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For a long time, I have been collecting ideas in a digital notebook of sorts (micro cassette player then the voice memo then in apps and now in chat...)

Not finished thoughts, exactly. More like fragments, questions, patterns, stories, observations, things I could not stop turning over.

Recently, I decided to use AI to help me build what I started calling an Idea Graph: a system that could do more than store the ideas. I wanted it to categorize them, crosswalk them, surface connections between them, show me loops and patterns, and help me see what I had actually been thinking about all these years.

No surprise to anyone who knows me, the first version contained nearly 2,800 ideas. 🙃

What is a girl supposed to do with that?

One cluster led me into a literature review to explore whether there may be academic work ahead. More on that later.

Another helped me outline the book I apparently have been writing for the last ten years. More on that later, too.

Another helped me define a business I am building to support the work of midwives. More on that later, too.

And one kept pulling me back toward the thing my eyes seem to find everywhere:

Systems and infrastructure.

The invisible structures beneath the work. The reasons we humans keep running into the same brick walls. The moments when a small observation reveals a much larger pattern. The stories from history that still have something urgent to say about the present. The ways a signal emerges from a noisy field if we watch for it.

That is where Harvest the Signal began.

It is where I will write about the origins of the school nurse program, how organizations waste mistakes, why indispensable people may be carrying broken systems, what learning to run taught me about interrupted progress, and why redesigning postpartum care may require us to notice the expertise already standing across the street.

And, most recently, it is where Coach Hammock had an F-bomb moment on the same day I was writing about what an AI operations coach might say to a very overwhelmed receptionist.

There were 2,800 ideas. I wrote about them. But it didn't feel done.

So I got on the mic, shared the stories around the ideas, and created a podcast.

And that, you’ll be relieved to learn, is the one thing I’m revealing now rather than later.

If you like to read, please do. But I really encourage the listen. I leave One More Signal at the end of every episode just for the listener and drop my favorite anecdotes, or in one case, a few rants, along the way.

That Idea Graph is one of the cooler AI-powered things I’ve built. It does amazing things with my 2,800 ideas.

But this is me, beginning to harvest them.

I'll be posting about each one in the weeks ahead and building more as we go. 

Read online. Listen on Spotify or Apple.

Want a bit more? Listen on  Apple Podcasts or Spotify for One More Signal about this topic.