First trimester

”Our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency…” Monty Python

Previously at the Volcano Base I’d been wrestling with the wrong AI tool for the job. Naturally, I had some thoughts about that.

Earlier this week someone asked me what I’d been making since starting on this adventure. I realised that I’d been at this for 3 months now, and then everything around me shifted into a sort dreamy flashback sequence using a ripple dissolve. I remember it like it was yesterday…

Mission Briefing

The first trimester

…morning sickness and significant hormonal changes… Wait, wrong flashback.

What have I learned in 3 months?

Two main things:

• There’s a lot more goodwill out there than I’d anticipated. Thank-you!
• Nobody wants plug-and-play systems: they want customisation
• Constant learning is the cost of doing AI business (ok, that’s three things)
• Theory doesn’t pay the mortgage (four things)
• Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition (five things… oh for heaven’s sake)

What I’ve done

A surprising number of keynote talks

These have been for large enterprises: media, SaaS and FMCG. No weddings (yet).

AI training sessions

These have been pretty mixed in scale. Some full day sessions (mainly for leadership) and a smattering of smaller, topic-specific workshops.

Proposal Machine

An AI-enhanced system for automating the creation of nicely designed draft proposals, straight from the transcript of a client call.

Strategy Engine

An AI-enhanced system that drafts a strategy for a client, based on a stakeholder meeting transcript and data from a staff survey.

Agency Pre-Production Agent

An AI-enhanced system, integrated into Microsoft Teams, that helps production teams to eliminate repetitive admin. I now charge double for any projects involving Microsoft Copilot Studio, so be warned ;)

Lead Generation System

Did a few of these this year. AI-enhanced systems for finding leads, contacting them and processing the results into CRM systems etc.

Article Editor

More clever than it sounds. An AI agent integrated into a “knowledge graph” to draft articles based on related topics in the graph, finds relevant quotes/citations, produces relevant artwork, while maintaining tone-of-voice consistency.

What’s next?

I’m not sure. There are lots of different opportunities in the pipeline, but realistically I can’t see past the next 3 months, so I’m definitely not secure. But not bad for 3 months, starting from absolute zero! So far we’ve avoided having to sell the house, which is a huge relief. An enormous thank-you to everyone that’s helped me at a really difficult time.

I’ll probably give the packaged systems another push. Even if nobody seems to want them, they’ve made for good conversation starters about something more custom. I really want to avoid just selling my time through. It’s stressful, constantly trying to fill the pipeline, and not sustainable.

I’ll probably tap my developer contacts too, as I can’t know everything personally.

If you’ve got any clever partnership-style ideas, I’m all ears. Just HMU (as the kids say).

Classified Intel

Some interesting stuff I discovered on my adventures.

Niantic Studio

Yes, I’m 6 months late to this. But Niantic Studio (who you might know from Pokemon Go or Ingress) lets you make 3D cross-reality “experiences”. I discovered the studio after discussing the placement of AI agents into real world spaces.

Tabletop R&D

A gaming theme this week, it seems. Queen Mary University made an AI system that will play test your board game idea automatically. It helps you understand game balance, victory conditions by creating a digital twin of your game, which is then played thousands of times in minutes. Hat tip to Shaun Trevisick for that one.

Gemini 2.0 Flash (Image Generation)

Another catchy model name, but this image generation and modification model from Google is pretty good. Make sure you choose the right model from the RHS of the interface. Then you can create high quality images from text AND then modify that image with further prompting (e.g. add a top hat to that dog).