The Zack Scriven Podcast

In the season opener, Zoie Rittling (Teguar) gets candid about what it's actually like being a woman in industrial automation — the trade shows where she's ignored while training the guys next to her, the unconscious bias most men in the industry don't realize they're carrying, and what's actually actionable if you want to help. Then the conversation shifts into her expertise: edge compute, machine vision, and where the hardware is heading in 2026.

**In this episode:**- Why a single LinkedIn comment sparked a larger women-in-automation conversation- The trade-show pattern Zoie has seen play out over and over- A concrete answer to "what can men in the industry actually do?"- How edge AI + machine vision are sorting potatoes mid-air on a conveyor- What specs customers are asking for in rugged industrial PCs right now- Zoie's path from visual arts to software to industrial sales

Zoie Rittling is in Business Development at Teguar — industrial and rugged computing hardware for manufacturing, energy, food & beverage, and machine vision applications. Catch Teguar at Automate 2026 (Chicago, June) and ICC 2026 (Sacramento, September).

If you listen to the end, drop a review. It's how new listeners find the show.

#ZackScrivenPodcast #AutomationMonth2026 #WomenInAutomation #EdgeCompute #IndustrialAutomation #Manufacturing

In 2019, Inductive Automation's Colby Clegg, Don Pearson, and Kevin McClusky sat down with Zack at IA's Folsom headquarters and predicted nearly everything that's now dominating the industrial software conversation: AI accountability, the open-systems revolution, algorithm liability in closed-loop control, and the mobile-first plant floor.

Nobody had names for any of it yet. They just had precision.

This episode is a curated remaster of those three conversations — nearly two hours of 2019 archive compressed into 38 minutes of what now reads as evidence rather than prediction.

In this episode:

• Why unlimited licensing wasn't just a pricing decision — it was a prerequisite for digital transformation
• The open/closed architecture cycle and why we're back in the loosely-coupled phase
• How AI adoption in manufacturing follows the self-driving car trajectory
• Why the question for closed-loop AI isn't "why did the algorithm decide that" — it's "who chose the training data"
• The Gartner hype trough, the Exchange, and what's actually coming in the next 2-3 years

Featuring Colby Clegg, Don Pearson, and Kevin McClusky of Inductive Automation. Recorded remotely with Colby Clegg (Ep. 90) and in October 2019, Folsom, CA. with Don & Kevin. (Ep. 149 & 150) Remastered in 2026.

Timestamps:

00:00 — Cold Open: The Moments That Still Land

02:08 — Open vs. Closed: The Cycle That Never Ends

05:24 — How Ignition Started: Steve's Idea in 2003

07:00 — OT/IT Convergence and the Technology Bridge

09:19 — Sparkplug, MQTT, and the Eclipse Foundation

11:39 — Open Source: Why 90% of Your Idea Isn't Special

12:08 — AI in Manufacturing: Where It's Safe to Start

13:23 — Closed-Loop AI and the Liability No One Wants

18:05 — The Self-Driving Car Threshold for Industrial AI

19:35 — Gartner Hype Cycle: "We're Squarely in the Trough"

20:04 — The 10-Year-Old Who Doesn't Know What Wikipedia Is

21:13 — Mission-Driven Companies vs. Quarterly Return Machines

24:22 — Ignition's Final Mile Secret Sauce

25:00 — Mobile: The Technology You Should Already Have

28:18 — The Ignition Exchange and Ecosystem Velocity

31:54 — Closing: "If the Body Is Automation, AI Is the Brain"

Guests:

Colby Clegg · https://www.linkedin.com/in/colby-clegg-860460a/

Don Pearson · https://www.linkedin.com/in/don-b-pearson/ Kevin McClusky · https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinmcclusky/

#ZackScrivenPodcast #InductiveAutomation #Ignition #IIoT #Industry40 #OpenSystems

Podcast Episode with Kevin McClusky - Co-Director of Sales Engineering at Inductive Automation

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Podcast Episode with Don Pearson - Chief Strategy Officer at Inductive Automation

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Podcast Episode with  Jim Root, Troy Ritchie, and Herb R. Anderson.

"Las Vegas LinkedIn Influencer Meetup"

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Podcast Episode with Abel Lucio of Cowan Consulting Services - The Field Supervisor

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Podcast Episode with Wally Hudnall of Cowan Consulting Services - The Automation Manager

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Podcast Episode with Mark Cowan. The Owner of Cowan Consulting Services in West Texas

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Podcast Episode with William Worster of Cowan Consulting - Automation Specialist

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Podcast Episode with Sean Terrell of Cowan Consulting - The Automation Warrior

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