Starting AI with the Foundations

Starting AI with the Foundations

Jul 1, 2026 | Newsletters

💸 “The cost to use a given level of AI falls about 10x every 12 months, and lower prices lead to much more use.” – Sam Altman Hello Reader, Last week I taught a half-day workshop in partnership with the Regional Business Partner Network at Enterprise North Canterbury. We gathered dozens of entrepreneurs and business owners together for an afternoon of AI training. They had heard the hype, seen the demos, and played around with a few tools. But they were still trying to understand how AI could…

The AI Maturity Ladder (& REPLAY of Hermes vs OpenClaw webinar)

The AI Maturity Ladder (& REPLAY of Hermes vs OpenClaw webinar)

Jun 24, 2026 | Newsletters

🤖 “If you don’t learn to how to orchestrate agents now, you’ll spend 2027 catching up to people who started today.” – Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google Hello Reader, Xero recently published a report comparing how New Zealanders are using AI. They surveyed more than 1000 professionals, and they found that most people are still using AI like a random toolbox. They open ChatGPT, or Copilot, or Claude, or Gemini. They ask a question, get an answer, copy the useful bits, and move on. That’s fine. A…

One question for building your next AI agent (JTBD)

One question for building your next AI agent (JTBD)

Jun 17, 2026 | Newsletters

🕳️ “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want to buy a quarter-inch hole.” – Theodore Levitt Hello Reader, Projects fail if they aim too wide. That was the central theme of last week’s workshop in the AI Agent Accelerator, the 4-workshop sprint where we build, deploy, and fine-tune AI agents. Using my 4-step SAGE framework, every week we: SCOPE agentic projects AUTOMATE robotic work GENERATE skills and system prompts EVALUATE effectiveness Projects succeed and fail on their…

The SAGE Framework for Building AI Agents

The SAGE Framework for Building AI Agents

Jun 10, 2026 | Newsletters

💸 “AI Agents are a multi trillion dollar opportunity.” – Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA Hello Reader, AI agents are changing the way work gets done. As agentic AI systems become more capable, our real advantage will not come from technical proficiency. Our advantage will come from knowing how to manage AI agents well. The ability to scope agentic projects, manage autonomous systems, evaluate their performance, and design the information environments that make agents effective – these are the…

How to Make a NotebookLM for a Conference [EPIC AI Replays]

How to Make a NotebookLM for a Conference [EPIC AI Replays]

Jun 3, 2026 | Newsletters

↠↠ The velocity of learning has increased. ↠↠ Hello Reader, As part of TechWeekNZ, I hosted the EPIC AI Conference in Christchurch on Thursday, 21 May, 2026. There were a dozen speakers and panelists, and lots of practical takeaways. While we did record the sessions (big thanks to Daniel Panjaitan and Greg Dickson for volunteering!) it’s a lot of material to digest. You can watch all the replays at this link: https://christchurch-ai.com/epic-ai-conference …or, you can use NotebookLM to…

Lessons from ‘Leadership in the Age of AI’ [REPLAY]

Lessons from ‘Leadership in the Age of AI’ [REPLAY]

May 27, 2026 | Newsletters

⚖️ “AI requires enormous judgment. Leadership requires enormous judgment.” — Alison Adams, Chief Executive of ChristchurchNZ Hello Reader, Last week at EPIC in Christchurch, I hosted a TechWeek panel on Leadership in the Age of AI with four local CEOs: Anya Anderson from RedSeed, Julie Ryan from CustomD, Ali Adams from ChristchurchNZ, and Brad Fraser from Agentic Intelligence. The conversation kept coming back to the human work of leadership: judgment, communication, trust, empathy, change…