Now

Work

My portfolio continues to diversify.

When I wound up at DiUS after 10 years at the beginning of 2022, I actually had the intention of freelancing. But the two part time opportunities that sprung up were actually ideal for me professionally, and gave me some stability while we did a renovation at home.

While my 3 day per week role at Vibrance is ongoing, I have finished up at RMIT FORWARD (The Centre for Future Skills and Transformation). So this is the current and emerging shape of my portfolio:

Vibrance: working with some of Australia's most prominent organisations in the areas of innovation and growth. We typically engage with senior leaders and boards to help them bring new perspectives how to shape their strategy and realise outcomes. My role is increasingly to cover the AI angle in these conversations, creating experiences to help bring the full potential of the technology to life.

Collaborate and Deliver: this is my own company through which I do independent consultancy work, and sub-contract through other collaborators. As the name suggests, the idea is to focus on helping people work together, and then to create actual and meaningful outcomes.

Boundaryless: after many years of following their writing, using their frameworks, and doing their training courses, I am really excited to be collaborating with the team on a large scale consulting project. Our client is a multinational company in the mobility space, and we are helping them realise some very ambitions goals.

CatalystFX: Over the past 10 or so years, the Catalyst Network has become a cornerstone of my professional life. It is a very authentic and reciprocal space which I feel grateful to have both contributed to and received many benefits from. Over the past 18 months I have been engaging through the commercial arm with a water company who are navigating a different set of challenges to what I usually encounter in the private sector.

Conversation Design Institute: This one is quite new for me, but looking forward to getting deeper into this space. I have been very actively building conversational AI solutions for corporate clients, so augmenting that experience with the CDI auditing and assessment process will be a good mix.

Learning

Whereas in recent years I have been more engaged in structured courses and bootcamps, that has eased off a bit.

About 18 months ago I did Write of Passage, and I am still striving to build up the writing discipline.

Most of my learning energy is focussed on AI, and it is a veritable firehose. Things are moving so fast that there isn't really time for courses to be developed. I follow Every closely, and Nate B and Hugo Podworski are YouTubers that I frequently draw learnings from.

I continue to pay for Commoncog as I find it a rich source of business insights, as well as Exponential View.

My main "formal" learning (if you can call it that) is my Precision Consciousness training which I have been doing consistently since the beginning of 2022. It involves going deep into the principles underpinning the indigenous wisdom of the Americas (mainly Peru), and mastery of awareness for the purpose of stewarding long-term, collective well-being and creative evolution.

Creating

Last year my band Smith & Cohen (formally known as Sodastream) released our album Half Life, which had been about 8 years in the making. We are looking forward to doing more shows, and are building up a live set which is not just about songs, but includes instrumental textures and improvisation.

Health and Wellbeing

Freeletics: I train three times a week using this app, and it has helped me get into running.

Macrofactor: I lost 10kg last year to get to my goal weight using this app. I track literally everything that I eat, but it works for me.

Habits

Morning pages: something I have done on and off, but back into it lately and keen to keep it up, as it always pays off.