This page is inspired by Derek Sivers’ now page suggestion and his Now Now Now movement. The purpose of this page is to share my current focus. If you have your own site, you should make one, too.
Last updated: 13 November 2023.
MBA
Two modules (Strategy and Marketing) are now in the rear view mirror, and I’m now grappling with Operations Management. I don’t feel this is more difficult (thinking in absolutes…) than Strategy, but it’s perhaps the most alien to me so far so there’s more to learn—which is good.
The Bot Platform: how it is going
Wonderfully. Our integration with Slack is live and if you want to give it a go, feel free to get in touch. Other than that, we’re at a tricky moment in the history of our industry—with all the talking about “AI chatbots” a lot of people have a number of assumptions about what bots for internal communication should or shouldn’t do, and we’re finding that excitement in this phase is still leaving not enough space to risk assessment, management and mitigation. We’re not planning to go against the zeitgeist here—but our bots are used for use cases such as onboarding or compliance training, which have a very low tolerance for errors (e.g. bots making policies up, imagine that).
Furthermore, we’re working on an exciting project to supercharge our bots’ ability to proactively message people with personalised content. This is something our platform was already able to support, but with a few restrictions (e.g. fixed gap between messages, inability to skip non-work days, etc.). We’ve released a new functionality to set message flows to go out to people at highly customisable moments, and we’re now working on making sure the bot doesn’t reach out to people on certain days (e.g. the weekend).
Turning 38
I’ve turned 38 almost two weeks ago. I wrote my usual yearly post with how I feel about where I am, looking back at the last year in terms of work, life, and personal growth. Give it a read if you haven’t, and let me know what you think.
Family
Vinnie is 4 years old now. Her full bilingualism is starting to be more and more evident as she mixes up Italian and English significantly less than before, and when she asks for a cartoon she also tells me the language she wants it in (“Babbo, can I watch Paw Patrol in Italian please?”). And if I tell her something in English she usually comes back with “Babbo, puoi parlare in italiano per favore?” (“Daddy, can you speak in Italian please?”).