S3:E05 | The best Dive Log app for 2023 has every feature a scuba diver or freediver will ever need

My name is Kenny Dial and I want to welcome you back to season three of the Scuba Diving Podcast. This episode is part of a continuing series about the Buddy app. I'm going to be showcasing different features of it and you're probably wondering why. The whole purpose of my channel is to lift up and grow the scuba diving industry to what I feel its potential could be and I think the Buddy app is going to be the most powerful tool out there to help accelerate that and bring us all together in one spot. I know a lot of you are probably skeptical, I was too, but I really encourage you to give this a look. We're going to talk about the actual dive log feature today and I know you don't use dive logs, you prefer the book, you prefer your Patty Nowey SSI app, your Garmin or your Suunto or your Apple Watch, whatever it is. Well, just trust me on this one. As someone with over 10,000 dives, I haven't logged anything in years and this got me excited again. Even if you're not sure, download it. It's free, divewithbuddy.com. I go to the app store and actually type in Buddy Scuba and it pops right up for me. I went all the way to Hawaii to do this interview so hopefully you'll stick around for the whole thing. I think you'll enjoy it and it's just in time for Women's Diver Month this July. Women's Dive Day is coming up so who better to talk about this than the mastermind behind the Buddy app, Alexis. She's incredible, what a personality, what an awesome diver. Over two and a half years she's been working on this, it's finally rolling out. I hope you enjoy this interview with her on using the Buddy app for dive logs. Alexis, I know like I don't have to tell you that scuba diving is absolutely loaded with task loading. Like people are so snarling their gear and getting on and off the boat, nobody wants to screw around with a dive log at the end. How fast can you do it? 30 seconds. 30 seconds? Yes. You can log your dive in 30 seconds? Yeah. Maybe even faster once we have the computer integration. All right, well we're going to time that. Okay. Okay, dive log and the plus for your scuba dive, the date, total time down, maximum depth on the dive, and you said that was electric beach, add a photo, and publish. A lot of people are already happy with their PADI, NAUI, or SSI app. SSI people are like really into their app. Why should they leave that app and get on yours? I know they have a good app and everything. The reason that they're not is the usability of that QR code. That's one main reason that SSI people can pop on over is we're going to have an equal QR code S type of logging the dive or verifying the dive. For the other reasons, I think it's because wouldn't you like to be friends with all divers and not just the diver of that affiliation? Be able to add buddies. Affiliation like PADI, SSI, NAUI. Yeah, yeah. Everything's a little segmented, not just affiliations. Brands too. Garmin's got their own dive app, Deep Blue, Dive Plus, Diver Now. There's so many of them out there. They all cater to a certain audience, but what we want to do is bring everybody in one place. You know, I've seen it at the end of the night after a dive. I go, hey, I can validate your SSI app, and then we got a group of 12 people, and one person goes, oh, it's me, or maybe two or three, but it ain't ever everybody. It's not even half. It doesn't matter what agency. It'll take some time. It's not like everyone's coming over now. People like what they like. They're using what they're using, but as time goes on, things will change, and I think everyone's all about like coming together in this dive world, and so we'll eventually all be swimming in the same ocean together. Nicely done. Know what you did there. I've seen people with their paper dive logs out still. Yes. I've thrown mine away. I can't stand them, but I know some people are attached to them. Why should they unattach? You gotta be careful because they're going to be throwing tomatoes at you if you say the wrong thing here. I don't know if I would. I definitely still keep that paper log as a memory because it's so wonderful to look at and to remember those things, but something that they could do is backlog some of their most favorite dives in the app, and then this way they're able to share them in a text message to their kid, show their grandkid, get somebody, show that paper log to 100 people while sitting in your chair and get them interested in diving. That's a good answer. For me, the problem with a paper log is we just saw everything gets wet on the boat. Yeah. In a perfect setting, if you're out at a calm lake and you get out and then towel off and then yeah, the paper's good, but I don't know. I'm not a fan of the paper. Well, no one's really a fan of paper anymore, and if you're a diver, probably shouldn't be such a fan of paper either. Maybe let's bring it to 2023. We're getting recyclables and there's a lot of things about saving the ocean and maybe we can add paper logs to that list. I'm down. The phones aren't going anywhere. Phones are here. They're always on you. I had a friend actually call me one time and say, hey, I got to do this dive and they require 50 dives, right, to do it. And he's like, I lost my log book years ago. I got more than 50. And he's like, is anyone going to check if I just fake it? I'm like, no. So paper logs can be forged. Yeah. Is there any sort of forgery protection here? Well, there's a way of officially validating your log, which means that you send it to an instructor or dive master and they actually have to approve it just like a stamp, which is easier to forge, just a signature or stamp. Now you cannot forge that. Now you actually have to have that instructor or dive master's like approval for it when it comes to an actual check marked verified dive. Can you add a log that's complete BS and that's not yours? Yeah, but you could also, I guess, just write that in there as well, but it would never be verified. So you can't get them verified. You can't fake it. No, unless the dive master or the instructor that verified it is willing to fake it. All right. So at least it cuts down on fraud. Yeah. All right. So it's a fraud reduction app. I mean, it helps. I'm just kidding. Yeah. People, they're like, I don't log my dives. I get that a lot. Why should they come back to logging? Well, the first reason is when you're actually getting your certification, you need those dives logged. I think most professional divers are people who dive all the time. They forget about that. That's the reason you started logging it. You need it for your certifications. And then after that, just like everybody else, I also forget to log them because it's not easy. It's prickly. Boy, you got to watch out for these. Yeah, you got to be careful. It's hard. Those will get you just like that. Why should people come back to logging it though? Because we forgot how much we love diving. Do you remember that enthusiasm you had when you first started diving? You were thrilled to log that dive. You wanted to show everybody that dive. And we've kind of just gotten in the monotony of like not doing that. Like we should we should remember our love of diving. We should share our love of the ocean. Oh, look at this little baby. OK, that was not staged. Yeah. Well, you found the dreadful one. And this one is very cute. That's a little starfish, a little crunchy foot getter. Somebody's hungry. All right. So is the dive log really is this going to be the new credit score for divers? Like, oh, let me check the buddy app. I like that comparison. So, yes, everyone's got to get on a boat to work. Yeah, of course. Just like anything, not everyone was like on Instagram. And now you can generally like ask whether it be Instagram or Facebook and you're able to find them. So I would really absolutely love for that to be the case. If the buddy app like with your log and, you know, professionals can go in and look at it and see where you're at and everything. This really is kind of like the credit score. Is that going to be something that's going to shy away new people? No, I don't think it's going to hinder new divers. If we consider this more of like the credit score or the resume of diving, I think it's actually going to allow them to look at other people's profiles and say, where did they go diving? What certifications did they do to get to this place? I think it'll help people get to know each other a little better. Yeah, one hundred percent. When you find a dive buddy, it's it's really like a wonderful friendship. And I really hope that this will allow people to like find those buddies going to dive logs. Like you said, you can log equipment and you can show. And I'll be honest with you. First thing I do is I go and creep everybody's equipment. So I jump on there and I start like kind of seeing what they dive with and everything. I love the creep factor. I think that's fun. But do you think. All right. So if everybody knows everybody's looking at each other's dive logs, do you think people are going to be faking their air consumption a little bit? Maybe the ones that really care, but for the ones that do it for the love of diving? Nah, let's give them let's give them some more credit than that. Got to know people that would. Weight. Is this going to help with the weight? Because weight's a beast. You know, weighting is my pet peeve, right? Because it's good when new students and new divers say, OK, I dive with we'll just say 10 pounds. Right. Well, we know there's more to that equation. That's that's not all the boxes with what cylinder, with what wetsuit, with what salinity, with what equipment that can all double your weight or half your weight or whatever. So weight is one bit of a larger equation. So one of my pet peeves is people that go in. Usually it's in when they get a little bit better and they're kind of getting good. They get that 25, 50, 100 dive and they go, I take this much weight. I use this much. Yes. It's like on what? So that's that's only part of the equation. Do you think this is going to help solve that problem? I think whenever people start to actually log it and there's a part where it says, what gear did you use? You're able to select from your own profiles gear or actually like add maybe your rental gear and your weight. You have a five mil on versus a three mil on. Now you're going to be able to look back and say like, oh, OK, I'm diving saltwater. We're doing a wreck dive. When was the last time that I did that? Let me look at my log. Let me see how much weight I wore then. And you're going to be able to see and maybe compare to a previous dive. And this way, you know, your weight's not always going to be the same no matter what dive you do. Gives people a better viewpoint. Let's you connect those this much with that, with this. And you can see it. I like that. I'm going to tell you something honest here. I creep people's profiles a little bit. Have you ever late at night gone a little too deep into someone's pictures? Oh, yeah. I want to find like the good spots. I want to want to see like where they took those pictures or where they spotted that whale or eagle ray. I think it's also a really good way to find a new place to dive. You think like if you go too deep and like one, it would be awkward? No, because I think that's really cool thing about a dive log is that I might log a dive tomorrow, like backlog one that was from a few years back, especially when we've all been logging our dives for years. It's not like the Instagram creep where you go all the way down to their profile, like accidentally like that photo at the bottom. Of course, this is this I think is more of an experience. I think it's something that you're searching for and you're digging for in people's profiles. So no, it's not going to have that same like factor. I think more people are going to be appreciative of like, oh, that's cool. They want to go on this dive. So in short, it's okay to creep here. Yeah. Okay. One thing that we didn't talk about that you feel like is important about dive logs. Oh, something that I feel is important. The share builder, your audience, my audience currently are people who already dive and we know that our logs are like very informational. They're not that visual. This allows you to really tag your buddies, add your dive shops, your dive master, your photos, gear, depth, your location. So all the metrics, right? But how it's visualized is gorgeous. It's fun to look at. And when you share it, it allows you to cater this long list of a dive log into something that's social. Everybody online is going to be able to look at and understand ocean, shark, depth, location. Whereas if you show a trajectory or if you just like list something, it's harder for the regular people out there to understand. And we want more people to dive. People are going to think it's more attainable. They're going to understand that it's easier and fun to do. Thanks for listening or watching. I hope you enjoyed the show. More coming down the road from Alexis, from Buddy, all right from the beautiful Island of Oahu. Go add me as a buddy on the Buddy app. Search Kenny Dial, guy with the red hat, super easy. Type in Dive With Buddy or Buddy Scuba right from the app store or go to divewithbuddy.com. Hope to see you on there. And if you want to support my channel, go to sweetwaterscuba.com. We have all the good stuff like the shirts, the hats, the stickers, everything. Autographed kids books are on there and wholesale opportunities for retailers. Don't forget we're on almost every major channel, put out daily content, new stuff all the time. I'm on live all the time. So hopefully I'll see on either TikTok, Kenny underscore Dial, Instagram, Sweetwater underscore Scuba, Facebook, just search me or just search me in your browser, Kenny Dial. One of those should come up. Finally, the YouTube channel has all the podcasts and all of the short form stuff. It actually kind of has everything in one spot. Either way, I hope to see you on one of these apps, on one of these pages, whatever connects us to the underwater world. I hope to see you there. Let's show the rest of the world, the rest of the world.