The headline: The Winter Olympics were a fun distraction this month.

Going into the Winter Olympics, I had a few teams I was especially excited to follow.

The United States women’s national ice hockey team was absolutely stellar. They went undefeated through the entire tournament, allowed just two goals, and brought home gold. It was dominant in a way that makes you appreciate not just the wins, but the discipline and focus it takes to sustain that level of play on the biggest stage.

The US mixed doubles curling team of Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin was another highlight. They were steady, confident, and earned silver, the first Olympic medal for the US in mixed doubles curling.

On the Canadian side, Rachel Homan continues to cement her legacy. Watching her team battle through and defeat the US squad led by Tabitha Peterson for bronze was high-level curling at its best.

There were countless other moments that blew me away. Watching Ilia Malinin push the technical limits of figure skating was unreal. And seeing Alysa Liu win gold felt like one of those pure Olympic moments you remember for years.

The last few weeks have been genuinely fun, watching events live with the office, catching highlights at bars around the city, and winding down each night with recaps before bed. The Olympics are rare in that way. For a short window, it feels like we are all pulling in the same direction, celebrating the same victories. It makes you wish we treated each other that way all the time.

Posts

• January 2026 Review

• Book Review: Engineering Management for the Rest of Us

• Consistency Is Key to Building Trust

• Book Review: Nexus – A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

• When Technology Stops Making Us Smarter

Books That Stuck

• New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson

  • I’ve had this on my shelf for a long time and finally took the plunge. What a great book, but then again Robinson always delivers. A little dystopian, doomy and scifi with a scoop of realism and climate mixed in. This felt refreshing in a way that I wasnt expecting from a climate dystopia book.

• Voice Content and Usability by Preston So

  • This book started off strong for me, really resonating the concepts and laying out the frameworks for voice content. But then devolved into an idealistic study on setting up content and navigation, which is good but not what I was after. I am on a quest to make your headphones be the interface device to your computer - voice in and out to accomplish tasks and understand the world around you.

• Conversational Canvas: Designing UX for Voice and Chat by William Webb

  • “A well-crafted digital conversation respects privacy and transparency, builds trust, and learns from both success and missteps.” I enjoyed this book, thinking of experiences more than the framework to build a voice interface.

• I also read my first AI narrated audiobook this month. It wasn’t as bad as I expected by there were words and phrases that just didnt work lacking the human element.

Some Links

• Thinking a lot about User Experience lately, how it's changing with AI and both more and less intrusive technology. Some things seem to becoming harder to use - losing that apple magic of “it just works”.

  • Beyond UI/UX: Designing Adaptive Experiences in the Age of AI - Enter Adaptive Experience (AX), the next evolution in design. Unlike static UI, AX is dynamic, contextual, and powered by AI. It doesn’t just present options; it reshapes itself in real time based on signals, intent, and behavior. The goal is not just usability but anticipation, delivering what a user needs before they even ask.

• Leadership and steering the team has been on my mind a lot this month, from reviews to being more decisive and making incremental changes that make lasting impacts. Here are a number of posts I have been thinking about since reading them.

  • Leadership health metrics - There is an undeniable link between leadership and the performance of teams, […]. If we are to measure what matters, should we be measuring leadership performance too?

  • Getting the main thing right - The lesson here is that you should spend a lot of time and effort trying to figure out what to focus on.

  • “Disagree and Let’s See” - Committing to something you disagree with is an emotional contortion that is hard to do in practice.

  • False velocity is rampant in engineering orgs right now - Much of this is driven by fear and FOMO. The cure? Separate hype from reality. Data helps, but it starts with culture.

Life Lately

We were able to get away for a nice weekend in Wisconsin. Spent some time at a cabin on a lake where I saw more stars than I’ve ever seen and relaxed while taking in some Olympics.

Got some time in at the curling club this month, played some games, practice and volunteered. The addiction of delivering a perfectly curled stone is real.

Hanging out with the dog through the cold and now wet season has been taking up a lot of my time. His personality and goofiness is so fun to watch as he grows up.

One Thing to Carry Forward

A reminder to myself, and anyone who needs to hear it - you can just do things.