Tech-Neill-ogy #28 - 3 December 2023

Welcome to Tech-Neill-ogy #28!

Things never really seem to slow down around here! I spent the past week in Portugal visiting universities as part of a BMI-THE program for Brazilian counselors. Pretty amazing experience. You can read more here (LinkedIn).

In other news, ChatGPT was released a year ago. Amazing to think back and to see how far things have come! This article provides some perspective looking ahead to year 2. I’m not going to waste any breath (or screen space) talking about the chaos and drama at OpenAI surrounding Sam Altman. I kind of see it this way: AI is here to stay. The politics are somewhat irrelevant right now. Focus on figuring out how to develop the skills to use the “thought partners” effectively.

In line with this way of thinking, I cannot help but gush a little bit about Bloks, my new favorite tool.

Thanks, as always, to those of you who share resources with me. I appreciate all of it! In any case, feel free to drop me an email at [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you!

Enjoy the newsletter!

So Bloks… Yes, usually, I try to share 5x different apps that might assist you with your work, but this one is different, and I think warrants a more thorough examination. On the surface, this seems like so many other meeting transcription apps: it uses AI to make sense of recorded meetings. However, this one, in my opinion, is truly different. It listens in the background, from your computer or your phone (though there are differences at present), and then transcribes the conversation, then converting it into notes, action items, and even a summary. I tried it on my recent trip to Portugal, and it not only does all of this better than any app I’ve used so far, but it listened to conversations and presentations in Portuguese and transcribed it into English notes! I suspect it has further language capabilities, with other languages, too.

However, that is just the tip of the iceberg. It can be paired with your calendar (Google, in my case), and so it knows what meeting you’re supposed to be in and with whom. This latter feature is interesting. It looks at the public profiles, apparently mostly from LinkedIn, and provides concrete suggestions on how best to approach meeting with this individual. It also collates past meeting notes and summaries into these “briefs,” to prepare you for your meetings. This is pretty amazing.

I’ve reached out to confirm some details about the ambition I have to use this software with students, particularly around confidentiality and FERPA/GDPR/etc protocols and the like. I look forward to hearing back and sharing with you when I hear!

One of the other features that stands out is a dedicated GPT bot based exclusively on your interactions. For example, you might ask who you met with yesterday, how many hours you spent doing something over the past month, or how many times you’ve met with someone. You could ask for a summary of your past X number of meetings with someone as well. In thinking about the application to student college counseling, there is amazing potential here. I am eager to hear back about student identity safety and cannot wait to share back with you. For now, download it and give it a try!

I have a million ideas to share in this section, but I don’t want to share anything too groundbreaking and diminish the focus above on Bloks. So, for now, for those of you who might be active on social media, here’s an interesting one, particularly helpful for those whose ChatGPT/gen AI ap has access to the live internet.

Give me 10 ideas for social media posts on [Social Platform] that can help establish me as an expert in [topic] and resonate with [ideal audience/avatar].

As always, if you’d like to explore some of the other hacks, tips, and prompts I’ve shared here and elsewhere, check out this link. If you have any great prompts or questions about prompting, send me a note at [email protected].

I cannot believe it is already December. Results for our seniors have begun to trickle in, and I hope you’re facing the same successes our students have been experiencing. Best wishes for a great week ahead! Talk to you next week!

Happy counseling,

Jeff