I’ve been working on something – and in the course of working on it, I realized that it was part of a bigger thing for me and the way I think about the Internet.

I have goals for 2025: I want to expand our vegetable garden. I want to place in a mountain bike race. I want to spend more time with my kids (while they want to spend time with me!)

Professionally I want to spend more time using and thinking about AI and its pros and cons. I also want to improve when it comes to impromptu communication: to be able to respond to a question that I’m not prepared for, quickly, concisely, and effectively.

(these aren’t all of my goals – not an exhaustive list!)

I figured I’d take a crack at both the AI piece and the speaking piece by leveraging ChatGPT to build a little web app. I was inspired by Vicky Zhao’s 1-2-3 framework, but wanted a simple, straightforward way to practice and then review, maybe making it a daily habit. Leveraging generative AI, my own (rusty!) HTML skills and a Github Page, and I got the pieces together enough to get something working.

More Good Work Talk – here it is!

But as I was doing this I had the experience of a few things: a classic two-wolves-inside-me scenario. One wolf was asking, “How will you monetize it? How will you know how many people visit? We should add analytics, don’t you think?”

But the other wolf pointed out, “Remember the Old Internet? Where folks would just, make cool stuff and send it out there?” … and I do remember the Old Internet. Like a lot of you, I miss having that digital creative space to connect and communicate.

…so there aren’t KPIs for More Good Work Talk. There isn’t a little view counter at the bottom. Github Pages might gather analytics but I’ve never seen them. This is, for me, a call back to the Internet of my youth: more of a place for humans, building things and sharing them because that’s a fun and interesting way to spend time.

I think I’ll keep building little toys like this – little ways to introduce play into my professional development. I am going to call it Work Play. There may never be any more, but there is at least one. If it’s helpful for you, please do keep using it – but you’ll never get an NPS survey about it, mark my words!