On Kurt Vonnegut’s birthday, these words among many that influenced my life, I fondly reflect upon: “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” — From “The Sirens of Titan” (1959)

We had about 2k trick-or-treaters walk up to our house. We live in Oakland, CA. The graciousness, humor and care of the community was in full bloom.

I’ll be honest. I can understand how AI will change the world. I have no idea how humans got thumbs.

Printers are back!! The dominant use-case for AI in my house for the first day of summer is making custom coloring sheets. It’s taking creative inspiration and using digital to make something physical. Next step is a full tabletop game.

OH from my kids: “That puppy has no drip.”

Jonny Ive joining OpenAI means that Sam Altman believes AI will be differentiated in the taste of the experience, not the capabilities of the AI.

It’s amazing how many people and years have been spent on Ads mgmt UX, yet all are universally hard to use in different ways. @finkd’s vision of replacing the marketer <> ad platform interface with AI is compelling for every PM spent time trying to replicate Excel in UI.

Demonstrated ability to build software should be a pre-requisite for hiring a PM today. With no-code and AI-assisted tools, anyone intent on building products should have side-projects to show strategic thinking and design choices. PMs should be evaluated on portfolios.

The advice I find myself giving to others is most often “prepare yourself and then have a direct and honest conversation” and “figure out what you actually want and write it down”. Always focus on the fundamentals.

This is my favorite chart on what the IRA as an industrial policy is doing. It is charting the future and investing in our resources.