Podcast
WB-40
Hosted by Matt Ballantine & Chris Weston · EN
Conversations on how technology is changing how we work with guests most weeks helping us to navigate.
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(340) Time
Dec 900:55:32Tap to summarizeWhat if most organisational problems aren’t unique at all—and treating them as if they are is exactly what’s holding you back? Mark Earls joins Matt and Lisa to challenge how we think about innovation, time, and human behaviour in organisations. From why you should prototype multiple solutions before perfecting one, to the critical difference between […]
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(339) Surface Deep
Nov 2600:44:44Tap to summarizeNo description available
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(338) Sports Data
Oct 2800:48:25Tap to summarizeWhat happens when you bring together data geeks and sports enthusiasts? In this fascinating episode, Matt and Nick are joined by John Carney to explore the hidden world of sports analytics and the surprising role of randomness in athletic competition. John dives deep into the intersection of probability, statistics, and sports performance, revealing how data is transforming everything from penalty shootouts to player recruitment. The conversation ranges from the theatrical nature of sports as entertainment to the mathematical frameworks that help us understand (and predict) athletic outcomes. You can find out more about Field of Play here: https://www.fieldofplay.co.uk/ The Pydata London Conference here: https://pydata.org/london2025 And more about the PyData Manchester here: https://www.meetup.com/pydata-manchester/ Transcript auto-generated by Descript: [00:00:00] Matt: Hello and welcome to episode 338 of the WB 40 Podcast This week with me, Matt Ballantine, Nick Drage, and John Carney. [00:00:56] Well, welcome back to the reasonably, reasonably regularly on a fortnight basis. Podcast that is WB 40 now in, into our 10th year of putting this stuff together. Joining me hosting this week is my co-author, not only my co-host, but my co-author, Nick. I think this is the first time we’ve done the show together, where we have been the hosts. [00:01:18] You’ve, I think, interviewed me in the past, but this is the first hosting we’ve done together. That is a good point. Yes. Yes, it is. How very exciting. How have you been over the last week or so? [00:01:28] Nick: Alright. He says hastily, looking at what he’s done the last week. Thank, thank, thank God for calendars. I’ve been, and unfortunately the audience won’t see your response. [00:01:41] I’ve been teaching people about wardly mapping. I’ve been looking at writing. Interactive. Well, I’ve been looking at course at writing interactive cities in a language called Inc. Which is something I’ve played with before, and that looks really interesting, just a way to build small interactive demonstrations or games. [00:02:04] And then I was at a session at the weekend looking about building micro games, which are basically short, very short, very small war games , that take quite a while to design. But you can learn and play in like under half an hour, ideally like 20 minutes. If you wanna get a single point about an event rather than you play sort of the war for North Africa or something and understand it after months of replays, it’s like 20 minutes. [00:02:30] You get the rough idea of how something works. So, looking into, so did that really good session. I need to generate some, I need to write some now. [00:02:38] Matt: That sounds fun. How about [00:02:39] Nick: you? What about you in your last week? [00:02:40] Matt: Well, well, kind of related to that, I have started at last to read a book that I bought about a year ago which is, I can’t remember what the Intitle was, but it, it was originally the Oxford Book of Card games, and it’s not a book about sorry, the Oxford Book of Playing Cards. [00:02:55] I think it’s. It’s not about a book about rules of playing cards, it’s the history of playing cards and playing card games. And the reason I mention that is because one of the things that it says quite early on is one of the reasons why some people don’t like card games played with a 50 standard, 52 card deck is because the de cards themselves gives you no indication whatsoever of how the game is. [00:03:18] And so you have to learn the rules and the rules are completely independent. Whereas if you’re playing, I dunno, Scrabble or Ludo or whatever you, with the board and stuff, there’s, there’s information about what you’ve got to do and how it works right in front of you all the time. I also found out, which I didn’t realize, is that earlier versions of the game of chess were played for gambling and they involved dice and things like that as well, which is interesting ’cause we often, and I know we’ve been writing some stuff about how chess is very different to card games. [00:03:46] But actually they, they came from a similar route originally, so, so that’s the sort of stuff that I’ve been looking at in terms of reading. I have started my civic duty this week. I can say no more about it than that and we’ll see where that goes. And other than that, I’ve, I mean, yeah, mostly it’s been getting ready to have a break from work for a short period and then getting ready to go back to work in about a week and a half and. [00:04:12] Really getting into a new client. It’s been a very strange liminal few weeks where I’ve been sort of closing things down or putting things on pause and getting ready to start again. So, yeah. No, got it. That’s a bit odd. Anyway, joining us on the show this week John what have you been up to over the last week or so? [00:04:32] john: Hey it’s been a busy week, the past week. I ended up gonna gi at my best friend’s wedding, so I exchanged the grim and dark of Manchester, the bright sunny of gi which is lovely. It’s wonderful. See, my best friend get married, had a lovely wife, and. [00:05:04] On the flight home, I, I expect so I’m suffering at the moment, but been a lovely time. Was it warm? It was very warm. I’ve never been before, but very warm, very, very sunny. Not cloud in the sky. Very breezy at the same time. Very pleasant. I’ve never experienced that combination of 29 degrees Celsius and a nice core breeze at the same time. [00:05:24] Matt: Oh, that sounds, yeah, my wife was in Seville a couple of weeks ago, and so similar. I mean, that’s not that far away. No, no. Right. From [00:05:31] john: all aia, I believe. [00:05:32] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. So and, and is it the monkeys, apes something in Gibraltar? Yes. [00:05:38] john: Monkeys on the, on the on the Rock. Can’t say I. [00:05:42] Matt: Okay. That’s, that’s probably for the best. [00:05:44] So we are are going to be talking this week about. At least two of about the six and a half dozen conferences that you apparently do in your spare time. One of which is the thing that originally brought me to your door, which is a thing called Field of Play. So I think probably we should crack on. [00:06:02] john: Yeah, I do. [00:06:59] Matt: I am a big believer in. How serendipitous events happen and how you and I, John got put in contact is one of those. I was at a conference about three months ago and I bumped into somebody who I’ve known for many years but hadn’t seen in donkeys and certainly hadn’t chatted to for a long while, and Andy and I were chatting away and he told me about a new venture that he had which involved sports data. [00:07:26] He was being a bit cryptic about it ’cause it’s one of those stealth mode things, which I know that people mostly do because they haven’t quite worked out what the idea is yet. But and he he said about whether I knew anybody who knew anything about Sports Station, I had a think about it. I thought, well there’s somebody I know who used to work for England Wales Cricket Board, so I can put you in touch with him. [00:07:44] And there’s somebody I know who works at the football association I used to work with at Microsoft, so I can put you in touch with him and I’ll have a word around and see if anybody else knows anybody. And so I had a word around, and you and I are connected through both being an equal experts network. [00:07:59] We will not talk about equal experts tonight other than just to get that disclaimer outta the way. And somebody said, oh, you speak to John because he’s organized earlier this year, an entire conference about sports data. We exchanged a few messages an...
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(337) Writing tools
Oct 1400:55:14Tap to summarizeOn this week’s show, Matt and Lisa meet Tris Oaten to discuss whether writing tools actually matter—and the answer might surprise you. While musicians have interfaces like Ableton and sequencers that fundamentally reshape their creative output, Tris argues that writers’ real tools are invisible: patterns of thought, environmental context, and the mental associations we build with certain albums or spaces. It’s a fascinating reframe that challenges how we think about creative tools entirely. The conversation tackles why we’re still trapped by document formats designed in the 1980s, with passionate disagreements about whether Microsoft Word is an accessibility triumph or “awful garbage” that tricks you into formatting instead of writing. They explore alternatives like Typst and markdown, debate whether templates liberate or constrain creativity, and question why there aren’t more playful, experimental writing tools when musicians have entire ecosystems designed to spark new ideas. But the real insight comes when they dig into the relationship between consumption and creation. Tris claims that writer’s block is actually reader’s block—your creative output depends entirely on rich inputs. They discuss techniques for breaking out of established thought patterns, from Bowie’s cut-up method to the Surrealists’ Exquisite Corpse, and challenge the romanticization of suffering in creative work. Why do we assume writing should be painful when it could be joyful? It’s a conversation that moves between deeply practical advice and genuinely thought-provoking questions about the nature of creativity itself. Transcript automatically created by Descript: Lisa: Welcomed episode 337 of the WB 40 Podcast with me, Lisa Riemers, Matt Ballantine, and Tris Oaten. Well, we’re back here again, Matt and I, and we’re welcoming Tris onto this week’s episode. And Matt, how has your week-ish been? What’s been going on for you? Matt: My week-ish. So well a couple of weekends ago now. ’cause time flies like that. I had the delight of taking my mother to Venice for a long weekend, celebrate her 80th birthday, just her and me and it was amazing. It’s the third time I’ve been to Venice and I don’t think it’s a place you can tire of, or maybe I’m just getting old, I don’t know. But it’s just, I mean, it’s, it’s utterly surreal. It’s completely beautiful. It’s touristy as hell in many ways, but there’s bits of it. And we were staying in a bit with just a little bit off the tourist trail, which is quite nice. We went out to Lido, see the beach, which is totally different. We went out to Murano to look at very overpriced glass stuff that was nice. And then just pood around walking. Pops into a few museums, went to the Peggy Guggenheim Institute, which is a amazing modern art gallery , so that was great. And then I’ve been back, I’m taking taking a role at work with one of our bigger clients, which is, quite exciting. I’m also gearing up though for going on jury service in a week and a bit. And so trying to be able to fit what I can in before that. And it’s, it’s a strange thing, jury service. It’s the second time I’ll have done it. And it does mean that you basically had to put your life on hold for unspecified period of possibly up to two weeks, but maybe more or maybe significantly less. Who knows? So I’ll be pood along to a crown court near you soon to be able to do my civic duty. So that’ll be that. And apart from that, I’m, I think I’m losing my voice and I know that my mother is actually she’s fine, but has come down with COVID again. So I do wonder with my voice starting to fade out, whether I’m also gonna have COVID to delay on top of everything else, which would be great. Amusing fun. That, Lisa: that sounds like if that is the case, will that mean you won’t be able to do the jury service, I suppose. Matt: I think you might need to be actually technically dead to not be able to take part in jury service, but we’ll, we’ll see. They’re quite strange. Right. Lisa: Okay. Matt: Which, you know. Fair enough. But yeah, there we go. How about you, Lisa? What have you been up to? Lisa: So the last week or two has been quite manic. My end. The famous book that we’ve talked about on a few episodes has finally gone out into the wild. Friend of the podcast and according to his post on LinkedIn, friend of me, Chris King, hi Chris, found a copy in actual Waterstones in Leeds, which is very exciting ’cause I’ve not yet been into a physical bookshop to find it. And I wasn’t expecting it to be actually physically available for some reason. So That’s lovely. But yes, the last couple of weeks has been quite a lot of, I feel like I’ve become a bit of a content factory with it all. Because. As somebody else said, like once it’s, once it’s published, that’s just the beginning of all of the rest of the stuff that comes with. So that’s been keeping me busy except it’s not been that that’s keeping me the busiest. What I’ve actually been doing recently is swapping SharePoint for PowerPoint. So the last few weeks I’ve been working with an Irish client who are doing some innovation training for a bunch of businesses in Ireland, and they’ve got several different suppliers and several different speakers. And I’ve been trying to pull everything together into like a more cohesive templates and trying to make things a bit more keep things consistent for people. So I’ve swapped SharePoint for PowerPoint, which is a lovely change. But I did have a conversation again this afternoon about SharePoint, so I can’t. I can’t escape it. Matt: I think it’s worth pointing out at this point, my long held view that doing PowerPoint isn’t real work. But you know, Lisa: what is real work? Is it something that you do, that you get paid for? Matt: PowerPoint is the one of those things that you can just, I mean, so much time can be plowed into it. I guess putting the sort of work that you are into it is helps people to avoid that so they can actually focus on the actual bits that matter rather than working out whether 18 point or 22 point font is the right thing and whether it should be Crif or San Crif because you’ve gone through all of that for them. Lisa: Exactly. That’s exactly why I’m there. I’m helping ease their cognitive burden by. Bringing it all into one template. So I might be losing my sanity, but hopefully everyone else is keeping theirs. Matt: And how from a obviously your, you are specialist subject now around accessibility of content. How does PowerPoint fare these days, and especially how does some of those automated parts of PowerPoint enable you to be able to do things automatically? So Lisa: some of it is very good and some of it, the automated stuff that it spits out in the first place is very bad. The, the built in accessibility checkers in PowerPoint are great. All of the suggested color palettes when they create this, I, I love a smart art graphic ’cause if, if you use it, if you create a smart art graphic, it’s built off a list of bullets. So it’s already starting with a list of structured content. So it’s not a li it’s not 17 text boxes on a page that have got lots of lines between them that you’d have to try and describe. But the color contrast is often not right. It often suggests white text on a yellow background, which is hard to read for everyone. So yes, some things are really good. Once you’ve created, once you’ve done the work, making all the page layouts and templates, do what you need to, it actually makes it a lot easier to make a, a consistent experience and something that’s usable. But it takes some fiddling and also. Once you’ve made a template, when you actually start using it in earnest, you start finding it. Actually, that’s not a great color scheme. Or, oh, I, I didn’t make the ...
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(336) Interim too
Oct 300:46:45Tap to summarizeIn this episode, Chris and Nick continue discussions about the world of interim management and welcome Rebecca Fox to discuss her extensive experience across public and private sectors. Rebecca shares candid insights about the realities of interim work, emphasising that there’s no time for a hundred-day plan—it’s all about a day-one approach. She explains how interim leaders must quickly fill leadership voids, build trust, and create certainty in organisations facing strategic misalignment or transition. The conversation explores the relentless pace of modern CIO roles, the importance of commercial awareness, and why technology leaders must focus on outcomes that drive revenue, grow margins, or reduce risk rather than just managing technology for its own sake. The discussion shifts to broader challenges facing technology leaders today, including the pressures of cost optimisation in PE-backed and public companies, the increasing complexity created by SaaS proliferation, and concerns about AI adding another layer of complexity without addressing underlying process issues. Rebecca argues that organizations need to simplify before layering on AI capabilities, warning that simply bolting AI onto complicated legacy processes will create bigger problems down the road. The group discusses how AI might represent an opportunity for smaller, more agile organisations while larger companies struggle with vested interests and accumulated technical debt. Show transcript, automatically generated by Descript (so forgive errors etc). Chris: Hello and welcome to episode 3, 3 6 of WB 40, the weekly podcast with me, Chris Weston. Nick Drage. And this week Rebecca Fox. I. Well, welcome to WB 41, episode number 3, 3 6. We, we, we’ve got Nick and Rebecca, but our first day I’m gonna ask Nick, how are you doing, Nick? Long time no. See. What’s your week been like? Nick: I’m doing well. Just for the discussion I’ve been for the last week, I’ve been I’ve been vibe, coding, vibe, sorry, vibe coding, a bash script, just to run a stone, a survival game and see if, see if it’s actually gonna work. So it’s like a, it’s like a Monte Carlo simulation of the game rather than trying to play a card game like 2000 times just from the script. So that’s what I’ve been up to for the last week. Chris: Wow, that’s a whole week of trying to quite make a bash grip. Is that, is that, is that the right, is that the right tech tool for this? But isn’t AI Rebecca: also supposed to make things quite quick as well? If it’s taken a whole week to do, it isn’t, isn’t AI smashing? Nick: I, I have, Jesus, this is, this has started earlier. I have been doing other things in the last week, but that’s, that, that, that would be, that would be the highlight, but also. It’s been interesting to see how slow the process is in that. I’m like 90% of no sort of the way there with how the logic of a program should work. But still, it’s something I’ve done so regularly that I, I catch myself out and can sort of waste hours. I’m just making mistake. Rebecca: How many prompts did it get you to where you are now with this, with this bit of vibe? Oh, like like six. Okay. I think you’ve said about 600. ’cause you could have probably just written the code quicker then, right? Nick: See, well that would assume that one I know bash scripting, which I know enough to get it, like only slightly wrong. And two, I’m, I’m very much not a natural developer. Like the, the big stuff I can do quite well. The detail of make sure this punctuation is here or use spaces in this kinda line, but not that kinda line. Is, it feels like it’s designed specifically to trip me up. So that’s why it’s basically a case of asking the lille, what does this look like? Copy and paste that in, rename the variables. Take it from there. Chris: Absolutely. It is designed Nick: to, Chris: to catch you out Anyway, so but, so yeah, so we, we heard Rebecca there. So Rebecca, welcome to the podcast, Rebecca Fox Rebecca: to see you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you so much for the invitation. So last week, I, last week was actually pretty exciting. I went to an evening dinner on Tuesday. Which is great. Spon sponsored. It’s always nice to have a free dinner, which is talking about Ned how to become a ned, which I, I did a, a course on last year, but also being part of a foot C two 50 doing an NED stuff, but a really busy job that I’m currently exiting. You know, love to get a ned well and some fractional work. And then on. Thursday actually, my, my partner Hayley and I did a workshop as part of Manchester Tech Festival, which was great the first time. We’ve done a workshop together and interesting enough, we are still together after doing that workshop. So I’m very proud of us both for, for surviving. That and also well, we’ll talk about next week. And then this weekend we’re super exciting. My son’s just bought a house. My son’s 29. He’s just bought a house, so me and he went to see him and see what he’s bought and help him in able clean it and do all the little jobs that that he couldn’t do. And I’m sure there’s lots more work to do. So it’s been a really exciting and busy week last week. So yeah, it’s been great. Chris: That is a busy week and yes, you know, team handling a kind of a presentation can be a bit stressful. And Matt and I have done it actually. And you know, we we’re not, we’re not partners in that sense, but, you know, we’ve been together a long time and we’ve and we, you’re still Speaker 2: partners. Chris: We’ve never, we’ve never fallen out. You know, the, the, the, the relationship has, has, has, has remained, but yeah, that’s, that’s a difficult one. And then of course, houses so, you know, so this week for example, I. Actually my daughter came back from university. She’s only been there two, two weeks, which came back to pick something up or something. So I had that going on with you know, people going after university and, and new, new thing, new, new, new things. But I also did the UK IT leaders event in Manchester last week, which was nice because quite a lot of our Midlands tech leaders contingent were there. They made the. Arduous and app perilous journey at the M six to Manchester to to get there. And also, you know, met up with a, you know, a lot of people that I haven’t seen for a while which is always nice, isn’t it? And met a few new people as well. So, you know, new friends and new acquaintances are always welcome. So yeah, last week was pretty, pretty busy and busy work-wise as well. We, it’s one of those, it’s a funny time in business at the minute. A lot of it is a bit soft and people are struggling a bit, and again, we still talk to lots of people who are looking for work in, for CIOs or leadership type roles in it that, you know might not have been expecting to take so long to look for, look for a role. It, you know, it’s, it’s definitely. A tricky market, but it’s not dead by any means. And in terms of what we are doing, yeah, it’s, it’s busy. There’s lots of stuff going on, and I know lots of people who have exited a job and found a job really quickly as well. So I think it’s just one of those, it’s a, it’s a softish market, but yeah. Interesting stuff going on. So it was a, yeah, it. Rebecca: It was nice to see Manchester features part of it leaders as well, by the way, you know, I, I, I live in Manchester and it’s an absolutely amazing city. It Chris: is. It’s you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s got a good claim to be the, the fourth or third city in the country. And that’s you know, that’s good. You got Birmingham as the second city, obviously mean. It’s ...
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(335) Accessible Content
Sep 2300:52:32Tap to summarizeThis week Matt welcomes back Lisa alongside guest Matisse Hamel Nelis to chat about their upcoming book “Accessible Communications: Create Impact, Avoid Missteps and Build Trust.” The duo spent 18 months crafting what sounds like a much-needed guide to creating digital content that actually works for everyone – not just the mythical “average user” that so much design seems targeted at. They dive into why accessibility isn’t just about compliance checkboxes or helping people with disabilities, but about recognizing that we’re all temporarily disabled at various points (try reading a restaurant menu in candlelight without your reading glasses, or navigating a website on your phone while walking). The conversation takes some detours through the world of inaccessible tech design, from VR headsets that don’t work with glasses to meeting software that assumes blind people simply wouldn’t use their product. Lisa and Matisse make a compelling case that accessibility problems often stem from a lack of diversity in the rooms where decisions get made, and they share practical tips that anyone can implement immediately – like actually using Word’s heading styles properly, writing descriptive hyperlinks instead of “click here,” and understanding why those bullet point emojis on LinkedIn are driving screen readers bonkers. The book launches October 3rd in the UK and October 28th in North America. You can pre-order now from Kogan Page at: https://www.koganpage.com/marketing-communications/accessible-communications-9781398621848And WB-40 listeners can get a huge 30% discount with the code PUBMON30 This week’s transcript (automatically generated by Descript, so there may be a few oddities) Matt: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to episode 335 of the WB 40 Podcast This week with me, Matt Ballantine, Lisa Riemers, and Matisse Hamel Nelis.[00:01:00] Well, it’s been a while and I’m back. Woo hoo. And it’s. Me just presenting on my own or hosting on my own this week, because I’ve got two special guests this week. This, we’re gonna mix it up a bit but one of them is somebody you’re quite familiar with. I’ll talk about all of that in a moment. But Lisa how have you been? It’s been ages. Lisa: It has been ages. It’s certainly been ages since we’ve spoken. Although I was on the show I don’t even know what weeks mean anymore. About three beats ago, a couple of episodes ago. Yeah. lot over the last couple of weeks. I’ve been to a couple of different accessibility conferences and meetups. I got to, on the way up to Newcastle, managed to catch see a Papa Georgio, who’s normally in Australia, but she was flying from Greece into London. Just as I was leaving London. We had half an hour for a coffee at St. Pancreas Station. Went up to [00:02:00] Newcastle for access given, then went up to Edinburgh, got a train down to London, and then flew to Salzburg to then drive to Hoop Holding to go to the Speaker Summit, which I didn’t know apart from. Having met Marcus online and having met Mark Earls online, I didn’t know anybody there and I basically went there off the strength of your recommendations from last year. ’cause I, and as I said to people while I was there, yeah. That Matt said this was the best thing he’s ever done. And I hate to admit it, but he’s probably right. Matt: Well, the best thing I’ve ever done isn’t necessarily the best thing you’ve ever done that That’s true. But it’s certainly the best event I’ve ever been to. And like I’ve been to some pretty good events over the years. You know, I’ve talked about it before on the show. I love meeting people in person. Lisa: But what Marcus has created, it was so well [00:03:00] thought through and. I learnt loads and I got to, I think I improved my speaking abilities while I was there. And although there was, there was a massive transformation overnight from when I did a dry run on the Friday to doing it properly on the Saturday after running part, running it through with our other guests this week, Mattis. But you know, there was weeks of prep and we spent 18 months writing a book about the subject matter, but it was an overnight, it was an overnight transformation, like in, in such a short period of time. I feel like my ability to tell a story about what we’ve been doing was massively improved. And everybody was lovely and the food was terrific and. There were tiny Bavarian children dressed up dancing on the last day. And some of it was [00:04:00] really surreal. I got to meet the international, incredibly prolific, despite being, like, considering her age, Brianna Weiss, who’s written 15 books, I got speaking notes from her as her and Marcus sat listening to us do a talk. Like it was just, I didn’t really know what to expect and I was actually expecting it to not be very good ’cause I had high expectations. And thankfully they were blown away. Like it was so good. Matt: I, I was so relieved to hear that. And actually there’s a couple of other people who I recommended the thing to, and everybody came back saying it was a fantastic thing for them, which is, I didn’t expect anything other than that. But it’s, it’s always when you properly recommend something, as opposed to saying on a, a sorting. NPS score that you are likely to recommend something actually properly going out there and going, no, [00:05:00] spend money on this thing. It will be brilliant. That’s proper skin in the game stuff. This is another essay I need to write about how terrible NPS is, is, but no, so pleased, so please, how Lisa: terrible NPS is part 17. Oh, Matt: 1700 probably. There you go. And Matisse, how about you? Welcome to the show. How’s your recent week been? Matisse: My recent week has been busy with some incredible client work, working on training materials around accessibility and creating accessible communications, which Lisa and I have been writing about. So it fits right in my wheelhouse. And also doing some presentations for A 11 Y Toronto or accessibility Toronto on the matter of accessible marketing. So it’s been a jam packed week of all things comms and accessibility, which has been fantastic, and Matt: just to be able to place you. Geographically in the world. Whereabout, whereabouts are you joining us from? Matisse: Oshawa, Ontario, which is just outside of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. That’s Matt: the east side [00:06:00] of East. Are you like erecting walls to be able to protect yourself from the south? Matisse: It’s interesting times, that’s for sure. I am actually ge gearing up to Head South for a conference at the end of October, which I am not gonna lie a little scared about. It’s in Washington DC but trying to stay positive and, you know, not say anything too controversial, if you will, and go like that actually. Yeah. Matt: Yeah. You have to be very careful ’cause anything you say could be listened to and at least you don’t have to fly that far back if you do get turned away at the gates. Matisse: Exactly, exactly. Luckily in Toronto customs is at the Toronto airport, so if they do turn me away, I just cop in the car and head back home. Excellent. Matt: That’s great news. Matisse: Matt, what have you Lisa: been up to? Matt: Well, I mean, it’s been a very long time since I was last on the show, so there was summer holidays and trips to Malaysia and Singapore, which is fabulous. Fabulous. But in the recent week I’ve ended up in a position where I’ve got an awful [00:07:00] lot of business development work mostly because most of my colleagues are work...
Transcribe →(334) Interim
Sep 2100:48:47Tap to summarizeWelcome back to the WB 40 Podcast! In this episode (334), Chris and Julia sit down with special guest Duncan Stott, an interim CIO extraordinaire, to really dive into the high-stakes world of interim management. We explore how the role of the CIO has completely changed, especially since COVID brought tech to the forefront and now with the massive focus on AI disruption. Duncan shares a fascinating insight: interims often benefit from a “quirk of human nature” where organisations listen to them more and offer more respect than their own permanent team, because the outsider is brought in with a specific label to perform a defined job. The decision to become an interim is often driven by a crisis, appealing to leaders who have high confidence in their discipline, crave variety, embrace the high-risk/high-reward aspect of the career, and know they can deliver results repeatedly across different sectors. These roles are urgent, sometimes requiring someone to start within two weeks, typically to handle M&A, an ERP project, or fill a gap left when a permanent CIO is “released”. But this career choice is definitely not for the faint-hearted, as Chris points out. Unlike permanent staff who might get 100 days to find their footing, an interim typically has to move incredibly fast, often expected to deliver their initial assessment or view within the first five days. This intense pressure requires interims to constantly focus on succession planning and ensuring they leave the situation ready to be handed over to a “grateful client”. Crucially, success requires balancing speed with empathy, especially since the permanent teams often feel “bruised and wounded or bewildered” by previous organizational changes. Duncan highlights the goal of leaving a “double legacy”: achieving the technical delivery while also coaching and mentoring the permanent team to leave the people in a better state. Sustaining this self-employed path requires tremendous effort: you have to treat it as a business, aggressively self-market, build authentic, respectful relationships with a “good handful” of headhunters, and meticulously prepare for interviews—which interims might practice a dozen times a year to stay sharp. You can find Duncan’s own podcast, The Interim, at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-interim/id1787889240 or https://open.spotify.com/show/6ylPRtkqWOQWrmfyStQWjA?si=137a1966e4cc4efb
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(330) Agentic
Jun 14, 2025Tap to summarizeOn this week’s show, Chris, Lisa and Michelle dive deep into Agentic AI, exploring how it differs from traditional automation and current AI tools. Chris explains that while regular agents follow basic rules (like a thermostat) and AI agents respond to commands (like Alexa), Agentic AI systems work autonomously toward outcomes – they’re proactive, learn from mistakes, and can collaborate with other AI agents. The discussion illustrates how these systems can take on complex, ongoing tasks that would be tedious for humans. The conversation also tackles the significant challenges and risks of Agentic AI implementation. Key concerns include maintaining human accountability when autonomous systems make decisions, the degradation of AI quality due to increased demand and training on AI-generated content, and real-world legal issues like the Workday class action lawsuit involving age discrimination in AI screening.
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(240) Open Sourcery
Oct 17, 2022Tap to summarizeOn this week’s bumper edition, Matt spends a day at the OpenUK Open Source Software thought leadership event. In the course of the show he speaks with Amanda Brock, Jim Zemlin, Val Del Vechhio, Sal Kimmich, Richard Dobson, Mahamed Ali and Nikita Koselev.
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(238) Privacy & Adtech
Sep 19, 2022Tap to summarizeOn this week’s show we talk with Professor David Carroll about the gaps between privacy law and the way in which machine learning techniques are able to target us, and how that’s panning out in courts in Europe.
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