Downtown

Get Ready to Feel Uncomfortable

If you're here, you've already cleared the hardest hurdle.

You're open to AI. Not everyone is. Some people are still waiting it out, still skeptical, still hoping it passes. But you showed up. And in my book, being open is the whole beginning.

So here's the first thing I'll tell you, the same mantra I've been telling myself: get ready to feel uncomfortable.

This is a new era and a new subject, and yes, there are resources everywhere. If anything, there are too many. When I started, I kept trying to learn from content built for developers, and it left me feeling like I was in the wrong room. I wasn't. I just hadn't found my way in yet.

Because here's what nobody tells the non-technical newcomer: you are not non-technical. Not really.

You may not write code. But the work of AI is full of things you already do: operations, process, project management, analytics, writing, vetting, deciding. Those are real skills, and they are exactly the muscles you'll grow as you build. The longer I do this, the more I see that the people who think they're least prepared are often the ones who adapt the fastest.

AI is a thought partner. A tool. A team.

I didn't arrive at that on day one. I got there in small steps, and small steps compound into what I think of as level-ups. You try a tool. It works, or it doesn't. You learn something, and you carry it forward.

I also made peace early with this: I will learn things, try things, and discard them. That's not failure. That's the practice. You're building an organic map of how AI fits your work: which tools make sense, which ones leapfrog the last, which ones you'll outgrow. All of it is happening live. That's the fun of it.

And there is fun in it, more than I expected. The feedback is almost immediate. You'll know right away if AI understood you. You'll know if you said what you meant clearly enough. The distance between asking and seeing has shrunk to seconds, and that means you get to practice critical thinking constantly, holding the results against your own standards. Standards that, I promise, will rise as you go.

I hadn't felt that kind of learning in a long time. It reminds me of watching our kids move through school: elementary, high school, college, surrounded by chances to learn. I get genuinely excited when I connect the dots, pick up a new tool, or just glimpse what's possible now. Some tools I don't need yet. I try them anyway, because that's how the pieces of a stack start to fall into place.

You'll find, as you walk with me, that the stack, the skills, and your own way of working with AI all become a kind of practice. A craft you keep refining.

That's what I want AI in the City to be: a reference that's actually useful to you. I'll share what I'm building, the skills I'm growing, the processes that have worked, and the spots where I stumbled, because the milestones and the pitfalls both belong on this path.

I'm so glad you're here.

Let's walk the city together.