Hi again. My intent is, first and foremost, to provide value to readers of this newsletter. Episode 2 is all about how I plan to do that.
Let’s take a quick look at the landscape of AI, talk about my relationship with it, and lay out a path for what Free Beer Studio might accomplish in the next 12 weeks in a small corner of that landscape.
First, about me - I’ve always been a technology guy - whether that was coding COBOL and RPG on mainframe and midrange systems, teaching technology to K-12 students, or, in my current day job, helping organizations manage endpoint systems ( mobile, desktop, and virtual). I’m fortunate to have lived at a time that allowed me to experience the birth of both the Internet and the mobile device. Because of my 9-5, I was also at the tip of the spear for consulting with companies on how to best deliver remote work and education experiences to their users. That was great!
Through much of that time, I also had a secondary obsession - automation. Taking advantage of the APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow applications and systems to talk to one another, and being able to automate the flow of data from one system to another using tools like IFTTT (If This Then That), Zapier, and Make allowed for workflows that automated a lot of the things I wanted to do. I experimented with things like managing my inboxes and calendars, updating notes and moving files around on my desktop and to my cloud providers.
This automation interest really picked up steam in late 2022, when ChatGPT was released. Suddenly, these same automation tools could be used to leverage generative AI within workflows and prompted to create college-level writing and unbelievable images. How could it get better?
It hasn’t STOPPED getting better. It seems that if you’re watching a YouTube video now, it’s likely outdated tomorrow. The pace of innovation in this space is phenomenal - new APIs, new tools, new workflow and interface builders, front-ends, back-ends, LLMs (Large Language Models). Every. Single. Day.
Goals for Free Beer Studio’s First Season
I don;’t want to try to boil the ocean here - the current world of AI and automation tools is VAST. I’d prefer to break off chunks that will:
help readers get started with some practical applications of AI tools,
help me build internal tooling that will drive Free Beer Studio forward, and
Demonstrate how easily you can build with AI, even if you have no coding background.
So, Season 1 of Free Beer Studio’s will begin with the following projects -
Project 1: Create a Personal AI Assistant Using Consumer AI Tools
Not everyone wants to learn to build a watch, but many of us are interested in knowing what time it is. In this stream, I’ll build a personal AI assistant using tools that are readily available and easy to use. We’ll take a chatbot and give it some tools that allow it to work for us. Check, summarize, and send email, update calendars, look up emails and phone numbers, take notes, manage our task lists.
The key idea here is that the tools to create a system like this exist, are cheap, and are easy to use. We’re going to take these building blocks and create an assistant. More importantly, we’re going to learn some CONCEPTS that help you expand the way you’re using that system as needed.
Project 2: Build the Free Beer Studio Idea Engine and Website
What is an idea engine? Because Free Beer Studio is a content-based business, the idea engine is a machine that will capture insights from AI and automation news (RSS feeds, YouTube scrapes, other newsletters) along with my own ideas, then remix those ideas and mold them into appropriate formats for things like blog articles, newsletters, and social posts.
“Wait, so you’re just gonna regurgitate old content and slap your own label on it?”, you might ask. Not exactly, THIS idea engine will have appropriate human-in-the-loop (HITL) logic, so that I can edit posts and articles, or even let the system regenerate from another perspective. Maybe something like, “can you give me some key ideas to help me write that post from a higher-education viewpoint?”.
The idea is to build a thinking system - a research assistant, a draft writer. Further, I’ll be using a labeling system that shows readers what degree of AI was used in every piece of content I publish.
Project 3: Build 25 Apps and Websites
Web apps, mobile apps, websites, dashboards - the idea here is that there is such a broad array of front-end development tools out there that can powerfully create sites and apps and there is nothing to stop anyone from creating this way. In the app and website building thread, we’ll build some demo projects in each of these categories with as many of the tools as we can. I’ll even use the free tier of the apps in many cases, so it will cost you pretty close to nothing to follow along and bring your own ideas into the world.
Even better, we’ll mix it up further - not just changing the tools, but also creating small, medium, and large projects to show what real no-code development looks like.
Is it really THAT easy? Tomorrow’s newsletter will have a demo related to one or more of these projects.
More to come!