keep it safe and secure from normal wear and tear. Even if you try to take it off, you'll have to work pretty hard to get it out of there (but also, don't do that to yourself!).
Stay tuned next week for more customer questions we'll answer! We love hearing from you guys, it makes our whole week 🫶
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2) Team Enneagram Test
Building a healthy team environment under high-pressure conditions can be a challenge, but culture is so important.
People do their best work when they feel understood and appreciated. We want this company to be a place where we all can flourish—and that starts with understanding who we are.
This week, each team member took an Enneagram personality test to help us understand how everyone thinks, works, and communicates. As it turns out, we're quite diverse in who we are personally—almost every single person on the team got a different personality type.
Fun fact: Carter got a Type 1 (The Perfectionist). Here's a little read on why an Enneagram Type 1 can be a great leader!
It's so important to build self-awareness, so that we can build mutual awareness together. We aren't just here to create a collection of world-class individuals. We're here to build a truly world-class team.
As the great Will Guidara, author of Unreasonably Hospitality, says:
"Everyone's oxygen is different, and we have to figure out for ourselves what we need to breathe."
1 thing to look forward to
1) Content Update
This one's huge!
This week, for the very first time...
we will begin publicly sharing footage + images of production-grade Totem Compasses in the wild on social media!
Up until this point (except here on Totem Tuesday—TT always gets the best stuff), everything that we've shared publicly has been images and videos of our old prototypes.
As most of you know, we are well past the prototyping stage. Moving forward, everyone will be able to see footage of exactly how the Totem Compass looks, and exactly how it works in festival & live event settings.
In general, we'll be sharing content much more frequently on social media (particularly on TikTok), thanks to our awesome new Community Manager, Jahís.
Keep your eyes peeled!
A story to remember
Hey there 😊👋
I've been thinking recently
about stories.
We hear stories all the time from the Tribe,
because everyone,
since the dawn of time,
knows what it feels like to get lost.
We all come from
different places,
different families,
different backgrounds
and that gives us each
a distinctive story
that is uniquely our own.
But stories don't grow in a vacuum.
They grow alongside each other.
Intertwined with each other.
Somehow, our story led us to you.
And your story led you to us.
Neither could exist as they are today,
without the other.
So, thank you.
Thank you for sharing your stories with us,
each and every day.
Thank you for taking time out of your Tuesday
to allow us to share our story.
And most of all...
Thank you for writing this beautiful story
alongside us.
It means everything.
Totem Team, out.
✌️
(P.S. — if this is your first Totem Tuesday, we hiiighly recommend that you go back and check out the Totem Tuesday archives. Every single decision we’ve made with the product is detailed extensively in past editions. Have fun 😘)
