About
Hi, I'm David.
I'm the AI Strategist at Colorado State University. My job is to turn "we should do something with AI" into systems people actually use, and to be the person campus calls when they need AI advice, a prototype, or a path through the noise.
Before this I spent two decades in web engineering, most recently as CSU's Director of Web Services, where my team ran hundreds of campus sites. I led the migration of 400+ sites to a cloud platform, drove the university's web accessibility work, and built the billing system that kept a cost-recovery unit running. I write Python, C#, PHP, and whatever else the problem requires.
Some of the work is AI infrastructure: a self-service API gateway that gives researchers governed access to frontier models, campus agents and the methods to build them well, and MCP servers that connect AI to the systems where real work happens. On nights and weekends I build my own tools, including a personal AI memory server that every assistant I use can read and write. It's called David's Brain. Naming things is hard.
The rest of the work happens in rooms, not repos: data governance committees that make actual decisions, guidance that turns legal ambiguity into rules people can follow, briefings that give leadership real fluency, and a growing network of AI champions across campus so adoption doesn't depend on any one person. I've spent enough years between engineers, lawyers, and executives to translate fluently in every direction, and most of what I've gotten done at a university came from that, not from the code.
My operating philosophy: meet people where they are, help the willing, and don't evangelize the resistant. I'm not an advocate of AI everywhere all the time. I'm an advocate of AI where it demonstrably removes drudgery and helps people do their best work, and I'm happy to tell you when it won't.
Elsewhere
Email david@dev-cycle.com, or find me on LinkedIn and GitHub (yes, the handle is doofusdavid; I stand by it).
This site is operated by Dev Cycle LLC. Opinions are mine, not my employer's.