Meeting Title: Brainforge EP Group Documentation Sync Date: 2026-01-20 Meeting participants: Clarence Stone, Amber Lin
WEBVTT
1 00:03:58.130 ⇒ 00:03:59.250 Amber Lin: Hello!
2 00:04:00.900 ⇒ 00:04:05.869 Amber Lin: Well, what’s up? Well, nice to see you again. Let me transfer this meeting onto my computer.
3 00:04:10.940 ⇒ 00:04:13.670 Amber Lin: Cool. What did you want to talk about?
4 00:04:13.930 ⇒ 00:04:17.540 Clarence Stone: One… You’re amazing. Thank you so much.
5 00:04:17.540 ⇒ 00:04:18.060 Amber Lin: Q.
6 00:04:18.060 ⇒ 00:04:21.099 Clarence Stone: for taking ownership and running this meeting,
7 00:04:21.100 ⇒ 00:04:39.290 Clarence Stone: full transparency, I was a little annoyed with the EP group when I first dropped in. I was just like, wow, it’s, like, pretty obvious a lot of y’all didn’t have access to this, and no one said anything. So, you really saved them, and you were so patient and kind, and I give you so many points for doing that.
8 00:04:40.320 ⇒ 00:04:48.090 Amber Lin: I mean, I appreciate it. I would be equally lost if I were them. Like, I… like, most of the people in the EP group have…
9 00:04:48.220 ⇒ 00:04:57.670 Amber Lin: less than 3 years of working experience, and most have been individual contributors, so, like, this is… like, organization doing this has always been…
10 00:04:57.680 ⇒ 00:05:09.319 Amber Lin: taken care of for them, because, like, somebody was a project manager for them, so, like, I don’t… I don’t blame them. I was very much equally lost, when I was doing that.
11 00:05:09.710 ⇒ 00:05:19.620 Amber Lin: First, as well, and then, like, I also tried to train some project managers before, so it was, like, this is not my first time walking people through.
12 00:05:20.030 ⇒ 00:05:37.499 Clarence Stone: So, I already flowed this by Utam, and he said it’s approved by him if you are open to doing it. So, the ask that I have for you is, would you mind adding one more meeting with the EPs where you work one-on-one to help them clean up their documentation?
13 00:05:37.950 ⇒ 00:05:45.159 Clarence Stone: Just like you did today. Like, everything that you did today, you just, like, call on people, you’re like, hey, please enter this in, you double-checked, right? Like.
14 00:05:45.460 ⇒ 00:05:51.690 Clarence Stone: That, that was amazing. I’d love if you would be willing to do that, because…
15 00:05:51.910 ⇒ 00:06:01.009 Clarence Stone: I think it’s gonna be a difficult path to getting all of this sorted, and the way you handle it was way better than I was about to.
16 00:06:01.880 ⇒ 00:06:12.829 Amber Lin: Yeah, I can… I can do that. I think it’s very much on the ground, and, like, it’s probably easier to hear from me than to hear… hear from
17 00:06:12.930 ⇒ 00:06:18.850 Amber Lin: like, hear from you, because they’ve just not worked with you for long enough. I think that’s all.
18 00:06:19.730 ⇒ 00:06:26.270 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so, okay, with that, though, I want to answer your… the question you had for me before.
19 00:06:26.370 ⇒ 00:06:29.670 Clarence Stone: About, hey, let’s create a checklist, right?
20 00:06:31.040 ⇒ 00:06:35.120 Clarence Stone: By the way, I made one for you, just so you know.
21 00:06:35.350 ⇒ 00:06:45.230 Amber Lin: Thank you. Like, I… I somewhat know what my checklist is, but I don’t think people know what they’re actually doing right now.
22 00:06:45.230 ⇒ 00:06:48.300 Clarence Stone: I made looks nothing like the one you…
23 00:06:48.300 ⇒ 00:06:49.790 Amber Lin: Oh, this one’s really cool.
24 00:06:49.790 ⇒ 00:06:53.970 Clarence Stone: Yeah, like, me and Claude just made this, like, during the 5 minutes, I said I need.
25 00:06:53.970 ⇒ 00:06:54.540 Amber Lin: Okay.
26 00:06:54.540 ⇒ 00:06:56.740 Clarence Stone: from you. So,
27 00:06:57.170 ⇒ 00:07:21.990 Clarence Stone: what I was gonna say is, the way, like, we grow our team is gonna matter so massively to how well they’re able to make use and dominate the AI future, right? And to me, it’s not about getting capabilities or output from a team, but rather, are we giving them, like, skill sets and traits and capabilities that are gonna make them freaking awesome in the future?
28 00:07:22.260 ⇒ 00:07:23.280 Amber Lin: Right.
29 00:07:23.280 ⇒ 00:07:48.260 Clarence Stone: Like, so, to me, like, giving a straight-up checklist of, did you put this document here, did you update that? It’s not giving a full story of how you would handle yourself as a professional in, like, you know, 10 years when those patterns don’t exist anymore. We might not even use Google Drive, right? Like, the whole point is, I want this group to understand why we do it, how that’s embedded into the project life cycle.
30 00:07:48.260 ⇒ 00:08:12.430 Clarence Stone: And the engagement. So, when I said, like, I’d rather ask you questions about, you know, like, hey, how’s your project doing? What’s the contract value? What’s the current phase that you’re in, right? Like, what’s your percentage of completion? Like, those are natural questions that we might actually ask each other. Not that the CEO or, like, Uten or Robert, like, are going to be asking this. This is stuff that you’re going to ask between
31 00:08:12.490 ⇒ 00:08:27.229 Clarence Stone: you know, people that are just working within the company, right? So, like, from a perspective of completeness and planning, I’d rather come at it from an angle of, these are really common questions that people in a planning role should be capable of answering.
32 00:08:28.190 ⇒ 00:08:42.759 Amber Lin: Yeah, totally. I completely understand that, and I prefer how you ask these questions. I think I jumped one step ahead of, okay, how is this going to get implemented? Because even if, say, someone
33 00:08:42.760 ⇒ 00:08:54.729 Amber Lin: who has always done engineering and sees these questions, they wouldn’t necessarily know where to look or how to do that. So I think what I’m thinking is a step further of, okay, here are the…
34 00:08:54.850 ⇒ 00:09:14.790 Amber Lin: common questions that gets asked. And then in a document, we say, hey, this is how you would be able to answer this. Say, for example, we look at, how are we on track? So this is where they… we would give an example, okay, pull up your Gantt chart, take a screenshot, see where you’re at. What are… are all these
35 00:09:14.790 ⇒ 00:09:25.270 Amber Lin: So, item number one, are all these tracked and linear? Do… are people doing these? Have they been done? And if so, like, do you know that they’ve been completed? Have they been verified?
36 00:09:25.270 ⇒ 00:09:37.090 Amber Lin: And next step is, okay, like, if we’re on track, how many hours have we spent? How does it compare to our allocated hours? So, these are more… I think when I say checklist of
37 00:09:37.160 ⇒ 00:09:55.980 Amber Lin: software. I was thinking of, in order to answer these questions, what tools do you need in your toolbox to answer this? So I think you, you provided a great framing of thinking that, I don’t think I… any of us have thought at that level.
38 00:09:56.250 ⇒ 00:10:07.679 Amber Lin: For a project to consider all the avenues. Like, I might have thought about, like, allocations, profitability, but I think this is a great high-level
39 00:10:07.680 ⇒ 00:10:20.029 Amber Lin: mental framework that all of us need. But then to implement, I do think, especially for the new folks, they need, like, step-by-steps, even if they just fill out a framework.
40 00:10:20.060 ⇒ 00:10:22.179 Amber Lin: I think that’s…
41 00:10:22.300 ⇒ 00:10:30.660 Amber Lin: That’s easier for them to get started with, until they fake it, till they make it, like, to reach a certain level of understanding.
42 00:10:30.660 ⇒ 00:10:53.229 Clarence Stone: So this is why I’m so glad that you said yes when I asked you, because I think you are the missing piece of this puzzle. Like, you’re the one that can read this question and go, I know exactly what I would do to get to that answer, and this is how I’m thinking about it, this is where I would go, this is what you can do too, right? Like, you are that connective tissue that allows them to understand these business cases, so…
43 00:10:53.610 ⇒ 00:10:59.370 Clarence Stone: Like… Can I ask… like, I’m gonna clean up these questions. These are AI-generated, so they’re not perfect.
44 00:10:59.370 ⇒ 00:10:59.820 Amber Lin: Perfect.
45 00:10:59.820 ⇒ 00:11:04.330 Clarence Stone: Right? But, like, if I could, make a good list for you.
46 00:11:04.330 ⇒ 00:11:24.340 Clarence Stone: like, can you spend just an additional hour sometime during the week with the EPs? Or actually, you can take over the current time slot and do this with them, right, until they’re ready to actually do a review. Because my dream is to bring Robert and Utam in, and then have them
47 00:11:24.450 ⇒ 00:11:31.900 Clarence Stone: like, have one of these sheets, right, and just take turns asking questions, and then having the EP be able to answer all of those things.
48 00:11:32.840 ⇒ 00:11:52.360 Clarence Stone: Right. Because, to me, like, it’s cool if you have everything updated, but if you don’t know how that’s actually, like, related to the project itself, like, I have failed at teaching you to be able to apply these things into, like, the new way of working that’s, like, really, you know, what makes our organization special.
49 00:11:52.950 ⇒ 00:11:55.650 Clarence Stone: Right? So,
50 00:11:55.690 ⇒ 00:12:18.539 Clarence Stone: Yeah, like, what do you think about that approach? I’m still gonna clean this up, I’m also gonna pass this by you, and, you know, feel free to edit or add or change any of these questions, because some of these might not apply, right? And I also want to run it by Robert and Utom and say, hey, here’s our evaluation criteria. Like, in the process of answering these questions, we will actually have seen if everything is up to date.
51 00:12:19.090 ⇒ 00:12:30.980 Amber Lin: Yeah, I think that makes sense, and that makes sure that all our efforts are, pointed towards the final goal, so I think that’s great. Once you’ve run it by Utama Robert, let me know.
52 00:12:32.170 ⇒ 00:12:51.740 Amber Lin: I can book… so I have… I can either book individual sessions with people to check in on their progress, to ask, okay, run me through your Notion, run me through your Google Drive, and then let’s look at these questions together. Or we can, say, break these questions up
53 00:12:51.920 ⇒ 00:12:56.320 Amber Lin: One by one, and then try to use each session for that.
54 00:12:56.450 ⇒ 00:12:57.060 Amber Lin: Oh.
55 00:12:57.640 ⇒ 00:13:02.500 Amber Lin: I think you should do what you did today, where, like, you were filling something in, they saw it.
56 00:13:02.500 ⇒ 00:13:06.330 Clarence Stone: Right. And they go, oh, that’s how I do it.
57 00:13:06.330 ⇒ 00:13:06.690 Amber Lin: Excellent.
58 00:13:06.690 ⇒ 00:13:21.440 Clarence Stone: was actually submitting it, and then you went back and double-checked, right? It’s like, hey, Mustafa, this is 125%. That’s not correct, right? So, if you did it that way, and said, okay, now go back and update, everybody update your operate this way, right?
59 00:13:21.440 ⇒ 00:13:21.950 Amber Lin: Hmm.
60 00:13:21.950 ⇒ 00:13:28.249 Clarence Stone: then, like, I think, you know, you could… you can get away with not having to have a bunch of one-on-one meetings.
61 00:13:28.530 ⇒ 00:13:47.280 Clarence Stone: Okay, that will be great, because I just don’t know how much time outside of execution I have. Exactly. I don’t want this to take up all of your time. I just want you to be able to have the floor to share your wisdom, right? And then, like, pass it on to everybody else. Let them activate themselves and actually do it, right?
62 00:13:47.420 ⇒ 00:14:00.530 Clarence Stone: Because we still want to put ownership, right, onto people, so, like, they should follow up and do it themselves. Now, at that point, if they’re not doing it, I feel like we’ve covered all our bases. We’ve done our best to, you know, provide support, right?
63 00:14:00.840 ⇒ 00:14:14.299 Clarence Stone: So, yeah, I think that’s a game plan. If it’s good with you, I’m just gonna, like, clean this up, run this by Robert Utong. If you want to make any final changes, feel free to, but I think, like.
64 00:14:14.300 ⇒ 00:14:23.739 Clarence Stone: this is a good formula, because, like, I… I’m not really still thinking about this in the context of Brainforge, like, I’m just thinking about y’all in your future jobs, like.
65 00:14:23.780 ⇒ 00:14:36.599 Clarence Stone: if you said, like, hey, you came from being an EP at Brainforge, and you couldn’t answer a question of, like, what decisions are blocked and need escalation, and where are you handling these cases, where are they cataloged?
66 00:14:36.600 ⇒ 00:14:39.549 Amber Lin: Right? Like, imagine being in a business world, and someone’s like.
67 00:14:39.610 ⇒ 00:14:54.350 Clarence Stone: asking you that question, it’s legit, right? And you couldn’t answer that, it’s not a good reflection of yourself, or the organization, or your capability to kind of adapt in the future. So, that’s my perspective. Sound good? What do you think?
68 00:14:54.350 ⇒ 00:15:13.160 Amber Lin: Yeah, sounds good. In terms of the questions, let me know how we end up categorizing them, because I would like to just pick out… I will start with the most basic ones of, say, like, are we even on track, or do we have, as I say, do we have documentation? So, if possible,
69 00:15:13.160 ⇒ 00:15:22.630 Amber Lin: if you’re using AI, could you ask it to rank it in terms of simplicity, so people have something, like, easier to start with, to build confidence?
70 00:15:22.870 ⇒ 00:15:39.230 Clarence Stone: Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, I’m getting rid of the client relationship part, because obviously it doesn’t apply here. So, yeah, I will actually just, like, stack rank it by reversing it, by saying, like, hey, easiest to answer questions first, and then, you know, more difficult ones towards the bottom.
71 00:15:39.740 ⇒ 00:15:40.970 Clarence Stone: And, like.
72 00:15:41.440 ⇒ 00:15:56.270 Clarence Stone: I’m gonna get rid of financial metrics, team and resource thing we should keep, like, risk and performance, and so some of these things I’ll need. But, like, you know, a lot of this, like, this isn’t a bad… like, now that I… by the way, AI generated all of this, Amber.
73 00:15:56.270 ⇒ 00:15:59.789 Amber Lin: I know, it’s, it’s really, it’s really getting so much better now.
74 00:15:59.790 ⇒ 00:16:15.580 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I just said to Opus, I’m like, as a CEO of a consulting company reviewing the status and health and quality of documentation and completeness of deliveries for all their existing consulting engagements, make me a list of the top 20 questions that this CEO would ask.
75 00:16:15.780 ⇒ 00:16:16.540 Amber Lin: Mmm.
76 00:16:16.720 ⇒ 00:16:19.830 Clarence Stone: And it just generated this document for me instead. This is so…
77 00:16:19.830 ⇒ 00:16:20.220 Amber Lin: I know.
78 00:16:21.230 ⇒ 00:16:22.160 Amber Lin: Awesome.
79 00:16:22.890 ⇒ 00:16:40.670 Amber Lin: Yeah, and I think our one day we’ll also put in, like, an AI workshop, where I think they will have to teach me instead of I teach them, because most of the people on EP are AI engineers. So, like, once we’re able to do the basics, I think we’ll start to rotate
80 00:16:40.790 ⇒ 00:16:45.250 Amber Lin: like, learning sessions, because I think they have a lot to share as well.
81 00:16:45.610 ⇒ 00:16:46.900 Clarence Stone: Oh yeah, I mean…
82 00:16:47.620 ⇒ 00:16:51.590 Amber Lin: I already heard your Wizeth cursor, though, what are you missing?
83 00:16:52.980 ⇒ 00:16:56.130 Clarence Stone: I already heard that you’re so good at using cursor. Like, somebody…
84 00:16:56.130 ⇒ 00:16:58.980 Amber Lin: I… I’ve only used it for analysis.
85 00:16:58.980 ⇒ 00:17:02.680 Clarence Stone: with cursor? Like, it’s awesome.
86 00:17:02.680 ⇒ 00:17:07.339 Amber Lin: I’m doing what you do, I’m just asking it to do things, and it’s doing it better.
87 00:17:07.839 ⇒ 00:17:09.139 Amber Lin: We thought it would do.
88 00:17:09.780 ⇒ 00:17:16.550 Clarence Stone: Yeah, okay, yeah, I mean, if you want to learn any cursor tips or tricks, I’m pretty freaking good at it, too. So.
89 00:17:16.550 ⇒ 00:17:18.710 Amber Lin: Awesome! I would love to know.
90 00:17:18.710 ⇒ 00:17:22.260 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I made my whole entire previous company on Cursor.
91 00:17:23.359 ⇒ 00:17:32.430 Clarence Stone: It’s literally all open source things that I standardized, I redesigned, and created a UI on top of. Like, it’s all open source things that…
92 00:17:32.430 ⇒ 00:17:33.230 Amber Lin: So cool.
93 00:17:34.200 ⇒ 00:17:36.189 Amber Lin: What’s your last company’s name?
94 00:17:36.190 ⇒ 00:17:37.130 Clarence Stone: vicinity?
95 00:17:37.510 ⇒ 00:17:39.820 Amber Lin: Vicinity…
96 00:17:43.160 ⇒ 00:17:45.590 Amber Lin: It’s not the German streetwear brand.
97 00:17:45.590 ⇒ 00:17:47.650 Clarence Stone: No, Vicinity AI.
98 00:17:47.650 ⇒ 00:17:48.719 Amber Lin: Okay.
99 00:17:49.850 ⇒ 00:17:52.530 Clarence Stone: The website’s TrustFicinity.com.
100 00:17:53.330 ⇒ 00:17:54.570 Amber Lin: Oh, very cool.
101 00:17:56.970 ⇒ 00:18:01.369 Amber Lin: Oh, wow, this is, I mean, this is what ABC wants.
102 00:18:01.730 ⇒ 00:18:16.730 Clarence Stone: Yeah. So this, this was, like, early last year. I got models running efficiently with MCP connectors, RAGs, and, agentic functions, just running locally.
103 00:18:16.930 ⇒ 00:18:17.930 Amber Lin: Mmm.
104 00:18:17.930 ⇒ 00:18:23.530 Clarence Stone: So, it was literally just open source things. As soon as they dropped, I integrated it. Like, totally.
105 00:18:23.530 ⇒ 00:18:24.240 Amber Lin: That’s so cool.
106 00:18:24.240 ⇒ 00:18:31.500 Clarence Stone: Like, hey, memory’s out, let’s add it, right? Yeah, so I got really good at using cursor.
107 00:18:31.860 ⇒ 00:18:35.970 Clarence Stone: So if you… if you run into anything, I’m more than happy to help, but…
108 00:18:35.970 ⇒ 00:18:46.049 Amber Lin: That would be great, because I am pretty new to it. Yeah, see, I hear otherwise. I hear you’re, like, the best analyst on Cursor. We have one analyst.
109 00:18:46.870 ⇒ 00:18:48.500 Amber Lin: I can’t say much.
110 00:18:48.500 ⇒ 00:19:00.729 Clarence Stone: Yeah. True, true, true. Okay, so I’m gonna clean this up, I’m gonna send it over to you once, once we get a look. Thank you so much for, for, accepting that, that offer. Like, please,
111 00:19:00.970 ⇒ 00:19:15.999 Clarence Stone: like, I really liked the way you worked with the team. It was just really amazing to watch. I’m just sitting here going, like, hey, Tom, like, I know you’re not on here, and I’m supposed to review documents, but that’s not what’s happening, but I’m happy with what’s happening. So, yeah.
112 00:19:16.000 ⇒ 00:19:22.539 Amber Lin: Oh, okay. And feel free to send anything in the EP channel so they know what to expect.
113 00:19:22.540 ⇒ 00:19:23.880 Clarence Stone: Okay, sounds good.
114 00:19:23.880 ⇒ 00:19:25.610 Amber Lin: Yeah. Alright, thank you so much.
115 00:19:25.610 ⇒ 00:19:26.640 Clarence Stone: Thank you!
116 00:19:27.610 ⇒ 00:19:28.260 Amber Lin: Right?
117 00:19:30.930 ⇒ 00:19:31.390 Clarence Stone: How do I…