The Shortlist Episode 93: The Short(er) List: Bluebeam Rumble!

In this episode of The Short(er) List, we're bringing you the software debate event of the century! Becky welcomes guest and sparring partner Katy Byers for knock-out, drag-out, no holds barred throwdown over the best tool for collecting proposal feedback from technical staff.

Katy is team Bluebeam. Becky is not. She is very, very not.

What follows is a good-natured and delightfully passionate argument about markups, workflows, and whether Bluebeam is a powerful proposal tool or just a PDF editor that engineers love a little bit too much. Becky makes her case for Adobe Share for Review. Katy holds her ground. Neither is backing down without a fight.

No proposals were harmed in the making of this episode. Please leave your feedback for the team by highlighting text, adding a comment, or typing out a note in a red squiggly cloud—we're flexible, kind of.

Podcast Transcript

So we are bringing those conversations, rants and other fun stuff that was too spicy for TV to you in bite-sized little podcast treats hosted by me and featuring all of your favorite Middle of Sixers. Today, we are really getting into it.

I am privileged and overjoyed to have as our guest today, Katy Byers, one of our most spectacular project managers when it comes to proposals, perhaps one of the best proposal managers I've ever encountered in my life because she's so organized,

she's wonderful, and every time we think we're about to just jump off the ledge during a proposal process, she's there for me to make jokes and sing in the trenches and it's wonderful. Katy, how are you doing?

I am doing wonderfully and even better now that you just sang my praises, I'm tearing up.

Well, enjoy it while you can because today we are discussing a very hot topic, a very contentious topic. This is as polarizing as we're going to get listeners. So buckle up, get the popcorn.

Today we are talking about Bluebeam. Is it good? Is it bad?

Is it useful? Do we as marketers like it? We're fighting, we're debating.

Katy, how do you feel about Bluebeam?

Let's get ready to rumble. Oh, I'm ready. I'm ready to make my case.

And my case is that as marketers, our job is to translate technical content into palatable content for the rest of the world.

Sure.

So a big part of that is meeting the technical staff where they are at. Where are they? They're hanging out in Bluebeam, baby.

They're making their markups in Bluebeam. That's where we need to be.

Counterpoint. Bluebeam sucks and should go back to hell at its earliest convenience.

Because as someone who deals in logic and things making sense and being organized and taking content and information and turning it into even more organized and understandable content information.

If you start with something like Bluebeam, which, for example, I think we've all received edits on a proposal draft in Bluebeam. A, where are they? B, how do you know which ones you've done?

C, what if you have to copy content out of there? What if somebody wrote an essay and said, hey, replace this paragraph with this text? Where even is it?

You have to scroll off of the pasteboard. You can't copy it out of there. Nobody knows how it works and it wastes an incredible amount of time.

I know how it works and I know it well.

Do you?

Oh yeah, I do.

Hey, what happened to you?

What's wrong with you? Who hurt you, Katy?

I will say that Adobe Share for Review crashes or does something weird or glitches bi-weekly. And by that, I mean every other week on average for me. Bluebeam, never.

Never had an issue. Bluebeam Studio never crashes. Is so reliable.

That might be because it doesn't do anything.

It doesn't really have any features. It's just there to be a nightmare and not work. Just saying.

Like, you seriously understand it. You open up, what is it? Bluebeam Review, right?

It's like, it's not even really review. It's like REVU or something like that. That's not even a word.

So like, what are we reviewing? I mean, review, review. REVU, it's almost like review, like REVUE, which is what, like a performance where like multiple people go out and it's like, it's a drag brunch review.

Like, that's not what this is. That's a fun thing. This is a bad thing that makes everyone sad.

So you look at this program and you're like, I've got to get to the edits and make them, and you know exactly where they are, and it just makes sense to you.

Heck yeah. I know how to navigate it better than I know how to navigate Adobe Share for REVU. There are more capabilities.

It's a panel.

It's right there. You can set it. You can even filter out in Adobe Share for REVU.

What have we already resolved? What's still open? You can tag people.

You can put little smiley faces in there. There's so much functionality.

So much more functionality in Bluebeam. You don't have your panels open. Oh, oh, now.

How dare you?

How dare you bring up my panels?

Oh, how the turn tables. Because it is my turn to teach you how to use a program instead of you always teaching me how to use InDesign.

Well, let's hear it, Katy. How can the thinking person who is used to Adobe products because they make sense, find a way to mold their experience into being able to use this awful program that we call Bluebeam?

Well, Bluebeam is really great for non-thinking people like me, because it functions and there's a lot more capabilities in it.

And I think what I'm hearing from you, and what I hear from a lot of marketers that don't like Bluebeam, is that you're like, where are the comments? Because they're like off in a pasteboard that you can't see in Adobe Share for review.

Correct.

The cool thing about Bluebeam is that you can see the pasteboard, because there is more functionality, there is more content.

So, when an engineer inevitably writes an essay about a roundabout, it's always an engineer, it's always an engineer, like a manifesto, you can see all of the content, and it's not floating off in space, like as if you were to open it in an Adobe

It literally is though.

Only if you open it in Adobe, not if you open it in Bluebeam, not if you open it in Bluebeam, which is what they use.

We have to meet them where they're at.

Ick. So, how then, how do you copy text out of there? Like literally, how do you do it?

Just like what's...

You right click the text box and click copy text. Exactly the same.

If you can find the text box.

Those of us who can find the text boxes, not naming any names, but those of us on this call who can find text boxes, you right click.

There's too many panels. There's sessions and like dates and who did what. And it's not even like you can't...

There's so many different variations. You open the program and it doesn't even open the document. You have to search for like, where's the document that we're talking about?

Find the panel with the edits. They're all in red clouds, five miles off of the pace board with lines that like go everywhere and it makes no sense. And it's so hard to copy.

I have a plan.

You do?

I'm going to heal.

This is now my life goal is to heal your Bluebeam trauma. We are going to manage a proposal review process in Bluebeam, you and I together for a proposal that I'm managing and you're supporting.

Are we?

And I am going to make you fall in love. That is my life goal. We're gonna have this conversation a year from now, and it's gonna be like, Becky is the Bluebeam Queen.

I'm gonna hate it even more by then, because by then, no, see, with Adobe, though, Adobe is what we're all used to.

It's so straightforward. Everyone opens a PDF. It's Adobe, it's Acrobat.

Everyone knows what's going on. You just open the little comment panels, they pop up on the right. It's so easy.

There's no possibility to make a little red cloud that's like all the way out in outer space, and try to go find the content. It's right there. You can copy the text right out of the comment.

It's so wonderful. It's easy for anyone to do. Even if people use Bluebeam, they don't have to have an Adobe account.

They can just click on the link and go in there and make comments and it's so easy. Like, why on earth would anyone want to complicate it with? Bluebeam, this awful, this Adobe knockoff.

Okay.

I'll say Adobe is easy for us. You say easy for everybody. I'll say it's easier for us.

Adobe is not intuitive for most engineers and architects that I have worked with and know. They love those little red boxes that you despise so much. They rely on them heavily.

They are their emotional support, word clouds that they use to give us all the information that we need to create content for them.

That's all well and good, but how do you explain, like the sessions thing? What is that what it's called? Sessions where you have like different versions of like.

Oh, heck yeah.

And it's so much better than share for review. So, okay. So you have a session and it's like, imagine it like a little room.

I imagine it a little meeting room and you can add.

A little room with no windows or doors or escape. Sure, I'm with you. This you're finally making sense.

Solitary confinement of the document virtual sharing world.

And you can put however many documents you want in there. And you can decide what the permissions are for the viewers. So, for example, you can create a studio.

And then I have the pink draft of my proposal in there that is allowing for markups from the reviewers.

But then I also drop in the RFP, and I don't allow markups on that one, but I can pop notes in there and tag people and say, hey, so and so, make sure that this section is answering this question, so that they are simultaneously reviewing both

documents side by side. Whereas I can't do any of that. And then also, as now we're done with our pink draft, we have our red draft ready for review.

I keep the pink draft there, so they can all see their comments still, because Lord knows they will want to look at them again. And you can leave that there for their review, close it for editing, and then upload another document.

And it's all together in a little list, so organized and so nice.

And no one gets confused with all these versions flying around and all these different documents and sections and like...

I mean, you do, to be queer. I do.

Yeah, because I'm a normal person who likes things organized and straightforward.

This feels organized to me. In my brain, it feels organized. I know.

I'm a weirdo.

Honestly, the whole pink, red, gold, draft color coding thing feels weird to me, too. I mean, and maybe that's because I have synesthesia. So like numbers and letters have colors for me inherently.

So like that could be like, I don't know, some kind of like cognitive dissonance there. But what you described to me is so many things.

There's like, you talked about different sessions and different dates and different files, and they're all side by side, and there's a pink draft and a red draft, and somebody wants to go back and see their comments, and they want to see somebody

else's comments, and you can assign this and do like, I just like, there's minutes and seconds count. When you're working on a proposal deadline and with Adobe Share for review, it's so straightforward. It's all right there in one place.

You don't have to look anywhere for everything. If you have a new version of something, it just makes a new version. It's wonderful.

Then you keep everybody on track. That way, you don't have Bob the Superintendent making edits on Draft 2, while Johnny the project manager is making edits on Draft 6. Everybody's on the same draft at the same time, and you can control that.

And I like control, Katy.

Oh, I like control too.

And one of the things about Bluebeam that allows control that I am obsessed with is when you remove a document from your studio, it pops up offering you to save a local copy of that document with all of the comments and all of the activity that

happened on it. So you can just really quickly save it to the proposal folder, and you got receipts. You got receipts right there.

You can do that with Adobe too.

It's not as easy. It's not as intuitive. It doesn't just pop up for you to do it, and you have to go find the file and unshare it later.

You have to find the file?

The file comes to you if it's Bluebeam?

It does.

It does it? How does it?

It appears to you in a dream.

I knew it. I knew you were making this up. Nobody actually likes Bluebeam.

That was very convincing, Katy.

If I could do anything, it's Cell, baby.

I even hate the name Bluebeam.

What does that even mean? What about it is blue? What's the beam?

It sounds like, I don't know, it reminds me of the mid-2000s with Blackberry and all that sort of thing. It's just Bluebeam.

Oh, I'm sure it's something to do with drawings, right? Blue is traditional drawing.

Like blueprints?

Like blueprints and then beams. Beam them up to the cloud and beam me up, Scotty. Maybe, actually.

Why is that crazy?

Why am I, what?

I was thinking like a beam that's part of a building, but that's just me.

But why would that be?

The AEC marketer in me.

Yeah, but they call them something else. There's always some other name for them.

Sometimes they call them beams.

Cross laminated timber. I get that. They probably do.

Beams.

Beams, yeah. That's a subset of beam.

Is it? I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying.

Joists. That's a word. That is.

Yeah, I've written about those.

You have written about joists?

Yes.

I worked for a structural engineering firm. I've written proposals centered around joists.

And you paid attention to what was going on? What's wrong with you?

I love my job, OK?

Good for you, Katy.

You know how much I've learned about roundabouts in the last 24 hours?

Roundabouts?

Oh, yeah.

A traffic circle? Oh, wait, you call it a roundabout?

Wait, you call it a traffic circle?

Yeah, a traffic circle. Like you're driving on a road and then it becomes a circle shape and people drive around and around and they go off on different roads. Is that what you mean?

Roundabout is what the British call a U-turn.

Traffic circle?

It's a traffic circle. I mean, I don't know. My parents are from New York, so they taught me what it was and I think maybe it's a regional thing.

Yeah, that is true.

I stand in line, but I will often say Q because I watch a lot of British television so that might be, I don't know.

Now that you say the circle thing, that makes sense because I was just in DC and they have them everywhere and they're called circles.

So just circles.

This is the West Coast and we call them roundabouts.

It is.

The best coast calls them roundabouts.

I'm with you.

I agree. I can't bring myself to call it that, but I get what you're saying.

Can you just say it one time for the people in the back?

Let's just debate everything.

Roundabout.

I think it's roundabout time to wrap up this episode. Now I'll just get off at the next traffic circle and take the exit to letting everyone know that it has been an absolute joy to have Katy on the podcast as usual.

She's one of my favorite people and we will definitely bring her back. It was very fun fighting about Bluebeam. Obviously, you know, I mean, who's to say what's right, what's wrong?

It's not a black and white issue. Adobe is clearly better, but it's fine. Rate, subscribe, rate, subscribe.

I'm just kidding. Everybody can have an opinion and they're all different. That's a wrong answer.

Katy and I are like that. I'm doing a cross fingers symbol in case you can't see listeners.

Then they can't.

We don't hate each other. We're just having fun. But rate and subscribe.

Remember to share the love, make a friend, recommend the podcast to another AEC marketer who wants to feel seen. And we will see you next time where we will probably be fighting and arguing about something else.

Ding, ding.

Go Adobe. Yay. I'm not like a huge, I don't know.

It's not like an Adobe shill.

Are they paying you for this?

They're not. No. And I've got a lot of beef with Adobe, quite frankly, the Pantone thing.

Get out of here. Are you serious? Is that enough of a sign off?

I think so.

I got to go.

I have a meeting.

Okay.

I am recording.

As Becky would say, we're cooking with oil.

We're cooking with gas.

Oh, gas. My bad. It's the 1800s over here.

We're cooking with kerosene.

Get in the wagon, here we go.

Don't die of dysentery.

The Shortlist is a podcast that explores all things AEC marketing. Hosted by Middle of Six Principal, Wendy Simmons, each episode features members of the MOS team, where we take a deep dive on a wide range of topics related to AEC marketing including: proposal development, strategy, team building, business development, branding, digital marketing, and more. You can listen to our full archive of episodes here.