Kim Swanson: 0:03

Welcome to AASHTO Resource Q&A. We're taking time to discuss construction materials, testing and inspection with people in the know. From exploring testing problems and solutions to laboratory best practices and quality management, we're covering topics important to you.

Brian Johnson: 0:18

Welcome to AASHTO Resource Q&A. I'm Brian Johnson.

Kim Swanson: 0:22

And I'm Kim Swanson and we're back Finally, right?

Brian Johnson: 0:28

Yeah, it has seemed like forever since we actually sat down to record one of these.

Kim Swanson: 0:35

It almost has been forever. We took a break at the end of February and now it's almost the end of July, so this is a very long hiatus for us, but we're back for everyone who missed us.

Brian Johnson: 0:48

Yeah, this has been a bit like when you have a task that you need to take on at home and you just delay, delay, delay. And the reason for that is because once we get rolling, we don't stop until we end the season. So it's been a little uh difficult getting going this time, because we want to make sure that we do it a little better than we did in the previous years yeah, and it's one of those.

Kim Swanson: 1:19

We need to make sure we were getting everything done that we needed to get done before we could start right with, like our you know day jobs, so to speak. So you will notice, this season, season five it's going to be instead of every tuesday we're releasing an episode. It's going to be every other tuesday, so that is something different, and that is again to help with our workload and managing as much as the podcast as we can at the time.

Brian Johnson: 1:44

Yeah, and you may have noticed from previous episodes, if you've heard any, that we talk a lot about continual improvement at AASHTO Resource, and that extends to the podcast itself. And the reason why we're thinking about the two weeks instead of every week it's not just the time consuming nature of it for editing uh and and getting all of the information together to make the uh packaging I guess you'd call it nice, as kim does uh but it's also just to make sure that we have better content. So there have been some times that we have been guilty of uh repurposing stuff or not that there's anything wrong with that uh, or or just having kind of fill-in episodes because we just need to get content out every week. I think, just thinking the way we were discussing it, preparing for season five, we were like, okay, what can we do to make sure that every episode is a good one? And and that was really uh, it really pushed us in the direction of splitting it to uh every other week, uh.

Kim Swanson: 2:58

So that is a little bit of background information on that change yeah, I'm not loving the fact that you have not loved every single episode we've done, brian, I mean, come on I have, I'm just teasing. Some have not true true, not that I got a lot of negative feedback.

Brian Johnson: 3:17

I mean really no feedback, uh from most people, as we have talked and I did want to talk about that too by the way.

Brian Johnson: 3:23

So there was something uh, I guess it was. It was last week, as we're recording this uh, I was in Hawaii on vacation and I because, uh, I don't like my family Uh, I scheduled a meeting with the asphalt pavement industry Happy and John Young, who was on our podcast last season, and I set up an appointment to be a guest at one of their monthly meetings and he invited people. We had a great turnout. A guest at one of their monthly meetings and he invited people and we had a great turnout.

Brian Johnson: 4:11

But I had mentioned something about the podcast and somebody asked me is it true that you never get any emails at the podcast, at ashtoresourceorg email address? And I was enunciating that just now on purpose, for a reason. And I said, well, yeah, that is true, we don't ever get any emails to that email account. And that person was surprised. They thought we would get some and somebody. So John Young from Happy was thinking about it and he emailed us and he said oh, by the way, in the transcript the email address shows up in different ways and one of them was Astro, astro, it was Astro resource, yeah, yeah, or at Astro resource, and there was one that was what was it? Pod case email at.

Brian Johnson: 5:06

Whatever the email address was, so I was like okay, well, maybe if people were pulling from the transcript they would get that wrong. I still don't know if we're going to get any action on that email account, but if you're out there and you just want to say hello, we'd be happy to hear from you. At podcast P-O-D-C-A-S-T. At A-A-S-H-T-O-R-E-S-O-U-R-C-E, dot O-R-G. See if I spelled that correctly.

Kim Swanson: 5:33

Yeah, that's I mean, I'm the spot that I would definitely not have spelled that correctly. So thank you for that, Brian. I will say we do auto transcribe our episodes, so and I do try to do it once over to make sure I catch any glaring mistakes like that and misspellings, but obviously not perfect. So, and we do want people to email us, and especially about the changes we're making this season. If you love it, let us know. If you hate it, you're like I want content every week, Let us know that too, and then we can see what we can do. But again, it's all about continual improvement and we do need to get feedback to know if we're doing what you need us to do for this and getting out of the episodes what you want to get out of it. So any who and what else?

Brian Johnson: 6:23

What else were we? You were also talking about possibly using video, right?

Kim Swanson: 6:29

Yeah, we might be actually that is a change. So if you go over to YouTube, you'll see at least this episode we're using the video for we're going to see how we do that, moving forward, and if you like it, let us know. If you don't like it, also let us know. So, yeah, that's going to be a little bit different that you can get actually see our faces on the YouTube version of this. So that's exciting, maybe not. Maybe it's not exciting.

Brian Johnson: 6:57

Maybe it's worse.

Kim Swanson: 6:58

Maybe it's worse, it could be, let us know. Yeah, it definitely could be worse, that is for sure. So at the end of last season, season four, we stopped because of TechX AASHTO Resource Technical Exchange was coming up that month and we needed to prep for it. So, brian, since you attended TechX this year, do you want to give like a brief recap of what's what happened there, and all the exciting things, or not so much?

Brian Johnson: 7:56

Sure, you know, the technical exchange is always a great opportunity for people to get together and talk about what's. All sorts of interested parties in the ass I almost said asphalt, because it's just an asphalt meeting in the materials testing industry that are involved with our program in some way, either directly or indirectly, but they all get together and we have usually about 250 or so people attend the technical exchange. We have panel discussions, we have presentations, we have round table discussions for the attendees, different workshop type activities and really just a ton of opportunities for collaboration and talking about solving problems that people are facing. And like like any conference and this is something that I often try to tell people is a lot of the value comes in between those sessions and after those sessions. So don't base the value strictly on the agenda. I don't want to go too into it, but we often have a lot of tracks of interests for people and they can pick and choose which sessions they want to attend and usually we do get feedback in the end.

Brian Johnson: 9:13

I wish I could have attended more which is good, because that means we had a lot of good content.

Kim Swanson: 9:19

Yeah, no, we often get that, I think at least every year we get a few people saying I wish I could have attended everything and in that vein, this season on the podcast we're hopefully going to have some of the speakers or panelists that participated in TechX as guests on our episodes here. So we're hoping to do that more often and just share that knowledge and that content more widespread, so you can look forward to that coming up in season five. What else can people look forward to in season five? Brian?

Brian Johnson: 9:53

well, we're going to talk about another reason why we kind of were delayed, and see, in starting season five, and that was, uh, reevaluating our priorities. So one thing we were doing is working on a strategic plan, which is called a roadmap now for ashto resource, and we're going to talk about that in season one, uh, with the director of ashto on a strategic plan which is called a roadmap now for.

Kim Swanson: 10:16

AASHTO Resource and we're going to talk about that in season one with the director of AASHTO Resource, robert Lutz, episode. What did I say? He said season one, it's season five, episode two most likely is what's going to be happening there. We're going to be talking with AASHTO Resource resource director, uh, bob lutz, and that is actually recording that in the next few minutes here, so you will see probably our same outfits in the same thing in the next episode that's right.

Brian Johnson: 10:40

So we're going to talk about some of those priorities. Uh, I I actually wasn't sure if we were going to continue to have the AASHTO Resource Q&A podcast as part of the review of our priorities, because I wasn't sure how it fit in Because, as Cam mentioned, our day jobs are quite different than this. So mine is director of the AASHTO Accreditation Program. Other non-specific duties I'm involved in like standards development, uh attending different meetings and representing our organization, as well as managing a team of quality analysts and and involvement with other staff members on uh tasks related to ashto accreditation no-transcript.

Kim Swanson: 11:47

Yep, I'm very excited about that because I do love doing the podcast. It is just, you know, and it is more my job than your job, so I will say it takes away from your job more than it does mine, because this is definitely in the communications wheelhouse common findings and common nonconformities from some of your favorite standards. I think for sure we're going to have R18. We're going to do some common findings for that. But if anyone has suggestions on what to do next or what standards you want to know about or what common findings are, let us know. At podcast, at ashtoresourceorg, we're going to talk about some of the new proficiency sample programs that were launched recently, so that's exciting. We're going to talk about some of the new proficiency sample programs that were launched recently, so that's exciting. We're going to have some episodes on that, episodes on equipment maintenance. What else, brian?

Brian Johnson: 12:42

We're going to talk about quality.

Kim Swanson: 12:44

Yeah, we are.

Brian Johnson: 12:45

As we always do, and we're also going to talk about things that are hot topics or issues that have come up in the accreditation program that I think are useful to other people in the program. So we have always done that, and I find that those are probably some of the more useful ones. The only hard part about it is those usually get buried in the FAQ episodes or mailbag episodes, but if you're, if you're ever curious about what type of things are going on currently, those are good ones to check out. If you want to look back at our archives, of which there are plenty of episodes, do you know what our total number is right now?

Kim Swanson: 13:29

I think it was 160, I want to say I don't know exactly. I just was putting that together for our status report and so I want to say it's 160, but don't quote me on that.

Brian Johnson: 13:41

It could be that it was somewhere around there.

Kim Swanson: 13:42

It's over 150.

Brian Johnson: 13:44

It was a lot more than I expected.

Kim Swanson: 13:46

Yes.

Brian Johnson: 13:47

When I looked at the number, I had to double check my math it's like this is simple math, but I don't believe it. I don't believe the result. Yeah, but you know these things, add up.

Kim Swanson: 13:56

Exactly, but I think that's giving everybody a good taste of what to expect this season. Right, is there anything else you want to let us know? Let them know, let our audience know, because it's been, it's been a while.

Brian Johnson: 14:16

Anything else? I don't think so, but I will again stress the importance of giving us feedback about what you want to hear, because when you ask people who are in it every day and don't have a lot of questions about what we're doing, you may not get the same answer. You may not get the same answer. So, like, what I think you want to hear might not be what you want to hear, because I don't know what you're confused about or what you maybe you're not even confused with, just what you want to hear more about. So it's important to let us know, and even it's kind of funny, because we were talking to our boss, bob, about episodes that we think are useful and even he had different ideas about what he thought was going to be useful compared to what we thought would be useful. So it's best to hear from the audience.

Brian Johnson: 15:03

Yes so please, please, reach out and let us know, so we're on the right track.

Kim Swanson: 15:08

Exactly. If you want more of something or less of something, definitely reach out to us at podcast at ashtoresourceorg or our individual email addresses, which you can find on the Contact Us page, and that is generally where we get the most feedback. People send it personally to us, but we would love the inbox to be full at podcast at ashtoresourceorg. Ooh, brain fart there. But thanks everybody for joining us on season five and I think I'm pretty excited about season five.

Brian Johnson: 15:39

Yeah, I am too. I think it should be a good time and we'll get some more useful information for people.

Kim Swanson: 15:45

Thanks for listening to AASHTO re:source Q&A. If you'd like to be a guest or just submit a question, send us an email at podcast@a ashtoresource. org, or call Brian at 240-436-4820. For other news and related content, check out AASHTO re:sources social media accounts or go to aashtoresource. org.