Category: What I’m Up To

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Artificial Intelligence Current Events Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

“Back to the Future of Work” covered in Tampa Bay Business & Wealth!

Last week’s panel event, Back to the Future of Work, was featured in Tampa Bay Business and Wealth!

Taking place at the Reliaquest Auditorium in Tampa startup space Embarc Collective, the event featured a discussion about different ways to think about how we measure the value of work in the new world of AI, remote work, ubiquitous internet, and economic uncertainty.

On the panel were:

Check out the article, From hours to outcomes: Tampa panel explores the future of work in an AI world!

 

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Artificial Intelligence Meetups Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

I’ll be speaking at the Indo-US Chamber of Commerce’s “Practical AI” panel — Tuesday, September 16 at 6:30 p.m.!

Promotional poster for “Practical AI: Turning Technology into Business Value” featuring moderator Sam Kasimalla and panelists Joey de Villa, Sudeep Sarkar, and Priya Balasundaram.
Click the image to reserve your ticket!

Want to learn how AI can be used in your business or career, meet key people from Tampa Bay’s dynamic South Asian community, and enjoy some Indian food? Then you’ll want to attend the Indo-U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s panel, Practical AI: Turning Technology into Business Value, taking place next Tuesday, September 16th at 6:30 p.m. at Embarc Collective!

The tl;dr

Why Attend?

  • Learn how AI can be applied beyond theory to solve real business challenges.

  • Hear from leaders in academia, entrepreneurship, and applied technology.

  • Network with Tampa Bay’s growing AI and tech community.

  • Enjoy complimentary Indian cuisine while connecting with innovators and peers.

Speakers & Moderator

Register for this event!

Once again, this is a free event, and there’ll be a complimentary Indian dinner. Register now!

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Artificial Intelligence Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

Scenes from Fractio’s “Back to the Future of Work” event (September 4, 2025)

Last night, Fractio hosted Back to the Future of Work, an event built around a panel discussion about changing the way we assign value to work in the age of AI.

I arrived early to set up my computer to run the pre-panel video…

…and check that the panel seats and mics were set up properly…

…then had some quick breakfast-for-dinner (which was symbolic of how our understanding of paying for time was about to be turned upside-down):

The event took place at Embarc Collective, who’d set up the room in a way that would let people comfortably eat “brinner” while watching the panel…

…and when the doors open, a room-packing crowd came in.

After a little time to let people get their food, breakfast cocktail, and mingle, they were seated…

…and the panel got under way!

Fatin Kwasny, organizer of the panel and Fractio CEO, moderated…

…and the panel got started.

From left to right, the panelists were:

I enjoyed participating on the panel, and it appears that my fellow panelists did as well! I also heard from many audience members who found the event informative and entertaining.

Thanks to Florida CFO Group for sponsoring breakfast-for-dinner and breakfast cocktails…

…and to Byron Reese for providing us with copies of his book, We are Agora, to give to attendees!

 

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Hardware What I’m Up To

The room where it happens

Joey de Villa’s home office. It has a shiny hardwood floor, two desks in an L-shaped configuration, monitors, keyboards, synthesizers, and other gear. A large octopus art piece looms over the back wall.
Tap to view at full size.

For the curious, here’s a recent pic of my home office, a.k.a. “The Fortress of Amplitude.” The gear configuration changes every now and then, but it generally looks like this. It’s where the magic happens!

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Artificial Intelligence Hardware What I’m Up To

Quick announcement: I’m doing developer relations for HP’s new ZGX Nano AI computer!

Just so you know: today’s my first day at Kforce doing developer relations for HP! More specifically, for HP’s ZGX Nano, a tiny computer designed specifically for running large AI models right on your desktop…and not on someone else’s computers!

The ZGX Nano packs a ridiculous amount of power into a tiny space…

Powered by NVIDIA’s GB10 GPU and a 20-core ARM CPU sharing 128GB of RAM, the ZGX Nano performs at 1,000 teraflops (1 petaflop), which is 1015 floating-point operations per second. It’ll support an AI model taking in 200 billion parameters — 400 billion if you connect two ZGX Nanos together.

I’m getting set up for day one on the job as I write this, so I’m keeping this post short and ending with this gem from a little while back: HP’s Rules of the Garage:

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Career What I’m Up To

The interview where I ALMOST succeeded

Last week, I interviewed for a developer relations leadership role at a company whose product I genuinely use and admire.

I made it to round 2 of 3, but ultimately wasn’t selected.

While I didn’t land the job and a chance to work with an amazing company and incredible team, I’m honored to have been considered and incredibly proud of the work I put in:

  • 30+ hours of research and preparation
  • 100+ slides across two presentations
  • Some of the most meaningful conversations I’ve had with a team in years

I could simply throw up my hands in resignation and leave all that work and content to languish in a folder on a backup drive or in the cloud…

…but instead, I’m sharing it here. Why?

Because:

  • Good ideas deserve to circulate! Maybe there’s a framework, approach, or creative solution in my presentations that could help someone else.
  • We’re not alone in this. The job market is tough right now, and I want people to know they’re not the only ones putting in extraordinary effort. I know you’re out there, giving it your all!
  • Transparency builds community and helps others. Real examples of strategic work are worth way more than hand-waving abstract advice.

I’m sharing the slides that outline my complete developer relations strategy presentation plus my tactical execution plan, anonymized and annotated with speaker notes. You’ll see my “Foundation / Focus / Flywheel” framework, community engagement strategies, and how I approached everything from attribution tracking to expanding into Europe.

  • If you’re job searching: Take what’s useful here and build on it! No attribution necessary. We’re all in this together, and your success doesn’t diminish mine.
  • If you found this valuable: Please share it! It helps me and others going through this.
  • If you’re hiring: This shows how I think about DevRel strategy. If your team builds for developers, let’s chat!

My philosophy is that either I win or I learn. I learned a lot from this process, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to have engaged with such a thoughtful team.

Next time, I just might win.

Here’s the link to my presentations.

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Artificial Intelligence Security What I’m Up To

A simple AI fake voice and face example

This past Tuesday (July 15, 2025), I appeared on a news segment on Tampa’s WFLA Channel 8 evening news, where I was brought in to comment about ways to not fall for AI-powered phone scams. The video from that news segment is pictured above.

While the segment talked about using AI to mimic people’s voices and faces and have them say whatever you want, there wasn’t time to demonstrate this capability — so I’m doing it here.

Here’s a video I recorded back in October 2023 to promote a Python course that I was teaching:

I then fed that video to HeyGen, the AI avatar service,  and used it to translate my video into Spanish. Here’s the result:

I don’t speak Spanish anywhere as fluently and smoothly as my HeyGen-generated version, and note that HeyGen went so far as to sync my lips with the Spanish words!

The Spanish voice is also a decent approximation of mine — close enough that it might fool even people who know me well, given a stressful situation full of emotion and other distractions, which is the sort of scenario that con artists try to create in a phone scam.

You should also note that the Spanish video was made with the version of HeyGen from October 2023. I’m sure it’s undergone significant improvements since then.