Justin Davis

Synapse Summit 2025 Agenda Join Synapse Summit 2025 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, the ultimate gathering of innovators, entrepreneurs, and leaders.

Exciting news! Justin Davis @jwd2a.bsky.social, Sourcetoad’s VP of UX, is speaking at #SynapseSummit next week!

Justin will join a #healthtech panel discussing how #UX plays a key role in making health data useful for patients & providers.

🔗 Full agenda: synapsefl.com/agenda/

Don’t miss it!

You can now build things at the speed of thought. What an insane time to be in tech.

Love seeing the timeline appreciate Tampa and Doechii's #Grammy

(And I see some of the doubters' comments, too - as with all of Florida, I wish more people could experience the Florida residents know, and play a huge role in creating.)

Let’s go Doechii, congrats on the Grammy win! Tampa bringing it! Loved the shoutout - Tampa is so full of culture and talent, so awesome to see that recognized on stage!

Love the idea, but wow what a weak opening number on the Grammys 😬

Yeah, I definitely think that the pace of this is way outrunning our ability to understand how to deal with it culturally and politically, and that’s likely to create some real problems soon.

So crazy!

I can empathize with being nervous/cautious using AI to do things for you, especially if you’re new to it.

What I CAN’T understand is actively getting rid of it from your env, or proudly stating that you reject it.

Y’all do know this isn’t going anywhere right? Gonna be rough when you’re behind.

oh you use a text editor? real programmers make their edits directly on the github web ui

A skill that isn't really taught in school is how to read from notes naturally. Yet, so many times, we have to listen to people read mechanically in meetings, in sales calls, in all kinds of situations.

Why isn't this taught?

Features of Adulthood xkcd.com/3034

My son said to me: "At least I don't spend as much time on a screen as you do every day"

I said: "I think we need to stop talking about screen time, and start talking about creative vs consuming activities. You can do both in front of a screen, they're not equal"

Maybe 'screen time' isn't it?

Ideas On Tap Tampa Bay Thinks Out Loud

💡 Big ideas + great beer — TONIGHT!

Hear Sourcetoad’s Justin Davis @jwd2a.bsky.social at "Ideas on Tap" at New World Brewery. Learn why humility is key to innovation and how to test ideas in the real world. 🎤

📅 Tonight, Jan 7 | 7 PM
📍 New World Brewery, Tampa | FREE
📍 Details: ideasontaptb.com

no shit maybe the most useful part of having an AI-embedded editor

So how do you start? Literally with anything. Tonight's dinner recipe. Researching some Excel formula you need.

Or every time you go to search something on Google, try asking ChatGPT/Gemini first.

Don't overthink it, just start using it for anything. Flight time is flight time, all hours count.

I think the same goes for AI today. *All* of us are going to be using it as a tool in our jobs one day. And, if you can start to develop mechanical sympathy with it, by just flying the plane more regularly, so to speak, then when all the hobbyists show up alter, you'll be the skilled pro.

The same goes for craftsmen making things out of wood.

They've developed mechanical sympathy for their tools, and can use them in a much more nuanced, subconscious way, which separates the casual hobbyist from the skilled professional.

Pilots who develop mechanical sympathy with the aircraft they fly become more intuitive, safer, and ultimately better pilots because they're "one" with the machine.

You know how when you're parking your own car, how you just know how much room you've got until you bump into something? Like you can just feel it?

That's mechanical sympathy. You've driven your car enough that you've develop an intuition about the machine's limits, tolerances and tendencies.

There's a concept called "mechanical sympathy", which I find fascinating and useful, and also explains why you need to be using AI tools everyday for anything you can think of.

Ok, first, what is mechanical sympathy? 🧵

What's useful is what's useful.

Weeks, not months. Reduce scope until you figure that out. Yeah, it's hard. It's supposed to be.

If your "senior" product folks continually lean on the same frameworks, approaches, and methods project after project, then they're not senior.

Being senior level means you continually keep on top of new approaches to solve problems. Staying up on industry innovations is literally part of the job.

there is a huge difference between using LLMs to replace your thinking and using LLMs to execute on your thinking

yeah, I think that's definitely good counsel, and certainly a view I share as well (show early work earlier). I sometimes end up being handed finished artifacts by clients and others, with whom I didn't have the luxury of participating in early iterations, which adds some complexity

[you find a mysterious charging port on your body]

oh no

[also it’s not usb-c]

OH NO

A challenge I’ve had often as a designer, when having others produce work for me, is knowing how to react and provide feedback when the artifact feels highly flawed across the board. If someone gets it to 90%, I can easily help nudge it to 100%, but struggle when it’s only at 20%.

Any tips?

Cyber Monday, Travel Tuesday, Weed Wednesday?

🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞

H/T to the Weather Channel app team for the great copywriting. Def adds some life to an otherwise sterile experience.

Great example of answering the design question, “But does it have to be boring?”

The market you think you're in doesn't matter nearly as much as the market your *customers* think you're in