speaking – CGW's Blog

The case for a throwback summer

What is your favorite childhood summer throwback?

I, for one, remember a lot of morning sitcom reruns, sandlot baseball, the icy-chill of a well-conditioned library and an annual block party. What’s yours?

I enjoyed joining the impressive Cherri Gregg and Avi Wolfman-Arent on WHYY’s Studio 2 this week, alongside Stephanie Humphrey and Marc Faletti.

This is especially timely as the parent of young kids, as I embark on a summer of activities and camps — balancing developing and fun, boredom and screens and all the rest. Give this a watch and let me know what you remember from your own summer childhood! https://lnkd.in/gZ-VqfVr

Who are entrepreneurs enemies? My 2026 Technical.ly Builders Conference keynote

Below is my Friday speech, inspired by this bet, and following this live podcast recording.

I want to tell you about a bet I have with Brian Brackeen.

I’ve known for Brian for more than 10 years, back when he founded a facial recognition startup in Miami. He’s built in machine learning longer still. He and his wife and partner, Candice, cofounded Ohio-based VC firm Lightship Capital, investments around AI. He organizes Black Tech Week. He’s got opinions.

Last year we debated whether AI would imminently replace software developers. Brian said yes—developer jobs would fall. I disagreed. We bet a cheesesteak, or more properly having to wait in line for one, deadline May 2026.

It’s May 2026. This morning we’re going to learn the answer together, and what it means either way.

Science communication at a crossroads

I joined a spirited conversation at the University of Maryland BioPark for a system-wide symposium on science communication.

I filed a story for Technical.ly here. Our panel looked like this:

Megan Nicholson, a senior editor at Issues in Science and Technology
Heath Kelsey, director of the Integration and Application Network at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
Christopher Wink, cofounder and publisher, Technical.ly
Moderator, Michael Sandler, the UM system’s vice chancellor for communications and marketing

To navigate AI, journalists must know the technology, and their job

To navigate AI, journalists need to break it down: What the technology is, and what the job is.

I was thrilled to keynote this weekend’s New Mexico Local News Fund’s local news summit in Albuquerque. My talk: Risks, Ethics and Opportunities for AI in Local Newsrooms.

To an audience of 100 local journalists and publishers in New Mexico, and supporters from around the conutry, I walked through a simplified framework for understanding what we call artificical intelligence — and I shared Technical.ly’s ethics for AI in storytelling.

Find my full slides here.

Enormous credit to Rashad Mahmood and Denise Zubizarreta.

Mega-events have failed cities before. Are we learning?

Cities love hosting mega-events — the Olympics, World Cup, NFL Draft. But decades of research suggest they rarely deliver the long-term economic boost leaders promise.

Are we learning? This was the focus of the plenary discussion I moderate this week in Washington DC at the annual leadership summit hosted by the International Economic Development Council (IEDC).

I also wrote about it for Technical.ly here.

What happens after Eureka?

We love to celebrate the spark of a good idea, but we too often skip over the long, uneven road it takes to get that idea into the world.

Research on innovation keeps pointing to the same tension: breakthroughs come from serendipity and “structural holes,” where people from different disciplines collide, but impact only happens when we deliberately smooth the path that follows. That’s what made a conversation I led at Baltimore’s University of Maryland Biopark, inside the innovation district’s year-old 4MLK building feel special.

I contributed Technically coverage here and here. The Biopark team had a photographer on site, so I also just pulled some of the shots of me in action below.

This is what a robotics ecosystem looks like

A robotics ecosystem connects education to workforce training to entrepreneurship and industry. Many parts and components fit in, overlap and even compete but contribute to a shared goal.

While out there, I filed a story on driverless freight company Aurora, and on a new mural series.

That’s what I got to in a panel discussion I led on the main stage of the Pittsburgh Robotics Discovery Day last Thursday. Below watch video of the panel.

We didn’t remove gatekeepers; we replaced them with algorithms.

I joined CURRENTLY, the slick video interview series from the creative agency [Electric Kite], hosted by principal Kevin Renton, to talk about local journalism, entrepreneurship and how we build healthier information ecosystems. (I wrote more about it on Technical.ly here)

Themes we hit: why geography still matters online; why “friction” is a feature of community; how luck shapes entrepreneurial outcomes; and why journalism is a strategy you attach to sustainable business models.

Below the full video, and a few points I want to stand out.

My storytelling keynote to Tech Hubs leaders in Montana

Meaningful commercialized science and intentional local economic coalition building does not correlate to high-quality storytelling about it. Economic development leaders should take storytelling seriously.

The kind folks at Montana’s Headwaters Tech Hub gave me the chance to address their summit of Montana ecosystem members and other tech hub leaders from around the country. I gave a storytelling presentation informed by this research — and led with the impressive tale of how Jeanette Rankin became the country’s first female Senator.

Bloggers were once the creators, and there are lessons to learn

Nearly 50 philanthropists and funders squeezed into the breakout at the annual Media Impact Forum conference held at the National Constitution Center.

Our panel’s focus was on newsroom-creator relationships, which we at Technical.ly have dove into — both with creators, and with our own newsroom and, in a sense, because looking back my start as a “blogger” sure sounds a lot like the creators of 15 years ago. My moderator Liz Kelly Nelson wrote up more here on the conference here, and she previously wrote this piece which fits into my writing on ‘journalism strategy.’

Below I share a few notes from the discussion.