2026 is split into 2 parts, read the Practical side to see more details about my current projects
This year feels like a year of growth, where I'm starting to try new things I've avoided in the past. Through my robotics career, I always avoided doing software because I liked hardware better. I also was always looking for a "business buddy", so we could team up and I could focus on the tech/product, and they could focus on the business side. Both of those change now!
Update from Last Year
Since the end of the summer, I finally took the "programming plunge" and have got deep into AI and software, and that's had great results. I'm starting to get into marketing and more business side of things as well, so this year feels like it will be a year of rounding out and consolidation. I've had a lot of threads started, and they're all doing really well, time to start weaving them together. Project Safety Net will be strong!
With my history of meditations, I've spent ages learning to deal with black boxes. Learning about your own subconscious, seeing what goes in vs what comes out, seeing patterns, even meeting new people and getting to know them, how they process the world. Everything is black boxes, it's something I do so instinctively I barely give it any thought.
Turns out, that's the perfect skill for learning to use AI. Its a black box (whether you call it a glorified auto-fill or AGI, doesn't really matter), that you put in some prompt, it does some magic, and spits out an answer. Some LLMs have an option to "show thinking" so you can watch it process and test different ideas, before it chooses the one to show you. Learning those limits, and using that to learn what guardrails are needed is what I've been doing since September. I had a wild evolution of coding with AI, from using Notepad++ and copy pasting examples back and forth to ChatGPT, to first experimenting with VSCode and Copilot, being amazed that it would automatically put the function into the right file for you. Then moving deeper into VSCode with Claude, and watching that take off and edits 5 files at a time, and then full Claude planning modes where you brainstorm a solution, and then it generates it all at once. The final evolution of moving outside of VSCode into CLI versions of Claude and Codex, and using those for custom LLM agents and my local model rig, you can read more about that here.
I avoided software development for ages, since I didn't want to get into the weeds and monotony of learning the new languages to keep up with the industry. But, I did learn Assembly and C, so even though I don't know coding languages, I know code. I know how it's structured, how it works, how it flows, how hardware and resource limits come in... Using that as a baseline for coding with AI is excellent.
I've learned that AI thinks its really smart, and tries really hard to prove to you its really smart, but it's actually really dumb at times. Though, if you can give it proper guardrails, and keep it on track so it CAN'T be dumb, it's so powerful. The speed you can get of developing new projects is basically unlimited. Especially once you start layering your tools on top of each other (if you're smart, building them cleanly and modularly) so that every project you do, the next one becomes faster. That's on the purely personal side, I know connecting to other libraries and using the entire worlds Open Source Code (which AI does inevitably) makes it even faster. Things spiral so hard and so fast, you need to maintain a semblance of control to stop it from spiraling into a mess of spaghetti code that nobody can read.
I've really enjoyed this feeling of building over the past few months, being able to create the ideas I've had for the past few years and sink my teeth into their implementations. Now that I've got some powerful personal tools, I need to start working on marketing and getting them out there for others.
I've still been thinking about SCIM layers and how everything fits together across scales, and I've had a few new ideas. I've spent years working on introspection and identity, figuring out who I was, how to share that with the world, and then how to find others to specifically share and grow with. I've always been curious with people and how they process the world, so I liked solidifying who I am and working on the interface layer between me and everyone else.
In my 2023 plan, I said "my 20s was a decade looking inwards, 30s is time to turn that outwards", and I'm really happy with the angles I now have to play with. My interest in STAR-TIDES was partially based on how it seemed to have an identity crisis. I've been trying to help figure out how to make it have a solid identity within the organization, get everyone on board, and then clearly share that with the world. It feels like the same layer of identity issues I've always had, but instead of working internally and all the decision making being self contained, its organizational group dynamics. In an organization that we're trying to scale, things can't just be decided in the moment, they have to be solidified into processes that scale to others and get groups of people rallied around any changes.
Same with Sheltrium and my other projects. It's one thing to do things by yourself, but when you want to scale them to include others (whether that's partners or customers), you need to focus on scaling and repeatability. Making processes, identifying what you are, sharing that with others, figuring out how to get more people involved... Its the same identity patterns that play out on the organization level as well as the individual level.
In the middle, at the group level, I noticed similar patterns. Its in classes I've taken, communities I've been a part of (acro, dance, gym...), even online in video games. There was one game I played for many years (Ah, COVID times), I had friends around the world and we had a guild together. We had the same issues: we needed to identify who we are (Pineapple Gang), what our goals are, and how we could find others to join us in our cause. It's not a organization level issue because we didn't care about succession, were living in the moment having fun together as a group. We still needed to attract people with "this is how we have fun, join us if you want to have fun with us!" There's still competition with all the other guilds and groups, same way there always competition with communities. If you're taking dance, there's only so many free nights in a week, you have to choose how you're going to spend your time, so all the different dance teachers, classes, and groups around town are all trying to advertise and differentiate themselves to attract you to join them.
So if those cover individuals, groups, and organizations, what's above? Following SCIM, there should be Nations, but I'm not sure how that really works. At that size, you're basically born into something, obviously people move citizenships and can travel around the world. I bet there's something to be said here about immigration, but that's a topic for another day.
For now, I want to bring back my idea of above organizations, Organizations+ from Plan 2024. Before I put villages in that category, which is a concrete example, but I think there's a more ethereal answer as well, and I'm going to call it "a movement". How do you get multiple organizations to rally together around a bigger goal, each while following their own best path/practices and being independent, yet all moving in the same direction? That's what a movement is, whether it's the "green energy" movement, or "save the children", or anything like that. It's a big idea, everyone rally's around and contributes.
The hypothesis of "everything follows the same pattern at multiple layers" seems to be paying off. Including "shear layers" and different sizes of groups working on different time scales seems to be holding strong as well. Individuals are small and fast moving, they move between groups and orgs following their own goals. Groups emerge within orgs when a team of people are either assigned together, or naturally join up as work buddies, but that takes more time. The organizations themselves are even slower, whether that's getting them off the ground or pivoting them in a new direction. It takes a long time to come up with a new policy that everyone agrees with, and then another long time to codify it into the organizational plans so its repeatable!
On a personal, individual level I know I can share with my friends various personal development strategies and how I've applied them in my own life. Spending time with different friend groups and communities has taught me group dynamics and why some stick together and others drift apart. So in theory, with more practice, eventually I'll be able to do the same as an organization. The same way I learn to rally people into groups around a common goal, I can learn to rally organizations around a common goal and make a movement. Knowing how to optimize myself and how to share that with others makes a strong group, and knowing (big MAYBE) how to organize and optimize an organization, and being able to spread that to other organizations will create a strong movement.
Sheltrium, STAR-TIDES, and my other projects are all different angles of attack. There's three main angles to experiment with: One side is capitalistic, the other is charitable, and the last is Open Source. I'm trying to learn the different options of rallying people around ideas and the different motivations required depending on the project style.
There are 2 major things that seem to be true every time I see them, so I'm working to incorporate them. One is having projects/activities with a feeling of inevitability. The idea of "this is happening no matter what, so get on board while you can!". When its a business thing, people are excited to get behind an exciting vision, when its a friends group people much rather hear "I'm going to the theme park, want to come with?" instead of "I want to go if you want to go". Its a reflection of confidence, and makes people excited.
The second is "make sure your vision is big enough that others can fit their visions inside of it". If you have an idea, and try to convince other people to help you, its hard because most likely it will distract the people from their own ideas, and then you're competing, and you'll usually lose. But if your idea can be accomplished by having others keep doing what they already like doing, and just helping them get new benefits, expansion, and exposure from doing what they're already doing, they'll definitely be more willing to get on board!
However, none of this matters if I don't know what I'm doing, which is why practicing on my projects is most important! I need to learn how to help myself before I can really help others. So that's what the plan for 2026 is. Build up my projects, see what it takes to get others to rally around the ideas and see what kind of communities I can get built. That means, the biggest thing I need to learn is marketing... It's a bigger pivot than usual, I need to work with people instead of bots, so wish me luck!