Five ideas to put in your pocket and ponder on later:

See #1 for industry observation

See #2 for Boise biz-scene analysis

See #3 for my new favorite self-help trick

See #4 for a shout-out to an oft-forgotten trade

See #5 for my latest, favorite AI Agents framework

Construction is document rich and data poor.

buildAidaho primarily serves the construction and real estate industries. As a tech company that works predominantly in data, we spend a lot of time thinking about why and how our clients struggle to integrate data strategy at a level similar to other industries (e.g., finance, manufacturing, commerce, communications). 

Succinctly, I think it comes down to this: construction is document rich and data poor. 

Think about it: land surveys, shop drawings, interior selections, legal documents, job site videos, and daily logs... These instruments are information dense, but unstructured. As a result, without manual transformation (read: data entry), each asset’s data is confined, unable to easily be combined with other information.* I say construction is data “poor,” because so little information is reliably translated to structured format, meaning we seldom achieve the scale required to start detecting patterns. 

But recently, with the arrival of LLMs and our rapidly-improving document-parsing capabilities, we’re now able to confidently say that these previously “locked-up” data points can be extracted, organized, contextualized, and analyzed like normalized data.

* Data that is easy to combine with other data and aggregate is considered “structured” or “normalized.” It’s characterized by tables, rows, and columns that can be combined to form more complex and complete knowledge.

Network effects are accelerating the Boise business scene.

Someone recently introduced me to NFX, and I can’t stop thinking about how networks drive our lives. NFX is a pre-seed and seed venture firm focused on catalyzing startups that show promise in capitalizing on network effects. Network effects are mechanisms in a product and business where every new user makes the product/service/experience more valuable to every other user. The firm centers on this powerful concept because they believe that when a company can obtain network effects, they’re more likely to win big through stark defensibility. 

Here’s how I see it relating to Boise: Boise used to be less entrepreneurial. True, we’ve had some incredible legacy companies (e.g., just a few: Simplot, Micron, HP), but there wasn’t always the buzz that you feel today as you navigate various events & meet ups. So many people are interested in business in Boise that one begins to think, “Is there actually room for everyone in this small town?” And - stunningly - the answer appears to be “yes, because of network effects.” Each person that joins the start-up network seems to catalyze it. It’s a system where the pie is constantly growing, rather than being divided into smaller and smaller pieces. 

As we’ve seen formalized programs emerge, like Idaho Startup Lab, Hackfort, Basecamp Tech Fest, and ITC, plus the countless meet ups, we see more ideas, energy, and growth. 

NFX cites being located in “Silicon Valley” as a competitive advantage for a startup. But, increasingly, being located in Boise seems like a pretty good spot, too. 

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 is a powerful way to overcome resistance.

This one is less work and more self-help: Mel Robbins’ 5 second rule. It’s particularly salient for overcoming anxious mental energy. When we’re pushing ourselves to new heights - personally or professionally - the brain instinctively creates resistance. I explain this (to myself), as my primitive brain’s way of trying to keep me safe. My brain encodes “new” to equal “different,” and “different” could equal “dangerous.” So, the resistance I feel comes from a place of not knowing what’s on the other side. 

What Mel Robbins’ countdown from 5 to 1 does, is distract my brain from focusing on the resistance. Plus, it’s an extremely short window of time, hurtling me towards the looming deadline of “one.” As a result, I end up having to take action before I can dwell on it. Sending the scary email? Countdown. Getting back into the codebase having forgotten where I left off? Countdown. Cold calling the dream client? Countdown. Drinking the greens juice? Countdown. 

Land surveying — the unsung hero?

I wish I had known about the incredible field of land surveying earlier. Here’s what is dumbfounding to me: I spend a lot of time around construction tech, and I’ve never heard anyone talk about land surveying. Surprising, isn’t it? Given that you can’t build on a piece of land until you understand who owns it.

Here’s another shocking stat, in 2022 the Idaho Workforce Development Council and Idaho State University published that, “Each year, Idaho gains one licensed surveyor and loses ten to retirement. In the last two years no licenses were issued for surveyors.”

Labor shortages exist across nearly every trade, but a 10% replacement rate is a quick route to a dire shortage. 

Agno is a blazingly fast AI Agents framework making AI projects more demonstrable for my clients.

I couldn’t resist throwing in this AI Agents framework. Agno is open sourced and lets you build and deploy AI agents with remarkable speed. In addition to the performance, access to many pre-built tools and integrations, and the approachable learning curve, Agno’s user interface for both Agents and Workflows is beautiful. Particularly for me, in trying to bridge the gap between the code and clients, having a quick demo in Agno has greatly improved client’s comfort in approaching AI.

 Watch for a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to build an accurate AI reporting agent using AWS and Agno.