Operator, not consultant.

I'm Chen Deng, an engineer and business operator in Calgary, Alberta. The short version: I used to manage $50M infrastructure projects as a PMP-certified project manager. Now I apply that same discipline to something stranger — running multiple small businesses on autonomous AI agents.

The distinction I care about: plenty of people advise on AI adoption. I run my own businesses on it, with my own money at stake. My e-commerce brand runs on 16+ agents. My pharmacy's back office runs on 7, under regulated-industry guardrails. When I build the same systems for clients, they're getting what I actually use — not a slide deck.

People ask whether I'm "an AI person" or "a project manager." Both, and on purpose. Project management taught me how work actually flows through a business and where it leaks time and money. AI is simply the first tool that lets one person plug those leaks at scale. The models will keep changing — I pick whichever does the job cheapest and swap them freely. The skill that doesn't change is knowing which work is worth doing at all.

I work in English and Mandarin, which is why a chunk of my client work serves Calgary's Chinese community: Mandarin schools, restaurants, cultural associations. Bridging those two worlds is part of the job description I wrote for myself.

Off the clock: homelab tinkering (a Synology NAS with an over-engineered VPN kill-switch), trade shows, and finding Calgary's best playgrounds with my family — which naturally became an automated newsletter, because of course it did.