Introducing: Beyond the Hype - A Series of Field Notes on Real GenAI Capability

TL;DR

Most people are stuck in GenAI experimentation. This series is for those ready to move forward — into meaningful productivity, skills that scale, and systems that stick. Starting next week.

The Premise

IoT was for nerds. Blockchain brought in the finance bros. Now GenAI has fused both tribes into the mother of all hype cycles — a perfect storm of buzzwords, demos, and corporate hand-wringing.

When electricity first lit homes, people installed bulbs the same way they mounted gas lamps — vertically, with fittings that mimicked flame housings. That was over a hundred years ago. We’re still doing it.

GenAI’s entering the same phase: using tomorrow’s tools to do yesterday’s work, just slightly faster, slightly cheaper, slightly less human. The question is — will we stop at the socket? Or will we redesign the whole room?

“It’s not enough to give someone ChatGPT and expect magic. You need structured guidance, real-world workflows, and role-specific applications.”

— Bob O’Donnell, TECHnalysis Research (via Yahoo Finance)

That’s exactly what this series explores. Less magic, more method. Less hype, more how.

What You’ll Get

Every fortnight. I’ll share something from the frontlines — field notes from my work building GenAI capability in real environments: councils, consultancies, and corporate IT.

Not a syllabus. Not a funnel. A living document.

Expect:

• Quietly controversial truths about what GenAI can’t do yet

• Patterns that turn one-off wins into durable practice

• Elegant workflows hidden inside ugly prototypes

• Signals that you’re moving from dabbling to enabling

• Mental models that outlast the next vendor slide deck

If you’ve ever whispered “I think we’re doing this wrong” during a Copilot demo, this series is for you.

Who It’s For

• The ones duct-taping GenAI into Notion and VS Code just to keep momentum going.

• Professionals whose orgs skipped data governance and now wonder why their AI rollouts stall.

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• Curious builders doing the work in the shadows — not for fun, but for survival.

This series is part of my productivity-focused work at AIBOK. I’ll still post AI safety and architectural provocations elsewhere, but this thread is for the doers. The quiet enablers. The ones who think better with a prompt in the corner of their screen.

Why Now

Remember when xmlHttpRequest() made the web feel like it could breathe? Or when you realised GitHub would be more than just another repo? Or when mobile apps stopped being toys and started eating entire markets?

We are in that moment again.

And yet — most teams are treating GenAI like a demo, not a discipline.

Unless you learn how to build with it — to think with it — you’ll be left watching as someone else redefines the value chain.

Because GenAI doesn’t replace people. It replaces tasks — and sometimes entire skills.

And the hardest part?

It exposes the ones we’re most proud of — the ones we’ve made automatic through repetition and craft.

AI isn’t coming for your job.

It’s coming for the tasks you cling to when you’re tired, undertrained, and out of ideas.

Let’s fix that — one field note at a time.

What to Expect

It starts with a post.

Then another.

Every other week, a bit deeper — a bit sharper.

The goal? Capability, not just curiosity.

To think better. To work differently. To stay ahead of the curve you didn’t see coming.

#GenAI #BeyondTheHype #FieldNotes #WorkSmarter #CapabilityNotHype

Still experimenting? This series shows how to build capability that lasts.