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Six months ago I started an MSc in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bath. Six months before that, I began a crash course in Python and mathematics. This blog post covers the best free resources that I found most helpful. If you are preparing for a degree in AI or computer science and you are from a non-technical background, this post is for you. My background My undergraduate degree was a BA in a non-STEM subject (Economics, Politics and International Studies – not quite PPE but nobody knows what EPAIS stands for). I have been working as a product/program manager in tech for more than 15 years, but have had limited exposure to mathematics and programming, either academically or professionally. ...

Product analytics is one of Claude’s superpowers. Being able to quickly crunch through product and analytics data means I can make decisions faster, in a more data driven way and with less dependence on the team. Here are 6 ways I am using Claude to help me analyse data. To celebrate the Bayeux Tapestry arriving at the British Museum and me having the foresight to buy my girlfriend a museum couple’s membership for her birthday, here’s a medieval view of Claude connected to all my tools for some “data analysta” ...

Cursor is an AI-powered code editor built for software engineers – not product managers. Yet over the past few months, it has become my primary AI tool for product management work. Here’s why I made the switch, and how it’s helping me get more done. A Case Study (and Some Use Cases) Here’s a recent example of how I used Cursor end-to-end to investigate and document an analytics issue: Exploring our analytics. I can chat directly with PostHog (our analytics tool) through Cursor. It writes and executes SQL queries, then presents the results to me in plain English. Identifying the root cause of issues. I noticed something unusual in our analytics data. When I asked Cursor to investigate, it autonomously created multiple diagnostic queries, pinpointed the exact date the bug began, and identified the most likely causes. Drafting markdown documentation. Cursor summarised the issue in a markdown file. Like most LLM outputs, it was verbose. I ended up deleting about half the content. But it gave me a solid starting point. Publishing to Notion. Once I refined the writeup, Cursor posted it to Notion and automatically applied the relevant tags – something most people don’t do consistently! I manually added an “AI generated content” tag-transparency about AI involvement matters to me. Creating a Linear ticket. Cursor created the ticket with a concise description, and assigned it to the correct team and owner. This end-to-end workflow took minutes to go from investigation to documentation to ticket creation. If I was doing this all myself it would have taken hours. More importantly, it all happened without me leaving Cursor. ...

I recently switched to the EE mobile phone network, mostly because they reportedly have the best 5G network in the UK. While I’ve had to reroute my favourite park walk to avoid a pesky signal dropout spot, the service has mostly lived up to the hype. The real bonus though, was getting free access to Google AI Pro. That’s excellent timing, as Google’s AI products have really taken off this past few months. Here are some of the ways I’ve been using my new subscription. ...

I have been a ChatGPT Plus subscriber for about 6 months now. To celebrate, I wrote a blog post about 6 ways I am using it to help me get things done in life and at work. 1. Coding assistant “Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves” is one of my favourite mottos. I am the type of guy who signs up for new current accounts to get introductory bonuses, and watches two seasons of 1923 in 6 days to avoid any fees beyond the one week free trial. So, it should not come as too much of a surprise that the idea of paying £20 per month for more than one AI assistant really grates on me. ...

As a product manager and all-around data nerd, analysing product and user data is something that brings me joy. This is convenient, as understanding users and analysing data are two of the biggest parts of my job. In this post, I share some of the tools and data sources I like best. Due to copywrite restrictions, ChatGPT could not create a collage of the logos of all the tools mentioned in this post. But it did create me an image that features visual elements inspired by these tools ...

The past few months have been busy for me! I have been trying to sell my house and find somewhere new to live. In September, I had an offer accepted on an awesome place (woop woop!). Assuming the sale doesn’t fall through (a big assumption in England), and assuming this is actually my forever home (also a big assumption), I will not be looking at Zoopla or Rightmove again for quite a while. ...

For years I used Evernote to store my notes and Trello to track my actions. For the past 2 years, I have been using Obsidian for both. This post summarises how and why I am using Obsidian. Credits again go to Henry Franks for putting me on to this! Why I like Obsidian Obsidian is a note-taking tool based on Markdown, an open document format that creates formatted text. It has a huge community who have built a wide range of awesome open-source plugins and themes. After the pain I went through migrating away from proprietary tools like Trello and Evernote a few years ago, I like that Obsidian is based on an open format. It makes it easy to migrate all my content to a similar tool if I so wish, which should keep them competitive. I also like that I can have all my actions and notes in one place. This minimises the need to duplicate information in different places. ...

I am working at a startup of 13 people with big plans for the future. Notion is one of the main tools everybody in the team uses. This post describes how we have set up Notion to make information easy to find across multiple growing teams. What is Notion Notion is a note-taking and productivity tool. We use Notion for organising our ideas and documentation keeping track of work We don’t use Notion for: ...

In this post, I’m going to explain my system for keeping myself organised and productive. This system has been working well for me for the past two years, and I have helped a number of people to set it up for themselves. ...

Teams at GDS are free to pick the processes and tools that work for them. On the GOV.UK Publishing Platform, our Kanban process is supported by Trello. This is a follow-up to my blog post on How we use Kanban on the GOV.UK Publishing Platform team, and explains how we use Trello to support our Kanban process. ...

Wunderlist is a free-to-use task management tool. Available on desktop, web browsers, smartphone and more recently the Apple Watch, it allows you to stay organized wherever you are. Initially created in Germany it is one of my favorite productivity tools, and after it’s recent acquisition by Microsoft, it should be around for a while to come. Here I explore how to use Wunderlist to keep yourself organised, and get things done. ...