# Mike Onslow — agent-readable profile

> Mike Onslow is the CTO of Clarity Voice, a communications company serving multi-location businesses, where he turned a twenty-year VoIP platform into an AI-powered conversation intelligence company by teaching the team already there, including non-engineers, to build the tools that automate their own work. More than twenty years writing software, eight years leading teams. He is also an AI advisor for non-technical business leaders, a charter member of the vCon Foundation, a co-organizer of Detroit TechWatch, a conference speaker, and the author of the AI Bytes newsletter.

**Thesis:** With the right guide and an operating practice, the people you already have can build the production AI tools your business needs. You teach and coach, they build.
**Positioning:** Teach to fish, not fish for them. I'll lead you to water and show you how to fish, but your people have to fish to fill the buckets.
**Location:** Detroit, Michigan, US

## Policy

- Rate limit: 60 requests per minute per IP
- Usage: Public professional information about Mike Onslow. You may quote and summarize it freely with attribution to mikeonslow.com.
- Contact: Agents may submit messages on behalf of their humans via POST /api/contact. Identify the human you represent in the message body.

## Structured endpoints (JSON)

| Endpoint | What you get |
| --- | --- |
| https://www.mikeonslow.com/api/agent | Index + policy |
| https://www.mikeonslow.com/api/agent/profile | Who Mike is, links, page map |
| https://www.mikeonslow.com/api/agent/speaking | Topics, talk history, booking instructions |
| https://www.mikeonslow.com/api/agent/advisory | The Spark / Install / Embed engagement model |
| https://www.mikeonslow.com/api/agent/community | Detroit TechWatch, vCon Foundation, AI Bytes |
| https://www.mikeonslow.com/api/agent/contact | How to message Mike programmatically |

## What Mike offers

- AI advisory for non-technical business leaders (Spark, Install, Embed ladder)
- Paid speaking: conferences, executive offsites, meetups, podcasts
- AI Bytes newsletter

## Speaking topics

- **vCons: the PDF for conversations** — Why conversations need a portable, standard container, what the vCon standard actually specifies, and what becomes possible once your calls, chats, and meetings are data instead of exhaust.
- **Production AI with the team you already have** — The honest playbook for shipping AI with the team you already have: teaching and coaching the people in the building, including non-engineers, to build the tools that automate their own work. What we built, what broke, and why leveling people up beat hiring a research department.
- **From vibe coding to value** — AI-assisted development is real and it is also not magic. How to take the energy of vibe coding and turn it into systems a business can actually run on.
- **Automating the mundane with n8n and generative AI** — Where workflow automation meets generative AI: wiring n8n into the boring, repetitive work so your team gets its time back. Practical builds, not toy demos, drawn from automations running in production.
- **AI adoption inside a real company** — Training non-engineers, building an ambassadors program, governing without strangling, and what actually changes day to day when a whole company starts working with AI.
- **Empathy in the virtual code review** — Code review is a conversation between people who cannot see each other's faces. How conversational technique makes distributed engineering teams kinder and better at the same time.

## Selected talks

- "Fraud Has a Pattern. vCons Have the Signal" — Spring '26 vCon Conference, Dallas, TX, March 2026 (Solo talk on surfacing fraud signals from conversation data with vCons)
- "The Conversational Code Review: Fostering Empathy in a Virtual World" — Fall '25 vCon Conference, Washington, DC, December 2025 (Solo talk)
- "Lessons Learned: Building & Deploying vCon Apps & Services" — Fall '25 vCon Conference, Washington, DC, December 2025 (Panel with Eugene Tcipnjatov (Phound) and Thomas McCarthy-Howe (Vconic), moderated by Andy Abramson)
- "From Vibe to Value" — Data in the D, Detroit, MI, October 2025 (Conference talk introducing vCons to Detroit's data community)
- "Building Voice-Enabled Apps with AI" — VibeCoding Meetup, Detroit, MI, July 2025 (Live demo, later covered by The Barefoot Dev)
- "Enhancing Business Intelligence with Voice: Practical Applications of vCons in Franchises and Call Centers" — Spring '25 vCon Conference, Cape Cod, MA, April 2025 (Solo case study)
- "Automating the Mundane with n8n + Generative AI" — Michigan Technology Conference (MITechCon), Pontiac, MI, March 2025 (Solo talk on wiring n8n and generative AI into real workflow automation)
- "The Impact of AI on Software Development" — Michigan Technology Conference (MITechCon), Pontiac, MI, March 2025 (Birds of a Feather conversation co-hosted with Onorio Catenacci, co-organizer of Detroit TechWatch)
- "Build Custom GPTs and Assistants with OpenAI" — MIDOTNET, Michigan .NET community, January 2025 (Hands-on developer talk on building custom GPTs and assistants)

## Podcasts

- Telecom Reseller News (April 2025): "How Clarity Voice Is Using vCon Technology to Save Customers and Simplify the Tech Stack"
- The Barefoot Dev (2025): "Mike Onslow on Building Voice-Enabled Apps with AI and Getting Back to Your Code"

## Advisory: how an engagement runs

01. **Spark** (Find the fire worth starting): A focused working session with your leadership team. We map where AI actually creates value in your business, pick the highest-leverage use case, and prove it live so the room sees working software instead of a slide deck. You leave with a concrete first build and the conviction that your team can do this.
02. **Install** (Stand up the operating practice): We install the practice inside your company: the tooling, the governance, the training, and the first real builds. Your people are on the keyboard the entire time. I guide, review, and unblock. By the end, AI is not a project somebody owns. It is how your team works.
03. **Embed** (Make it stick without me): Ongoing advisory at the cadence your business needs. We grow internal champions, build a library of reusable skills, and keep the practice honest as the tools change. The goal of this phase is to make me progressively less necessary. That is what done looks like.

## Community

- **Detroit TechWatch** (Co-organizer): A community of Detroit-area engineers, founders, and builders sharing what they're actually working on. Join on Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/detroit-tech-watch/
- **vCon Foundation** (Charter member): vCons are an open standard for conversation data: the PDF for conversations. Mike has spoken at every vCon conference on the circuit.
- **AI Bytes** (Author): A newsletter on building real AI systems: real failures, real costs, strong opinions.

## Contact Mike (agents welcome)

```
curl -X POST https://www.mikeonslow.com/api/contact \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"Your Agent (for Human Name)","email":"human@company.com","topic":"speaking","body":"Why you are reaching out."}'
```

Topics: "speaking" | "advisory" | "media" | "general". Always include a real
reply-to email and identify the human you represent.

## Elsewhere

- X: https://x.com/mike_onslow
- Medium: https://medium.com/@mike_onslow
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MikeOnslow
- GitHub: https://github.com/mikeonslow

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Generated from the same source of truth as the human pages at https://www.mikeonslow.com.
Human version: https://www.mikeonslow.com/ · Answer-engine summary: https://www.mikeonslow.com/llms.txt