Where I Can Stand
Early learnings, honest limits, and an invitation to compare notes.
I’ve been thinking lately about what it means to be an expert.
When do you become one?
Who decides?
And do you actually need that label to help other people?
I’ve spent a lot of my career working with data. Long enough that some people might describe me as an expert. I never have.
I was the database administrator and architect on a team. I was the person digging through system issues, chasing down performance problems, and making design decisions that stuck.
I was also constantly learning. I took in‑person classes, back when business training still happened in conference rooms. I followed the blogs of people I considered real experts. When I got the chance, I talked through my design problems with a few of them.
I was doing the work.
I was learning every day.
And still, I didn’t think of myself as an expert.
My manager at the time suggested I start running weekly office hours for database topics. I thought that was a ridiculous idea. He also wanted me to do brown bags. That felt even more absurd.
With a few nudges, I did both.
People showed up. They asked questions. I helped where I could. Over time, my understanding of what an expert might actually mean shifted.
I’ve been fortunate in my career to work alongside people who truly were experts. Geniuses, even. Literal rocket scientists. People who built parts of the foundations that much of today’s technology still rests on.
They were the best people to work with.
Not because they knew everything, but because they were helpers. They shared what they knew freely, not as declarations, but as dialogue. They asked questions. They listened. They treated understanding as something you built together, not something you guarded.
Watching them work quietly shaped what I aspired to be.
Not the person with all the answers, but the person willing to help.
The kind of expert who makes room for conversation.
That became the goal.
Not expertise as status, but expertise as service.
That model of expertise is harder to hold onto in the age of AI.
The word itself suddenly feels heavier.
AI has been around for decades, but many of us have only started working with modern AI tools recently. That gap creates an uncomfortable tension.
How long do you have to be doing this before you’re allowed to help others?
A year?
Two?
Five?
The question assumes AI is a single thing. It isn’t.
AI touches many different kinds of understanding.
Foundations and models.
Data quality.
Tooling.
Human judgment.
Responsibility and impact.
Product behavior in the real world.
No one climbs all of those at once.
You learn one slope, feel your footing, and then realize there’s another ridge beyond it. Just when you think you’ve reached the top, the terrain shifts.
That isn’t a failure.
That’s the nature of the field.
I’m very new to AI.
Not an expert.
Not even expert‑adjacent.
Just new.
What I am, though, is curious. I’m having fun learning. I like tools that make the work I already do a little easier, or a little clearer.
I’ve spent most of my career working with data. For me, almost every problem is a data problem. Understanding where information comes from, how it flows, and how it can be shaped into something useful is how I make sense of systems.
So when I started bring AI tools into my day‑to‑day work, I didn’t approach them as something to master end to end.
I approached them the same way I approach everything else.
What does this help me see?
What does it make easier?
Where does it fit into how I already work?
Every day, I tweak my working agreements. I try something new. I keep what fits. I drop what doesn’t.
I’m slowly assembling what I think of as my AI data desktop.
Not a grand system.
Just a collection of tools and practices that support how I think.
I’m not building AI from scratch. That isn’t me.
What I care about is surfacing how to use the tools that already exist to make your work, and your data, easier to understand and shape.
I’m considering doing a small talk on using AI tools in data work.
I’m still very much in the considering phase.
I’m not an expert. I’m just beginning my walk on this road. I’m learning what fits, what helps, and what actually shows up in my day‑to‑day work.
That feels like enough to pause and ask whether it might be useful to share what I’ve learned so far.
My hope isn’t to teach from a position of authority.
It’s to start a conversation.
I’d like to bring a small group together, share the pieces I’ve picked up, and see what others bring with them.
Different tools.
Different approaches.
Different puzzles.
The questions people ask often matter as much as the answers. They spark new ways of thinking. They surface gaps I didn’t know I had. They add pieces to the puzzle I’m still building.
Maybe expertise isn’t a summit you reach and claim.
Maybe it’s simply being willing to say, “Here’s where I am, and here’s what I’m seeing,” and letting the conversation carry you forward.
That feels like a place I can stand.