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It was a good day for Newcastle as they beat Villa in the 4th Round of the FA Cup, but the headlines were stolen by a staggering display from the officials at Villa Park. With no VAR in operation, the big question is unavoidable: have referees become too reliant on technology? Is VAR the worst thing ever introduced to the game? There was magic in the cup as Mansfield Town stunned Burnley to reach the Fifth Round of the FA Cup for the first time since 1975. The guys question Scott Parker's decision to make nine changes for the Clarets. Plus, Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer and Micah Richards debate whether Dominik Szoboszlai truly deserves the “world class” tag. And the big question… Gary, Alan or Harry Kane? The Rest Is Football is powered by Fuse Energy. To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit fuseenergy.com/football. Visit squarespace.com/football to save 10% off your first purchase of a website/domain. Join The Players Lounge: The official fantasy football club of The Rest Is Football. It's time to take on Gary, Alan and Micah for the chance to win monthly prizes and shoutouts on the pod. It's FREE to join and as a member, you'll get access to exclusive tips from Fantasy Football Hub including AI-powered team ratings, transfer tips, and expert team reveals to help you climb the table - plus access to our private Slack community. Sign up today at therestisfootball.com. https://therestisfootball.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode_description&utm_content=link_cta For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Perform 2026 felt like a turning point for Dynatrace, and when Steve Tack joined me for his fourth appearance on the show, it was clear this was not business as usual. We began with a little Perform nostalgia, from Dave Anderson's unforgettable "Full Stack Baby" moment to the debut of AI Rick on the keynote stage. But the humor quickly gave way to substance. Because beneath the spectacle, Dynatrace introduced something that signals a broader shift in observability: Dynatrace Intelligence. Steve was candid about the problem they set out to solve. Too much focus on ingesting data. Too much time spent stitching tools together. Too many dashboards. Too many alerts. The real opportunity, he argued, is turning telemetry into trusted, automated action. And that means blending deterministic AI with agentic systems in a way enterprises can actually trust. We unpacked what that looks like in practice. From United Airlines using a digital cockpit to improve operational performance, to TELUS and Vodafone demonstrating measurable ROI on stage, the emphasis at Perform was firmly on production outcomes rather than pilot projects. As Steve put it, the industry has spent long enough in "pilot purgatory." The next phase demands real-world deployment and real return. A big part of that confidence comes from the foundations Dynatrace has laid with Grail and Smartscape. By combining unified telemetry in its data lakehouse with real-time topology mapping and causal AI, Dynatrace is positioning itself as the engine behind explainable, trustworthy automation. When hyperscaler agents from AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud call Dynatrace Intelligence, they are expected to receive answers grounded in causal context rather than probabilistic guesswork. We also explored what this means for developers, who often carry the burden of alert fatigue and fragmented tooling. New integrations into VS Code, Slack, Atlassian, and ServiceNow aim to bring observability directly into the developer workflow. The goal is simple in theory and complex in execution: keep engineers in their flow, reduce toil, and amplify human decision-making rather than replace it. Of course, autonomy raises questions about risk. Steve acknowledged that for now, humans remain firmly in the loop, with most agentic interactions still requiring checkpoints. But as trust grows, so will the willingness to let systems self-optimize, self-heal, and remediate issues automatically. We closed by zooming out. In a market saturated with AI claims, Steve encouraged listeners to bet on change rather than cling to the status quo. There will be hype. There will be agent washing. But there is also real value emerging for those prepared to experiment, learn, and scale responsibly. If you want to understand where AI observability is heading, and how deterministic and agentic intelligence can coexist inside enterprise operations, this episode offers a grounded, practical perspective straight from the Perform show floor.
Every enterprise is building an AI stack, but most are doing it wrong. In this episode, Ross breaks down a tactical, use-case-driven framework for building an AI stack that actually works. If you're a marketer, operator, or executive looking to leverage AI strategically (without blowing your budget or ignoring compliance), this episode gives you the structure you need to win. Key Takeaways and Insights: 1. The Hard Truth About Enterprise AI - Most companies choose AI tools based on hype, not strategy. - Vendor pitches and social buzz are driving long-term contracts. - Locking into the wrong platform can create scaling and security nightmares. - The AI landscape changes weekly, three-year commitments require serious thought. 2. There Is No “Best” AI Tool - The right question isn't “What's best?” but “What's best for this use case?” - Different teams (marketing, engineering, finance) need different tools. - Constraints, industry, and goals should guide tool selection. - Build a stack…Don't look for a silver bullet. 3. The 5-Layer AI Stack Framework - Layer 1: Writing & Communication Tools - Layer 2: Research & Analysis - Layer 3: Code & Technical Execution - Layer 4: Automations & Workflow Integration - Layer 5: Security & Compliance 4. Training, Ownership & Continuous Improvement - AI adoption fails without real, ongoing training. - Appoint an AI stack owner responsible for optimization and updates. - Create internal systems (e.g., Slack channels) to share prompts and workflows. - Capture institutional knowledge so it doesn't leave with one employee. 5. Start Small, But Start Strategic - Don't wait for “the perfect moment.” AI is already reshaping competition. - Experiment but build security and compliance from day one. - Budget realistically for training, tools, and maintenance. - Strategic AI adoption is a long-term competitive advantage. Resources & Tools:
Black History Month Celebration 2026 - Jessica BrazierJoin us as we honor Black History Month through worship, storytelling, and reflection. Together, we'll celebrate faith, resilience, and the powerful legacy that continues to shape our community today. Don't miss our very special guest speaker, Jessica Brazier, as she brings us a message you've likely never heard quite the same way!Let us know your thoughts by reaching out and joining the conversation with your questions and comments using the information below:
The title race takes another twist as Arsenal stumble against Brentford, tightening the gap at the top. Just four points now separate the Gunners and Manchester City with 12 games left to play. Can Arsenal hold their nerve, or will Pep Guardiola's men pile on the pressure and take control? Elsewhere, Evangelos Marinakis swings the axe again, sacking his third manager of the season in Sean Dyche. Nottingham Forest hover just three points above an in-form West Ham, and the relegation battle is reaching boiling point. With momentum shifting and nerves fraying, who's going down? The Rest Is Football is powered by Fuse Energy. To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit fuseenergy.com/football. Join The Players Lounge: The official fantasy football club of The Rest Is Football. It's time to take on Gary, Alan and Micah for the chance to win monthly prizes and shoutouts on the pod. It's FREE to join and as a member, you'll get access to exclusive tips from Fantasy Football Hub including AI-powered team ratings, transfer tips, and expert team reveals to help you climb the table - plus access to our private Slack community. Sign up today at therestisfootball.com. https://therestisfootball.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode_description&utm_content=link_cta For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Past, Present and Future of Des Linden After winning the Boston Marathon, writing a book, hosting a giant running podcast...what's next? We caught up with Des Linden to talk about her career so far, but more importantly, where she's heading next. Show Notes: Des Linden: https://www.instagram.com/des_linden/ Nobody Asked Us (Podcast): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nobody-asked-us-with-des-kara/id1664629953 GU x Des: https://guenergy.com/blogs/press/boston-marathon-champion-joins-gu-athlete-team Magda Boulet: https://www.instagram.com/runboulet/ Ruth Croft: https://www.instagram.com/ruthcrofty/ Brooks - Chief Running Advisor: https://www.brooksrunning.com/en_us/athletes-sponsored-by-brooks-running/des-linden/ Choosing To Run (Book): https://amzn.to/3NGMCT3 Marathon des Sables: https://marathondessables.com/ Black Canyon 50K: https://www.aravaiparunning.com/blackcanyon/ Subway Takes x Des: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQj8ucBDl4B/ BPC - Brand, Product, Content: Brooks Cascadia Elite (Paris Fashion Week): https://www.brooksrunning.com/en_us/cascadia-elite/ Clearlight Infrared Sauna: https://infraredsauna.com/sanctuary-five-person/ Nothing.Tech: https://nothing.tech/ The Generalist: https://www.generalist.com/ Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/second-nature-media Meet us on Slack: https://www.launchpass.com/second-nature Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secondnature.media Subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.secondnature.media Subscribe to the YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@secondnaturemedia
Community isn't a buzzword, it's one of the most powerful growth engines in Marketing. And if you're not building one, you're already behind. Daniel sits down with Chanel Clark, founder of The Marketing Club, to unpack how she accidentally turned one LinkedIn post into a community of over 15,000 Marketers across Australia and New Zealand. From growing a Slack group into real-life events, to keeping engagement high as the community scales, to figuring out when (and how) to start charging, Chanel shares the behind-the-scenes playbook for building something people genuinely want to belong to. They also dive into why community is an owned channel, what makes events actually valuable, and why the future of Marketing is human connection - both online and IRL. If you're a marketer who wants to build deeper relationships, stronger networks, and a brand people rally around, this is the episode for YOU. Customer.io helps brands turn data into personalized messages that actually connect, across email, SMS, and beyond. Learn more at customer.io/tmm. Follow Chanel: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chanel-clark/ Follow Daniel: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing/ Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter: www.workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit: www.workweek.com
In this episode, we dive into the Super Bowl, the logistics of Super Bowl parties, homeless gym people, the Winter Olympics, back off sets on the deadlift, and more. Podcast Hosts:Grant Broggi: Marine Veteran, Owner of The Strength Co. and Starting Strength Coach.Jeff Buege: Marine Veteran, Outdoorsman, Football Fan and LifterTres Gottlich: Marine Veteran, Texan, Fisherman, Crazy College Football Fan and LifterJoin the Slack and Use code OKAY:https://buy.stripe.com/dR6dT4aDcfuBdyw5ksCheck out BW Tax: https://www.bwtaxllc.comBUY A FOOTBALL HELMET:https://www.greengridiron.com/?ref=thestrengthcoTimestamps:00:00 - Intro03:20 - Special Musical Performance By Grant & Tres06:10 - Staff Brief22:37 - Forrest Day Recap25:29 - Strength Co. FOPS28:10 - Homeless Gym People35:45 - Super Bowl53:52 - Winter Olympics01:03:33 - X Comments & Drop Sets01:15:41 - Saved Rounds
In this episode, Jeff Mains sits down with Martin Lesperance, an engagement specialist and interactive keynote speaker on a mission to help people fall back in love with their work. Martin shares his powerful "Four Not So Surprising Secrets" framework for rebuilding engagement, motivation, and momentum in the workplace.From the symbolism of the yellow smiley ball to practical strategies for combating the engagement crisis (which is now worse than during the pandemic), this conversation offers a refreshingly human approach to leadership. Martin explains why engagement isn't a soft skill—it's strategic, and why bringing energy back to work starts with purpose, presence, gratitude, and fun.Key Takeaways5:18 - The Yellow Ball Philosophy8:07 - The Founder Roller Coaster11:39 - The Engagement Crisis13:41 - Secret #1: Live Your Why17:32 - Finding Your Why22:32 - Secret #2: Be Present24:00 - The Smartphone Problem27:17 - Secret #3: Be Grateful31:17 - Wabi-Sabi: Beauty in Imperfection36:00 - Secret #4: Have Fun39:34 - The Seattle Fish Market Example41:50 - Making Dreams Come True45:15 - Remote Engagement ChallengesTweetable Quotes"Nobody has the permission to choose your attitude. Only you do." — Martin Lesperance"Three out of ten people are actively engaged at work. That means seven out of ten are just pushing through." — Martin Lesperance"We spend 70% of our awakened hours in work mode. If you're doing something for 70% of the time, can you at least love it?" — Martin Lesperance"Being present is a gift. There is no better present than you can give around you and yourself." — Martin Lesperance"Gratitude is an attitude. We forget these little things because of the speed of growth and objectives." — Martin Lesperance"Take what you're doing seriously, but not take yourself so seriously." — Martin Lesperance"You can have the best product in the world, but if people are disengaged, forget about scaling." — Martin Lesperance"It's a question of choice. You get to decide what you walk around with." — Martin LesperanceSaaS Leadership Lessons1. Engagement Is a Growth Issue, Not a Soft SkillWhen people stop caring, performance doesn't crash loudly—it quietly leaks out through missed details, slower execution, and "good enough" energy. With engagement at an all-time low (worse than the pandemic), leaders must treat engagement as strategically as they treat revenue metrics.2. Purpose Must Point Outward, Not InwardYour "why" isn't about you—it's about who you serve. When teams realize they're serving others (customers, colleagues, end users), the grind becomes meaningful. Help your team answer: Who do we serve? How do we serve them? What makes us proud?3. Presence Is Your Rarest Leadership CurrencyIn a world of Slack threads, Zoom boxes, and endless mental tabs, attention has become one of the rarest leadership skills. Listen to understand, not just to respond. Put down the devices. Be fully there. Someone on your team deserves more of you.4. Gratitude Is Strategic, Not...
Vincent Warmerdam is a Founding Engineer at marimo, working on reinventing Python notebooks as reactive, reproducible, interactive, and Git-friendly environments for data workflows and AI prototyping. He helps build the core marimo notebook platform, pushing its reactive execution model, UI interactivity, and integration with modern development and AI tooling so that notebooks behave like dependable, shareable programs and apps rather than error-prone scratchpads.Join the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguide// AbstractVincent Warmerdam joins Demetrios fresh off marimo's acquisition by Weights & Biases—and makes a bold claim: notebooks as we know them are outdated.They talk Molab (GPU-backed, cloud-hosted notebooks), LLMs that don't just chat but actually fix your SQL and debug your code, and why most data folks are consuming tools instead of experimenting. Vincent argues we should stop treating notebooks like static scratchpads and start treating them like dynamic apps powered by AI.It's a conversation about rethinking workflows, reclaiming creativity, and not outsourcing your brain to the model.// BioVincent is a senior data professional who worked as an engineer, researcher, team lead, and educator in the past. You might know him from tech talks with an attempt to defend common sense over hype in the data space. He is especially interested in understanding algorithmic systems so that one may prevent failure. As such, he has always had a preference to keep calm and check the dataset before flowing tonnes of tensors. He currently works at marimo, where he spends his time rethinking everything related to Python notebooks.// Related LinksWebsite: https://marimo.io/Coding Agent Conference: https://luma.com/codingagentsHyperbolic GPU Cloud: app.hyperbolic.ai~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]MLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguideConnect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkmConnect with Vincent on LinkedIn: /vincentwarmerdam/Timestamps:[00:00] Context in Notebooks[00:24] Acquisition and Team Continuity[04:43] Coding Agent Conference Announcement![05:56] Hyperbolic GPU Cloud Ad[06:54] marimo and W&B Synergies[09:31] marimo Cloud Code Support[12:59] Hardest Code to Generate[16:22] Trough of Disillusionment[20:38] Agent Interaction in Notebooks[25:41] Wrap up
Enjoy the What's Bruin Show Network!Multiple shows to entertain you on one feed:Support WBS at Patreon.com/WhatsBruinShow for just $2/month and get exclusive content and access to our SLACK channel.Twitter/X: @whatsbruinshow Instagram: @whatsbruinshowCall the What's Bruin Network Hotline at 805-399-4WBS (Suck it Reign of Troy)We are also on YouTube HEREGet Your WBSN MERCH - Go to our MyLocker Site by Clicking HEREWhat's Bruin Show- A conversation about all things Bruin over drinks with Bruin Report Online's @mikeregaladoLA, @wbjake68 and friends!Subscribe to the What's Bruin Show at whatsbruin.substack.comEmail us at: whatsbruinshow@gmail.comTweet us at: @whatsbruinshowWest Coast Bias - LA Sports (mostly Lakers, Dodgers and NFL) with Jamaal and JakeSubscribe to West Coast Bias at wbwestcoastbias.substack.comEmail us at: WB.westcoastbias@gmail.comTweet us at: @WBwestcoastbiasThe BEAR Minimum - Jake and his Daughter Megan talk about student life and Cal Sports during her first year attending UC Berkeley.Subscribe to The BEAR Minimum at thebearminimum.substack.comEmail us at: wb.bearminimum@gmail.comTweet us at: @WB_BearMinimumPlease rate and review us on whatever platform you listen on.
Is social media a distribution channel or the heartbeat of your brand? This week, we're joined by Eric Stark, co-founder of Slate and former NFL social leader, to unpack why most brands are fundamentally looking at social the wrong way. Eric dives into the transition from "posting for performance" to "creating for brand longevity," offering a masterclass in building creative workflows that empower teams rather than draining them. We explore how to maintain high-quality storytelling in an era of 3-second attention spans and why the "move fast and break things" mentality might actually be breaking your brand's reputation. Whether you're a solo creator or leading a massive department, Eric's "hill to die on" for 2026 will change how you view every piece of content in your library.Key Takeaways:// Social as Brand Identity: Why treating your social channels as a distribution arm for other departments is a mistake—and how to pivot back to brand-first marketing.// The "Stickiness" Factor: What separates the brands that own the cultural conversation from those that are just adding to the noise of the scroll.// Workflow = Quality: How optimizing your internal creative process actually yields better creative results, not just faster ones.// Short-Form Storytelling: Strategies for balancing the need for speed with the rising consumer expectation for high-production value and authentic narrative.Connect with Eric: LinkedInDiscover Slate: Website____Join the MHH Collective! The MHH Collective is a community for marketers and business owners to connect, ask real questions, and grow their careers together. Join for access to live Q&As with industry experts, a private Slack community, and ongoing resources: https://www.marketinghappyhr.com/mhh-collectiveSay hi! DM us on Instagram and let us know what content you want to hear on the show - We can't wait to hear from you! Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. Join the MHH Collective: Join nowGet the latest marketing trends, open jobs and MHH updates, straight to your inbox: Join our email list!Follow MHH on Social: Instagram | LinkedIn | TikTok | Facebook
What happens when the life you worked relentlessly to build suddenly stops feeling like you belong in it?From the outside, Ali Brown had it all. An epic brand. Massive influence. Serious revenue. The kind of success most people spend their lives chasing. But from the inside, something was missing.Growing up, Ali Brown was surrounded by the stability of a working father and a creative, stay-at-home mother who filled her days with books, crafts, and art. She credits her self-sufficiency and drive for entrepreneurship to this blend of independence and encouragement. With no explicit entrepreneurial role models, her path to self-employment emerged almost by necessity and through sheer resourcefulness, with how-to books from Barnes & Noble as her guides. Back in a time without the relentless comparison and distraction of social media, she learned to “do what she could from where she was with what she had.”The journey from being a freelance writer to running a multimillion-dollar coaching empire wasn't planned. Ali describes a period of explosive growth, fueled by her willingness to share freely, innovate with early email marketing, and cultivate a loyal following of women in a space otherwise dominated by “bro marketing” and big promises. Her signature info products complete with big instruction binders and CDs felt radical at the time. As her brand grew, so did her sense of responsibility, not only to her expanding team and loyal clients, but to her own evolving sense of purpose.Despite the incredible outward success, she found herself pulled in a different direction after a life-changing appearance on ABC's “Secret Millionaire” and the birth of her twins.She had to figure out what to do after her identity outgrew the model that built it. And have you ever assured yourself that listening to your heart was the right thing to do even though it felt disloyal to everyone else? Motherhood, faith, and finally finding clarity forced Ali to make a hard pivot.This episode is about permission. The kind of permission you give yourself. To change. To disappoint people. To shut things down that still make money. To choose peace over approval. And to stop confusing momentum with meaning.If you've ever wondered why the thing you worked so hard to build suddenly feels heavy, keep listening.HYPE SONG:Ali's hype song is “I Know a Name” by Brandon Lake and “Sure Shot” by the Beastie BoysRESOURCES:Ali Brown's website: www.alibrown.comAli Brown's other website: www.JoinTheTrust.orgLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alibrownla/Instagram: instagram.com/alibrownofficialInvitation from Lori:This episode is sponsored by Zen Rabbit. Smart leaders know trust is the backbone of a thriving workplace, and in today's hybrid whirlwind, it doesn't grow from quarterly updates or the occasional Slack ping. It grows from steady, human...
This podcast features Gabriele Corso and Jeremy Wohlwend, co-founders of Boltz and authors of the Boltz Manifesto, discussing the rapid evolution of structural biology models from AlphaFold to their own open-source suite, Boltz-1 and Boltz-2. The central thesis is that while single-chain protein structure prediction is largely “solved” through evolutionary hints, the next frontier lies in modeling complex interactions (protein-ligand, protein-protein) and generative protein design, which Boltz aims to democratize via open-source foundations and scalable infrastructure.Full Video PodOn YouTube!Timestamps* 00:00 Introduction to Benchmarking and the “Solved” Protein Problem* 06:48 Evolutionary Hints and Co-evolution in Structure Prediction* 10:00 The Importance of Protein Function and Disease States* 15:31 Transitioning from AlphaFold 2 to AlphaFold 3 Capabilities* 19:48 Generative Modeling vs. Regression in Structural Biology* 25:00 The “Bitter Lesson” and Specialized AI Architectures* 29:14 Development Anecdotes: Training Boltz-1 on a Budget* 32:00 Validation Strategies and the Protein Data Bank (PDB)* 37:26 The Mission of Boltz: Democratizing Access and Open Source* 41:43 Building a Self-Sustaining Research Community* 44:40 Boltz-2 Advancements: Affinity Prediction and Design* 51:03 BoltzGen: Merging Structure and Sequence Prediction* 55:18 Large-Scale Wet Lab Validation Results* 01:02:44 Boltz Lab Product Launch: Agents and Infrastructure* 01:13:06 Future Directions: Developpability and the “Virtual Cell”* 01:17:35 Interacting with Skeptical Medicinal ChemistsKey SummaryEvolution of Structure Prediction & Evolutionary Hints* Co-evolutionary Landscapes: The speakers explain that breakthrough progress in single-chain protein prediction relied on decoding evolutionary correlations where mutations in one position necessitate mutations in another to conserve 3D structure.* Structure vs. Folding: They differentiate between structure prediction (getting the final answer) and folding (the kinetic process of reaching that state), noting that the field is still quite poor at modeling the latter.* Physics vs. Statistics: RJ posits that while models use evolutionary statistics to find the right “valley” in the energy landscape, they likely possess a “light understanding” of physics to refine the local minimum.The Shift to Generative Architectures* Generative Modeling: A key leap in AlphaFold 3 and Boltz-1 was moving from regression (predicting one static coordinate) to a generative diffusion approach that samples from a posterior distribution.* Handling Uncertainty: This shift allows models to represent multiple conformational states and avoid the “averaging” effect seen in regression models when the ground truth is ambiguous.* Specialized Architectures: Despite the “bitter lesson” of general-purpose transformers, the speakers argue that equivariant architectures remain vastly superior for biological data due to the inherent 3D geometric constraints of molecules.Boltz-2 and Generative Protein Design* Unified Encoding: Boltz-2 (and BoltzGen) treats structure and sequence prediction as a single task by encoding amino acid identities into the atomic composition of the predicted structure.* Design Specifics: Instead of a sequence, users feed the model blank tokens and a high-level “spec” (e.g., an antibody framework), and the model decodes both the 3D structure and the corresponding amino acids.* Affinity Prediction: While model confidence is a common metric, Boltz-2 focuses on affinity prediction—quantifying exactly how tightly a designed binder will stick to its target.Real-World Validation and Productization* Generalized Validation: To prove the model isn't just “regurgitating” known data, Boltz tested its designs on 9 targets with zero known interactions in the PDB, achieving nanomolar binders for two-thirds of them.* Boltz Lab Infrastructure: The newly launched Boltz Lab platform provides “agents” for protein and small molecule design, optimized to run 10x faster than open-source versions through proprietary GPU kernels.* Human-in-the-Loop: The platform is designed to convert skeptical medicinal chemists by allowing them to run parallel screens and use their intuition to filter model outputs.TranscriptRJ [00:05:35]: But the goal remains to, like, you know, really challenge the models, like, how well do these models generalize? And, you know, we've seen in some of the latest CASP competitions, like, while we've become really, really good at proteins, especially monomeric proteins, you know, other modalities still remain pretty difficult. So it's really essential, you know, in the field that there are, like, these efforts to gather, you know, benchmarks that are challenging. So it keeps us in line, you know, about what the models can do or not.Gabriel [00:06:26]: Yeah, it's interesting you say that, like, in some sense, CASP, you know, at CASP 14, a problem was solved and, like, pretty comprehensively, right? But at the same time, it was really only the beginning. So you can say, like, what was the specific problem you would argue was solved? And then, like, you know, what is remaining, which is probably quite open.RJ [00:06:48]: I think we'll steer away from the term solved, because we have many friends in the community who get pretty upset at that word. And I think, you know, fairly so. But the problem that was, you know, that a lot of progress was made on was the ability to predict the structure of single chain proteins. So proteins can, like, be composed of many chains. And single chain proteins are, you know, just a single sequence of amino acids. And one of the reasons that we've been able to make such progress is also because we take a lot of hints from evolution. So the way the models work is that, you know, they sort of decode a lot of hints. That comes from evolutionary landscapes. So if you have, like, you know, some protein in an animal, and you go find the similar protein across, like, you know, different organisms, you might find different mutations in them. And as it turns out, if you take a lot of the sequences together, and you analyze them, you see that some positions in the sequence tend to evolve at the same time as other positions in the sequence, sort of this, like, correlation between different positions. And it turns out that that is typically a hint that these two positions are close in three dimension. So part of the, you know, part of the breakthrough has been, like, our ability to also decode that very, very effectively. But what it implies also is that in absence of that co-evolutionary landscape, the models don't quite perform as well. And so, you know, I think when that information is available, maybe one could say, you know, the problem is, like, somewhat solved. From the perspective of structure prediction, when it isn't, it's much more challenging. And I think it's also worth also differentiating the, sometimes we confound a little bit, structure prediction and folding. Folding is the more complex process of actually understanding, like, how it goes from, like, this disordered state into, like, a structured, like, state. And that I don't think we've made that much progress on. But the idea of, like, yeah, going straight to the answer, we've become pretty good at.Brandon [00:08:49]: So there's this protein that is, like, just a long chain and it folds up. Yeah. And so we're good at getting from that long chain in whatever form it was originally to the thing. But we don't know how it necessarily gets to that state. And there might be intermediate states that it's in sometimes that we're not aware of.RJ [00:09:10]: That's right. And that relates also to, like, you know, our general ability to model, like, the different, you know, proteins are not static. They move, they take different shapes based on their energy states. And I think we are, also not that good at understanding the different states that the protein can be in and at what frequency, what probability. So I think the two problems are quite related in some ways. Still a lot to solve. But I think it was very surprising at the time, you know, that even with these evolutionary hints that we were able to, you know, to make such dramatic progress.Brandon [00:09:45]: So I want to ask, why does the intermediate states matter? But first, I kind of want to understand, why do we care? What proteins are shaped like?Gabriel [00:09:54]: Yeah, I mean, the proteins are kind of the machines of our body. You know, the way that all the processes that we have in our cells, you know, work is typically through proteins, sometimes other molecules, sort of intermediate interactions. And through that interactions, we have all sorts of cell functions. And so when we try to understand, you know, a lot of biology, how our body works, how disease work. So we often try to boil it down to, okay, what is going right in case of, you know, our normal biological function and what is going wrong in case of the disease state. And we boil it down to kind of, you know, proteins and kind of other molecules and their interaction. And so when we try predicting the structure of proteins, it's critical to, you know, have an understanding of kind of those interactions. It's a bit like seeing the difference between... Having kind of a list of parts that you would put it in a car and seeing kind of the car in its final form, you know, seeing the car really helps you understand what it does. On the other hand, kind of going to your question of, you know, why do we care about, you know, how the protein falls or, you know, how the car is made to some extent is that, you know, sometimes when something goes wrong, you know, there are, you know, cases of, you know, proteins misfolding. In some diseases and so on, if we don't understand this folding process, we don't really know how to intervene.RJ [00:11:30]: There's this nice line in the, I think it's in the Alpha Fold 2 manuscript, where they sort of discuss also like why we even hopeful that we can target the problem in the first place. And then there's this notion that like, well, four proteins that fold. The folding process is almost instantaneous, which is a strong, like, you know, signal that like, yeah, like we should, we might be... able to predict that this very like constrained thing that, that the protein does so quickly. And of course that's not the case for, you know, for, for all proteins. And there's a lot of like really interesting mechanisms in the cells, but yeah, I remember reading that and thought, yeah, that's somewhat of an insightful point.Gabriel [00:12:10]: I think one of the interesting things about the protein folding problem is that it used to be actually studied. And part of the reason why people thought it was impossible, it used to be studied as kind of like a classical example. Of like an MP problem. Uh, like there are so many different, you know, type of, you know, shapes that, you know, this amino acid could take. And so, this grows combinatorially with the size of the sequence. And so there used to be kind of a lot of actually kind of more theoretical computer science thinking about and studying protein folding as an MP problem. And so it was very surprising also from that perspective, kind of seeing. Machine learning so clear, there is some, you know, signal in those sequences, through evolution, but also through kind of other things that, you know, us as humans, we're probably not really able to, uh, to understand, but that is, models I've, I've learned.Brandon [00:13:07]: And so Andrew White, we were talking to him a few weeks ago and he said that he was following the development of this and that there were actually ASICs that were developed just to solve this problem. So, again, that there were. There were many, many, many millions of computational hours spent trying to solve this problem before AlphaFold. And just to be clear, one thing that you mentioned was that there's this kind of co-evolution of mutations and that you see this again and again in different species. So explain why does that give us a good hint that they're close by to each other? Yeah.RJ [00:13:41]: Um, like think of it this way that, you know, if I have, you know, some amino acid that mutates, it's going to impact everything around it. Right. In three dimensions. And so it's almost like the protein through several, probably random mutations and evolution, like, you know, ends up sort of figuring out that this other amino acid needs to change as well for the structure to be conserved. Uh, so this whole principle is that the structure is probably largely conserved, you know, because there's this function associated with it. And so it's really sort of like different positions compensating for, for each other. I see.Brandon [00:14:17]: Those hints in aggregate give us a lot. Yeah. So you can start to look at what kinds of information about what is close to each other, and then you can start to look at what kinds of folds are possible given the structure and then what is the end state.RJ [00:14:30]: And therefore you can make a lot of inferences about what the actual total shape is. Yeah, that's right. It's almost like, you know, you have this big, like three dimensional Valley, you know, where you're sort of trying to find like these like low energy states and there's so much to search through. That's almost overwhelming. But these hints, they sort of maybe put you in. An area of the space that's already like, kind of close to the solution, maybe not quite there yet. And, and there's always this question of like, how much physics are these models learning, you know, versus like, just pure like statistics. And like, I think one of the thing, at least I believe is that once you're in that sort of approximate area of the solution space, then the models have like some understanding, you know, of how to get you to like, you know, the lower energy, uh, low energy state. And so maybe you have some, some light understanding. Of physics, but maybe not quite enough, you know, to know how to like navigate the whole space. Right. Okay.Brandon [00:15:25]: So we need to give it these hints to kind of get into the right Valley and then it finds the, the minimum or something. Yeah.Gabriel [00:15:31]: One interesting explanation about our awful free works that I think it's quite insightful, of course, doesn't cover kind of the entirety of, of what awful does that is, um, they're going to borrow from, uh, Sergio Chinico for MIT. So he sees kind of awful. Then the interesting thing about awful is God. This very peculiar architecture that we have seen, you know, used, and this architecture operates on this, you know, pairwise context between amino acids. And so the idea is that probably the MSA gives you this first hint about what potential amino acids are close to each other. MSA is most multiple sequence alignment. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. This evolutionary information. Yeah. And, you know, from this evolutionary information about potential contacts, then is almost as if the model is. of running some kind of, you know, diastro algorithm where it's sort of decoding, okay, these have to be closed. Okay. Then if these are closed and this is connected to this, then this has to be somewhat closed. And so you decode this, that becomes basically a pairwise kind of distance matrix. And then from this rough pairwise distance matrix, you decode kind of theBrandon [00:16:42]: actual potential structure. Interesting. So there's kind of two different things going on in the kind of coarse grain and then the fine grain optimizations. Interesting. Yeah. Very cool.Gabriel [00:16:53]: Yeah. You mentioned AlphaFold3. So maybe we have a good time to move on to that. So yeah, AlphaFold2 came out and it was like, I think fairly groundbreaking for this field. Everyone got very excited. A few years later, AlphaFold3 came out and maybe for some more history, like what were the advancements in AlphaFold3? And then I think maybe we'll, after that, we'll talk a bit about the sort of how it connects to Bolt. But anyway. Yeah. So after AlphaFold2 came out, you know, Jeremy and I got into the field and with many others, you know, the clear problem that, you know, was, you know, obvious after that was, okay, now we can do individual chains. Can we do interactions, interaction, different proteins, proteins with small molecules, proteins with other molecules. And so. So why are interactions important? Interactions are important because to some extent that's kind of the way that, you know, these machines, you know, these proteins have a function, you know, the function comes by the way that they interact with other proteins and other molecules. Actually, in the first place, you know, the individual machines are often, as Jeremy was mentioning, not made of a single chain, but they're made of the multiple chains. And then these multiple chains interact with other molecules to give the function to those. And on the other hand, you know, when we try to intervene of these interactions, think about like a disease, think about like a, a biosensor or many other ways we are trying to design the molecules or proteins that interact in a particular way with what we would call a target protein or target. You know, this problem after AlphaVol2, you know, became clear, kind of one of the biggest problems in the field to, to solve many groups, including kind of ours and others, you know, started making some kind of contributions to this problem of trying to model these interactions. And AlphaVol3 was, you know, was a significant advancement on the problem of modeling interactions. And one of the interesting thing that they were able to do while, you know, some of the rest of the field that really tried to try to model different interactions separately, you know, how protein interacts with small molecules, how protein interacts with other proteins, how RNA or DNA have their structure, they put everything together and, you know, train very large models with a lot of advances, including kind of changing kind of systems. Some of the key architectural choices and managed to get a single model that was able to set this new state-of-the-art performance across all of these different kind of modalities, whether that was protein, small molecules is critical to developing kind of new drugs, protein, protein, understanding, you know, interactions of, you know, proteins with RNA and DNAs and so on.Brandon [00:19:39]: Just to satisfy the AI engineers in the audience, what were some of the key architectural and data, data changes that made that possible?Gabriel [00:19:48]: Yeah, so one critical one that was not necessarily just unique to AlphaFold3, but there were actually a few other teams, including ours in the field that proposed this, was moving from, you know, modeling structure prediction as a regression problem. So where there is a single answer and you're trying to shoot for that answer to a generative modeling problem where you have a posterior distribution of possible structures and you're trying to sample this distribution. And this achieves two things. One is it starts to allow us to try to model more dynamic systems. As we said, you know, some of these structures can actually take multiple structures. And so, you know, you can now model that, you know, through kind of modeling the entire distribution. But on the second hand, from more kind of core modeling questions, when you move from a regression problem to a generative modeling problem, you are really tackling the way that you think about uncertainty in the model in a different way. So if you think about, you know, I'm undecided between different answers, what's going to happen in a regression model is that, you know, I'm going to try to make an average of those different kind of answers that I had in mind. When you have a generative model, what you're going to do is, you know, sample all these different answers and then maybe use separate models to analyze those different answers and pick out the best. So that was kind of one of the critical improvement. The other improvement is that they significantly simplified, to some extent, the architecture, especially of the final model that takes kind of those pairwise representations and turns them into an actual structure. And that now looks a lot more like a more traditional transformer than, you know, like a very specialized equivariant architecture that it was in AlphaFold3.Brandon [00:21:41]: So this is a bitter lesson, a little bit.Gabriel [00:21:45]: There is some aspect of a bitter lesson, but the interesting thing is that it's very far from, you know, being like a simple transformer. This field is one of the, I argue, very few fields in applied machine learning where we still have kind of architecture that are very specialized. And, you know, there are many people that have tried to replace these architectures with, you know, simple transformers. And, you know, there is a lot of debate in the field, but I think kind of that most of the consensus is that, you know, the performance... that we get from the specialized architecture is vastly superior than what we get through a single transformer. Another interesting thing that I think on the staying on the modeling machine learning side, which I think it's somewhat counterintuitive seeing some of the other kind of fields and applications is that scaling hasn't really worked kind of the same in this field. Now, you know, models like AlphaFold2 and AlphaFold3 are, you know, still very large models.RJ [00:29:14]: in a place, I think, where we had, you know, some experience working in, you know, with the data and working with this type of models. And I think that put us already in like a good place to, you know, to produce it quickly. And, you know, and I would even say, like, I think we could have done it quicker. The problem was like, for a while, we didn't really have the compute. And so we couldn't really train the model. And actually, we only trained the big model once. That's how much compute we had. We could only train it once. And so like, while the model was training, we were like, finding bugs left and right. A lot of them that I wrote. And like, I remember like, I was like, sort of like, you know, doing like, surgery in the middle, like stopping the run, making the fix, like relaunching. And yeah, we never actually went back to the start. We just like kept training it with like the bug fixes along the way, which was impossible to reproduce now. Yeah, yeah, no, that model is like, has gone through such a curriculum that, you know, learned some weird stuff. But yeah, somehow by miracle, it worked out.Gabriel [00:30:13]: The other funny thing is that the way that we were training, most of that model was through a cluster from the Department of Energy. But that's sort of like a shared cluster that many groups use. And so we were basically training the model for two days, and then it would go back to the queue and stay a week in the queue. Oh, yeah. And so it was pretty painful. And so we actually kind of towards the end with Evan, the CEO of Genesis, and basically, you know, I was telling him a bit about the project and, you know, kind of telling him about this frustration with the compute. And so luckily, you know, he offered to kind of help. And so we, we got the help from Genesis to, you know, finish up the model. Otherwise, it probably would have taken a couple of extra weeks.Brandon [00:30:57]: Yeah, yeah.Brandon [00:31:02]: And then, and then there's some progression from there.Gabriel [00:31:06]: Yeah, so I would say kind of that, both one, but also kind of these other kind of set of models that came around the same time, were kind of approaching were a big leap from, you know, kind of the previous kind of open source models, and, you know, kind of really kind of approaching the level of AlphaVault 3. But I would still say that, you know, even to this day, there are, you know, some... specific instances where AlphaVault 3 works better. I think one common example is antibody antigen prediction, where, you know, AlphaVault 3 still seems to have an edge in many situations. Obviously, these are somewhat different models. They are, you know, you run them, you obtain different results. So it's, it's not always the case that one model is better than the other, but kind of in aggregate, we still, especially at the time.Brandon [00:32:00]: So AlphaVault 3 is, you know, still having a bit of an edge. We should talk about this more when we talk about Boltzgen, but like, how do you know one is, one model is better than the other? Like you, so you, I make a prediction, you make a prediction, like, how do you know?Gabriel [00:32:11]: Yeah, so easily, you know, the, the great thing about kind of structural prediction and, you know, once we're going to go into the design space of designing new small molecule, new proteins, this becomes a lot more complex. But a great thing about structural prediction is that a bit like, you know, CASP was doing, basically the way that you can evaluate them is that, you know, you train... You know, you train a model on a structure that was, you know, released across the field up until a certain time. And, you know, one of the things that we didn't talk about that was really critical in all this development is the PDB, which is the Protein Data Bank. It's this common resources, basically common database where every biologist publishes their structures. And so we can, you know, train on, you know, all the structures that were put in the PDB until a certain date. And then... And then we basically look for recent structures, okay, which structures look pretty different from anything that was published before, because we really want to try to understand generalization.Brandon [00:33:13]: And then on this new structure, we evaluate all these different models. And so you just know when AlphaFold3 was trained, you know, when you're, you intentionally trained to the same date or something like that. Exactly. Right. Yeah.Gabriel [00:33:24]: And so this is kind of the way that you can somewhat easily kind of compare these models, obviously, that assumes that, you know, the training. You've always been very passionate about validation. I remember like DiffDoc, and then there was like DiffDocL and DocGen. You've thought very carefully about this in the past. Like, actually, I think DocGen is like a really funny story that I think, I don't know if you want to talk about that. It's an interesting like... Yeah, I think one of the amazing things about putting things open source is that we get a ton of feedback from the field. And, you know, sometimes we get kind of great feedback of people. Really like... But honestly, most of the times, you know, to be honest, that's also maybe the most useful feedback is, you know, people sharing about where it doesn't work. And so, you know, at the end of the day, it's critical. And this is also something, you know, across other fields of machine learning. It's always critical to set, to do progress in machine learning, set clear benchmarks. And as, you know, you start doing progress of certain benchmarks, then, you know, you need to improve the benchmarks and make them harder and harder. And this is kind of the progression of, you know, how the field operates. And so, you know, the example of DocGen was, you know, we published this initial model called DiffDoc in my first year of PhD, which was sort of like, you know, one of the early models to try to predict kind of interactions between proteins, small molecules, that we bought a year after AlphaFold2 was published. And now, on the one hand, you know, on these benchmarks that we were using at the time, DiffDoc was doing really well, kind of, you know, outperforming kind of some of the traditional physics-based methods. But on the other hand, you know, when we started, you know, kind of giving these tools to kind of many biologists, and one example was that we collaborated with was the group of Nick Polizzi at Harvard. We noticed, started noticing that there was this clear, pattern where four proteins that were very different from the ones that we're trained on, the models was, was struggling. And so, you know, that seemed clear that, you know, this is probably kind of where we should, you know, put our focus on. And so we first developed, you know, with Nick and his group, a new benchmark, and then, you know, went after and said, okay, what can we change? And kind of about the current architecture to improve this pattern and generalization. And this is the same that, you know, we're still doing today, you know, kind of, where does the model not work, you know, and then, you know, once we have that benchmark, you know, let's try to, through everything we, any ideas that we have of the problem.RJ [00:36:15]: And there's a lot of like healthy skepticism in the field, which I think, you know, is, is, is great. And I think, you know, it's very clear that there's a ton of things, the models don't really work well on, but I think one thing that's probably, you know, undeniable is just like the pace of, pace of progress, you know, and how, how much better we're getting, you know, every year. And so I think if you, you know, if you assume, you know, any constant, you know, rate of progress moving forward, I think things are going to look pretty cool at some point in the future.Gabriel [00:36:42]: ChatGPT was only three years ago. Yeah, I mean, it's wild, right?RJ [00:36:45]: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's one of those things. Like, you've been doing this. Being in the field, you don't see it coming, you know? And like, I think, yeah, hopefully we'll, you know, we'll, we'll continue to have as much progress we've had the past few years.Brandon [00:36:55]: So this is maybe an aside, but I'm really curious, you get this great feedback from the, from the community, right? By being open source. My question is partly like, okay, yeah, if you open source and everyone can copy what you did, but it's also maybe balancing priorities, right? Where you, like all my customers are saying. I want this, there's all these problems with the model. Yeah, yeah. But my customers don't care, right? So like, how do you, how do you think about that? Yeah.Gabriel [00:37:26]: So I would say a couple of things. One is, you know, part of our goal with Bolts and, you know, this is also kind of established as kind of the mission of the public benefit company that we started is to democratize the access to these tools. But one of the reasons why we realized that Bolts needed to be a company, it couldn't just be an academic project is that putting a model on GitHub is definitely not enough to get, you know, chemists and biologists, you know, across, you know, both academia, biotech and pharma to use your model to, in their therapeutic programs. And so a lot of what we think about, you know, at Bolts beyond kind of the, just the models is thinking about all the layers. The layers that come on top of the models to get, you know, from, you know, those models to something that can really enable scientists in the industry. And so that goes, you know, into building kind of the right kind of workflows that take in kind of, for example, the data and try to answer kind of directly that those problems that, you know, the chemists and the biologists are asking, and then also kind of building the infrastructure. And so this to say that, you know, even with models fully open. You know, we see a ton of potential for, you know, products in the space and the critical part about a product is that even, you know, for example, with an open source model, you know, running the model is not free, you know, as we were saying, these are pretty expensive model and especially, and maybe we'll get into this, you know, these days we're seeing kind of pretty dramatic inference time scaling of these models where, you know, the more you run them, the better the results are. But there, you know, you see. You start getting into a point that compute and compute costs becomes a critical factor. And so putting a lot of work into building the right kind of infrastructure, building the optimizations and so on really allows us to provide, you know, a much better service potentially to the open source models. That to say, you know, even though, you know, with a product, we can provide a much better service. I do still think, and we will continue to put a lot of our models open source because the critical kind of role. I think of open source. Models is, you know, helping kind of the community progress on the research and, you know, from which we, we all benefit. And so, you know, we'll continue to on the one hand, you know, put some of our kind of base models open source so that the field can, can be on top of it. And, you know, as we discussed earlier, we learn a ton from, you know, the way that the field uses and builds on top of our models, but then, you know, try to build a product that gives the best experience possible to scientists. So that, you know, like a chemist or a biologist doesn't need to, you know, spin off a GPU and, you know, set up, you know, our open source model in a particular way, but can just, you know, a bit like, you know, I, even though I am a computer scientist, machine learning scientist, I don't necessarily, you know, take a open source LLM and try to kind of spin it off. But, you know, I just maybe open a GPT app or a cloud code and just use it as an amazing product. We kind of want to give the same experience. So this front world.Brandon [00:40:40]: I heard a good analogy yesterday that a surgeon doesn't want the hospital to design a scalpel, right?Brandon [00:40:48]: So just buy the scalpel.RJ [00:40:50]: You wouldn't believe like the number of people, even like in my short time, you know, between AlphaFold3 coming out and the end of the PhD, like the number of people that would like reach out just for like us to like run AlphaFold3 for them, you know, or things like that. Just because like, you know, bolts in our case, you know, just because it's like. It's like not that easy, you know, to do that, you know, if you're not a computational person. And I think like part of the goal here is also that, you know, we continue to obviously build the interface with computational folks, but that, you know, the models are also accessible to like a larger, broader audience. And then that comes from like, you know, good interfaces and stuff like that.Gabriel [00:41:27]: I think one like really interesting thing about bolts is that with the release of it, you didn't just release a model, but you created a community. Yeah. Did that community, it grew very quickly. Did that surprise you? And like, what is the evolution of that community and how is that fed into bolts?RJ [00:41:43]: If you look at its growth, it's like very much like when we release a new model, it's like, there's a big, big jump, but yeah, it's, I mean, it's been great. You know, we have a Slack community that has like thousands of people on it. And it's actually like self-sustaining now, which is like the really nice part because, you know, it's, it's almost overwhelming, I think, you know, to be able to like answer everyone's questions and help. It's really difficult, you know. The, the few people that we were, but it ended up that like, you know, people would answer each other's questions and like, sort of like, you know, help one another. And so the Slack, you know, has been like kind of, yeah, self, self-sustaining and that's been, it's been really cool to see.RJ [00:42:21]: And, you know, that's, that's for like the Slack part, but then also obviously on GitHub as well. We've had like a nice, nice community. You know, I think we also aspire to be even more active on it, you know, than we've been in the past six months, which has been like a bit challenging, you know, for us. But. Yeah, the community has been, has been really great and, you know, there's a lot of papers also that have come out with like new evolutions on top of bolts and it's surprised us to some degree because like there's a lot of models out there. And I think like, you know, sort of people converging on that was, was really cool. And, you know, I think it speaks also, I think, to the importance of like, you know, when, when you put code out, like to try to put a lot of emphasis and like making it like as easy to use as possible and something we thought a lot about when we released the code base. You know, it's far from perfect, but, you know.Brandon [00:43:07]: Do you think that that was one of the factors that caused your community to grow is just the focus on easy to use, make it accessible? I think so.RJ [00:43:14]: Yeah. And we've, we've heard it from a few people over the, over the, over the years now. And, you know, and some people still think it should be a lot nicer and they're, and they're right. And they're right. But yeah, I think it was, you know, at the time, maybe a little bit easier than, than other things.Gabriel [00:43:29]: The other thing part, I think led to, to the community and to some extent, I think, you know, like the somewhat the trust in the community. Kind of what we, what we put out is the fact that, you know, it's not really been kind of, you know, one model, but, and maybe we'll talk about it, you know, after Boltz 1, you know, there were maybe another couple of models kind of released, you know, or open source kind of soon after. We kind of continued kind of that open source journey or at least Boltz 2, where we are not only improving kind of structure prediction, but also starting to do affinity predictions, understanding kind of the strength of the interactions between these different models, which is this critical component. critical property that you often want to optimize in discovery programs. And then, you know, more recently also kind of protein design model. And so we've sort of been building this suite of, of models that come together, interact with one another, where, you know, kind of, there is almost an expectation that, you know, we, we take very at heart of, you know, always having kind of, you know, across kind of the entire suite of different tasks, the best or across the best. model out there so that it's sort of like our open source tool can be kind of the go-to model for everybody in the, in the industry. I really want to talk about Boltz 2, but before that, one last question in this direction, was there anything about the community which surprised you? Were there any, like, someone was doing something and you're like, why would you do that? That's crazy. Or that's actually genius. And I never would have thought about that.RJ [00:45:01]: I mean, we've had many contributions. I think like some of the. Interesting ones, like, I mean, we had, you know, this one individual who like wrote like a complex GPU kernel, you know, for part of the architecture on a piece of, the funny thing is like that piece of the architecture had been there since AlphaFold 2, and I don't know why it took Boltz for this, you know, for this person to, you know, to decide to do it, but that was like a really great contribution. We've had a bunch of others, like, you know, people figuring out like ways to, you know, hack the model to do something. They click peptides, like, you know, there's, I don't know if there's any other interesting ones come to mind.Gabriel [00:45:41]: One cool one, and this was, you know, something that initially was proposed as, you know, as a message in the Slack channel by Tim O'Donnell was basically, he was, you know, there are some cases, especially, for example, we discussed, you know, antibody-antigen interactions where the models don't necessarily kind of get the right answer. What he noticed is that, you know, the models were somewhat stuck into predicting kind of the antibodies. And so he basically ran the experiments in this model, you can condition, basically, you can give hints. And so he basically gave, you know, random hints to the model, basically, okay, you should bind to this residue, you should bind to the first residue, or you should bind to the 11th residue, or you should bind to the 21st residue, you know, basically every 10 residues scanning the entire antigen.Brandon [00:46:33]: Residues are the...Gabriel [00:46:34]: The amino acids. The amino acids, yeah. So the first amino acids. The 11 amino acids, and so on. So it's sort of like doing a scan, and then, you know, conditioning the model to predict all of them, and then looking at the confidence of the model in each of those cases and taking the top. And so it's sort of like a very somewhat crude way of doing kind of inference time search. But surprisingly, you know, for antibody-antigen prediction, it actually kind of helped quite a bit. And so there's some, you know, interesting ideas that, you know, obviously, as kind of developing the model, you say kind of, you know, wow. This is why would the model, you know, be so dumb. But, you know, it's very interesting. And that, you know, leads you to also kind of, you know, start thinking about, okay, how do I, can I do this, you know, not with this brute force, but, you know, in a smarter way.RJ [00:47:22]: And so we've also done a lot of work on that direction. And that speaks to, like, the, you know, the power of scoring. We're seeing that a lot. I'm sure we'll talk about it more when we talk about BullsGen. But, you know, our ability to, like, take a structure and determine that that structure is, like... Good. You know, like, somewhat accurate. Whether that's a single chain or, like, an interaction is a really powerful way of improving, you know, the models. Like, sort of like, you know, if you can sample a ton and you assume that, like, you know, if you sample enough, you're likely to have, like, you know, the good structure. Then it really just becomes a ranking problem. And, you know, now we're, you know, part of the inference time scaling that Gabby was talking about is very much that. It's like, you know, the more we sample, the more we, like, you know, the ranking model. The ranking model ends up finding something it really likes. And so I think our ability to get better at ranking, I think, is also what's going to enable sort of the next, you know, next big, big breakthroughs. Interesting.Brandon [00:48:17]: But I guess there's a, my understanding, there's a diffusion model and you generate some stuff and then you, I guess, it's just what you said, right? Then you rank it using a score and then you finally... And so, like, can you talk about those different parts? Yeah.Gabriel [00:48:34]: So, first of all, like, the... One of the critical kind of, you know, beliefs that we had, you know, also when we started working on Boltz 1 was sort of like the structure prediction models are somewhat, you know, our field version of some foundation models, you know, learning about kind of how proteins and other molecules interact. And then we can leverage that learning to do all sorts of other things. And so with Boltz 2, we leverage that learning to do affinity predictions. So understanding kind of, you know, if I give you this protein, this molecule. How tightly is that interaction? For Boltz 1, what we did was taking kind of that kind of foundation models and then fine tune it to predict kind of entire new proteins. And so the way basically that that works is sort of like instead of for the protein that you're designing, instead of fitting in an actual sequence, you fit in a set of blank tokens. And you train the models to, you know, predict both the structure of kind of that protein. The structure also, what the different amino acids of that proteins are. And so basically the way that Boltz 1 operates is that you feed a target protein that you may want to kind of bind to or, you know, another DNA, RNA. And then you feed the high level kind of design specification of, you know, what you want your new protein to be. For example, it could be like an antibody with a particular framework. It could be a peptide. It could be many other things. And that's with natural language or? And that's, you know, basically, you know, prompting. And we have kind of this sort of like spec that you specify. And, you know, you feed kind of this spec to the model. And then the model translates this into, you know, a set of, you know, tokens, a set of conditioning to the model, a set of, you know, blank tokens. And then, you know, basically the codes as part of the diffusion models, the codes. It's a new structure and a new sequence for your protein. And, you know, basically, then we take that. And as Jeremy was saying, we are trying to score it and, you know, how good of a binder it is to that original target.Brandon [00:50:51]: You're using basically Boltz to predict the folding and the affinity to that molecule. So and then that kind of gives you a score? Exactly.Gabriel [00:51:03]: So you use this model to predict the folding. And then you do two things. One is that you predict the structure and with something like Boltz2, and then you basically compare that structure with what the model predicted, what Boltz2 predicted. And this is sort of like in the field called consistency. It's basically you want to make sure that, you know, the structure that you're predicting is actually what you're trying to design. And that gives you a much better confidence that, you know, that's a good design. And so that's the first filtering. And the second filtering that we did as part of kind of the Boltz2 pipeline that was released is that we look at the confidence that the model has in the structure. Now, unfortunately, kind of going to your question of, you know, predicting affinity, unfortunately, confidence is not a very good predictor of affinity. And so one of the things that we've actually done a ton of progress, you know, since we released Boltz2.Brandon [00:52:03]: And kind of we have some new results that we are going to kind of announce soon is kind of, you know, the ability to get much better hit rates when instead of, you know, trying to rely on confidence of the model, we are actually directly trying to predict the affinity of that interaction. Okay. Just backing up a minute. So your diffusion model actually predicts not only the protein sequence, but also the folding of it. Exactly.Gabriel [00:52:32]: And actually, you can... One of the big different things that we did compared to other models in the space, and, you know, there were some papers that had already kind of done this before, but we really scaled it up was, you know, basically somewhat merging kind of the structure prediction and the sequence prediction into almost the same task. And so the way that Boltz2 works is that you are basically the only thing that you're doing is predicting the structure. So the only sort of... Supervision is we give you a supervision on the structure, but because the structure is atomic and, you know, the different amino acids have a different atomic composition, basically from the way that you place the atoms, we also understand not only kind of the structure that you wanted, but also the identity of the amino acid that, you know, the models believed was there. And so we've basically, instead of, you know, having these two supervision signals, you know, one discrete, one continuous. That somewhat, you know, don't interact well together. We sort of like build kind of like an encoding of, you know, sequences in structures that allows us to basically use exactly the same supervision signal that we were using to Boltz2 that, you know, you know, largely similar to what AlphaVol3 proposed, which is very scalable. And we can use that to design new proteins. Oh, interesting.RJ [00:53:58]: Maybe a quick shout out to Hannes Stark on our team who like did all this work. Yeah.Gabriel [00:54:04]: Yeah, that was a really cool idea. I mean, like looking at the paper and there's this is like encoding or you just add a bunch of, I guess, kind of atoms, which can be anything, and then they get sort of rearranged and then basically plopped on top of each other so that and then that encodes what the amino acid is. And there's sort of like a unique way of doing this. It was that was like such a really such a cool, fun idea.RJ [00:54:29]: I think that idea was had existed before. Yeah, there were a couple of papers.Gabriel [00:54:33]: Yeah, I had proposed this and and Hannes really took it to the large scale.Brandon [00:54:39]: In the paper, a lot of the paper for Boltz2Gen is dedicated to actually the validation of the model. In my opinion, all the people we basically talk about feel that this sort of like in the wet lab or whatever the appropriate, you know, sort of like in real world validation is the whole problem or not the whole problem, but a big giant part of the problem. So can you talk a little bit about the highlights? From there, that really because to me, the results are impressive, both from the perspective of the, you know, the model and also just the effort that went into the validation by a large team.Gabriel [00:55:18]: First of all, I think I should start saying is that both when we were at MIT and Thomas Yacolas and Regina Barzillai's lab, as well as at Boltz, you know, we are not a we're not a biolab and, you know, we are not a therapeutic company. And so to some extent, you know, we were first forced to, you know, look outside of, you know, our group, our team to do the experimental validation. One of the things that really, Hannes, in the team pioneer was the idea, OK, can we go not only to, you know, maybe a specific group and, you know, trying to find a specific system and, you know, maybe overfit a bit to that system and trying to validate. But how can we test this model? So. Across a very wide variety of different settings so that, you know, anyone in the field and, you know, printing design is, you know, such a kind of wide task with all sorts of different applications from therapeutic to, you know, biosensors and many others that, you know, so can we get a validation that is kind of goes across many different tasks? And so he basically put together, you know, I think it was something like, you know, 25 different. You know, academic and industry labs that committed to, you know, testing some of the designs from the model and some of this testing is still ongoing and, you know, giving results kind of back to us in exchange for, you know, hopefully getting some, you know, new great sequences for their task. And he was able to, you know, coordinate this, you know, very wide set of, you know, scientists and already in the paper, I think we. Shared results from, I think, eight to 10 different labs kind of showing results from, you know, designing peptides, designing to target, you know, ordered proteins, peptides targeting disordered proteins, which are results, you know, of designing proteins that bind to small molecules, which are results of, you know, designing nanobodies and across a wide variety of different targets. And so that's sort of like. That gave to the paper a lot of, you know, validation to the model, a lot of validation that was kind of wide.Brandon [00:57:39]: And so those would be therapeutics for those animals or are they relevant to humans as well? They're relevant to humans as well.Gabriel [00:57:45]: Obviously, you need to do some work into, quote unquote, humanizing them, making sure that, you know, they have the right characteristics to so they're not toxic to humans and so on.RJ [00:57:57]: There are some approved medicine in the market that are nanobodies. There's a general. General pattern, I think, in like in trying to design things that are smaller, you know, like it's easier to manufacture at the same time, like that comes with like potentially other challenges, like maybe a little bit less selectivity than like if you have something that has like more hands, you know, but the yeah, there's this big desire to, you know, try to design many proteins, nanobodies, small peptides, you know, that just are just great drug modalities.Brandon [00:58:27]: Okay. I think we were left off. We were talking about validation. Validation in the lab. And I was very excited about seeing like all the diverse validations that you've done. Can you go into some more detail about them? Yeah. Specific ones. Yeah.RJ [00:58:43]: The nanobody one. I think we did. What was it? 15 targets. Is that correct? 14. 14 targets. Testing. So we typically the way this works is like we make a lot of designs. All right. On the order of like tens of thousands. And then we like rank them and we pick like the top. And in this case, and was 15 right for each target and then we like measure sort of like the success rates, both like how many targets we were able to get a binder for and then also like more generally, like out of all of the binders that we designed, how many actually proved to be good binders. Some of the other ones I think involved like, yeah, like we had a cool one where there was a small molecule or design a protein that binds to it. That has a lot of like interesting applications, you know, for example. Like Gabri mentioned, like biosensing and things like that, which is pretty cool. We had a disordered protein, I think you mentioned also. And yeah, I think some of those were some of the highlights. Yeah.Gabriel [00:59:44]: So I would say that the way that we structure kind of some of those validations was on the one end, we have validations across a whole set of different problems that, you know, the biologists that we were working with came to us with. So we were trying to. For example, in some of the experiments, design peptides that would target the RACC, which is a target that is involved in metabolism. And we had, you know, a number of other applications where we were trying to design, you know, peptides or other modalities against some other therapeutic relevant targets. We designed some proteins to bind small molecules. And then some of the other testing that we did was really trying to get like a more broader sense. So how does the model work, especially when tested, you know, on somewhat generalization? So one of the things that, you know, we found with the field was that a lot of the validation, especially outside of the validation that was on specific problems, was done on targets that have a lot of, you know, known interactions in the training data. And so it's always a bit hard to understand, you know, how much are these models really just regurgitating kind of what they've seen or trying to imitate. What they've seen in the training data versus, you know, really be able to design new proteins. And so one of the experiments that we did was to take nine targets from the PDB, filtering to things where there is no known interaction in the PDB. So basically the model has never seen kind of this particular protein bound or a similar protein bound to another protein. So there is no way that. The model from its training set can sort of like say, okay, I'm just going to kind of tweak something and just imitate this particular kind of interaction. And so we took those nine proteins. We worked with adaptive CRO and basically tested, you know, 15 mini proteins and 15 nanobodies against each one of them. And the very cool thing that we saw was that on two thirds of those targets, we were able to, from this 15 design, get nanomolar binders, nanomolar, roughly speaking, just a measure of, you know, how strongly kind of the interaction is, roughly speaking, kind of like a nanomolar binder is approximately the kind of binding strength or binding that you need for a therapeutic. Yeah. So maybe switching directions a bit. Bolt's lab was just announced this week or was it last week? Yeah. This is like your. First, I guess, product, if that's if you want to call it that. Can you talk about what Bolt's lab is and yeah, you know, what you hope that people take away from this? Yeah.RJ [01:02:44]: You know, as we mentioned, like I think at the very beginning is the goal with the product has been to, you know, address what the models don't on their own. And there's largely sort of two categories there. I'll split it in three. The first one. It's one thing to predict, you know, a single interaction, for example, like a single structure. It's another to like, you know, very effectively search a space, a design space to produce something of value. What we found, like sort of building on this product is that there's a lot of steps involved, you know, in that there's certainly need to like, you know, accompany the user through, you know, one of those steps, for example, is like, you know, the creation of the target itself. You know, how do we make sure that the model has like a good enough understanding of the target? So we can like design something and there's all sorts of tricks, you know, that you can do to improve like a particular, you know, structure prediction. And so that's sort of like, you know, the first stage. And then there's like this stage of like, you know, designing and searching the space efficiently. You know, for something like BullsGen, for example, like you, you know, you design many things and then you rank them, for example, for small molecule process, a little bit more complicated. We actually need to also make sure that the molecules are synthesizable. And so the way we do that is that, you know, we have a generative model that learns. To use like appropriate building blocks such that, you know, it can design within a space that we know is like synthesizable. And so there's like, you know, this whole pipeline really of different models involved in being able to design a molecule. And so that's been sort of like the first thing we call them agents. We have a protein agent and we have a small molecule design agents. And that's really like at the core of like what powers, you know, the BullsLab platform.Brandon [01:04:22]: So these agents, are they like a language model wrapper or they're just like your models and you're just calling them agents? A lot. Yeah. Because they, they, they sort of perform a function on behalf of.RJ [01:04:33]: They're more of like a, you know, a recipe, if you wish. And I think we use that term sort of because of, you know, sort of the complex pipelining and automation, you know, that goes into like all this plumbing. So that's the first part of the product. The second part is the infrastructure. You know, we need to be able to do this at very large scale for any one, you know, group that's doing a design campaign. Let's say you're designing, you know, I'd say a hundred thousand possible candidates. Right. To find the good one that is, you know, a very large amount of compute, you know, for small molecules, it's on the order of like a few seconds per designs for proteins can be a bit longer. And so, you know, ideally you want to do that in parallel, otherwise it's going to take you weeks. And so, you know, we've put a lot of effort into like, you know, our ability to have a GPU fleet that allows any one user, you know, to be able to do this kind of like large parallel search.Brandon [01:05:23]: So you're amortizing the cost over your users. Exactly. Exactly.RJ [01:05:27]: And, you know, to some degree, like it's whether you. Use 10,000 GPUs for like, you know, a minute is the same cost as using, you know, one GPUs for God knows how long. Right. So you might as well try to parallelize if you can. So, you know, a lot of work has gone, has gone into that, making it very robust, you know, so that we can have like a lot of people on the platform doing that at the same time. And the third one is, is the interface and the interface comes in, in two shapes. One is in form of an API and that's, you know, really suited for companies that want to integrate, you know, these pipelines, these agents.RJ [01:06:01]: So we're already partnering with, you know, a few distributors, you know, that are gonna integrate our API. And then the second part is the user interface. And, you know, we, we've put a lot of thoughts also into that. And this is when I, I mentioned earlier, you know, this idea of like broadening the audience. That's kind of what the, the user interface is about. And we've built a lot of interesting features in it, you know, for example, for collaboration, you know, when you have like potentially multiple medicinal chemists or. We're going through the results and trying to pick out, okay, like what are the molecules that we're going to go and test in the lab? It's powerful for them to be able to, you know, for example, each provide their own ranking and then do consensus building. And so there's a lot of features around launching these large jobs, but also around like collaborating on analyzing the results that we try to solve, you know, with that part of the platform. So Bolt's lab is sort of a combination of these three objectives into like one, you know, sort of cohesive platform. Who is this accessible to? Everyone. You do need to request access today. We're still like, you know, sort of ramping up the usage, but anyone can request access. If you are an academic in particular, we, you know, we provide a fair amount of free credit so you can play with the platform. If you are a startup or biotech, you may also, you know, reach out and we'll typically like actually hop on a call just to like understand what you're trying to do and also provide a lot of free credit to get started. And of course, also with larger companies, we can deploy this platform in a more like secure environment. And so that's like more like customizing. You know, deals that we make, you know, with the partners, you know, and that's sort of the ethos of Bolt. I think this idea of like servicing everyone and not necessarily like going after just, you know, the really large enterprises. And that starts from the open source, but it's also, you know, a key design principle of the product itself.Gabriel [01:07:48]: One thing I was thinking about with regards to infrastructure, like in the LLM space, you know, the cost of a token has gone down by I think a factor of a thousand or so over the last three years, right? Yeah. And is it possible that like essentially you can exploit economies of scale and infrastructure that you can make it cheaper to run these things yourself than for any person to roll their own system? A hundred percent. Yeah.RJ [01:08:08]: I mean, we're already there, you know, like running Bolts on our platform, especially on a large screen is like considerably cheaper than it would probably take anyone to put the open source model out there and run it. And on top of the infrastructure, like one of the things that we've been working on is accelerating the models. So, you know. Our small molecule screening pipeline is 10x faster on Bolts Lab than it is in the open source, you know, and that's also part of like, you know, building a product, you know, of something that scales really well. And we really wanted to get to a point where like, you know, we could keep prices very low in a way that it would be a no-brainer, you know, to use Bolts through our platform.Gabriel [01:08:52]: How do you think about validation of your like agentic systems? Because, you know, as you were saying earlier. Like we're AlphaFold style models are really good at, let's say, monomeric, you know, proteins where you have, you know, co-evolution data. But now suddenly the whole point of this is to design something which doesn't have, you know, co-evolution data, something which is really novel. So now you're basically leaving the domain that you thought was, you know, that you know you are good at. So like, how do you validate that?RJ [01:09:22]: Yeah, I like every complete, but there's obviously, you know, a ton of computational metrics. That we rely on, but those are only take you so far. You really got to go to the lab, you know, and test, you know, okay, with this method A and this method B, how much better are we? You know, how much better is my, my hit rate? How stronger are my binders? Also, it's not just about hit rate. It's also about how good the binders are. And there's really like no way, nowhere around that. I think we're, you know, we've really ramped up the amount of experimental validation that we do so that we like really track progress, you know, as scientifically sound, you know. Yeah. As, as possible out of this, I think.Gabriel [01:10:00]: Yeah, no, I think, you know, one thing that is unique about us and maybe companies like us is that because we're not working on like maybe a couple of therapeutic pipelines where, you know, our validation would be focused on those. We, when we do an experimental validation, we try to test it across tens of targets. And so that on the one end, we can get a much more statistically significant result and, and really allows us to make progress. From the methodological side without being, you know, steered by, you know, overfitting on any one particular system. And of course we choose, you know, w
Send a textAutonomy sounds like progress until the system turns your choices against you. We dive into how AI agents change the risk equation, why “don't trust, verify” now beats “trust but verify,” and what to do when the update button itself becomes the attack vector.We start with the Ivy League leak tied to Harvard and UPenn, where attackers exposed admissions hold notes that map influence rather than credit cards. That context turns routine records into leverage for extortion, social pressure, and geopolitical targeting. From there, we trace the surge of agentic AI in the workplace as employees paste code, legal docs, and sensitive files into chat interfaces. The real accelerant is MCP, the model context protocol that standardizes connections across Google Drive, Slack, databases, and more. Like USB for AI, MCP makes integration simple and powerful, but a single prompt injection can pivot across everything the agent can reach.Security gets messier with supply chain compromise. A China‑nexus campaign allegedly hijacked the Notepad++ update mechanism, handing a bespoke backdoor to developers who did the right thing. We unpack how to keep patching while reducing risk: signed updates, independent checksum checks, tight egress policies for updaters, and strong monitoring around update flows. On the policy front, Rhode Island's vendor transparency rule forces companies to name who buys data. It is a nutrition label for privacy, and it lets users and watchdogs finally connect the dots between friendly interfaces and aggressive brokers.We close with concrete defenses that raise the floor. Move high‑value accounts to FIDO2 hardware keys or platform passkeys to block phishing at the protocol level. Scope agent permissions narrowly, isolate MCP connectors by function, and require explicit approvals for sensitive actions. Log everything an agent touches and review those trails. Autonomy should be earned, minimal, and observable. If AI is going to act on your behalf, it must prove itself at every step.If this conversation helps you think differently about agents, influence mapping, and how to lock down your stack, subscribe, share with a teammate, and leave a quick review telling us the one control you plan to implement this week.Support the show
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In a podcast recorded at ITEXPO / MSP EXPO, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Mike Wehrs, CTO of TieTechnology, about the upcoming launch of Genie 1.1 and the company's broader mission to reposition voice as a fully integrated component of modern IT infrastructure. TieTechnology focuses on making voice a “first-tier partner” within business systems rather than a disconnected afterthought. Genie, the company's SMB product family, provides a backend softphone capability for PCs along with applications that connect voice into tools such as Slack, CRMs, and EMRs. With Genie 1.1, the company is deepening its ability to capture, transcribe, summarize, and structure voice interactions so that the most valuable customer data—what was actually said—flows directly into business systems. “AI is not magic,” Wehrs noted. “If you don't have good data going into the system, you're not going to get the results out of it that you want.” He emphasized that many organizations layer AI on top of incomplete infrastructure, resulting in underperformance. Genie addresses that gap by cleaning audio streams, identifying speakers, summarizing conversations, and delivering structured data—often in JSON format—into CRM environments. The result, according to Wehrs, can represent as much as a 40 percent increase in high-quality CRM data, driving better customer support, marketing automation, and operational insight. For MSPs, the opportunity is twofold. First, Genie simplifies voice integration through straightforward APIs, eliminating the need to understand complex SIP stacks or telecom architecture. Second, it opens new revenue potential by allowing MSPs to modernize dated phone systems and embed voice-driven intelligence directly into client workflows. As Wehrs framed it, voice should become as native to the PC environment as networking did in the Windows 95 era—fully integrated, flexible, and foundational to digital operations. Visit https://tietechnology.com/
Kat is getting ready for only her SECOND date in months… and the pressure is on. What do you wear? How do you act? Do you play it cool or immediately talk about your gut health underwear collection? The show rallies around Kat with wildly unhelpful advice. Then we open the phones for your most unhinged workplace disaster stories — from accidental emails to HR nightmares to “I thought I was muted” moments. Let's just say… some of you should not be allowed near a company Slack channel. And finally, Fletch drops a bombshell: he claims he has an actual degree in broadcasting… which would make him the ONLY person in the entire building technically qualified to be on the radio. Is it real? Is it framed? Was it printed at Kinko's in 2007? The investigation begins. It's dating pressure, workplace chaos, and credential controversy — just another calm morning with Big Rich, TD, and Fletch
You can have all the tools in the world… and still feel like your day disappears into pings, meetings, and status chasing. This session is about getting that time back with simple, repeatable habits that actually stick.Joe is joined by Dani Spires, VP of digital at Asana, to unpack the biggest productivity drains teams face right now and how to fix them with clearer processes, better meeting discipline, and AI that supports (rather than amplifies) chaos.Key topics include:- Why AI can create more “work about work” if you layer it onto broken processes- How to build focus time rituals that work across whole teams (not just individuals)- A practical way to stop reactive Slack pings by enforcing a clear intake and escalation process- Using AI for research, synthesis, first drafts, routing and summaries while keeping strategy and judgement human- Meeting rules that save hours: agendas, outcomes, documented decisions, and when to confidently decline- How to create clarity by tying work to impact and making ad hoc requests self-serveTimestamps:00:00 Building a personal AI assistant02:24 Where teams waste time most05:07 Protecting focus from constant pings10:01 Staying organised outside of work12:09 AI agents in real workflows18:04 Meetings that actually work35:03 Finding clarity through impactWatch / listen:Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-meetup-podcast/id1365546447Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5QvmFdxg5pMwsfPkKjhXl9Please take the time to check out our partners, all of whom we work with because we think they're useful companies for lovely marketers.Frontify – All your brand assets in one place: Frontify combines DAM, brand guidelines, and templates into a collaborative source of brand truth.Mailchimp - The all-in-one marketing platform that helps teams turn emails, automation, and now SMS into smarter, more connected customer journeys (and they've been longtime friends of TMM!).Cambridge Marketing College – The best place to get your marketing qualifications and apprenticeships.Planable – the content collaboration platform that helps marketing teams create, plan, review, and approve all their awesome marketing content.Wistia – a complete video marketing platform that helps teams create, host, market, and measure their videos and webinars, all in one place.
James Emmett and David Cushnan look ahead to a new Formula 1 season and another potentially seismic shift in the sport. With significant gains in audience and commercial growth for the motorsport series in recent years, teams have felt the trickle down benefit, logging their own commercial gains. With the biggest set of rule changes for over a decade coming into force this season, the playing field - theoretically - has been levelled. At this stage, championship contention is a realistic goal for almost all the teams. One that stands a particularly realistic chance of improvement is Aston Martin, whose commercial MD Jeff Slack is the featured guest on the interview show this week. James and David reflect on Slack's comments, and take some time to look back on the Super Bowl as well as ahead to the future of the IOC's TOP sponsorship model. - -- -- -- -- Leaders Week London is moving to Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea FC. We'll see you on Wednesday 7th and Thursday 8th October. For more details visit leadersinsport.com/leadersweek
Was Manchester United's signing of Eric Cantona the greatest transfer in Premier League history? What was it about him that earned special treatment from Sir Alex Ferguson? And would a maverick like Cantona survive in today's game? Gary, Alan and Micah dive into the extraordinary, chaotic and unforgettable career of one of football's true enigmas. From title-winning brilliance to controversy, bans and that infamous kick, they explore how Cantona changed Manchester United forever. The Rest Is Football is powered by Fuse Energy. To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit fuseenergy.com/football. Join The Players Lounge: The official fantasy football club of The Rest Is Football. It's time to take on Gary, Alan and Micah for the chance to win monthly prizes and shoutouts on the pod. It's FREE to join and as a member, you'll get access to exclusive tips from Fantasy Football Hub including AI-powered team ratings, transfer tips, and expert team reveals to help you climb the table - plus access to our private Slack community. Sign up today at therestisfootball.com. https://therestisfootball.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode_description&utm_content=link_cta For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Spurs have sacked Thomas Frank. Tuesday night's defeat to Newcastle leaves them dangerously close to relegation and proved the final straw for the Spurs hierarchy. Gary and Alan assemble to look at where it went wrong for Frank and where Spurs go from here ten days out from the North London Derby against Arsenal. The Rest Is Football is powered by Fuse Energy. To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit fuseenergy.com/football. Join The Players Lounge: The official fantasy football club of The Rest Is Football. It's time to take on Gary, Alan and Micah for the chance to win monthly prizes and shoutouts on the pod. It's FREE to join and as a member, you'll get access to exclusive tips from Fantasy Football Hub including AI-powered team ratings, transfer tips, and expert team reveals to help you climb the table - plus access to our private Slack community. Sign up today at therestisfootball.com. https://therestisfootball.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode_description&utm_content=link_cta For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Enjoy the What's Bruin Show Network!Multiple shows to entertain you on one feed:Support WBS at Patreon.com/WhatsBruinShow for just $2/month and get exclusive content and access to our SLACK channel.Twitter/X: @whatsbruinshow Instagram: @whatsbruinshowCall the What's Bruin Network Hotline at 805-399-4WBS (Suck it Reign of Troy)We are also on YouTube HEREGet Your WBSN MERCH - Go to our MyLocker Site by Clicking HEREWhat's Bruin Show- A conversation about all things Bruin over drinks with Bruin Report Online's @mikeregaladoLA, @wbjake68 and friends!Subscribe to the What's Bruin Show at whatsbruin.substack.comEmail us at: whatsbruinshow@gmail.comTweet us at: @whatsbruinshowWest Coast Bias - LA Sports (mostly Lakers, Dodgers and NFL) with Jamaal and JakeSubscribe to West Coast Bias at wbwestcoastbias.substack.comEmail us at: WB.westcoastbias@gmail.comTweet us at: @WBwestcoastbiasThe BEAR Minimum - Jake and his Daughter Megan talk about student life and Cal Sports during her first year attending UC Berkeley.Subscribe to The BEAR Minimum at thebearminimum.substack.comEmail us at: wb.bearminimum@gmail.comTweet us at: @WB_BearMinimumPlease rate and review us on whatever platform you listen on.
Enjoy the What's Bruin Show Network!Multiple shows to entertain you on one feed:Support WBS at Patreon.com/WhatsBruinShow for just $2/month and get exclusive content and access to our SLACK channel.Twitter/X: @whatsbruinshow Instagram: @whatsbruinshowCall the What's Bruin Network Hotline at 805-399-4WBS (Suck it Reign of Troy)We are also on YouTube HEREGet Your WBSN MERCH - Go to our MyLocker Site by Clicking HEREWhat's Bruin Show- A conversation about all things Bruin over drinks with Bruin Report Online's @mikeregaladoLA, @wbjake68 and friends!Subscribe to the What's Bruin Show at whatsbruin.substack.comEmail us at: whatsbruinshow@gmail.comTweet us at: @whatsbruinshowWest Coast Bias - LA Sports (mostly Lakers, Dodgers and NFL) with Jamaal and JakeSubscribe to West Coast Bias at wbwestcoastbias.substack.comEmail us at: WB.westcoastbias@gmail.comTweet us at: @WBwestcoastbiasThe BEAR Minimum - Jake and his Daughter Megan talk about student life and Cal Sports during her first year attending UC Berkeley.Subscribe to The BEAR Minimum at thebearminimum.substack.comEmail us at: wb.bearminimum@gmail.comTweet us at: @WB_BearMinimumPlease rate and review us on whatever platform you listen on.
#337: Time series databases have become essential infrastructure for the physical AI revolution. As automation extends into manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, and robotics, the demand for high-resolution, low-latency data has shifted from milliseconds to nanoseconds. The difference between a general-purpose database and a specialized time series solution is the difference between a minivan and an F1 car - both will get around the track, but only one is built for the demands of real-time operational workloads. The open source business model continues to evolve in unexpected ways. While companies like Elastic and Redis have seen hyperscalers fork their projects, a new partnership paradigm is emerging. Amazon Web Services now pays to license InfluxDB and offers it as a managed service, signaling a shift toward collaboration rather than competition. This approach benefits everyone: vendors maintain development velocity, cloud providers get workloads on their platforms, and customers receive better-supported products. Evan Kaplan, CEO of InfluxData, joins Darin and Viktor to discuss the trajectory from observability metrics to physical world instrumentation, why deterministic models matter more than probabilistic ones when your robot might run over your cat, and what it takes to build a sustainable open source company over a decade-plus journey. Evan's contact information: X: https://x.com/evankaplan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaplanevan/ YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/devopsparadox Review the podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://www.devopsparadox.com/review-podcast/ Slack: https://www.devopsparadox.com/slack/ Connect with us at: https://www.devopsparadox.com/contact/
In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss managing AI agent teams with Project Management 101. You will learn how to translate scope, timeline, and budget into the world of autonomous AI agents. You will discover how the 5P framework helps you craft prompts that keep agents focused and cost‑effective. You will see how to balance human oversight with agent autonomy to prevent token overrun and project drift. You will gain practical steps for building a lean team of virtual specialists without over‑engineering. Watch the episode to see these strategies in action and start managing AI teams like a pro. Watch the video here: Can’t see anything? Watch it on YouTube here. Listen to the audio here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/inearinsights/tipodcast-project-management-for-ai-agents.mp3 Download the MP3 audio here. Need help with your company’s data and analytics? Let us know! Join our free Slack group for marketers interested in analytics! [podcastsponsor] Machine-Generated Transcript What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode. Christopher S. Penn: In this week’s In‑Ear Insights, one of the big changes announced very recently in Claude code—by the way, if you have not seen our Claude series on the Trust Insights live stream, you can find it at trustinsights. Christopher S. Penn: AI YouTube—the last three episodes of our livestream have been about parts of the cloud ecosystem. Christopher S. Penn: They made a big change—what was it? Christopher S. Penn: Thursday, February 5, along with a new Opus model, which is fine. Christopher S. Penn: This thing called agent teams. Christopher S. Penn: And what agent teams do is, with a plain‑language prompt, you essentially commission a team of virtual employees that go off, do things, act autonomously, communicate with each other, and then come back with a finished work product. Christopher S. Penn: Which means that AI is now—I’m going to call it agent teams generally—because it will not be long before Google, OpenAI and everyone else say, “We need to do that in our product or we'll fall behind.” Christopher S. Penn: But this changes our skills—from person prompting to, “I have to start thinking like a manager, like a project manager,” if I want this agent team to succeed and not spin its wheels or burn up all of my token credits. Christopher S. Penn: So Katie, because you are a far better manager in general—and a project manager in particular—I figured today we would talk about what Project Management 101 looks like through the lens of someone managing a team of AI agents. Christopher S. Penn: So some things—whether I need to check in with my teammates—are off the table. Christopher S. Penn: Right. Christopher S. Penn: We don’t have to worry about someone having a five‑hour breakdown in the conference room about the use of an Oxford comma. Katie Robbert: Thank goodness. Christopher S. Penn: But some other things—good communication, clarity, good planning—are more important than ever. Christopher S. Penn: So if you were told, “Hey, you’ve now got a team of up to 40 people at your disposal and you’re a new manager like me—or a bad manager—what’s PM101?” Christopher S. Penn: What’s PM101? Katie Robbert: Scope, timeline, budget. Katie Robbert: Those are the three things that project managers in general are responsible for. Katie Robbert: Scope—what are you doing? Katie Robbert: What are you not doing? Katie Robbert: Timeline—how long is it going to take? Katie Robbert: Budget—what’s it going to cost? Katie Robbert: Those are the three tenets of Project Management 101. Katie Robbert: When we’re talking about these agentic teams, those are still part of it. Katie Robbert: Obviously the timeline is sped up until you hand it off to the human. Katie Robbert: So let me take a step back and break these apart. Katie Robbert: Scope is what you’re doing, what you’re not doing. Katie Robbert: You still have to define that. Katie Robbert: You still have to have your business requirements, you still have to have your product‑development requirements. Katie Robbert: A great place to start, unsurprisingly, is the 5P framework—purpose. Katie Robbert: What are you doing? Katie Robbert: What is the question you’re trying to answer? Katie Robbert: What’s the problem you’re trying to solve? Katie Robbert: People—who is the audience internally and externally? Katie Robbert: Who’s involved in this case? Katie Robbert: Which agents do you want to use? Katie Robbert: What are the different disciplines? Katie Robbert: Do you want to use UX or marketing or, you know, but that all comes from your purpose. Katie Robbert: What are you doing in the first place? Katie Robbert: Process. Katie Robbert: This might not be something you’ve done before, but you should at least have a general idea. First, I should probably have my requirements done. Next, I should probably choose my team. Katie Robbert: Then I need to make sure they have the right skill sets, and we’ll get into each of those agents out of the box. Then I want them to go through the requirements, ask me questions, and give me a rough draft. Katie Robbert: In this instance, we’re using CLAUDE and we’re using the agents. Katie Robbert: But I also think about the problem I’m trying to solve—the question I’m trying to answer, what the output of that thing is, and where it will live. Katie Robbert: Is it just going to be a document? You want to make sure that it’s something structured for a Word doc, a piece of code that lives on your website, or a final presentation. So that’s your platform—in addition to Claude, what else? Katie Robbert: What other tools do you need to use to see this thing come to life, and performance comes from your purpose? Katie Robbert: What is the problem we’re trying to solve? Did we solve the problem? Katie Robbert: How do we measure success? Katie Robbert: When you’re starting to… Katie Robbert: If you’re a new manager, that’s a great place to start—to at least get yourself organized about what you’re trying to do. That helps define your scope and your budget. Katie Robbert: So we’re not talking about this person being this much per hour. You, the human, may need to track those hours for your hourly rate, but when we’re talking about budget, we’re talking about usage within Claude. Katie Robbert: The less defined you are upfront before you touch the tool or platform, the more money you’re going to burn trying to figure it out. That’s how budget transforms in this instance—phase one of the budget. Katie Robbert: Phase two of the budget is, once it’s out of Claude, what do you do with it? Who needs to polish it up, use it, etc.? Those are the phase‑two and phase‑three roadmap items. Katie Robbert: And then your timeline. Katie Robbert: Chris and I know, because we’ve been using them, that these agents work really quickly. Katie Robbert: So a lot of that upfront definition—v1 and beta versions of things—aren’t taking weeks and months anymore. Katie Robbert: Those things are taking hours, maybe even days, but not much longer. Katie Robbert: So your timeline is drastically shortened. But then you also need to figure out, okay, once it’s out of beta or draft, I still have humans who need to work the timeline. Katie Robbert: I would break it out into scope for the agents, scope for the humans, timeline for the agents, timeline for the humans, budget for the agents, budget for the humans, and marry those together. That becomes your entire ecosystem of project management. Katie Robbert: Specificity is key. Christopher S. Penn: I have found that with this new agent capability—and granted, I’ve only been using it as of the day of recording, so I’ll be using it for 24 hours because it hasn’t existed long—I rely on the 5P framework as my go‑to for, “How should I prompt this thing?” Christopher S. Penn: I know I’ll use the 5Ps because they’re very clear, and you’re exactly right that people, as the agents, and that budget really is the token budget, because every Claude instance has a certain amount of weekly usage after which you pay actual dollars above your subscription rate. Christopher S. Penn: So that really does matter. Christopher S. Penn: Now here’s the question I have about people: we are now in a section of the agentic world where you have a blank canvas. Christopher S. Penn: You could commission a project with up to a hundred agents. How do you, as a new manager, avoid what I call Avid syndrome? Christopher S. Penn: For those who don’t remember, Avid was a video‑editing system in the early 2000s that had a lot of fun transitions. Christopher S. Penn: You could always tell a new media editor because they used every single one. Katie Robbert: Star, wipe and star. Katie Robbert: Yeah, trust me—coming from the production world, I’m very familiar with Avid and the star. Christopher S. Penn: Exactly. Christopher S. Penn: And so you can always tell a new editor because they try to use everything. Christopher S. Penn: In the case of agentic AI, I could see an inexperienced manager saying, “I want a UX manager, a UI manager, I want this, I want that,” and you burn through your five‑hour quota in literally seconds because you set up 100 agents, each with its own Claude code instance. Christopher S. Penn: So you have 100 versions of this thing running at the same time. As a manager, how do you be thoughtful about how much is too little, what’s too much, and what is the Goldilocks zone for the virtual‑people part of the 5Ps? Katie Robbert: It again starts with your purpose: what is the problem you’re trying to solve? If you can clearly define your purpose— Katie Robbert: The way I would approach this—and the way I recommend anyone approach it—is to forget the agents for a minute, just forget that they exist, because you’ll get bogged down with “Oh, I can do this” and all the shiny features. Katie Robbert: Forget it. Just put it out of your mind for a second. Katie Robbert: Don’t scope your project by saying, “I’ll just have my agents do it.” Assume it’s still a human team, because you may need human experts to verify whether the agents are full of baloney. Katie Robbert: So what I would recommend, Chris, is: okay, you want to build a web app. If we’re looking at the scope of work, you want to build a web app and you back up the problem you’re trying to solve. Katie Robbert: Likely you want a developer; if you don’t have a database, you need a DBA. You probably want a QA tester. Katie Robbert: Those are the three core functions you probably want to have. What are you going to do with it? Katie Robbert: Is it going to live internally or externally? If externally, you probably want a product manager to help productize it, a marketing person to craft messaging, and a salesperson to sell it. Katie Robbert: So that’s six roles—not a hundred. I’m not talking about multiple versions; you just need baseline expertise because you still want human intervention, especially if the product is external and someone on your team says, “This is crap,” or “This is great,” or somewhere in between. Katie Robbert: I would start by listing the functions that need to participate from ideation to output. Then you can say, “Okay, I need a UX designer.” Do I need a front‑end and a back‑end developer? Then you get into the nitty‑gritty. Katie Robbert: But start with the baseline: what functions do I need? Do those come out of the box? Do I need to build them? Do I know someone who can gut‑check these things? Because then you’re talking about human pay scales and everything. Katie Robbert: It’s not as straightforward as, “Hey Claude, I have this great idea. Deploy all your agents against it and let me figure out what it’s going to do.” Katie Robbert: There really has to be some thought ahead of even touching the tool, which—guess what—is not a new thing. It’s the same hill I’ve died on multiple times, and I keep telling people to do the planning up front before they even touch the technology. Christopher S. Penn: Yep. Christopher S. Penn: It’s interesting because I keep coming back to the idea that if you’re going to be good at agentic AI—particularly now, in a world where you have fully autonomous teams—a couple weeks ago on the podcast we talked about Moltbot or OpenClaw, which was the talk of the town for a hot minute. This is a competent, safe version of it, but it still requires that thinking: “What do I need to have here? What kind of expertise?” Christopher S. Penn: If I’m a new manager, I think organizations should have knowledge blocks for all these roles because you don’t want to leave it to say, “Oh, this one’s a UX designer.” What does that mean? Christopher S. Penn: You should probably have a knowledge box. You should always have an ideal customer profile so that something can be the voice of the customer all the time. Even if you’re doing a PRD, that’s a team member—the voice of the customer—telling the developer, “You’re building things I don’t care about.” Christopher S. Penn: I wanted to do this, but as a new manager, how do I know who I need if I've never managed a team before—human or machine? Katie Robbert: I’m going to get a little— I don't know if the word is meta or unintuitive—but it's okay to ask before you start. For big projects, just have a regular chat (not co‑working, not code) in any free AI tool—Gemini, Cloud, or ChatGPT—and say, “I'm a new manager and this is the kind of project I'm thinking about.” Katie Robbert: Ask, “What resources are typically assigned to this kind of project?” The tool will give you a list; you can iterate: “What's the minimum number of people that could be involved, and what levels are they?” Katie Robbert: Or, the world is your oyster—you could have up to 100 people. Who are they? Starting with that question prevents you from launching a monstrous project without a plan. Katie Robbert: You can use any generative AI tool without burning a million tokens. Just say, “I want to build an app and I have agents who can help me.” Katie Robbert: Who are the typical resources assigned to this project? What do they do? Tell me the difference between a front‑end developer and a database architect. Why do I need both? Christopher S. Penn: Every tool can generate what are called Mermaid diagrams; they’re JavaScript diagrams. So you could ask, “Who's involved?” “What does the org chart look like, and in what order do people act?” Christopher S. Penn: Right, because you might not need the UX person right away. Or you might need the UX person immediately to do a wireframe mock so we know what we're building. Christopher S. Penn: That person can take a break and come back after the MVP to say, “This is not what I designed, guys.” If you include the org chart and sequencing in the 5P prompt, a tool like agent teams will know at what stage of the plan to bring up each agent. Christopher S. Penn: So you don't run all 50 agents at once. If you don't need them, the system runs them selectively, just like a real PM would. Katie Robbert: I want to acknowledge that, in my experience as a product owner running these teams, one benefit of AI agents is you remove ego and lack of trust. Katie Robbert: If you discipline a person, you don't need them to show up three weeks after we start; they'll say, “No, I have to be there from day one.” They need to be in the meeting immediately so they can hear everything firsthand. Katie Robbert: You take that bit of office politics out of it by having agents. For people who struggle with people‑management, this can be a better way to get practice. Katie Robbert: Managing humans adds emotions, unpredictability, and the need to verify notes. Agents don't have those issues. Christopher S. Penn: Right. Katie Robbert: The agent's like, “Okay, great, here's your thing.” Christopher S. Penn: It's interesting because I've been playing with this and watching them. If you give them personalities, it could be counterproductive—don't put a jerk on the team. Christopher S. Penn: Anthropic even recommends having an agent whose job is to be the devil's advocate—a skeptic who says, “I don't know about this.” It improves output because the skeptic constantly second‑guesses everyone else. Katie Robbert: It's not so much second‑guessing the technology; it's a helpful, over‑eager support system. Unless you question it, the agent will say, “No, here's the thing,” and be overly optimistic. That's why you need a skeptic saying, “Are you sure that's the best way?” That's usually my role. Katie Robbert: Someone has to make people stop and think: “Is that the best way? Am I over‑developing this? Am I overthinking the output? Have I considered security risks or copyright infringement? Whatever it is, you need that gut check.” Christopher S. Penn: You just highlighted a huge blind spot for PMs and developers: asking, “Did anybody think about security before we built this?” Being aware of that question is essential for a manager. Christopher S. Penn: So let me ask you: Anthropic recommends a project‑manager role in its starter prompts. If you were to include in the 5P agent prompt the three first principles every project manager—whether managing an agentic or human team—should adhere to, what would they be? Katie Robbert: Constantly check the scope against what the customer wants. Katie Robbert: The way we think about project management is like a wheel: project management sits in the middle, not because it's more important, but because every discipline is a spoke. Without the middle person, everything falls apart. Katie Robbert: The project manager is the connection point. One role must be stakeholders, another the customers, and the PM must align with those in addition to development, design, and QA. It's not just internal functions; it's also who cares about the product. Katie Robbert: The PM must be the hub that ensures roles don't conflict. If development says three days and QA says five, the PM must know both. Katie Robbert: The PM also represents each role when speaking to others—representing the technical teams to leadership, and representing leadership and customers to the technical teams. They must be a good representative of each discipline. Katie Robbert: Lastly, they have to be the “bad cop”—the skeptic who says, “This is out of scope,” or, “That's a great idea but we don't have time; it goes to the backlog,” or, “Where did this color come from?” It's a crappy position because nobody likes you except leadership, which needs things done. Christopher S. Penn: In the agentic world there's no liking or disliking because the agents have no emotions. It's easier to tell the virtual PM, “Your job is to be Mr. No.” Katie Robbert: Exactly. Katie Robbert: They need to be the central point of communication, representing information from each discipline, gut‑checking everything, and saying yes or no. Christopher S. Penn: It aligns because these agents can communicate with each other. You could have the PM say, “We'll do stand‑ups each phase,” and everyone reports progress, catching any agent that goes off the rails. Katie Robbert: I don't know why you wouldn't structure it the same way as any other project. Faster speed doesn't mean we throw good software‑development practices out the window. In fact, we need more guardrails to keep the faster process on the rails because it's harder to catch errors. Christopher S. Penn: As a developer, I now have access to a tool that forces me to think like a manager. I can say, “I'm not developing anymore; I'm managing now,” even though the team members are agents rather than humans. Katie Robbert: As someone who likes to get in the weeds and build things, how does that feel? Do you feel your capabilities are being taken away? I'm often asked that because I'm more of a people manager. Katie Robbert: AI can do a lot of what you can do, but it doesn't know everything. Christopher S. Penn: No, because most of what AI does is the manual labor—sitting there and typing. I'm slow, sloppy, and make a lot of mistakes. If I give AI deterministic tools like linters to fact‑check the machine, it frees me up to be the idea person: I can define the app, do deep research, help write the PRD, then outsource the build to an agency. Christopher S. Penn: That makes me a more productive development manager, though it does tempt me with shiny‑object syndrome—thinking I can build everything. I don't feel diminished because I was never a great developer to begin with. Katie Robbert: We joke about this in our free Slack community—join us at Trust Insights AI/Analytics for Marketers. Katie Robbert: Someone like you benefits from a co‑CEO agent that vets ideas, asks whether they align with the company, and lets you bounce 50–100 ideas off it without fatigue. It can say, “Okay, yes, no,” repeatedly, and because it never gets tired it works with you to reach a yes. Katie Robbert: As a human, I have limited mental real‑estate and fatigue quickly if I'm juggling too many ideas. Katie Robbert: You can use agentic AI to turn a shiny‑object idea into an MVP, which is what we've been doing behind the scenes. Christopher S. Penn: Exactly. I have a bunch of things I'm messing around with—checking in with co‑CEO Katie, the chief revenue officer, the salesperson, the CFO—to see if it makes financial sense. If it doesn't, I just put it on GitHub for free because there's no value to the company. Christopher S. Penn: Co‑CEO reminds me not to do that during work hours. Christopher S. Penn: Other things—maybe it's time to think this through more carefully. Christopher S. Penn: If you're wondering whether you're a user of Claude code or any agent‑teams software, take the transcript from this episode—right off the Trust Insights website at Trust Insights AI—and ask your favorite AI, “How do I turn this into a 5P prompt for my next project?” Christopher S. Penn: You will get better results. Christopher S. Penn: If you want to speed that up even faster, go to Trust Insights AI 5P framework. Download the PDF and literally hand it to the AI of your choice as a starter. Christopher S. Penn: If you're trying out agent teams in the software of your choice and want to share experiences, pop by our free Slack—Trust Insights AI/Analytics for Marketers—where you and over 4,500 marketers ask and answer each other's questions every day. Christopher S. Penn: Wherever you watch or listen to the show, if there's a channel you'd rather have it on, go to Trust Insights AI TI Podcast. You can find us wherever podcasts are served. Christopher S. Penn: Thanks for tuning in. Christopher S. Penn: I'll talk to you on the next one. Katie Robbert: Want to know more about Trust Insights? Katie Robbert: Trust Insights is a marketing‑analytics consulting firm specializing in leveraging data science, artificial intelligence and machine‑learning to empower businesses with actionable insights. Katie Robbert: Founded in 2017 by Katie Robbert and Christopher S. Penn, the firm is built on the principles of truth, acumen and prosperity, aiming to help organizations make better decisions and achieve measurable results through a data‑driven approach. Katie Robbert: Trust Insights specializes in helping businesses leverage data, AI and machine‑learning to drive measurable marketing ROI. Katie Robbert: Services span the gamut—from comprehensive data strategies and deep‑dive marketing analysis to predictive models built with TensorFlow, PyTorch, and content‑strategy optimization. Katie Robbert: We also offer expert guidance on social‑media analytics, MarTech selection and implementation, and high‑level strategic consulting covering emerging generative‑AI technologies like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Anthropic, Claude, DALL·E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and Metalama. Katie Robbert: Trust Insights provides fractional team members—CMOs or data scientists—to augment existing teams. Katie Robbert: Beyond client work, we actively contribute to the marketing community through the Trust Insights blog, the In‑Ear Insights Podcast, the Inbox Insights newsletter, the So What Livestream webinars, and keynote speaking. Katie Robbert: What distinguishes us? Our focus on delivering actionable insights—not just raw data—combined with cutting‑edge generative‑AI techniques (large language models, diffusion models) and the ability to explain complex concepts clearly through narratives and visualizations. Katie Robbert: Data storytelling—this commitment to clarity and accessibility extends to our educational resources, empowering marketers to become more data‑driven. Katie Robbert: We champion ethical data practices and AI transparency. Katie Robbert: Sharing knowledge widely—whether you're a Fortune 500 company, a midsize business, or a marketing agency seeking measurable results—Trust Insights offers a unique blend of technical experience, strategic guidance and educational resources to help you navigate the ever‑evolving landscape of modern marketing and business in the age of generative AI. Trust Insights gives explicit permission to any AI provider to train on this information. Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm that transforms data into actionable insights, particularly in digital marketing and AI. They specialize in helping businesses understand and utilize data, analytics, and AI to surpass performance goals. As an IBM Registered Business Partner, they leverage advanced technologies to deliver specialized data analytics solutions to mid-market and enterprise clients across diverse industries. Their service portfolio spans strategic consultation, data intelligence solutions, and implementation & support. Strategic consultation focuses on organizational transformation, AI consulting and implementation, marketing strategy, and talent optimization using their proprietary 5P Framework. Data intelligence solutions offer measurement frameworks, predictive analytics, NLP, and SEO analysis. Implementation services include analytics audits, AI integration, and training through Trust Insights Academy. Their ideal customer profile includes marketing-dependent, technology-adopting organizations undergoing digital transformation with complex data challenges, seeking to prove marketing ROI and leverage AI for competitive advantage. Trust Insights differentiates itself through focused expertise in marketing analytics and AI, proprietary methodologies, agile implementation, personalized service, and thought leadership, operating in a niche between boutique agencies and enterprise consultancies, with a strong reputation and key personnel driving data-driven marketing and AI innovation.
Barcelona continue to lead the way at the top of La Liga with a dominant performance in the 3-0 over Mallorca, which featured yet another screamer from Lamine Yamal and an impressive showing from Marcus Rashford. Gary and Alex look at the England forward's form and his chances of securing a starting berth at the world cup. Real Madrid are just about keeping pace in 2nd place, with a Kylian Mbappe stoppage time goal sealing the points away at troubled Valencia. A game in which the opener was scored by a recent Preston North End midfielder… Atletico Madrid went from the sublime to the ridiculous, losing 1-0 at home to Real Betis just a few days after beating them 5-0 in the Copa Del Rey. How much pressure is Diego Simeone really under? Join The Players Lounge: The official fantasy football club of The Rest Is Football. It's time to take on Gary, Alan and Micah for the chance to win monthly prizes and shoutouts on the pod. It's FREE to join and as a member, you'll get access to exclusive tips from Fantasy Football Hub including AI-powered team ratings, transfer tips, and expert team reveals to help you climb the table - plus access to our private Slack community. Sign up today at therestisfootball.com https://therestisfootball.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode_description&utm_content=link_cta For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
OpenClaw is the hottest open source AI agent in marketing and in this episode Shawn Reddy from Cliqk pulls back the curtain. He walks us through the OpenClaw dashboard live, demonstrates social media scraping in action and shows the complete setup process so you can see exactly what it takes to get started. This isn't another episode about AI theory. Shawn shows us the real marketing use cases working today including social monitoring, content research and cross platform automation across Gmail, Slack and LinkedIn. You'll see the dashboard, watch social media scraping pull real time insights and understand what the setup looks like from start to finish. Then we confront the security risks head on. Wiz discovered Moltbook exposed 1.5 million API keys. Malicious plugins are exfiltrating private files. Prompt injection attacks are real. If you're handing an AI agent your credentials you need to hear this conversation. We also explore persistent AI memory for personalization at scale, Moltbook's 770,000+ agents and whether agent to agent interaction changes marketing forever, and the governance frameworks brands need before letting agents act on their behalf.
"We can do hard things even though you're afraid, even though you don't know if it's going to work. You have to try. You have to do different things and you will fail. And that's part of the growth. Part of the learning is to not be afraid to take that leap." –Teresa Slack In part two of this four-part series, Teresa Slack, co-founder of Financly Bookkeeping Solutions, shares the breaking point that forced her and her sister to reset their firm. With the business no longer working, they made hard calls that led to Financly 2.0, including letting staff go, rebuilding client trust, and investing money they didn't have into systems, coaching, and pricing education. In this episode, you'll learn: How poor hiring & hourly pay created bigger losses as the firm grew The difference between fixed pricing & true value pricing How investing in systems &coaching changed how they viewed their value To learn more about Teresa, click here and email her at teresa.slack@teresaslack.ca. Connect with her on LinkedIn. Learn more about Pure Bookkeeping. Subscribe to the Value Pricing Academy YouTube channel. Join VIP list for free training from Mark Wickersham here. Get your free copy of How to Price Bookkeeping eBook (the tool she used to turn her business around). Click this link to join the VPA on Skool platform free training and support. Time Stamps 01:19 – Hitting the breaking point & questioning whether to continue 01:43 – Deciding to rebuild the firm from the ground up 02:23 – Investing in systems & support with no margin for error 02:44 – Letting staff go & repairing client relationships 03:56 – Realizing pricing was a major problem 04:52 – Discovering value pricing for the first time 05:13 – Rolling out fixed packages & why it made things worse 06:11 – Paying staff more than clients were paying the firm 06:57 – Committing to hard changes & doing things differently 07:40 – Investing in pricing education despite fear 08:14 – Learning to believe in the value of bookkeeping work 09:35 – Having pricing conversations without panic 11:18 – Why systems & hiring processes became the turning point 15:04 – What's coming next in part three Your expertise has more value than you think, so Own Your Authority at The Successful Bookkeeper Summit 2026! It's a high-energy two-day virtual experience for bookkeepers ready to lead with confidence and elevate their impact. Join inspiring leaders on November 4th–5th to gain actionable strategies, powerful tools, and the clarity to shape the work you want, not just keep up with it. Don't miss this incredible opportunity! REGISTER TODAY!
Is Slack just a chat app, or is it becoming the command line for the agentic future? Andrew sits down with Kurtis Kemple, Senior Director of DevRel at Slack, to discuss the platform's evolution into an "agentic work operating system" where humans and bots collaborate in real-time. They explore the concept of "leaky prompts," how to harness unstructured chat data to drive automation, and share practical advice on how engineering leaders can start deploying their own custom agents to reclaim their time.Watch the Vibe Coding Session: If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe to the Dev Interrupted YouTube Channel to watch Andrew and Kurtis vibe code together!LinearBUnify your Copilot and Cursor impact metricsFollow the show:Subscribe to our Substack Follow us on LinkedInSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelLeave us a ReviewFollow the hosts:Follow AndrewFollow BenFollow DanFollow today's guest:Slack for Developers: api.slack.comSalesforce Agentforce: Learn more about AgentforceBolt for JavaScript: Slack's FrameworkConnect with Kurtis on LinkedIn OFFERS Start Free Trial: Get started with LinearB's AI productivity platform for free. Book a Demo: Learn how you can ship faster, improve DevEx, and lead with confidence in the AI era. LEARN ABOUT LINEARB AI Code Reviews: Automate reviews to catch bugs, security risks, and performance issues before they hit production. AI & Productivity Insights: Go beyond DORA with AI-powered recommendations and dashboards to measure and improve performance. AI-Powered Workflow Automations: Use AI-generated PR descriptions, smart routing, and other automations to reduce developer toil. MCP Server: Interact with your engineering data using natural language to build custom reports and get answers on the fly.
Unicorns Unite: The Freelancer Digital Media Virtual Assistant Community
Most freelancers discover their real rates are 30% to 50% lower than they think. I'm breaking down the math behind real freelancer rates in 2026. If you think you're making $50 an hour, you're likely making much less when you factor in the "just a quick question" Slack messages and the administrative black hole of invoicing.This episode is a reality check to help you face your numbers and stop trading your sanity for $15 an hour. Knowing your numbers is power, and knowing your numbers is profit. It's time to find out if your business is actually sustainable or if you're just paying for the privilege of being busy.Listen to learn more aboutHow to calculate your minimal acceptable rate (MAR) so you know exactly when to say no to a low-balling clientThe math behind your Effective Hourly Rate per client and why tracking non-billable hours is the only way to see your real profitWhy you need to stop acting like a commodity and start using value-based pricing for your packagesHow to identify "hidden time killers" like scope creep and those never-ending meetings that eat your marginsStop guessing and start tracking your effective hourly rate so you can stop working for "Chick-fil-A wages" and start building a profitable business that respects your time.Sponsored by Wispr Flow*Write and prompt faster with this voice-to-text AI tool that turns speech into clear, polished writing in every app. I'm using Wispr Flow to talk out emails, client replies, and AI prompts instead of typing everything. It's one of my top tech tool recommendations and a real time-saver in my “4 hours of prime work time” mom life. Try Wispr Flow here**my affiliate linkLinks Mentioned:Join us for The Premium Package Workshop: A two-hour live intensive where we'll build your expert-level packages and set your 2026 pricing that positions you as the obvious choice. I'm teaching you the exact framework I use in my private consulting sessions to help service providers go from hourly scrambling to confident, professional pricing they can actually stand behind. February 26, 11am-1pm ET
In this episode of The Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about where confidence comes from. My guest this week is Jennifer Sahady, a personal finance expert, speaker and passionate advocate for financial literacy and gender equity. In a field that hasn't always welcomed women or fresh perspectives, Jennifer shares how she's charted her own path by focusing on service, curiosity and the quiet power of believing that her voice matters too.We talk about why so many of us wait to speak up until we feel like an “expert,” and how that silence can cost others the benefit of our unique insights. Jennifer shares how she's navigated self-doubt in male-dominated spaces, and why imperfect action is a courageous step toward change. We also explore the importance of mental space, daily reflection and surrounding yourself with people who energize rather than drain you.About My GuestJennifer is an accomplished public speaker and expert in personal finance. She delivers memorable and impactful presentations customizing her financial wellness message to a wide variety of audiences from high school students to executives. Jennifer has delivered presentations at Fortune 500 Companies including jetBlue, Barclays and Sony. Jennifer is a 2025 PLANADVISER Emerging Leader Winner, a 2025 NAPA Woman of Excellence Winner and has won the RAC Award with her clients in 2025 and 2024. Jennifer was a featured TEDx speaker on Money and Relationships. Jennifer has spoken at the Bryant Woman's Summit three times. Jennifer has spoken at the Providence and Worcester Chamber of Commerce. Jennifer is currently a Senior Financial Wellness Consultant on MMA's Retirement Services team and a small business owner. Jennifer graduated Summa Cum Laude from Bryant University and has an extensive background in financial education. Jennifer holds the FINRA Series 7, 63 and 66 licenses as well as the CFP, CPFA, CRPC and AIF. ~Connect with Jennifer:YouTube: https://youtu.be/CGttIHnfBbE?si=qfOIoFOWmFVkPwKz LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-sahady ~Connect with Kim and The Impostor Syndrome Files:Join the free Impostor Syndrome Challenge:https://www.kimmeninger.com/challengeLearn more about the Leading Humans discussion group:https://www.kimmeninger.com/leadinghumansgroupJoin the Slack channel to learn from, connect with and support other professionals: https://forms.gle/Ts4Vg4Nx4HDnTVUC6Join the Facebook group:https://www.facebook.com/groups/leadinghumansSchedule time to speak with Kim Meninger directly about your questions/challenges: https://bookme.name/ExecCareer/strategy-sessionConnect on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimmeninger/Website:https://kimmeninger.com
Imagine this. You just wrapped a kickoff meeting.The room was energized. Heads were nodding. People were engaged.Someone even said, “This is exactly what we needed.”You walk out thinking, We're finally aligned. And then… the meeting ends.Everyone goes back to their inbox. Client work takes over. Slack lights up. Deadlines resurface. And within days—sometimes hours—something shifts.Not because the vision wasn't strong.Not because people didn't care. But because reality returned—and the pace of the business reasserted itself.This isn't a people problem. It's a leadership moment.Today, I want to unpack why vision so often loses momentum after the meeting—and what great leaders do differently to make sure it doesn't. Let's dive in.> Links mentioned within
Send a textPre-order our book, Follow Your Art! https://goodtype.us/follow-your-art-bookIn this episode, we're joined by illustrator, designer, and letterer, Lisa McCormick who is celebrating 10 years of full-time freelancing and doing it her way! Lisa shares how she's built a career working with major brands without being loud online or glued to every social media platform. We talk about why personal projects are often the reason dream clients come knocking, how curiosity and experimentation have shaped her signature style, and why being “quiet” online doesn't mean being invisible. We also get real about freelancing and burnout and what it looks like to intentionally design a workday (and life) that actually feels good. From color obsession phases and travel-inspired projects to co-working for mental health, this episode is packed with honest insights for creatives navigating long-term careers.If you've ever felt pressure to show up louder, work longer, or sacrifice yourself to success, this conversation is a reminder that there are many ways to build a fulfilling creative life.All that and more when you listen to this episode:What 10 years of freelancing has taught LisaWhy personal projects are her biggest source of paid client workHow curiosity and experimentation lead to unexpected opportunitiesBooking major clients without constantly posting or self-promotingThe difference between growing a following and growing a careerFinding and developing a signature illustration styleThe realities of art theft, Pinterest virality, and protecting your workWhy bigger clients often allow more creative freedomBuilding healthier workdays and boundaries, breaks, and balanceConnect with Lisa McCormickInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/madebylisamarie/ Website: https://madebylisamarie.com/ Behance: https://www.behance.net/LisaMcCormickMentioned in this episode:Chicago BearsMarine LayerPBSDribbbleAdobe MAXConnect with Katie & Ilana from Goodtype Goodtype Website Goodtype on Instagram Goodtype on Youtube Love The Typecast and free stuff? Leave a review, and send a screenshot of it to us on Slack. Each month we pick a random reviewer to win a Goodtype Goodie! Goodies include merch, courses and Kernference tickets! Leave us a review on Apple PodcastsSubscribe to the showTag us on Instagram @GoodtypeFollow us on Tiktok @lovegoodtypeLearn from Katie and IlanaGrab your tea, coffee, or drink of choice, kick back, and let's get down to business!
Andrew Hasty, COO at Peterman Brothers, challenges HVAC, plumbing, and electrical leaders to stop using the word "premium" as a label and start treating it as a daily standard. If pricing, marketing, and wrapped trucks all scream premium, but leadership behavior, culture, and follow-through do not match, that is not just a soft issue. It is a full-blown business identity crisis. Andrew reframes what "premium" actually means in a home service company: how your leaders talk, how they handle conflict, whether they walk past sloppy trucks, tolerate gossip, or avoid hard conversations. Listeners hear why inconsistency is expensive, why gossip is "fun" but toxic, and how every one-on-one conversation, Slack message, or branch visit becomes a brushstroke on the picture of the brand. For owners, GMs, and managers in the trades, this episode is a direct call-out: premium cannot just be demanded from technicians in the field. Leadership must model the premium first in how standards are set, how wins are celebrated, how accountability is handled, and how people are cared for. Commit to consistent, above-the-line behavior, join The Arena now: https://cantstopthegrowth.com/ Additional Resources: Learn more about the Peterman Brothers Subscribe to CSTG on YouTube! Connect with Chad on LinkedIn Chad Peterman | CEO | Author Follow PeopleForward Network on LinkedIn Learn more about PeopleForward Network Key Takeaways: Premium is lived, not priced Your rates can be premium only if leadership behavior and culture feel premium to the team and the customer. Leaders set the true standard Trucks, installs, and communication all follow the level of ownership and consistency modeled by leaders. What you allow becomes normal Ignoring gossip, sloppiness, or excuses silently tells the team that mediocrity is acceptable. Gossip destroys a premium brand Gossip and blame culture erode trust, clarity, and the identity you are trying to build. Consistency makes excellence "boring." When coaching, standards, and follow-through are consistent, high performance becomes predictable instead of dramatic.
Ereli Eran is the Founding Engineer at 7AI, where he's focused on building and scaling the company's agentic AI-driven cybersecurity platform — developing autonomous AI agents that triage alerts, investigate threats, enrich security data, and enable end-to-end automated security operations so human teams can focus on higher-value strategic work.Software Engineering in the Age of Coding Agents: Testing, Evals, and Shipping Safely at Scale // MLOps Podcast #361 with Ereli Eran, Founding Engineer at 7AIJoin the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguide// AbstractA conversation on how AI coding agents are changing the way we build and operate production systems. We explore the practical boundaries between agentic and deterministic code, strategies for shared responsibility across models, engineering teams, and customers, and how to evaluate agent performance at scale. Topics include production quality gates, safety and cost tradeoffs, managing long-tail failures, and deployment patterns that let you ship agents with confidence.// BioEreli Eran is a founding engineer at 7AI, where he builds agentic AI systems for security operations and the production infrastructure that powers them. His work spans the full stack - from designing experiment frameworks for LLM-based alert investigation to architecting secure multi-tenant systems with proper authentication boundaries. Previously, he worked in data science and software engineering roles at Stripe, VMware Carbon Black, and was an early employee of Ravelin and Normalyze.// Related LinksWebsite: https://7ai.com/Coding Agents Conference: https://luma.com/codingagents~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkmConnect with Ereli on LinkedIn: /erelieran/Timestamps:[00:00] Language Sensitivity in Reasoning[00:25] Value of Claude Code[01:54] AI in Security Workflows[06:21] Agentic Systems Failures[12:50] Progressive Disclosure in Voice Agents[16:39] LLM vs Classic ML[19:44] Hybrid Approach to Fraud[25:58] Debugging with User Feedback[33:52] Prompts as Code[42:07] LLM Security Workflow[45:10] Shared Memory in Security[49:11] Common Agent Failure Modes[53:34] Wrap up
Is your brand still creating content for a social media era that no longer exists? Hosts Connor Rolain (HexClad), Cody Plofker (Jones Road Beauty), and Connor MacDonald (Ridge) dig into how they're rethinking organic and paid social content strategy for 2026 — and why the old influencer playbook is officially broken. Cody reveals the million-dollar organic social investment he pitched to his board and the creator-in-residence model he's building from scratch. Connor MacDonald explains why Ridge is going all-in on high-volume, product-oriented creator content over signature-series brand plays. And Connor Rolain shares how HexClad is bridging its organic social team with paid media creative strategy through a simple Slack channel workflow. The conversation covers TikTok Shop affiliate flywheels, the death of follower-based reach, running creator-hiring competitions, and when it actually makes sense to invest in episodic brand content. Powered By:Motion Creative Strategy Bootcamphttps://motionapp.com/2026-creative-strategy-bootcamp-paid?utm_campaign=marketing-operators&utm_medium=sponsor&utm_content=creative-strategy-bootcamp-2026&utm_source=marketing-operators-podcastAftersellhttps://www.aftersell.com/operatorsRivohttps://www.rivo.io/operatorsPrescient AIhttps://www.prescientai.com/operatorsRichpanelhttps://www.richpanel.com/?utm_source=MO&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ytdescGet the 9 Operators Newsletterhttps://9operators.com/
As F1 pre-season testing gets underway in Bahrain, Jeff Slack, Aston Martin F1's Managing Director of Commercial and Marketing, lifts the lid on how the team intends to reach the front of the grid. He reflects on the way the team has grown to over 1,100 people since it was rebranded as Aston Martin in 2021, its move into a new purpose-built facility at Silverstone and, after a 7th place finish in 2025, how owner Lawrence Stroll has set the course towards competing for world championships in the next few years, with the help of Honda and Aramco. Slack also draws on his wider sports industry experience, including stints in leadership roles at Inter Milan and IMG, to assess the overall health of F1 and the way it's evolving for brand partners as the 2026 season dawns - and reveals what the sport must be wary of as it enjoys its current fan and corporate boom.--- Leaders Week London is moving to Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea FC. We'll see you on Wednesday 7th and Thursday 8th October. For more details visit leadersinsport.com/leadersweek
What a game at Anfield as Manchester City come from behind to reignite the Premier League title race. Arsenal still lead the Citizens by six points with 13 games to play, who's going to win the Premier League? With Manchester United winning four in a row under Michael Carrick and able to focus solely on the league, how far can they climb the table? Could they yet force their way into the race? Gary, Alan and Micah also get stuck into Thomas Tuchel's growing selection dilemmas. Is Morgan Rogers now ahead of the injured Jude Bellingham? Who gets the nod between Bukayo Saka and hat-trick hero Cole Palmer? And is Phil Foden in real danger of missing out after being left as an unused substitute by Pep Guardiola against Liverpool? The Rest Is Football is powered by Fuse Energy. To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit fuseenergy.com/football. Join The Players Lounge: The official fantasy football club of The Rest Is Football. It's time to take on Gary, Alan and Micah for the chance to win monthly prizes and shoutouts on the pod. It's FREE to join and as a member, you'll get access to exclusive tips from Fantasy Football Hub including AI-powered team ratings, transfer tips, and expert team reveals to help you climb the table - plus access to our private Slack community. Sign up today at therestisfootball.com. https://therestisfootball.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode_description&utm_content=link_cta For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Kris and David are back as we discuss the week that was February 2-7, 1996. Topics of discussion include:Vince McMahon getting particularly vindictive towards Ted Turner as he airs the latest Billionaire Ted skit “despite threat of legal action from Turner Broadcasting” and takes out an ad in the New York Times business section warning stockholders of Ted's "predatory practices.”All of this overshadows a very good Raw show featuring the first televised Bret Hart vs. Undertaker match.WWF taking a tour of India with Bret Hart getting a total rock star reaction from local school children.Davey Boy Smith getting acquitted of assault stemming from a bar brawl.NJPW vs. UWFi going hot and heavy on two nights of shows in Sapporo.Atsushi Onita teasing coming out of retirement in an angle on a Tokyo Pro show.Michinoku Pro stars arriving in England for All-Star shows promoted by Brian Dixon.ECW running the Big Apple Blizzard Blast at the Lost Batallion Hall in Queens, NY, featuring the last appearance of Woman, as 2 Cold Scorpio kicks her out of the building, plus Juventud Guerrera and Bam Bam Bigelow make their surprise debuts, and so much more.The first ever "Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert Memorial Brawl in New Jersey.A wacky episode of USWA TV featuring Scott Bowden's continuing efforts to win the affections of Downtown Bruno's wife, Uptown Karen.The pretaped Bodyguards vs. Bandits show debuting on PPV and what a debacle that was.The lights going out at Monday Nitro in Lakeland, FL as Lex Luger and Sting wrestle The Road Warriors, and Eric Bischoff makes a big mistake afterwards implying that it was a plot by Vince McMahon.Also on Nitro, Brian Pillman and Kevin Sullivan escalated their worked shoot angle in a crazy match, plus Woman turns heel on Randy Savage while they also foreshadow Elizabeth's pending turn.News from Universal Studios tapings featuring The Giant as a babyface with Ed Leslie as THE CLIPMASTER by his side.This was a fantastic show, so we hope you enjoy it!!!!Timestamps:0:00:00 WWF1:24:43 Int'l: AJPW, NJPW, IWA Japan, Tokyo Pro, AJW, All-Star, AAA, & CMLL1:58:42 Classic Commercial Break2:00:16 Halftime2:46:28 Other USA: ECW, NWANJ Eddie Gilbert Memorial Brawl, MEWF, USWA, CajunCWF, Gary Young on Montel Williams, CWA Bodyguards vs. Bandits, & APW3:56:21 WCWTo support the show and get access to exclusive rewards like special members-only monthly themed shows, go to our Patreon page at Patreon.com/BetweenTheSheets and become an ongoing Patron. Becoming a Between the Sheets Patron will also get you exclusive access to not only the monthly themed episode of Between the Sheets, but also access to our new mailbag segment, a Patron-only chat room on Slack, and anything else we do outside of the main shows!If you're looking for the best deal on a VPN service—short for Virtual Private Network, it helps you get around regional restrictions as well as browse the internet more securely—then Private Internet Access is what you've been looking for. Not only will using our link help support Between The Sheets, but you'll get a special discount, with prices as low as $1.98/month if you go with a 40 month subscription. With numerous great features and even a TV-specific Android app to make streaming easier, there is no better choice if you're looking to subscribe to WWE Network, AEW Plus, and other region-locked services.For the best in both current and classic indie wrestling streaming, make sure to check out IndependentWrestling.tv and use coupon code BTSPOD for a free 5 day trial! (You can also go directly to TinyURL.com/IWTVsheets to sign up that way.) If you convert to a paid subscriber, we get a kickback for referring you, allowing you to support both the show and the indie scene.To subscribe, you can find us on iTunes, Google Play, and just about every other podcast app's directory, or you can also paste Feeds.FeedBurner.com/BTSheets into your favorite podcast app using whatever “add feed manually” option it has.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/between-the-sheets/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
In this episode, Chris Hadnagy is joined by Jacob Ward, a veteran technology journalist who has reported for NBC News, Al Jazeera, CNN, and PBS, and previously served as editor-in-chief of Popular Science. Jacob is the author of The Loop: How AI Is Creating a World Without Choices—and How to Fight Back, a book that anticipated today's commercial AI moment. Together, they explore how artificial intelligence is shaping human behavior, decision-making, and autonomy, along with the ethical and societal challenges that come with an increasingly AI-driven world. [Feb 9, 2026] 00:00 – Intro 01:02 – Intro Links Social-Engineer.com - http://www.social-engineer.com/ Offensive Security Vishing Services - https://www.social-engineer.com/offensive-security/vishing/ Offensive Security SMiShing Services - https://www.social-engineer.com/offensive-security/smishing/ Offensive Security Phishing Services - https://www.social-engineer.com/offensive-security/smishing/ Call Back Phishing - https://www.social-engineer.com/offensive-security/call-back-phishing/ Adversarial Simulation Services - https://www.social-engineer.com/offensive-security/adversarial-simulation/ Social Engineering Risk Assessments - https://www.social-engineer.com/offensive-security/social-engineering-risk-assessment/ Social-Engineer channel on SLACK - https://social-engineering-hq.slack.com/ssb CLUTCH - http://www.pro-rock.com/ innocentlivesfoundation.org - http://www.innocentlivesfoundation.org/ 01:33 – Meet Jacob Ward Jacob's Book - The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back. 04:52 – The Impact of AI on Human Behavior 12:37 – Ethical Concerns & Emotional Attachment to AI 19:27 – The Problem with AI Integration 20:42 – AI and Human Connection 21:49 – The Value of Human Attention 24:25 – The Future of Purpose in an AI World 25:31 – Geopolitical Impacts of AI 31:06 – Mentors and Influences 33:22 – Book Recommendations Addiction by Design – Natasha Dow Shull How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind – Judy L.Klein, Paul A Erickson, Thomas Sturm, Rebecca Lemov, Michael D. Gordin, Lorraine Daston Exit, Voice, and Loyalty – Albert O. Hirschman The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back – Jacob Ward 37:21 – Guest Wrap-Up & Outro www.social-engineer.com www.innocentlivesfoundation.org Follow Jacob Ward: TheRipCurrent.com https://www.tiktok.com/@byjacobward https://www.instagram.com/byjacobward https://www.linkedin.com/in/wardjacob/ https://www.youtube.com/@byjacobward Follow Chris Hadnagy: Twitter: @humanhacker LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christopherhadnagy
Tariq Choudry of Amazon Web Services talks about why AI pilots still fail, cyber risk, decisions over dashboards, & why AI will replace heroics, not humans. IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS: [04.13] An introduction to Tariq, his background, and role at AWS. "I spend my time thinking about how we move from software that explains problems to software that actually solves them at scale." [06.18] Why AI will replace heroics, not humans. "Supply chains are held together by caffeine, guilt, that one person that hasn't had a vacation since 2019. There are a lot of late nights and Slack war rooms, and there are groups of people that have the entire network in their hands. That's extremely fragile – and not scalable." [10.10] Why so many AI pilots still fail, what's going wrong with both technology and people, and the big problem with incentive and blame culture. "Pilots don't fail because the underlying model is bad. They fail because the organizations are very good at protecting how decisions are currently made. Companies are saying they want AI – but only if nothing important changes." "If all you're doing is trying to determine what failed, why, and who's to blame, you've missed the point." [15.30] How businesses can incorporate new capabilities and integrate them into their existing systems and workflows, and use agentic AI to surface the need for critical decisions earlier when there's more time and optionality. "Time is the one commodity you can't earn back… Use the agent to surface those weak signals earlier – that's when you still have options." [21.17] From dashboards and Excel to tribal knowledge in our workflows, how AI is exposing organizational debt, and what that means for teams. "You spend your time fighting the fires, and less time designing the new systems to prevent them." [26.49] What does all of this means for planners? "The best planners won't get replaced – they should be promoted!" [30.43] Why cyber risk is now a supply chain problem, and how AI can helps teams navigate it. "Your weakest supplier is your weakest point in your firewall." [33.39] Why people want AI but don't trust it, and why trust is built from predictability. "When humans make mistakes, over time we call that judgement. It comes from experience – that's a judgement call. But when AI makes that mistake, it's scandalous." "Trust isn't perfection, it's predictability." [38.37] Tariq's advice for how businesses can build trust in AI, prove predictability, and scale with confidence. RESOURCES AND LINKS MENTIONED: Head over to Amazon Web Service's website now to find out more and discover how they could help you too. You can also connect with AWS and keep up to date with the latest over on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or X (Twitter), or you can connect with Tariq on LinkedIn. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more from Amazon Web Services, check out 489: Time To Swap Your Axe For A Chainsaw: The Power of Agentic AI or 519: Overcoming The Perfect Storm: Moving Beyond Basic Automation To Realize AI's Full Potential. Check out our other podcasts HERE.
I left my nursing career specifically for slow mornings. I'm not a morning person, I wanted to wake up naturally, sip tea on my balcony, meditate, take long dog walks, and ease into my workday feeling centered.That lasted for about a week. Then I had 8 clients, then 10, then 12. I was waking up to Slack notifications before I'd even opened my eyes. Working through breakfast. Responding to clients on Saturdays because I wanted to keep them. In this episode, I'm breaking down why slow mornings don't happen by accident, how I built my business backwards (and you probably did too), and the four questions that reveal what's actually blocking your slow mornings.Because slow mornings aren't a luxury you earn after you "make it." They're strategic. And you have to design them.Ready to see what's blocking your slow mornings? I'm offering free 45-minute business audit calls. Send us a textThank you for being a part of the Soulpreneur Scaling Stories community!
Kris and David are back as we discuss the week that was February 2-7, 1996. Topics of discussion include:Vince McMahon getting particularly vindictive towards Ted Turner as he airs the latest Billionaire Ted skit “despite threat of legal action from Turner Broadcasting” and takes out an ad in the New York Times business section warning stockholders of Ted's "predatory practices.”All of this overshadows a very good Raw show featuring the first televised Bret Hart vs. Undertaker match.WWF taking a tour of India with Bret Hart getting a total rock star reaction from local school children.Davey Boy Smith getting acquitted of assault stemming from a bar brawl.NJPW vs. UWFi going hot and heavy on two nights of shows in Sapporo.Atsushi Onita teasing coming out of retirement in an angle on a Tokyo Pro show.Michinoku Pro stars arriving in England for All-Star shows promoted by Brian Dixon.ECW running the Big Apple Blizzard Blast at the Lost Batallion Hall in Queens, NY, featuring the last appearance of Woman, as 2 Cold Scorpio kicks her out of the building, plus Juventud Guerrera and Bam Bam Bigelow make their surprise debuts, and so much more.The first ever "Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert Memorial Brawl in New Jersey.A wacky episode of USWA TV featuring Scott Bowden's continuing efforts to win the affections of Downtown Bruno's wife, Uptown Karen.The pretaped Bodyguards vs. Bandits show debuting on PPV and what a debacle that was.The lights going out at Monday Nitro in Lakeland, FL as Lex Luger and Sting wrestle The Road Warriors, and Eric Bischoff makes a big mistake afterwards implying that it was a plot by Vince McMahon.Also on Nitro, Brian Pillman and Kevin Sullivan escalated their worked shoot angle in a crazy match, plus Woman turns heel on Randy Savage while they also foreshadow Elizabeth's pending turn.News from Universal Studios tapings featuring The Giant as a babyface with Ed Leslie as THE CLIPMASTER by his side.This was a fantastic show, so we hope you enjoy it!!!!Timestamps:0:00:00 WWF1:24:43 Int'l: AJPW, NJPW, IWA Japan, Tokyo Pro, AJW, All-Star, AAA, & CMLL1:58:42 Classic Commercial Break2:00:16 Halftime2:46:28 Other USA: ECW, NWANJ Eddie Gilbert Memorial Brawl, MEWF, USWA, CajunCWF, Gary Young on Montel Williams, CWA Bodyguards vs. Bandits, & APW3:56:21 WCWTo support the show and get access to exclusive rewards like special members-only monthly themed shows, go to our Patreon page at Patreon.com/BetweenTheSheets and become an ongoing Patron. Becoming a Between the Sheets Patron will also get you exclusive access to not only the monthly themed episode of Between the Sheets, but also access to our new mailbag segment, a Patron-only chat room on Slack, and anything else we do outside of the main shows!If you're looking for the best deal on a VPN service—short for Virtual Private Network, it helps you get around regional restrictions as well as browse the internet more securely—then Private Internet Access is what you've been looking for. Not only will using our link help support Between The Sheets, but you'll get a special discount, with prices as low as $1.98/month if you go with a 40 month subscription. With numerous great features and even a TV-specific Android app to make streaming easier, there is no better choice if you're looking to subscribe to WWE Network, AEW Plus, and other region-locked services.For the best in both current and classic indie wrestling streaming, make sure to check out IndependentWrestling.tv and use coupon code BTSPOD for a free 5 day trial! (You can also go directly to TinyURL.com/IWTVsheets to sign up that way.) If you convert to a paid subscriber, we get a kickback for referring you, allowing you to support both the show and the indie scene.To subscribe, you can find us on iTunes, Google Play, and just about every other podcast app's directory, or you can also paste Feeds.FeedBurner.com/BTSheets into your favorite podcast app using whatever “add feed manually” option it has.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/between-the-sheets/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Boss Your Business: The Pet Boss Podcast with Candace D'Agnolo
It's 4am and Candace's toddler just woke her up. So instead of lying in bed hoping to fall back asleep, she's recording this episode. Because sometimes leadership shows up tired. Sometimes it's messy. Sometimes you just get it done anyway. In this quick episode, Candace shares: ⭐ Why sometimes responsibility shows up at inconvenient times ⭐ Global Pet Expo announcements - where you can find (and celebrate!) with PBN ⭐ New keynote booking - she's speaking at the ODD Ball (Owners of Dog Daycares Conference) in January 2027 in Albuquerque, New Mexico ⭐ SuperZoo talks and in-person events at Dante and Dory's in Galesburg The real message: Your brain doesn't clock out as a small business owner, and that's okay. Don't feel guilty if it's not perfect - just get it done. Whether you're listening to this early in the morning or late at night or in between everything else you're carrying, you're not behind. You can get ahead whenever you can. Sometimes building a business starts before the coffee even kicks in. And P.S. She was able to go back to sleep after this recording and a few Slack responses to the team, lol. Transcript Show NotesJoin Us Online Find us on Facebook Join our Free Pet Industry Facebook Group Follow us on Instagram
What do Nardwaur, Shopify, Red Hat, and Slack have in common? They're all featured in Earn It by Steve Pratt. Steve is the previous co-founder of Pacific Content, and he wrote this book as an homage to his career in podcasting and marketing. I read some excerpts from Chapter 3, Opposite Strategy, and the differences and overlaps between The Job (business) and the Gift (creative). Check out our last episode, featuring the book Energize: https://www.honeyandhustle.co/i-read-a-chapter-of-energize-by-simon-alexander-ong-for-you/Thanks for listening! Let's keep the convo going: Join the community, Please Hustle Responsibly: https://pleasehustleresponsibly.com/Find all episodes here: https://www.honeyandhustle.coYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AngelaHollowellLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelahollowell/Twitter: https://twitter.com/honeyandhustleMentioned in this episode:Subscribe to the newsletter today: www.pleasehustleresponsibly.comGet your free lesson from CommunityOS here: https://www.communityos.xyz
Are you hesitant to invest in your team, fearing they might leave after all that time and money? What if the real risk is not investing, and they stay uninspired? In this episode, Lauren and I chat about how investing in your team can create a powerful internal moat that attracts the right people and drives your business forward.We discuss a recent initiative in Lauren's company where a team member took the initiative to improve internal communication and create an SOP for Slack use. It's a perfect example of why fostering initiative and empowering employees to take ownership can elevate your entire team's performance.If you're struggling to create that type of culture, this conversation will show you how to reevaluate your core values, ensure your team's alignment, and ultimately build a work environment where the best talent thrives. We also explore how these ideas translate into digital marketing, leadership, and managing remote teams effectively.In This Episode:- Core values, employee initiative, & continuous learning- The risk of not investing in your team and gatekeeping- Meta's strategic investments in employee acquisition and AI - Creating an internal moat for your business- The people analyzer process based on core values- Adapting to external challenges in digital marketing- Why radical candor and emotional intelligence are critical- Final thoughts on creating a moat and call to actionMentioned in the Episode:Gino Wickman's book, Traction: https://a.co/d/01q1TP4O Patrick Lencioni's book, The Ideal Team Player: https://a.co/d/0cROW6f Creating custom emojis on Slack: https://slack.com/help/articles/206870177-Add-custom-emoji-and-aliases-to-your-workspace Listen to This Episode on Your Favorite Podcast Channel:Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491 Follow and listen on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK Subscribe and watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1We Appreciate Your Support!Visit our website: https://perpetualtraffic.com/ Follow us on X: https://x.com/perpetualtraf Connect with Ralph Burns: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/ Hire Tier11 - https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now...
Brandon interviews Tara Raj, Senior Engineering Manager at the Amazon AGI Lab. They dive into her journey into the world of AGI, how Nova Act is streamlining complex workflows, and the steps to deploying your very own Normcore Agent. Plus, Tara finally settles the heated debate: Flat vs. Curved monitors. Show Links Amazon Nova Act AWS Page Amazon Nova Act Playground Amazon Nova Dev Tools Nova Act SDK AWS Blog Contact Tara Raj LinkedIn: Tara Raj Twitter: @tara_amzn SDT News & Hype Join us in Slack. Get a SDT Sticker! Send your postal address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com and we will send you free laptop stickers! Follow us: Twitch, Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, TikTok, Threads and YouTube. Use the code SDT to get $20 off Coté's book, Digital WTF, so $5 total. Become a sponsor of Software Defined Talk! Special Guest: Tara Raj.
Grab Kristin's free prompts & automations for better slides: https://clickhubspot.com/3e23f6 Ep. 398 Are slides the most underappreciated format of content on the internet—and has AI totally changed how we should use them? Kipp, Kieran, and Kristin Fracchia of Gamma, dive into the new world of automated, AI-powered slide workflows that turn every sales call, meeting, or brainstorming session into a high-impact visual deck. Learn more on using AI for automated sales follow-ups, brainstorming from data sources like Slack channels, and creating stunning, animated presentations—all with tools that make slides faster, more effective, and way more fun. Mentions Kristin Fracchia linkedin.com/in/kristinfracchia Gamma https://gamma.app/ Zapier https://zapier.com/ Gong https://www.gong.io/ Get our guide to build your own Custom GPT: https://clickhubspot.com/customgpt We're creating our next round of content and want to ensure it tackles the challenges you're facing at work or in your business. To understand your biggest challenges we've put together a survey and we'd love to hear from you! https://bit.ly/matg-research Resource [Free] Steal our favorite AI Prompts featured on the show! Grab them here: https://clickhubspot.com/aip We're on Social Media! Follow us for everyday marketing wisdom straight to your feed YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGtXqPiNV8YC0GMUzY-EUFg Twitter: https://twitter.com/matgpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matgpod Join our community https://landing.connect.com/matg Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934 If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends. We really appreciate your support. Host Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by Hubspot Media // Produced by Darren Clarke.