Here’s two things of mine to check out:

What we do at my work

We broadcast our updated Tanzu overview yesterday. I MC it and do a Q&A session at the end. I tried to get a lot of my views of the platform engineering, what we do, build vs. buy, and the usual stuff in through my questions and the intro and outo parts. It’ll give an idea of what people do with our stack, you know, when it comes to building, running, and managing their apps. You should watch it!

Making Big-Ass D&D Maps with Generative AI

The second thing is a write-up of how I use Midjourney to make D&D battle maps. I even broke my 15 year hiatus and posted it on reddit.

I have a lot of pent-up material and commentary on how I do solo role-playing with ChatGPT (and other AI stuff). The problem in writing it up is that the time I spend writing it up is the time I could use to actually play. Maybe the “just start a live stream and push record as you play” option is what I need to get back to.

It’s fun re-entering this D&D world after (checks calendar) 33 or 34 years. I usually don’t like learning things new, let alone “on the Internet” because I really dislike the shame of being, like, ignorant and wrong. (Probably the number one reason I haven’t learned Dutch after 5 years living in Amsterdam.) But, with D&D, there’s a good mix of fun and safety when it comes to D&D. I don’t know if I’ll ever re-build the desire to play with a group of people, but, you know, it’s fun even being a learning-lurker in that world. For example, while there’s only a few replies to that post, there’s good suggestions in there that I’m excited to try out: better to overlay your own grid, and try out img2img. Learning doesn’t have to be shameful! It can be fun!

If “The Internet” has been one of my life-long obsessions (ever since that first day I logged into an AS/400 and starting typing up HTML files), then D&D was a very strong one before that. Mix the two together, and it’s a good stir-fry.

Anyhow! Check out some fun map making with AI.

Relative to your interests

Pile of AI stuff on-top here, mostly “enterprise AI.”

• AI - two reports reveal a massive enterprise pause over security and ethics - A preview of the next 3 to five years of “enterprise AI” as it nears then skis down peak of inflated expectations: “When we go into a CIO discussion, it’s ‘How can I use Gen-AI?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know. What do you want to do with it?’ And the answer is, ‘I don’t know, you figure it out!’”

• Don’t Get Canceled: How To Overcome GenAI Consumer Backlash - I am interested in enterprise AI governance and policy. I’m not even sure what that is! But what does security, audit, and governance look like for AI? What is DevSecOps, secure software supply chains, all that type of thing for enterprises using AI?

• CMOs Must Protect Consumer Trust in the AI Age - “only 20% of consumers are comfortable with businesses incorporating the use of GenAI into their operations, according to a survey by Gartner.”

• Americans increasingly using ChatGPT, but few trust its 2024 election information, Pew Research Center - Techmeme summary: “A survey of 10,133 US adults: 43% of those aged 18–29 used ChatGPT in February 2024, up from 33% in July 2023, compared to 27% of 30–49 and 23% of all adults”

• About Placemark.io - Is there room in the TAM for a startup like me? Seems representative of starting a software-business, there needs to be room in the market, a chance to make it big: “As I’ve said a bunch of times, the biggest problem with competition in the world of geospatial companies is that there aren’t many big winners. We would all have a way different perspective on geospatial startups if even one of them had a successful IPO in the last decade or two, or even if a geospatial startup entered the mainstream in the same way as a startup like Notion or Figma did. Esri being a private company is definitely part of this - they’re enormous, but nobody outside of the industry talks about them because there’s no stock and little transparency into their business.”

• Stop Chasing Unicorns - ‘When it comes to ways of working, what do the companies that beat you in deals do better product, design, and engineering-wise?" Silence. "Do they do better discovery and research, ship higher quality work, run more experiments, kill bad decisions faster, retain passionate team members, or have a more effective org design?’

• Skinny jeans hot for AW24? Two writers argue over the demonised drainpipes - Some real passion about skinny-jeans here: ’at least with skinny jeans there’s no chance of soaking up every puddle you slosh through on a rainy day, until the water reaches your knee and you develop a very real chance of developing trench foot. ’

• Redis vs. the trillion-dollar cabals - Defending yourself against the three public clouds.

Wastebook

• “Credit card issuers, when they screw this up, lose millions of dollars and dry their tears on money.” Here.

• Your cattle are my pets. Talk Theme.

• “Random acts of marketing.”

• Damnit, Jim. I’m a marketer, not a product manager.

• “We’re gonna need some more budget. No more Doritos for the rest of the FY.”

• “You fight like a dairy farmer!” (Example used by Gemini for something you’d have time to say with your free action in D&D 5e combat.)

• “Relative dearth.”

• “You’re pushing a rock [up a hill] that’s never gonna love you.” RoTL, #530.

• “Between you, me, and the microphone…”

• Living the dream: “Pelia related that what she found most challenging about her long life span was not the loss of friends and loved ones to time, but instead, boredom.”

Conferences, Events, etc.

Talks I’m giving, places I’ll be, and other plans.

Tanzu Defined online, April 3rd (watch the replay!), The Internet. TEQNation, May 22nd, Utrecht, speaking. DevOpsDays Amsterdam, June 20th, speaking. NDC Oslo, speaking, June 12th. SpringOne, August 26–29, 2024.

Logoff

Tomorrow’s Software Defined Talk podcast episode (“not illegal, works as designed”) is fun - we recorded it last night if you want to watch the unedited video instead of normal podcast-ery. Or, just subscribe to it and you’ll get it ready for your dog-walking, dish-washing, commute, or as good background noise for making your kids lunches in the morning. Those are the only sanctioned times to listen to the podcast, by the way.

Bye!