_{Wait, I had a deadline??}

For the first time since I started this newsletter, I've missed my self-imposed newsletter deadline. Not because I’ve resigned (that April Fool’s prank has taken on a life of its own), but because while I promised to tell you the stories, I’ve been too busy living the stories. 

The last few weeks have been a blur of early flights, late drives, and workshop rooms full of people who are genuinely lighting up. I’ve been tired. Picture me with my green fox headband wrapped around my eyes as I collapse against an airplane window, and the next thing I know the wheels are hitting the tarmac (when did we take off?). The whole month has collapsed into a single feeling — exhaustion punctuated by faces of people discovering their capability. I get home, fall into bed, and my dog wakes me up two hours later because she urgently needs to go outside. Again. (Aria, I love you, but your timing is devastating.) 

Every night and weekend for the past two weeks, I've looked at my laptop envisioning stories and funny ChatGPT headline images, but then looked at my pillow to envision sweet sweet sleep. The pillow’s been winning.

Anyway. Here's what's been happening while I wasn't writing.

At the Ontario Transportation Expo, around fifteen transit leaders joined me for a hands-on AI workshop. In three hours, we took a single question — what would it look like to upgrade an on-demand service into a fixed route? — and built the entire analytical toolkit to answer it. Data audits, automated analysis through Claude Cowork, an interactive map, a summary video explaining the problem, even a board presentation deck. All of it, built live, together, around a real problem that gave everyone a sandbox to learn in. What lit me up was watching fifteen people stop being passive and start debating and riffing ideas off of each other while I got to simply facilitate and inspire ideas. 

After KTS’s first ever AI Launchpad training for the staff of an entire transit agency, one person went home and built a no-show prediction model from scratch. By the time I came back for Session 2 three weeks later, it was deployed — and it had reduced no-shows by a significant enough margin to represent roughly $15,000 in annualized savings. This is an agency that’s not paid for a commercial IVR solution. They essentially manufactured one in-house, getting 90% of the way there on their own. That's what happens when you give someone a green light and the right tools: they surprise you.

In Colorado, I spent two days with transit leaders from across a mountain region, each wrestling with completely different problems. One person needed to automate NTD reporting that normally eats three to four weeks of his year. By the end of the workshop he had the foundation, and by the following Monday he'd built the complete tool. Four weeks of tedious work completed in two days. That's what happens when someone walks through the individual AI journey at their own pace and discovers what's possible for their specific work.

I'm not slowing down. This Thursday I'm running a virtual session with CALACT (register here). In two weeks I'm in Frisco TX running two workshops for the Texas Association of Community Action Agencies (TACAA), and then straight to Lubbock for Texas Transit Association's annual conference where I'll be leading not only another workshop, but the whole closing session on the future of transit's workforce in the AI era.

And I'm building a team to keep this train rolling. Two people have already joined me, and three co-ops will start in a few weeks. This thing is taking off (how many transportation metaphors can I fit in one blog post??), and soon you'll be hearing directly from the leaders I've been working with. Remember that podcast question from last month? Stay tuned.

Your capability already exists inside you, my role is simply catalyzing you to tap into it. These stories are proof, and there’s so much more to come. It’s all too good to keep to myself — I just needed some sleep first.

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Go shatter your glass ceiling.