Learning by Trying

I entered the workforce before the first iPhone launched. It wasn't clear exactly how mobile would change things, but you could feel it. The proliferation of smartphones changed how you make a business happen—how we work and market.

AI presents another dramatic moment in my professional life, and where there's drama, there's an opportunity to start a blog.

The rise of the big tech giants has dramatically reshaped how we work and build businesses. But this blog isn't about tech success stories or entrepreneurship—it's about the tools we use, the methodologies we develop, and the expectations we rise to meet... It's about the journey of adapting to the technological shifts that shape our careers.

When mobile apps took off, it brought a wave of fresh faces—people with new ideas eager to experiment with different ways of doing new things. Clueless and unbound by established methods (hi!), these rookies carved new paths for themselves as entire industries were doing the same. I navigated those early days and witnessed how embracing change created careers, including mine, in marketing.

AI is another transformation. The challenges we face today in building with AI are unique to this moment. Future generations will encounter different limitations. They won't need to understand these problems since they won't experience them. We will.

I see this today with people using martech tools. They know what happens when they press a button but don't always know what it is doing in the background—why would they? The button works, and they weren't there before there was a button.

As early adopters of technology, we can develop a lifelong advantage: an intuitive understanding of why things work the way they do and why they evolved a certain way. It's a privilege to be here now as AI starts to take off.

With every technological revolution comes the fear of being left behind. Change keeps accelerating, and standing still feels like a bad option. The fear of obsolescence is real, reminding us that the world moves forward whether we're ready or not. Technology gives, and technology takes away.

The rise of AI feels like what happened with mobile: It's pervasive and creeps into every aspect of work and life. But with AI, the anxiety isn't just about losing a job; it's about losing relevance. How do you compete with a machine that learns faster than you ever could?

Will AI impact your job? Yes. It will. 'Aren't you afraid technology will take your job?'. I'm used to it. Technology advances, existing value chains no longer add up, and jobs are lost (Taxis vs Uber, Netflix vs Blockbuster, etc...)—it's all I know; this is the only world I've worked in.

This blog isn't about dismissing that fear but acknowledging it and using it to fuel my learning and adaptation. It's also not a website about changing the world; it's about evolving in it.

AI won't change how I work—I'll change how I work using AI. Technology won't make me redundant; I'll use technology to create a new job. AI is not 'happening' to me; I'll be making AI happen.

The early days of mobile were a mix of excitement and uncertainty—new tools, new platforms, and figuring out how to make it all work as we went along. It was less about mastering something already understood and more about discovering what was possible. With AI, we're crossing a similar threshold. The tools are new, the rules are unwritten, and the outcomes are uncertain.

This blog is about diving into the world of LLMs and using the tools. It's about investigation, practical experimentation, sharing and learning by doing. I want to maximise my speed of adoption of AI—here in the open.

I wrote this article using Grammarly, made the image for the article with Midjourney and created this website using v0.dev. I also used ChatGPT throughout the process. That is what this blog is about.

Update: I officially got a job in AI and wrote down some of my thoughts about job titles in tech.