An Inevitability of AI Doing Something

Conversations here usually start with a whiteboard and often a sketch or several. There’s some back and forth about everything from aesthetics to outcomes, with usually some kind of boundary offered (“do you want this now, cheaply, or well”). All in all, the conversation around shaping systems and behaviors to intended goals follows a fairly straightforward conversation. The rise of AI tooling seems as if it changes this process, but does it?

Been lightly playing with Replit for an idea stuck in the brain for sometime, and it’s mostly just fine. The ability to use it on iPadOS is a delightful break from some of the other LLM-coders. And the closeness to “building” to “analyzing the user’s intent” is a delightful change from bending into the technical architecture for every feature or purpose. That said, this doesn’t seem like a futuristic shape of building, deploying, and maintaining applications as much as this tooling feels something more “on the way to a final form.”

In conversations and prognostications about what comes after smartphones, there is also a “what comes after apps” context. Where anyone with a handle of natural language and their focused imagination would simply be able to cast their words and gestures into a pane (canvas, glass, camera, and/or microphone) to get what they desire. What does anyone desire? Reduced friction. Reputation being enhanced. Endorsement. Compensation.

They want to better ensure their survival.

Many folks are correct in saying that learning the how and why of machine learning tooling is needed now. Many anchor this in learning the models, or learning what exposed/sold/open sourced models can do. Some anchor this in the many shapes of generative programming around those models - prompt engineering on one end, workflow management on another, and a gradient of usage in between. And this works for now. It doesn’t create what will be… nor can it. Tooling of this moment is only good enough to ensure compliance and comfort for this part of the change. Tools are not eternal.

As a result of using AI tools, some work will change forever. Much like inter-office email changed as soon as email became as easy to finance as a computer on every desk, there’s some seemingly necessary behavior which will be changed because of AI tooling. It won’t be covered in a golden folder. Nor will it require signatures. It might have its own language, security, and likely, domains previously only imagined in the past’s view of the future. It might not even be in a language currently known.

Change is inevitable. And for better, worse, and different, the increasing use of this type of math (models, tokens, calculus, and energy) will be a pallet for some, and a museum for others. It might also birth moselums for what is held dear right now. Learn what you can… adapt, build, and reinforce. And then see what about AI tools actually work forward.

Avanceé Reads for 7 Mar 24 🔗

Across the week, there were a few moments of inspiration and connection. The knitting of all of these is some kind of lesson to a series of travels brokered by connectivity, but constantly looking ahead to whatever is happening next.

Also published: Timelines March 2018’s Link Shares ♾️

Coming Soon: Avanceé co-facilitating a Sales Effectiveness workshop at the Central Maryland Chamber of Commerce. Learn more and join us.

Timelines: March 2018’s Link Shares ♾️

Trying a new thing called “Timelines.” Pulling on older posts to revisit the paths taken or remind of what’s been happening. Let’s start with the initial link shares which launched this effort:

• 2 March 18
• 9 March 18
• 16 March 18
• 26 March 18
• 30 March 18

Avanceé Reads for 28 Feb 25 🔗

With the shutdown of the AiPin, our experience and experiment has come to a bittersweet end. There’s always lessons in the journey. And as always, this means simply to shift forward to the next things.

Also published: Opining About Human-Centered Design in Civic Tech

Opining about Human-Centered Design in Civic Tech

Cropping a convo for a wider eye/lens… the context being design/human-centered design in (a/some) #CivicTech spaces

How to be human centered when the operational objective isn’t to be humane, but to be operationally more proficient… such is the design challenge to transform its approach and posture once again

Could probably drop tools/practices and just focus towards training and behavioral development… use the “tools/practices” as the languages and impress a heuristic of product agility, operational versatility, and “readiness to {outcome}” as the pillars.

[P]robably have to become coaches/personal trainer-like… versus consultants/facilitator.

Design as an enabler of agility and readiness, and the language it’s expressed in is heard as humane (and yes, profitable).

If you will… if y’all can model your projects to be/act like theirs, but do so faster, humanely, and with on-roads for them to learn ask questions, then use your team’s narrative capacity to give them the vision of the future state they’d desire… y’all would probably have a route. It’s dopmine in the design cycle but usable.

Sucks to say “treat design projects like fake agile development just to prove a point” but it’s probably the angle they need to face their risk threats.

Can opine like this easily as not a current part of the #CivicTech space… those who get it are looking for ways to get it done, or swimming in/near uncertainty and increased pressures thru posturing. If Avanceé should be a part of this space to help your team shift/evolve their approach, get in touch.

Compliance or evolving agility; your call Designers.

Image comes from an old concept. Thinking about how to do interactions differently.

Avanceé Reads for 21 Feb 25 🔗

By the time this has been posted, will have done an emulation of an older shape of things. Travel, connections, content, and not much in the way of a break. Packed moments at an increased pacing is a part of things for many folks these days. Lots coming at us, and not yet the time to take a breather. So here’s your reminder to make sure you do make space for the busy times, as well as the settled ones.

Upcoming: next month is Avanceé co-facilitating a Sales Effectiveness workshop at the Central Maryland Chamber of Commerce. If you are in the D(M)V region, join us.

Avanceé Reads for 14 Feb 25 🔗 ❤️

A bit of a late posting, but can you blame folks for taking love offline. Well, in order to keep the love going here, here’s the notable reads which should have been posted last week.

Also published: Update to the Brilliant Labs Frame 👓 Experiment

Upcoming: next month is Avanceé co-facilitating a Sales Effectiveness workshop at the Central Maryland Chamber of Commerce. Learn more and join us. There’s also a survey to help us learn a bit more about our how to shape this monthly cohort.

Update to Brilliant Labs Frame 👓 Experiment

One of the advantages of Avanceé’s platform is the ability to explore and experiment as we desire. We can take a look at the edges of technology and pushed towards our own affairs. This has been the case with a few products from Brilliant Labs. First, we looked at the Monocle, a single lens and developer focused device. It was really a chance to look at something that was on the outright edge of heads up displays and using artificial intelligence-like applications. Brilliant Labs then came out with the Frame glasses. These are a slightly more polished version of what the monocle was. With the added ability to create a few more applications with a more common programming language to those who are able to do so. And to wear something that has a bit more public acceptance than Google Glass or even the first few Snapchat Spectacles models.

Most recently, Brilliant Labs collaborated with eye-wear company SmartBuyGlasses to offer clip-on prescription lenses for the Frame glasses. This allows those who might have some type of astigmatism, low focus, or some other types of visual disability to be able to use these glasses to shape how this technology might go forward. We see these glasses as a chance to probably reframe what it means for “prescription glasses“ to augment vision. It’s one thing to have a curved lens. It’s another thing when you can also augment that curved lens with something a bit more connected to the environment around you. But it’s not overwhelmingly taking over your vision/cognition.

We received the prescription lens clip-on some days ago, and published a few videos regarding its unboxing, and some of the initial use:

• unboxing and first wear
• walking outside and describing normal use

For those who may not have time to look at the video, what’s most impressive about these is how comfortable these glasses remain. For those persons who may wear glasses on a regular basis, you would be surprised at the lightness of Frame before putting on the clip one. With the clip-on, they are definitely heavier, but not unbearably so. The way that the clip is designed, it fits neatly against the glasses. And unless you have longer eyelashes, you should have no problem with the slightly closer lenses to your eyes. You may notice some fuzziness around the edges when you look to the ends of the glasses due to the clip-on lenses being slightly smaller than the lens cut out of the glasses themselves.

Connectivity to your tablet or mobile phone is provided through the Noa application (also available for Android) and Bluetooth. From there, it’s up to you to engage with the developer community to play with or build your own experiences.

These are not exactly the same as the Meta/Ray-Ban glasses. Those are a more polished in terms of the consumer application, and are geared towards those who have a definitive use of certain types of recording or interactions with Meta’s applications of LLMs (large language models). Frame is more for the developer community — those persons interested in understanding what it might take to do AI hardware, and who have an interest in some more personal/not connected aspects of using language, models, and connected devices (learn more in this video interview). Regardless of the lessons, connected hardware shares in some possible nefarious ideas and also some pretty empowering ones.

Example of this was recently shared by Brilliant Labs on YouTube. This is an experimental feature to idea of the types of usage. This case is also a template for developers to extend upon as they desire. One developer has a GitHub repository showing just how far devs have taken things.

For Avanceé, we will continue to push forward with this experiment of looking at glasses that do not just need a curved lens in order to augment one’s sight. The hardware within these does pose some notable challenges, as does physics itself. But, the success of the Brilliant Labs Frame is captured in exactly this moment. These are glasses which are designed for those persons who are willing to take a few pieces and build their own roads forward. They’re not exactly polished in the sense of something you might be used to from Apple, Garmin, etc. But there is something of an exciting journey that can be had with these glasses and the software tools that are being developed. It’s a journey worth taking we believe.

If you are interested in acquiring the Brilliant Labs Frame glasses, you can check out their website here. From that link, you will also be able to see the Developer documentation and the link to the Discord community where several projects are being shared.

Avanceé Reads for 7 Feb 25 🔗

Each week these are shared with a sense of wonder and hope. Wonder about the shape of conversations and threads which meander about. Hope at doing something more than just pulsating silicon wafers until they cannot any more. Wonder and hope… a lot of what’s been challenged lately. But, also where there’s opportunity for something else to come forth.

Also published:

• Stumbling As Agility
• Two on LinkedIn here and here

Stumbling As Agility

Stumbling forward. That’s more or less the feeling these days. And for each experiment and moment of research that offers a little bit of clarity there’s also something different upon us.

It was affirming to see a graphic speak to the amount of content that comes across our senses. And even in this case where it doesn’t even talk through all of our senses, the way that we are architected really makes an impact, or reaffirm the impact of everything from current events to the ways that we express our agility.

Agility is only good enough until it has been adapted to. This venture prefers to think that contemplation that lead to generative insights is a unique and actual practice. But, the space in which agility is expressed also reinforces adaptation. Seen how new products and services are manifesting deep research into “work” is a bit of a quagmire. On one end it’s insightful to see methods and behaviors show themselves in this new space of technological tools. On the other hand, it portends a type of future to which a consultive approach may be less valuable. If you will, expertise becomes the focus where a consultation might have been the ask.

Some will ask if there are courses to navigate these moments. The answer here is “probably not.“ There are types of avoidance is being shown through the agility of machine learning and the tooling around. It isn’t something that’s necessarily taught in the classroom. It’s learnt outside the classroom. It’s a type of curiosity and comprehension best formulated by building foundations inside the classroom so outside the classroom there is ample space for agency and experimentation.

How then do you craft an acceptable way forward? Honestly, trying to figure that out for this venture. There’s too much noise around building over top of a wrapper. There’s two little noise about the ethics of the business of these wrappers. Those persons who have a practiced or have a genetic disposition to focus are having something of a renaissance. While those who may be agents or storytellers may need to find a new type of muscle memory. It’s OK to stumble for a while. But the stumbling only points out where some weaknesses may be. Strengthen the areas that stumble, and you may develop a type of agility that was previously undiscoverable.

Avanceé Reads for 31 Jan 25 🔗

Am in the kind of week where there’s a remembrance of poking into another side of design-engineering. The spark of such a memory might be discussed later. But for now, there’s something more complete Avanceé could offer going forward, regardless of the state of affairs.

Also published: Considerations and Certifications

Considerations and Certifications

“I think it’s worth calling out the BS and pointing people in the right direction.”

Stealing that line from a recent conversation as we are getting set to increase activity with some local partners and am looking across the scope of what is happening to the space of technology operations.

About AI/ML:

Nothing about current AI/ML tech leads a belief that it’s the right thing, yet. And yet, even though we are pressing the AiPin into use alongside doing our own research. There’s a shape of being able to work better that many can and should adopt. But, only DeepSeek actually seems to be approach a type of structure mimicking the “focused expertise” we do innately. Really good thread expressing that on Twitter/X here.

Still don’t see any value in certifications around AI/ML. Are there folks becoming knowledgeable enough with some of the wrappers/transformers to help folks forward? Yes. In fact, there’s a positive case to be made for improving operational effectiveness with such tools (for example, our partner is starting this session). But, not to call it AI/ML… until folks are building and/or auditing models (ahem, data scientists and lawyers/paralegals), then it’s not quite something we’d deem certified. It’s tool knowledge, and applied experiments.

We are doing the same (have you noticed that Avanceé doesn’t recommend AI/ML anything).

About Websites and Social

The push away from Twitter/X by many folks continue. We have been on @Micro.Blog since the beginning of this effort because there’s something smart about the “post once, syndicate everywhere philosophy.” We are on quite a few networks - on purpose. There’s a shape of being available which might become more challenging. Authentication and authenticity come along with this. Doesn’t mean everyone needs to own a website, but there’s some good wisdom all should heed:

• purchase your name/pseudonym as a domain; URL and email at the very least
• if you like your socials, or like to speak/be seen, you should have your own blog
• back up your stuff with a/several external drives which do not get connected to the Internet
• purchase an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) with battery backup if you work from home and connect to core device(s) and cable modem/router
• pay attention to VPNs (whether free or paid, look at how they implement that service and secure it and your connections)
• use masked emails and email forwarding where you can
• get on board with passkeys (and if not, get your passwords into a password manager asap)

Problem-Focused versus/and People-Focused

The nature of work is that we come from various perspectives to do a thing and be compensated for it. Either we are problem-focused or we are people-focused. Be mindful of each of these aims. The outputs are similar, the outcomes are vastly different.

For those who are problem focused, your “next” isn’t about solving the problem and keeping the customer around. Your next is mitigation and visibility. If your customer or product isn’t mitigating the problem (at its core) or making visible the things which are under control, then you are causing more problems.

For those who are people-focused, your next isn’t retention or relationships, it is maturity and agility. While it might come across a bit transcendentalist, there is a capability people ought to have esteemed or corrected such that their agency affords them more flexibility to govern their responses to outcomes. Where can you find, imprint, and then get out of the way? That’s how you focus on people (for now at least).

Wrapping Up

These are just a few considerations being taken upon by Avanceé. Doesn’t mean we agree with every premise or position, only that we pay attention to what encourages and threatens our current times. Whether you care to play with the tools or methods is up to you. We are here to help you take sustainable steps forward so that you can (re)engineer the present and setup a desired future. If you need help seeing this more clearly for you/your org, get in touch and let’s take this forward.

Avanceé Reads for 24 Jan 25 🔗

And here we’ve got something of interesting shape of things. On one side is this deplorable state of circumstances, on another this state of endless possibilities. Am not sure all of it is as bleak or otherwise optimistic, but trying to push forward means taking what is and isn’t, while also finding new voices to yell for what’s needed.

Also published: OpenAI Operator Quick Thoughts

OpenAI Operator Quick Thoughts

There’s a part of having watched OpenAI’s Operaror video (and read the release and accompanying docs which says “in calling the AiPin a secretary, and this should be a part of its characteristics.” And that’s semi-good (heck, am actually not long from booking a flight after a few days of lagging on such).

There’s a part which has a less happy vibe to this… somewhat thinking about the lower-level tech support which falls near the “I don’t want to talk to a machine, I want to talk to a human” feeling. Not that the activity of this type of “non-owned bot” doesn’t make sense… but in a sense that we might be further yielding to a voice of doing stuff which is fine for the machines, but less humane than we’d hoped.

Still chewing… but initial thoughts are neatly conflicted (as usual for many OpenAI announcements). Watching/reading and wonder-filled all at the same time.

Avanceé Reads for 17 Jan 25 🔗

The changes which have been in the wind are upon us in one way or another. That said, all change doesn’t mean negative consequences. Some items are ripples of decisions to come. How we respond now, determines what we chose later.

Also published: On Data Visualizations and Decisions

On Data Visualizations and Decisions

Visualizations can lead to awareness, and then to ???

When doing/working with researchers and data scientists, there’s often this “make it neat to interact with” bit which falls into the reporting side of analysis. And yes, it needs to be as intuitive/direct as possible to understand what the research/analysis has found, but also how it connects to what’s relevant from the viewer’s point of view.

Can such views into the structure and decisions of government prompt a different response? Person over on Twitter/X shared a possibility under development called SF Government Graph.

Is the visual enough for the “interested” public? Yes. Is it enough to make, change, or invent new decisions? Not clear, not sure.

That said, if I were a social studies teacher, civics classroom, or committee/workgroup member for a government entity (I am the latter), such a dashboard would be hella helpful to see the kinds of connections between people, operations, and policy which validates the voices needed to keep, remove, or change decisions which affect our communities. This kind of #CivicTech ought to be more normally understood, wouldn’t you say?

Avanceé Reads for 10 Jan 25 🔗

Welcome to the new year and the first share of interesting reads and notable links. Always putting things into perspective, the shape of news and transformation is one that we can’t keep our eyes away from him. However, it’s also time to get to work.

Avanceé 2024 Review

Another year of reflections, connections, contemplations, and experiments have concluded. 2024 was certainly a challenging year for Avanceé. But, it wasn’t something that is insurmountable, just a ripple from an intention of more deliberate research, networking, and refining the goal of this initiative.

Refining Vision

Avanceé has always been shaped as an experience derived from consulting a single person who is able to swing between industries, methodologies, and technologies to connect strategy and leadership. This year found a clear refreshing of things as an anchor into the local business community unveiled a gap in language and need. The about page was updated with the following as a result:

“What if your vision had a concierge? Some kind of guide to the future you envision - but they aren’t taking you there. They are merely informed-enough of the possibilities and then you could “rub the bottle” for that insight to be specificly manifested to you?”

This came along with updates to touchpoints such as the business card and AiPin, a simpler flyer of sorts, and resetting some of the cross-posting behaviors happing to Twitter/X, Bluesky, and Nostr networks.

Driving Research

One of the delightful positives of this venture is the intentionality to research. While the mainstream “year of AI” made itself present in several pieces here, it was the diving into the details which made its way through notable reads the most. The nuances of talking about machine learning were the lesson just as much as the studies and news notes. Crypto stays in view because of its volatile nature in edge socials. There’s a shape of ML/AI that’s less explored poked towards in a few pieces and will come out in some upcoming concepts.

Experiments and Insights

That research extended to the experiments which are always a part of this venture. The aforementioned AiPin featured heavily from the summer forward. Brilliant Labs’s Frame glasses picked up where the Monocle was ‘23’s play. Machine learning/LLM play continued with GPT4All, OpenAI, Nomad Labs, Perplexity, and a few others - noting the increasing challenges of ethical concerns, expertise vs marketing, and novelty being the juggle.

There should be some clarity and increased focus movement with a lot of these experiments in 2025 - especially as the AiPin and other tooling becomes grafted into something of a research assistant.

Fractional Leadership

This year saw the (abrupt) conclusion of working in a fractional design leadership role with an identity and access management company. There were positive experiences and solid product/process modeling. Though also, the realization that we can only show the possibilities forward, not guarantee success when there’s a lack of movement or operational maturity.

That experience led to some clarity to a previously published “what do we do” page. And conceptualizing the role of “thought leadership” into more than just pointing fingers and dashboards.

Networking intentionally made itself a characteristic this year. However, conflicts between some behaviors/practices and outcomes will have this under a more discerning eye going forward. Avanceé will be a part of some DC/MD networking groups (121NetworX, Central Maryland Chamber, etc) to help expand the consistency of using outcomes from research and experiments in fractional and consultative capacities.

Articles Published

Lastly, there’s been a good deal more opinion/insight pieces posted this year. The following list adds necessary context to the previous sections of this report.

Dec 2024

• Mindful of Crypto

Nov 2024

• Implications of AiPin and Oura Connectivity
• Sounding Board
• Prescription Lens Judgemenr

October 2024

• Responsive Communication
• How to AI

Sept 2024

• Notes from Humane AiPin Use
• Are Websites Still Needed
• Conceptualization As A Superpower
• Incompatible With Current Working Behaviors

Aug 2024

• Is There A Difference Now for Social Computing Devices
• Read the Terms of Service
• Complications and Re-Engineering AL/ML Complexity
• Why Origami?

July 2024

• Brilliant Labs’ Frame AI Glasses Initial Impression
• Choosing Other Paths
• Being Attentive
• AI As Accessibility Tooling
• Updates to the Everysight Maverick Experiment

June 2024

• From Scope to Strategy to Tactics
• Measuring Outcomes
• Evolving Interactivity
• Affordances and Sustainable Product Interfaces
• Fluidity in Adapting
• Thinking Matter Expert

May 2024

• Frameworks for Professional Development
• Contemplative, Focused Computing

April 2024

• Back to Reconsidering Productivity Computing
• Developing ICAM Experiences As A Learning Canvas
• Designer’s Evolution
• LLM/AI Hardware and Muse
• Stymied, or Not

March 2024

• Negotiations With Audiences
• Gateway

Feb 2024

• If At First You Don’t Succeed
• Reshaping a Definition of UX
• Vision Pro (Demo) Impressions

Jan 2024

• Been A Long Time Since Concepts
• Always Refining the Contact Points

It isn’t too hard to create all of this, but could be challenging to some. You can use RSS, or any of the socials noted on the About page to catch things as they happen.

Onward to 2025

And with that, Avanceé is onward to 2025. Who knows, it might be the “AiPin secretary” or similar becoming the means things show up on the site. Or maybe, we finally break into other tech which will be a part of positive and challenging conversations. Whatsoever might happen, it’s all about helping you take your next steps forward. Don’t hesitate to reach out directly - or be surprised if you hear from us.

Avanceé Reads for 20 Dec 24 🔗

Avanceé Reads for 13 Dec 24 🔗

Not exactly sure, but this might be the last share of weekly reads for the calendar year. Still have to finish the wrapup report and a few experiments to also close off. This has been a solid year of research and investigation. Looking forward to what these connections and research turns into for 2025.

Avanceé Reads for 6 Dec 24 🔗

The cold of the season is settling in around these parts, and still folks want to do more. The theme seems to be that we all have to learn to do more, but with less. Not as much room for over-estimating capabilities, capacities, or opportunities. And yet… lots left to connect before the year is out.

Also published: Mindful of Crypto

Mindful of Crypto

On this holiday weekend in the USA, and consumer holiday in terms of how many companies look at the end of the year with an eye towards filling gaps in sales and profits. Of note on today is the concentration to digital goods. This year, it seems as if cryptocurrencies run near the top of the list for many. Part of this has to do with the challenges in economics for some due to several global factors. Part of this contains a fervor around control mechanisms of transactions, communications, and developer tooling - many looking for “what comes after feeds, notifications, and untenable content moderation.” But what should anyone consider about crypto?

For those interested in the communicative aspects of crypto, it’s good to pay attention to transactions and technologies. But it’s probably more important to pay attention to the softer elements, such as the regulatory environment, what is and isn’t traceable for those communication tech technologies (web3 or otherwise). It may be helpful for you to take a look at what it means to have moderation services as part of the behavior, or part of the technology stack, or both. And it’s not an easy solution. When thinking about crypto and communication, it’s very easy to move into conversations about Telegram, Signal, Nostr, etc and float past characteristics folks ask for but are a technical and/or legal quagmire.

Avanceé has stayed on the edge of artifacts like Bitcoin, Lightning, Etherium, wallets, etc. In fact, as part of one of our ongoing research, Liberapay for a tip jar, Unstoppable Domains for plain language wallets, and even receiving Lightning payments (via this code) has spawned some valuable lessons. Where we don’t see as much traction is within audiences who aren’t as concerned right now about the state of their monies. If you will, folks who care about the economic parts of crypto might have more invested in regaining agency which isn’t as accessible in dominant economies. And this is fine, globally and economically, things are shifting such that these challenges to agency might be more honest than the communicative aspects.

Of smaller, but no less important, are aspects crypto pushes lessons towards decentralized governance and federated infrastructure components. These are lower level, but probably the best cases for “crypto as an example of what different pipes can do.” There’s an energy here which isn’t too much different than HTML before CSS broke through, or energies similar to mobile design and features by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and DoMoCo. Do you have to understand these parts to understand crypto? Actually you do. The financial and communicative aspects are built on top of these. It’s more than server-lessened plays, or new ways to build DevOps tooling (certainly part of this). Decentralized governance asks of community participants to take a more action-oriented role before and after scaling. Federated components need to not only be performant, but secure and regionally malleable in the midst of uncertain platform and regulatory constraints.

All of this is reallly fun to keep up with, can’t you tell.

So where should your company focus? Or, where does your innovation team mind the right things about crypto and not the noise?

Small projects should focus on whatever is accessible. If you are in the financial space, you should already be playing with Level 2 tech in a small degree. Minding the USA regulatory process is one thing, but pay attention to the Central and South American countries who are pushing forward without the legacy financial infrastructure baggage (or pressing on despite it). Building financial instruments which go beyond exchanges, wallets, and contracts is where opportunities arise. Level-set what you wish to see in 2-5 years, then work backwards from what you will support to what you will build, to whom you will train or hire to get there.

Larger projects should have a pin next to items like Molly White’s Web3 Is Going Just Great, Lyn Alden’s book and Nostr feeds, @Rabble’s insights and builds, and many others. Am of the opinion that experiments in this group need to lean to actionable insights faster than they become new platform products and services. There’s a different perspective worth exploring before striking one’s shovel everywhere. Am also of the opinion that much about crypto infrastructure is too unsettled - other than Bitcoin and Etherium. Ledgers and that’s it. Everything is being proposed and questioned on top of those it seems.

All of this to say, on this Cyber Monday, that your approach to crypto needs to be more mindful than dismissive. Whether is communications, economics, infrastructure, regulations, or products, the “fad” is in the noise of meme coins, the source is “why does a coin matter?” The yelling about money laundering and CASM aren’t to be quieted, nor should anyone hush the proposal Nostr’s SIP notes offer to content types and relay services. Find a space to listen, ask, and move your awareness forward. Then, shape your response accordingly.

As for Avanceé, well, we are going to keep learning… and maybe something else in time.

Avanceé Reads for 29 Nov 24 🔗

The next phase of the holidays are the case for many people. Most folks take advantage of purchasing opportunities. And yet the connections to what we’re gonna be talking about over the coming year have yet to fully reveal themselves. Connectivity and Federation are going to be fairly popular topics.

Also published: The Augmented Intelligence Challenge

The Augmented Intelligence Challenge

Some years back, was pushed into teaching folks about Excel macros. Anyone who has worked on automating a part of their work certainly gets why it’s valuable. But, making it valuable for folks who have not? Well, that was a challenge.

Later, ended up working across a few companies where this ability to map, analyze, and automate became some of the key utilities for how my role performed. Even got into it with some folks because I passed up “collaborative editing sessions” due to having an automation in place (content template, API integration, calendar/task actions, and optional email/Slack notifications depending on context). Enjoyable, yet also challenging.

These days, I do a bit less with “showy” automations such as ones made in VB, Zapier, Apple Shortcuts, or IFTTT, but still have a few things in play. What’s most neat about some of these is how there is nothing artificially intelligent about them. I see a gap, I map what is doable with the tools in hand, and then run towards outcomes which make the most sense.

Am doing some “hacky bits” with the notes on the Humane AiPin to emulate some common CRM functionality. As with the previous automations, there’s a challenge. Don’t want to get caught up in doing something because it is cool or complex. And at the same time, we are in the shape of tools now where doing something things the same way they were done 20 years ago on computers doesn’t make sense.

Challenge: stop acting as if computing and behaviors haven’t evolved. Augment your intelligence with what is in/near your senses, then make your imaginations of the future, a gift found in this present.

Need some help shifting into this kind of perspective, get in touch and let Avanceé help you forward.

Avanceé Reads for 22 Nov 24 🔗

For one reason or another, the iPadOS application for @microdotblog has seemed a little wonky lately in regards to handling the text model boxes. So, am typing (dictating) blind. And maybe that’s not a bad thing. The shape of input should change. And, it’s probable that this weekly post should be a good bit more automated than it is… We shall see what happens when it’s posted*.

Also published: Implications of AiPin and Oura Connectivity

*looks mostly after doing the usual “make sure the image is linked” edits