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by Jon Leland, AI Creative Director & Content Strategist

The Connection Engine

AI is the engine. Relationships are the point. A weekly look at how experts with something worth saying actually get heard. Join 1,300+ readers. ⚡

🎯 I'm Jon Leland, AI Creative Director at ComBridges, with four decades of communications craft behind me. Every week I show the work: the tools, the judgment calls, and the systems behind amplifying a message that deserves an audience. It's for purpose-driven experts, authors, coaches, and business owners who'd rather spend their time on their work than on their marketing. Use AI well. Stay human. Build what matters.

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Helene, 72, gesturing beside the words "30,000 photos. Nobody will look at them," over a blurred Life By Decade timeline.
MUST READ
6 DAYS AGO • 1 MIN READ

📄 The reason no one ever reads your life story

In this issue → Why a life story with no single view goes unread → Helene, 72, on why she built her timeline now instead of later → Life By Decade LIVE!, Thursday September 24 After my older sister died, I wanted to see her life in one view. Not a box of photos. Not a folder of files with dates in the names. One view, beginning to end, so I could take in the whole shape of it. Nothing did that. So I built it. Watch the full 17-minute video on YouTube A note for those of you building something...

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Illustrated desert collage of sketches, photos and app screens. Overlay: Welcome to the Weird & Human AI Wild West.

🎨 What to make when AI can make anything

14 DAYS AGO • 2 MIN READ
A hand picks one card showing a lightbulb from a grid of twenty rough sketch cards. Headline: "20 ideas. Which one is good?"

🎯 What AI Still Cannot Do for Your Marketing

20 DAYS AGO • 3 MIN READ
Two-panel diagram, "From False Binary to Collaborative Reality." The top panel opposes Human-Made and AI-Made. The bottom panel joins them with a bridge, meeting at Human + AI Collaboration, where human intention and judgment lead the process.

🎛️ Human-Made vs. AI-Made Is the Wrong Question

28 DAYS AGO • 3 MIN READ
Hand-drawn watercolor and ink illustration of a desk seen from above, with five small glowing panels scattered across it and a hand drawing a curving ink line that connects them in sequence. A brass desk lamp and a steaming mug sit nearby. Overlay text re

🧰 The people who get the most out of AI aren't tool hunting

ABOUT 1 MONTH AGO • 2 MIN READ
A laptop on a desk showing a screen full of code, with a coffee mug beside it. Bold white text across the image reads: I built an app in a day.

🔍 You're using AI as a search engine. It's actually a workshop.

ABOUT 1 MONTH AGO • 3 MIN READ
A hand-drawn watercolor and ink illustration of a wooden desk seen from the front. Several printed pages lie fanned at the left, some crossed out and pushed aside. At the center a hand rests on a single handwritten page. To the right, a laptop displaying

✨ Faster is the least interesting thing AI does for me.

ABOUT 2 MONTHS AGO • 3 MIN READ

🚫 No slop. Ever. Here's how that actually works.

ABOUT 2 MONTHS AGO • 1 MIN READ

🔁 I Connected Claude to Kit. Then the Feedback Loop Surprised Me.

2 MONTHS AGO • 2 MIN READ

🤖 AI read the data. I made the call. 📊

2 MONTHS AGO • 1 MIN READ