I wrote this in June 2018 about how people present themselves. Back then it was about physical presentation — how you show up in a room. In 2025, the room is online.
If someone hasn't put the care into presenting themselves well, how much care will they put into anything else?
Presentation is a proxy for self-awareness. It signals you understand what others expect, that you respect the context you're in, and that you can be trusted with responsibility.
The digital handshake
In the AI era, your digital presentation — your profile, your public writing, your online presence — is your handshake. Curate it or be curated by algorithms that don't care about you.
This has only gotten more true. Your GitHub profile, your blog, your X posts — that's how people decide whether to work with you before they've ever met you. And now that AI can generate a polished profile in seconds, the bar has shifted again. It's not about being polished anymore. It's about being distinctly you.
A curated presence that clearly reflects a real human with real opinions stands out in a sea of generated bios and generic "passionate about technology" taglines. The presentation still matters — but what it signals has changed from "I made an effort" to "I actually exist."