Bring Your Kid to Work Day

Posted on by Brendan

I never knew that bringing a kid to work day was a national holiday until yesterday. Last year when my son was 2, I wanted to participate but our second child came a few days before. This year, I saw it on the calendar 2 weeks out, and knew I wanted to make sure we participated. As the date got closer, I let my son know he would be coming into work with me after school on Thursday. Like I always do for special events, I try to let him know a few days in advance and then remind him a few times a day after that. 

The wild thing I didn’t anticipate was the excitement built each day that came closer. His excitement passed to me as, especially as we headed out to drive to the office. My wife dressed him in a similar outfit to me and he was chatting it up about going to work with his dad. 

We got there and he had a blast. He was a little timid at times but found things he loved, which were cars, the view of the Charles River from the kitchen where we were watching the boats, and the snacks. I was also proud to hear him answer popular questions from people I work with such as, what is your name? and how old are you? 

This also brought back a few memories I had of joining my dad at work. Often using office supplies, admiring views, and meeting others. 

In today’s world where the youth population is dealing with a mix of mental health challenges, I find a day like this truly powerful. It gets kids out of their school routine into a different but real world experience that opens their eyes to career possibilities and allows them to meet new people.

I hope my family can participate in this national holiday for years to come.

Feedback and Action

Posted on by Brendan

Recently, I’ve been involved in a few feedback exchanges in different ways. The first was the more popular one where someone gave me direct feedback. The other, likely less popular, was someone who came to me as a manager with feedback about someone else. They were looking for help in working through some challenges with someone and how to improve on them. 

The thing I learned from these two situations is that action is important. Take action whether you get the feedback or have feedback to share. Don’t stay silent. In my first example, I acted on the feedback right away. This allowed me to be more effective and I also improved on how to do what was asked. In addition, I know what not to do for the future. It really was such a fruitful learning experience, and I felt added ownership.

For the second example, I think it is important to also take action on this and use a trusted person like a manager to help think through the concerns and how to work on them. This can be harder to do but it is such an effective way to hold people accountable to healthy two way relationships.   

Receive the feedback – take action. Concern about how a partnership is going, take action.

AI Use Cases at Work

Posted on by Brendan

It is good to know I am not alone. Recently, I have read or listened to strong thinkers in their respective domains question if AI can be used in their day to day. I too have had these observations in my own day to day. To be really clear, I see the power of it and how it can be used to solve certain problems, mainly jumping steps from start to finish. 

That said, in my day to day as an SEO leader, I am struggling to adopt it as a power user. Despite this, I remain open and excited to the new technology so that I can adapt my skills and experience to stay relevant in the field of SEO. Here’s a few tactical ways I’ve been reading about using AI:

Here’s a few AI ideas I am most excited about: 

Generative AI and Retrieval Augmentation Generation (RAG) have a chance to completely change the point and click experience that the graphical user interface (GUI) brought us. The GUI was an unlock in technology that opened up computers to more industries. Prior to that, workers in certain industries couldn’t see value in computers.

My Take: I totally see how this concept applies to desktop software applications specifically. I’d love to chat with software versus trying to figure out how to use it with a series of clicks and sometimes waiting each click. The best use case I can think of is chatting with something that is hooked into data I need to get at. So instead of knowing SQL or point and click steps in Tableau or Looker, I can tell the computer what I want. This is great and something I’d use. My thought is this use case is very specific to desktop experiences and not mobile. The tap, type, scroll, read experience on mobile is totally different. I am not entirely convinced that AI chat is integral to the mobile experience as so much of mobile use is browsing articles, social media, and search. Maybe it does catch on via mobile or simply is complementary to existing search, social, and other products? 

The best way to familiarize yourself with Generative AI is to identify a problem you have and try solving it with AI. That is where the magic will be felt.

My Take: About 6 months ago, I came across this experience. There was something I was dying to do for about a year but was trying to solve it with someone who had expertise in a certain area. The problem was I could not get the internal or external help. Enter AI. I began trying to solve the problem myself with AI and it proved to be useful. I compared against other LLMs and learned about each and then shopped it around to others on my team who supported the use case. We then worked to productionalize it. This felt to me like magic and the use case fit AI perfectly.  

I remain excited and interested to see where this new technology takes consumer behavior. 

LLM Value Chain

Posted on by Brendan

I found this image provided by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) very helpful for understanding the current LLM value chain. In the image they use FM which stands for Foundation Models. Specifically you can see where the big tech incumbents are currently playing. Some interesting pieces to me are:

  • The FM release will be how other enterprise and start up companies are able to leverage these FMs at scale for proprietary data. Perhaps startup FMs will run in tandem with these as well. I am excited about innovation here because it opens up the door for a lot of improvements to SEO and CRO executional improvements and changes. 
  • It will be interesting to follow how the bottom row continues to play out since that is where the end users. I am excited to see how AI makes its way into productivity software like Gsuite, Android, Microsoft Office, or  iOS. 
  • Notice where Apple is playing? They’re developing models and with its mobile ecosystem of users has a chance at shaking things up. 
  • When people talk about GenAI favoring incumbents, this image makes that clear. 
LLM Value Chain

Returning to Work after Vacations

Posted on by Brendan

Vacations are necessary for me, and I think most people. I took Thursday and Friday off last week and traveled to the Dominican Republic to celebrate a friend who is getting married in a few months. It was a fun time. Warm weather, sun, golf, good food, beach, pool, and most importantly many conversations and laughs with old friends. It is quite surreal spending time away from kids for a few days. It is great to get away from constant parenting once in a while but I also missed them. And when I got back they seemed like they grew up in 48 hours. 

Back to the point I want to make about returning from vacations. I’ve learned the importance of mindset on the first day back at work after a vacation. It is important to take the vacation and truly enjoy yourself during it. I used to take less vacation because I didn’t like coming back and feeling out of the loop and catching up. 

Rather than taking less vacation, I simply switch my mindset when I return. My mindset is to ease into the first day back. I do this by giving myself the morning to be meeting free. At least 830AM to 11AM or so. In that time I catch up on data, weekly planning, team priorities, and email/slack. I like to do this off a fresh night’s sleep. I find after spending 2 to 3 hours in these areas, I reap the recovery benefits of the vacation and I dive back into work with a mindset of excitement and control rather than letting calendar or other people’s priorities dictate my first half of the day which leads me feeling more stressed and bored than excited and engaged. 

Take the vacation, come back and be deliberate about your time for the first half of the day.