What's Up with Tech?

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Marketing isn’t “soft” when you can tie it to the numbers that run the business. Evan sits down with Meghan Keough, a modern, business-first CMO with decades in enterprise tech, to unpack how marketing leaders can operate at the intersection of brand, revenue, and transformation without losing the plot. We get specific about the metrics that matter most in B2B go-to-market strategy: pipeline by source, cost per pipeline, win rates, sales velocity, and the margin impact behind the dashboard.

From there, we zoom out to the reality every team is facing: constant change with imperfect information. Meghan shares a practical approach to transformation that favors fast learning over perfect plans, plus the discipline of revisiting decisions, running experiments, and being ruthless about what’s actually working. If you’re trying to modernize demand generation or reposition a company upmarket, you’ll hear why quick wins build credibility and why foundations still matter even in a world moving at AI speed.

AI comes up as more than a shiny tool problem. We talk marketing operating models and end-to-end workflows, where AI can streamline steps and even enable more autonomous execution. That leads to a candid look at martech stack complexity and why many organizations are at a consolidation tipping point, along with a clear way to balance experimentation versus scaling: dedicate a small slice of quarterly capacity to pilots, then operationalize the winners across the team.

If you want fewer silos, better alignment with sales and product, and a marketing strategy that holds up under revenue scrutiny, this conversation delivers. Subscribe for more, share this with a growth-minded leader, and leave a review with the one marketing metric you think deserves more attention.
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6G is closer than most people think, and the biggest surprise is that the headline might not be “faster.” We sit down with Mats Karlsson from Ericsson to talk about the move toward physical AI, where networks help systems sense and act in the real world. When robots, vehicles, and digital twins depend on connectivity for safety and performance, “more bandwidth” stops being the product and guaranteed outcomes become the real promise.

We unpack what outcome based services actually mean in practice: collision avoidance, factory uptime, immersive experience quality, and other measurable KPIs that enterprises can justify paying for. That naturally leads to the toughest question for telecom operators and service providers: monetization. Matt explains why the business model has to evolve along with the network, translating intent into offerings, pricing, and even revenue sharing in real time, while still being able to prove the network can fulfill what it sells.

From there, we get practical about AI in telecom, OSS/BSS transformation, and where ROI shows up today. The message is blunt: don’t start with AI, start with trusted data. We talk about common OSS and BSS pain points like siloed datasets, uneven data quality, and limited end to end visibility, plus real examples of value like revenue assurance, billing anomaly detection, predictive operations, and faster root cause analysis. We also dig into agentic AI and why industry collaboration through TM Forum and open standards is key to making autonomous networks work at scale and unlock new revenue streams, not just cost savings.

If you care about 6G, autonomous networking, AI in telecom, and the future of outcome based connectivity, hit subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review. What outcome would you pay for first: uptime, safety, or experience quality?
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Pool season is back and so is the annual question: why does keeping water clean still feel so manual? We sit down with Patrick from Beatbot to talk about what changes when a robotic pool cleaner stops being a “dumb” tethered machine and becomes a cordless AI pool robot that can map your pool, plan an efficient route, and adapt when it hits real-world obstacles like ladders and tight corners.

We dig into what modern smart pool cleaning actually looks like: cleaning the floor, climbing walls up to the waterline, scrubbing that ring that never goes away, and skimming the surface for floating debris. Patrick also explains how app control and scheduling fit into everyday pool maintenance, plus why sensors matter more than buzzwords when you just want consistent results and fewer headaches. If you’ve been comparing options for a robotic pool vacuum, this conversation helps you separate must-have features from marketing.

Then we look forward. Beatbot’s newest direction includes a dock that can flush debris out of the robot’s filter basket into a larger base, aiming to eliminate one of the most annoying parts of pool ownership. We also talk about the longer-term future of smart home integration, weather-aware cleaning, solar-friendly charging timing, and how pool service pros can use robots to work more efficiently while they focus on water testing and chemicals. Subscribe, share this with a pool owner, and leave a review with the feature you most want in the next generation of pool robots.
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Autonomy in telecom sounds like a pure technology race until you look at where operators actually get stuck. It turns out the models aren't the bottleneck. The humans around them are.
We're joined by @Ibrahim Eldeftar, who leads Cognitive Software and Services at Ericsson, to unpack the real path from partial automation to Level 4 autonomous networks, and why the hardest part is often the human system around the tools.
Ibrahim walks us through the two hurdle categories every CSP runs into. The first is the technology foundation: multi-vendor support, scalable AI platforms, data management, deployment at scale. The second is the organizational side: change management, upskilling, new ways of working, and breaking down silos that have been cemented in place for decades. The industry keeps underestimating that second category, even when the AI roadmap looks finished on paper. Ibrahim explains why, and what it actually takes to move an operator forward.
From there we get concrete. rApps and a service management and orchestration platform can replace the fragmented automation stack most operators are living with today, giving teams a common SDK, consistent interfaces, and an ecosystem model where operators build apps themselves or source them from partners. Ibrahim shares real proof points from live networks, including modernizing worst cell hunting with AI anomaly detection and root cause analysis, and taming massive MIMO complexity where the search space is simply too large for humans to tune in any reasonable timeframe.
Then we get into what changes when GenAI and agentic coordination enter the picture on public cloud with AWS. Natural language "talk to the network" interfaces. Orchestrating dozens of RApps at once. A shift toward RApps as a service and SaaS delivery, where operators pay for outcomes rather than software licenses.
Subscribe for more deep dives on telco AI and network automation, share this one with a colleague who's living the automation grind, and leave a review if it landed. And think about this while you listen. What would you automate first if you could truly trust the outcome?

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Identity is where the fight is moving fastest, and RSAC 2026 proved it. Fresh off the show floor, we sit down with Jim Taylor, President, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at RSA Security, to break down what’s truly changing in identity security as AI reshapes both the threat landscape and the defenses enterprises rely on.

We dig into why “sovereign” and “deploy anywhere” identity deployments are suddenly mission critical. Cloud convenience can quietly trade away resiliency and control, and recent disruptions show how quickly authentication outages can become business outages. Jim explains what customers are asking for now: the same identity platform capabilities whether it runs as SaaS, in a private cloud, on-prem, or in highly constrained environments where failure is not an option.

Then we get practical about modern identity attacks beyond phishing. If passkeys and phishing resistant MFA harden the front door, attackers pivot to the session with token theft, adversary-in-the-middle scams, and help desk bypass that exploits people and process. We also explore agentic AI and the rise of non-human identities, including how to inventory agents, set entitlements, and apply identity governance so “mini workers” don’t inherit unlimited permissions.

We close with a grounded take on passwordless authentication as a step-by-step journey and what we hope the industry looks like by RSAC 2027 and 2028. If this helped you rethink IAM strategy, subscribe, share with your security team, and leave a review. What identity risk are you most worried about right now?
The Climb with Cherie Clonan
The Climb is a podcast for people building something meaningful and finding their..
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