How I Digitized My Brain: Building a Queryable Knowledge System to Control the Chaos

Modern society is drowning in information scattered across meetings, documents, conversations, notifications, and random thoughts. We're expected to absorb more, remember more, and respond faster—while somehow remaining present for the people and work in front of us. This talk shows how I built a comprehensive digital brain that captures the information I don't want to lose—meeting transcripts, voice memos, PDFs, links, conversations—and makes it all queryable through natural language. What started as a software project eventually became a hardware project: a small, purpose-built device for capturing real-world conversations and feeding them into a private, AI-powered knowledge system I control. Who is this talk for? Developers, architects, technology leaders, consultants, and anyone struggling with information overload. It's especially relevant for people exploring AI-powered applications, personal knowledge systems, automation, or ways to maintain context across an increasingly fragmented digital life. Basic technical knowledge is helpful, but you don't need to be building your own AI infrastructure to take something away from it. What will attendees take away? Practical patterns for capturing information from multiple sources, making accumulated knowledge accessible through natural language, and thinking intentionally about privacy and ownership along the way. You'll see the architecture behind the system, the physical device I built to extend it beyond the screen, and the unexpected ways that outsourcing memory to machines changed how I work. Why should they be excited? I'll demonstrate a real system that lets me recall conversations from months ago, recover decisions I'd forgotten, and capture ideas without stopping to organize them. This isn't really a talk about taking better notes. It's about what happens when we stop asking our brains to remember everything—and use AI to create more space to pay attention, stay curious, and be present.