Notes on data, AI, IT
and security
No marketing fog. The way I think about real problems with founders and managers.
GPT-3 and the new baseline for language models
What the release of GPT-3 means for search, support, text analytics and product UX - a view for founders and directors.
Predictive analytics in supply chains: what the crisis revealed
How the pandemic tested investments in demand forecasting and inventory management - and what to take away from it.
Data producer-consumer contracts: the unglamorous fix that works
Why data pipelines break most often at team boundaries, and how formalising the contract between producers and consumers prevents the majority of those breaks.
COVID phishing: how the threat landscape shifted in two months
A briefing for managers: how attackers are exploiting the pandemic and remote work, and what to do without panic.
Computer vision for quality control: what is realistic in 2020
A plain assessment of where computer vision actually delivers in factory quality control right now - and what the common misconceptions are about cost and scope.
Digital workplace: from emergency fix to something sustainable
How to move from 'just make it work' to a proper infrastructure for a distributed team - observations from April 2020.
Event-driven architecture: a plain explanation for non-engineers
What event-driven architecture is, why engineering teams want it, and how to evaluate whether it makes sense for your product - without needing to understand the code.
Customer data in a crisis: how companies lose the signal
Why customer behaviour analytics stops working during a sharp change in context - and what to do about it.
Zoom in a crisis: the security settings managers need to check
In March 2020 Zoom went from a niche tool to company infrastructure overnight. A practical checklist for managers who are not security specialists.
Data backlog triage when the team just went remote
How to decide in the first weeks of a distributed sprint what data work to continue, pause, and drop - without a formal process to fall back on.
VPN under load: what to check when the whole office went home
A practical guide for managers: how to assess the security and reliability of remote access during a mass shift to remote work.
API-first design when the team works remotely
Why distributed teams make sloppy API contracts visible faster - and how to use that pressure to establish a more disciplined design process.