Blog
Hello, Readers!
Welcome to my blog! Here, you’ll find a mix of topics from intentional living to navigating your career in the age of AI to updates on my various projects. The themes that run through my work are Living the Life You Want, Simplicity, Continuous Improvement, Iteration, Travel, Indie Book Publishing, and Agile Software Development.
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Recent Posts
Exit Interview: A Book Review
I recently read Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career by Kristi Coulter. I picked it up because the title resonated with me. I, too, have had an ambitious tech career and just recently semi-retired, pulling back to teach and run programs at my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Coulter’s book was funny, interesting, and, above all, kind of PTSD-inducing if you’re in tech and especially if you’re a woman in tech.
A Different Kind of Power: Why Jacinda Ardern’s Version of Leadership Matters
I just finished A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s Prime Minister from 2017 to 2023. At a moment when the political world feels particularly bleak, Ardern’s book feels different. It’s full of hope (and good decisions). Her tenure as New Zealand’s Prime Minister shows us that a person can hold the highest office in a country and still be, unmistakably and unapologetically, a human being, a woman, and a mom.
Stick Together: What the Women’s Suffrage Movement Can Teach Us About Politics Right Now
I’ve been working on a new book for women trying to kick ass in a male-centric world and I’m in the developmental editing stages right now. I just got through my final chapter and I love it so, darn much. The chapter is called: “Stick Together: How To Stop Undermining Other Women & Get Things Done Together”. Historically, our failure to stick together has cost us decades of progress. Here’s just one example.
Overwhelmed by AI? It’s OK to Watch for a While
There’s a particular flavor of anxiety that’s causing us all to believe that if we’re not using AI all day every day we’re falling hopeless behind. If you’re overwhelmed, resistant, skeptical, or just genuinely uninterested in the AI hype cycle right now, I want to say something that you might not be hearing very often: That’s okay. You’re going to be fine. And here’s why I think that.
We’re Looking for Partners for UW-Madison’s CS Capstone — Could That Be You?
One of the things I’m most proud of during my career is creating and running UW-Madison’s Computer Sciences Capstone course (CS 620). Every semester, hundreds of computer science Seniors work in teams of four to six on real software projects for real organizations, using agile development practices. And every semester, I need great partner organizations to make it happen. Last year, we had 27 amazing partners and we’re looking to grow quite a bit to accommodate 40% more students for the 2026-2027 school year.
What I Learned at the Global Agility + Innovation Summit: AI, Judgement, and the Future of Leadership
I just returned from the Global Agility + Innovation Summit, a one-day leadership conference in DC hosted by Sanjiv Augustine and his team at LitheSpeed. It was a day packed with sharp thinking, genuine conversation, and the kind of energy that only happens when a room full of practitioners who actually care about the work they’re doing get together. Here are some conference highlights.
There Is No Right Way to Be Brilliant: A Review of Daily Rituals by Mason Currey
I’m reading Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey, and I keep having the same thought over and over again, “Well, if they can do it that way, then anyone can”. The book profiles 161 creative minds from novelists, scientists, and painters, to philosophers, composers, and poets, documenting their daily working routines. And after one hundred pages of profiles, the takeaway I’m getting is that you can be brilliant in your own way, on your own schedule, with your own strange routines.
When You Combine What You Love, Something Remarkable Happens
This past weekend, 580 people in Milwaukee did something that seems almost too simple to be true: they played board games for a weekend and raised over $46,000 for cancer care at Aurora Healthcare. I left the weekend thinking about how often we underestimate what happens when we stop treating our passions as separate from our purpose and start treating them as the same thing. When we combine what we love, extraordinary things happen.
Introducing CS Marketplace: Where Student Talent Meets Real-World Problems
CS Marketplace is a new initiative from the UW-Madison Department of Computer Sciences that connects campus organizations with skilled computer science students who can build the software solutions they need. The Summer & Fall 2026 cohorts begin soon. Find out more about this exciting new program!
When Life Gets Overwhelming, I Organize Things For Stress Relief
To say we had a lot going on this week is an understatement. So yesterday, I did something that might sound counterintuitive when you’re drowning in life: I picked a drawer and got rid of everything in it I no longer wear. By the end of both sessions, I felt measurably better. This is not an accident. It turns out the science on this is pretty compelling. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, this is the article for you.
AI Is Changing What Your Engineering Team Should Be Doing: Are You Taking Advantage of It?
AI is giving engineers the gift of time. And most organizations are squandering it. Figuring out what to do with your organization’s newfound time is one of the most important strategic questions that engineering leaders and product teams need to be wrestling with right now. The answer, I’d argue, is discovery. Real, rigorous, customer-focused product discovery. And most teams are not doing nearly enough of it.
Scuba Diving Cozumel with Teenagers: How to Give Your Kids the Underwater Trip of a Lifetime
When three of our teenagers (ages 12, 13, and 15) first expressed interest in getting scuba certified, I was thrilled (and then a little nervous)! Could they handle the training? What actually happened was better than anything I could have planned. And then nature helped us out a little bit because we saw dolphins on their very first open water dive.