Nik Silver 🇺🇦

@[email protected]
83 Followers
80 Following
461 Posts
I help organisations and their technical teams work together better.
Bloghttps://niksilver.com
GitHubhttps://github.com/niksilver
Nik Silver 🇺🇦1d ago

Some reflections on last week's #CTOCraftCon, and in particular the sensible conversations around AI usage in digital product teams - plus the empathy that was a big part of that. And then relating it to a social media kerfuffle about AI and #vim.

https://niksilver.com/2026/03/17/some-humanity-behind-the-ai-hype/

Some humanity behind the AI hype

Two things happened to me last week. One is that I saw an awful lot of people getting very upset that vim, the open source *nix text editor, comprised “AI taint” to the extent that they…

niksilver.com
Nik Silver 🇺🇦3d ago
Chris Pitts3d ago
Once again a reminder that there is a circle of hell reserved for web designers who insist on disabling paste for password fields
Nik Silver 🇺🇦Mar 11

Matrix management sometimes has a bad reputation. But I've had positive experiences with digital product teams. More in this week's blog post:

https://niksilver.com/2026/03/10/when-matrix-management-works/

When matrix management works

Following on from last week’s proposition that your job title is not your job, a question arose. Where does this leave matrix management? I know people who don’t like mangement, and cer…

niksilver.com
Nik Silver 🇺🇦Mar 5
Simon WillisonMar 5
The chardet open source library relicensed from LGPL to MIT two days ago thanks to a Claude Code assisted "clean room" rewrite - but original author Mark Pilgrim is disputing that the way this was done justifies the change in license - my notes here: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/5/chardet/
Can coding agents relicense open source through a “clean room” implementation of code?

Over the past few months it’s become clear that coding agents are extraordinarily good at building a weird version of a “clean room” implementation of code. The most famous version …

Simon Willison’s Weblog
Nik Silver 🇺🇦Mar 4

Something that several people latched onto in a recent workshop I gave, about creating effective multidisciplinary teams: Your job title is not your job.

More in this week's blog post: https://niksilver.com/2026/03/03/your-job-title-is-not-your-job/

Your job title is not your job

I recently led a workshop about getting multidisciplinary teams to work effectively, and one point on a slide got picked up and repeated by others throughout the day: Your job title is not your job…

niksilver.com
Nik Silver 🇺🇦Feb 26
Ben GriffithsFeb 26

Resurrected an old 2013 project that I did. I let the original domain expire and lost interest, but, um, alls well that ends well...

If you want a simple, ad-free way to read shakespeare plays.

https://shakespeare.whitebeard.blog/

Readable Shakespeare Plays

Nik Silver 🇺🇦Feb 26
Last night's #boardgames included Smash Up with 5 players. Each player combines two themed decks, hopefully finding synergies, to score points by dominating bases with their minions. I did quite well by coming second often and mopping up small points, but it wasn't quite enough to win. I love the idea of asymmetric decks, but was slightly uncomfortable with the copyright-skating IP. School of Wizardry? Lavender ponies with rainbows? Hmm. I'm off to see what the popular consensus is online.
Nik Silver 🇺🇦Feb 25

A couple of examples of coherence within organisations - sharing context and culture to work more effectively and successfully.

https://niksilver.com/2026/02/24/cohesiveness-within-organisations/

Coherence within organisations

Some time ago I was part of a small company management team that wrote and published an internal career progression framework, explaining how people in different roles could progress. As part of th…

niksilver.com
Nik Silver 🇺🇦Feb 24
whitebeardFeb 23

I'm on a roll. Here's a small thing I made to help new players at the table, inspired by improv prompt cards and Brian Eno.

http://whitebeard.blog/2026/02/23/its-your-turn-a-prompt-deck-for-new-roleplayers/

It’s Your Turn — a prompt deck for new roleplayers

I’ve introduced loads of people — 50 plus at last count — to tabletop roleplaying over the years, and the hardest moment is always the same. Not combat, not the rules, not remembering what a …

Whitebeard's Realm
Nik Silver 🇺🇦Feb 21
Joel ChippindaleFeb 21

"If you're working with generative AI now, the question to ask yourself is: where did the rigor go?

...

The engineers who thrive in this environment will be the ones who relocate discipline rather than abandon it."

— Chad Fowler from https://aicoding.leaflet.pub/3mbrvhyye4k2e

Relocating Rigor - The Phoenix Architecture

The Discipline That Looks Like Recklessness