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Hard Mode First

Lessons learned from a lifetime of doing things the hard way, the first time

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I Spent a Year Running AI Pilots in NYC Classrooms. Here’s Why a Ban on AI Is a Mistake.

A ban on AI in schools isn’t a ban on technology. It’s a ban on having a teacher in the room when our kids interact with it.

Alexa+ Just Asked to Store My 6-Year-Old’s Voice

The in-home AI that parents all forget about just got a major upgrade. It's time to start paying attention.

The "AI for Good" Team Just Lost One of the Good Guys

Remembering Wyman Khuu, and taking inspiration from his impact as a lifelong teacher

Finding the Loose Bricks in the Wall: What a Stranded Flight Taught Me About How We Learn

How pushing past the default options helps you find hidden solutions in airlines, technology, and learning

Scarcity Breeds Mythology

How the intersection of three major events: America's 250, Taylor Swift's wedding, and Anthropic's release of Fable 5 all keep the American Dream alive

The AI Tooling Trap: Why Agency Beats Authority

Every company wants to be your AI standard. Every consultant wants to be your expert. Neither is a substitute for actually building an organization that can learn.

Better First Drafts: How to Build Apps Fast Without Infinite Iterations

True efficiency with AI tools isn't a hack. It’s a continuous practice of structured sprints, timeboxing, and leaning into the friction of a blank canvas.

From Prompt to Party: How I Used AI to Spin Up a Rooftop Watch Party in Six Hours

The era of "disposable software" is here, and it’s changing how we build hyper-local communities.

Winning and Losing: The Crucial Role of Fandom

How competitions give people a reason to care

The Muppet Theory of Founder Mode

Why building a business requires rewiring your brain from "Order Muppet" to "Chaos Muppet" (and how to survive the transition)

Daily Use Isn't Fluency: The High Cost of the AI Literacy Gap

Moving from "counting to ten" to architecting solutions: What teaching 2,000 people revealed about the gap between using AI and integrating with it

Glitches in the Human Machine

Patching the emotional, social, and institutional glitches of the high-velocity era

You Can Just Start Things

Ten reflections from the ground floor of Season One of "founder mode"

Your AI Problem Isn't an AI Problem

Why 60% of every Build First workshop is spent on the thing nobody wants to do: Actually naming the problem.

Build Something This Spring: 9 AI Builder Events in April, May, and June

The time to build is now. Here's a mix of free and paid workshop opportunities this spring.

15 Years in NYC

What it's been like to color my way through the maze of New York City over the past 15 years

Beyond AI Forward: What Zapier’s New Rubric Gets Right (and What’s Missing)

Proof that learning AI isn't quite so binary, and the way to build better organization-wide habits toward learning this new language

5 Benefits of Thinking Like an Engineer at Work

How to adopt an engineering mindset by teaching yourself how to learn new tools and solve real problems with technology

$37

What it took to finally see who AI education is leaving behind

Stop Building Portfolios. Start Managing Repos.

Why Commit History is the Only Resume that Matters in the AI age