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// Ben Bashford

Product, Design, Engineering, Data Science. Marketing agencies, innovation studios, in-house. I’ve done all three, and moved between them on purpose.

I like the cutting edge, but the technology is often the easy part. People and process are the work.

My job is turning insight and intuition into decisions. Curious and creative first, rigorous second. Prototypes over decks. Experiments over opinions. I’ve killed ideas I liked because the data didn’t back them, and shipped ones I didn’t because it did.

Sometimes I lead from the front. Sometimes the best thing I can do is get out of the way. Either way, the work only gets good when people feel valued and safe enough to be wrong in front of each other. Self-esteem powers bravery.

I'd love to tell you more.

// The Docs Are the Memory

Every new Claude session I started for a project had no memory of the last one. That’s the fact this whole setup is built around.

The system behind this website, a homelab, and a couple of other projects. Claude and an Obsidian vault, four notes per project instead of a chat log, and a folder connection that lets Claude read and write them directly.

Also: a document that went stale for a day, and a scheduled task that didn’t survive its first day.

// Information Appliances

Every function a device can perform is something your brain has to hold open as a possibility.

Jef Raskin, the Canon Cat, and why a device that only does one thing asks less of you than one that does everything.

Also: a language with only one variable, a phone that used to do one thing at a time, and the iPod again.