OPEN Tech Talks: AI worth Talking| Artificial Intelligence |Tools & Tips

One thing I've noticed after working with enterprise customers for more than 20 years is this. When AI projects fail, people usually blame the model. They blame ChatGPT. They blame the vendor. They blame the technology. But after sitting in hundreds of customer meetings, I rarely found AI itself to be the problem. The real problem was hidden somewhere else. The data was scattered. Nobody knew whic...

AI has changed the conversation. Not because machines suddenly became intelligent, but because millions of ordinary people suddenly gained access to something that felt extraordinary. I still remember when ChatGPT first became available. Like many people, I opened it with curiosity. I wasn't looking for shortcuts. I wanted to understand what was actually happening. Every week since then, I have sp...

For the last two years, almost every conversation in technology has been about AI. New models. New tools. New agents. New automation. And honestly, I understand the excitement. I've spent more than 20 years working in technology, cloud, AI, and enterprise transformation. I've seen many waves of innovation. But this one feels different. Yet something has been bothering me. Every conference I attend...

For most of my career, technology felt predictable. A new software platform arrived. A new programming language appeared. A new cloud service changed how we deploy applications. Every wave of technology helped people work faster. But AI feels different. Over the last two years, I have watched professionals across industries experience something I have never seen before. People are not simply using...

For many years, technology projects were relatively predictable. A new system was implemented, a process was automated, or an application was modernized. The challenges were technical, but the path was usually clear. Then Generative AI arrived. I still remember some of the early conversations with technology leaders. Almost every discussion had the same underlying question: "How quickly can we ado...

One thing I have realized after years of working in AI, enterprise systems, ERP, and now Generative AI, is that technology alone never changes industries. What changes industries is understanding people. The problem today is not a shortage of content. There is no shortage of tools. It is not even a shortage of AI models. The real problem is relevance. Why do people ignore most advertisements? Why...

One of the biggest shifts I'm seeing right now is not only how AI is changing work, but how it is changing the way we test ideas. In the past, if a founder, researcher, product manager, or strategist wanted to validate an idea, the process was slow. Build a hypothesis. Run surveys. Wait for responses. Clean the data. Analyze it. Then maybe discover the question itself was not strong enough. Now, w...

Over the past year, something has become very clear. AI is not just a technology shift. It is a leadership test . Across enterprises, startups, and even governments, the same pattern keeps repeating: Leaders are being pushed to act fast Teams are overwhelmed with change And yet, clarity is missing From the outside, it looks like a technology race. But from inside organizations, it feels very diffe...

80% of enterprise AI projects never reach production. After two decades helping enterprises adopt new technology, Kashif Manzoor breaks down the five failure modes killing enterprise AI initiatives, introduces the GenAI Maturity Framework, and shares three questions every CTO should ask before approving their next AI project. Episode #: 185 In this episode, you'll learn: The 5 failure modes killin...

Over the last couple of years, most of my conversations around AI have been about capability. How fast models are improving. How agents are becoming more autonomous. How enterprises can adopt GenAI safely. How teams can redesign workflows around intelligence. But this week, I found myself thinking about something deeper. Not what AI can do. But what does AI  cost? And I don't just mean money. I me...

      Episode # 183 Today's Guest : Adriel Desautels, Founder & CEO, Netragard Adriel is a leader in cybersecurity with over 20 years of experience. Adriel founded Secure Network Operations and the SNOsoft Research Team, whose vulnerability research helped shape modern responsible disclosure practices. He later launched Netragard, pioneering Realistic Threat Penetration Testing, which he now call...

Welcome to Open Tech Talks. Quick note before we start, thank you. The messages, the feedback, the "keep this practical" reminders… they've been incredibly helpful. Open Tech Talks has always been a weekly sandbox for technology insights, experimentation, and inspiration—with one objective: learn, test, and share what's real. Now, a personal moment from this week. A few days ago, I sat with a busi...

This week, I've been thinking about something slightly uncomfortable. Last weekend, I was reviewing one of my older architecture diagrams from five years ago. A cloud-native migration plan I was deeply proud of at the time. It was clean. Structured. Scalable. And then I asked myself: If I were to rebuild this today in the era of generative AI… Would I build it the same way? The honest answer? No....

    Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Kara Williams 01:53 Kara's Coaching Journey and Entrepreneurial Background 03:20 The Importance of a Simplified Tech Stack 05:51 Common Mistakes in Tech Selection 07:09 Exploring AI in Business 08:16 Creating the Proof First GPT 10:47 Learning and Executing with AI 12:04 Common Challenges Faced by Entrepreneurs 13:50 Guiding New Entrepreneurs 14:59 Misconceptions...

Welcome back to Open Tech Talks , and thank you, genuinely, for the continued support, messages, and thoughtful feedback. This show has been running for years now, and what keeps it meaningful is the shared curiosity of this community. We're in a very different phase of the AI journey. The conversation has clearly moved past "Can we build this?" Now it's about "Should we build this?" , "Is this su...

January has a very particular energy. The holidays are behind us. The inbox is slowly filling up again. Calendars are waking up. And there's always this short window, just a few quiet days, where it feels like everything could still go in a different direction. I've been thinking a lot during this pause. Over the last couple of years, AI and large language models have gone from experiments to expe...

In this episode of Open Tech Talks , host Kashif Manzoor sits down with Bobbie Chen , a product manager working at the intersection of fraud prevention, cybersecurity, and AI agent identification in Silicon Valley. As generative AI and large language models rapidly move from experimentation into real products, organizations are discovering a new reality. The same tools that make building software...

In this episode of Open Tech Talks, I sit down with Professor Russell Van Brocklin, a New York State Senate-funded researcher, known as "The Dyslexic Professor," to unpack a very different way of thinking about AI, problem-solving, and dyslexia. Russell's work sits at the intersection of cognitive enhancement and AI integration . He shows how an "overactive" front part of the dyslexic brain (word...

In this week's episode of Open Tech Talks , host Kashif Manzoor takes you through a convenient, real-world guide to building your first  AI workflow, even if you are not technical. After last week's conversation (Episode 175) with Rose G. Loops on Ethical AI, Human Safety & AI Identity Protection, this episode returns to the foundations of GenAI adoption for professionals and enterprise teams . It...

In this episode of Open Tech Talks , I sit down with Rose G. Loops, a trained social worker turned AI developer, ethics advocate, and author, to explore a side of AI that most enterprise conversations skip: human-AI attachment, ethical deployment, and protecting both AI identity and human safety . Rose joins us from Los Angeles and shares how she was unknowingly placed into a human–AI attachment e...

This episode is for entrepreneurs, small businesses, solopreneurs, creators, and consultants who feel overwhelmed by AI and don't know where to start. You'll learn how a completely non-technical founder used Generative AI to transform two businesses, pivot her career, and build AI-driven systems without writing a single line of code. In this episode of Open Tech Talks , host Kashif Manzoor speaks...

Building Career Resilience in the Age of Generative AI Every week, we explore how AI and technology are changing the way we work and learn. This episode dives into the question I get asked the most, How is Generative AI changing every career? Let's unpack why it matters, how it's shifting roles and skills, and what you can do to lead this change instead of chasing it In this solo episode of  Open...

Open Tech Talks welcomes Lirone Glikman, author of The Super Connectors Playbook , global speaker, and relationship-building strategist. We dig into practical ways founders, students, and leaders can build authentic relationships , present with clarity , and sustain a personal brand without sounding salesy, especially now that AI makes everyone's writing look the same. What's inside Online vs. in-...

Episode 171 of Open Tech Talks brings a powerful conversation with Marc Pickren , the turnaround CEO behind multiple successful SaaS revivals and now the driving force at Springbot . Host Kashif Manzoor explores how today's businesses can stay resilient, profitable, and human-centered amid the rapid evolution of AI and automation. Marc has spent the last decade reviving software companies between...

In this episode of Open Tech Talks , host Kashif Manzoor sits down with Emily McSherry , founder and CEO of Advise. This career development platform  helps university students discover real-world careers through authentic video interviews. Emily shares her journey from recruitment and sales training to launching Advise, a platform now used by leading universities to bridge the gap between classroo...