Day 5 of the I ️ AI Challenge : The Future of Work and Leadership

Hello and welcome back. Day 5 of our I Heart AI Challenge. So excited. We actually had some fun this week and some incredible people joining us. I would like to give the first few minutes— I know we're starting a couple minutes late, but, uh, I wanted to make sure the audio is working, so I'm hoping indeed that it is. So I'm going to be looking for those of you who are here with me live to chime into the chat and let me know that we are indeed live and you can hear me. In the meantime, I would like to share a little bit about my life. Yesterday was my— one of my children's birthdays, and so we had a huge amount of fun. I— we also, you know, celebrate this idea of a birthday fairy, and I'm going to share with you more about that later on as it applies to artificial intelligence, but I want it. I always like to make the day magical for my kids. And so when they wake up, they see the house decorated in a way that it wasn't when they went to bed. And it's wonderful. It's a moment where you get to see someone's eyes kind of light up and get excited, no matter what the reality is. Thank you, Madeline. Thank you for being here. Sandrine, wonderful. Thank you for being here. So if you are here and joining us live, you can hashtag live so people know that you are here. Also, if you're catching this on the replay, that way— oh, and I don't know if you guys saw yesterday. If you all saw yesterday, I ended up replaying, um, automatically through my platform. I ended up replaying it at a different time. And so I will be doing that again today. So for those of you who cannot, um, or if you know people who wanted to do this but they're in Australia, for example, which would make it the wee hours of the morning, um, or evening, I don't know, um, but makes it hard for them to listen, or if they're at work, these are all available, uh, on replay inside of our community. But this will actually replay live on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, all the places that it's streaming right now. It'll replay live. I, of course, will not be there live. It'll be replaying what we're doing right now. But so exciting. So if you're catching this on the replay at a different time, welcome, uh, and of course, thank you all. Julia, what's up? Thank you for being here. Michael Novak, welcome back. So this is going to be a really fun day, but I hope it will challenge your ideas about how AI is impacting our world and challenge your ideas about what work is and what that word means in the future. I've had some such interesting conversations preparing for the Good Morning AI podcast that I currently have, and you can find the Good Morning AI podcast. We actually teed it up at the end of last year and have been recording sessions ever since. We're going to start rolling those out right after this challenge. And all those conversations have really led to people having conversations with me that caused me to think even very differently about what the world looks like, not just in 2 or 3 years, but in 10 years, in 100 years, and, and maybe faster if we can do it as humanity. So, so excited to be here with you. Really so happy that you joined and very grateful for your time. So today, I always like to start off by giving you a bit of the lay of the land of what we're going to do. We're going to talk about the future of work, but we're also going to talk about leadership. And the reason I say that is because most of you— some of you are students, but most of you have been in career for a while. That's usually my friends and family in the AI world. We've been through multiple transformations in technology, and I think As someone who's experienced technology in any other time other than the last 2 years, that experience will help you build better solutions with this technology in the future. And so I want to help you understand and really embrace the knowledge that you've gained and not shed that knowledge, right? Not think, oh, cloud and data are kind of, you know, those were skills of old. Skills from last year. AI is the skill for 2024. I can't tell you how many times I see, um, articles and books on AI is the, the most important skill set you can have. I really actually, you know, everyone says that, but I actually believe something quite different. I believe that yes, AI is an incredibly important skill, but it is much— it's made much more important by those of us who understand the business and understand business problems. Um, it says my screen, uh, is what? Uh, let's see, I'm trying to see. Hold on, let me go to the chat. Thanks, Michael, you're always— oh, my screen is backwards. Um, good to know. Let's see, I would have to— can someone confirm that? Maybe I have to mirror my video. Hold on, hold on, let's see. Does that help? Are we better? All right, I'm gonna give you a— thank you, Mike, for that. Thank you, Michael. Um, all right, I'm gonna wait a couple seconds to see if that fixes things. It looks good to me now, but, uh, but often it's a little checkbox that gets automatically selected on my behalf. I'm not sure why they would do that, but anyway, should be good now. Let me know in the chat if you can see this screen behind me okay. Yes, awesome! You guys are amazing. Thank you for your feedback. Okay, great. Yeah, I bet it's better if you can actually read it. I mean, I don't know, I feel like it's a bit of an aptitude test. I find I can actually read things backwards. It's surprising. So I think you probably could too, but why add that level of friction, really? Um, oh, awesome, wonderful! Benito is in the house. He is from San Diego. Also, if you are here, if you are up to it and willing, please share where you're coming from. I am coming from Again, another beautiful day in sunny South Florida. Um, and, uh, I would love to know where you're coming from. So super excited to have you here. Uh, but yes, welcome Benito, so good to see you. Okay, good. So, so over the next few minutes, maybe 40 minutes or so, I'm going to show you the things that have differentiated me, not just in the form of my AI skills, but also in other complementary skills that I think it's important for you to think about. Again, you don't have to do all the things that I have done, but many times one of the main questions we've been asking those who have come to speak on the challenge this week is, what did you do? And what did you do differently? And how did you get into this space? So I'm going to share a little bit more about what I do differently and why I do it. And much of it— well, okay, a little bit has to do with artificial intelligence, but a lot of it has to do with the different type of person you have to be to be successful using this technology. So I'm going to— I have a class that I teach called 100 Ways to Stay Motivated. It's— I do it every year, 2023, 2024. So I have this class that I teach and I go through 100 ways to be at the top of your game throughout the rest of the year. And all of this has helped accelerate my ability to be successful in the field of artificial intelligence. I actually think it'll make you successful in any field you choose to go in. But we're AI people, or at least we are AI curious. And so I will, I will talk a little bit about some of those things. Obviously, I'm not going to go through all 100. That'll take us 4 or 5 hours. But, but I will give you a couple. Arlington, Virginia, welcome. Oh, Türkiye, what nice to see you. Thank you. And Massachusetts in the house. I used to live in Massachusetts. One of my children was born in Massachusetts. So we have a My heart is there many times. OK, so I always like to give you kind of a few things that we're going to talk about. One, one is, you know, the, the process, the top. And I think this is pretty useful because it's data-driven. The top 3 questions I have heard from executives, the top 3 questions they have asked me when they want to move in the direction of artificial intelligence. And the reason I think that this is important— I'll try not to write too far off the screen. Well, I'll just move it over. The top 3 questions that I have— basically, I've had hundreds of these conversations with executives and they all end up asking 3 main questions. And I think it's important to reiterate those questions now on the last day, because if you know how to take your personal experience, your life experience, what you're good at, what you're passionate about, and apply it to things we know executives are asking, you have an opportunity to provide value in this space. And value will equate to a company that is successful, a, a role you can be successful in, right? No matter where you are, whether you're an intrapreneur, entrepreneur, whether you want to be a leader in a big company or a founder in a small company, these 3 questions I think are really important to navigate. Once we do that, I then want to share— I like let— whoops, I want to jump to number 3. But the second thing I'm going to talk to you about are some AI— I'm going to call them tips and maybe tricks— how to use AI in developing your own expertise? And really, where is AI in some of the things you're already using that you might not currently be using? And then finally, probably my favorite, is what does it take to be a leader in this space? And this, I'm going to talk about my personal routine, what I do every day that I'm home. I do travel a bit, but every day that I'm home, what I do with my family, what I do with my husband, how we plan our days, and the specific things that I do to set myself up for success. So amazing. Oh, wonderful. Yes. Oh, Louisville. What? I'm going to be in Kentucky soon. So one of the nice things about the community is we have a community calendar, and I'll invite everyone, including like we have a couple of people in the community that are hosting their own events. Salim in London, which I don't know if he's going to be on today, but he is in London and he's starting his own meetup group or has already started it. So we're hosting his events just so that you can see that you're not alone in this journey, number one. But if you happen to be in a city that I'm going to be in, guess what? We could have coffee. I was just chatting with— I happen to be in Scottsdale, Arizona, and one of my friends from the AI world happened to be there too, lived there. And so she sent me a message, was like, oh my gosh, we should have coffee. And we ended up talking for hours, like just about the state of the world, the state of responsible AI, our families, you know, all sorts of things. And so I think it's really cool when you can connect with people that are on a similar journey than you are. Some of them are further ahead, some of them are behind you, but no matter where you are, you can learn from someone and you can teach someone. And that's exactly what our community is built to do. And I love it so far. We just started it like a month ago, but we already have about 120 members. It's super fun. I love it. And I'm so grateful for those who are in the community contributing. We also have a leaderboard. So every month we set up a challenge, and if you are in the top 3 in that leaderboard, you will get a little swag bag from either my I Heart AI campaign, my firstmile.ai campaign, or the AI Leadership Institute. And we're constantly creating new fun stuff to give away, uh, to make it fun to navigate and, and, and develop your skills in this space. So, so I love it. So I'm going to share with you a little bit about what I've done and what I continue to do to be successful. Um, and, and I, I don't think you'll be super surprised by it, but some of the things you might be like, wow, what would my life be like if I actually did those things? Some people think I have a little, um, that I do a lot. So here we go. So let's talk about those top 3 questions first. Oh, so before we get into that, I do want to remind you that inside the community— I know a bunch of you are already in the community— inside the community, in the classroom, you will find all of the days of the challenge, the recordings. I will be, over the next 5 or 6 weeks, I will be breaking up those videos to make it a little easier to consume than a 2-hour chunk, especially because yesterday we had like 8 minutes of dead air and I don't want that. So let's make sure that we have an opportunity to go back and review some of this material. Like yesterday, Joe and I were talking about like how interesting the content was from yesterday. And that was like, that's my favorite topic, right? How do you go like, what is the life cycle? Where is my part in it? And how can I accelerate clients that are trying to do that work? That was like Noelle's, you know, my favorite area of the AI business. But many of you might have saw yourself in sales or marketing. And so being able to go through this material might be helpful to you. But I also, you might remember I did a huge whiteboard. I also posted the whiteboard into that area. And when you joined the challenge, many of you did, all of you, I think, but many of you did. And if you didn't, not too late, there's a QR code. You could join the community. And when you join the challenge, there are a couple of things that I promised you. One was an AI resource toolkit. And all that really meant is that I wanted to give you a quick cheat sheet for all the things that came up through the week. In order for me to do that, though, I needed to have the conversations we have during the week. So I'll be developing that over the next couple of days. You'll get that by Monday. What is already there, though, is the third offer that you got when you joined the challenge, and that was to get a blueprint for success. So I authored a document. It's not super fancy. It's very Noelle-like. So, you know, there might be mistakes, there might be some typos. It's meant to get what's in my head and in my heart onto a page and given to you. No editor was involved. Maybe, maybe I ran it through Grammarly, which now I think I have to say, because Grammarly is AI-driven, like it was AI-infused because Grammarly was involved in helping do a first pass. But, but this guide is literally what I've spent my entire career iterating and building. I always say it's like decades of my experience bottled up into something you can read. In a couple hours, maybe in an hour if you're super persistent, but certainly in a couple days you can consume it, right? So my decades into your days is like the biggest gift I can offer you. And so that's already in there. You can already see it. I wanted to get that in there before we even started today. So, so those are the things for those of you signed up for the challenge that of course, and the content we did this week, which is super like, it's been amazing having the guests we've had. I've been so grateful. And we do have another guest coming today who's one of my favorite people and has an incredible story. And so I can't wait to have them join us at the top of the hour. Now, what the special— those of you who decided to join our VIPs, you all get something quite different and it's not too late. As a matter of fact, today I will somehow post the VIP link into the chat. I'll have to do it on LinkedIn, probably. Um, but you can now— you could still join VIP. And one of the fun things that all our VIP people got was an I Heart AI shirt, t-shirt. It's my black t-shirt with my font, uh, with my heart. Uh, it's not the ones you can get on Amazon. It is— it's Noelle's. And so if you want that shirt, and I love that shirt, and if you work for a company that happens to be purple in nature, I also have purple ones. But if you would like one of those shirts, you can join the VIPs. And what VIPs get is a little bit different, right? The VIPs get all the stuff, of course, the challengers get in the resources section. But you're going to— for, um, the price of the VIP experience, you're going to get lifetime access to my new paid community. And this is special. I'm not doing this for everybody. It's only for my friends. Um, but that means that yes, of course you're going to contribute. You know, I always say like you have to have a little skin in the game. This is like maybe a couple coffees or maybe a dinner out, or, you know, it's a very nominal cost. But once you're in, you could be part of this growing community. It's an industry alliance. The AI Leadership Institute is going to grow massively over the next couple of years. It's grown significantly over the last 5 years. And so I want to invite you all to be part of it, but you're my people. So I want to give you a chance to get in at the lowest possible cost I could provide it to you. But again, you're going to be a contributor as well. So it's give and take. I asked a couple of members last night who are already in the community, and I asked them, hey, like, you know, you've been contributing a lot to the chat. Thank you so much. I hope you're getting as much as you're giving. And their response to me consistently was, oh my gosh, this is awesome. I get to meet new people, create new relationships, learn and teach. And so it's super exciting. Thank you, Tamara. Yeah, it's going to be awesome and it's going to be where I get to spend time like the free community. I won't be able to be in there and teaching stuff like I can't, you know, I got to do work that drives my business, but I will be teaching inside of the Alliance, inside of what's called the AI Leadership Institute. So, so excited for that. But part of that journey, I wanted to make sure that all of you who joined VIP, that you've gotten a few of those things already. I did ship them out. As soon as you get your kit, please post it. You can post in the community. They should be arriving soon because we sent them before the challenge started. Some of you are in different parts of the world, and I did not realize how long it would take the eagle to, like, capture the package and cross over the ocean. So some of you will have to wait till next week, which is really sad, but some of you should have them or got them already or should get them today. And when you do, let us know what you think. I actually put a couple surprises in there, um, and so I would love to hear what you think about them when they show up. Okay, cool. So I love it. I love giving presents. I love teaching. Like, this is really my world that I love to be in, and I hope you are enjoying it as much as I am. So those top 3 questions that I would love to share with you, right? The top questions that executives talk about. When I walked into a very large media company, I guess you'd call them like communications, telecom, old school, but not really anymore, but telecom. And I remember the CTO of this huge telecom organization. You would know them if I said them. And they were like, okay, I, uh, I'm super excited about this. Love generative AI. I've been— look, I've been researching it myself. So that's lesson number one. Most executives, most businesses know what this tech at least generally is. The hype is good. Everyone has heard about it. Everyone wants to have a piece of it. Everyone like is like, oh, this sounds interesting. But the very first question they end up asking me is how Do I build safely? I'll just— oh gosh, I think that's how you spell safely. Um, this is where my little red line comes in and I can click on it and it'll respell it for me. Um, but how do I build safely? Meaning, how do I create a sandbox with guardrails that allows me, right, to build and experiment responsibly. So they're not asking, what do I do with this? Though many do eventually ask that question. As a matter of fact, it's the next question. But the first thing they're doing is like, hey, how do I not hurt my business? How do I not hurt my company? So your role, your job, your mission over the next year should you choose to accept it. And you are not late, by the way, if you are just getting into this world. Um, I see people adding themselves to the list of smart people in this space every single day and then claiming that they've been doing this for years. You, on the other hand, actually could start doing things that will differentiate you from— I always say we want to be differentiated from the talkers, we want to be the doers. And doing means that you're gonna build these sandboxes all by yourself with no one needing you to. You're gonna just start building sandboxes. My encouragement to you is to— I mean, there's a couple things. So one thing I did is I started my own company back in 2015. I started the AI Leadership Institute because of the work I was doing at Alexa, and I realized this was going to be huge. It took a while to catch up to the rest of the world, almost 10 years. But I was like, this is going to be huge. So I established a company, a brand, and that brand is why many of you are here today. But I established that brand when no one was listening, when nobody cared what I was saying, when nobody really thought it was, you know, going to be a thing. And nobody was really that interested in implementing. All of a sudden, fast forward a few years and now everyone is interested in the things I've been spending the last decade thinking about. So the good news is, is that I definitely am a believer and I've seen this happen throughout my career probably 3 or 4 times, is that if you stay consistent in what you think about, what you care about, the problems you can solve for people, the value that you can offer, you will eventually through effort Find your tribe, find your people, find the people you can help and you can serve. The people who do not, who end up getting to a point and they quit, right? The only reason they don't find their tribe is because they stop. There's actually a book I'd love to introduce to you. Some of you might know it. Oh gosh, called Acres of Diamonds. It's an old book. But it's called Acres of Diamonds, and it's basically this, uh, allegorical story about how someone, you know, was— bought this land, 3, 4 acres, and they bought it because it was said that it would have diamonds in the dirt. Like, it would— you'd be able to become rich, right? Do you remember the oil rush and the gold rush, right? Oh my gosh, if I buy this land, I will be rich. And, uh, so this guy buys the land right, goes and starts digging. And I remember like a Looney Tunes cartoon where there's all these like holes in the ground where someone's dug. Like, all— that's my vision, right? All of these holes in the ground. And the guy's like, this is ridiculous, it's dumb, I spent 3 years looking and there's nothing here. So he sells it at pennies on the dollar, and the very next person spends 3 or 5— I think it was 7 in the story But he ends up, of course, finding those diamonds and becoming wealthy. But he had the persistence and the resilience to keep going until it happened. Now, there's a couple reasons why I love that story. One, it's fictitious, and it represents this idea that sticking with something— and again, the, the thing you're sticking with is important. Obviously, he could have been sold a plot of land that had no diamonds, and he just got duped. So that's the first thing. Due diligence on the value you offer to the world. Like, is what you do valuable? And there are easy ways to find that out, right? You can— if there are people in the world that are gathering in communities like this one, right? If there are people in the world that are huddled up on Facebook or gathered at meetups and they're talking about the thing that you know how to do for them, that's a great indicator that there are diamonds in the dirt. Right? And it's worth the effort continuing to do that. We also have things like Google Trends. We have things like, uh, Amazon has keyword capability and tools. Microsoft has the Founders Hub with a lot of capabilities and tools. These tools will help you figure out, is the thing I care about, is it interesting to the world? Um, I always— I won't get too into it, but I always leverage this concept of— it's like a Venn diagram. Ikigai is kind of how I framed it in my mind, but it's not exactly because it's— that is way more complicated than what I'm about to share with you. This is just like how to find your value in the world. And I start very simply by figuring out first, what do I love to do? And many of you are watching me do what I love to do. I love teaching. I love sharing. I love taking really hard things and making them accessible to people who thought that's too hard for them. And I'm like, no, no, wait, if I could do it, you could do it. And then I give them lots and lots of examples of people who've done it who were just like them. And then all of a sudden, they do the thing they never thought they could do. And that makes me super happy. So I love doing that. However, you'll notice in that I didn't tell you anything about the topic, right? So then I find an intersection of what I'm good at. And I happen to be good at technology, I happen to be good at building, I have to be good at selling. And so I take an inventory of the things that I love to do and what I'm good at, and then of course I'll have to, um, adjust maybe to the top. Then I ask a very important question. Uh, maybe I will just put the word need. What does, what does the world need right now? And that's where we go and look at the audience and look at the market and figure out what does the world need right now. Does the world need people who know Ruby on Rails? Maybe some people still do, and I— no judgment if you are a Ruby on Rails developer or have built that. I mean, there's still systems but it's like kind of an older technology, right? Are people, you know, what is the world looking for? Is the world looking for— I was going to say COBOL programmers, but actually the world is kind of looking for COBOL programmers, right? But, but does the world— well, I guess it comes down to, right, the world might need stuff, but does it intersect with what you love and what you're good at? If it does, you can make a lot of money, right? This intersection is where all the dollars are. The reason why is because you will be excited to do it. You will wake up and not feel like you're working. You won't even want to call it work. You'll call it life. That's what I do. Like, I don't feel like I work for a living. I just have a life that intersects what value I can provide to the world, which is directly correlated to what I think the world needs right now, what I love to do, and what I'm good at doing. And then I just do lots of that at scale. Massive action. Remember on a couple days ago I was talking about my goals and how I set my goals? When I set my goals, I set my goals to be 10x whatever it is. So for this, uh, event, I wanted to have 100 people join the community. Now in order for me to get 100 people to join the community, which we passed So we actually did that. So I was super happy, but that wasn't my goal. My goal was actually to get 10,000 people in the community. And guess what happened? I'll tell you a fun story about Venus, right? Of the Serena and Venus, right? Venus Williams and Serena Williams. And I loved their story. I never saw the movie though. I should probably, but I never saw the King Arthur movie, but one of the things that I, I saw about Serena's story specifically was that she was about to win. I think she just won her 18th, you know, Open, right? Her, her big competition that she's trying to win. And she then in her mind started preparing like, I want to win another one. I want to win one more and starts creating her training program and working with her coach. And her coach stopped her and said something critical that I wish every coach would tell their people. Like, hey, your job as an individual is not to do one more, is not to build a community of 100. Your job is to win 30 more, right? Like, that's what you want. You want to be the type of athlete that's the best in the world. You want to grow the biggest community in the world around this whatever it is. So you can't— if you end up setting, for example, if I set my target at 100 I would have only said, okay, well, that means I probably need to talk to like 100 people. I likely would have gotten, I don't know, 80. Actually, probably more like 20, because the work I would do to get 100 is nowhere near the type of activity I would do if I wanted 10,000 people, right? And obviously I grew that number because I go big. But the idea is that whatever your goal is, think what your life would be like, like Serena I could win one more Grand Slam, or I could win 20 more. What do I have to be as an athlete to win 20 more? It's different than if I just need to win one. I have to change my training, change my nutrition, change the cadence in which I operate. All the same is true for anything you decide to go into. And as a matter of fact, one of my, you know, ways to stay motivated in, uh, in 2024, in the class that I teach, One of those ways is— I actually wrote it down so I wouldn't forget— is that when you realize that there's a requirement, some of you are going after AI certifications. When you identify a requirement, go after the requirement. Of course. Oh gosh. Right. Do the thing. Do the needful, as I like to say. Right. Get your certification.. But then go the extra mile, do something else, accelerate. So I'll give you an example. At Amazon Alexa, when I first joined that team, Jeff Bezos encouraged— did not require— encouraged everyone on the team to build a skill so that we knew what our customers, our brands would have to do. Instead of building one skill, I built over 100. I remember at the time that I did it, I was there were less than 1,000 skills on the platform. And there was like a moment, it was maybe a day where I had 10% of all skills on Alexa were built by me. I like, I mean, it may not have even lasted an hour, but in that moment I was like, I got this. And as a result, sheer numbers game, I had successful skills. You build 100 skills, a couple of them are going to hit. Same idea. You have 100 ideas. Just like an entrepreneur, you have 100 ideas, a couple of them are gonna make— like, are gonna hit. Do you have the patience and resilience, and are you taking massive action in order to achieve those goals? Oh gosh, you know what I mean. Oh, I was gonna say action. I said action and achieve at the same time, but action. What action are you going to take to make sure that you get where you need to go? And we've learned a bunch of stuff this week. So now you hopefully have uncovered something that you're like, wow, I'm pretty good at this, I could do this, I love this. Now you need to figure out where in the world is it needed and how do you go extra in that area. How do you tell the world that I am good at exactly the thing that you need? And that goes to why I started this challenge with sales and marketing. You have to get who you are into the world because otherwise someone who's known better than you are, who has a better following— I don't even know if it's following— but has a better presence in the industry, is going to be listened to or even just acknowledged more than you will, who hasn't published anything, who hasn't made your perspective known. It is a requirement. Known beats best. So become known. And imagine what happens when the best become known. Like, you will kill it. You'll crush it. So I'm a big fan, and this is of course exactly the type of thing that I've done. So the first question, as I mentioned, is how to build safely. So I encourage you to start building because you want to go into a client or into your work or into, you know, anything that you do and say, oh yeah, I built one of those last weekend. Oh yeah, I built— it's just like me at Alexa when I went back. I'm like, oh yeah, I built 100 skills. And they're like, no, you haven't. They literally would tell me there's no way you did that. It's the product, the, the platform's only a year old. And I was like, yeah, yeah, and I published all my code on GitHub. Like, there is no scarcity. I, I was not hiding it. I was not like, this is my IP. As a matter of fact, I published my most popular skill code on GitHub, and then people took my exact code, did not alter it, which I kind of wish they would have, but they didn't alter it. They just published another skill just like mine, same exact name. And it became popular, not as popular as mine, but they succeeded. I actually like that though. Like, I'm not worried about that, right? Because of course I'm building my brand, I'm doing work, I'm constantly progressing. If you want to be that kind of person who takes someone's code and publish it, okay, right? I think you're more the kind of person who does good work and shares it with people. Not the code. Again, I was— it was earlier in my career, that was 10 years ago. I don't know that I would have done that in hindsight. Maybe I would have provided a guide or a chatbot to guide them through building it. I don't know if I would have given them my exact code, but I learned. But open source was all about that, and I wasn't monetizing this. If you're building a business, obviously there's some different concerns, but the first thing I would do is start building. And my best Advice to you for building is to go to GitHub. Inside the community, inside the classroom, there are what— there's a section called GitHub Accelerators. Every week over the next, I don't know, 15 weeks, I'll be submitting a new accelerator for you to practice with. In the free community, I will not sit with you and kind of walk you through, but in AI Leadership Institute, I'll be doing live lessons. So you'll be able to watch me build those projects. And it's kind of fun. They'll be on YouTube, right? So it's not like a secret thing, but you will get first access and you'll get to be there live and ask questions, which not everybody will get to do. So GitHub is my secret place for learning. It's not that secret, but it's where I go to learn. It's where I go to build. It's where I go to practice. And it's incredibly impactful because now I'll tell you my favorite new feature. It's not even that new, I guess, but my favorite feature is what are called build badges. I don't know how many of you have tried to build code in GitHub and, uh, and the code wasn't actually buildable anyway. Like, it never actually built and there was no way to prove that it was buildable. And now there are build badges in GitHub that I love, um, that allowed me to see, oh, this code does work. So if I go and rebuild it myself, if it doesn't work, it's on me. Like, the code actually does work. The other thing they have is, uh, what is called Codespaces. So Codespaces allows you not to have to worry about setting up your own machine, and I've hosted many a machine before, setting up your own machine, downloading all the packages, getting everything set up. You can just launch a GitHub project in a Codespace and it's all set up for you and it runs in browser so that you can actually do a lot of these activities in browser. Here is a— I'll call it— it's not really a hack, it's like a one thing that hardly anyone does. If you do nothing, just step through— oh gosh— code, specifically Python. Just step through it, right? When you see a machine learning project, a chatbot application, oftentimes if it's written in Python, you can open up that Python script and you could just play each button and watch what happens. Learn how it works. It doesn't— like, it's not, it's not hard. It's actually quite intuitive. And if it's not intuitive, you can actually pass that open source, like, you know, open licensed piece of code into ChatGPT or a like thing. I used Claude 100K today. Like use Claude, whatever one you want to use, put that code in there and ask the model to explain it to you. Ask the model, like ask an LLM to explain to you what the code's trying to do. I call it conversational repository. Soon you will see, just like with all things, that GitHub will add that feature right in. And actually, I think there is some of those features are already in the toolset for enterprise. But adding that feature of just being able to ask questions of a repository, why were you built? What do you do? How could someone use you incorrectly? That's pretty cool. Of code that maybe was written 10 years ago or 20 years ago. Like, this is gonna change everything, but it's a great way to just learn. Build GitHub projects. I'd pick the one that have build badges so you know it works, or one from reputable sources like Amazon, Microsoft, Google. Use Codespaces if you don't want to set up your machine. I like setting up my machine because I constantly run the risk of messing it up, and that's exciting for me. Some of you may not find joy in that moment, so use Codespaces for that. And then if you do nothing else, even if you'd never build anything, at least go and step through the code. I taught an expert prompt engineering class last year and When I taught that class, I think there were 70 people in the class, and all the expertness was not building anything. All it was was stepping through expert code. And there were areas— this is what I love about the new way we learn— I basically took out certain aspects of the code that you had to replace. So for example, the API key. In order to know that, hey, I'm building an app that uses an API, I thought the first thing you should do is know how to go get that key and paste it in. Now, if you just step through it, the instructions would tell you how to do that. Less than 10% ever finished the work in that class. Less than 10%. Now, I also found out through research, less than 10% of people ever finish a book that they start, ever finish a class that they start. Ask Coursera. Coursera actually will tell you, like, it is very rare to be a finisher. So I'll say that as the last thing. Adopt a new mindset and finish what you start. The littlest thing. Finish stepping through a Python application. Finish building an app, right? Finish using, um, I mean, for goodness sakes, we have very easy no-code solutions on Microsoft, right? Microsoft, what's that chatbot thing? Oh my gosh, I can't remember. VBA, no, VPA. Anyway, um, but you could use all these different systems. Uh, VoiceFlow is an Alexa skill, or now a voice skill application platform with lots of different APIs that you can use. It's all WYSIWYG, just build something and get to the point where you can see it work. Now some of us, and I actually know this because many people in the world don't finish what they start, so there's certain ways, and many times that ends up— it has a very unfortunate side effect of not being a finisher. It has the side effect of decreasing our own self-confidence in finishing things we start. And I'll tell you how I know this, right? I went to high school, I thought I would finish, but I didn't. There's lots of stories out there. I've done— talked about this on every keynote stage I've ever been on about why that is, but I didn't finish high school. But I was really smart. So I took some tests, SATs, ACTs, and I early admitted into college, university, actually Embry-Riddle University. I have friends from Embry-Riddle who are in our space now, which is so cool. But I went to university. I didn't really enjoy that either. And then luckily Y2K hit. And when Y2K hit, I quit. I did not finish. And over a decade of my career, I was kind of like, Why didn't I just finish? I should have just finished. And it decreased my confidence so much so that I had to do other things to compensate, like take more certifications and take more classes and start teaching. And do— I mean, now many people look at me, they're like, oh my gosh, Noelle, you do so many things. I think the reason I do a lot of things is because it's, it's part of who I had to become when I didn't finish the things at the beginning. I don't know, maybe not, but it's certainly something that I think about.. So now I have little things that I do every single day, and I'll talk to you about it in the routine section, but I do every single day to build self-confidence in myself. And you might be surprised at what they are. So I'll come back, but being a finisher is key. How do we just finish the books we read? You know, we start, finish the GitHub projects, we fork and start to rebuild, right? How do we finish a job? So one of the things I do very confidently and passionately when I go into an organization, I am crystal clear and I actually, I think I make usually the person who's hiring me a little uncomfortable because I'm like, no, I want to know exactly what done looks like so that when I get to that point, I can be like, check, I'm done. Guess what being a finisher also does? It tees you up to be a very good deliverer of AI solutions. In the last 5 to 7 years, it's actually higher than this. I'm being conservative, but 80% of AI projects failed. And the reason they failed, and I was part of a lot of these, a lot of projects, hundreds, thousands, maybe, projects, and over the last you know, since 2015, 2014, these projects failed because they lacked— I'll just say it simply— metrics for success. They lacked the box that you would check to say this works and we're good and we're moving on. They had no clarity of like, what does good look like? What is done? What is success? And or worse, they had a bunch of boxes and they didn't prioritize them. And so the boxes would be like, okay, if we do all these things, we'd be successful. When the reality is, is actually success is maybe just one of them. But there was just no clarity, no leader to drive what is the reason for doing this task. That's why I love generative AI projects. Because I can laser focus on a single KPI, right? I'll— for those of you who are familiar with the term, right, a single key performance indicator. Like in call center, one single key performance indicator that I often start with in a call center, like, uh, customer service type application, is I'll start with total— well, actually, that's where I'm at now, but Average handling time. How long does it take an agent once they get a call to handle a call, and can I make that less? The time it takes for an agent to do that work costs money. So it's a very clear number. When they spend 5 minutes times 150,000 agents, that's $9 million. I just made that up, I have no idea. Don't do that math, right? But if I know that that's the baseline I can go in and say, what happens if I take 5 minutes and turn it into 2.5 leveraging AI? And then I have a direct equation that I can correlate to business value. And I can do that very quickly. So I say, if average handle time goes down by this percent, check, I win, we go to production. Or at least pilot or whatever the next stage of that evolution is.. But picking that KPI is critical. And that actually leads us to the second most common question that executives ask, which is, right, the first one was, how do I build safely? That's sandboxes. You should build them. The second question is what to build. What do I do? I had this question last night. I was talking to the ethics team or ethics class at Miami Dade College, part of the program that I helped create there. So awesome. And so there's an ethics class that they're taking. So I was there and one of the questions from one of the students was like, what do we even do with this thing? I get it. I get the idea. But how do you know what to use it for? And the what is actually a rubric that I outline in the book that I just dropped in the community called Your First Mile in AI. And that rubric is first figure out what your core values are. Then figure out what you think is risky. Create a correlation, right? I usually plot it on an axis and then find someone like myself or Joe or any of the other people in the community to say how risky— or I'm sorry, how easy is it, right? What's the level of complexity? How complex is it? What's the level of complexity? That's the key, because I want a core value-driven, low-risk solution that's easy to implement. And every company has these, every single one. And almost, I would say, a very small fraction have actually moved into the direction of using it. So knowing that that's the question they're asking, this is my rubric. As a matter of fact, Ali Kay Miller, one of my friends, um, on LinkedIn just announced her— she's got some framework she just came up with. I think it's called like dot, dash, star or something like that. But it's very similar, right? Mine's a little bit more on the programmatic side because she's more on the business side. But, but very simply, I want to make a promise to an organization about an AI solution that's not going to hurt their business, that's aligned with who they are and what they want to do in the world, and that they can get results quickly. And each one of these has their own set of, you know, and you could use exactly this if you wanted, but it's the rubric of how do you find out what core values are. Some companies, when I go and I do this workshop with them, I first spend 4 hours on this question alone. But when I do this workshop, we might get stuck just establishing what their core values are. So knowing that companies get stuck there, I want to invite you to also evaluate your core values. This is not just for businesses, but it's also for you as a professional. You should know what your core values are, and you should align yourself with companies that have similar core values. All right, so the third question— and I think you'll like it, I hope, I like it— the third question executives ask me is who. What that means is who is going to do this work? And more importantly, how is it impacting my workforce? Right. So what is it going to do to my workforce? To be very candid and transparent with you, I want to share that when I first started having this conversation last year, in the beginning, maybe even end of the year before, 2023, 2022, in the early part of 2023, most organizations that I was talking to had dollar signs in their eyes around the number of people that they could get rid of, the number of FTEs they could shed because AI would take those jobs. That was a very naive initial approach to leveraging this technology. And the reason why is because many of those organizations Many of the organizations I even worked with decided to cut into the muscle of their organizations on a tactical short-term vision of cutting costs when those very same people would be needed. And this is shown because if you look at these companies, look at the layoffs that were done and then look at the headcount that they opened there. I am now— of course, we've got now a year of experience doing this. We now realize the very same people we laid off were actually critical people with domain knowledge that could have helped us had we been willing to upskill them. I think you'll like this analogy, but just like training a model is hard, just like facial recognition, right? Microsoft, Amazon, IBM all got called out during COVID for facial recognition bias and models in production that were hurting people, that were not seeing people of color, that were not seeing gender. And in that example, those companies shut down their models, took them offline. One perspective to think about, and I mentioned this earlier this week, is, okay, I get it. They took it offline, no problem. Are you building another one? Are you doing something else? Are you making it better? I will not, you know, I will not pontificate about what they actually did. And I don't want to paint a bleaker picture than it is. But the reality is, is that no model is broken, right? Models do implode. So I should say most models are not broken that aren't doing what they're supposed to, right? If it's giving us bad information, biased information, like That's not because it's broken. It's usually because it's untrained. And it's up to you, up to the leadership of an organization or of a company to have the stamina to continue doing the work to train a model till it gets a better result. Now, again, I'm not saying all models are this way. I have watched models implode. I have watched models disintegrate before my eyes and become unusable. But for the most part, 90%, maybe even 98% of the projects that I've been involved with when we got an undesirable outcome, it increased if we had a leadership that was supportive, we would just continue training and it got better. Alexa is a great example. When it first released, it was not awesome at certain things. It was actually terrible. Sometimes when you said the word please and thank you, it would beep out. If you remember, like you'd say, please tell me the time and it would go beep beep. In other words, it had no idea what you were saying because you used a word it did not understand. And that word was please. That's not— no longer the case, but that is what happened in the beginning. I remember, I'll tell you a fun story about a project I got to be on. I was in Seattle and back then you might know this guy Marshawn Lynch. He's actually— he was in some Super Bowl draft commercials. I think it was like, I think it was a Lay's commercial actually. Anyway, Marshawn Lynch at the time, he had just retired from the Seattle Seahawks, and he had not yet started back at the Oakland Raiders, I think is the timeline anyway. It was back in like 2015, and I remember the team came in and said, hey, who knows Marshawn Lynch? And I am not an NFL person per se. I did not know who he was at the time, so I didn't say— I didn't raise my hand. Well, it turned out that they didn't want all these fan people who would be like, oh my gosh, Marshawn Lynch, you're so awesome, take a picture. He doesn't really like that. So much, I guess. And so I'm like, heads down doing something. And they're like, ah, Noelle, you're going to Oakland. And so I was selected to go to Oakland. And I went to Oakland to help him because when he spoke to Alexa, it didn't work. When he said— when he invoked Alexa in his business where he wanted it to turn on the lights and open the doors and unlock things, it didn't work. And so I was invited to go and talk to Marshawn.. And I remember walking in and being like, hey, and talking to him. And he was like, you're a— he was like, you're pretty smart, huh? And I was like, I mean, I hope so. And then he offered me Hennessy at like 10 o'clock in the morning, which I did not know what that was. Luckily I said no because I politely say no whenever people offer me things like that. But, but it was funny because after I was like, oh my gosh, that was such a Marshawn Lynch moment. Anyway, so I was there to help him kind of set it up. But here's the thing I learned is that he started— I was like, okay, great. So Alexa's not working. Talk, you know, invoke Alexa. And he said, oh, okay, Alexis, turn on the lights. And I was like, oh, no, okay. So it's Alexa, right? So I'm trying to train, like, no, it's not Alexis, it's Alexa. And he's like, oh, okay, Alexis, blah, blah, blah. And he did not change the words. I'm like, Okay, one more time. So it's Alexa with an A at the end. He's like, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm like, okay, so this is gonna, this is, this is gonna be a hard one. So as a result, that information, right, we took that back. And as a matter of fact, there was actually an SNL skit about the elderly also using Alexis. And it's really funny because the model then was updated, trained, right, to accommodate this behavior. Like it was broken, and then we trained it. And now you could try it to this day. If you say a variation on Alexa, as long as you're pretty close— Alexa, Alexis— and that's why also we have a little bit of challenges with people who have names in relation to Alexa, even Alex sometimes. But that model was trained to now pick up more of those wake words. And it was an intentional choice. We're going to train the model to understand you now. And poof, now it understands you. That's awesome. I love that. And so similarly, the reason I tell that story is, A, I like the idea that we can fix problems with AI. Like, if a model is not working, it is fixable if you have the stamina to fix it, if you have the resources to fix it. Upskilling your organization, upskilling your team is very similar. Like, you could give up on them, you could lay them off, or You could do what we did for Marshawn Lynch. You could just go retrain it and make it work, right? You could go retrain those people. And that's the world that we are in now. It actually is a great segue to our, you know, amazing guest today. But before we do that, I do want to just— I'm just going to recap what we chatted about. And don't worry, I'll give you these notes. But we had these 3 questions. I'll give you some tips and tricks as we roll into the Q&A after our interview today. And I'll also share with you, I mean, this upskilling thing is a whole area. You could just do this because companies are getting access. And I know this from a project I was recently on where I was educating a company on how to use Microsoft Copilot. And in my first conversation with them, they said to me, well, we feel like they should just be able to learn how to use Copilot. Like, It should not be something that they need training on. And what I remembered was my time at Accenture when they made that available to a bunch of people and those people were executives and they're like, here's Copilot, have fun. And we found out like 30 to 40% of them actually gave feedback that it was not useful. And I, as somebody who uses it every day, I was like, what do you mean it's not useful? I don't even understand what you're saying. And what we found out was, is that the reason it wasn't useful is because they didn't understand the concept of prompt engineering. They didn't understand the concept of writing a clear thought to get a clear outcome. You know, garbage in, garbage out, things that as a technologist have kind of been ingrained in the way that we think. Not everyone thinks that way. And so I now do like a 4-week training for companies, right? This 4-week process of teaching people And once they're done with 4 weeks, their productivity goes up by 30-40%. But without that 4 weeks, here's what's I think fascinating. Their productivity with a con— like a conversational agent like Copilot, their productivity actually goes down. They get worse. And the reason they get worse is because— and some of us have gone through this— where you get caught in this rabbit hole of questioning to a model and you never get a good result. And so Upskilling is not just about teaching people AI. It's also about teaching them how to use the tools that are in— oh, I should make it a little bigger— in their toolbox. Meaning inside Copilot, inside of Google, right? In the Google Workspace, inside Zoom, inside Teams, there are AI services that are going to help them. But if they don't know what they are, they don't know how to use them, and they don't know how to clearly ask for the help that they need at the time that they need it, they'll actually get lost in these tools and it'll create a level of resistance that'll be very hard to overcome.

Awesome.

Okay, great. So we are about to— so hey, Dan is here too. I will send you over the link. First, we're going to have Daisy and then Dan's going to join us right after. Hey, Oh, I haven't shown you. So I want to encourage you all. I'm super excited to invite a longtime friend who knew that we would be here, but a longtime friend, Daisy. Hello, welcome. It is early for Daisy, not early like in Asia, but certainly early for us in the United States. She's coming. You are, are you on the West Coast today?

Yes.

Yes. Okay, great. So thank you for joining. I was like, so sheepish about asking you because I didn't want to wake you up or get you up early on a Friday. But I'm so grateful that you're here. Daisy and I have met quite a while ago, years ago. And I remember when we first met, we were both kind of on a very similar journey. But I don't want to steal the thunder. I would love to start. I sent you a few questions. I will warn you, I tend to deviate from those questions when you start saying stuff and I'm like, talk more about that. But I will try to not ask anything you aren't prepared to or I don't feel like you can answer. But first, who are you? Let everyone know who you are, what you do, and also a bit about your journey. I think your story is so amazing. I would love for people to understand kind of how you got to this moment doing the thing that you're doing.

Sure. Yeah. Thank you, Noelle. Thank you so much for having me. Noelle has been amazing. I think she is a great mentor, even though she doesn't know she's my mentor. She still is. But my journey started quite a while back. I started at the largest winery in the world, and they, at the time, they had just purchased and acquired a big brand. And so it was growing quite a bit, and there was a digital transformation within the company. And that's kind of where— when I started, and I started seeing how automation was impacting the workforce. And I got to see firsthand how AI could optimize supply chain and improve safety. So I got really interested in technology. And I went back for my computer science degree. And when I completed my computer science degree, I started learning more like because when you go to school for computer science, you're like, okay, well, what do I do now? So I started exploring different options and eventually started attending things like Voice in AI, which I think the year I attended, it was before COVID So there was really like no way for me to like meet people in person. But I met Noelle Russell Russell that way and amazing. She was an amazing speaker talking about like AI early on before like ChatGPT, um, came out. And really that's where I started learning a lot about like communities with like in the AI space. So I think communities in the AI space are huge, a great way to learn, a great way to ask questions and to see if, uh, what you're thinking is valid or if there's more areas to explore further. But really communities are huge. I'm part of a few different communities. And then I started taking a data science boot camp where we explored kind of, you know, the workings around AI, what the technologies and tools that power AI. And so that's where I got my foundations of like AI. And then eventually I went on to start like speaking more about AI. We had Noelle Russell Russell come to our community. To speak about AI and a lot of like the community here, it's not very tech focused. And so we are heavy on agriculture. And when Noelle started talking about like, you probably have used artificial intelligence already if you use Alexa, she started opening people's eyes to see like, oh, okay, like, yeah, I've done that. And so we started our startup journey last year and now we're helping to train and teach people about artificial intelligence. And how they can use generative AI in a work environment, in a class environment, how parents can use it to advocate for their students and different things like that. That's where we're at in our journey right now. I don't know if there's more you want me to share.

No, I love it. I love it. I'm so excited because I think you're, I guess, quite a few chapters ahead, but you started at the same place that many of the people that are listening today are now, where you are interested in the space, but you're not really sure where you're going to navigate. And, and in your environment, like, over the last couple of years, I'd love to understand a little bit about, like, what drove you to, for example, start your own company. Um, because I think— and the, the type of thing you're doing in this company, you just talked about it a little bit, but I'd like to have everyone understand kind of what, what process you went through to say I'm either going to try to be an entrepreneur and build this inside a company, or I really think that there's a gap, or what was your philosophy on deciding to start Yuda? And tell us a little bit about that company, what the name stands for. I just love this story there.

Yeah. So Yuda derives from the word ayuda. So in Spanish, ayuda means help. Ayuda, man. Yes. And so what we saw was that a lot of people were struggling in general with, uh, diving into emerging technologies, right? Especially in the area that I come from. Like I said, it's not a big tech-focused community. So a lot of people— and this is happening all over, right? Like, it's like, I want to get started in tech, I want to do this, but I don't know where to start. So that's really where Yuta came from is like having, uh, amazing talented people that didn't know where to go, where to start. And so that's why we built this company. A lot of entrepreneurs who have small businesses don't know how to leverage like generative AI. So that was another reason that really pushed us to say like, there's so many opportunities here, and how can we start something to not only to build our own revenue streams, but to help people. And so that's kind of where it derives from, leading community events, learning from people, getting that data of like, here's what we want to see, learn, here's what we're struggling with, and then building kind of something out of that.

And did you, like, when you built this company, like, what, who are you going after? Like, is it specific? Is it regionally focused, like around Modesto? Is it global? Who is your audience and what made you decide to go after that audience? Earlier in the session today, I was talking about how important it is to, first, I think you've done a beautiful job of figuring out what you're good at and you've combined that with something you love to do. But that critical next piece is like, who are you serving? And tell us a little bit about how you figured that out. And I think it's not like you had this light bulb go off. I feel like it was a a need that progressed, but would like to understand your thinking around who and how did you decide to go to market?

Yeah, so I think it was a lot of experimenting, talking to different people, giving different sessions about what we were trying to do. So we started with students, giving a lot of talks to students on generative AI and helping them understand how to use generative AI. And then we started talking to companies and seeing like where their needs were, and we kind of aligned with both of them. So currently we have a roadmap of where we want to be in the future, which is on a global scale, but we want to start regionally first and really help our community before we go out and help others. And so that's how we're, we're kind of going to market, is just starting regionally and then going further from there.

Amazing. I love it. And tell us a little bit about your— and again, I did not, I didn't put this on paper, but I think it's amazing how you structured the team, right? Like you're not a, you're not a team of one. Um, you kind of have, you have this amazing team of, of people that you work with. Tell us a little bit about who those people are and like, how did you all get together and decide to do something like this?

Um, so we're all part of this group called Google Developer Group, and a lot of us are ambassadors for Women Techmakers program. So we get together and talk about technology. And from that, like, it's kind of like if you go to a hackathon, you meet people, and a lot of businesses start that way, right? Like, we met at a hackathon, we started a business, you know, we started this idea, it turned into a business. So we've been doing this since 2019.. And a lot of the people who've come to these events continuously, we just started talking about like, there's such a need for this here. And I kept hearing the same thing over and over. So the group is comprised of mostly like Latinos, because our community is largely Latinos. And there's probably about 5 of us who are partners on this, but 2 co-founders. So it's really like using our partners and building from there. And that's really the structure that we have right now. We have partners that we work with who help us build, right? Ambassadors, pretty much. Yes, for our company.

I think that's amazing. And the reason I mentioned that is because I do— I'm, I'm always— I'm not like necessarily one to build a thing, build a product, build a service, but I do like amplifying good things that I know, which is why I'm an MVP for Microsoft. And I think you have that same model, that business model, right? Is how do you align with businesses and partners, create partnerships with organizations that are doing things that can help kind of make your dream a reality. But you're not, you know, for— you're not forcing all of that on your own team. And I love the fact that your team is representative of the audience you're trying to reach. And that level of diversity, something you always say on the stages that you're on, which is why I appreciate it, is that there just aren't enough of us talking in a way that people in these communities can look up and say, oh, there's someone who looks like me. And your entire organization and all of your, you know, the leaders that are coming together to build this, they all represent in my mind, like, they're people that I look, I just don't see enough of. And so it's really cool to see that you've done that and you jumped in, uh, to the world from an entrepreneurial perspective and specifically around the world of education. And that's why I thought it was nice to have you on today because we are in this time where upskilling is critical. And even now, I think companies are not aware of how much work they have to do in this area, but you are taking this community-driven approach which allows people to upskill themselves. And, and that I think is a pretty empowering message. And so that's why I'm so glad that you're here. Now, one, we had a great, interesting year over the last year, right? We were kind of technically officially out of COVID then generative AI kind of hit the scene. Can you tell us maybe one of your favorite experiences last year? Like what's something that you look back and you're like, oh my gosh, that was so awesome. And it was unique because of like the time we were in and what we were doing.

Oh, wow. That's—

I know there's a lot. There's a lot. We did a lot of fun things together, but I'm just thinking like a project you were on or even an event. I mean, you talked about VOICE, but like, is there something that you were like, oh my gosh, that was the best. I hope we do more of that in 2024.

Yeah. So we do have our two large events, Deaf Fest and International Women's Day. International Women's Day was heavily attended.. And that was beautiful because women in the tech space is hard to see. And we had a lot of attendance, a lot of excitement around artificial intelligence, Gen AI specifically. And for DevFest, Noelle Russell Russell, you came here this year again. And we had so many people like interested in what you were saying. And really what you're doing, and they were there to upskill themselves as well. So I think It was beautiful to see that, you know, people are coming in and upskilling themselves. Like, they don't have to wait for their employer to say, like, hey, let's, you know, invest professional development dollars on you. They're doing it themselves. And unfortunately, companies are not always up for professional development. They're not there to support their employees that way. But there is so many resources out there to upskill yourselves if your company is not providing that for you.

Absolutely. And but to your point, there are so many. And so having an organization that could help guide you, which is why I think, you know, your organization is so well suited because especially in an area where it's not known to be super technically friendly or have lots of technical programs. So just like in the sea of hundreds of thousands of things that you could learn and do and go certify against, like who's going to be— what do they call like your Sherpa, right? Who's going to be the person who kind of guides you through. And so it's really amazing to see the work that you're doing in that space because I think that alone is incredibly valuable, like just not having to sift through all of the things yourself and then pick the wrong path because you just don't know, like learning from those who have come before you and your entire team kind of represents that. So it's really cool to see. What is something that, you know, last year I just found that there was a lot of things happening last year and I learned some pretty big lessons that I think were unique in the world of generative AI. Is there anything— and it may not be just last year, maybe over the course of your kind of entire trajectory going from, you know, the work that you were doing on the corporate side into now trying to help those who are getting those roles. What is some of the— maybe a big lesson that you've learned or a big takeaway that you're now like, wow, we do things differently because of this experience?

Yeah, I think I would have to say Seeing the bias in AI has been really big for me. It's impacted me because it kind of helps me realize, like, I can't just go in and, and not do things with a lens of, like, diversity, inclusion, and equity, right? And that's huge because a lot of people do that. They just like, this is a cool thing. And, you know, who cares if, like, other people are being impacted? Um, and I think when I take the approach of like using generative AI, I always have that in mind and it helps to align where we're trying to go and the message that we're trying to give out is like, make sure we use these tools responsibly and make sure you use it as a tool and not as something that's taking over for you.

Um, 100%. Yes.

Yeah.

And I, I always think to myself like, how quick people— and oftentimes it's not even super malicious, right? Like they're kind of looking around and they're— because their teams are not very diverse, when they ask like, wow, do we think this is good to go? Like everyone's like, yeah, it looks great. We should do this. And they're not— to your point, like they, they aren't really thinking how it might hurt. And we talked about this yesterday in the form of design justice. It's also a section in the book that you all now have access to joining the challenge. But like, how do you create and design a solution? Meaning at the beginning, like the first thing as you're ideating, how do you ask different questions based on what we now know is a potential outcome? You know, I have a Google alert called AI gone wrong and ChatGPT gone wrong, where I just get alerted every morning, 6:04. It's not the best thing to start with, by the way, with your day. But I go in there and I will look and I'll be like, oh my gosh, there we go. Like, here's another company that didn't think about these questions. Like, how do you do it safely? How do you do it responsibly? How do you do something that aligns with your core values? Like, people are— the hype allows our enthusiasm to drive a lot of the momentum in the decisions that we make. And I think it's so critical that we actually tie to core values. And those core values, oftentimes when you're thoughtful about it, is going to be like, how do I take care of the people that work for me? And to your point, like, I think we are seeing a shift in professional development awareness, right, in companies that they're realizing that if they can empower their workers, this is actually going to be a huge time for growth and prosperity for them if they keep those workers and open the funnel and serve more people in more demographics, in more languages, as opposed to shrinking it, putting in a robot that's actually going to decrease someone's trust and interest in working with you, decrease their connection to your brand, their connection to your core values. I think we're seeing a lot of organizations say, you know what, we don't want to necessarily go that route because we're watching companies that do really struggle in public eye. Even OpenAI for that matter, right? Like we're watching one of the largest, most successful companies in the world building the largest models in the world.. And we are watching them battle with a lack of diversity on their board, battle with, you know, just friction inside of their teams, lack of, you know, intentional, mindful, responsible leadership. Like, there's just— it's weird to watch a company like that on the main stage, if you will, right? Like, right in front of us, you know, and these things happen on a Friday. It's like As the World Turns, like every day you're like, what's going to happen next? But the sad part about that is that the models they are using and that this friction is happening in, there are billions of people using it. So we need to now be much more careful about how that happens. And so I love that that's something that you're seeing and now you're focusing on as well. Now, one of the things that I always like to ask is you've been, you know, you've learned and moved into the world of AI over the last, I don't know, 5, 7 years. Like, it wasn't what you were doing. It's not what you were born and raised to do. It's not what you were classically trained to do. So can you provide us some guidance on like, what did— what were you doing all by yourself? Like, internally, what was the mindset that you had to acquire in order to move into this space and stay successful in this space, right, as you've pivoted through different roles and opportunities? Because I think it's very, very important for people to understand kind of the different lenses that we all go through. So I'd love to understand your story about like, how did you do this? What was your process? What was your plan? What did you do just in the last year to get upskilled on GenAI even?

Yeah, I think the first part is like getting over the fear of learning, right? Like a lot of people have that. They're— they think, okay, I can't do this. Like, I'm not, you know, I don't have all the skills. Like, I don't have a technology background. So I think getting over that fear of like not knowing if you can learn something new. This is definitely something that a lot of people can learn if you're following the right people, making sure that you're going forward with this responsibly. So the first part is getting over the fear and then learning from communities that already exist in the area. So we are pretty close to the Bay Area, so I'm able to attend a lot of the community events around GenAI. So that's really how I learned is like going to events and meeting people who are in the space and, you know, like just talking to them, doing talks together and building projects together. So that's really, I think, the best way to learn is like find a community and build together. You're there to ask questions and learn from each other because everybody, like you said, brings a different perspective. But that's been the biggest thing for me is going to these events and learning and then following up with those people and building something together.

Yes, I 100% agree. And you and I are big community builders and community makers. And I think one of the important things to realize is that there is— if you do not find a community that you feel safe learning in, and maybe you don't even want to create one, but I will encourage you to connect with people who are building these communities because we're also friends, right? So if I have people that are on the West Coast, like my inclination is to be like, connect with the people in Modesto that I know. They're amazing. Like connect with like our network. Doesn't mean you have to necessarily be in the I Heart AI Institute. Maybe you don't I heart AI and that's not your vibe, but there are definitely communities for this. And if not, it's great opportunity to create one. I think one of them, big misnomers in people who create communities is that you somehow are extroverted and that you are a teacher and all of this. I think Pete, actually Erickson, who put together Modev is the company and he created the Voice Summit and now it's Voice and AI and now he's got Generate AI. He is not often, does not want to be the person on the stage. He doesn't even want to like have people really talk to him that much. He's kind of like, introverted by nature, but he loves the idea of creating a space. And so that might be something that you think about as an individual as you move into this space. Like, if you don't have a community to go to, just start a meetup. And that meetup doesn't have to have speakers. Just create like a coffee chat. Say, hey, let's go to Starbucks and have 5 people sit together and share what they're doing. You might actually be the only one that has something to share the first time. But everyone who's on this call now at least has the stuff we just talked about to share, right? You just learn stuff. I always— I like this. One of my Peloton instructors, at the end of every Peloton ride, he's always like, you know, share this, what you just learned about yourself in this really tough ride. He's like, share this with people you know, but also have the courage to share it with people you don't know. And I love that because it's actually the people I don't know that I could have the biggest impact. Most people that I know know that I ride Peloton and know I do hard things. No, I do ice baths. But, um, but when I share with people who don't know— I actually had a guy yesterday, a mover assessor, he came in and he shared his story about having a near-death experience with me. And, and I was like, wow, that's like a lot, like TMI. But at the end he said, the reason I share that is not just for you but also for me, and that in sharing he's healing. And I just was like, you know what, I can be that empathetic listener. And community is all about that, like being one of the people in the room that's just an empathetic listener. You're not a— you don't teach, you don't show up, you're just there to support the growth of other people. And I do think in the world, you know, goes back to our title today, the future of work is actually going to transition to the future of life. Like our life is going to change, what work looks like is going to change. And as we, as companies start to adopt rethinking, reinventing what work looks like for roles within their company, we're going to see— hopefully, this is my utopian vision— we're going to see a world where we have more time to do important things like connect together, like be with our families, like take care of our parents. Like, we're going to have more time to do that. But it does require a leadership that says, when we create this space for you, we're not going to fill it with more work, right? When I reduce your work load by 35%, I'm not going to fill it with 40% new mundane tasks. I'm going to actually give you space to think, to connect. I'm going to— every company will be a company that gives 20% time that says, do 20% of your work that I'm paying you to do. It's going to be for you to think, ideate, write, connect, speak at conferences. 20%, right? Like, that's a whole day. What if you got a whole day a week to do something that you're getting paid to do, but in alignment with what you care about, what you know, what you like, you know, with people that you want to grow and learn with? Like, it will change how our society operates. But it's going to require a lot of change, not just, not just for our leadership to allow that to happen in the workplace, but also for us to even be willing to accept that that's a thing we could do. Many of us work hard because we have been trained to believe that we have to work really hard to be successful. And I'm one of those people, like, I dare say was a workaholic early in my career, like, where I worked harder and I would let things on my family go so that I could be successful because I needed to make money for them. Like, my priorities were to make sure I could take care of my family, but that forced me to work real, like, unnecessarily long hours.. And now I'm in a world where, oh my gosh, I could do so much with less time. But how do I have the mental discipline to not fill that time with other stuff? So I would love to, as we close out our time with you, and you're welcome to stay and be part of the Q&A in my last little section here. But our last time with you, what I always like to ask is if you have any advice or anything that you're doing at UTA that you want to share with us. Like, what can our audience do to support you, number one? And then also, you know, what advice would you give to people who are just like starting this journey or maybe even where you were 2 years ago? Any advice you have for them? And of course, how do we stay in contact with you? Right? Like, what's the best way? LinkedIn, of course. But if there's anything else that we can do or follow or see, we'd love your perspective there.

Yeah, I think so. The best way to contact me is probably LinkedIn. Daisy Mayorga Fuentes, I think, is my LinkedIn name. You can follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, @yuta.io. And then I think the best thing that I've learned is adaptability. Make sure that you can adapt to different situations, be open to new things, and like never stop learning because there is always room for growth in any company.

Amazing. Thank you so much. This is great. We're super excited. Please go out and check out what Yuta is doing. And if you have a way or opportunity to support them in the work that they are doing, especially in the Modesto area, I have a huge heart for Modesto and other communities just like it. So please use any, you know, any love you can send their way. They have lots of opportunities. There's many amazing experts in the field that are listening right now. So if you want to offer to be a speaker, to host a webinar, like to help increase the skill set of the people that they support, I would love for you all to do that. Give some love to Daisy in the chat so that she can go back and be like, oh my gosh, it was so fun. But thank you all for listening and being a part of this. The last half hour, I am going to I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking about the last piece, which is the, the, the part of like what I do every day. And I'm also going to invite another final speaker to just give us their perspective. And they are really big in the Microsoft MVP space. And one of the things I encourage all of us to do, which I actually have, you know, dreams of helping Daisy do this as well, is like, How do we create more diversity in the space of these evangelists and advocates in big tech companies that are driving awareness? And so I think creating opportunities for us to share and nominate each other and bring each other into the fold in these type of opportunities. Dan did it for me, so I'll be bringing him on in just a few minutes. But thank you very much, Daisy. And like I said, you're welcome to be here and listen in. But don't worry, I won't have you on camera so you can relax. Enjoy, and if you have to run, but I totally appreciate your time with us today. Thank you so much. Thanks, Guy. Um, awesome. Okay, so I will now go through and talk to you about that last little bit while I give Dan the link to join us. I know I tried to email, but apparently I must have, um, done it incorrectly. Um, so I'm gonna send this over to you now, Dan, so you should see it. I'm gonna take about 5 minutes, and then that'll give us a chance to end the day with our conversation. All right, so here we go. Okay, so the last thing I wanted to share with you is a little bit about my routine. First things first, I think everyone should have one. It doesn't matter if you do it in the morning or at night. However, there is some very specific brain science that says how different your life is when you wake up early. And some of you will be like, I'm not a morning person. I'm not. I don't like waking up early. It's okay, but you can change that. Like, it's a choice. It's a choice you're making to be a morning person or a night person. It's a mental— like, you weren't born a night person. You were actually born being up, you know, quite early. Um, as a mom of 6, I know this. Um, so as a human, you have a choice. But when you wake up early before the sun— so this is my first When you get up before the sun, there is brain science that backs up the level of productivity you will see throughout the rest of your day increases the earlier you wake up. Now, it does mean you may go to bed early, so I go to bed like super early. I won't even tell you, I like, like a grandma. Um, but before the sun gives you time before the world wakes up. And that world that's waking up, right, is going to fill your inbox and give you messages, but you deserve and require time for yourself. Now, before the sun, that means— and actually have a TikTok, uh, video, an Instagram video that goes through what I do, but I'm going to quickly outline it, um, so that you can see the kinds of things I do and choose to build your own routine. And there's lots of books on this. There's The Miracle Morning, there's 5 AM Club, right? All these books are leveraging that cognitive science that was released to, to share how valuable and impactful waking up early is. And I am one of these people. So I get up around 5, 5:30 every morning, weekends included. I know, um, sometimes I sleep in, like I give myself grace, but most days, 98% of the time, I wake up early. And the reason I wake up early is because I want to give myself time before kids, work, life begins every day. And here are the things that I do. The very first thing I do when I wake up is I say thanks. And it's super simple. Like, I'm laying in bed, my eyes are open, I'm awake. I've now done this so often that I don't have an alarm. Like, and sometimes I even try to set an alarm and it doesn't go off, but I like put my hand on my chest and I'm like, I'm thankful that I'm breathing right now. Super thankful that I woke up. Super thankful. And then I just expand from like just being thankful I'm there to thankful for my husband who's laying next to me in hopes that he doesn't have to get up with me, but he has to. And thankful, you know, that I'm in a house and thankful for my children who are down the road, you know, down the hall and thankful. Like, I just expand it. And for a couple of minutes, I just iterate through all the things that I am so glad I have. And this shifts my day into a super positive note because I'm like, oh my gosh, life is good no matter what it is. And sometimes looking back, I'm like, wow, life was not so good back then. Right? And I always say winter's always coming. There's always these seasons that I go through, but I always wake up and spend— and this is not a long thing. It's like a minute, 90 seconds, right? Just rattle off in your mind. You have to write it down. Just rattle off in your mind what you're grateful for. Once I do that, I actually do get up and I move. That means that I get up and I stretch. I maybe— I have a Peloton in my room, so maybe I get on the Peloton. I have a treadmill at my desk, maybe I get on the treadmill. I have a Peloton Tread. I, you know, so I, I move. Do not overcomplicate this. I just need to also, in addition to waking up my mind, I need to wake up my body and I will say that I'm now in a part of my life where I strength train more than I do like cardio. But I want to share with you a fun fact that I learned. It's like a little trick. It's called 30-30-30. And what this means is that I follow a practice where within 30 minutes of waking up, I will drink 30 grams or eat 30 grams of protein. And what this does is it kickstarts my metabolism. And it— well, I won't say my age, but at my age— no, in my current metabolic, like, life cycle, I need that kickstart. So it helps my body. Now I've got a bunch of things working for me, right? I've woken up and my mindset is positive because I'm grateful. I drink some protein and then I hop on for what's called Steady Stay cardio. So this is like not super hard. It's called zone 2, zone 2 cardio, 30 minutes. That's it, 30 minutes. So this is like a huge part of my routine where I wake up, I grab a protein shake, sometimes hard-boiled eggs, sometimes, um, I make a shake downstairs. It depends on how up I am at this hour, uh, but usually I just grab a protein shake from the mini fridge, I hop on my treadmill And maybe at this time I start doing my planning. So the next thing I do is I plan. And in planning for the day, did I bring it? I did. So I use a planner, a paper planner, a paper planner. But on it, I want to share with you what it does. And I— it is critical to every day. I'm going to flip to a page I haven't used yet. But the first is a schedule. It's a schedule from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Of how I'm going to spend my day. And I learned from someone, they had said, you know, the devil shows up in the blank spots of your calendar. And I don't believe necessarily in like, anyway, I don't, I don't have that religious belief, but I definitely know that when I do not account for every moment of my day, I will look back and be like, what did I even do for 2 hours? Like, what was I doing? So it doesn't mean you have to be working every moment, every block on your calendar.. But you want to have it accounted for. This is why I use Motion, motion.io. So Motion helps me account for things I want to get done, and it amplifies my ability to be productive. The other side, though, is critical. First is the goals I have in my life. This is not the goals I have for today. This is in my life. I want to be a bestselling author. I want to be, you know, global keynote speaker. I want to own a 9-figure business. I want to, you know, and these goals have evolved. Since I was 20s, but I do this every day. Write down the goals I have for my life. Then I write down a quote that'll inspire me. Usually I skip that one because I feel like I think in quotes, um, but the next one is really important, and it's targets. I set the targets I'm going to go after that day in order to achieve the life goals I have established. And what that means is when I look at my schedule and I look at my targets, they should be in alignment with the goals that I have for my life. In every moment I spend— and some— my goals are all over the place, right? I have writing a book, growing a business, but I also have being a good spouse, I have being a good mom, um, I have being a good daughter and wife and, uh, and sister, right? So I have personal goals and professional goals in these. So whenever I look at the way I'm spending my day, I want echo the life goals I have. If I'm not spending time every day doing something in the direction of the goals that I've set for myself, guess what? I'm not going to achieve them. Like, that's just the reality. So documenting how you do that, writing your goals for your life— and I do them in present tense— I am a best-selling offer or author, I own a, um, you know, 9-figure business, I employ women and people of color to do work that's important in the world. I, you know, these are all statements as if it's happening right now. My targets are the steps I'm taking to make that a reality. Then at the end of the day, super important, this is what I do at the end of every day, is I rewrite my life goals. People who like identify their goals once are 50% more likely to achieve them. People who do it twice have exponential results. If you think about your goals twice, it's going to activate what's called the reticular activation system. And what that means is that you— it's just like when you buy a new car and you think you got the only red car in the town, and then you buy it and roll off the lot and start seeing red cars everywhere, right? Like, it's how your mind focuses and attracts. And so when you look at your goals at the beginning and end of every single day, what ends up happening is opportunities you never would have seen before start presenting themselves, opportunities that were always there. But until you wrote down, hey, I want to be an author. Oh my gosh, today's the day I get to tell you. Do you want to know who just signed a book deal with Wiley?

What?

I did. So I am going to in August be publishing a book with Wiley. Wiley. I don't know. Some of you tech people will know Wiley, but what? That's so amazing. I've been writing and it's gonna— I'm— it's gonna do well because it's mine and I'm super excited. But holy mama, like, I've been writing in my book that I was going to write for a major publisher. I've been writing this for years and I got invited. I did not seek it out, they sought me out. This is what happens when you write down your goals. Like, I could cry, I'm so happy. When you write down your goals and you're consistent and then you take action every single day in the direction of the things that you want, your world starts to put pieces together, right? The universe answers the call is what I often say. But it's not foo-foo and airy-fairy, like, it is cognitive science, right? It's brain research. Um, and I couldn't be more excited to share that. Yes, learn AI, of course, but learn AI for a reason. What is your goal? What is your why? What are the things you want to do in this life? And start writing it down every day, morning and night, and then open your eyes to all the opportunities that will present themselves. Um, ah, hi honey. Um, all right. Uh, so my husband's here. Hi, good to see you. Uh, okay. So, so that is my gift to you is that you can achieve anything you want. You remember at the beginning, I didn't graduate from high school. That's embarrassing. I didn't finish college.

That sucks.

Like, I wish I did, but I didn't. I set myself up as a disadvantage, but then I changed my mind. I set my goals and I delivered on targets. Like, that's, that's as easy as it is. One of my goals was to have a bigger impact in the world. And so I would interact with people who had big impacts in their worlds. And one of those people has come to join us for the last 20 minutes of our session today. And I invited him because he represents a lot of the things we've already talked about, but he is a constant learner and he is always learning and then teaching. And I think it's such a special skill, but it also gives us an opportunity to learn through a new lens, another lens of how someone's been successful in this world. And I want to invite Dan Ray to the stage. What's up, Dan? Thank you for being flexible and just showing up whenever I needed you.

Absolutely. Congrats.

Thank you. Isn't that exciting? Um, I can't believe— I, you know, I'm like— and for a long time, uh, they reached out to me, and then, you know, you got to sign the deal, and then they have to sign it back. And I was like, oh my gosh, is this really happening? Um, but it's a dream come true. But the dream, it didn't, you know, just happen, right?

Like, right.

We make a goal and we do the work. We take massive action and oh my gosh, so exciting. So wonderful to have you here. I want you to take a moment. You— I got decreasingly less good at telling everyone what they were going to do when they got here. So Dan doesn't know any of the questions I'm going to ask him. I rarely stick to the questions I send anyway, but I would love for you to take a few minutes, explain who you are and how we met. And also what you're doing right now so we can understand a little bit more about your life and your world.

Absolutely. In 2019, Noelle put out a message on Twitter and said, "Where are all the Black and Latina MVPs?" Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals. At the time, I thought, Well, I know a few, but I don't know many. And at the time I was at Microsoft full-time. I've worked there twice in my career and thought, well, you know, I should probably figure out if there's a good answer to this question. But I also reached out to her on Twitter to say, hey, would you be open to a nomination? I see that you're doing all sorts of great work. And so the first nominations and MVPs that I created were Black and Latina females in my network. Jackie Chiati was one of the second, and then the third was Sharon Conley, who's from Australia. So 3 women, 3 different parts of the US and, and another country. And I currently work for Smarter Consulting as the Chief Learning Officer. So Noelle Russell Russell, as you mentioned, I've been an MVP for 2 years, but I've been an MCT for 24 years, and that's a certified trainer for Microsoft.

Oh my gosh, and I love that. Like, we just talked about this, so it's amazing what happens in the world. Like, Dan and I had never met, and now we've met a couple times since we met in the real world. Uh, we ran into each other, I think it was at Build, um, one year, maybe it was MVP Summit, uh, but then again, most recently he happened to be— and I'd love to know about your cruise— but he happened to be coming to South Florida and was able to join us for our kickoff of I Heart AI Month. So we're excited to have you. What I think is so critical about the role that you played, number one, I would have had no idea how to become an MVP if it was even possible. And you did not just nominate me. You invited me into the process of thinking about, like, is it the thing you want to do? You are one of the best use cases poster people of what an ally looks like. Because not only did you do it for me, but you made it like a practice. I also now made it a practice where everywhere I look, I'm like, ooh, they'd be a good MVP. Where I'm actively searching for people where I'm not trying to— I have a whole business where I'm on stages and people find me to get on their stages, but there are so many opportunities to share what you know with the world. And I don't want to be like, I don't want someone to be like, yeah, but Noelle's the only one. Like, or, you know, like there's only 3 of them. Like now because of you, like that percentage has shifted. And now of course you've brought on 3 people that have the same idea, right? Like how do we bring in more diversity? And it was funny because I remember that year it was, it's called like MVP Buzz. Like season. And so all you hear is like, and this season's coming again in a couple months, and all you see is this buzz of like, I made MVP and it's amazing. And all I saw were men, all of them, and some women, but no brown people. Like, no one. Jeremy Sinclair, he's like my one friend. And I was like, okay, there is a brown person in there. But he wasn't in AI and he wasn't, you know, he was on the Windows side. And so I was just so fascinated. It was almost— and I very rarely do these kind of like snarky responses, you know, like, what's up world? Like, what is wrong with the world? But to have that be answered, not by, hey, we're doing the best we can, which is what the MVP leadership said, right? Like, hey, we're doing the best we can. And they were because like they only know who is invited, right? Who's nominated. But someone like you, being willing to do that. Thank you for that because it definitely, I mean, it's changed like who I am and what I do and I'm super proud to be part of it. It also allows me to stay connected to technology I love and a company that I really like. Both of us have worked at Microsoft and then become MVPs on the backend. I always tell people I actually like being an MVP better than I liked working for Microsoft. I get way more cool tech. Way more opportunities to be invited to conversations, and my feedback is listened to. So I love it. I think it's amazing. Um, but it's, uh, it's fantastic. So thank you for that. I would also like to maybe ask you a little bit— I've seen, you know, you've done some really cool things over the last year.

What is—

what would you say is one of the maybe biggest lessons you've learned since, like, ChatGPT came out? Like, what is one thing that you've changed about what you do, how you do it, based on the fact that now AI is kind of top of mind with everyone?

Yeah, so Microsoft Designer came out in the fall of, I guess it's been a year and a half almost now. And at the time I was at Ignite in Seattle and I saw the announcement, but I didn't have access to it. So I thought about, well, you know, this DALL-E technology, that I haven't worked with seems to be what Designer is based on. I was able to sign up and use DALL·E for image creation. I started lamenting on LinkedIn and other places online about, well, I don't have access to Designer, but at least I can work with the technology that it's based on. Duane Hyatt, who was another person that I found in the community, became an MVP and now works for Microsoft, was, you know, paying it forward or, or, you know, back to people that have helped. Duane was the person that invited me to the Microsoft Designer beta. So besides ChatGPT, kind of early on I saw the early access to Microsoft Designer. We set up a showcase page on LinkedIn, and most recently that's blown up with Jack Rockbottom's message about creating those 3D figures, and their LinkedIn went from like 2,000 followers to like 12,000 followers.

Yes, overnight. Yeah, I love it. I love— and I love that it was because we were just experimenting. Like, it's a, it's a philosophy I think most of us, if you're not doing this now, like, there's no harm in because you're not, you know, you're not building anything for a client or to, you know, for a, in your job, you're just playing around with technology. And that's what I think is so exciting about a program like the MVP program that accelerates your interest in just experimenting with technology and then uncovering something that the world needs to know about. And then you get to go around and talk about those things. And many of the MVPs I know don't even take like big stages, right? Like they literally create communities where they sit in much more intimate settings and talk about the technology, provide labs about the technology. As a matter of fact, we have a couple people, MVPs that joined that are doing, you know, global AI boot camps where they just teach stuff all day long and they're not even the ones teaching. They just organized it and they invited other teachers to come. I'm like one of them often. And, and so it's, it's so cool. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the things you did while you were in South Florida and some of the community type activities? And I mean, can you share the cruise thing? Like, what happened?

Yeah, yeah. So that— there's a really, really cool story about Jonathan Weaver and the, the cruise. So I came down— the reason I was in Florida was because before the cruise that I had signed up for, uh, through my current employer, I found out— or previous to my employment, I found out about the cruise, and I was like, I'm in. And then there's a Microsoft 365 Miami community day. And so I was down there for that on Thursday for a pre-day, and Friday you had the I Heart AI kickoff on Saturday. I was free on Saturday, and then on Sunday we went on a cruise from Miami to, uh, Jamaica. And while we were on the cruise, we did the two sea days on the cruise as community events for 3 hours each, and Jonathan Weaver's one goal for the whole thing— we had 40 people from the community go to the cruise— was to have somebody that just kind of randomly found out about the event. And I was like, well, then they'd have to be on the boat, right?

Yeah, yeah.

They find out about it, go, oh, I think I'll join you, you know.

Yeah, join the cruise.

Um, we had somebody from Finland, of all places, who read about the cruise on a Facebook group that Jonathan had posted in and just showed up on Saturday to say, "Hey, can I join? Is this something that I can participate in?" Totally random. That's the power of community. It's not necessarily just the planned people or the people you knew that you reached out to or the people that are already part. One of the things the MVP leadership said when I became an MVP 2 years ago, was make sure you're a ladder for others. And I loved that analogy or that, that visualization of, you know, what are you doing? Betsy Weber, my community program manager, says make a U at the table. Don't make a circle of your friends.

Yes.

Open to invite others to. So Nakia Carter, when I did my first SharePoint Saturday, because I didn't do a lot of the community stuff on the weekends. So my very first SharePoint Saturday, I met Nakia in Chicago and I said, hey, you know, we have a U here, feel free to sit down. She was at Microsoft at the time, prior MVP, African American woman, you know, so she was one of the people that immediately came to mind, Noelle, when you mentioned, you know, who are the Black and Latina MVPs. But, you know, there weren't a lot, you know, it took a while to think of, you know, who do I know in the community?

Yes.

But those kinds of things that happened on the cruise was just spending time with people and many people that I didn't know.

I mean, and just imagine, like, any one of us could just be like, hey, I'm gonna do something, go on a cruise, and now I'm going to think a little bit more about, hey, we should do these like learning activities, and then invite people and just see who shows up. Like, pretty amazing. But I think one of the most important things— I mentioned this earlier— when you're deciding on, like, how to go to market, if you will, or how to make what you're doing available to people, it's showing up where they are. So one of the things, like, he of course has, um, he is a member in a bunch of different Facebook groups, um, but like going into these groups, these meetups, and letting people know, like, this is something that you're doing will then expose it to people and people you've never even met will show up. It happens to me all the time where I'm like, how did you even hear about this? And they're like, oh my gosh, I searched for you. We have, oh my gosh, this Saturday we're doing Pie and AI from Deep Learning AI and we're gonna, we have like a bunch of savory and sweet pies that people are gonna be able to taste and it'll be super fun. But I only know like 6 people and like 50 people have signed up and I'm like, Huh, that's awesome. It'll be great. And it's just, I love it because I put it in the reason people are coming that I don't know. And that I'm, to your point, creating a you where more people can join the fun. The reason that happens is because I put it on Eventbrite and it's hosted by Deep Learning. So it got exposed to people that I don't know. So how do we open, you know, our aperture for connecting with more people? We actually have to talk to people we don't know. And often ways to do that is to create relationships like Like I said, that's why I love the MVP community. Many times people will show up from the MVP community that are not in AI at all, that are, you know, now I feel like AI is in all the areas, but like are tangentially related in Azure or, you know, in M365 or in even SharePoint and Excel and like these products. So I think it's really a cool world now that we're getting. AI in my mind is bringing us closer together. It's giving us more commonality. Than before it used to be this separate thing. Only certain types of people could learn or use this technology. And now I really am starting to see AI is for everyone. So in our last few minutes, I would love for you to share a little bit about your advice. You are constantly learning, constantly reeducating yourself and moving into— and of course, I mean, I love your role. So there might be people who are interested in roles like that. What is your advice to those who are, you know, maybe a chapter or two behind you or behind me or behind, you know, like they're just getting started or maybe they've started, but they're not sure what to do next. What would you share with them about like some things that they should focus on or maybe an area that they should dive into based on your experience?

Yeah, I'm like you, Noelle Russell Russell. I went to college, so I get to check some college on my resume., or my, you know, my, uh, application to companies. But I went to a 4-year university for 3 years, which is not my recommendation to anyone listening to this.

We have that in common.

I didn't know that.

Figure out a way to get a 2-year, uh, associate's if you're gonna do that.

And talk to a community college that I took some credits from, and they're like, these credits are like 30 years old. I'm like, I know, I didn't come to you 30 years ago to ask, you know, how close am I to an associate's degree? Um, so regardless of where you are with school, um, experience, capabilities, one thing that I found was through a job that gave me the ability to learn was more important than school. So a friend that I met in college— so those college connections really did pay for themselves. Said, Dan, you'd be perfect working for Gallagher in the Chicagoland area. I had never heard of the company. I had no connections at the company, but I had this really good friend that we had taken calculus together. I was horrible at calculus but loved computers. He's like, you don't need to know anything about calculus. I'm not going to be an actuary. I work in support for this company. You'd be perfect for it. I met the manager that this friend I had, and the manager said, I'm gonna have to sell, you know, why you didn't graduate from college, because at the time they wanted college graduates to be considered as employees. And I said, life got in the way, you know. I was 3 years in, I got married, I had bills to pay, I had other things to focus on at the time. So it wasn't that I didn't want to finish school. I originally thought I was going to be an accountant, and, you know, another thing that I'm not as passionate about is much more passionate about computers than, you know, law or accounting codes that change yearly and, and that type of work. So, you know, sometimes the, the path that you think, especially as you're young, allows you to, you know, rethink, like, how can I take what I've already done and move in a different direction, or move where I'm passionate about?

And I think you have you're maybe it's part of like just who you are, but I think a really important thing for everyone to know about you is that you are, you're a connector, but also like you saw that person, like that person was like, hey, you'd be great here. And the power of connection, like knowing people, having real relationships with people, being friends with people, talking to people when it's not just required for work. Like this is how, you know, many of the people that I've helped get jobs or that has helped me get a job has all been because I was actually, I considered them my friend and I would hang out with them even if I wasn't contractually obligated to do so. And so I think that is amazing. Thank you so much for spending time with us. Is the, what's the best way is, do you have anything you want to share with the audience or what's the best way for people to stay in contact with you and follow you? What should we tell them to do?

Yeah. So I use Still Dre, S-T-I-L-L-D-R-E-Y. Me, @NoelleRussell, on LinkedIn, X, Facebook. You know, I'm all over the social medias. We do have a Microsoft Speakers Hub, which is a company page on LinkedIn. That is where almost 2,000 people have signed up to either come together in community, speak, learn about speaking. And you're— to your point, you know, how do you get to this? You figure out how to, you know, to build that community, to get comfortable with speaking. Maybe that's with small audiences to begin with, and you can move up to larger audiences once you're comfortable. It's a lot easier to do something like this, in my opinion, as a starting point, where I don't feel like the focus is all on me, because Noelle, we're having a conversation, right?

Yes.

All about Dan or all about you is, you know, an exercise.

Yes, I agree. Less interesting, right? It's so much more rich when you see it from lots of different perspectives and you are able to apply it in so many different ways. So amazing. Thank you so much. We will also include that link in our notes for today for those of you who are joining. So we are done. Oh my gosh, 5 days together. So thank you for ending it with me, Dan. I'm so glad you were able to join us. He had a packed day, by the way, squeezed us in. So I'm so glad it worked out.

Yeah, I need to run to a class, but thank you so much for having me and wonderful to meet everybody.

Absolutely. Please connect with him on LinkedIn. He's a great friend to have. I am also just so passionate about the people in our community and everyone else. I will be sharing with you just a couple of things over the next minute or so, and this is probably the best thing I can offer you right now. I am about to launch the AI Leadership Institute. Institute. I've been mentioning it all week. This Leadership Institute is going to be an industry, um, alliance that you can join. It's going to be a monthly fee. However, for you all and for my VIPs, you already have access. But if you're not VIP yet, you can join. Um, it is going to give you access to get a cool shirt. So when we go to events together one day, we'll have like a coffee chat and I'll be like, bring your I Heart AI shirt. We could like represent. It would be so awesome. I do not sell this shirt. I only give it away to the people who join my community, my VIP community. So if you want to— and again, I'm not forcing you, you don't have to— but I do want to very quickly share with you what that looks like. The VIPs, you already know, but you're going to get a 30-minute session with me, an AI readiness assessment. And what that means is that I'm kind of like what the questions I went through this week. I'm going to share with you exactly what I think you can do over the next 6 months to shift your career or your business in the right direction. I will also share with you an AI Executive Field Guide. You'll also get access to all the sessions, but most importantly, you're going to get lifetime access to the AI Leadership Institute. You will be a founding member, and this is going to be huge. I'm super excited about it. We will do monthly live learning sessions, which means every month I'll do a class kind of like this, but it's only going to be available to VIPs. We also, though, will be providing the ability to get credits from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, which we already have relationships with. You'll have a chance to play. You'll also get credits from Deep Learning AI to take classes there. So it's an opportunity to really accelerate if you are up for acceleration, really accelerate your journey. I am so excited you shared your time with me and gave me like, like amazing— we had amazing speakers this week. It was so fun. I'm internally grateful for your time. I hope you learned as much as you could, but I also hope you found it enjoyable. This is where my heart is. It's where I really hope, you know, like, let's find more people to share it with. You'll notice a lot of the people we had here, it was all about community. How do we find people, bring them into the fold, make it accessible to them? And then for those of you who want to run, who want to 10x, who want to build, there's a special place for you. But if not, that's okay. Join the free community. You will get tons of huge amount of value. That's where I do all my good stuff. But I will be doing lots of live lessons, coaching, mentoring inside the AI Leadership, which if you sign up today for VIP, it'll be available till Monday. We have a dedicated welcome session for all of the new VIPs, the founding members. Next week, and I would love to have you there. So thanks for having me. Y'all are awesome. Throw some hearts into the chat. I always love to see it. I could take a picture. I could be like— and we'll see a bunch of hearts. But if you loved it, if you love AI, go do what I mentioned my Peloton instructor says, right? Share what you learned this week with people you know. Just share with one person that you know and have the courage to even share it. With someone you don't know. I think this is an amazing time to be in this space. There's so much to be optimistic about and positive about. It was a great week. I'm so glad that you spent it with me, and I hope you enjoyed it. I'll see you in the community. I'll hopefully see you all in VIP, but if not, I'll see you in the I Heart AI community. And thanks for everything. And oh my gosh, it's over. Okay, talk to you later. Thanks, Allison. Thanks, Oscar, for joining. Thanks, Sky, Varol. I'm just running through all the names. You guys were amazing. Um, I can't wait to hang out more with you. This is the new thing, and you guys get to listen about all my crazy Wiley stuff that's happening. So go make your dreams come true. Thanks for everything. Bye everyone.