Notes from the field.
Essays and short videos on what we see inside engagements — agility, data, and putting advanced technology to work. No newsletter, no sequence.
EssayAI Is the New Cloud
Notes from NAB 2026: the AI label is this decade's cloud, cloud-native master control is finally having its moment, and the real game is vendors using your storage as lock-in. Store once, index once, and let services compete on what they actually create.
EssayWhat Airline Deregulation Teaches Media About Cost
Media layoffs get framed as strategy failures. Many are also operational failures, built up over years of not asking suppliers to reflect the pressure the industry is under. The airlines that survived deregulation rebuilt their cost structures line by line. Media will have to do the same.
EssayMaking the Process of Making Shows
The bottleneck in most media organizations isn't a lack of ideas. It's a lack of standardization. Treating content creation as a scalable operation, standard pipes, automated pre-creative work, and a monetizable archive, is how you feed infinite demand without an army of manual handholding.
EssayA Dependency Strategy Is Not a Distribution Strategy
YouTube won the TV wars, and public media is right to be there. But a strategy that relies solely on third-party aggregators isn't a distribution strategy, it's a dependency strategy. Owned platforms are the counterbalance, and the technology is finally commoditized enough to build them.
EssayPublic Media Needs a Flywheel
Netflix's 40 straight quarters of growth didn't come from creative instinct. It came from a flywheel operating model where data fuels every stage. Public media is competing on the same battlefield, and it needs its own version of that loop.
EssayFlying Without Instruments
Public television used to run like a 747 flown without instruments, seasoned pilots eyeballing a route they'd flown for decades. That works until the destination changes. To reach digital audiences, you need instrumentation: clear goals, consistent signals, and decision systems that use them.
EssayPublic Media's Real Threat Isn't Defunding
The political fight over public media funding is real, but it's accelerating a deeper vulnerability: a decade-long failure to pivot to a digital-first audience. Primetime viewership has halved in five years while digital stays flat. The fix is a new operating model, not just a bigger streaming budget.
VideoScalability Playbook Ep. 4: Is Enterprise Architecture Still Relevant?
Mike and Debasish are joined by Nick Malik, CEO of CTO Resources, to dig into why enterprise AI projects fail and whether enterprise architecture still earns its place in a modern technology organization.
VideoScalability Playbook Ep. 3: Managing Uncertainty with Composability
Debasish and Mike on navigating market uncertainty with composability: whether AI really takes jobs from developers, how to move when business direction is unclear, and what actually makes a good technologist.
VideoMisconceptions About IT
Mike and Debasish take on common misconceptions about IT and the complexity of navigating enterprise technology — process, design thinking, and change management.
VideoWhat We Learned — Playbook Ep. 2
Lessons from Episode 2 of the Scalability Playbook: the pace of change in tech, the challenge of keeping up, and the rise of agentic AI.
VideoScalability Playbook Ep. 2: Navigating the AI Landscape
The pace of change in AI, what DeepSeek's arrival means for the industry, the promise and risk of agentic AI, and why enterprise architecture still underpins scalability.
VideoThe Dark Alleys of Agentic AI
From the debut episode of the Scalability Playbook: Mike Park on where agentic AI can quietly go wrong.
VideoThe Impact of Eliminating Fact-Checking at Facebook
From the debut episode: Debasish on how Meta's decision to drop fact-checking is likely to ripple through its technology.
VideoBig Technology Winners in 2025
Mike and Debasish call who they expect to come out ahead in technology in 2025.
VideoHow Hyped Is AI?
From the debut episode: Debasish's read on where the noise around AI is headed.
VideoHow Blockchain Will Impact AI
Whatever happened to blockchain? Mike Park on where it still intersects with AI.
VideoThe Coolest Tech We Saw in 2024
Debasish and Mike trade the most interesting things they saw in technology in 2024.
EssayWhen Data Doesn't Drive Your Business
PBS's digital primetime reach is flat while broadcast falls off a cliff. Flat digital is a signal that the data isn't being used to grow the audience.
EssayWhen Data Drives Your Business
Netflix's growth over 40 quarters ran on data-driven decisions — knowing what the audience wants and how to deliver it.
EssayChipotle: A Model of Scalability
Chipotle can assemble 12,582,912 distinct entrees from a fixed menu. That is flexibility at scale — and a template for how to design enterprise capabilities.
EssayBoosting Business Agility: Lessons from the Human Body
A company is like the human body: interconnected systems that must coordinate. Fragmented departments are a body without a nervous system — slow and error-prone.
EssayEmbracing Agility: The Power of Changing Directions
Agility isn't raw speed — it's how fast you can change direction. A race car is quick in a straight line; a pogo stick can pivot. Design your organization to pivot.