Switched On: A Bowdark Podcast

We flip the script and interview ourselves. James puts interesting questions to Paul about generative AI and the UX possibilities that are starting to open up. Sometimes Paul wanders off to uncharted territory.

We're in the age of Copilots. Discussion focuses a lot around Microsoft - but the implication is clear: they're everywhere, and they're just getting started.

James and Paul pontificate on their experiences working in, with, and under business-led IT, shadow IT, and corporate IT. What's the best way forward, for IT orgs to have real impact on business outcomes?

We talk about the Copilot Studio demo and other possibilities. "Everything you categorized in your head as 'I can't do that,' pull it out and rethink it. It might be possible now."

Alan Chai, Microsoft Power Apps MVP and Head of Digital Transformation & Innovation at Schlumberger, wows James Wood and Paul Modderman with his tales of enterprise creation, curation, and learning new things.

Highlights

• Check out Constellation’s October event: Connected Enterprise 2023
• What a great sense that things are ALWAYS exciting — but in early days of his career that exciting-ness was slower.
• “Smith” — highly common last name these days — tied to the old profession of blacksmithing. What’s the new “smith” these days? Probably producting software.
• Holger: why can’t email be done better? (Yeah. I agree here for sure. It seems like a useful holdover ripe for some kind of sea change.)
• The art is finding the right ratio between human and automation. Find the right pace of digital transformation for people.
• Stay until the end where Holger catches me forgetting what we’d discussed in the pre-show!
• The “money quotes” section below is intentionally truncated. Holger says so many little nuggets of wisdom that I found myself just transcribing the episode.

Money Quotes

Holger

It’s all about how we will work, what we will work on, what we will get paid to work on…and it’s changing rapidly. 

You have to reinvent yourself every 5 years.

You have to find the right balance between the skills of people and the automation you can provide them. Companies who do that right do amazing things.

SAP is like concrete: it’s great when it’s warm and moving…but [after time] you need a sledgehammer to fix it.

James

You’re seeing the veil between the back office and the front office be torn apart — but it’s also creating lots of consternation and hand-wringing.

Paul

It’s never been more clear than now that what you do for work and how you do it have the distinct possibility of changing right under your feet. Difference is faster, now.

 

James and Paul discuss the upcoming events in the fall conference season - especially Microsoft Power Platform Conference and SAP TechEd, and come up with their unique spin on a wish list for them.

Podcast Episode! Season 5 Intro: The Future of Work

James and I sat down to ruminate and prepare for our upcoming next season: The Future of Work. It’s obvious that GPT (and especially ChatGPT) has completely saturated everyone’s brains. It seems like we’re finally seeing the veil between front-office and back-office start to tear. But most of all, we are PUMPED about this season — as both a way to learn from great guests, and as a time capsule of a unique moment in tech history.

Money Quotes

James

You’re seeing a shift from systems being systems of record to decision support. 

The proliferation of low-code tools are making it much more accessible to interconnect front-office and back-office systems.

This is coming very soon: enterprise-grade GPT services that train on your data. 

Intranets are usually where information goes to die.

Paul

The future of work is about the new ubiquity of really good tech. There’s a shift going on in how much businesses believe they can actually do with technology. 

I see the lights turn on with more non-techie people now, when the conversation turns to what you can do with it in your business. 

The fact that the world is changing so fast means that there is such a thing as “The Future of Work”. 

ChatGPT made the magic of tech real to people who don’t give a crap about tech. We as techies live in a world where we have always believed [that tech could make a real difference], but now it’s clear to non-techies.

 

James and I closed out our season of exploring digital transformation and its various meanings with a wrap-up conversation. 

Awesome Episodes This Season

• Season 4 Premiere: Digital Transformation
• Continuous Everything with Jon Reed
• Digital Transformation as Improving Processes with Alex Jones
• De-Mystifying the Digital with Paru Sankar
• Innovation with Purpose with Diego Dora
• An Agile SAP Development Platform with Nestor Lara
• Compassion in Software with Dustin Bruzenak
• Season 4 Finale: Digitally Transformed

Money Quotes

James

In a healthy, modern enterprise, we should constantly be renewing ourselves…There’s no getting around the hard work that it takes to continue maturing your organization.

The compounding benefits you can see from “continuous everything”…it’s hard to quantify.

Paul

We still live in a world where experts are truly experts. That expertise can lead to things where, when we get in the room to do design…they themselves may not have agreed or have codified how they get their stuff done. 

It has never been the case where we have digitally transformed something utterly out of a human’s hands. I have never obviated the accounting department. 

If you do digital transformation, what is being transformed?

James and Paul sit down with Dustin Bruzenak, co-founder of Modern Logic - a Twin Cities-based software development shop specializing in projects that emphasize compassion and human-centered thought. Dustin offers great thoughts on the software industry: building the products, building teams, and finding your cultural center.