Author: Sjoukje Zaal

Conversations around the short and long term risks and potentially significant unintended consequences of AI are increasing in volume.  This has culminated recently in a controversial open letter, coordinated by Future of Life institute, from hundreds of leading figures in this space, including Elon Musk, asking for development and AI learning to be paused, until it is better understood.  “Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources,” the letter says. “Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.”

Dave, Sjoukje & Rob talk with Futurist Theo Preistley about the risks of AI already manifesting in society, what additional features and automations are coming, which potentially add more risk, and what can could and should be done at this point to ensure we bring AI into our lives responsibly.

Finally, in this weeks Trend, we talk about what organisations should do to prep for AI, and that fact that they still have time to act now to get the right arrangements in place.

TLDR:
01:15 Intros
02:08 Cloud conversation with Theo Preistley
38:25 What should organisations do to prep for AI? 
45:27 The Evil Dead Rise and rewatch Picard!

Further Reading:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/31/ai-research-pause-elon-musk-chatgpt

Digital organisations work in new ways that require us all to adapt and develop new skills and framing and making sense of the world.  How to tackle this is one of the more difficult challenges requiring addressing in a digital transformation.

Dave, Sjoukje & Rob talk with Micheal Hamman, Teacher and Coach, about different styles of organisation and about how our beliefs can impact how we act.  He also talks about the over emphasis on the engineering mindset, how we need to consider the human technologies and how all of our “human operating systems” may require some new apps.

Finally, in this weeks Trend, we talk about skills that modern leaders need to adopt and what can we learn from each other. 

TLDR:
01:14 Intros
02:02 Cloud conversation with Micheal Hamman
24:05 Three skills every modern leader needs
33:19 Vertical Facilitation!

Digitalisation in an inherently complex activity, with unknowns being very high and experimentation required on an ongoing basis – there is no ‘once and done’.  The changes in leadership framing, decision making and ways of working required are hugely under estimated in discussions and planning of ‘transformation’ and failure to engage with that could risk your success.

Dave, Sjoukje & Rob talk with Dave Snowden, Director and Founder of the Cynefin Centre about his work on making sense of complexity, they discuss Dave’s seminal work, the Cynefin Framework, how he has subsequently built on that thinking and how you apply that it in the digitalisation process of your organisation.  His insights are not to be missed.

Finally, in this weeks Trend, we set out some perceived wisdom of what is required in digital leadership and see what stacks up.

TLDR:
00:43 Intros
01:21 Cloud conversation with Dave Snowden
24:53 Six Tips For CEOs for Leading Digital Transformations  
40:31 Wainwright walks! 

Further Reading:
https://thecynefin.co/

AI usability and adoption continues to rapidly accelerate in 2023, but it is important to understand the risks to your business from mis-using AI and best practices for evaluating the right AI tools for the right jobs.

Dave, Sjoukje & Rob talk with Michelle Zhou, Founder and CEO of Juji, about her history and take on the progression of AI over the last 20 years, why democratisation of AI is both increases the safety and precision of AI, as well as likely driving the right and best human experiences.  Also, how do you nurture your AI?!

Finally, in this weeks Trend, we deep dive on democratised AI by looking at no code AI.

TLDR:
01:00 Intros
02:26 Cloud conversation with Michelle Zhou
32:18 No-Code AI
41:54 AI Conference!

Platform engineering is a core part of modern digital operating models.  The discipline has been developing over the last 10 years and provides underlying safe, secure and optimised platforms, essential for creative and customer centric innovation.

Dave, Sjoukje & Rob talk with Jennifer Riggins, Tech Culture Author about what good platform engineering looks like, why conditions today could lead to good platform engineering practices, how platforms help organisations innovate and deal with technical complexity, how it leads to strong DevOps implementation and how it helps deal with a major issue in tech today, developer cognitive overload.  

TLDR:
00:54 Intros
02:16 Cloud conversation with Jennifer Riggins
22:24 Platform engineering in 2023 – doing more with less 
32:19 SPRING AT LAST!

Legacy modernisation is one of the most difficult, and often misunderstood, elements of digital transformation.  It can be expensive and very disruptive.  It has more in common with business transformation than cloud migration and can lend itself to risky large scale implementations.

Dave, Sjoukje & Rob are joined by John Kodumal, CTO and Co-Founder of LaunchDarkly, they talk about how greenfield development is increasingly rare, evolving a running system is much more common.  New method and tools are now available to move this past a static or quarterly update, risk heavy process, such as feature management which allows legacy to be modernised with zero outage and switch over risk. 

In this weeks trend we talk about the emerging field of developer productivity, why it can be helpful, but its also very difficult to do effectively.

TLDR:
00:50 Intros
01:30 Cloud conversation with John Kodumal
21:30 Developer Productivity
29:42 Scaling People by Claire Hughes Johnson (book recommendation)!

Further Reading:
Scaling People:  https://amzn.eu/d/af6XVeN

“Digital transformation” a phrase that has been used for years, often thought to be overused and perhaps hollow, maybe coming of age.  This week we look into this phrase and what its meant over the years, but also try to understand what’s changed to make it more material. 

Dave, Sjoukje & Rob talk with Jeff DeVerter, Tech Evangelist from Rackspace about what has made this real in 2023 and what is different organisationally, culturally and technically in a “digitally transformed” organisation.  Also, they try to understand the difference between digitisation and digitalisation, how this may change professions and how this type of transformation can help us become more customer relevant.

Finally, in this weeks Trend, we talk about cloud enabled digital transformation and how cloud fits in.

TLDR:
01:24 Intros
02:19 Cloud conversation with Jeff Daverter
22:30 Why Cloud is key in enabling digital transformation 
31:40 Going for a nap! 

TelCo is a Sector where Cloud based software defined networks are driving customer expectations combined with potentially providing huge operational efficiencies.  Telcos are increasingly moving their networks to the cloud, recognizing the significant advantages this can provide – 31% of global network capacity is being serviced by cloud today, and this is expected to increase to 46% in the next 3 to 5 years.

Dave, Sjoukje & Rob talk with Geoff Hollingworth, CMO of Rakuten Symphony about their experience as a Cloud Native Telco, and what we can learn by looking at what is possible on the other side of cloud transformation.  The team explore what a telco cloud transformation is (is it different from cloud transformation in other sectors?), the operational differences between a Cloud Native and traditional Telco and cloud transformation progress and nuances in the sector

Finally, in this weeks Trend, we talk about the FinOps Foundation and the misconception of FinOps being just about saving money.

TLDR:
00:52 Intros
02:07 Cloud conversation with Geoff Hollingworth
35:30 The FinOps Foundation 
39:51 Getting some sleep!

Further Reading:
https://www.capgemini.com/insights/research-library/cloudification-of-networks

Each year Capgemini publishes TechnoVision – a comprehensive prediction of the year to come, along with useful principles that guide both its prediction and use.  It seeks to bring some fresh thinking to the technology business issues of today.  In this special two part episode Dave, Sjoukje & Rob talk in detail with the reports leader Ron Tolido and get a special insight into the creation of Technovision 2023! 

In this special first episode, the team explore why Scarcity, Sustainability and Uncertainty have influenced so much of the thinking, what impact this has and then walk through the 5 trends at the centre of the report: Invisible Infostructure, Applications Unleashed, Thriving on Data, Process on the Fly and You Experience/We Collaborate.

Finally, in this weeks Trend, we talk about how Microsoft and Google are both racing to bring chatGPT supported product to market.

TLDR:
01:25 Intros
02:00 Cloud conversation with Ron Tolido
45:04 Microsoft and Googles move to incorporate chatGPT into their tooling
51:09 Surf rock with robots!