Before New York
Episode three, before New York. In episode one, I said the Women Who Code talk hadn't started. June 2nd, I'm on a stage in New York City. It's only a few days away at this point.
I'm Darian Glausier, and this is Head First.
What I Actually Built
Let me back up. Because if your background isn't in tech, you probably need the plain version of what I built before any of this makes sense.
Basically — it's a hub. One place where your team's standards and documentation can live, that connects to many different places. It started for my team. It can be as big or as small as you need.
Here's the problem it's solving.
Developers — and I say this as one — we are notorious for not keeping up with documentation. Most people just don't like documentation, and I don't blame anyone. It actually cracked me up because not too long ago I said I liked making documentation and someone told me that's the first time they've ever heard a developer say that. But we've had specialty careers just for technical documentation because the systems that are supposed to make it easy don't actually support it.
You create this thing called a living document. In theory, it captures how your codebase works, what the rules are, how to actually work inside it. In practice? It rots in a corner for years until someone finds it and goes — wait, do we even need this though?
The living document thing has always been bullshit. It's been bullshit for a very long time. But now we're being forced to manage it on a large scale because of how important it actually is.
Companies are pushing really hard right now to be AI-driven. I'm sure we've all felt that at this point. They want you to use it, build with it, let it help your team move faster. What a lot of them are skipping at the higher level is the infrastructure piece — the part where you actually give AI accurate, current information about how your codebase works. And I'll say it directly: leadership needs to allow time for proper documentation. It matters more now than it ever has.
Because if what AI is reading is eighteen months stale, do you know what you're going to get? Something that is eighteen months stale. Stale in, stale out. It's not the AI failing — it's what you handed it. Don't get upset about your AI doing that when that's just what you gave it.
Stale in, stale out. It's not the AI failing — it's what you handed it.
What the hub does is keep that from happening. Standards live in one place. Something changes — it pushes out to every connected repository automatically. Inbound, outbound. This will take a minute, not a sprint. And each of those repos has an AI agent that goes and explores the code, figures out what it does, what it depends on, how to actually work in it — and writes that down. So your tools aren't starting from scratch every single time a developer opens them.
Because every AI conversation starts from zero. Every single one. There's no memory between sessions. So the question becomes — what is the most important context I can give it, from the high level all the way down to the detailed level? That is the question the hub is built to answer. It's a good place for finding things. Making a connection between loose pieces.
AI needs your context to be useful. You need AI to move fast. That's not a one-way thing — it's a symbiosis. You can't skip the infrastructure and then wonder why it's not working.
The hub started as something my team needed. I built it because I needed it. And on June 2nd, I'm in New York City showing other engineers how to build their own version. It still feels wild to say out loud.
What Prep Actually Looked Like
The product was already there. The hub existed — it was running, it had been improving. What I didn't have was the talk. The deep talking points. The slides. All of that was still ahead of me coming out of HomerCon.
After HomerCon, I finally had the space to sit down and build it out. I did a little every day. Not always a full session. Just — move it forward. That's the whole strategy sometimes. Don't stress yourself out.
The hardest part about talking about AI right now is that AI is not sitting still. Something I was referencing a month ago might already be updated, deprecated, or replaced entirely. I kept going back and checking — is this still accurate? Is this still the right thing to reference? Does this even still exist? At some point you just have to accept that it won't be perfectly current. Fast-moving tech is fast-moving. You do what you can, you name the limitation, and you keep going.
One thing I didn't expect to help as much as it did — practicing out loud in front of someone who had no idea what I was talking about. Ergo, my boyfriend. Thank you very much. Sat through multiple run-throughs. No technical background. Professional chef. Just there, listening. And it helped me figure out what I actually wanted to say versus what I thought I was supposed to say.
You just need to be stupid with the people you love.
There's a version of prep where you can't stop touching it because you're afraid to stop. I know that version well. What actually helped was letting it breathe. Do a little every day until it clicks, until it flows — and then you just say fuck it and do it.
Don't aim for perfection. Aim for doable. Aim for real.
One more thing that made a difference: I've been talking about this inside my company for months. Demoing it, explaining it, answering questions from different kinds of people. The last time I presented it was to a very businessy audience — had to go higher in the overview, less technical. I know I'll have to do some of that again. And the Women Who Code talk isn't the first time I've had to explain this thing. It's a version of something I've already done — just for a room I haven't stepped into yet. That changed my confidence level more than anything else.
Before June 2
With HomerCon, my biggest fear was time. I had ten minutes, and ten minutes is nothing when you have something big to say. I came in at ten thirty. I will always appreciate those last thirty seconds — it was supposed to be a hard stop.
This format is completely different. Forty-five minutes. Workshop. People building on their own laptops while I'm talking. I have room. That's not what I'm worried about.
I'm worried about the crazy things. Like GitHub going down.
This talk has a live demo. I'm going to show people the actual working system, walk through it, have them fork it, start building their own version. My worst-case scenario is getting up there, opening the browser, and nothing loads. Standing in a room full of senior engineers having to talk pure theory — when they came to see something real that I actually built and that functions.
If that happens — there are backup slides. There's always something to say. That's what you prepare for.
But I don't want to skip over what it felt like to get selected in the first place.
When I found out — my first thought was: is this a scam? Am I being scammed right now? Me? Why me? Why'd you pick me?
That's imposter syndrome. That specific thing where you've been wanting something and then you get it and instead of excitement your first instinct is suspicion. Like — I'm not really that good. Why the fuck did you pick me? It's especially real for women in tech, where the bar for proving you belong seems to reset every single time you walk into a new room. You're basically AI at that point.
But I'm putting my name out there anyway. Because at some point, wanting to help people gets louder than the doubt.
And honestly — I think the chronic pain I live with every day has something to do with that. When you wake up with something that never goes away, you stop waiting for the right time. You just say fuck it and put yourself out there.
The Part That Feels Right
I've always wanted to speak. But I didn't always know that about myself. I didn't know what I wanted to talk about. I didn't know what I wanted to be seen as. I worried about it for a long time.
And then I built something. I rebuilt my website. I started this podcast. I'm putting myself out there.
And I'm brave for that. I am brave.
It feels unreal. It feels scary. But the feeling I get when I'm in front of people — talking about something I made, something that works, something that might make even one person's life just a little bit easier — I almost can't explain it. It just feels right. I feel content. Like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.
There's a high to it. It's not the stage. It's not the credential.
It's touching one person out there. Even if it's just one person — helping that one person sends my heart a flutter.
I'm Darian Glausier. This is Head First.