Office Hours #1 – The Introduction

Introduction, The Recording, The Why and What to Expect

Sep 23, 2024

Welcome to my first ever issue of Out of Office! To be honest with you, it’s also my first ever newsletter & hopefully an opportunity to build a community around all things AI, design and must-know digital tools. If you know me, you know I love to share interesting ideas. This will be no different.

Out of Office

Out of Office initially started as an idea with some friends 2-3 years ago as a micro-collective of people without standard 9-5 jobs. I picked up the idea again earlier this year (actually while stuck in hospital after an unexpected surgery) where it transitioned into a clothing brand semi-documenting my travels, and now it’s pivoted once more into a creative outlet for me based around the idea of what do you learn “outside” of work – or “outside” of your normal role.

I think ultimately it’ll probably end up being some combination of a collective/clothing brand/community/creative outlet/<insert other idea here> – but I’m keen to see where it goes.

I do have some nice merch already designed for it though if you’re interested…

The Recording

Last week (Thursday 19th Sept) I held the first "Out of Office" Introduction to Building using Artificial Intelligence session – 85+ signed up and over 40 people showed up from healthcare, marketing, logistics, pharmaceuticals, agencies with marketers, doctors and investors all learning and building apps together. Hopefully the first of many of these sessions.

As promised – here’s the recording from last weeks introduction session.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

And if you’d like to download the slides – I’ve made the PDF available here.

Why did I start this?

I’ve always spent a lot of time learning and building on the internet and fortunately been able to build a career out of it. Primarily as a designer – freelancing for startups and VCs and running my creative studio OCTOBER, but I’ve also always loved using technology to experiment – I’ve been making videos and messing with new tools on the internet since pre-2010 and it’s something I still do weekly.

I posted a couple of weeks ago on LinkedIn about some of the progress I’d made with using AI to code and received far more interest than I expected to, I’ve had great conversations, caught up with friends and met some new companies off the back of it.

The LinkedIn post that kicked it all off

I wrote this post on a whim and the positivity I’ve received off the back of it has inspired me and sparked a bunch of ideas – this newsletter being one of them. I hope to use it as a place to document my own learnings and hopefully spark conversations and ideas with you as well.

What will I write about?

I’m trying not to over-plan or over-think this newsletter and I’m sure it’ll grow as I do it. For now I’m planning to write about using AI in my daily and work life, my progress building tools with it, tips and workflows I’ve found useful, interesting links, and a selection of other bits related to design, photography, entrepreneurship, freelancing, running a studio, travel and more.

Besides those I’d love to hear what you’d like to read as well.

London to Lisbon 🇵🇹

As I’m sure most of you already know – I moved from London to Lisbon at the start of 2024. I’d love to meet more creatives, entrepreneurs and interesting people here – so please reach out if you or someone you know is in Lisbon!

Reach out!

Please leave any comments, thoughts or questions. I’m super curious to know what’s going on with your experiences so far and I want to answer your most popular questions.