Build vs Buy In The Age Of AI: A Developer’s POV For Marketing Leaders

[00:00:00] Tessa Burg: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Leader Generation, brought to you by Mod Op. I’m your host, Tessa Burg, and today I am joined by a fellow Mod Opper in technology, Derek McBurney. He’s our Head of Technology out of Mod Ops Calgary office, and I am very excited to talk to him about a couple of articles he recently published in Medium about the impact of generative AI and coding.

[00:00:25] Tessa Burg: Derek, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:00:28] Derek McBurney: Thanks for having me, Tessa. Uh, I’m really excited to be here. Uh, I’m happy to talk, uh, bit about technology development, AI Um, always excited to get an audience for these things. And, uh. Um, my setup. Finally, uh, I get to use it for a podcast. Uh, I’ve had this setup since COVID, when we were kitting out our home offices, everything like that.

[00:00:50] Derek McBurney: So for the past five years, I’ve been the butt of jokes from every client meeting I’ve had. Everybody’s always asked me, Derek, you know, how’s your podcast? Uh, this is my first time, so here we go.

[00:01:01] Tessa Burg: I love it. I was telling, saying before we got on the air. That I’m really jealous of the microphone. I don’t have one.

[00:01:07] Tessa Burg: I just speak really loudly into my computer. Uh, but I want one. I’m going to get one and it, your audio sounds very crisp, so this won’t be the only episode you do. We’re gonna get more use of it.

[00:01:21] Derek McBurney: Well, we’ll see. We’ll find out. We’ll find out how it goes.

[00:01:24] Tessa Burg: Yeah. So before we jump into this subject, tell us a little bit about yourself and your role here at Mod Op.

[00:01:30] Derek McBurney: Sure. So I’m the Head of Technology at the Calgary Mod Op Office, so I have the privilege of leading a team of two dozen developers, tech leads, quality assurance specialists. Uh, we build digital experiences for clients large and small, um, and really like to bring to life really creative experiences, uh, onto screens.

[00:01:55] Derek McBurney: Uh, and I’ve been, I’ve, sorry, I’ve, I’ve been here, uh. Uh, I, I’ve been at our office for almost a decade actually, and we were brought into Mod Op, uh, a couple years ago. Uh, prior to that I was at the University of Calgary here in town. Uh, and I started as a computer science intern there. So, uh, and then it got, got hired full-time into their IT department doing lots of software and systems.

[00:02:16] Derek McBurney: And so in a way it was like I never really graduated. I ended up being there for a decade as well, uh, working my way over their web team, uh, before coming here.

[00:02:25] Tessa Burg: Oh, that is funny that when I, my college job turned into a full-time job when I started an internal IT, but I had like the exact opposite reaction.

[00:02:34] Tessa Burg: Like when they’re like, oh, are you staying? I was like, oh. Oh no. Being an internal IT desk top support server manager was not my life dream and I was too young at the time to realize. The rich experience. I, I was getting, you know, I was so naive thinking and I was just gonna go out and get one of those dream jobs right outta college.

[00:02:55] Derek McBurney: Yeah.

[00:02:56] Tessa Burg: But I’m glad that you stayed, uh, because the experience you bring to Mod Op is fantastic and it’s an exciting time to have you leading in the Calgary office when things like AI and code assistance are not only reinventing the way that we do work, but the types of experiences we can deliver to clients.

[00:03:17] Derek McBurney: Yeah, I, I appreciate that. Those are really kind words.

[00:03:20] Tessa Burg: So when we think about these AI code assistants, a lot of our audience are not developers. Can you paint a picture of what exactly is an AI code assistant, what they represent, and how is this shift playing out today in software development?

[00:03:38] Derek McBurney: Sure. Uh, you know, and I’ll back up all the way to the beginning.

[00:03:40] Derek McBurney: Uh, w when it comes to code, like what is code? It is us, you know, us developers writing instructions to the computers to get them to do things. So when we come to like web experiences and things like that, we’re literally, uh, writing out that this website should have a button. This is what the button looks like when you click on it.

[00:04:00] Derek McBurney: This is what the button does. So it’s a series of, uh. Instructions to get it to do that thing using different languages, languages for styling, languages for logic, it is text, it’s code, we write it out. Uh, so when it comes to AI and code, uh, the progression of the tools started just like kind of how it did for all tools.

[00:04:21] Derek McBurney: So one of the first things, one of the first features that our code editors had when you could switch on AI enabled coding was auto complete. And you see that a lot when you’re writing documents and, and Google Docs or whatever, you know, it’ll start finishing out your word or helping you spell with code.

[00:04:39] Derek McBurney: We do the same things, so I would start writing. The line for, uh, having a click interaction on a button. And every so often it would just, it would fill out, it would attempt to fill out what I was writing. Uh, and it was pretty slick. ’cause it would, this auto complete would work most of the time. And it was, when it was working with you, it was quite something, right?

[00:04:59] Derek McBurney: Because it would actually just finish off the line. You were starting, you jump to the next thing. Occasionally it would spin out and, and auto complete something that was not what you wanted. But I would say that was, it was surprising how little that was happening as it went on. So that was sort of the first experience coding with AI.

[00:05:15] Derek McBurney: And then, then they added what prompt based coding. So like how people work with ChatGPT, where giving you a prompt and you type it in instruction and it does the thing. So in code, you know, again, thinking about that button, I could say, uh, you know, make, uh, this button on this page template I’m writing. Make it, uh, you know, open up this modal window or something and hit enter right into the code editor. So prompt it the same way you do ChatGPT. And what it does is it returns a whole bunch of code. It’ll, it’ll look, it’ll evaluate the code. You have to try and hook into it properly and then spit out a bunch of code.

[00:05:55] Derek McBurney: So instead of auto completing a line, it’s actually doing. You know, all the code it thinks is necessary to run this. And then what that does is now you see the code, it would present it to you in what’s called a diff, and I, sorry, I get technical. I love getting technical, but imagine it’s just showing you what, uh, lines of code it’s adding to your existing code.

[00:06:16] Derek McBurney: And what lines of code it’s taking away or, or, or modifying. So you would get to see that. And so it does grant you the chance to know what the AI is doing, how it’s changed your code, and then give you the opportunity to accept or decline those changes, uh, which is. A, a big paradigm shift, but when it works well, it’s given you a lot of code that you were probably going to write anyway.

[00:06:39] Derek McBurney: Uh, and, and being able to, to speed you up by just bringing it in, you accepting it, and boom, I’ve got a working button the way I was hoping for.

[00:06:48] Tessa Burg: So in that process that you just described, it sounds like things are moving faster. If I’m a marketer sitting in my seat, I’m like, Ooh. So we can get more stuff done.

[00:07:01] Tessa Burg: You know, when I was on the client side and we needed a new application, you had to submit a ticket, justify the ticket, wait for it to get in the queue. And have you seen now that there are new AI tools and coding and code assistance velocity, like pick up so that you’re able to ship and deliver solutions faster?

[00:07:23] Derek McBurney: Yeah. Uh. That’s a big question. So when it works well, and when I mean works well, like actually kind of gets you what you were hoping to get with it, it’s hard not to think, yeah, this, this is speeding me up. Right? We wouldn’t, I wouldn’t want to use the tool if I’m constantly fighting with it. Um, but there are times you will fight with it.

[00:07:44] Derek McBurney: So I ask it to do something and it spits out something that is close. Not right, and then I have to reject some of those code changes. I have to do different code. Sometimes the worst thing is actually it gives you code that looks great. You accept it, you test it, it’s running, and actually there’s something like innocuously wrong with it that doesn’t get, get past your first line of testing, uh, but then causes you to spin out later where it’ll introduce a bug down the road you weren’t anticipating.

[00:08:16] Derek McBurney: So it, it gives you boosts when you need them, but it can also, it can also slow you down sometimes as well. And this is, uh, this is why I got into writing some Medium articles about how to use AI because I think. If you lean into sort of the strengths and, uh, be very selective about how you choose to employ it, I think you can get a lot more of those velocity gains.

[00:08:40] Derek McBurney: Uh, and if you aren’t selective with it, if you’re just, if you’re prompting away for everything, you will get yourself into a lot of trouble and, and slow yourself down. So, uh, with very pragmatic application of it, I think you can get, uh, boosts in velocity. Uh, but I think developers have also, um. Found themselves at times, uh, getting, uh, slow slowed down by it.

[00:09:03] Derek McBurney: And I, I’ve seen studies out there like the, the, the jury is very much still out. And I think that’s because it comes down to using it smartly. Uh, and, and being aware of these pros and cons.

[00:09:14] Tessa Burg: And I feel like that’s with a lot of AI tools, sometimes people go into it expecting that they’re gonna try it.

[00:09:22] Tessa Burg: It’s going to meet their very high, lofty expectations of giving them superpowers and then it doesn’t, and then they ditch it. And you even point out that developers are kind of programmed to hate prompt engineering, yet you have this other side where you have found some benefits and that it does open up some time and space for you to do more of the satisfying stuff.

[00:09:46] Tessa Burg: Tell me a little bit about. What that process looked like for you and, and where you said being selective about it. Where, where are you using it, where are you not? And when we talk about elevating more time on the satisfying stuff, what has this opened up for you in terms of creativity and, and being a part of driving innovation or maybe even adoption within your technology practice?

[00:10:13] Derek McBurney: Yeah. Lot to unpack there. So it, it has, employing these tools has changed how I operate. So I talked about that, that diff So I, I prompt it. I get a bunch of code changes and now I’m reviewing the code. Uh, that’s a task a lot of senior developers, release managers know really well, uh, when another developer on the team does some work on a feature.

[00:10:39] Derek McBurney: They’ll package up their code, send it for review, and then a senior developer, a tech lead, will look at that and determine, you know, this is good. I want to use this, or, this isn’t good, I don’t want to use it. A lot of developers don’t actually like that part of their job, but obviously it’s, it’s so, it’s a change, right?

[00:10:55] Derek McBurney: It, it, it’s what these are called pull requests when you package up code and send it for review. So a PR being a PR reviewer, uh, it’s interesting. Developers wanna be in the code, they wanna make things. Of course one of the keys to making things is accepting. You have a big team, they’re gonna be producing work.

[00:11:10] Derek McBurney: You need to bring it all together into, uh, a product and make it sing. Uh, so it’s a necessary part of the job. With coding, with AI tools, you’re, you’re doing that, that PR review, that reviewing code step a lot more than you normally would. Uh, and that’s a big change and I think a lot of programmers don’t necessarily like that, but if.

[00:11:34] Derek McBurney: You are getting the AI to do some tasks you don’t want to be bothering with that aren’t necessarily mission critical. It does free up your time to spend more of your time on the ambitious parts, the parts that you want to be doing. So for example, um. I’ve worked with it on many different projects. Uh, one, one of the projects I had to do, I was getting a bunch of data from a video game and I needed to work that data into a web experience where you could, uh, users could do stuff, uh, and, and, and set various, uh, aspects of their characters and.

[00:12:14] Derek McBurney: The data came in as an Excel spreadsheet, just a massive Excel spreadsheet. I wanted to focus on building out this really rich user experience where users get to work with their game characters and love it. I didn’t wanna spend much time having to do all this plumbing for transforming Excel files into something my web experience could use.

[00:12:37] Derek McBurney: So this was actually a really great example for being able to employ AI. So, uh. What I didn’t wanna do is say AI, Hey, just transform this Excel data into the data I need and do that. I know how AI can hallucinate the data needed to be bulletproof. It had to be the data I got, needed to be the data I was using, and there’s a risk if I just tell the AI, change the data, it actually spits out some numbers that are bad.

[00:13:03] Derek McBurney: Instead, what I chose to do was use it to write scripts. And scripts are nice. They’re repeatable chunks of code that’ll just either work or not work, and transform that Excel data into a format I needed for my web experience. And I could write the, get the AI to produce that first script. I didn’t even look at it that closely.

[00:13:24] Derek McBurney: I decided, you know what a proof will be in the pudding. I’ll run the script, see how the data transforms, and, and boom, I got the data I needed in the format my web experience, uh, needed so I could focus all my time on that web experience piece. And less on just writing the minutia of scripts to transform data one way to the other.

[00:13:43] Derek McBurney: So, uh, that was very technical, but at a high level, I was able to spend more of my time hands-on in the tools, uh, for the stuff where, um, I needed it to be pixel perfect, where I’m most valued, you know, building out these front end experiences, making it highly creative and visual focus. All my time there, I did not defer it to AI tools.

[00:14:05] Derek McBurney: May do you know, a job that’s okay or may do a bad job? No, I was gonna make sure it was a great job. Spend all my time there being ambitious and deferred the AI to stuff where it’s like, you know, I don’t care the quality of these scripts, as long as they spit out the data I need, I’m good to go. So I think lots of people using these AI tools, this is what they should think about when they are using them, is how to use them.

[00:14:28] Derek McBurney: Don’t use ’em for everything. Use them for the bits where you know, you don’t need to be hands on with it. So that you can spend more time, uh, in the areas where you should be hands-on with it to get better, more ambitious results.

[00:14:42] Tessa Burg: Yeah, and it’s interesting that you ended your response that way, that your use of the tool is to free up time in the more strategic and creative thinking areas.

[00:14:52] Tessa Burg: And we just did a two part interview with John Arnold from Creatio. And with him, we really dove deep into not code assistance, but no code platforms and the ability to democratize development and have citizen developers across the organization, but specifically in sales, marketing, or customer service. What has been your experience and how has.

[00:15:20] Tessa Burg: No code sort of impacted the way that you collaborate with your colleagues in different departments is they try to express, you know, their concepts and their creativity differently.

[00:15:32] Derek McBurney: Yeah. You know, another term I, no codes. One I’ve heard, the other term people may have heard is vibe code, which, which is kind of fun.

[00:15:40] Derek McBurney: And I like that. And just to explain that, yeah. It, it really is the idea that. Instead of writing code yourself, instead of being a developer yourself who knows how to read and write code, and understands that you just work with the prompts to produce code that produces an experience. So you just, you type in, you know, I want this concept to do that.

[00:16:00] Derek McBurney: So, uh, it’s really exciting. I think. This is one of the neatest ways to use AI is to get to concepts sooner so that you can scrutinize that concept, you can see it live and breathe, uh, understand what you wanna do with it. And it is allowing people who aren’t coders to be able to get to that point. Uh, and I think that’s really exciting.

[00:16:22] Derek McBurney: So we’ve had designers, UX designers, uh, on our team at our office use some of those tools to take a Figma design. They had. And bring it to life as a working concept so they could review it with a client. And just with, you know, a day of prompting where it would’ve taken developers a week to bash out that code, that may not even get used because maybe the concept’s no good.

[00:16:44] Derek McBurney: We were able to start riffing on the concept right away. I think that’s really exciting and. I know, I think when this stuff first came about, developers got on the defensive like, oh, we’re gonna have non-tech people building this stuff out, like, what’s gonna happen? And I, none of that diminishes, uh, the utility of developers.

[00:17:05] Derek McBurney: If anything, I think it actually demonstrates why it’s so important. So it’s great. We can bring, uh, experience, anyone can bring experiences to a place where you can look at it and play with it. Um. Getting to a concept and building it out. It, it’s always kind of been the easier part of development and building out experiences.

[00:17:25] Derek McBurney: The hard part is actually turning it into a production product, production experience that works for all its users, because it has to be secure, it has to be bulletproof. It’s gotta work on people’s different devices, things like that. It requires a lot of integrity. You do need to care about code quality.

[00:17:42] Derek McBurney: ’cause this may be an experience your team is sustaining for months, years, everything like that. So that’s still important. Uh, and in a lot of cases, uh, when you get to this concept, which is great, then when you decide, oh, we wanna make, we wanna run forward with this concept, at that point, you wanna get real with your developer team, make sure this is built out properly, make sure this is suitable for customers.

[00:18:06] Derek McBurney: So. Think developers are still valuable, but it’s really great to bring more ideas in, more fully realized ways on everybody’s machines. Uh, it, it’s exciting, and this is why I, I keep coming back to the word. Um, it allows you to be more ambitious. Like we can push forward with ideas sooner. Uh, and that part’s like genuinely exciting for where we can go from there.

[00:18:30] Tessa Burg: Yeah. I love that theme of ambition. And the other theme that you’re really hitting a lot on is collaboration. It allows you to work with others even when you’re collaborating with the coist in itself. And then collaborating, spending more human time looking at what experience are we trying to build, where can we go from here, like build off each other.

[00:18:55] Tessa Burg: It very different than development projects of old where you would submit requirements and they would go into that queue and developer would take a stab at it to come back to you. And there then there was more like a back and forth. And while I feel like UX UI was a big wave that brought forward, uh, more collaboration.

[00:19:16] Tessa Burg: Vibe coding, no code platform. It’s this next wave because it’s functioning and because we can start to look at it. I would say hood to hood, you know, the very front end into the back end and have conversations about not only what is this experience doing, what is it capturing, what can we learn from the data that we capture?

[00:19:37] Tessa Burg: We’re gonna go from here. And the more we are aligned on that upfront, then. The more efficient it is to build out and scale in the future and not just be one-off solutions.

[00:19:49] Derek McBurney: Yeah, and I, I know too, when you needed to get your developers to build out that first concept and invest that week. Be, it became harder to throw that away if it wasn’t good.

[00:20:01] Derek McBurney: Yeah. You know, it’s like, oh well that’s wasted investment now. It’s so easy to just toss stuff out that wasn’t good. Uh, try again with a new thing. So it more experimentation, more room to experiment. So I think, you know, when we talked about velocity, like I think at the end of the day, like I’m not sure developers are able to be faster, but I think teams can.

[00:20:23] Derek McBurney: Potentially get farther or mature their ideas more, because you can have more rapid experimentation.

[00:20:31] Tessa Burg: Yeah. And on that topic of velocity, another trend that we’ve seen is companies, and I would say executives, maybe not in the day-to-day of actual developments, perceive that with the ease of being able to create, it looks like, hey, now anyone can code, anyone can build an app.

[00:20:51] Tessa Burg: There’s lower barriers to entry. Uh, we might re-look at our equation or how we’re approaching build versus buy. Maybe we as a company are gonna decide to build more and license off the shelf applications less. Where have you seen a shift in that has. Vibe coding, the ability to build more, changed the way you look at licensing tech and specific software applications compared to taking it yourself and building it internally.

[00:21:26] Derek McBurney: Right. Um, this is where, uh, I think it’s important to educate yourselves on, on how AI works, when to lean into it, when to not, because I think the, I think the first temptation would be that, you know, we can get to concepts sooner. Um, why don’t we just build it ourselves? Why would we spend a lot of money on licensing costs?

[00:21:48] Derek McBurney: Uh, you know, when we can do this in-house quicker now? And that is where, you know, I want to get to people, talk to leaders out there, because I, I think that decision is huge. It still requires a lot of scrutiny and, and for what I touched upon earlier, and that the harder part of having services, tools, products you build.

[00:22:08] Derek McBurney: It really is that sustainment phase and, and keeping it working, keeping the lights on, and you need to have a really strong foundation of good code and everything like that. So, um, it may seem like the investment you are making is to just get to that 1.0 MVP release and you’re good to go, but if, if this is a service you’re going to employ for a long period of time, you do have to sustain it as, as, as we know, like the web and digital.

[00:22:34] Derek McBurney: Continues to change devices, technologies, you have to keep that thing running. Uh, and what might look good in the short term for costs, because you were able to rapidly get to some prototypes or some MVP launches might not be so good in year 2, 3, 4, 5, relative to paying a SaaS provider for, you know, a monthly or annual cost for something where, you know, they have a full team that’s keeping that service bulletproof and you don’t want to, um.

[00:23:02] Derek McBurney: You know, replicate that in-house. So it really comes down to, you know, I, it shouldn’t, even though you can get to some concept, uh, concepts and, and build them out, uh, sooner, which is really exciting. It should still come down to strategic decisions around what do you actually wanna live with? What tech debt do you wanna build and maintain and have yourself, and what do you just.

[00:23:23] Derek McBurney: You want somebody else to do it, right? Like, uh, I, um, there, that can be some of the best money you ever spend, right? Like, I, I love to, uh, get cleaners in the house. Now, first I balked at the cost. I’m like, no, I don’t wanna spend, you know, this money a month for cleaners. And I’m like, wow, I got some time back.

[00:23:42] Derek McBurney: And, uh. That’s okay. So, and the cleaning I could, in the house, I could do myself. Um, but, uh, that’s some of the best money I ever spent. ’cause now I don’t have to do that. So I think those decisions , shouldn’t be necessarily influenced by how quickly you can concept something out.

[00:23:59] Tessa Burg: Yeah. I, I would say vehemently, but I aggressively agree.

[00:24:04] Tessa Burg: I think when you’re looking at that build versus buy, to your point, the strategy is this core or a business. Is this what we at the core want to maintain and iterate on? Because whether you’re using vibe code, code assistance, or pure coding, it’s iterative. It’s is subject to the engagement response and use from the audience in which it serves, and that audience lives in an always changing, ever changing environment.

[00:24:36] Tessa Burg: And so you’re not just signing up for the idea you have today. You’re signing up for moving with the market forever until you decide to sunset that. And back to your point about costs, whether even if you use code assistance, it’s still a massive investment of time and a lot of time. External capital and I, I mean, I’m seeing it right now, a lot of people, because the prototype and that’s all vibe coding is got up so quickly and they were able to play with it and they were able to do something.

[00:25:11] Tessa Burg: I, the knee jerk response has been, well, we should just build this. We don’t have to license that now. And you have to take a beat and say, okay, so you can build it now. But what, that’s not long-term sustainable value.

[00:25:24] Derek McBurney: Yeah. I, I’ve, I’ve been in a lot of rooms where, you know, we built out the concept and however we got there, whether we coded ourselves or used AI or, or, or whatnot.

[00:25:33] Derek McBurney: I’ve, I’ve been at those first proof of concept review meetings with clients where they, they love it. Their eyes light up, they, they see the concept and they’re like. Ship it. It’s great, it’s done. And I’m like, um, actually it just began, uh, so it, yeah, that hasn’t changed that, that’s fundamental. Um, but sometimes, yeah, some I do worry, you know, as, as more things are more quickly realized on the screen that people would take away, well, it’s done.

[00:25:57] Derek McBurney: Uh, but the, the engineering teams, the developer teams out there, they know what’s involved to make quality software that hasn’t changed, uh, and, and still needs that, uh, that look.

[00:26:07] Tessa Burg: Yes. So if we were to say, you know, what are some really important things people have to keep in mind is one, code assistance, even vibe coding, citizen developer, all great movements and it has opened up space for creativity.

[00:26:24] Tessa Burg: Focusing on places where we can start to reimagine the way we serve our clients, work internally with different departments, but that the fundamentals of quality, of making sure that this is engineered and future proof for scale and aligns with. Either our internal vision or our client’s vision hasn’t changed.

[00:26:45] Tessa Burg: One of the areas I wanted to touch on is the responsible use, and you made a great point. How positively and negative or negatively you’re impacted is directly a consequence of how you choose to work with AI and we’ve. Talked a lot about this, but when we think about the listeners today who are leading marketing teams and they’re trying to define the AI adoption, and at the same time in an environment where marketers are worried about, you know, their jobs and hearing headlines of how marketing roles, customer service roles, sales roles might go away.

[00:27:31] Tessa Burg: How do they approach that? How, what advice would you give CMOs on talking about responsible use of AI adoptions and the standards and the role their teams can play?

[00:27:42] Derek McBurney: Yeah. There’s a lot of facets to responsible use, uh, which is interesting. Um, and I maybe have a different lens on this than some of my colleagues because I know, uh, one of the things that comes up often of course being in our creative agency world is, um.

[00:28:04] Derek McBurney: Uh, designing with AI. And so one of the obvious ethical things is, you know, don’t we, we wanna be transparent of our use of AI with our clients. We don’t wanna be in a situation where we’re passing on AI designed creative works as if we did them ourselves. Right? So that’s an obvious thing I think that, um, you, you want to handle is, is making sure you’re transparent about using AI, things like that.

[00:28:26] Derek McBurney: Why my experience is a little bit unique is I’m using AI to help me code, and that’s all behind the scenes. It’s, it is sort of a black box right at, at the end of the day what I’m, uh, shipping digital experiences. Nobody’s actually seen the code. It’s, it’s the black box. The, the, they’re seeing the results on top.

[00:28:45] Derek McBurney: Uh, so it, it that, that typical AI responsible use policy to make sure we’re not passing off AI work as our own. It’s different in the coding world and almost kind of a gray area. And it’s interesting. Um, so one of the things is typically in our role, what we’re doing. There’s a term called open source, so it’s code that’s available for everyone.

[00:29:06] Derek McBurney: There are so many different projects and technologies built in open source code that’s freely available. Often my team and I are, are using these open source packages to build digital experiences. We’re gluing things together. Our code is the glue of these existing services, integrating with other services.

[00:29:25] Derek McBurney: And then of course. Doing all the beautiful design work, everything like that on top of it, custom styles, none of it feels proprietary like that. Like it isn’t. So it feels fine to be using AI tools there to help augment our coding and things like that. I think where I would maybe. Wanna strengthen that is if we were building a proprietary system, you might not want to necessarily be sharing out some of your code with AI services, or if you are, make sure to get enterprise agreements with these, uh, AI service providers so that your data, your proprietary code, isn’t actually leaking in into the, the broader ecosystem.

[00:30:02] Derek McBurney: So that’s, that’s a big facet of, uh, responsible use. There’s also responsible use from, and we’ve been talking about this, uh, today, like. How you choose to use it. And I, I think one thing that’s really important is it, uh, using AI, whatever you’re deferring to AI to do, whether it be in code or creative, that’s something you’re not doing.

[00:30:26] Derek McBurney: So that part of your brain is, is not firing, right? Like when I had it write scripts to transform data. There were these Python scripts to turn Excel into JSON. If none of that makes sense to use the listener, it’s fine. But is this part of the development? I was no longer writing those scripts and I wasn’t using that part of my brain to manipulate those data structures.

[00:30:48] Derek McBurney: I’ll be getting softer on that. Like if I continue to do that over time, you know, a creative that might be deferring some part of their process to AI, they’ll get softer on that as well. I think that’s okay. If you are being. If you are scrutinizing what aspects you are gonna get softer on and what aspects you’re gonna retain because you’re gonna be heads down in it.

[00:31:11] Derek McBurney: And I think total other side of responsible use, but sort of for the individual and how they can continue to be a good and valued practitioner. So like, um, you know, like I, I get like, uh, a grocery, one of those food prep meal services delivered, uh, sometimes, uh, where they give you all the, the recipe and the ingredients.

[00:31:31] Derek McBurney: And I can bash out meals for the kids on weekdays, which is great. You know, I’m losing the ability to go to the, the grocery store and just like randomly pull, pick ingredients and be able to riff on that and do, uh, good, uh, meals I’ve accepted. I’m not gonna be a world class chef. That’s fine. So I, it’s, it is okay, but pick those moments.

[00:31:50] Derek McBurney: Right. So like, when it comes to building out the front end experience. I don’t get AI to help write styles and how theming should look. ’cause I need it to be perfect. I wanna retain being that strong because I know one of the things we do is deliver like pixel perfect custom creative experiences on the web.

[00:32:07] Derek McBurney: So I, you know, I’m heads down in that I’m not gonna get AI doing that. Um, so I think that’s, that’s a really important way people can choose to use it. And I think it can be tempting ’cause the results coming back from AI are really good to just throw it at everything. You need to take a step, think about what is that doing to me?

[00:32:24] Derek McBurney: Because I think, like I said, as as we go further with these tools, the practitioners are gonna continue to be valued because they’re the ones that can put this all together and make the greatest results. But not if you soften your brain so much on this stuff that you yourself are no longer, uh, providing a lot of value.

[00:32:40] Derek McBurney: So I think that’s a really key way to think about using AI.

[00:32:45] Tessa Burg: I love that. You encourage people to test and try and learn and see what’s possible, but at the same time, when it comes to making decisions to make decisions with intention aligned to your purpose, your values, and the overlap that you’re purpose and your values has with your company and how you’re serving your customers and clients, and I think that’s really smart advice because to your point, if we just use AI for everything, it.

[00:33:13] Tessa Burg: And this was another episode we did. It generates slop. And if you get to the point where you can’t decide or you can’t tell if it’s slop, then you’ve gone too far.

[00:33:24] Derek McBurney: Yeah. Course.

[00:33:24] Tessa Burg: And you are now a part of the problem.

[00:33:27] Derek McBurney: Yeah. Yeah. I think you know, one I points on AI has been this, I. It’s not as good as the boosters say.

[00:33:35] Derek McBurney: There are real problems with it. It’s, it is creating slop and it’s been tougher on the web. I, I, I’ve been a web geek my whole life, and when you search on the web, like I find I’m getting a lot of pages where I click on them. Uh, and you can tell it’s just AI generated slop like it, the way it’s speaking, it is, it’s repeating the same thing five different times.

[00:33:53] Derek McBurney: It’s, oh, like that’s not good. Like, so there’s things like that. AI is not as bad as the cynics are saying. Let’s, let’s be honest too, right? Like, I think I gave some examples where like it’s really cool, like, um.

[00:34:09] Derek McBurney: A random example, but, you know, my child’s gotten into 3D printing and everything like that, and he wanted to do a 3D print for his music, uh, teacher. And they have a logo. You know, he took the 2D logo and there was a service that used AI to interpret what a 3D model would be like. This is, this is cool stuff that’s enabling really great creativity.

[00:34:28] Derek McBurney: You know, it’s doing things in like. Healthcare and um, uh, you know, like I heard it was the pattern matching of AI was helping, uh, figure out, uh, what was messages and ancient scrolls. Um, like that you can’t deny. So there, there’s something there. So it. It, it’s in the middle. It’s not as good as everybody, the boosters are saying it’s not as bad as the cynics are saying.

[00:34:49] Derek McBurney: And having that pragmatic approach and just getting real with where it’s good, where it’s not being critical of it, but also, you know, encouraging it, I think goes a long way. And I think that’s, that’s my other message for that leaders out there. I don’t think you should mandate everybody use AI the way you think you should use it.

[00:35:09] Derek McBurney: You’re gonna get a lot of people doing great things, who did great things, who are not, who are now getting frustrated. What you want to do is, is educate people on the services that are there, encourage them to play and empower themselves to adopt these tools in their workflows.

[00:35:25] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I agree. We always say when we’re tackling some of these issues directly with our clients, we call like co-innovation.

[00:35:33] Tessa Burg: And when we think about the discipline and the practice of innovation, it’s first grounding in the challenge. And one of our, our other colleagues, Patty, she opens up with a statement, what have you always wanted to do? As opposed to, here’s what we want you to do, it’s what have you always wanted to do?

[00:35:53] Tessa Burg: And that opens that door to creative exploration, to then having an incentive to work more efficiently, but still keep that eye on. What I want to do is generate value for the people and the customers I serve, and I now, I have the opportunity to do that differently. So I, I really, I literally love that advice because we see when things are mandated or forced, it’s, there’s a lot of resistance, but it’s really just because.

[00:36:23] Tessa Burg: You didn’t give super smart people the opportunity to explore.

[00:36:29] Derek McBurney: Yeah, definitely.

[00:36:31] Tessa Burg: So we’re at time. This went by super fast and

[00:36:36] Derek McBurney: This is fun. This is really fun.

[00:36:38] Tessa Burg: I know I had a, I had a great time. We’ll have to do this again. I feel like this topic is gonna continue to evolve and change, and if people want to find you, how can they reach you?

[00:36:50] Derek McBurney: Oh, uh, good question. Um, you know, I, I have a personal website. Uh, it’s dmcb.dev. Um, but there’s a cool link there. I, I did this a while back, but there’s just an office hours thing, so you can book a chat with me. I think Friday mornings I typically do it. Uh, I just found this was a good way. People wanted to just talk shop and stuff, uh, to open that up to people.

[00:37:12] Derek McBurney: So that, that’s a great way, uh, to, to reach out to me for sure. And, uh, yeah, uh, this was great. And now I, now I can’t tell clients I, I, I don’t podcast, uh, anymore, so.

[00:37:23] Tessa Burg: Right.

[00:37:24] Derek McBurney: He changes everything.

[00:37:25] Tessa Burg: You’ll definitely be doing it more often. And then for listeners who wanna hear other Leader Generation episodes, you can find them at modop.com.

[00:37:33] Tessa Burg: That’s modop.com/podcast. Or navigate under The Van Guardian. And we’re available wherever you listen to podcasts, including Spotify and Apple Podcast. And Derek, thank you so much again until your next episode with your awesome audio. I hope you have a great week.

[00:37:54] Derek McBurney: Thanks, you too. Really appreciate it.