UNSCRIPTED

Berend goes solo to recap IFS Unleashed 2026, working from notes on a phone that nearly didn't survive the week.He structures his takeaways around five T's and five I's — Trust, Time, Tempo, Talent, Teamwork, Intelligence, Investment, Integrity, Insincerity and Innovation — drawing on moments with Mark Moffat, Tom Brady, Chamath Palihapitiya, Badi Narasimhan from William Grant & Sons, and Sarah Nicastro.Why does trust decide whether frontline teams adopt AI at all? What does a whiskey distillery teach us about time as a business strategy? Can AI actually close a 1.9 million-worker skills gap in manufacturing? And when a machine takes an action, who owns the outcome?This episode covers the launch of IFS Intelligence, the tension between "speed is life" and Dario Amodei's AI warnings, the robot that might need its own airline seat, and what Tom Brady's take on teamwork has to do with getting an industrial operation to perform at its best.Future of Assets is a platform for asset management leaders. Find more at futureofassets.com.

Sarah Nicastro spent the week at IFS Unleashed in Orlando and is sharing the second half of her top 10 personal highlights from the event.

This episode picks up where Monday’s article left off — if you want the first five highlights, head to the Future of Field Service website: https://www.futureoffieldservice.com/my-top-10-highlights-ifs-unleashed-2026-part-1/

Highlights #6–10 cover some of the conversations and moments that stood out most — including how industrial AI is accelerating the servitization journey, why trust becomes more valuable as AI takes on more, and genuinely inspiring perspectives on leadership, community, and what it means to be a role model. Tom Brady, Chamath Palihapitiya, Alexis Ohanian, and Chelsea FC Women’s CEO Aki Mandar all made an impression.

Topics covered:

• How is industrial AI reshaping the path to outcomes-based services?
• Why does trust become a competitive advantage in an AI-heavy business environment?
• What Chamath Palihapitiya said about encoding tribal knowledge and de-levering from power
• Tom Brady on shielding yourself from failure and what leadership responsibility actually looks like
• Alexis Ohanian on community as a “Trojan horse” in a world full of AI-generated content
• What a “mini legacy” looks like and why it matters
• Aki Mandar on role models, doing the right thing, and holding power to account

Host: Sarah Nicastro, Creator and Editor in Chief, Future of Field Service

Nick Richards spent more than 13 years as a field service engineer at Cubic Transportation Systems before stepping into management. That experience sits close to the surface in everything he talks about in this episode.

He joins Sarah Nicastro to discuss what leaders get wrong about the frontline, why recognition so often misses the mark, and what a genuine commitment to knowing your team actually looks like in practice. He also talks about how Cubic is approaching diversity in hiring — including neurodiversity and women in engineering — and why he believes field service managers, not HR departments, should own the recruitment process.

This is a conversation for anyone leading a frontline team, or anyone trying to understand what today's field service workforce actually needs to stay and grow.

Topics covered:

- What top-level leadership consistently misses about the frontline role

- Why a simple "thanks" isn't always enough — and what actually lands

- Why Nick refuses to be called "boss"

- How Cubic is building more diverse field service teams

- Neurodiversity in field service hiring — seeing strengths, not risks

- Getting more women into field engineering roles

- What a better recruitment process looks like in practice

- Why managers should own hiring, not just HR

- What younger and more experienced engineers want from their leaders

- The changing nature of pride in the field service role

Guest: Nick Richards, Interim Head of Field Services, Cubic Transportation Systems

Host: Sarah Nicastro, Creator & Editor in Chief, Future of Field Service

Yasir Sheikh, Global Service Transformation Leader at Honeywell Technologies and 2026 Stand Out 50 leader, joins Sarah Nicastro to explore how AI is changing service delivery - from predictive to prescriptive maintenance, why change management is the part of transformation most organizations get wrong, and the analogy for getting transformation right that Sarah says she won't forget.

When a CEO tells Ashley Gross they need an AI win, her first question is always: why does the win need to come from AI? In this episode of Assets UNSCRIPTED, host Berend Booms sits down with Ashley, founder and CEO of The Alliance and author of The AI Workweek, to explore what actually makes AI pay off in the day-to-day work of an organisation. Ashley rebuilt her 80-hour work week down to 15 hours before ChatGPT existed, has since helped Fortune 500 companies figure out what AI is genuinely worth doing, and now describes herself as a business therapist between IT and business teams. The conversation covers AI fatigue among frontline workers, why AI is putting more pressure on senior leaders than entry-level staff, and whether Dario Amodei's call to slow AI development is a valid concern or smart timing.

Berend Booms, Associate Editor of Future of Assets, takes over the mic to share his key takeaways from Future of Field Service Live London. Session by session, he covers what stood out, what surprised him, and what he will carry with him. And in a nod to Rob Stevenson's keynote on music and energy, he picks a song to go with every part of the day.

Sarah Nicastro is just back from the Service Council Symposium in Chicago. In this solo episode she shares her five personal takeaways — from why the employee experience conversation is finally going deeper than the talking point, to "digital rocks not digital popcorn," to the empathy insight from EchoStar's Melissa Perkle Bailey that she says she'll come back to time and time again.

Dr. Aymen Gatri, Professor of Cybersecurity and AI Defense in Berlin and Director of PMO Products at Konecranes, joins Sarah Nicastro to add a layer of pragmatic necessity to the AI buzz — covering the hidden risks of AI in service, why governance and accountability are being overlooked, and how to balance a strong AI offense with a strong AI defense.

David DeAngelis, Senior Director of Technology Training and Support Services at Brightstar Lottery, joins Sarah Nicastro to share how his organization built a scalable professional competency program for over 600 field service technicians, from an 18-month behavioral research process, to a 6-month structured training model, to the technician feedback that made it all worthwhile.

Kris Oldland, founder of Field Service News and Managing Director of 1927 Media, joins Sarah Nicastro for a candid conversation about selling the business he spent thirteen years building, what he observed about the field service industry during his time away, and the B2B publishing platform he's built to replace the model he believes is broken — one that treats readers as partners, not commodities.