In tech product management marketing, there are three phases of your “story” and execution: strategy, planning, and doing (“execution”). I think a lot of people mix up these phases, talk too much about strategy, don’t do enough planning, often poorly communicate the plans to staff, and are not “throw it all at the wall” enough with doing. I’ve worked in this area for, I don’t know, 20 years. Here’s my latest organized brain-dump from watching people from afar and close-up at many places.

This episode: AI is coming for your software job, or at least for the parts of it you actually enjoyed. Meanwhile, businesses are still stuck in pilot purgatory with generative AI, IT leaders remain unconvinced of AI’s ROI, and Java is apparently coming for Python’s AI crown. The economy may be changing not because of interest rates or labor shortages, but because everyone is drinking more water and eating fewer snacks.

Writing with ChatGPT and ClaudeI’ve been using ChatGPT and Claude a lot for writing recently. I had a long conversation in the car ride between Ghent and Amsterdam with one of my old DevOps pals and they described their AI writing process. It’s best describe it as “layering.” Well, actually, it’s just how writing is always done: incrementally at first, and then iteratively until you run out of time. Here’s the technique.

Today it’s all wastebook. Garbage Chairs of Amsterdam, June Bug edition.Wastebook“gizmocrat” and ”gizmocrats,” new govt IT outsourcing term? “Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was tweeting about guacamole prices over the weekend as Musk took over key functions of the government.” Two weeks in. “Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified before it can walk,” attributed to William Gibson. “Tariffying,” The Economist. “There’s probably a couple of kinks in that slinky,” Sen.

Hello. How are you today? Wastebook"MAGA makeover' and “Texas Blowout.” US hair news from the UK. “your dissimilar appearance to other social media influencers.” Aaron on my influencer aesthetics. “Some people want something else, and that’s fine for them.” John Dickerson, Political Gabfest, Jan 30th, 2025. ”romantasy, which blends spicy sex scenes and romance tropes with supernatural elements, is not a fleeting trend." At which Rebecca Yarros excels. "groyperfication, "John Ganz.

“Socrates drawing at a whiteboard with a rapt audience set in ancient Athens, but the whiteboard is like a contempory whiteboard,” Midjourney, January, 2025.Socrates Didn’t WhiteboardThis week’s Software Defined Talk: “This week, we discuss the latest news about DeepSeek, how to make sense of the countless hot takes, and a review of The Nvidia Way. Plus, some thoughts on Valentine’s Day.” Take a listen, or watch the unedited recording, and subscribe if you don’t already.

Take a walk with me and ponder cheaper AI: I found some good charts for this one: "State of Enterprise Tech Spending," Battery Ventures, September, 2024. “Where's the Value in AI?" BCG, October, 2024. 🍃 Spring AI, an open source SDK for using AI. Tanzu AI Solutions and VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA. This chart in particular is helpful. It’s showing that there aren’t actually that many - hardly any!

Fun with charts: Relative to your interestsHow Cloud Ingestion Pricing Eats Your Budget - ”Essentially, yes, the cloud can be cheaper — but only if you’re using it the right way.” Microsoft and Google Are Forcing Customers to Adopt AI at a Premium Price: What Customers Need to Know - “84 million customers x $36 (the annual increase per subscription) = $3,024,000,000” Core Principles of AI Data Readiness - Maybe enterprise AI is all about getting your data into shape.

Interview: Brian GracelyWhitney and I interviewed Brian Gracely for this week’s Software Defined Interviews episode. It was a great, big ol’ basket of topics: the process of gathering and reporting cloud news, the evolution of PaaS, and the pros and cons of working at small startups versus large companies. Also: career advice, the importance of communicating value within organizations, and how to stay relevant in the ever-changing tech landscape. And still more: Brian shares insights on how to generate engaging content for podcasts and the impact of internal communication on company culture.

Catch-up: what we learn from Sonos and OpenTofu, how I use AI at work, Bluesky is getting pretty good. Found by fuzzyghost.Agentic AII’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the Tanzu point of view on AI and the stack we have (Spring AI and the VMware Tanzu AI Solutions). There’s a lot mysticism around agentic AI, but when you reduce it down to an API, you can simplify it.