Back to Prep End-of-Month Wrap-Up — May 2026 (10:30 Tue, Josh + Joe)

End-of-Month Wrap-Up — May 2026 (10:30 Tue, Josh + Joe)

Big goal: Wrap up the 30-day documentation cycle and adjust for next month’s projects. Lens (Mar 2026 amendment): for each story, hit the what → the how → the so what.

Outcomes to land

  1. Close out tasks for the past month.
  2. Reconcile reporting + tagging differences across the three layers.
  3. Move tags + quoted-impact statements into → (1) the Project Support Tracking base (seed-grantee tracking, apprFJgsQXOg2eG3V) and (2) the Quoted Impact board (tblTuf2vcIJgTeKkR).
  4. Identify 2–3 stories worth sharing → subset into the Airtable “Stories” field.

“What did we do?” — at a glance, all layers

Macro Manager Layer (tbl2eCjgiUWwdKsZN): 8 May records exist — Flash Lab, Build-a-Bot, CRISPRkit, DeVeaux, Health Coach Bot, ISTE, LabGPT, SofIA. ⚠️ Written early May, so stale on back-half events (see Reconcile below).

Seed-grantee tracking (Project Support Tracking base) — May touchpoints to log/reconcile:

  • Ramirez (Learning Through Creation) — May 8 catch-up, narrowed the maker-space bot’s scope.
  • CRISPRkit (Tequity) — Studio Services May 21; Belinda Android handoff transitioning to close-out.
  • DeVeaux (Joyful Learning) — still the stalled intro chain (5+ wks). [CHECK-IN]/[SOUNDING-BOARD].
  • HarmonAI / Fan / King — quiet in May; confirm no untracked touchpoints.

Quoted Impact board — 1 new May statement to enter (below).

Operations / strategy (not a project layer, but the month’s center of gravity):

  • GPS retrospective pivot (May 14 1:1 → draft May 20–21): reframed to R/R/R — Reach / Robust / Resonance as narrative grammar.
  • Strategic Huddle (May 12): “vibe-coded MVP support as a service” + capacity-calibration framework. (Notes still unfiled — 14 days.)
  • Build-a-Bot multilingual SHIPPED (DE/ES/FR/EN). ISTE Live 2026 locked (Jul 1). Flash Lab cost sheet live-tested at Leading Educators May 20.

“What trends are popping up?” — work + cross-support

  • Vibe-coded MVPs are an emerging support pattern. Partners are building AI prototypes that “look good but don’t understand how/why they work” (SofIA’s own framing). Reuben’s role helping them reach a maintainable next step is becoming repeatable — candidate for a formalized offering.
  • New domain entering the portfolio: global health / med school (Nigeria STELLA project) — pulling AS technical support + Cathy’s learning sciences into Stanford School of Medicine work.
  • Cross-team support as a catalyst (per May 12 huddle) — Joe’s workshop became Reuben’s vehicle for low-touch seed-grantee re-engagement. A pattern to use deliberately.

“What stories are emerging or worth watching?” — (what → how → so what)

1. SofIA → “vibe-coding support” as a potential new studio offering ⭐

  • What: SofIA (Ceibal/Uruguay growth-mindset chatbot) is a vibe-coded MVP that “got to something that looks good but doesn’t really understand how/why it works.” Reuben’s ongoing advising (Lovable + Gemini, auth/schema, security doc) is settling into a repeatable pattern.
  • How: Flagged at the May 12 Strategic Huddle as a candidate for a formalized seed-grant offering — helping vibe-coded prototypes get to a maintainable next step. Action: Reuben to bring “vibe-coded-MVP-support-as-a-service” back as a huddle agenda item.
  • So what: This is the “vibe-coding workshop” potential — a scalable way to meet the wave of partner-built AI prototypes without hand-building each one. Worth watching as a possible Q3 offering; ties to the GPS “Reach” leg.

2. Nigeria global-health project (STELLA / Cancer-Enriched Breast Tomosynthesis) ⭐

  • What: AS is now supporting a School of Medicine tEquity grant — Brittany Dashevsky + Chris Beaulieu (Breast Imaging / Center for Innovation in Global Health). STELLA is their breast-imaging teaching platform; the funded project (cut $75k → $25k, so scope-narrowing ahead) aims to extend it for cancer-imaging education in Nigeria.
  • How: Reuben met Brittany early May and proposed shipping Nigerian collaborators an anonymized STELLA server as the deployment path (she’s asked him to document how he’s done this before). Studio Services scoping May 13; Cathy now joining to advise on instructional-module design from a learning-sciences lens.
  • So what: A new domain for the studio (global health) and a genuinely cross-disciplinary play (radiology + learning sciences + AS deployment). If the anonymized-server approach lands, it’s a replicable model for getting Stanford platforms into low-resource settings. Worth watching.

(Quoted-impact entry to move to the board this cycle: Nancy’s “Is my problem bot-able?” — [NUGGET], Build-a-Bot framing language. Separate from the two emerging stories above.)

“What should we change?” — process

  • Airtable timing. The 8 Macro records were written early-month and went stale (the Flash Lab record still says the Lane calls “never happened” — they did, May 8). Lesson: run the monthly pass at end-of-month, not early. Fix the habit starting now.
  • Tagging reconciliation. Macro-layer tags vs. seed-grantee-tracking tag fields (each table uses a different field name — Tags vs Codebook Tags) drift apart. Agree a single source of truth.
  • Stalled threads: Cyan (commit-or-pause today), Strategic Huddle notes (file this week), Strategic Horizon (overdue from April).

Quick asks for Josh

  • DCI June 5 night-before logistics + Egencia booking sign-off.
  • GPS retro next-round cadence.
  • Cyan: commit-or-pause.
  • Cost-sheet feedback (sent May 6 — now 3 weeks).
Source: prep/2026-05-26-end-of-month-may.md