I'm Ken Langdon. I live in Australia, and I spent thirty years in IT being paid to look at large contracts and tell senior people whether the deal was as good as the slide deck claimed. More often than was comfortable, the answer was no. AI is the first technology in a while that I think actually justifies the noise around it.

I have four children spread across enough age brackets that I live through teenage years and adult career years from different chairs at the same dinner table. When I am not at a keyboard I am walking somewhere. I have done the Camino de Santiago (800 kilometres) and the Shikoku Pilgrimage in Japan (officially 1200 kilometres, but 1400 in my case from getting lost on signs I cannot read).

These books have been in my head for years; AI has finally helped me get them onto the page. At some point I will need to stop polishing and start production:

• Fragile By Design — why large IT projects fail before they start. Close to publication.
• Priced to Win — what Australian government IT procurement gets wrong, and what could fix it.
• Risking IT — practical companion from the vendor side, where I spent most of my career.
• Reading the Air — the hidden grammar of trust, power, and survival in Japanese business.
• In the Absence of Certainty — a walk from theology to what I call open agnosticism: I don't know, you probably don't know, but I am open to discussion.

Of the five, the only one I am willing to share in draft is In the Absence of Certainty. Fair warning before you ask: it is heavy going, and not in a way I am going to apologise for. Ask for a copy if you still want to wade in.

The site started with a challenge from Tough Guy Book Club, a Melbourne-grown network of men's book clubs that meet in pubs and run optional monthly challenges (this month: thirty days off alcohol). One of those challenges was about asking someone for help and offering some in return. I paired up with a mate, Greg. He taught me a tray bake; I taught him about AI. That afternoon is already on the site.

What I had planned, originally, was a short document for Greg. As I started writing it, the document kept growing, the examples kept multiplying, and a single document was clearly the wrong shape for it. So I built the website instead, and let loose from there. It is a fair parallel to how a short article becomes a book, which is more or less what is now happening with the list above. The site is up and running, and the first book on that list is close to public release.

I am open to consulting work. Use the Send Feedback button below.

If you want to know what I actually think about AI rather than just who I am, read My Take on AI.