Use the last paragraph for something funWatching the video is more fun, but here’s he transcript you can’t be bothered: The way you learn to write a conclusion to an essay or a paper or whatever kind of text you're writing in school: just totally forget that. What you want to do when you write a conclusion is not summarize what you've done, return to your argument, and say how you've proven it out or whatever.

Comparing two years of Twitter engagement to a month of Bluesky engagementLike everyone else, I consider giving up on Twitter daily, especially with the US election bullshit. I don’t really read much on there anymore (I’ve tried all the tricks, even subscribing some months ago), but I still post things hoping to get the eyeballs. Since Twitter shut down is APIs (or made them expensive, or whatever), it’s harder to automate posting.

Making Money with Open Source - Software Defined InterviewsWe talked about a lot more than making money with open source in this interview with RedMonk’s Rachel Stephens, but the part was pretty good: In this episode, Whitney Lee and Coté dive into the insights of Rachel Stephens from RedMonk about the world of being an industry analyst. They discuss experiences from working as an analyst, the balance between qualitative and quantitative analysis, the challenges and misconceptions surrounding open-source business models, and the impact of AI on the analyst profession and beyond.

Private PaaSAlong with our summary of Explore EU last week, around the start of this I go over my thinking about private PaaS, VMware, and Tanzu. At least that’s what I remember doing. Wastebook“THINGS HAVE NEVER BEEN BETTER—BUT THEY’RE IMPROVING” Systemantics. The Systems Bible, John Gall. And: “we are interested, not in the process of forgetting to mail a letter, but in the Post Office Box that is too full to accept that letter.

Detroit, 2015.Wastebook“I’m still in my pajamas — haven’t changed since Tuesday night. I’m also drinking a fair amount…” ProfG. “My conspiracy theory has a much higher budget.” Lordess. “To create this post, I used a cascade of AIs.” Tomasz Tunguz. “improvident” is an adjective meaning lacking foresight or failing to plan ahead, often resulting in wasteful or reckless behavior without considering future consequences. Culturally, the term is often used to critique individuals or societies that prioritize immediate gratification over long-term well-being.

Improvised Corporate AssholeI've been listening to the book Impro by Keith Johnstone. Somewhere I read that it's on Palantir's new employee reading list, which made me interested. The section on status is both weird and intriguing. It's very prescriptive - there's no "it depends." People love this book: it has 4.3 stars on Goodreads. That enthusiasm and its place on at least one corporate reading list makes the book's chapter on "

Code Neo (Pearl Sijmons), Joana Schneider, 2024.Relative to your interestsPriorities CIOs Must Address in 2025, Insights from the 2025 Gartner CIO Survey - “only 48% of digital initiatives meet or exceed their business outcome targets. This statistic highlights a significant challenge for organizations aiming to achieve their digital transformation goals.” // It could also highlight that the expectations were very unrealistic. I’d bet on that more than anything else. // Also, here’s some Gartner charts on the topic.

The Cloud EquilibriumAs you know, I enjoy the impossible chase to track down the elusive chart that shows how many workloads are running on private cloud1 versus public cloud. I last rounded up my findings in July, 2024. Of particular interest is the IDC CloudPulse report. I don’t have access to the most recent one, but you can see one of the older charts in an older blog post of mine.

Start with good content, get better contentI've seen enough generative AI used to help marketing now that my theory is: you should only use it if you're already good at making whatever "the content" or strategy is. The AI will help you make it better, or more broadly consumable. It will do a terrible job starting from a blank slate. You can coax it, try to get it to know your style, feed/RAG more context in, workshop and refine it…but at that point you’ve spent just as much time as it would taken to just type an email, call someone to plan/brainstorm, blog post, or hit record.

Whitney has a LinkedIn problemOur second episode of the Software Defined Interviews reboot is up: Whitney and Coté talk with Sidney Miller about tech recruitment. They talk a lot about the process from both sides: people hiring and people looking for jobs. Plus, some thoughts on working at Neiman Marcus. Find Sidney in LinkedIn. More details: They explore effective strategies for both the hirer and the job seeker. Key topics include the comprehensive role of tech recruiters, tactics for handling diverse skill sets, inclusion efforts, unbiased interview practices, and the significance of empathy and transparency.