10 Books That Changed My Life
I’m going to tell you about 10 books that changed my life, which is tricky for me, right now. Most of the books that changed my life are not currently in my possession. My library is in storage in the United States, the last 1000 books I could not bear to part with when we moved to New Zealand, so the interesting part of this exercise is — I have to see what really sticks. In selecting my top 10, I want to scan my eyes lovingly over my bookshelves, [...]
Natural Healing Remedies
As it turns out, working 60 hours a week for 9 months is not good for the body. I developed some startling symptoms recently, right about the same time I resigned from my day job, and decided to go back to running my business full time. To cure my symptoms, I used the natural healing remedies that have worked best for me: Qi GongNutritionBaths and SweatPositive ThinkingLaughter TherapyGratitude PracticesThe Naturopathic Principles The Healing Art of Qi Gong Qi Gong is an ancient Chinese moving meditation, and it has been used [...]
One year in New Zealand
I've been extraordinarily busy over the past year. Today is the one-year anniversary of putting in our 30-day notice on the house we were renting in Portland. Within the past year, the Huntress Clan has: Packed all of our worldly possessions into a storage unit Moved temporarily into my father-in-law's house Planted the Fairy Godmother, a dogwood tree that has the placentas of all three of my children in its roots Separated for 2 months while I came to New Zealand to search for a job Attained a full-time job [...]
10 Daily Tools For Positive Thinking
By nature, I am not a positive thinker. I have to work at it. Positive thinking will not do anything by itself, but as Zig Ziglar said, “Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.” The success or failure of many things you do in life depends on how well you do those things - and if a few simple tricks can put you in a positive frame of mind, it can increase your effectiveness, as well as amplify your enjoyment of life. “We do not [...]
My favourite quote of all time is a misattribution.
When I was a young scholar, my life changed when I read this quote: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” I thought that Aristotle said this. For years, I ended my newsletters with this marvellous line, attributing it to the Ancient Greek philosopher and scientist. For a time, I even titled my newsletter ‘Habits of Excellence.’ I’ve been championing this quote because I admire both the content, and the poetic cadence, of the words. It was this very cadence should have [...]
My First Trip to New Zealand
It all started with LookSee Wellington. This program offered all-expense-paid trips for 100 people working in the Tech industry to come and visit Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. 48,000 people applied. Only 0.2% of those who applied were invited, and I was not one of them. Still, applying for a trip to New Zealand got us thinking about that place. And right now, the country I am in is a mess. We had some family members interested in leaving the US, and since the Huntress Clan has expatriated before, we [...]
Ten Things I Really Miss About Living In Costa Rica
It’s been more than a year since I left tropical paradise, and wrote about the Ten Things I Will Not Miss About Living In Costa Rica. As absence makes the heart grow fonder, now I’m homesick for that wonderful place. Here are the ten things that I miss the most. 1. Wearing Tank Tops All The Time It’s sunny and bright in Costa Rica before 2pm nearly every day of the year. If it happens to be the rainy season, you might get a downpour for a couple of hours [...]
The Breath of the Neutral Mask
Who are we before we become the character? That is the question that the Neutral Mask seeks to answer. "There are three masks: the one we think we are, the one we really are, and the one we have in common." - Jacques Lecoq It has been years since I have studied the deep and subtle foundations of the theatrical art, and returning to its arcane depths has given me a creative revitalization that I desperately needed. Last week I went to a Neutral Mask workshop, taught by Sarah Liane [...]
10 Lessons From 10 Years of Marriage
My wife and I formalized our fairy tale romance and married each other ten years ago, on a Tuesday morning. There was no one else present; we rented a penthouse suite in downtown Portland, dressed in our sacred garb, and at the appointed hour, friends and family around the globe lit the candles we had sent to them, and wished us well as we said our vows to each other in solitude. From that day to this, over the past ten years, I have enjoyed a deep and meaningful connection with [...]
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The AI Maturity Ladder (& REPLAY of Hermes vs OpenClaw webinar)
Xero recently published a report comparing how New Zealanders are using AI. They surveyed more than 1000 professionals, and they found that most people are still using AI like a random toolbox. They open ChatGPT, or Copilot, or Claude, or Gemini. They ask a question, get an answer, copy the useful bits, and move on. That’s fine. A toolbox is useful, but a toolbox does not do the work for you. It's just available at your workbench, and it can add [...]
One question for building your next AI agent (JTBD)
Projects fail if they aim too wide. That was the central theme of last week's workshop in the AI Agent Accelerator, the 4-workshop sprint where we build, deploy, and fine-tune AI agents. Using my 4-step SAGE framework, every week we: SCOPE agentic projects AUTOMATE robotic work GENERATE skills and system prompts EVALUATE effectiveness Projects succeed and fail on their scope. A well-defined scope creates focus, sharpens judgment, and concentrates ambition to a precise outcome. The scope of a project is the minimum required to [...]
The SAGE Framework for Building AI Agents
AI agents are changing the way work gets done. As agentic AI systems become more capable, our real advantage will not come from technical proficiency. Our advantage will come from knowing how to manage AI agents well. The ability to scope agentic projects, manage autonomous systems, evaluate their performance, and design the information environments that make agents effective - these are the skills of the future. These four steps make up the SAGE framework: Scope agentic tasks Automate workflows Generate skills Evaluate results [...]
How to Make a NotebookLM for a Conference [EPIC AI Replays]
↠↠ The velocity of learning has increased. ↠↠ As part of TechWeekNZ, I hosted the EPIC AI Conference in Christchurch on 21 May, 2026. There were a dozen speakers and panelists, and lots of practical takeaways. While we did record the sessions (big thanks to Daniel Panjaitan and Greg Dickson for volunteering!) it's a lot of material to digest. You can watch all the replays at this link: https://christchurch-ai.com/epic-ai-conference ...or, you can use NotebookLM to quickly extract the best [...]
Lessons from ‘Leadership in the Age of AI’ [REPLAY]
Last month at EPIC in Christchurch, I hosted a TechWeek panel on Leadership in the Age of AI with four local CEOs: Anya Anderson from RedSeed, Julie Ryan from CustomD, Ali Adams from ChristchurchNZ, and Brad Fraser from Agentic Intelligence. The conversation kept coming back to the human work of leadership: judgment, communication, trust, empathy, change management, and knowing when enough is enough. The kind of judgment only a human can make. AI is not making leadership less human. It's actually [...]
[REPLAY] Managing AI Agents – The Next High-Value Skill Set
TechWeek in New Zealand is a festival for celebrating technology in Aotearoa. I hosted a lot of AI events. The first day of TechWeek, I delivered a sold-out webinar, AI Agent Management: The Next High-Value Skill Set When I asked attendees for a 🔥 burning question 🔥 they had about AI agents, answers included: How do I build my own model and agent? How can you use AI agents safely? Are they expensive? How secure is an AI agent? How easy [...]