Burn The Map: Doors, Data, and Digital Twins with Timber Barker
Release Date: 09/25/2025
Burn The Map
In This Episode: We talk to Scott Morris about the weird, messy, often badly managed reality of work — and why AI might actually make it better, if we stop using it as an excuse to be lazy thinkers. Scott walked us through the path from LAPD officer to longtime people executive to founder of Propulsion AI, where he’s building AI teammates designed to help companies stop treating humans like interchangeable headcount and start getting serious about performance, clarity, and meaningful work. This conversation goes way past the usual “AI will take your job” panic. Scott makes the case...
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In This Episode: We talk to Chris Hood about why most companies are nowhere near as customer-focused as they think they are. Chris breaks down the gap between saying you care about customer experience and actually building a business around it — and spoiler: most brands are optimizing for internal convenience, not customer value. From bloated onboarding flows and fake “customer-first” language to AI rollouts nobody asked for, this conversation is a sharp reality check for anyone building products, managing growth, or hiding behind vanity metrics. He also walks through what good customer...
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In This Episode: We talk to Grant Fuellenbach about the part of growth most operators ignore until it starts setting money on fire: the back office. Grant works with builders and trades businesses where the work is real, the margins matter, and the systems are often being held together with duct tape, habit, and optimism. He breaks down what actually happens when a company starts growing before its workflows do—and why more leads, more projects, and more hires can make the business worse if the backend never catches up. We also get into the difference between useful AI and shiny-object AI....
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In This Episode: We sit down with Christian Hammer (Founder & CEO of Ngentix) to talk about the unsexy problem that breaks AI in the real world: execution across messy systems. Christian calls what he’s building “AI plumbing in the wall”—the infrastructure layer that connects tools, enforces policy, and kills the drudgery (think: PDF → QuickBooks copy/paste hell) without pretending an LLM is magically reliable. This one is for product-minded builders: we get into why “agents” can make operations worse if you don’t have a system of record, why momentum beats velocity, and...
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In This Episode: We talk to David Espindola about the part of the AI boom most companies keep trying to skip: the boring, unsexy work that makes AI real—problem definition, strategy, governance, and trust. David’s written two books (The Exponential Era and Soulful) and spends his time thinking about what happens when exponential tech stops being a keynote and starts breaking things in production. We get into why “go do AI” is an executive-level failure mode, how to decide whether you’re a maker, shaper, or taker, and what it actually takes to build AI agents you can...
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In This Episode: We talk to Allen Martinez—founder at Noble Digital and author of The Brand Experience AI Operating System (BX AI OS)—about why so many “AI initiatives” are basically expensive science projects with a chatbot slapped on top. Allen’s take is refreshingly unforgiving: if you don’t close the governance gap, the identity gap, and the accountability gap, you’re not deploying AI—you’re launching brand chaos at machine speed. We get into what it takes to turn AI from a black box into something you can actually run, audit, and improve… without letting marketing,...
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In This Episode: We talk to Jaime Jay about going from the 82nd Airborne to homelessness (more than once), to building a company that helps founders get their time back without blowing up quality, trust, or accountability. Jaime is a hard-nosed systems thinker and one of the founders of Bottleneck Distant Assistants—where they train “distant assistants” (real humans, not “digital assistants”) using a framework he calls Delegation Intelligence. We get into the unsexy truth: delegation isn’t “hire a VA and pray.” It’s building a repeatable system so the business stops pinging...
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In This Episode: We sit down with Monica Marquez, co-founder of Flipwork AI and the unofficial change management therapist every modern exec wishes they had on speed dial. Monica’s resume is a “who’s who” of places that love an acronym—NYU, Goldman Sachs, EY, Bank of America—so trust me, she’s seen every flavor of corporate resistance to tech you can imagine. Monica calls out the dirty little secret of AI in the enterprise: Buying the tech is easy; getting humans to actually use it (without mangling your workflows and ROI) is the real Olympic sport. She dishes on why middle...
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In This Episode: We sit down with Elizabeth Bieniek: accidental innovator, corporate plane-repairer at 30,000 feet, and author of Cake on Tuesday, a book for people who like their business advice with more real talk and less corporate fluff. Elizabeth walks us through her unpredictable path—from getting an MBA at Babson and tumbling into the tech world, to launching a stealth startup inside Cisco, and then finally distilling years of chaos into 25 lessons for unlocking corporate innovation. Why Cake on Tuesday? Because frankly, what’s the point of slogging through strategy sessions if...
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In This Episode: We sit down with Dr. Craig A. Kaplan, the PhD-wielding brains behind Predict Wall Street (and, apparently, the patron saint of retail investors everywhere). Craig walks us through 14 years in the financial trenches, building tech to turn the “dumb money” crowd into a collective force that could actually beat Wall Street at its own game—at least until the hedge funds caught the scent and crashed the party. Brace yourself for a story that’s equal parts “wisdom of crowds,” collective intelligence research, and “what happens when the little guy dares to play with the...
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We talk to Timber Barker, founder/CEO of BOOM Interactive, about turning flat floor plans into living, AI-powered digital twins—and the not-so-glamorous reality of building the company that does it. From selling his truck to keep the lights on to landing partnerships with NVIDIA and projects with the NBA, Timber breaks down how CoreSpec3D makes the built world actually usable: chat with your floor plan, drop “sticky notes” that act like tasks, render photorealistic options in seconds, and hand first responders a real-time 3D view when things go sideways. Translation: less guesswork, fewer change orders, more control.
What We Cover:
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How CoreSpec3D converts 2D plans into editable 3D “living floor plans” you can chat with, annotate, and share—on any device
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“Slack in 3D”: digital sticky notes, tasks, and context tied to exact spots in a building
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Security design that actually works: auto camera layouts, cable runs, BOMs, OEM catalogs (hello, Hanwha), and first-responder views with live feeds
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Why the next AI frontier is construction data—and how owning the floor plan layer unlocks bids, maintenance, and real ROI
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The founder grind: selling the truck, friends-and-family checks that open doors, and never missing payroll while bootstrapping
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Patents and tech under the hood: 2D-to-3D extrusion, auto-room gen, 3D comms, and “layered diffusion” for consistent photorealistic renders
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The UX hill worth dying on: if you can play Candy Crush, you can use it (no $6,000 workstation required)
Guest Bio:
Timber Barker is the founder and CEO of BOOM Interactive (boominc.ai), creators of CoreSpec3D (cs3d.ai)—an AI platform that transforms flat floor plans into interactive digital twins and a single pane of glass for design, facilities, and security. With 10 patents filed (4 issued) and global trademarks, Timber’s team is partnering across industries (including NVIDIA) to democratize 3D, speed up bids and maintenance, and make building data actually useful. He previously launched the DIY-friendly Bubbles (designwithbubbles.com), and he’s been bootstrapping BOOM for six years without missing payroll—because teams come first.
Enjoy the episode. This show is brought to you by Wrench.ai.
Follow Dan:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danbaird/
X: https://x.com/mrdanbaird
Follow Timber:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timber-barker-9660194/
BOOM Interactive: https://boominc.ai
CoreSpec3D: https://cs3d.ai
Bubbles: https://designwithbubbles.com
Follow the Pod:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@burnthemappodcast
Twitter/X: https://x.com/BurnTheMapPod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/burnthemappodcast/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@burnthemappodcast
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/burnthemappodcast.bsky.social
Selected Links From This Episode:
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BOOM Interactive: https://boominc.ai
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CoreSpec3D: https://cs3d.ai
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Bubbles (DIY): https://designedwithbubbles.com
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Hanwha Vision (security OEM): https://hanwhavisionamerica.com
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NVIDIA: https://www.nvidia.com
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Autodesk Revit: https://www.autodesk.com/products/revit/
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Matterport: https://matterport.com
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Figma: https://www.figma.com
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Canva: https://www.canva.com
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Trunk Tools: https://www.trunktools.com
People and Organizations Mentioned in this Episode:
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Timber Barker
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Dan Baird
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BOOM Interactive
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CoreSpec3D
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Bubbles
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Co-op Live
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NBA
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Hanwha Vision
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NVIDIA
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Figma
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Canva
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Autodesk Revit
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Matterport
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Trunk Tools
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First responders
Show Notes & Timestamps:
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00:08 — Why Timber built CoreSpec3D: communication, not just CAD flexing
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01:29 — The stuff founders never say out loud: lawsuits, bad deals, near-missed payroll
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03:43 — Selling the truck to pay the team—six years, zero missed payrolls
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07:48 — The quick demo and how far it’s evolved since “Bubbles”
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08:31 — From point tool to platform: the floor plan as a living system
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11:43 — Residential pain vs. commercial chaos; speeding both with AI
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18:38 — Accessibility: runs on any device; “Candy Crush” finger-friendly editing
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19:30 — 2D photo to editable 3D in seconds (then you finesse it)
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22:42 — Test-fit an office in 30 minutes vs. a $5K design retainer
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24:03 — Digital sticky notes, tasks, and chat: Slack, but inside your floor plan
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26:25 — Security layouts, camera FOVs, and cable paths—materials and costs auto-spit
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31:06 — First-responder mode: live camera feeds inside the 3D twin
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34:14 — Data is the moat: every decision, material, and change captured
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50:24 — The patents: 2D→3D extrusion, 3D comms, auto-room gen, “layered diffusion”
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53:31 — Consistent, photoreal renders from your own camera angle (no style drift)
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54:14 — Where to find Timber (LinkedIn) and BOOM Interactive
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55:02 — CoreSpec3D vs. DIY Bubbles; GTM focus on commercial