So, again ...what is that you do?

Being Creative Technologist is... not about single-handedly shipped products - it is about foundations on which those could even exist, concepts that turn into large platforms, enabling technologies for others to make them shine. It is about disruption within well-established and biased environments. It is about the desire to look at well-established systems and reevaluate them for modern times, ways or needs. It is about inspiring others and pulling them towards the unknown without fear. It is about being child-like before becoming bitter, biased, all-assuming, and all-knowing. It is about doubting doubt, courage, and interpersonal skills. It is not about winning or losing, as it is about searching. It is about never standing still but always wandering. It is about listening, about hearing, about the ingenuity of connecting the dots you just heard about, and problem-solving. It is about problem-finding as well. It is about empathy, intuition, and being completely fine with 99% of your work being forgotten within one or two months. It is about others being better and more imaginative than you. It is about working with those who cannot imagine what you easily could and are not built or experience the world the same way. It is about the ability to speak with musicians, educators, sculptors, engineers, and procurement folks at the same meeting and sum it up with a concept that does not exist anywhere else. It is about setting up the North Star. It is about destroying that North Star four months later. It is about patience, perseverance, ambiguity, and the unavoidable pressure of time. It is not about being done at 6:00 pm PST - as our creativity is a non-linear process. It is related to money and profits, as it is related to the cost of various technology elements. It is about being comfortable making a fool of yourself or someone you work for. It is about your team looking at you like you just returned from "Burning Man." It is about you making sure that no one knows that you just came back from "Burning Man". It is not about others understanding your concept on the spot; it is often about hearing from them 3-5 years later: "Dude! Remember that thing you showed us three years ago??? So guess what...". It is about being uncomfortable, it is about not having answers, it is about influencing others. It is about pretending to know nothing, to be free to explore. It is about challenging the Status Quo. It is an endless hustle. It is about living this life outside of work. It is about being ecstatic when hearing "Now that is interesting!" ...and being fine with: "Could you please walk us through once more?". It is about asking questions. It is about starting again, and again, and again - if needed. It is about having a conscious disregard for authority. It is about being rebellious at times. It is about having tears of joy seeing your concept come to life. It is about someone else taking full credit for what you've started. It is about seeing what others don't. It is about going where others won't. It is about failing so others can feel safe. It is about being an astronaut in a land of astronomers - this stuntman, this daredevil, this "Hold my beer!" kinda person... it is about proving you value every evaluation period. It is about not being able to tell your closest friends what you're working on. It is not about being out there in public with all your shenanigans, it is about secrecy and stealthness. It is about crushing egos and somehow becoming a threat to those who are insecure. It is about making certain folks very uncomfortable at times. It is about speaking your mind; it is about serving others with your knowledge and expertise, and it is about sharing. It is about working with smarter than you, better educated than you or speaking English better than you. It is about being fearless. It is about having endless energy to pull and push forward. It is about running across the house naked from your morning shower to quickly illustrate your thoughts before they're gone forever, poooof. It is about those moments when your friends or loved ones ask: "Are you OK?" after seeing you gazing at the ceiling for 40 minutes straight - thinking about the next big thing. It is about storytelling. It is about getting your team to be as excited as you are, if not more. It is about asking questions and forming concepts. It is about stepping on toes to hear real voices; it is about being careful with those toes because those may be connected to the butt that I may have to kiss later ...but that's a separate story. Anyways... It is about being tolerated, but not liked. It is about being lonely at times yet surrounded by thousands. It is about being different yet understood by everyone. It is about knowing the difference between innovation and invention. It is about the long shot, not only about "the shot". It is about asking to go ten slides back during someone's presentation. It is about being vulnerable. It is about foresight and how far in time it reaches. It is about being an artist and engineer at the same time. It is not about deep knowledge of the tech - it is about imagining connections between connections ...inventing "Uber" was not triggered by those deep within the "TAXI" industry. It is about learning something new every week; it is about being naturally curious. It is about navigating corporate structures and relationships, OKRs, KPIs, and rapidly changing environments. It is about "Does this work, or not?" versus "Do you like it, or not?". It is like being the ball in Pinball. It is about connecting people who otherwise will never connect to materialize the concept that didn't exist just an hour ago. It is like being a plane and going against the wind, yet using it to your advantage and soaring ...and I love it.

Ah, shit - I forgot - it is about salesmanship as well.

Tomasz Opasiński

#sowhatisthatyoudo #creativetechnologist #ai #ml