188: ‘Getting Comfortable Being Uncomfortable’, with Gavin Crump

Member 188: ‘Getting Comfortable Being Uncomfortable’, with Gavin Crump

Evan Troxel: Welcome to the TRXL Podcast. I'm Evan Troxel, and in this episode I welcome Gavin Crump. Gavin is an architect, BIM consultant, educator, and content creator based in Sydney, Australia. After working on some of the largest healthcare projects in the Southern hemisphere, Gavin transitioned from production to coordination to BIM management, and eventually into consulting.

Along the way, he built an engaged global audience through his Aussie BIM Guru YouTube channel, which you've probably heard of, sharing technical tutorials and insights on Revit, Dynamo, Python, C#, and more. Today, Gavin continues to work inside the AEC industry as a digital practice lead at Architectus helping to shape the digital workflows and strategic tooling that support project delivery at scale. In this episode, we explore his personal and professional evolution from an introverted graduate architect who stumbled through his first Revit test to become one of the most visible and trusted voices in the AEC technology space. We talk about programming as a creative outlet, the surprisingly emotional experience of automating his first workflow and what it takes to build a public brand rooted in generosity and curiosity. Gavin also shares candid thoughts about building for delivery instead of design the often overlooked value of middle tier roles in architecture firms and why he believes architects still deserve the best tooling to do their best work. A key theme from this conversation, which connects to many other episodes, although with an opposite outcome from many previous guests on the podcast, including myself as one example, is Gavin's intentional decision to stay in the AEC industry rather than jumping to tech. While many with his skillset have left for startups or consultancies, Gavin chose to remain and make his impact from within.

It's a choice that reflects a deep sense of alignment with architecture's mission and a challenge to firm leadership. If we want to keep top talent, we have to create the conditions for them to thrive. Right here. As usual, there's an extensive amount of additional information in the show notes, so be sure to check those out.

You can find them directly in your podcast app if you're a paid member of TRXL+, and if you're a free member, you can find them at the website, Lastly, you can really help the podcast by sharing the episodes with your colleagues and by commenting on and sharing my LinkedIn posts. You can also leave a comment over on YouTube and engage with me and the other listeners.

I actually wonder if Gavin will leave a comment on this episode like he has been doing so well on many of the other ones. Anyways, head over to YouTube and see if he did. Also a hint that many of you don't know about hang out until the end of the episode for my wrap up, where I'll share my key takeaways.

All right, so now without further ado, I bring you my conversation with the Aussie BIM guru, AKA Gavin Crump.

I had this idea to start off this episode. I mean, you are the Aussie BIM guru, right? And, um, one of the things we keep seeing on LinkedIn is that BIM is dead, dead nails in the coffin.

Gavin Crump: Done.

Evan Troxel: Ai. We, we've moved on and, and, and I just think it's kind of like, are you serious?

architects don't move on from anything quickly. Right. And, and let alone adopt it. But, but then move on from it after they have adopted it. And I just, I mean, I'm, I'm sure you have, uh, well, first welcome to the show. Great to see you.

Gavin Crump: Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Great to be here. Um, like I was saying before we kicked off, it's surreal to be on a podcast I've listened to for probably the better part of almost four years. I think you've been running about five years now. Right. So I think I joined on in 2021.

Evan Troxel: point. Something like that. Yeah.

Gavin Crump: Yeah. So it, it's surreal, but, um, thanks for me on board.

But, um, it's, it's a good introduction. BIM is dead. Yep. It's all over the socials at the moment. Um, I think there's a lot of, um, marketing standing on the corpse of bim. That seems to be the primary motivator behind it. But, um, I mean, BIM is changing. That's, I guess, the ultimate sort of retort that people seem to make.

It's, it's, it's still very much here. It's very much my nine to five or some people's, you know, five to nine, um, in some cases. So, yeah.

Evan Troxel: just when you're trying to fix a problem,

Gavin Crump: Yeah,

Evan Troxel: how,

Gavin Crump: yeah. I,

Evan Troxel: are those elements hidden? Uh, let's count the

Gavin Crump: yeah, there's like 26 ways. I used to have a chart.

Evan Troxel: I

Gavin Crump: Um,

Evan Troxel: than that. I think there's

Gavin Crump: yeah.

Evan Troxel: double That is,

Gavin Crump: 26 ways that we have discovered as BIM managers, but I, I used to have a chart where the last step was consult the BIM manager, and I think I used to turn the chart upside down and start, start there. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: Well let, let's go. Let, instead of, instead of going down this provocative, uh, clickbaity headline kind of approach, tell us about, about you and, and where you've come from and, and how you've kind of found your way in the architecture and AEC industry, but also the technology side of things.

Gavin Crump: Sure. Yeah. I mean, my, my career journey's not too dissimilar to a lot of people I know of my age. Um, so we sort of entered the world just after the GFC, um, from a, from a professional perspective. So I. I think I finished university around 2012. I'd just done a pretty traditional, uh, bachelor's, masters of architecture straight run for five years.

And I hadn't managed to land any work along the way I had tried, but it was a tricky time. Um, and luckily I landed a role on a major hospital in my hometown of Adelaide. Um, so this was a $2.2 billion project at the time, which I think was the most expensive in the Southern hemisphere, and they were using Revit to deliver it.

So we had about maybe 50 people in the same office for this project. And it, it just taught me so much about, um, the value of software for collaboration, communication, and, um, just making sure that, you know, things are being delivered on time and well, and I, I sat next to the BIM manager as well, so he actually gave me a chance.

I failed my Revit test miserably. Um, I, I somehow got us so far zoomed out in the view that he didn't even know where we were. And I said, well, technically you don't know either. So I passed right. And I, and I paused.

Evan Troxel: two miles of the origin, I think,

Gavin Crump: It was something like that. I think I zoomed out accidentally and then I drew two things that were tiny and you couldn't see them on the screen.

And he is like, what's going on here? And yeah, I think that's how I got the job. Um, but uh, from there, I, I guess I, I realized that this was probably something I wanted to do for a career as well. Um, I, I'd done a very traditional architectural education where we, I think we used Revit for one tutorial and that was it.

Um, so I'd use SketchUp, AutoCAD 3D Max, um, but bit of, bit of, I think, um, I think Scape was just coming out then, and I was playing with that. But um, that was really the closest I got to bim. Um, but this project just. Di completely, one aided my perspective of what I thought a career path could be for me. I saw the BI manager and I said, wait, this is like completely different to what the universities told us architecture could be.

Um, and sort of gradually worked my way from delivery based roles to coordination based roles to eventually a management role. Uh, when I flew to Sydney in Australia, in, I think that was 2015, where I'd been given a bit of an opportunity at a quite a young age and, you know, wasn't quite as experienced as I probably, probably could have been or needed to be at the time, but I learned a lot very quickly about management, communication, the realistic side of bim, having to make it work as a company and a business.

Um, you know, licensing costs, you know, budgets, all those things that come with it. Um, but I took a step back into coordination roles, recognizing that I sort of lacked project experience, um, at a coordination level. So I moved to HDRI. And then Woods Bagot, um, and eventually moved into consulting. But through that time, really built up, uh, I guess more experience with coordinating with engineers, managing BIM at the project level.

So not necessarily focusing on libraries and templates as much as everyday user needs. And in that time I just learned that like, that the users, you know, they, they have to do a lot of really hard work and a lot of really manual work. And this thing called Dynamo came along and, um, which I saw you had Ian on the other week for, um, and it, again, it just completely 180 how I looked at bim.

Um, suddenly we can automate a lot of things and I sort of picked that up into my skillset. And then Grasshopper and eventually PiRevit. And, um, more recently C# and sort of found my way more into sort of a computation slash automation, uh, management role, uh, with, with companies and consulting that I worked with.

So it's been a pretty wild journey, very focused around software, but also the realistic nature of the work that we do. So I've tried to really keep in touch with, um, I guess the, the trenches that I know people are in, that I've been in myself and trying to pull them out and help them out. And, you know, somewhere along the way I made a YouTube channel as well.

So that was sort of my, my way to sort of broaden my network and meet more people and share my knowledge beyond the four walls of the company. But that's, um, that's sort of it in a nutshell, I guess. But, um, yeah. Happy to dive in. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: I think it's interesting that you started with like sufficiently you got hired because you could sufficiently break Revit. Good job. I mean, that's a great way to start and because it's like people break it every single day all the

Gavin Crump: Yep.

Evan Troxel: right?

Gavin Crump: Yep.

Evan Troxel: then you have to figure out how to, how to dig yourself out of that trench, as you said.

Right. And

Gavin Crump: Hmm.

Evan Troxel: like the trench only gets deeper. I mean,

Gavin Crump: Yep.

Evan Troxel: break it harder and harder in so many more ways than you could before. Right. Uh,

Gavin Crump: Mm mm

Evan Troxel: that's an interesting kind of perspective about it. I, the this that you had to programming through visual programming, I mean, and you've kind of gr gone several steps beyond that, but I'm, I'm just curious of, of what that felt like to you.

You said it kind of broke how you thought about it or, or turned, flipped it upside down. So maybe go a little bit deeper into that because I bet a lot of audience members who listened to this show are probably. Come from a similar kind of set of circumstances where it's like when that, I mean, obviously it's been out for a while now, right?

And there's been, there's, but back then there was very little available online and it was just really for you to tinker or scour the forums or find the right people to, to chat with or talk to. But, but it's quite different than it is today. And I, I would just, I mean, kind of story time mode, right? But it's like, what was it actually like what to when you first got into programming and the visual programming side of things to operate Revit and, and Rhino.

Gavin Crump: Yeah. Um, I mean, visual programming spoke to me just at the process level so strongly. Um, when I came across it, I mean, I used to do a lot of highly repetitive manual work at, at systems level. Um, so things like creating families, adding parameters one by one, and then doing that again for a hundred more families, like super manual stuff.

That was just like, uh, in my head I knew that this isn't the way, there's gotta be a better way to do this. And, um, I think the first task I automated using Dynamo was, uh, automatically numbering doors based on the rooms that they relate to a classic, you know, first task to automate. And, um, that was something that people literally right next to me on my project would doing manually as I tried to automate it.

And I, I sort of went, everyone stop. Like, you know, I've just figured this out. And it, yeah, I just.

Evan Troxel: close out, right? Let me do this. I

Gavin Crump: Yeah, it was, it was such a, a change in how I looked at it, not only just for me, but for other people. Now, I had the ability to give other people these things that I could do at a system and methodic level, um, but not automatically.

But now I, not only can I do this for me, I can give this to other people. And I think that was the part that excited me the most. And I, I'd sort of done visual programming before, but hadn't realized I had, like I used to. Develop. Um, so Warcraft three custom video game maps, and they had a, what's called a trigger editor where you had conditions and actions and you sort of worked upon groups of units.

So you might say, if you got hit by this unit, do x damage and you could sort of program behaviors. And I, I never really thought about it as programming. For some reason when I did it, it just felt like a, a game. It wasn't really programming to me, but I, I instantly recognized in Dynamo, oh wait, these are like concepts I'm familiar with.

Um, not at a visual level necessarily, but at a a process level. I immediately understood, you know, a group of units could be like a group of rooms and Revit, um, programming upon them. And it, it just suddenly there was a bit of a, like a switch in my head where I went, wait a second, this is like this. I mean, I wish I'd got on it earlier.

I think Dynamo's been around since like almost 2011 and I think I was really just getting properly into it. Around 2016 I think is when I first. Really became aware of it. So, I mean, I would've loved to have been there at day one with all the, you know, the original, the OGs, like John Pearson and all them.

Yeah,

Evan Troxel: not. I mean, it

Gavin Crump: yeah.

Evan Troxel: a lot more broken than the,

Gavin Crump: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: you found it. That word keeps coming up already in this, it was a short, short into, we're not even that far into this episode, and the word broken has come up so many times. It probably gotta work its way into the title somehow. But, but this idea of, of wiring up nodes and like finding the nodes, dropping 'em on the canvas, wiring them up, and I mean, to me. It's a, there's a super strong analog, right? When I was like a kid

Gavin Crump: Hmm.

Evan Troxel: taking apart the radio and then trying to put it back together, and we didn't have cell phones. We didn't take a picture of what it looked like when it was together so that we knew how to put it back together.

And there was no manual. This was just, we're playing around

Gavin Crump: Yeah. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: grandpa doesn't want the AM radio anymore. Uh, okay, cool. I'm taking it apart and then I'm gonna take it all the way apart and then I'm gonna try to put it back together and actually

Gavin Crump: Mm

Evan Troxel: wiring up components and, oh, that didn't work.

Okay, pull it apart, try it again. And, and something about that kind of analogy of, I mean, it, it's still, there's still something manual to it, right? I mean,

Gavin Crump: mm

Evan Troxel: so different than writing a line of code and me as a visual person, as an architect and as a designer, just made so much more sense,

Gavin Crump: mm mm

Evan Troxel: to play and experiment in

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: to see what I could do.

And, and, uh, you know. Failing way more than succeeding, right? For

Gavin Crump: Mm.

Evan Troxel: When I

Gavin Crump: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: but then it's like, okay, well who do I talk to about that? How, who knows what, who, who can I go to? Who can I send this to? Then they can just fix it and send it back to me. And like that portability aspect of it, like you're saying, you could deploy it or give it to somebody else on your team to hit run, right?

Um,

Gavin Crump: Mm.

Evan Troxel: or noodle with your, your layout and, and come back with something better or different or whatever. I think was just something so novel about all of that, and it was like, it's those kinds of things to me that still get me excited about computing. Right.

Gavin Crump: Hmm.

Evan Troxel: wow, computers are super powerful.

They can do, and it's so funny how many layers of extraction have been built on top of that incredible

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: to make it easy and to make it accessible and to do all these, and then you do something like that and you're like. This is real computer. I mean, the, okay, so another analogy, time is like rock climbing.

Like there's, I, I go to the climbing gym with my 23-year-old like, he can climb way harder than me, right? But there's some things that I can do that he just doesn't have the experience with yet as far as like a technique or a type of move or something. But there are certain climbs that feel like rock climbing and there are a lot of climbs that don't feel, and so my analogy is like, oh, this feels like this really felt like rock climbing, outdoor, natural.

It felt like even though it wasn't, and that to me is something like using a tool like or Grasshopper. It's just like, oh, this feels like Com computing, right? It's like when I used to hand code a website or something like that and

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: it would render in the browser. It's like, holy crap. It worked. And, and to me, I, I, I've always kind of loved that. Discover that process that you go through when you wire it up and, and it produces something that you were trying to produce that, and, and maybe not more than not, but, but when it does, it's like, oh, this is computing. I, I don't, there's something visceral about that.

Gavin Crump: Yeah, it's tinkering, I guess. Yeah. Like I, I, I've always been a tinkerer. Anything I'm given, I'll, I'll play with, I've, I've pulled things apart for fun sometimes. I mean, I'm a huge Lego fan. I used to love pulling all my sets apart and figuring out what we could do with them and combine them into, um, but yeah, it was, it was just as fun.

Like you said. It is fun, right? It's just computation is, is such a broad spectrum of people and ways of thinking and doing, and suddenly you find yourself. F almost in sync with like other industries and other people that you would've almost had nothing in common with, if not for the programming being the connecting factor.

So like I, I could, I could talk to my friends that were doing, you know, Python in, in completely different industries and we could suddenly have a really fun conversation about programming syntax and logic and use cases. And I found things that they were doing and I'm like, wait, I can use this. Like, this is useful.

Like, I can actually add that they found like, you know, an Excel library that was way better than the one I was using and suddenly we're trading, you know, fun and experience and we're sort of almost tinkering together. So I found it was a really good connector like that. I mean, I, I did a course with, um, Harvard.

They did do a CS 50 beginners free course and they literally teach you about binary is the first thing they teach you. They start at the ones and the zeros and they literally abstract you up. A layer at a time. So you come to really see and appreciate, uh, like you said, just how much history, uh, you are engaging with in, in computation.

When you know, and we're like, you know, 50 layers above this when we're in Dynamo, there's so many things. There's like binary assembly. Then I think you get to see at that point. Um, but then like all the libraries and the choices, the decisions that people made historically, like, you know, this Unicode represents five, this represents a, it's like those, those encoding conventions that people had to agree on at a global level.

It's just, it's such an amazing thing to, I guess, you know, be, be engaging with even just for that reason. So I, I think it's a really fun and interesting paradigm that, you know, takes you outside the industry almost in, in your, your scope and perspective.

Evan Troxel: I think it, I think when you made me think about how, how, like talking to your friends, and you obviously have very nerdy friends, right? You're talking about

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: and you're Yeah. In different industries and it's like sharing that kind of stuff. And I, I, that, that's awesome. I like being able to go outside of your close group and say, you solving this problem?

And, and not even, it's not even the same problem that you have, but. they've found maybe still applies in some way, but I was thinking about, um, I, I watched this, this YouTube video, um, about the thing that Google just came out with this, A two A agents to agents kind of a thing, and, uh, building on top of this MCP.

So it's all this AI stuff. So just bear with me for this one, short tangent. But I think it's really interesting because this idea now is that like has always been written to do a thing, right? And, and it's explicit in that way. It's like we write the code to accomplish these things, and of course people have to come up with workarounds and use apps to do things that maybe the designers didn't intend for or what didn't think of, or whatever.

I mean, we've all been there, right? Um, but, but now I, that game is going to seriously change in

Gavin Crump: mm

Evan Troxel: not too distant future where these agents can discover on their own these other agents collaborate.

Gavin Crump: mm.

Evan Troxel: solutions to do. I think that's wild. And, and it's like, kind of looking back at the history of what it's taken to get to that point is absolutely incredible.

I mean, that that progression, that many people my age and, and older and younger, I mean, we, we've witnessed that happen from, you know, my first Apple two e computer Apple, you know, or, or my Commodore 64, 64 bites of memory

Gavin Crump: Yeah. Wow.

Evan Troxel: it's crazy. Right? And,

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: see where, where that's where that's gone. Um, starting with basic programming to, I mean now we're talking a to a right, like absolutely wild, uh, kind of stuff.

And, and it makes me think like people are, are gonna be, they're building these things that have APIs and they can talk to other things and there's going to be software. Writing software to bridge the gaps between those things and I, that just kind of blows my mind.

Gavin Crump: Yeah, mine too. I mean, uh, I will admit, I, I'm aware of a lot of this stuff, but I, I still have no idea how a lot of it actually works behind the scenes. I'm trying to, that, that's more what gets me excited. I like to find out, okay, like, tell me all the dumb stuff that is behind this to make it be smart.

That, that's part of what I enjoy with ai, but appreciating that there is still, you know, all those abstraction layers behind this, that eventually goes back down to very rudimentary principles. Um, because a lot of people look at it and go, it's magic. I'm like, no, no. It's just a lot of work that's like, come together to build this, this system.

Um, so it's, and I do try to keep that, I guess as the, the underpinning thing that I relate with AI is like, at the end of the day, it's still just code. Like we have to remember. That, you know, it, it emulates intelligence. But to me it isn't intelligence in itself, but how you employ it and use it and in interface with it, that's where the intelligence lies.

So, um, I think agents are gonna be a game changer, and I, and I hope they are, because I see a lot of tasks people do in our industry that aren't like architecture. They aren't engineering, they aren't construction. They're busy work that could be better spent doing what people actually want to do as their role.

So I'm hopeful that we will see, um, you know, a severe amount of impact from agents, even if I'm no longer coding. Um, I, I don't mind, as long as there's meaning to the relationship we have with this technology and how we deploy it and do we still have con agency over our work? Um, to me that's the important part.

But it's an exciting time to be around too. Even for me, I, I saw the in internet kick off really big time in 1995. And to me that was probably the last really like, wow, like this is a, a game changer. Maybe the cloud, the cloud was another pretty big moment and in my time, but this is. Definitely one of those.

Okay. I'm here for this moment sort of things. Yeah. Even if it is Skynet.

Evan Troxel: I I I'm curious you, if you could kind of tell the story about how, because you know, you, you talked about breaking Revit and getting hired and, and saying, oh, like this, this might be a path for me. I'm, I'm curious like how that happened because you went to traditional architecture school.

Like you said, had a very tiny bit of Revit. Obviously you can't, like, a disconnect between the industry and education when it comes

Gavin Crump: Yep.

Evan Troxel: for software so that you can get a job to do a thing. I think a lot of universities like. We don't care about the software, we care about the ideas.

Right. Especially in design schools and things like that. But, um, so you failed, you failed the test. Right? And, and at the same time you saw this opportunity like, uh, and I'm, I'm, why? Why? Why did that land like that for you?

Gavin Crump: It's a good, really good question. Um, I think to me the, the first really big moment is just when I realized the amount of systemization that was available. I'm a real systems geek. Like I love taking things that don't work and making them work or building a framework that helps other people understand something that might be more complex otherwise.

And being on such a large project, we, we broke this model down into, I think it was like 30 sectors in plan, and then they were broken into chunks of levels and there was so much systems management across like, you know, hundreds of models. And I, I, I really, um, I mean, I, I still talk to him occasionally. I had off to the bit manager.

He really gave me this window into the industry that I guess I'd never seen at university because we were just doing drawings. We were, you know, pushing out renders. It was a very different culture and I never really,

Evan Troxel: most

Gavin Crump: yeah, yeah, like, like.

Evan Troxel: of the time probably.

Gavin Crump: Even seeing work sharing for the first time was like, whoa, like this is, this is completely different to what we had before.

And I think that's why Revit has such an edge. It's got that work sharing system down pat. Um, but, but that, that to me was even just a game changer. To see that you can just push things back and forth to each other, like GitHub. It sort of introduced me to GI Logic, I guess, at that point. And that was just such a game changer too.

So I just saw a, I guess a better use case for technology than I'd ever experienced before. And I've always loved technology. I've always been the person that breaks the family computer and fixes it. Um, so naturally I was just inclined to, to follow, um, the tech where I found it. Um, but I think they're the, they're the main triggers.

And I think too, I did recognize that that was gonna be the thing. That would probably accelerate my career if I jumped on this, it would probably be the, the changer in my career. Whereas architecture itself doesn't change too much as a profession. It's more the things around it that seem to change.

That's at least my observation over the years. And I could, I could see the potential for stagnation in my career path. Um, I'm not a natural communicator. I'm not an extrovert. Um, so I, I could see that there were gonna be challenges for me in that profession if I stuck with a traditional, you know, aim for the director spot sort of career pathway.

And I thought, this is my, a way around the industry that still keeps me in touch with it, but is more in tune with me, the way I communicate types of people that I, I sort of resonate most with professionally. And I, I saw that as also another, another offering that it gave me. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: So, and then it sounds like you kind of had a foot in like the production side and then the,

Gavin Crump: Mm,

Evan Troxel: I hate to say technical side because I, I

Gavin Crump: no, that's good.

Evan Troxel: production, right? So it's like you, but you know what I mean. It's like the,

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: side, let's call it that. And so you kind of went back and forth, like you said, you wanted to go back into production to get more experience on projects directly and like what users are experiencing and the kinds of things that break and have to be fixed on a daily basis. And then you, you eventually ended out in the consulting side of things and, teaching like through your YouTube channel and, and sure you've done courses and all kinds of things, but, but

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: navigating even that kind of differentiation. How did that happen for you? Like, were, how did you determine that, the value for what you were, because I think both of those kind of lend themselves to the personality type that you even discovered.

Right? And I think that's what happens even in school, right? It's like design, design, design. And then you realize pretty quickly, like there's a small percentage of people who are really good at communicating. They're, they're not afraid to get up in front of an audience and share their ideas and be bold and do the, and that, that really kind of lends itself better to an extrovert, for example.

Or maybe an ambivert, maybe somebody who can do both, right? But um, then there's like other roles and, and there aren't that many. I mean, as far as we were taught when I went to school, there aren't that many options, right?

Gavin Crump: Mm

Evan Troxel: more introverted and technical, like there's a technical side to architecture and drafting and, and eventually that became BIM and all these things, but, but it was like. Now there's a lot more paths. Right. And, but, but if we just kind of keep it in these big buckets, you still kind of had a, a determination to make between technical architecture and technical support role. I don't know how you,

Gavin Crump: mm.

Evan Troxel: what the words you use to describe it, but

Gavin Crump: Yeah, it's a fantastic point. Um, a lot of my career would definitely have been focused on the delivery side, which is not necessarily, um, you know, the, the large side of architecture, like everyone wants to design, not that many people want to deliver. It's a bit of a, like, you know, necessary evil for some people.

Um, but I, I guess I just saw the, that was where the, the sheer amount of waste was being produced in our industry. I sort of recognized that quite quickly that that was where most of the things that went wrong went wrong. Um, so to me I thought, well, I have, if I'm systematic and I target the side where I can see all the problems, like that's where they're gonna want the solutions.

So it's sort of naturally lined up. I, I did rediscover design and technology for the purpose of design a bit later in my career. So probably around 2020. Just before 2020, I really got deeper into Rhino, um, because I saw there were quite a lot of architects that were really passionate about this software.

And I, in a BIM management role, I didn't want to be that guy that just says it's Revit or bust. Like I said, no, we need to support more than just one platform. Like you can't just do everything in one platform. And I want to let people use the platforms they want to, but give them systems and frameworks regardless of where they are.

So Grasshopper was sort of my. My sort of my rediscovery of design and, and, you know, computational design reintroduced me to, to different ways of approaching architecture from a technological standpoint. Um, but yeah, for the vast majority of my career, I would say delivery was my, my, my focus. And it's, it's where I began.

My, my first role, I like keynoted for about a year, so I just tagged and, you know, almost went crazy. But in that process, sort of realized that the methods and the systems that are required to deliver large projects, so,

Evan Troxel: Wow. Yeah. Right. There's so much manu, uh, manual that, that kind of ma tedious manual stuff. I could see how that could drive you. Absolutely crazy.

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: so, so you said you kind of discovered Rhino at that point. Um.

Gavin Crump: Hmm.

Evan Troxel: When I went to school. Okay. So I keep, keep going back to this kind of my story part of it.

There was no, I mean there was Rhino, but it wasn't used for architecture at all. And then you kind of discovered that, oh, there's like this thing that people really love. did you find in that process for that?

Gavin Crump: I mean, a big part of it was actually the graduate culture that that's how I really engaged with it. Um, at least at the business level. 'cause I, most of the seniors weren't really RiNo users, like you said. They, they weren't really familiar with it. It hadn't really been the thing when they were studying.

But we just recognized that nearly every graduate was coming in with like zero Revit experience and didn't want to use Rev and design either. They wanted to use, you know, more fluid programs and they all knew Rhino. Um, 'cause I, I worked in, um, Sydney at this time and the universities over there. Are all very, very focused on Rhino and Grasshopper, um, in their education efforts and technology.

And I, I guess I recognized that was my way to sort of reengage with that layer of the business. Um, when you deal with delivery, you're often dealing more with middle management and, you know, senior technicians that you don't necessarily capture the full range of people. Um, but I found that that was, you know, really my way to reengage with the broader, the broader company.

Um, and I guess, uh, rhino for me too actually was like freeing for me as well. 'cause having used Revit for so long, I, I recognized its limitations and where it didn't actually necessarily deliver what we needed. So like, if we're dealing with a really large cityscape as a mesh, like you're not gonna import that into Rev.

It's just not gonna happen. And the first time I loaded the city of Sydney into Rhino it, I just went, whoa. Like that was like, it was like not even a minute to get this thing in and it.

Evan Troxel: sweat. Yeah.

Gavin Crump: Yeah, so, and I, and I went to export and there's like 50 file formats you can export As, and I'm like, whoa, I'm so used to, you know, it's Revit or Revit and that, that's it.

Evan Troxel: three. Yeah.

Gavin Crump: yeah, so it actually begun for me as just like a file format processing environment, but then I sort of went, wait a second, there's a lot more to this. Like, it's a, it's sort of like a super sketch up to me and how you can use it, like it's still got layers and similar solid primitives, but, you know, the, the, the power is, uh, for a lot of people in Grasshopper, but for me it was in the command line and some of the things that it reintroduced to that type of environment.

So it was a really nice union of design logic mixed with like systematic thinking, um, if you want to. So yeah, it was a, it was a fun sort of break away from Revit, if anything.

Evan Troxel: Nice. I, I'm, okay. So the, the next part of your story, I think is, is you kind of breaking out of, and I'm sure it started off maybe as kind of a side hustle and then turned into a, a full-time thing that you're, you're offering as a consultant and, and even now teaching, but. did that come about for you and, and why did that become the decision that you, you went

Gavin Crump: Sure. Yeah. So I guess I, I naturally began this trajectory when I launched my YouTube channel. So I think at the time I was working for a small practice in Sydney. There was only about 30 people, and there was just no time to produce any training content. Basically, it's a small business, like training is a massive overhead unless you do it through a platform that already exists.

And, um, I think my, my boss at the time and one of my friends said, Hey, like, why don't you just make some stuff for fun outside the company walls? It's fine, you know, manager won't mind.

Evan Troxel: work after work, Gavin?

Gavin Crump: Yeah, it was, but I guess they were like, they sort of opened my eyes to um, the fact that there was a bigger world out there that I could engage with.

'cause my, my manager at the time was quite in touch with the market movements around bim. Like, so he, he said, Andrew Annuls, and I was like, who's that? And he's like. Uh, CEO of Autodesk, like, you know, I wasn't really

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Gavin Crump: I didn't have my eyes that open at that point to who was who and what was what and where everyone was and what was going on at that level.

And, and YouTube yeah. Became this weird little thing that I just did on weekends and smashed out a few videos. I mean, my first few videos, I think I'm staring down the whole time talking to the ground. Um, I wasn't a natural. Um, but over time I think I got my first comment and I was like, oh, that's weird.

Like, okay, maybe people actually want this sort of thing. And, and yeah, it sort of grew after a year, I think, to a thousand subscribers, which was crazy at the time for me, I'd been watching, uh, the Revit kid, Jeffrey, Ben Harry for a while, and he was like, pretty much my, my role model in the space that I sort of tried to emulate in, in my own style and content.

But, um, it was weird to just get engagement and I think eventually he reached out to me, uh, through LinkedIn and just said, Hey, like cool stuff. And I was like, what? Like, this is crazy. And I suddenly went, wait a second. There's like a. I can be more than just, you know, my nine to five self. And that sort of ga it got me thinking about, you know, the nine to five and is it, is it what I want to do?

Is it, is it working for me? And I thought, what, what if I could be more flexible? And that sort of got me thinking about consulting and that point I already had people coming to me saying, I love this video. Can you do like this for me? But like, do this as well. And I'm like, uh, like I haven't got time.

Sorry. Like I'm too busy. And I didn't even realize they were probably willing to pay money as well. It was a sort of natural thing I missed. And then.

Evan Troxel: thing that I don't get paid for.

Gavin Crump: Yeah. Yeah. I'm already used to not getting paid. No. So, so, um, so I just naturally just found my way into the space and I just jumped in head first. And then I think about a week after I started, like the pandemic hit.

So it was obviously a terrible thing to happen, but for a business jumping in digital consulting, it was, I had immediate flexibility

Evan Troxel: Mm.

Gavin Crump: all these companies were suddenly looking for different ways of engaging with the market. And consulting seemed to be. Away. A lot of them were considering at the time.

I did a lot of templating and systems management for medium to large firms. And, uh, eventually found my way to architect this where I work currently as a client. So they, they began with me as a one day engagement per week. And, um, over time I sort of gradually shifted once I realized there was a bigger, a bigger opportunity here, um, with a fairly high level role that could, could deploy strategy across, you know, 700 people at a company.

Um, but yeah, consulting was a rush. I, I really enjoyed it. Um, it was good money as well. I went live. If people are looking to go into consulting, if you have a personal brand, it's, it's a definitely a viable business avenue as long as you have the market fit. That's the important part. Um, but um, yeah, I sort of found my way back to back to practice eventually through it, but, you know, engaged the market in a more.

A way in which I wanted to. Um, so I almost set the terms of my role when I jumped in and said, uh, they gave me a contract and I said, eh, not quite. And, you know, proposed some changes and it was a different way of engaging companies. So yeah, it was a rush. I loved it.

Evan Troxel: You know, I think it's worth going into that because I, I agree, but I also think people would like to hear why you said that.

Gavin Crump: yeah, personal brand for me has been, um, a complete change for not only how I engage with the industry, but how the industry can engage with me. I. So by putting myself out there and not really hiding behind too many logos or brands and putting my face on video, um, being very present on LinkedIn and those sorts of platforms, um, I, I found that it helped give me a, a layer of authenticity, um, but also I guess the ability to be respected by my peers.

That wasn't really available before. So people at firms respect their BIM manager internally, but like, we don't tend to talk to each other too much as BIM managers, we don't. Occasionally we might get to the pub and talk to one another, but by putting myself out there as me, um, I found that, I guess it helped me build like a credibility that, you know, goes a long way and, you know, finding career roles and engaging with people, get, getting software vendors to talk to you and, you know, show you what they're up to.

It was just such a good decision that I made and like, I encourage anyone who's willing to put themselves out there to try it. It's, it's. Pretty low risk. I mean, obviously, you know, don't tell anyone where you live and all those obvious things, but by being so accessible, you just get a different, a different experience with how the industry engages with you and sees you.

And it's, it's always strange going to a conference and, you know, someone comes up and just drops you a thank you and you don't, you don't even really know who they are, but you get that, that sort of, um, I guess you give and you receive sort of thing. I like, I like the idea that, you know, the, the industry is as big as you make it, I guess.

Like, and, and I found with my personal brand, the industry became, you know, huge for me. I can suddenly see, I guess, see the forest for the trees as well. Um, like I, I got to meet the Revit developers through it and all these things that just wouldn't have happened if I'd, um, just worked nine to five and talk to my Autodesk rep.

And that was pretty much my only window and into the market. It just was a game changer. And, and meeting personalities like yourself, John Pearson or all these people, like it was. Just a such a bigger community than I guess I ever would've realized without putting myself out there and saying, Hey, this is me.

Like, this is what I think, this is what I do. And you know, you don't have to like it, you don't have to engage with it, but it's me. Um, yeah. It was a game changer. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: it, it is interesting also when I think about that in con in the, with the context of what you shared earlier about being an introvert. Right. And, and I, I, I wanted to bring this up because consider myself an introvert, and I don't consider myself an extrovert.

Gavin Crump: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: definitely kind of in the middle, you know, and, and I can be whatever I need to be, when I need to be it.

And I, that might be a little bit luxurious because, um, I have a lot of empathy for both sides of, of that equation. And I also understand how valuable both sides of that equation are. Right. I, especially in an architecture firm coming from my background, it's like you need, you actually need both because like, you need to win the work and you need people to do the work.

Right. You, and, and those tend to fall into pretty clear, distinctive roles,

Gavin Crump: Yep.

Evan Troxel: to your, what, what you're doing by putting yourself out there. I think it's, I also want to help people understand that if they are like if they are like you and they're, they tend to be more quiet. You're not just gonna go out and announce things, but, but you're literally just talking to a camera

Gavin Crump: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Troxel: you're just saying what you're doing

Gavin Crump: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: and you're talking through the logic of it. By doing that a lot over time. You do definitely get better and better and better at doing

Gavin Crump: Mm.

Evan Troxel: you also get a, a better command of the things that you're doing and, and the production and all those things like tangentially.

Right. But actually putting it out there. you, you, you talked about like this authenticity layer to it. I could, when people reach out to you, they know who they're getting because you've built this reputation for a long time online and the only way to do that, it was to have started and then to keep at it.

And it's, it's funny that you would turn down, maybe you didn't know it at the time, right? Paying work, but, but you were investing in this thing and it wasn't just something you were doing to attract. You know, somebody to court you to eventually hire you. That may be what happened. Maybe it's happened three or four times, right?

But it's like, it's one of those things where it's like you, you invested and you kept reinvesting in that to make something over time. I think about, I think about the podcast like that all the time. It's like

Gavin Crump: mm.

Evan Troxel: it's never been easy to do, right? And, and my production values are high and I like things done a certain way. but it's the, it's the big picture. It's the whole story. It's like, this is why people listen to hour long plus conversations on, on a weekly basis. It's because of the big story arc. It's not the little pieces along the way. And to me, like having that body of work, and you've created one too, is like, it's a really amazing byproduct of, and and you never even have to really think about it at that scale.

Like it's just slowly building over time to become. That thing of value. And it's, it's not just valuable to you, it's valuable to the community, it's valuable to people interested in accomplishing the kinds of things that you're teaching them how to do. And I mean, I, I, part of this is just an appreciation that, that you're doing this kind of a thing and that I, I do want to ask you about your branding, like your

Gavin Crump: of course. Yeah,

Evan Troxel: pretty pretentious Kevin.

I have to say. No, but,

Gavin Crump: it.

Evan Troxel: just I, I mean if, does this, does this stir up anything for you in regards to what I just said that you think could be helpful for those out there who are who, who are just literally toiling away at their thing and, and not building a network intentionally, unintentionally, whatever.

Gavin Crump: Definitely. I mean, it's, it's been such a great thing to have that transcends the places I work at. That's probably my favorite thing about having this is like even if I go to another company, 'cause I have jumped around a fair bit, I'll be honest. Um, you, you lose nearly your full career and your reputation every time you do it.

You, you, you become a CV again and like revert back to a CV and then try it again. CV time. It's, I, I got tired of that and it was nice to have that, that identity that, you know, persists regardless of what you're doing. If I took a break from work for a year, I'd still come back and people might remember me if I'm lucky.

So I think that was a big part of it. I mean, like you said, to begin with, I really just sat in front of a camera. I didn't really sit in front of an audience and even mentally, I don't really put myself in front of an audience when I talk. I just, I just nerd out and just. Do what I do. And yeah, I think that's just naturally something.

I always looked at it like it was a bit strange when you started getting comments and engagements and you're like, oh, I have to actually, you know, think about how I talk to people and make sure I don't, you know, turn people away from my content if I don't, you know, if someone comes and disagrees with me, like, let's have a debate.

Let's not just go, oh, go away. I don't like you. Some people don't always handle criticism too well, whereas I've built up a pretty, you know, thick shell through, um, getting a lot of people that don't always agree with what I think, and that, that's actually why I use LinkedIn. I really enjoy debate and, you know, challenging people's beliefs and opinions and ideas and getting a better, a better understanding of my own through it.

Um, but I guess, um, yeah, I encourage anyone who's just, you know, in that space where they're not necessarily comfortable just jumping on a TED Talk or, you know, something that extreme. It's a, it's a nice starter point. Um, yeah.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Gavin Crump: Yeah. And you did mention the branding, the, um, the name Aussie Bim Guru. Um, yeah, it was, it was, it is a little bit pretentious looking at it like, you know, I don't want to, 'cause some people do actually criticize that in the past who said, oh, you, you think you're that, don't you?

You are the guru. You're better than, no, not at all. I enjoy the idea of the, the guide. I wanted to become like a guide through the industry. Um, so gurus, yeah, they, they know a lot, but their, their focus is on teaching and imparting knowledge onto others. And that's where the gurus sort of term to me sort of clicked.

And I also respected that a lot of people that were gonna follow me, were probably gonna be from India as well. So I'm like, this will be a word that resonates with them at a cultural level, and they'll, they'll appreciate it. And they, they generally do. They're like, oh, using Guru, I love it. Awesome. Um,

Evan Troxel: Nice.

Gavin Crump: in the West, obviously it's got a bit more of a elite sort of association.

Um, I mean, I like to think I'm, I'm, I'm pretty good at what I do, but I don't, I don't like to toot my horn. Um, so that was sort of the brand. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I guess like I've, I've generally had positive engagement with people when it comes to, comes to brand and it's all a name anyway. Like, you know, looking back I'm like, ugh.

Like is BIM the right word now? Bims dead. Should it be the Aussie?

Evan Troxel: Nope.

Gavin Crump: Yeah. Gotta commit to it now. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess, um, you know, on top of that, it's cool to have like a, a catalog of stuff that I can just share to people when I need to. Like, you've probably got the same thing. You're like, oh, I've met this person.

I've literally got an episode. Like, check it out. Like, it's like this, like library of your own brain that you no longer have to just hold in there all day. You can like, sort of put bits and pieces down and almost forget about them yourself and come back to them later. Like, I watch some of my own videos when I forget things, I'm like, wait, I've done this before.

I forgot about this, but I've got a video and I watch myself and people at work are like, are you watching yourself? I'm like, yeah, yeah. I don't remember how to do this. No idea. So for me it's also just a nice way, like you said, to build up a, a catalog or a library of parts over time that, you know, naturally grows into this big thing.

Even if it is a little, little bit unorganized and chaotic, it's, it's YouTube. It's gonna be pretty sporadic. But to me, I have that catalog available that I can index when I need to. Um, yeah, so it's been, been good for that too.

Evan Troxel: I, I hear people who tune into like my arch speak podcast, which is, we go and we're on like year 13 and they're like, I started it. Episode one and like now. And I, I, that sounds like torture to me. I, I know that those were not good episodes and I also know the quality was not good. And I knew the, the equipment wasn't good to capture the audio and all those things.

And podcasting has gotten a lot more sophisticated over the years and, and simpler in, in many ways. Like we're talking on video call right now. Like I, I did, I did that show for pro almost a decade with no video. Right? It was, it was

Gavin Crump: Wow.

Evan Troxel: we just, it was like a phone call or like a conference call. And, um, I think it's interesting to have that body of work that you can kind of even self-reflect on.

Like yeah, there's content there. Um, I actually had a listener at one point who was like a principal in a firm say, oh, you know, you, he heard me in a conversation. He is like, oh, you didn't use to think that. You and I and I thought that was, oh, that's interesting because like, I don't really keep track of how often I change my mind, but I sure hope I do.

And it's kind of

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: there's a record there that, that I have a, oh yeah, I, I do update how I think about things over time. I don't

Gavin Crump: Mm

Evan Troxel: them forever. And I thought, oh, that was just kind of a cool reminder for him to actually say that at, at that

Gavin Crump: mm mm.

Evan Troxel: But

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: one of those things where you, you, yeah, it's like a timeline on the internet.

Like I hope it doesn't get used for evil, but it's having my voice out there for that for a very long time. I'm sure could be used in many different ways, but it's one of those things where it's like, uh, I think about it. Maybe think about it this way too. It's like, oh no, it's just whatever I'm doing right now. And, and you're right, I'll pull out, oh yeah, I've talked to person. Oh yeah, they were on the show. I'll put a link to that. should, people say you should have this person on the show. I'm like, I've had 'em on the show. Here's a link to it. Right. And, and it's because they have picked it up since then.

Right. And they didn't go back to episode one and start listening. But, um, it is, it is, it is just kind of a weird, it's a weird thing, but at the same time it's a really cool thing, um, to have out there. And, and I would also echo what you said. I would encourage people to, to do that and just kind of do whatever is interesting to you. There's a book I read years ago, um, called We Are All Weird. And it was a, it's a Seth Godin book like the internet opens up you to an audience.

Gavin Crump: mm.

Evan Troxel: the goal is to connect with the other weirdos out there because we are all weird. And like there's a, there's definitely a group of weirdos. enough to what you're weird about to come together and build a community.

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: that, that's a big reason why I encourage people to go out and do this because you think like, oh, this doesn't have, you don't need mass appeal. Like there's no such, who cares about mass appeal? It's about actually connecting with people

Gavin Crump: A hundred percent. Yeah. Like I found that on my channel. Yeah. But like, I was looking, I was looking for those people, um, like people are like, oh, you, you should have like 5 million subs and all. I'm like, I don't want 5 million subs. Like, I wanna find those people that, you know, are resonating on my level.

And if it's like, you know, only a few of them that that's okay. Like it's, it's still worked for me. Um, I'm more than happy if more people watch my stuff. Cool. Like, as long as it helps them. But yeah, finding your weirdos is definitely like a,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Gavin Crump: a really cool part about doing this. Like I've really managed to.

I think at this point almost come across most of the people like me that are comfortable being in that space and collaborated with many of them and just got to know who they are. And whilst I haven't met a lot of them in person, I'm sure one day I will like, um, you know, Nicholas Elia for example, should, should have a chance to meet him quite soon, fingers crossed.

Um, based on some events. But, um, so it, it's been a really good way to just find, yeah, find my tribe, um, per se, but, but figure out what I want that to be as well. And you were mentioning before the, uh, the timeline, the, the, the ability to self-reflect on this, that, that's definitely relevant for me. I've, I've literally come back to some workflows multiple times across my, my YouTube series and, and approach them in different ways and it's helped me I guess, appreciate that.

Yeah, it is a journey like you do begin in different places and it's kept me. Humble as well, because I wouldn't, you know, get to the point I'm at now and go, oh, you should just do it the way I'm doing it right now. 'cause a lot of people do that in programming. They just say, you should just start with, you know, c and call it a day.

And I'm like, I know that's not how people work in most places. It's just not possible for people and it wasn't for me. And I've got the videos sitting there reminding me of the, the way I used to do things to, to keep me humble and say, you know what, you, you used to be like that too. You weren't just working the way you are now.

So it helps me stay, stay pretty grounded. Um, and some of the videos are quite funny too, to rewatch one's like, oh, this is why Dynamo's better than Python. And I'm like, oh, why do they make that video? It's not gonna age well. And then I had the,

Evan Troxel: also good you, you show that you could change your mind.

Gavin Crump: yeah, yeah. And I had one like, why is Python better than C? And I'm like, now I'm gonna have to make one wise c better than the rest.

So it keeps, keeps me grounded and, yeah.

Evan Troxel: perfect segue, I mean, talk about what

Gavin Crump: Hmm.

Evan Troxel: you're working on now when it comes to your YouTube channel and, and,

Gavin Crump: Sure. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: this, I mean C# and, and your, you're doing, are you doing live streams? Tell, tell us what you're up to.

Gavin Crump: Uh, not at the moment. I haven't really cracked the whole live stream recipe and timing. I, I've still enjoyed the ability to sort of just pump a video out and release it when it's ready sort of thing. Um, but yeah, C#, so I, I used Python and Py Revit for the better part of like two and a half years.

Um, and a lot of people told me during that time, you should go to C#, try it out. And I tried it, it didn't click. Um, it, it is a difficult language, I think to approach if you're not naturally inclined to, you know, thinking the way the language encourages you to think, which is very much in an application sense.

So lots of parts coming together to build this like product. Whereas Python's sort of like a, almost like in the Matrix where he says, oh, we've got guns and this huge rack of guns rolls out and you've got 5 million libraries to draw upon. Really jangly from people. I enjoyed that side of Python, but C# is a lot more programmatic.

You're deploying an app, it has to work, it's gotta have dependencies considered. Um, but I actually broke into C# using chat GPT. That was literally where I started learning C#. I just started conversating with our chat bot at work, um, who's a private facing GPT, but still roughly at that level.

And, and I realized it was pretty good at working with code, um, and writing code and responding to code and modifying code. And I just. Finally figured out those first few building blocks in C# that you need to get started, because there's a lot of things you have to get right in a project of C#, of the C# language to get your add in to even run in the first place.

So that was where I usually got stuck. Like one of those 50 things you needed to line up just didn't line up and the whole thing threw an error at me and I'm like, Ugh, I'm out. But I finally had this co-pilot that could tell me, oh, this is where you went wrong. Don't worry. We got this. And, and eventually, you know, I ran my ad in, it worked.

Um, John Pearson, he also recommended a really good template to me, um, by a guy called Roman on GitHub, um, the nice point template. And that saved a lot of the, the hurdles that you have to jump over to get into a C# project. Um, so once I was in, I naturally saw the parallels to python, python's, almost like an abstraction of sea in principle.

And C# is a, a lesser abstraction of sea. It's got some, some benefits over sea, but they, they're very similar. And at that point it was just an easy switch for me. It was just those, those things I couldn't do before they were blocking me from really getting into it. So, um, I started pretty much doing C# every week on the channel, and I'm trying to build people up through.

What I see as a fairly methodical process of getting towards an add-in that works in Revit in a similar way to Dynamo or Python. Like it's very delivery focused. Um, and it's almost me just re documenting my steps one lesson at a time and building a series that I don't think I found when I was trying to learn it.

There's a lot of great resources, but none of most of them said, let's begin by building our add-in system. And you spend like. All this time doing all this stuff that doesn't translate into a working application until less than 20 or something like that. I said, no, we've gotta get in faster than that to give people that reward.

Um, so I guess a lot of what I do on YouTube, especially with C# now, is I like to see that I'm sort of holding the ladder down for everyone and saying, come on, come on, get up, get up. We're going to the next thing. But I've got the ladder. I'm, I'm, I'm on the helicopter saying, no, wait, there's still people coming.

Um, so I sort of hold myself intentionally back a little bit from the leading edge of what's going on. And, and this is my, my Motive with C#. I want to bring that opportunity for other Python developers and Dynamo developers. They now have like a ladder they can climb, um, before the AI agents all come and completely, you know, pull the carpet out from under our feet.

Evan Troxel: You're, you're on borrowed time, Gavin,

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. This is all gonna be unnecessary soon.

No, I, I, I, I applaud what you're doing and I think what's so interesting about the YouTube today, right, is that you can learn anything. You wanna learn from who you wanna learn it from, and, and that to me is an incredible. An incredible thing that exists. I mean, it takes people to say, I'll, I'll put myself out there. I'll, I'll do that thing. And again, it can be super niche and weird. Right? And it can, I mean, not that this is weird, but it can be, it can be super niche and,

Gavin Crump: Oh yeah.

Evan Troxel: gain a, you know, the right community around it who's willing to go on that journey with you? And that's, that's super cool.

Gavin Crump: Yeah. And I found the, the community around C# is quite strong as well. And I think once I sort of signified to them, Hey, I'm in this space and I'm doing this. A lot of them have reached out and given me heaps of really cool tips. So I've got a, a toolbar on GitHub that's open and public. And through that I've got a lot of feedback behind the scenes saying, oh, I noticed you did this.

Have you thought about this? Have you seen this package? And it's sort of like rediscovering a, like a dynamo community that's a little bit more covert than the Dynamo community. They, they have like forums to some degree, but that they're honestly just all such busy people building apps that they don't really have that come together environment naturally.

So I found it's given me a, I guess, a different window into the industry and all the work that all these Adam developers have been doing over the years without ai. My gosh. Like that, that's hard work. Um, it's given me a respect for, I guess, those developers as well. But, um, I've been conversing with a lot of people like John Pearson, Sean Page, um, some people that are really heavy in the C# space.

And it's, it's been fun to, I guess, talk to people. At a different level that I wasn't at before in programming and have like more natural conversations and also read Jeremy Tamacs build a code of blog and actually understand what it says. Like that was a, a pretty cool moment because I used to go to Jeremy's blog and I'd always get halfway and go, I have no idea what any of this code means.

Um, I know I need it, but I don't know how it works. And now I can look at it and go, oh, actually understand, you know, half of this at least. Yeah. So it's been a, it's sort of like, you know, the matrix. I sort of see the matrix for what it is now. It's one of those sort of moments, but

Evan Troxel: Another matrix reference. Good.

Gavin Crump: yeah.

Evan Troxel: of my favorites. I, I am curious if you could just give a kind of, uh, an idea of like what kinds of things you're building with c

Gavin Crump: Sure.

Evan Troxel: understand why they might wanna look into what you're teaching them on YouTube.

Gavin Crump: Sure. So, I mean, a large part of what I'm building is probably still quite delivery focused. Um, once you get into design tasks, you deal with geometry, and geometry is much harder. Like you're using pretty raw mathematics when you get to like the geometry tasks. Um, so like, I mean, probably the, the main geometry task that I built early on, for example, is the classic task of you've got a topography and you wanna put paving onto it.

So if you sit there and you pull points onto the topo until it. Doesn't go through the topo, so I just built that as a actual task. You just pick a floor, it puts a grid in it and it drops it onto the floor. Um, but, but like the, the main things that I've built that have resonated at my company, uh, are generally toolkits that really tap into those pain points.

So, for example, we have used various batch printers and exporters over the years, and you have to get all the settings right, you have to distribute them through very, you know, awkward ways, like sending files to each other or getting some file on a server and hoping that it works in the next version.

And I said, I'll build you an exporter. It does P-D-F-W-G-N-W-C-I-F-C, and it's got pre-built naming standards that we can share as a company. Um, at the company level very easily. So like we built that, for example, and, you know, we do a lot of exporting in, in architecture unfortunately, but it resonated because people were like, oh, okay, we own this printer now.

We can change it. We can make it what we want it to be. Um, one really popular one I made is a room layout, sheep creation toolkit. So when you do hospital jobs, every room has to be documented on like an a three page. Um, highly wasteful. You spend like half the project just documenting rooms basically. So I just said we, we can automate that a hundred percent.

Um, but the way that I built the toolkit was very different to the other apps we'd used before that try to do this. So most of them try to build the entire sheet all at once. Um, and the views just get put on the sheet and they have no idea that they belong to a room layout sheet or a room. So I built in a relationship system where the views and the sheets all know, okay, I actually belong back to this room and if this room's name changes, I can like push the name change back to all these elements that relate to it.

So we built a, a much more, um, intelligent approach to just holding all that data together and, um, making it so that you can like, create views and it'll know there's already a floor plan. I'm not gonna make it again because I already exist on like a sheet over here. So building intelligence that doesn't exist at the Revit level, that that's a lot of the tools I build, or taking advantage of features that I'm exposed in Revit naturally to the user.

Um, one, one of them is a funny one that there's a, you, uh, you might have seen when people use Revit, they often do this big marquee across the whole model screen, and they like, say they want to select all the walls in a view, they'll select everything in the entire model, and then they'll filter down to walls and it takes like a long time.

So Autodesk has this thing in their API that lets you filter your selection before you make it, but it's just not really used in Revit naturally, but it's all sitting there behind the scenes ready to use, and you can select everything super fast and it, it, it gives you access to just things that Revit naturally doesn't give you for some reason by default.

Um, so yeah, but lot, lots of random stuff in there. Like I could, I could go on and on and on, but, um, a lot of the typical bread and butter tasks, but then some, some more fringe things as well. Um, that yeah, you wouldn't always think of. Yeah,

Evan Troxel: Very cool. is there anything that we haven't talked about that, I mean, I mean, go, let's just go back. Let's, let's just jump to the high level again. I mean, this whole idea of kind of navigating AEC as a programmer, right? And, and I mean, you went to traditional architecture school, you are, you're working at a company doing custom add-ins for Revit using C and you're documenting, uh, teaching other people how to do that on YouTube. Whoa. Like, okay, you, you never saw that coming, right?

Gavin Crump: not at all.

Evan Troxel: Never. And you've kind of gained some notoriety along the way because of these, you know, things that you've, you've put out into the world. Um, I mean, just, just if I just, this is your story, right? And, and how, how that happened could not have been planned out in advance, right?

It,

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: that kind of happened organically along the way. Um, I. With some, you know, raising your hand for, you know, making your own opportunities through the agency of creating your YouTube channel, being prompted by other people to, you know, a little bit of a push, you should do this and then you doing it. Um, I mean, there's a lot of ingredients that have gone into what this is, but you're definitely like a well-known individual in AEC technology. Uh, I mean, you've accomplished a lot and, and I'm, you're, you're way younger than I am and, and you're well on your way to doing a lot more. Right. So really cool story.

But just curious for, to hear kind of your, when you, when you hear it presented that way, I mean, you live it. I mean, maybe, maybe you think about this more often than, than, than I

Gavin Crump: Yeah, quite,

Evan Troxel: like

Gavin Crump: quite long.

Evan Troxel: if you're encouraging other people like Maybe they're, maybe they're being trained as architects, maybe not.

Right. But, but, and you've chosen to stay in AEC this whole time too, and you didn't have to do that. I think that's also kind of an interesting point, right? So, and not even going out just to do the software like a lot of people have who are in this piece of the industry, they leave to go into tech.

Right. And they, they are part of a startup and all these things. And anyway, um, I'm just throwing all that out there because

Gavin Crump: No, no, it's, it's.

Evan Troxel: your

Gavin Crump: It's a great, a great, um, lead in. I, I guess, yeah, you're right. A lot of people don't stay in a a c and I've, I've had opportunities presented to me to leave, um, or to go sideways, like way sideways, like, you know, software vendors and developers. And, uh, I guess unfortunately I just love working with architects.

That's my, that's my, my poison. I, I empathize with them. I've been one, I don't feel so much as an architect anymore, but like, they are my people, I guess is the way I see it. Um, but I guess, yeah, a lot of what I do, I do have to think, how do I relate this back to people just getting started now or people that haven't found their place in the industry just yet.

Um, and I always usually impart a few common tips. I mean, one is to. Look at what is going on at the bleeding edge of the industry and try to figure out what that might look like in like five years. Like if it was the way things were gonna normally be, and which parts of those things would you want to make a part of your skillset if you didn't have to convince your boss?

It was just a logical thing. Um, AI will, will be a game changer for the industry and like, architecture is probably, I dunno if I'd say under threat, but it's gonna be heavily transformed if the right pieces of tech get delivered the way that people are promising they will. Um, whether that happens, we'll see, but I'm sure it's gonna happen.

It's just a matter of when. Um, I always encourage people to sort of look at what everyone else is doing around them, and if everyone's doing the same thing, don't do that because like, you'll just end up doing that and eventually it won't be relevant. So if everyone's, you know. Learning Revit and that's it.

Like there's gotta be more to it than that. And that sort of like underpinned my own choices along the way. I've tried to find things that not everyone's doing and say, okay, like Bim literally getting into bim. That was for me the start of that. Like, not everyone really cares about bim. I do. 'cause like, you know, there's gonna be a need for this.

And, and I think programming was also that moment I said, okay, this isn't something I see very often around me. And whilst I also enjoyed it, I recognized it's got power. It's got agency that, you know, you have more control over things that you wouldn't have otherwise. And the software is sort of in charge of you if you don't know how to program these days.

I find, um, I think as well, uh, don't expect a traditional career path. That's probably a hard lesson that gets taught to you over time in your career. I think that, you know, it's, you're not gonna be where you expect to be in five, 10 years. I'm sure I won't be where I expect to be in 10 years by any means.

Um, but don't let the industry tell you what you should be and don't expect it to either. That's like a pretty hard lesson. I try to impart to graduates. Don't seek all the guidance from others like you. You do have to sometimes just make, take risks and, you know, make decisions that might seem like they're not necessarily gonna be the easy choice, or the one that is, is guaranteed just gonna work.

But that's the only way you really get ahead of the market by taking those risks and trying to figure out just, um. I guess, like which decisions have the, the potential to pan out well, um, and knowing what you do, if they don't, I guess, like I've, I've invested in platforms and ideas before that didn't take off and businesses closed that I was literally collaborating with behind the scenes.

And I went, well, that's a skill set that I just have to put down. But, but through doing that, I've, you know, I, I, I found other people and connections and it all sort of somehow delivers to you in the end. And if anyone is just trying to seek guidance, I guess I like to tell them, you can reach out to people like us.

We're pretty accessible. Like we're, we're not like, you know, gonna say no and just ignore you in the, in the dms or whatever. Like, it's, it's, I try to be very accessible for the people that, that need, need guidance and help. And I won't always get back to you straight away, but like, I like to promise to everyone.

I, I will reply to you. So, um, try, try not to find me too scary. I guess. I know I do a lot of debates on LinkedIn, but behind the scenes, I'm a nice guy, I promise. Yeah. So a whole bunch of tips in there, but yeah.

Evan Troxel: gotta, you got a mean bite there? Yeah. On LinkedIn

Gavin Crump: Occasionally. Yeah. And I guess I self, I self-reflect sometimes saying, you know, like, will I be in the industry in five years, 10 years? Who knows? I mean, I don't, I dunno if my boss watches, but hi, if he does, um, I, I have to, but I have to constantly sound check myself, um, saying, you know, is there different things that I'm not looking at right now that could be a different opportunity?

Like, should I go and go into video game architecture or, you know, go completely left field and just see where it takes me. But it, it's a temptation that's always there. But I guess I, I like to think that I, I take this as far as I, I can before I really do a quantum leap, but in my head, I know that probably one day the industry is gonna force me into some sort of situation like that through just transforming so much that those connections become so obvious or, or necessary.

Yeah.

Evan Troxel: You missed, you missed that whole metaverse train. That thing took off like,

Gavin Crump: Yeah. Luck. Luckily I, um, I just waited for the next train for that one. Um, yeah.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. You never know. Well, this has been a great conversation. Everybody needs to go over to the Aussie Bim Gurus YouTube channel and subscribe. Subscribe to Troxel while you're there. He, he has way more subscribers than this podcast does on YouTube, uh, for sure. And, uh, this has, this has been a fantastic conversation.

I'm gonna put a link to that in the show notes and I'm gonna put a link to you on LinkedIn so everyone can read your spicy comments. Anything else, anywhere else they can go to find, get more Gavin.

Gavin Crump: Uh, that's the main place you, you're welcome to email me as well, Aussie bim guru@gmail.com. If you've got like a more technical question, I'm happy to take those. Um, if you send a script, they'll usually look at it, so, um, but yeah, no, I'd just like to thank you for having me on the show. Like I said at the start, it's, it's surreal to.

Be able to, to engage with you in, in this medium and, and, you know, be on the show that I always watch and listen to these days. And, you know, I really admire the work that you do and the people that you give, um, people access to and you know, that you give them access to more people through being able to talk about their ideas here.

So I really appreciate, um, being a part of that, that collection of people that you've given, um, given, given that opportunity to. So thank you.

Evan Troxel: Nice. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. uh, let's do it again.

Gavin Crump: Yeah, certainly. Alright, take care.

Evan Troxel: Before you take off, I wanna wrap up this episode and revisit two main themes that stood out to me from today's conversation. The first one is about Gavin choosing to stay in AEC instead of leaving for tech. He makes a clear conscious choice to stay.

That decision speaks volumes in a time when so many technologists are exiting the industry due to burnout, lack of innovation, or better pay elsewhere. This is important for AEC tech leaders trying to retain and elevate talent. It hits the core of a major issue. Why talented individuals should stay and how firms can enable that.

Gavin is an outlier in this regard. It's uncommon to hear someone with programming chops and a YouTube following choose AEC on purpose. His story makes the argument compelling, and this should be a topic of conversation in firm leadership meetings. The second one is about personality traits, AKA, the Introvert's Guide to making an impact.

I think Gavin's story is deeply human and relatable to many of my podcast audience. Many in AEC are introverts by nature, especially those in BIM tech or technical roles and Gavin's self-awareness, humility, and approachability. Create an empowering narrative. You don't have to be loud to lead. His story offers a roadmap. Start small, be consistent. Speak to the camera, not the crowd And his brand building journey is proof that introverts can thrive publicly without changing who they are. What makes this theme particularly powerful is its relevance both within our industry and beyond AEC. The approach to content creation and public sharing provides a valuable model for professionals at any level.

We see excellent examples of channels producing impactful content across all generations from Gen Z to boomers, and you don't have to be an extrovert to do it. That's all for this episode. Tell me what you think by clicking the feedback link in the show notes, or leave me a comment on YouTube. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.