AI gave us the power of gods, made anything possible.
Have we been able to use it well? Or did we just get more paralyzed and overwhelmed?
Are we really making progress, or doing more things that don't matter?
Imagine the impact of all high agency people at Edge open sourcing their AI playbooks.
That's what I want to enable, and why I want to join.
To observe, experiment and publish a playbook on:
"How to build a healthy life, enabled by AI."
I believe the answers are not just a new prompt or a tech tool.
We have to work on rediscovering traditional wisdom, and to combine what we know from a span of fields, from meditation and mythology, to psychology and economics.
This work matters for the entire next generation of people who will have AI in work and all around their life, whether they like it or not.
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~/ how i think
How I think about running the experiment
☼Design frameworks for healthy AI use: helping people decide what to do and not do using AI, and how to work with it through their day.
☼Go in and counsel: understand how people currently use AI, and what goods and bads they're facing.
☼Propose new methods: ask them to follow it, give them the tools, templates, and ways to do it.
☼Check in with them, support them, observe them over the 3 weeks, document everything.
☼Build a knowledge base of AI use, how people use it to enable themselves, and publicly share it for the city.
☼Enable and organise show-and-tell workshops within the city.
☼Organise all the information into a healthy AI handbook, for the city and the world.
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~/ what i'd bring
What I could contribute
These are drawn from Edge Esmeralda's contributions wanted. I'm still waiting for this edition's request for experiments, so consider these my starting offers.
Workshops & experiences
I've been a community manager before, so I'd love to host workshops and experiences for the village. They can be about tech, art, mindfulness or purely play!
Matchmaking & serendipity
I would love to build a matchmaker for the village!
Not one that matches you just by who you are. One that matches you by where you are, today.
Tell it what you're working on, what you're stuck on, what you're curious about right now. It finds someone else in the village whose day intersects with yours, even if just for twenty minutes, even if just once.
Small, daily, ongoing serendipity. Not a single "here's your match" email on day one and nothing after.
One shared brain for scheduling, introductions, wayfinding, and surfacing what's relevant. Could carry the matchmaker's daily nudges too.
Community energy management
Tracking energy, social activity, and rest, so people thrive the whole month. Same pulse could sharpen the matchmaker's timing.
An AI-native company sprint
Can a small team build something real in a month, with AI tools and a village around them?
Founder and team matching
A focused sibling of the matchmaker itself, for complementary co-founders finding each other.
Village-wide AI assistant
One shared brain for scheduling, introductions, wayfinding, and surfacing what's relevant. Could carry the matchmaker's daily nudges too.
Community energy management
Tracking energy, social activity, and rest, so people thrive the whole month. Same pulse could sharpen the matchmaker's timing.
An AI-native company sprint
Can a small team build something real in a month, with AI tools and a village around them?
Founder and team matching
A focused sibling of the matchmaker itself, for complementary co-founders finding each other.
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~/ residencies
Residencies of interest
If I was part of earlier Edge Cities, here's what I'd love to be a part of, and why.
Touch Grass Residency
Top pick
Built around presence, food, rhythm, community, and slowing down. Something I stand for as a person too, and where I'd want to just be, not just build.
It's also the other half of my thesis: healthy AI use isn't just frameworks and handbooks, it's remembering how to slow down and be present in the first place. I'd bring that same question here.
Vibe Residency
A place I'd love to actively contribute to, not just attend. Same reason as Touch Grass: whatever the vibe track turns out to be about, I want to help myself and others in doing work with AI that actually moves the needle, which is the whole point of my healthy AI thesis too.
Video Creator Residency
I've co-founded social media agencies before, so this is where I could both learn and teach, sharing what worked (and what didn't) from building creator-facing content businesses.
Kids Residency
I'm a techie and a science nerd at heart. If kids there need someone who's always rooting for them and can make science and building feel exciting, I'd love to teach and contribute.
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~/ my story
My story, and why I'm relevant
For me to win, nobody else has to lose.
Positive sum is the belief underneath everything I do. We can all win together, and I look for rooms where that is the default.
Me (in green) with the entire WebVeda team at the convocation of one of our programmes.
the journey
Crypto creator fellowship, NAS Academy x MetaPurse
This was my first real introduction to crypto, NFTs and digital art. Post the formal course, we formed a collective of artists and published our own piece on Async.art. That was the first time a room of strangers on the internet built something together in front of me.
One of India's biggest content and courses companies. I designed learning experiences that were actually fun to be inside of. This is the muscle I would bring to hosting workshops for the village.
Co-founded a social media scaling agency
A big role in a big city! Took on a pile of projects, moved to Bangalore, and had a ton of fun figuring out what I actually wanted to build.
Co-founded a tech and media company.
Shifted to building products and technology that let content creators and artists do more than they could alone. That, plus many more projects, some of which are mentioned below.
Posted one positive video every single morning, so the first thing people see when they open Instagram is something encouraging.
Crazy BuildersIn the works
A community to help people fall in love with building, for all the new builders using AI to make their imagination real.
Abandon AdultingIn the works
A club hosting experiences that help you reconnect with your inner child and let go of unecessary attachments of adulthood.
Five years in and out of content and tech, and the thread through all of it is the same: build things that help other people build, and make the room better for everyone in it. More at namanhajela.com.
also, here's what else I can be :)
Piano playerTech support guyDeveloperOperations managerSystems nerdPhysics nerdDad joke enthusiast ☼
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~/ volunteering
Volunteering, and a thank you
Thank you for reading my application, all the way to the bottom :)
I believe the best way to immerse yourself in any experience is to also contribute to it, which is why I've applied to volunteer as well.