About
Blank Slate Institute exists because tools without understanding create dependency, not capability.
In a world where anything can be generated, meaning comes from how we think, what we ask, how we judge, consider, and what we choose to build.
BSI was founded to fill the gap left behind by good intentions and enthusiasm we often have to use new tools and techniques.
We’ve seen this run its course several times over
- 01Hype
- 02Trial
- 03Misallocation
- 04Despondency
- Issued a licence
- 05Productivity: trained
Every wave of this cycle has the same cause: tools issued without the thinking to use them. We found gaps in training and experts that were dangerously short of real world practicality and application. Nothing in between taught a working professional how to adapt and use these tools they're issued in their actual job and in a way they could still stand behind. That is the gap BSI closes.
Built from real roles, real tasks
We’ve developed our material based on what we see in the board room, in the office, and among family, friends and colleagues, and are now rolling the programme out through our own trainers and a growing network of partners around the World.
Our courses are built around real tasks from real roles, experience and our Students own work, every participant leaves with a way they can interact with AI that they can use the next morning immediately and with scale and impact.
Model and vendor agnostic
The curriculum is deliberately model and vendor agnostic. We teach judgement, structure, problem decomposition and workflow, not the menu of whichever tool is current this quarter or whatever tools is doing the rounds on social media. That is what makes the skills hold their value as the technology changes.
The World will change and staying agile and able to change quickly will be your difference against the competition.
Written and taught by people
All of our material is written and taught by people. We use AI heavily in our own work and research, and we are clear-eyed about where it helps and where it doesn't. That experience are our courses and practice.
BSI is a team headquartered in Singapore, with courses delivered in person and online by our Lead Trainer and Founder (Tim Desmond) and a global network of Instructor Consultants.
Tim Desmond
Tim has spent over 18 years building and running the infrastructure that AI actually depends on. He founded and grew DXN Solutions (ASX:DXN), taking it from a start up in 2010 through to IPO in 2018. Since then he has worked across the hyperscale data centre build out boom for power and cooling systems, and most recently led Business Development transformation for a large US listed energy storage firm in Asia Pacific, structuring energy storage projects for data centres and grid operators in Japan and the Philippines.
Alongside that he has worked extensively with AI systems for private clients who primarily make decisions with fragmented, unstructured and physical data, helping those clients establish reliable data pipelines and systems to make better and faster decisions. That work pushed him to focus on the largest unlock an organisation can solve with its most valuable resource, which is helping its people understand the systems they have to use to solve their problems. Everything Blank Slate Institute teaches comes out of that: what these new tools are good at, where they fail, and how to fit them into a job that already has deadlines.
Tim started Blank Slate Institute because the training available to working professionals was either too shallow to change how anyone worked or too technical to be useful outside an engineering team. BSI's courses are built for people who have a job to do and want AI to help them do it better, and with more scale and impact than was possible before the advent of these tools.
With a team headquartered in Singapore, Tim instructs BSI courses as Lead Trainer alongside a growing global network of company Instructor Consultants, and develops material with a team of human course developers.