I wanted a website. A place to hold my projects, a visual representation of part of myself, dedicated to exploring concepts around my profession, Talent Acquisition.
I looked at Medium, Beehive, WordPress, and Substack as options. Each time I thought through what I actually wanted, I ran into limitations. I would move on to the next platform, try configuring it, hit more walls, and repeat. None of them gave me what I had in mind.
That friction pushed me toward a different way of thinking. I came across vibe coding, which led me to Vercel, templated websites, Cloudflare, and spending more time in VS Code, which my 12 year old was already using regularly. I wanted to start learning more about technology and AI, not just read about it.
I had been building tools inside ChatGPT and later with AWS PartyRock. I used the chat version. But I felt uncertainty and a fear of not truly understanding AI. I knew reading blog posts would only get me so far. I needed to build something with it, and through that hands on process, I would understand it far better than any article could teach me.
So I decided to build, not buy.
The Process
It was not a straight line. I started with a website template that would not scale. It broke with simple edits, was more of a web application than a website, and was overkill for what I wanted. I was there to explore Talent Acquisition concepts with AI, not become an application engineer. I burned through tokens, ended up with a broken site that was beyond my skill level and beyond the scope of what I actually wanted to achieve.
I started over. Simpler this time. That led me to my current template. Shout out to marpeand for creating Lotse. I began making small changes to make it my own.
From there I started learning the ecosystem of prompt coding. Through different channels I was introduced to Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, v0, and others. My knowledge and understanding kept growing.
Eventually I was able to make the website truly mine and start producing project ideas around talent intelligence, talent acquisition, talent operations automation, and other areas of personal interest. Projects that would let me conduct research, write knowledge transfer articles, and explore ideas I care about.
What Building This Taught Me
Building this website taught me how to think and build as software creator. How to create while diving into waters I do not fully understand. With the support of AI tools I have been able to stay afloat and genuinely enjoy playing in this new creative space.
I hope you enjoy the website. If you never read it, that is fine. I hope it brings you value if you do cross its path, but ultimately I made it for myself, which is what it is all about.