Part of me has been writing code for 30 years, building frameworks, tools, and open source libraries for startups, big companies, academia, and NGOs. Part of me writes words that help people handle their brains - a book about depression that's saved lives, and letters and blog posts that have been read by millions, in every country on earth. Part of me does science, publishing and contributing to papers in several domains. Part of me takes photos and makes videos. Part of me writes poetry. Part of me learns languages and cultures, slow-traveling the globe for more than a decade straight. And part of me sits around trying to figure out how to manage all these different directions, and what they all have in common.
And as a collective, when we're not tripping over each other, one way or another, we're trying to change the world. Sometimes I succeed in making a bit of a difference. Sometimes I fail and get to learn. This "just try things and get up when you fail" seems to be baked into my DNA - so I'd guess that however long I get in life, I'll keep on doing it.
But who exactly is in this trenchcoat, and what have we done?
I've been coding for over 30 years, and along the way I've seen languages rise and fall, architected and built giant frameworks, and found elegant solutions that lasted, scaled, and were maintainable. I've written, released, and nurtured communities around a dozen open-source libraries. I built Will, one of the first cross-platform, chatbot assistants, a decade before ChatGPT existed. Most recently, I've spent four years building AI reasoning systems that augment human intelligence for high-stakes government decisions, Fortune 100 leadership coaching, and fighting disinformation and extremism at scale. It's been some of the hardest, most cross-disciplinary, and most fascinating work of my career.
I've written articles about depression that were read by over a million folks in every country on earth, and down-to-Earth how-to guide to deal with it. The No-Bullshit Guide to Depression. I've also been writing a weekly letter for the past ten years as I've slow-traveled around the world, and it's made a bunch of people's Sunday mornings a bit better.
I start things. Companies are one of them, and I've either founded or served as technical co-founder something like a dozen companies. GoodCloud, a CRM+Donation management for small nonprofits. BuddyUp, a platform to bring students together and make the hard parts of college easier. Front of the Napkin, an app where you can trade five bucks for a real answer the question, "should I really go after this idea?" (Full disclosure: I built that last one mostly for me, because I have too many ideas. The fact that other people find it useful is lovely.)
I've led teams at startups, research universities, and huge corporations. I've taken fresh developers and turned them into app-making warriors, and built cultures of honesty, kindness, and shipping good stuff - fast. Creative Technical Lead at Wieden+Kennedy — Coke, Nike, Laika, ParaNorman, Super Bowl. Head of Engineering at Ox Intel. Tech Lead at Valence. I like building teams as much as I like building systems.
I've had a camera at my side most of my life, starting on film and developing in darkrooms at the back of trailers on dusty rural horse farms. I've shot as I've traveled, lived, and tried to capture the truth as I best I saw it, at that phase in life. More recently that's taken the form of some minimalist photo videos that I really need to find some more time for.
I also combine those skills to make digital things that aren't tools and aren't products - they're, well, art. Is Enough, a crowdsourced poem about love. Encore, an interactive poem where each word blossoms into its meaning. Together Alone, an experiment with Anastasia Aizman about how the internet connects and isolates us at the same time. I attempted a 12-month AI + Art series that I had to bail out of because of a flooded house, and still wonder what might have been (I was working with early LLMs in 2017, and life could have taken a really different turn.) In short, this part of me stitches together the other parts, and tries to paint a new kind of picture, in a medium that not too many people have thought of yet.
I've published and contributed to papers on medical research, habit formation, ethnobotany, open-publication, and solar thermal power. I've been lucky to work alongside brilliant researchers and scientists, both in the cloud forests of Peru, and in cubicles in UCSD and Cornell.
I've spoken at everywhere from the TEDx red circle to book releases, sustainability institutes, and to visiting students. I started a weekly tech breakfast series at the world's best (I said it) ad agency. I've done competitive slam poetry and spoken word, and though I do it less these days - this part of me likes to remind me that there is nothing like connecting with a room, and the give-and-take of energy that speaking and performance brings.
I've spent a few years coaching people who were working to change the world, and loved the work - but the emotional labor and recovery were too high to sustain. So then, I built courses over at Ink and Feet, that folks could use themselves, to get a lot of the same benefits - things that helped people find their direction and get unstuck.
I help organizations doing good understand and use AI. Non-profits, social enterprises, mission-driven teams. Before that, I spent two decades working with organizations of all shapes and sizes - universities, the fortune 100, startups and local non-profits. There's something deeply satisfying about coming in from the outside, being handed a big messy problem, and finding a clear solution that bridges both the human, and technical elements.
It started with a simple question from my partner - why, as someone who plays a lot of games, and makes way too many things, haven't I made a game. I sat with my lack of answer for a few days, and realized it was a silly, but common refrain - nobody had told me I could. So I started learning Unreal, then Unity, and now I'm in the weeds making two of them. Obviously. Yes, I need more sleep.
Over a decade ago, I sold everything I owned, bought a one way ticket to Thailand, and started traveling. and started living out of a suitcase Twelve years, 30+ countries, six continents. I lived in a van in New Zealand. I found love in Paris. I learned languages. I spent two summers in the Peruvian Amazon interviewing shamans about medicinal plants. Bits of my heart are scattered across the planet, and they all keep pulling me back.
For a short while, I turned my weekly letters into videos, mixing visuals and music and words into something that said the same thing, but more. I still miss doing these, and they're some of the work that I'm still most proud of. I make visual poems, short films, and photography videos. Some of them are good. All of them taught me something about storytelling that code never could.
Tables and sculpture, bookcases and end tables, I've turned trees into new forms that have stayed with people for years to come. I've also rebuilt a good bit of two full houses, but it's the smaller, more intimate pieces, and the stories of the wood that makes them, that hold my heart.
When I turned 30, I decided to take my poetry seriously, rented a tiny, unheated room in an industrial warehouse, and covered the walls with papers. I spent two years studying, week after week, reading a different poet's entire catalog of work, taking notes, and trying to reproduce their style, to see what they were doing, and how it worked. And then I stopped, and wrote my own stuff, in my own voice, with all that I've learned. One of these days, I'll get the pile of things I'm genuinely happy with published and out into the world.
If you're ever thirsty, and want a drink, tell me about your day and I'll make you the perfect drink for the moment you find yourself in. It doesn't serve the world, and it can't be how I spend most of my time, but if you made me pick any job I've ever had, just for my personal enjoyment - this was it.
I've performed spoken word. It's terrifying in a way that shipping code never is. Standing in front of people and saying something true out loud, with no backspace key. I gave a TEDx talk too, which is the corporate cousin of spoken word.
You are completely correct. And the only reasons I've been able to do all of it are:
But that's the honest thing - we learn very little from success. It's so hard to disaggregate luck and good starting conditions and a thousand other things from what you did - in tallying up what made something successful. But when we fail, we can almost always figure out why - and if we know why, learn. It's science in a nutshell - hypothesize, test, review, learn. And then do it again. The gains compound.
Can I tell you a terrible secret? Almost anyone who is selling you something with a chest full of confidence is full of shit - but has bought their own hype. Be deeply skeptical of anyone who's never failed a good amount and is offering you advice. They're more likely telling you about their luck, life circumstances and own personality than anything useful.
Anyway, I'll get off the soap-box. That's my story. If it resonates with you, maybe you'd find some of the things I make useful, or if you work for an organization that's doing good and trying to figure out AI, please get in touch. And if you've read this far, and just want to hear when I release something new, toss your email in below, and I'll keep you updated. Have a great day.
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