Writing
Notes from the build.
On building companies, engineering, and what the work looks like now that code is cheap. I write a lot. Here's some of it, in case it helps you find solid ground. Some of these were written for a brand I was building or working for. Those are tagged, and open on that site in a new tab.
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WVU Online
Build What's Next: One Software Engineering Degree, a Decade of Possibilities.
WVU Online's story about my master's and where it went. Chad Mezera and Derek Brewer wrote it. I'm in it, and so is Cash, on the PRT.
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aura.refract
the room reads you first.
Your aura isn't inside you. It's the light you hand other people to read you by.
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Ledger Collective
AI, Meet Me Halfway.
I embraced it, built my half (the data) and got out of the way. Two planes, two authors, and the labor in between.
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→Ledger Collective
Ship Smaller. With Proof.
We batched software into releases because shipping was expensive. It isn't anymore. Now batching is the risk.
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→Ledger Collective
Prose Is the Programming Language Now.
If you can write a memo to a new hire, you can write software. Most teams still can't write the memo.
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It Was Never the Code. It Was the Translation.
For decades we priced software by the engineering. The expensive part was always the explaining.
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↗aura.refract
everyone came out red.
The first build turned nearly everyone red. Chasing the bug, we rediscovered color constancy.
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↗aura.refract
the engine is open.
We published the math behind the aura read (white balance, chromatic adaptation, a continuous hue read) running live, sliders and all. The edge was never the algorithm.
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↗aura.refract
your color isn't fixed.
If you refract twice and get two different bands, congrats, you're alive. On why the read changes, and why that's the point.
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↗aura.refract
we measure light, not energy.
A short, honest piece about what aura.refract is and what it isn't. Because someone always asks.
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↗aura.refract
why I built the lens.
I've never actually had my aura read. I only ever saw the pictures, in cities I wasn't in. That gap is the whole reason aura.refract exists.
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↗aura.refract
the booth is over. the light isn't.
Forty people a night, 250 nights a year, and a browser has no cap. Why the next two years of aura photography won't look like the last two.
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Not Stepping Away. Stepping Into the Lab.
On July 1 I move from full-time CTO of Ledger Collective into a board and advisory seat. Not a goodbye, just me going back to what I'm built for.
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Go to Bed. Especially When You're Thisclose.
My sleep schedule got wrecked. Not because anything was wrong, because everything was right. On building systems that run while you rest.
Earlier, elsewhere.
Before this site I wrote for Flatfile (2021 to 2023, as Engineer and Head of Product Marketing) and on LinkedIn (2024, as Ashley Mulligan). Articles, launches, and the films I'm in, with their original dates, linked where they live. Flatfile is now Obvious.
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When Time Is No Longer Linear.
Pair programming with Nate in the first year of building with AI. The headaches, and the line he kept saying: "Ash, time is no longer linear."
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Piecing Together the Puzzle of Life.
The years I softened my southern accent and left the small-town work off my résumé. Now it's the part I'm proudest of.
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The developer docs, relaunched.
After we relaunched the developer APIs, I rebuilt the docs on Mintlify. Their write-up of the project, and a walkthrough.
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The opportunity cost.
A short film on what it costs a business to keep onboarding customer data by hand. That's me on camera.
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Hello, world. Meet data onboarding.
The film that introduced the category. Written and presented by me.
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The bridge between big whales and the danger zone.
You land the huge customer. Then their data shows up, and it is filthy. The stretch between the handshake and the go-live.
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The one-two punch that will energize the future of data exchange.
Federated data sounds great until you ask who gets access, and how. On security and shared data.
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Data stuck in place can't grease the wheels of fortune.
Data sitting in a database earns nothing. It has to move. Retail, healthcare, and the case for exchange.
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Now more than ever, time is money.
Written in the 2022 downturn. What slow data onboarding costs in delayed go-lives and lost clients.
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Series B day.
The $50M announcement, the film that went with it, and my own post from that morning. I wrote the copy for all three.
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The Data Exchange Platform, on Product Hunt.
The platform launch I wrote and ran as Head of Developer Experience.
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A CSV importer that says yes instead of error: mismatch.
The rebrand and the new site, done in house. This is the launch film.
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Taming the Wild West of Data.
Every company's database has its own structure. What that costs the moment two of them have to share.
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Flatfile + Wild Me.
The story of one of the first Flatfile Impact grantees, a nonprofit tracking wildlife with data from the public.
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The first mile of data.
The webinar I co-hosted with Eric Crane on scaling data onboarding for dev teams. On YouTube.
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csvjson.com.
A free version of the product I relaunched. Paste a CSV, get JSON. It's still running.