I’m beyond thrilled to share that I’ve joined the Developer Experience team at @OpenAI as a contractor, working with @paw_lean and the team to support developer community programs and events! ✨ Over the last few years, I’ve worked closely with developer communities and seen firsthand how AI coding tools like Codex are reshaping these ecosystems, from the conversations happening at conferences to the ways devs are reconsidering how they work and what’s possible to build. I’ve felt that shift personally, too. I took this photo in April in Hokkaido, Japan, while working on staff at RubyKaigi, one of the largest Ruby developer conferences in the world. I ended up spending three months in Japan around the conference. During that time, I poured myself into the things that inspired me most, especially learning Japanese and vibe coding. I had already been using agentic coding tools for work and building small apps for fun, but as the models and tooling improved, I found myself using them more. And, naturally, my other interests started to converge with my use of AI. While living in Japan and practicing the language, using tools like Codex became a big part of my daily life. Learning Japanese on my own forced me to figure out how my brain learns best. As someone with ADHD, I need a highly personalized approach to learning. Conventional methods, apps, lessons, and IRL practice helped, but I still struggled to retain what I learned between conversations. So I started experimenting more with Codex, staying out late at cafes and sometimes even missing the last train while building my own tools for practicing Japanese. It’s been a lot of trial and error, but also incredibly gratifying. Instead of waiting for someone else to build the perfect learning tool for me, I could build things that actually worked for my brain. I’m still very much a beginner at Japanese, but I’m getting a little better every day. And it’s hard for me to imagine learning new skills any other way now! That’s part of what makes this opportunity so special to me. I know what it feels like to be alone at a cafe at midnight, struggling to learn something and turning that frustration into something genuinely useful. For the next six months at OpenAI, I’m SO excited to support @OpenAIDevs as they turn their own frustrations and curiosity into things only they could build. これからよろしくお願いします！🫶