“Do It Live”—When a pitch hinges on a live connection.
Bauhaus metaphor of “translation”
Gold on every surface, nerves nearly audible. In an ornate Moscow private dining room, I was pitching to the owners of Russian Fashion Week. The least fashionable person at the table, clutching a prototype built at eBay off the side of our desks. We mapped related items by designer, style, color, or silhouette—timed for the runway, powered by borrowed code and hope.
No shared language, shaky WiFi, and technical fixes begged between meetings. Each morning and just before lunch, another test. I wondered if timezone or API bugs would take us down mid-demo. I wondered
But the prototype delivered. The vision was clear. The owners saw market potential, and our partnership now had some more room to grow.
What I’d do now:
Lovable: Scaffold the whole experience—visuals and logic—with live data, fast.
DeepL: Instantly localize assets and flows, turning language barriers into bridges.
Split.io: Automate testing and monitoring so every live demo runs flawlessly.
Enduring Lesson:
Shared vision beats polish. Speed and clarity win every room—especially when new tools put working prototypes within arm’s reach.
“Let's tackle accessibility after we've got core features out"
Using AI to make accessibility a lighter lift. TBT AI
Not long ago, my team built a regulated healthcare marketplace for an underserved community. Accessibility wasn’t a checkbox—it was our imperative. We ran rigorous design heuristics, tested WCAG compliance, and got recognized with an accessibility award. Recent legal precedent like the Domino’s Supreme Court case [Domino’s Settlement, BOIA] proves how essential accessible design is; it’s no longer optional.
We ran rigorous design heuristics, tested WCAG compliance, and got recognized with an accessibility award. Recent legal precedent like the Domino’s Supreme Court case [Domino’s Settlement, BOIA] proves how essential accessible design is.
Accessibility drives growth and usability for everyone. Features we first built for compliance—voice-to-text, optimized color contrast, image recognition—are now standard web expectations. Making the internet accessible unlocks innovation.
If I rebuilt that marketplace today, I’d leverage:
Automated heuristic scanning compliments of BrowserStack
AI-based audit tools with CI/CD integration - I’d suggest Perforce’s Perfecto
GPT-enabled code review
Real-time reminders in Slack and clear ownership in Confluence
So what. So what, so what, so what?
A single overlooked barrier represses access for millions. Accessibility lawsuits aren’t rare—they’re precedent. For product managers, every accessibility enhancement broadens reach and delivers a better experience.
TBT: I built for accessibility before it became mainstream. Today, AI and automation put these best practices within every team’s reach. Investing here isn’t just compliance—it’s competitive advantage.
Reverse Document APIs - how we did it and how I’d do it now
Migrating legacy systems to microservices in pharma is a beast. I’ve seen teams struggle months trying to find who owns what API—or worse, hunt down incomplete or missing docs. Reverse-engineering became the norm: digging through logs, sniffing traffic, piecing together how parts talk. It’s frustrating, slow, and almost never fits into anyone’s roadmap.
Still, we have to release reliable, compliant microservices. Old-school guesswork and tribal knowledge won’t cut it anymore. What if AI and automation could help us map those APIs faster, clearer, with less headache?
Here’s how I’d reimagine the process today:
Capture real API traffic in Postman. This gives you the raw data on endpoints, parameters, and payloads without relying on scarce documentation.
Automate spec drafting with Swagger Inspector, which analyze traffic and generate OpenAPI specs automatically, saving tedious manual write-ups.
Leverage Copilot to turn noisy logs, legacy code comments, and raw specs into plain-language docs or usage examples developers actually understand. For example, Copilot can suggest method signatures or inline docs directly in your IDE, speeding reverse engineering without leaving your workflow.
Centralize knowledge in Confluence, with clear ownership tags and version control so everyone knows who reviews and updates what.
Automate workflows for review cycles and reminders via Slack to align busy stakeholders and get buy-in despite competing priorities.
This AI-first microservice migration playbook is about cutting confusion, boosting speed, and aligning teams—even when the org chart isn’t playing along.
What’s the biggest API migraine you’d hand off to AI?
How AI Workflow Automation Can Slash Consulting Case-Study Turnaround
TBT AI Edition: Revisting how I’m doing work now
Work is changing rapidly. We're all thinking about how to incorporate AI, new tools into our day to day to get better outcomes. In this series, I'm going to revisit past work and reframe it for today.
In consulting, speed wins. Case studies are a company's best marketing but they are a PIA and slow to create/launch. I've been on both sides. Once I endured 8 reschedules to ghost out a case study only to find missing notes and a poor recall. I’ve also been pursued by the best coworkers looking to find ten minutes when it seemed like I always had -30 minutes. It's painful AF.
Still, we need them. And we need them for all kinds of things: internal knowledge, white papers, blog posts, podcasts.
Today, let’s flip the script with an AI-first approach for getting cases written and published quickly.
Centralize data in Coda.io to create a single source of truth (and fewer versions!)
Use Zaps to automate notifications (easy access for relevant parties in Slack)
Leverage GPT to outline and structure first drafts - transform transcripts into user friendly stories in minutes
Tailor visuals with Napkin.AI
Use Webflow for easy, broad distribution to reach the audiences that matter most.