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: 0:21

And I'm Kim Swanson, and we are here with the season five recap episode. You've waited all season for this. I know you have.

Brian Johnson: 0:29

That's right. We are going to, we're going to wrap it up. This is this is our season five finale, so it was our shortest season. If you remember, at the beginning of the season, we talked about what we're changing. So we used to do it every week, yeah. Then we switched every two weeks and, honestly, that has proven to be a lot to keep up with as well, so I don't know what's going to happen moving forward.

Kim Swanson: 0:53

Yeah, no, we may have to shake things up again. Continual improvement is the name of the game, so we would love your feedback. Listeners, if you want to tell us what you liked about this season or what you didn't, or if you've been a longtime listener first-time caller situation definitely let us know what we can do better or what you liked about previous seasons that we didn't do this season, and you can email us at podcast at ashtoresourceorg. Still very underutilized email address. Could not. Still very underutilized email address.

Brian Johnson: 1:26

Could not be less underutilized, really, yeah, although we did get one.

Kim Swanson: 1:32

We did and we appreciate that. We do appreciate that.

Brian Johnson: 1:35

Thank you so much, so much we love hearing anything about it. Yes, I guess, before we go on, kim, where can people find the old episodes?

Kim Swanson: 1:44

Oh, our old episodes are still out. We don't hide that information from anybody, so you can get them on all your podcast directories. They're there. You can find it at podcastashtoresourceorg or if you go on our website, ashtoresourceorg, and under the ReUniversity section, we have videos and podcasts and articles and documents and everything there under the re-university section of our website and we're on YouTube. Sorry, that's right.

Brian Johnson: 2:16

If you want to see us with our exciting background, you can find us on YouTube, and I did want to give Kim a compliment. She spends a lot of time working on not just putting the podcast edits together but also adding supplemental information. That kind of helps to take you beyond just the content of the podcast and learn more about whatever we're talking about. So there will be on our ReUniversity page. Under the episodes you can find other supporting documentation that gives you more information about whatever the topic we are covering is. So, Kim, good job with that. I think it really adds to the overall presentation and can really help people find more information.

Kim Swanson: 3:06

Thank you. And this year, this season, we also did some companion articles for most of the episodes this year. They previously were only for the common finding ones, but this year we kind of had a supplemental article about what the episode was about, if you were a reader and not a listener.

Brian Johnson: 3:26

Yeah, that's really good. It probably helps people find the episodes too, I would guess, with the words on the internet. So let's talk about some of the highlights of the season. So we started with a revamp but we got into our strategic roadmap discussion in the second episode strategic roadmap discussion in the second episode and then we kind of took it from there and got into some individual interviews with people. So we got one of our favorite friends of AASHTO Resource, benjamin Trujillo, who's been a longtime participant in the AASHTO Resource Technical Exchange, helped us out on episode four. And recently Bryce Hanlon on episode 14 from the Oklahoma DOT and we had Matt Lineman from North Dakota DOT talking about comp and being a volunteer among the DOT people to try to build a positive working environment with the AASHTO committees and really any kind of committees you might be involved with.

Kim Swanson: 4:31

I think I want to ask you what your favorite memory or your favorite moment from the podcast season was this year.

Brian Johnson: 4:40

And maybe this is just the that phenomenon where the recent recency bias recency bias, yes, but. But I think that our conversation with Bryce was my favorite episode of the season. He's always great to talk to and it was just an easy conversation and I always like talking to him and, like we told him, you know, we may every year have to have his performance review on the podcast and I think even if we did even less episodes, we would probably want to see what Bryce is up to episode.

Kim Swanson: 5:16

I do like that. That was a good one as well for me and this is a slightly self-serving, but it's just makes me laugh. The four eyes of the corrective action process just makes me chuckle every time I see it. So that one kind of stood out to me for that episode when we were talking about corrective action and the four eyes and that was just it's humorous to me. So that was one of my favorite and not to diminish any of our guests, because I do love all the episodes with the guests, but that one for me stuck out in my head or stand out, stuck out, I don't, I don't, stood out.

Kim Swanson: 5:54

Stood out. Yeah, that was weird. Okay, stood out is the correct way for that one.

Brian Johnson: 5:59

I think so, and you were dipping your toe in a bit of the quality theory pool.

Kim Swanson: 6:06

Yes.

Brian Johnson: 6:06

In that one. So it was a little bit of a departure from your normal.

Kim Swanson: 6:10

Yes.

Brian Johnson: 6:11

Specialties. So, yeah, that was that was a good one, and, and I like anytime we have external guests. Those are usually some of my favorite episodes, because I love hearing about what other people think about and their challenges and their work. It's kind of like a nice little break from my own work, which we cover a lot on the podcast. I feel like one of the things that I enjoy about the podcast is it gives me a chance to get things off my chest in a semi-productive manner, uh, so I I can get some information out to people, uh, and hopefully they'll listen to it, you know, maybe even five minutes of it and maybe they'll get some takeaway that can help them, uh, in their day.

Kim Swanson: 7:01

Yeah.

Brian Johnson: 7:01

But I don't know.

Kim Swanson: 7:03

I don't know either and we don't know unless you tell us so. Listeners, please email us. At podcast at astro resourceorg, we have numbers saying people are downloading and listening, but some personal feedback would be amazing on that. So thank you in advance. I'm going to we're going to get flooded after this episode. I know, that email address is just going to be flooded.

Brian Johnson: 7:25

I hope so, because what we really need to do is figure out if what we're doing is useful to people, right? So, like I'll hear conversations from people at a meeting hey, I love this episode on whatever it is and I kind of make a mental note of where that person is. And then I go back and look at the data and I'm like I don't see anybody from that area that downloaded. I only can see city and state. So they might've been somewhere else when it happened, but I'm just like we're missing something in the data.

Brian Johnson: 7:57

And if we could hear from people about what they want to hear about or what they've enjoyed or what was useful to them, that would help us figure out what we want to do for season six. Uh. So, like, if we could, if you're thinking about sending us a message, fire away. We, we love. We love to get feedback at ashtoreasource on all kinds of things, and we do get a lot of feedback on our programmatic uh items, but not so much on the podcast. So I'd love to hear more from people about it.

Kim Swanson: 8:26

Yeah, again, we want to. It's a continual improvement for us and for laboratories, right. So we want to make sure or specifiers or the public or whoever's listening. It would be really interesting. If you are not in the construction materials testing industry and you're listening to this podcast, please email me because I want to have a conversation with you.

Brian Johnson: 8:45

I would love that.

Kim Swanson: 8:48

What are you doing with your life? That this is what you're listening to, and what market are we reaching? That's what I want to know, but I'm going to say. Most of our listeners are probably currently in the industry or actually existing customers of ours.

Brian Johnson: 9:07

I think so, and I also wonder about our international uh downloaders are. Are those vpns or those people?

Kim Swanson: 9:15

uh, I don't know I know we have a couple of a couple I've had. I've had some conversations in past seasons email conversations, not actual conversations with a person from Ukraine and then somewhere in the continent of Kenya. Kenya. Thank you, I couldn't remember what country in Africa. But yes, so we do. I do know they exist, they're out there oh, we'd love to hear from them.

Brian Johnson: 9:42

Uh, so so drop us a line. Helps us determine whether whether we should make more of these or not.

Kim Swanson: 9:48

So is the juice worth the squeeze?

Brian Johnson: 9:50

so to speak.

Kim Swanson: 9:51

That's one of my favorite sayings um and yeah, and we can't know that until we hear from you.

Brian Johnson: 9:58

That's right, because I like doing this.

Kim Swanson: 10:00

I have some data supporting that we should continue to do it, but actual conversations with people are going to be what's what helps us, I think.

Brian Johnson: 10:08

I think so too, so think about it. We'd love to hear from you, and I hope you check out our, our season five and even some of the past seasons on our website or youtube or some of the past seasons go back all of them are all of them all of them are a plus, maybe not a plus they're all a plus.

Kim Swanson: 10:29

Um, you will notice if this, if your first season is season five, we did like 40 plus episodes per season for seasons one, two, three and four. So, um, yeah, so there's a lot more information out there in past seasons. But again, thanks for joining us for season five and hopefully we hear from you and we know we can start planning what to do for season six.

Brian Johnson: 10:54

Yeah, and, and, if you want to see us in person or see me in person, I will be at the Technical Exchange in Bellevue, washington, in March. Check out our events page on the website. What is it? 17th through the 20th 20th, I'll be having some panel discussions, some presentations, and I'll just be around in general and I'll probably be recording some stuff that we can use on future episodes.

Kim Swanson: 11:20

Yes, I would love that. Thank you to our listeners who made it through season five with us, and we are taking a hiatus due to the technical exchange, so we will hopefully be back after that. Tbd on when we will be back, just because schedules are rough and it's hard to coordinate. So, uh, be on the lookout for season six at some point and again, hopefully you can see us at the technical exchange march 17th through the 20th in 2025 in bellevue, washington. You can go to ashtoresourceorg slash events for more information.

Brian Johnson: 11:55

All right, bye everybody, and Kim, I'll see you in several months when we can meet again, since we never talk to each other outside of the podcast.

Kim Swanson: 12:05

Pretty much, pretty much. I'll see you on the flip side. Thanks for listening to AASHTO Resource Q&A. If you'd like to be a guest or just submit a question, send us an email at podcast at AASHTOResourceorg, or call Brian at 240-436-4820. For other news and related content, check out AASHTO Resources social media accounts or go to AASHTOResourceorg.