With each new experiment in AI’s capability and potential I feel I am going through a grief cycle while navigating a hype cycle !!!!

As I climb the slope of enlightenment on my own journey in understanding AI I am feeling a degree of frustration, perhaps bordering on a bit of anger, that more skills that have been a hallmark of my career are potentially being marginalised or made completely redundant.

First some context.

After studying Communications, Advertising and Marketing at college my ambition was to work in an advertising agency.

Initially I worked for a printers as a paste up artist and then got a job helping organise exhibitions around the UK for a construction equipment manufacturer – a massively fun job travelling to all corners of the country, staying in hotels and having drinking competitions with Irish digger drivers.

All the time I was bombarding local marketing and advertising agencies with letters and CVs (which I still have so I can remind my daughters what job hunting used to entail).

Eventually one hit the mark and I joined what ultimately became one of the most successful marketing and advertising agencies in the region – The Lawton Communications Group – https://lawtoncommsgroup.com/

I joined as the late 80s boom turned to the early 90s bust and the agency’s house-building and tourism accounts were hit hard. However my focus was growing trade and technical accounts including the likes of Cobham, Meggitt and Racal.

One tech account really caught my eye – a company called National Transcommunications Limited – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arqiva – which had just been formed out of the privatisation of the engineering division of the Independent Broadcasting Authority, continuing the sell off of ‘the family silver’ the Government had begun during the mid 1980s.

When the time seemed right I jumped ship to this organisation with the brief of setting up and running an internal marketing and advertising agency.

It was the start of an incredible decade right in the heart of the digital revolution that stretched my skills and knowledge immensely and ultimately set me off on a completely new path.

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