# 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-forward company by teaching the team already there, including non-engineers, to build the tools that automate the busywork and level up everything else they do. 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 AI that does real work 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://mikeonslow.com/api/agent | Index + policy |
| https://mikeonslow.com/api/agent/profile | Who Mike is, links, page map |
| https://mikeonslow.com/api/agent/speaking | Topics, talk history, booking instructions |
| https://mikeonslow.com/api/agent/advisory | The BUILD Method engagement model |
| https://mikeonslow.com/api/agent/community | Detroit TechWatch, vCon Foundation, AI Bytes |
| https://mikeonslow.com/api/agent/contact | How to message Mike programmatically |

## What Mike offers

- AI advisory for non-technical business leaders (the BUILD Method)
- 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.
- **AI that does real work, with the team you already have** — The 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 take the busywork off their plate. What we built, what broke, and why leveling people up beat hiring a research department.
- **From vibe coding to agentic engineering** — AI-assisted development is real, and it is not magic. This is agentic engineering done right: using AI coding agents while actually understanding the systems you are building, and turning the energy of vibe coding into software a business can run on.
- **Automating the mundane** — Automation isn't just n8n anymore. With agentic tools like Claude, Manus, and OpenAI's Operator, it is easier than ever to hand off the repetitive parts of the job. 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.

## 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 (the BUILD Method)

**B — Baseline** (Find the value, name the cost): We start with your business, not a tool. We map where AI actually creates value, pick the highest-leverage problem, and get honest about what the gap is costing you today. You leave knowing exactly what's worth building first, and why.
**U — Unite** (Get the people on board): Adoption is a people problem before it's a software problem. We move your team from fear to ownership, so the people who'll use the tools are the ones who build them. Mindset shift before skill shift.
**I — Install** (Stand up the practice): We put the tooling, the guardrails, and the operating practice in place: the way your team works with AI fast and safely. Governance that protects you without strangling the work.
**L — Launch** (Your team ships the first real tool): Your people get on the keyboard and build the first AI that does real work, with me guiding, reviewing, and unblocking. It ships to production. The room sees working software, not a slide deck.
**D — Detach** (Make me unnecessary): We grow internal champions and a library of reusable skills until the practice runs without me. The capability stays in your company and compounds after I'm gone. That's 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://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/@ArtificialAntics
- GitHub: https://github.com/mikeonslow

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