Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor

Helping businesses make technology faster, simpler and more profitable.
Fractional CTO | AI Strategy | Digital Transformation
🎙 Technology for Humans

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

A short introduction in case you don't know me - I am a tech consultant, working primarily for small and medium business. I help you to implement tech strategy, safe AI rollouts, SaaS consolidation, custom software architecting and builds and aligning your IT with business objectives. You may not be able to afford a full time CTO, so I step in to the roll on a part time basis.

I also host the Tech for Humans podcast.

Interested? Follow me and send a DM.

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

@robbyrussell Beck is a legend!

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

I had trouble keeping up with all the AI related news so I made a website to summarise it.

Every couple of days I find a couple of topics that I need to know more about. I have my machines research it and write a short article.

When I'm on the road I can pull up a short article and learn something new that I needed to know more about.

Feel free to jump and use the articles yourself.

https://t.co/r7OXjbM7Dp

You can link, share or excerpt if you are interested.

No advertising, no link tracking, no data collection.

Bookmark for whenever you have 5 minutes spare and shouldn't be doom scrolling.

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

@techAU We need our own models, infra, training data and local companies running it all. I don't think there should be any compromise when it comes to sovereign AI in Australia

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

Here’s some relevant facts that have been missed: the migration to Magento happened in 2021.
The company were were coming out of a post COVID boom and likely budgeted in sales continuing at that level.
After the failed re-platform they moved to shopify where they have been since.
Online ads pointing to 404s is embarrassing but should have been fixed in less than 24 hours.
There may be other reasons for the business failing today.
A more likely reason for this debacle is that a million pa on online ads was not sustainable and probably had diminishing returns after COVID.

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

Magento is a good enough platform for eCommerce, although it was unnecessary to come off Shopify. The real problem seems to be with the implementation though. The partner that actually built the new site and failed to include redirects in their scope and to insist on testing prior to launch. They probably charged tens of thousands as well.

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

@TurboDad @7NewsMelbourne There is definitely more to know about this, that's for sure.

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

"Where do you draw the line then on sovereignty?"

Simon Kriss and I explored this through a slightly unlikely comparison: baked beans. The can might be Australian, but where did the beans come from?

If you're in an industry that should rely on “sovereign AI”, you should be able to explain exactly what we actually control, and what needs to be worked on next.

Is it the LLM, the infrastructure, the training data, user data. Perhaps we should even be looking at how to manufacture our own hardware.

Watch the full interview here: https://t.co/BdYB7bcgN7

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

@brauliomlm Thanks for the chat!

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

I spoke to cofounder of @cedarcode @brauliomlm (Braulio Martinez) this week on Tech for Humans Pod.

We discussed webauthn Ruby and the future of digital IDs, supporting Rails Foundation and Ruby Central and running a successful multi-continent Rails agency.

And I think I only mentioned AI once 😅

https://t.co/cePx8JGeL5

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

Does Australia need its own AI models? Simon Kriss lays out the reasons why in this video:

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

For anyone interested, the CFP for RubyConf Australia is open: https://t.co/fxvD0qJNjD

And EarlyBird tickets: https://t.co/qmCs1TDjiX

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

@luusssso The biggest difference is in the film used as opposed to digital images

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

@MichaelDChaney clients and agencies should be doing daily standups - what was the progress yesterday, what is being done today, what needs to be tested by the user etc

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

@craigkerstiens Codex has a 'review my computer use' tool that pops up once a week. I stopped using it when it roasted my use of the backspace key as my favourite key

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

The most cringeworthy X posts are the ones that are obviously AI generated but where the 'poster' adds a small typo back in (or the machine does on their behalf). Not fooling anyone!

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

If Australia wants to be a contender in the world AI game then we need to address the AI brain drain. Australia produces some incredible talent in the AI space, but they are easily lured to exciting research and big pay cheques overseas.

Simon Kriss of Sovereign Australia AI discusses this with us. See the full video here: https://t.co/BdYB7bcgN7

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

@planetargon @robbyrussell Thanks for the chat Robby!

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

Given all the images around of issues with the Duo screen this was probably a poor choice for the graphic on the new Mac touch screen

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

@spikesguides GPT 3.0

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

@Fanfulladev completely right. The things I would encourage more people to understand though are the infrastructure, deployment, security, patches, planning, UX - all that sort of stuff that your average vibe coder doesn't even realise they need to know about.

[Errol Schmidt | AI & CTO Advisor @eSquareDesign]

Avoiding Common Mistakes in Vibe Coding (or you don't know what you don't know):
https://t.co/2JR7MUo5CG