PODCAST · business
The Forward Slash Podcast
by Callibrity
Brought to you by Callibrity, The Forward Slash dives into the world of software engineering, digital transformation, and the future of technology, featuring insights from the people who live and breathe it every day.
Episodes
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/ai output: is a sea of same good enough
Everyone has the same AI now — so what’s left to compete on? UX researcher Colleen Pellissier and James Carman dig in on this week’s Forward Slash. Her read, after eight years studying what people do versus what they say: AI nails the themes but parks on the safe center line — a sea of same — and...
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/software factories: the governance gap nobody closed.
What happens when your engineers stop writing code and just tell the machines what to build? That’s a software factory, and in 2026 every IT leader is being pushed to stand one up. Adam Barrett returns to The Forward Slash for a record third time and calls it what it is: vibe coding that finally...
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/AI spend: why it still doesn't know your business
Your AI budget keeps going up. The business feels about the same. Michael Schank has a theory about why: AI trained on the whole internet, and it still knows nothing about your company. He calls that the context gap, and it's where most enterprise AI quietly stalls before it ever ships. We get…
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/AI speed: faster code, slower business
Your engineers are shipping code faster than ever with AI — so why hasn't your time-to-market moved? Thanos Diacakis's answer: the bottleneck just moved with it. The fractional CTO who led Uber's JUMP bikes integration joins us to discuss why faster code doesn't mean a faster business — the real...
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/AI's trust problem: let it work, not decide
Loving a technology and trusting it are two very different things — and Tamara Laine would know. She's the founder of MPWR, where her team builds policy-bound, audit-ready AI for highly regulated financial-services work. She joins James Carman to get specific: on the highest-stakes calls — like...
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/AI's power problem: rethinking the chip it runs on
Your AI costs keep climbing, and the power bill climbs with them. The usual answer is just "buy more compute." But what if the real ceiling is the 80-year-old design inside every chip? Steve Brunker, a 30-year enterprise CIO now CEO of Brain CA Technologies, joins us to explain why a fruit fly…
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/AI tokens: stop paying to ask twice
Your AI bill went up this year, so why does it feel like you're paying to ask the same question twice? Ilan Man's fix: stop using AI everywhere and start using it on purpose. The founder of Paradox Machines and former data lead at Squarespace joins James Carman with a test any leader can run. Let...
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/ai slop: writing got cheap, reviewing didn't
Who's actually reviewing the open source code your business runs on? Rich Bowen — Apache Software Foundation member since the late '90s, six terms on its board, now an open source strategist at AWS — tells host James Carman that maintainers are drowning in AI-generated pull requests that fix...
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/prove it or park it: AI's ROI reckoning
Nearly every company is "using AI" now — but for most, it still isn't showing up in the P&L, and boards have noticed. Todd James says that gap is a leadership problem, not a technology one. The former Chief Data & Technology Officer at 84.51° and head of AI at Kroger — now advising leaders…
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/agents on the payroll: who your AI is and what it's allowed to do
When an AI agent starts writing and shipping code inside your platform, who is it — and what is it allowed to do? Host James Carman sits down with Ajay Chankramath — CTO Platform Engineering Consulting, and former head of platform engineering at ThoughtWorks — on the questions IT leaders are...
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/seats for everyone: the AI rollout that quietly burns your budget
Your company just gave everyone a Claude or ChatGPT seat — so why isn't the ROI showing up? Host James Carman and YNDR founder Chris Thomas break down why handing out AI licenses isn't a strategy, why tokenmaxxing and prompt engineers won't deliver results, and how homegrown AI agents you…
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/vibe coded, now what?: the cost that comes later
Cancel the SaaS contract and vibe code it yourself? In this episode, host James Carman talks with Kendra Ramirez, CEO of KR Digital and a global Claude ambassador who's been building bots since 2018, about where AI actually earns its keep for business leaders. They find the line between a fast...
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/vibe coded, now what?: the cost that comes later
Cancel the SaaS contract and vibe code it yourself? In this episode, host James Carman talks with Kendra Ramirez, CEO of KR Digital and a global Claude ambassador who's been building bots since 2018, about where AI actually earns its keep for business leaders. They find the line between a fast...
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/running AI on Kubernetes: what actually works
If you're running AI on Kubernetes, you've probably hit this question: does the cluster actually help with inference, or is it just where everything ends up? Host James Carman gets a straight answer from William Morgan — the engineer who coined "service mesh," created Linkerd, and now leads...
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/hotfix: AI just became infrastructure — now what?
June 2026: the month AI stopped being a tool and became actual infrastructure. Covering the 19-day Fable 5 regulatory blackout, GLM 5.2's un-censorable open weights, and the supply chain attacks that made self-hosting the security team's problem. The /hotfix from The Forward Slash — a short-form...
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/the uncomfortable middle: ai without the layoffs
What if AI adoption didn't have to mean layoffs? Diane Weaver, co-founder and COO of Baryons, joins James to explore the "uncomfortable middle" of enterprise AI — the gap where jobs are being reshaped but new ones haven't arrived yet. They dig into why top-down AI mandates breed shadow work and...
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/ready, fire, aim: the AI tool trap
Most companies are buying AI tools before they've decided what they're for. James Carman, Callibrity CTO, and Jason Swafford, founder of Drag6, make the straight-talking case for the other way around. From there they cover why "failing" at AI is often just R&D in disguise, how to reframe shadow…
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/wave, not bubble: cutting through the ai noise
Bubble about to burst, or a wave you can't sit out? In Part 2, James and Sid Dutta go from technical to strategic: why AI is a wave, not a bubble; the "harvest now, decrypt later" threat and what's just hype; the "Kardashian effect" drowning real expertise on LinkedIn; and why you won't compete...
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/compliant isn't secure: data protection in the age of ai agents
Your AI agent inherits your permissions. It doesn't inherit your intent — and that's the gap nobody's watching. James sits down with Sid Dutta — founder of Privaclave and a 24-year data protection executive (Amex, Worldpay, Microsoft Gaming) — for a two-part series on why being compliant doesn't...
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/pilot purgatory: why your ai initiative isn't showing roi
Leadership mandated AI. Now they want the return — and your pilots have nothing to show for it. James sits down with Bob White, a 20-year ed-tech and SaaS operator (Cengage, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, VPG) who now advises companies on AI adoption, for an honest teardown of why most enterprise AI...
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/hotfix: the week ai got real
Five AI stories from the same week. One thesis: AI just moved from pilot to production. The first /hotfix from The Forward Slash — a new short-form read from James Carman on the AI news engineering leaders actually need to track. ~20 minutes covering EY and Microsoft's billion-dollar...
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/apocaloptimist: ai leadership in 2026
Is your AI strategy replacing people, or amplifying them? James sits down with Mike Hruska — founder of Baryons, former NIST material scientist, and TEDx speaker on what magic teaches leaders — for a human-first tour of AI leadership in 2026: the two kinds of executives this market is creating…
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/ai agents: more steak, less sizzle
Is your enterprise AI actively shipping, or just sitting pretty in a deck? James sits down with John Capobianco, head of AI and Developer Relations at Itential and former senior network architect for Canada's House of Commons, for an engineering leader's tour of what's actually shipping in 2026:...
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/agent guardrails: you can't blame the bot
The hardest question in enterprise AI isn't "can we build agents?" — it's "how do we let them act on our behalf without losing the company?" In Part 2 of our conversation with John Willis, co-author of The DevOps Handbook, James gets concrete about what agent guardrails actually look like in...
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/ai agents: don't be the next knight capital
The AI agent horror stories your vendors aren't telling you — and what to do before they happen to you. John Willis, co-author of the DevOps Handbook and one of the original pioneers of the DevOps movement, joins James for part one of a two-part conversation on what autonomous AI agents are...
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/enterprise ai: why your agents can't run without guardrails
Is your enterprise ready to run AI agents in production — or just in demos? Logan Kelly, co-founder and CEO of Waxell AI, joins us to explore why deploying autonomous AI agents at enterprise scale is a fundamentally different challenge than building them. From runaway costs and unpredictable…
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/tech leadership: why climate tech is now a cfo conversation
Is your biggest cost reduction opportunity hiding in your energy bill? Josh Dorfman, CEO of Supercool and climate entrepreneur, joins us to explore why the smartest companies have stopped treating clean energy as a sustainability initiative — and started treating it as a CFO conversation. They...
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/survive the spike: scaling systems for millions of users
What does it take to survive a 20x traffic spike? Part two concludes our chat with Matthew McDole. This week, he shares how Yum! Brands scales systems for Super Bowl Sunday—plus lessons on performance, resilience, and AI in engineering.
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/engineering growth: build skills, not titles
How do you grow your engineering career without chasing titles? This week, we have a two-parter! Matthew McDole joins James Carman to break down platform engineering, build vs. buy decisions, and why working on the right problems matters more than promotions.
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/skills shelf life: the two year problem
How do you keep your workforce competitive when the skills they built two years ago are already expiring? Ben Tasker leads an AI academy upskilling 36,000 employees in the public utility sector. This week, he joins us to unpack why 95% of organizations are getting AI adoption wrong — and why the...
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/AI governance: speed without exposure
As enterprise AI adoption accelerates, how do you move fast without introducing new security and compliance risk? Cordell Robinson, CEO of Brownstone Consulting Firm, joins James to explore why AI governance and cybersecurity can’t be an afterthought. They break down the risks behind shadow AI,...
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/creative intelligence: scaling influence
What happens when AI becomes better than the average designer? This week, Hikari Senju, founder and CEO of Omneky, joins James to explore how generative AI is transforming advertising from an art form into a measurable, automated system. They unpack how AI is redesigning enterprise workflows, why...
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/AI development: velocity without fragility
As AI accelerates software development, how do you keep complexity from accelerating with it? This week, Mike Spiegel of SpotOn joins us to examine how platform engineering must evolve in an AI-driven development era. As code velocity increases, testing discipline, reliability, and governance...
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/product adoption: the design advantage
Why do so many well-funded products still struggle with adoption? Mark Brehaut, Head of Design at Clair, joins us to unpack how design directly impacts activation, retention, and business performance — especially in high-stakes industries like FinTech. From onboarding friction and time-to-value…
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/shadow AI: bringing it into the light
If AI is already embedded in your teams’ workflows, are you leading it — or reacting to it? This week, Holly Laiveling, CTO at FEG Investment Advisors, shares what enterprise AI adoption really looks like inside complex, regulated environments. As generative AI moves from experiment to everyday...
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/platform engineering: the AI inflection point
If AI is the future of infrastructure, why does production still feel experimental? Joel Vasallo, Senior Director of Platform Engineering at TAG (The Aspen Group), joins us to explore what AI adoption actually looks like inside real production environments. From agent gateways and MCP servers to...
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/AI productivity: effort vs outcomes
What happens when AI adoption becomes a leadership challenge, instead of a technology change? This week, James sits down with Nikki Barua, CEO and co-founder of Flipwork, to explore why AI progress often stalls even after real investment. They unpack the growing gap between executive expectations...
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/leadership: escaping constant firefighting
When everything feels urgent, how do you make progress instead of just reacting? In this episode, we talk with Erkang Zheng, founder of JupiterOne and Ariso, about why so many leaders get stuck in reactive mode and what it takes to build systems that hold up under pressure. They explore proactive...
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/AI impact: still waiting
If AI is so powerful, why hasn’t it changed your organization the way you expected? In this episode, James sits down with strategy advisor Justin Trombold to unpack why GenAI progress feels slower than promised and why the biggest barriers usually aren’t technical. They explore what…
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/AI analytics: the adoption problem
Why do AI analytics tools look impressive… but still don’t get used? James Carman talks with Pete Hunt, CEO of Dagster Labs and one of the original engineers behind React, about what it really takes for AI-powered analytics to stick. They unpack why adoption is often the biggest challenge (not...
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/production-ready AI: the prototype trap
If AI can build a prototype in a day, why does shipping still take months? In this episode, James Carman is joined by David Arenas, a senior technology leader across industrial automation, fintech, and global data platforms. Together, they unpack why AI is accelerating development, but also…
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/AI on AI: a reality check with chatGPT
What did we actually learn about AI this year? To close out 2025, James interviews an unexpected guest: ChatGPT. They talk honestly about what teams got wrong, what actually improved, and why AI’s biggest wins came from small workflow shifts — not sweeping transformation. They also dig into...
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/human-centered design: fixing broken systems
What if the systems we rely on every day fail because they were never designed for how work actually happens? This week, we sit down with product design leader and founder Sharmeen Aqeel to explore how human-centered design and AI are reshaping how products get built, decisions get made, and...
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/AI engineering: shipping after sundown
What happens when shipping software is no longer limited by human hours? This week, Max Heckel — CTO of Ariso and creator of the open-source AI orchestrator “Ivan” — breaks down how his team literally codes while they sleep. Max shares how AI coding agents can tackle tasks overnight, open PRs by...
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/transformation: the power of simplicity
What if the real key to transformation isn’t more technology, but more humanity? This week, Nora Osman joins James to explore why simplicity, trust, and human experience are the real engines of organizational change. From zero-to-hero moments to the “red carpet in, red carpet out” philosophy…
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/AI agents: keeping systems (and costs) in check
Can your AI agents survive production AND your budget? In this episode, Yaron Schneider, CTO and co-founder of Diagrid and creator of the foundational open-source tools Dapr and KEDA, joins James to unpack what it takes to build AI agents that are durable, cost-aware and enterprise-ready.
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/AI strategy: back to business basics
In this episode of The Forward Slash, James talks with Michael Pompey, AI Evangelist at Arrow Electronics, about the messy middle between innovation and impact. They discuss lessons from mission-driven organizations, the danger of chasing hype, and why the next evolution of transformation will be...
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/outcome engineering: the end of feature factories
What if your transformation plan is the thing holding you back? This week, James welcomes Carol Houle, CEO of Inspire Digital Consulting, to dive into the mindset shift from rigid planning to adaptive execution. They explore how to connect OKRs to customer value, replace feature wish lists with...
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/AI adoption: from FOMO to fundamentals
Has AI finally met its moment of truth? This week, James sits down with Jim Spignardo, Director of Cloud Strategy & AI Enablement at ProArch, to explore how enterprises are moving from curiosity to competence with AI. They talk data, security, productivity, and the shift from “let’s try AI” to...
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/digital health: rewriting the rules of care
What if AI could hear what doctors can’t? This week James welcomes, Dr. Morris Nguyen, founder and CEO of Predicate, to explore how AI is transforming healthcare by combining patient voice and vital signs to detect critical illness early. Morris shares his journey from critical care physician to...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Brought to you by Callibrity, The Forward Slash dives into the world of software engineering, digital transformation, and the future of technology, featuring insights from the people who live and breathe it every day.
HOSTED BY
Callibrity
CATEGORIES
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How many episodes does The Forward Slash Podcast have?
The Forward Slash Podcast currently has 94 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Forward Slash Podcast about?
Brought to you by Callibrity, The Forward Slash dives into the world of software engineering, digital transformation, and the future of technology, featuring insights from the people who live and breathe it every day.
How often does The Forward Slash Podcast release new episodes?
The Forward Slash Podcast has 94 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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You can listen to The Forward Slash Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Forward Slash Podcast?
The Forward Slash Podcast is created and hosted by Callibrity.
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