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I’m Doug Langille, an IT leader at Nova Scotia Community College where I spend my days trying to convince people that yes, AI is actually useful, and no, it won’t write your strategic plan for you (I’ve tried).

This newsletter is where I document the experiments, share the failures, and occasionally admit when something actually works.

What You’ll Get Here

Weekly dispatches from the trenches:

  • AI integration – I’m using Mistral, Perplexity, Claude, ChatGPT, NotebookLM, and Gemini simultaneously because apparently I hate simplicity. Also neck-deep in Copilot and Microsoft 365 at work, which means I get to experience enterprise AI in all its bureaucratic glory
  • Productivity systems – How I actually organize chaos using markdown, GitHub, and VSCode while cosplaying as a hacker who definitely knows what he’s doing
  • Higher education innovation – Watching institutional change happen is like watching paint dry, if the paint kept forming committees
  • Digital craftsmanship – Philosophy of making things, usually while drinking coffee and questioning my life choices

I publish every week except when I don’t (Christmas, summer, existential crises).

Who This Is For

You’re probably an educator, IT person, or innovation advocate who’s sick of LinkedIn thought leadership and wants to know what actually happens when someone tries to implement all this stuff.

You appreciate honesty over inspiration. You’d rather hear “here’s how I broke it three times before it worked” than “5 transformational frameworks for synergistic excellence.”

If you want a guru, keep scrolling. If you want someone figuring this out beside you, pull up a chair.

Fair Warning

This is explicitly labeled as brain-droppings for a reason:

  • The workbench is messy
  • The AI toolkit is excessive
  • The plaintext obsession is real (markdown everything, fight me)
  • The self-awareness is borderline debilitating
  • The takes are lukewarm at best

You’ve been warned.

Beyond This Newsletter

I also write fiction at Tales & Tangents (douglangille.ca) where I can blame the dark stuff on “creative expression” instead of “concerning personality traits.” Two completely separate worlds. This one has coffee; that one has whiskey.

Subscribe for the weekly chaos. Unsubscribe when you remember you’re supposed to be working.

— Doug

📍 Nova Scotia (the one in Canada, not the one you’re thinking of) LinkedIn (where I’m more professional) Email (I actually read these)

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