This month I am hitting 15 Years at Morgan Stanley – and What a Tech Journey It’s Been 🚀! – and looking back, it’s hard to believe how far technology has leapt forward in that time.

When I started, IT was a world of:

• Data centers you could walk through – racks humming away like the heart of the firm.
• Applications that lived firmly on-prem, with deployment cycles measured in months.
• Monolithic codebases, waterfall project plans, and coffee-fueled overnight releases.

Today, that world looks completely different:

• Cloud-first strategies and hybrid architectures are the norm, shrinking deployment times from months to minutes.
• Microservices and APIs have replaced monoliths, enabling agility and rapid innovation.
• AI, automation, and advanced analytics are embedded into everyday workflows.
• DevOps and CI/CD pipelines keep delivery continuous, and teams closer to the business.
• Zero Trust security models and next-gen encryption protect assets in a more complex threat landscape.

In short, the pace of change hasn’t just been fast – it’s been exponential. The tools, the practices, the expectations, and even the definition of “possible” have all evolved.

I’m grateful to have witnessed – and contributed to – this transformation alongside incredible colleagues, mentors, and innovators. Here’s to the next chapter, where the only constant will be change.

In tech and innovation circles, two terms often pop up in early-stage project discussions: Proof of Concept (PoC) and Proof of Value (PoV). They sound similar, and they often get conflated, but they serve very different purposes—and knowing when to focus on one over the other can save you time, money, and credibility.

Let’s unpack the differences and ask the big question: should you always focus on the latter?

The Basics: What’s the Difference?

Proof of Concept (PoC)

A PoC answers one question: “Can we build it?”
It’s a limited-scope experiment to demonstrate that a certain approach or technology can work in principle.

• Goal: Feasibility
• Scope: Narrow, often technical
• Output: Evidence that the idea is technically achievable
• Example: Testing if your AI model can detect anomalies in raw sensor data with 80% accuracy.

Proof of Value (PoV)

A PoV answers a different question: “Should we build it?”
It evaluates not only feasibility but also impact—business value, user adoption, operational fit, and ROI.

• Goal: Viability and business justification
• Scope: Broader, often includes real-world conditions
• Output: Evidence that implementing this solution will produce measurable value
• Example: Demonstrating that deploying the anomaly detection AI in the manufacturing pipeline reduces downtime by 15%, saving $1.2M annually.

Why Proof of Concept Often Feels Like a Safety Blanket

Organizations love PoCs because they feel low-risk.

• Technical teams get to explore without committing to production.
• Stakeholders see quick progress in the form of demos.
• Budgets stay contained (at least initially).

But here’s the trap:
A successful PoC doesn’t guarantee adoption, ROI, or even relevance. You can have a technically brilliant solution that solves a problem nobody cares enough to pay for. The graveyard of corporate innovation is full of “great ideas” that died because they never made the jump from possible to valuable.

Why Proof of Value Matters More in Most Cases

When the goal is to secure investment, scale adoption, or align with strategic priorities, a PoV is the stronger currency.
A PoV forces you to:

1. Quantify impact – Tie your work to measurable business outcomes.
2. Align with stakeholders – Solve problems they actually want solved.
3. Test under real-world conditions – No more lab-only scenarios.

In other words, it moves you beyond the cool tech demo and into justified investment territory.

When to Choose One Over the Other

You shouldn’t always skip the PoC. There are times it’s the right move:

• High technical uncertainty: You don’t yet know if the problem is solvable with available tools.
• Early R&D: The primary goal is learning, not selling the idea internally.
• Regulated industries: You must prove safety or compliance before evaluating ROI.

But if your technology is already mature or the technical path is well-understood, jumping straight to a PoV can accelerate time-to-value and prevent “PoC purgatory.”

The Hybrid Approach

One effective strategy: treat the PoC as a technical milestone within a larger PoV initiative.

• Phase 1 (PoC): De-risk the technology in a controlled environment.
• Phase 2 (PoV): Test the solution in a real-world scenario with agreed-upon success metrics—financial, operational, or customer-related.

This way, you keep the agility of a PoC but ensure you never lose sight of the ultimate goal: delivering value.

The Bottom Line

If the outcome you’re after is buy-in, budget, and impact, the conversation should center around Proof of Value. Proof of Concept answers “Can we?”—which is important—but Proof of Value answers “Should we?” and “Will it matter?”

In a world where ideas are cheap but execution and adoption are everything, focusing on value ensures your efforts translate into real-world impact—not just another abandoned pilot.

Recently, I received news that’s a career milestone for many innovators: my patent was officially granted.

It’s one of those moments that comes with both a quiet satisfaction and a loud inner “Yes!” — the kind of achievement that validates countless hours of brainstorming, testing, scrapping ideas, and starting over.

Why Patents Matter

A granted patent is more than a framed certificate or a line on LinkedIn. It represents:

• Recognition of originality — proof that your work is not only novel but also non-obvious in the eyes of a rigorous review process.
• Protection of investment — the legal shield that ensures you can develop, commercialize, or license your invention without immediate fear of copycats.
• Negotiating power — in partnerships, acquisitions, and funding discussions, patents often tilt the table in your favor.
• A public contribution to knowledge — each patent is also a published document, expanding the collective library of human innovation.

The Dark Side of Patents

As with many systems designed for good, there’s a flip side.
The same protections that safeguard genuine inventors can also be exploited:

• Patent trolling — entities that acquire patents not to innovate, but to threaten lawsuits and extract settlements.
• Overly broad claims — stifling legitimate competition and slowing industry progress.
• Barrier to entry — smaller innovators may struggle to navigate or afford the legal defenses needed when confronted by well-funded adversaries.

These abuses distort the original intent of the patent system, turning a tool for encouraging innovation into a weapon for protecting monopoly or generating revenue without value creation.

The Responsibility of a Patent Holder

Getting a patent isn’t just an end—it’s the start of a new phase.
Holding one means balancing two roles:

1. Guardian of your idea — ensuring your work is used fairly and in ways aligned with your vision.
2. Contributor to the ecosystem — resisting the temptation to hoard ideas and instead finding ways for your work to inspire and enable others.

If used ethically, patents can be catalysts for collaboration, licensing opportunities, and the kind of cross-pollination of ideas that drives whole industries forward.

Final Thoughts

A patent grant is a privilege, not just a prize. It’s recognition of past work, but also a call to future stewardship.
I’m proud of this milestone—and equally aware of the responsibility that comes with it. Because innovation thrives not when ideas are locked away, but when they are protected enough to be shared, built upon, and turned into something even greater.

Request for Presenters!

Our 2-day Microsoft Tech Conference on Nov 17–18 isn’t just any conference — it’s the Microsoft Ignite: New York Edition 🎉.

Yes… it’s running the same week as Microsoft Ignite — on purpose. Why?
Because we’re bringing the Ignite energy straight to New York City, so you can:

🤝 Connect in person with fellow devs, IT pros, and business innovators
🎤 Learn from MVPs, product teams, and real-world practitioners
🚀 Go deep on AI, Azure, Office365, and all things Microsoft — from 100-level intros to 400-level deep dives
💬 Swap ideas over coffee instead of just emojis (though we still love emojis 😉)

We’re looking for speakers for breakout sessions, panels, and customer stories.

Whether you’re showcasing a Copilot success story, building magic on Azure AI, or running a Power Platform moonshot, now’s your chance to take the stage.

📍 Where: New York City
📅 When: Nov 17–18, 2025
🎯 Submit your session now → Don’t miss your shot to be part of the first-ever Ignite NYC!
🔥 The call for presenters is open.
💬 DM me if you’ve got an question or send this to a friend who needs to be here.

In the age of AI, one of the most underrated but increasingly essential skills is prompt writing. Whether you’re a developer using GitHub Copilot, a designer collaborating with generative tools, or a business professional trying to extract insights from a language model—how you ask determines what you get.

Yet many still treat prompts as throwaway one-liners, assuming that the AI will just “know what they mean.” Spoiler alert: it won’t—not unless you tell it well.

🧠 Prompting Is a Skill—Not Magic

Just as you wouldn’t expect to write perfect code, deliver a flawless presentation, or master Excel formulas without some effort and feedback, you shouldn’t expect high-quality AI outputs from generic, undercooked prompts.

Writing good prompts is not a one-and-done affair. It’s iterative. It’s intentional. And it’s teachable.

Think of it this way:

That transformation didn’t happen by luck. It happened by crafting a better prompt—with tone, style, narrative, and intention baked in.

🔨 Sharpen the Tool, Sharpen the Results

Start small, but practice often:

• Add context: Who is your audience? What’s the purpose?
• Be specific: What style, format, or tone are you after?
• Include examples: Just like giving a junior teammate a reference implementation.
• Iterate: Run it, refine it, and rerun it. Just like debugging code.

Over time, your prompts will go from vague to vivid—from “meh” to masterpiece.

🎤 You Practice Presentations. Why Not Prompts?

You wouldn’t walk into a pitch without rehearsing. You wouldn’t ship code without testing. So why would you expect an AI to perform well when your only input is: “make this better”?

Make prompt-writing part of your skill stack. Practice it like public speaking, like refactoring code, like negotiation. The better you prompt, the more value you unlock.

🏁 TL;DR

✅ Prompt writing is a real, trainable skill
✅ Vague prompts = vague results
✅ Personalized, iterative, clear prompts = 🔥 quality output
✅ You don’t need to be a prompt engineer—but you do need to care

Embrace the prompt. Master it. Because in the era of AI, it’s your new superpower.

Say goodbye to flat screens and passive viewing. Microsoft Teams is leveling up the event experience with Immersive Spaces powered by Mesh — now in public preview! 🪄

Whether you’re running a town hall, hackathon showcase, or a panel with quantum finance nerds (guilty 🙋‍♂️), you can now:

✅ Host events in spatial 3D environments (conference rooms, auditoriums, rooftops — no teleportation license needed)
✅ Let attendees mingle with real avatars — turn presence into participation
✅ Support up to 1,000 participants (because scaling intimacy is possible)
✅ Layer in spatial audio and real movement for deeper engagement
✅ Make hybrid feel less like a compromise and more like an upgrade 🚀

All from inside Microsoft Teams. No goggles required — but if you do have a Meta Quest or PCVR headset, go full Ready Player One. 🕶️

We’re not just hosting meetings. We’re designing experiences.
We’re not just attending webinars. We’re building worlds.

🔗 Try it out → https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftteamsblog/immersive-events-in-microsoft-teams-a-new-way-to-host-interactive-and-engaging-v/4428630

#MicrosoftTeams #Mesh #ImmersiveEvents #HybridWork #FutureOfMeetings #SpatialComputing #TechForHumans

🔐 The Problem with Traditional DNS

The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the foundational layers of the modern internet. It translates human-readable domain names (like example.com) into IP addresses that computers understand. But despite its critical role, DNS is a relic of a centralized past—and it’s starting to show its age.

Here’s what’s broken:

• Centralization: Domains are controlled by central authorities (ICANN, domain registrars). Ownership can be revoked or censored.
• Lack of privacy: DNS queries are often unencrypted and leak metadata. Your browsing patterns are up for grabs.
• No built-in identity: DNS tells browsers where to go, but doesn’t verify who you are. It’s not designed to be your digital passport.
• Limited programmability: DNS isn’t smart. It doesn’t interact with smart contracts or support complex decentralized applications.

That’s where the next-gen systems come in—redefining domains not just as addresses, but as programmable identities in the decentralized web.

🌐 Ethereum Name Service (ENS)

ENS is a decentralized naming system built on the Ethereum blockchain. It lets you map human-readable names like alice.eth to Ethereum addresses, websites, NFTs, and even avatars.

✅ Why ENS is compelling:

• Censorship-resistant: Your .eth name is a token (NFT) in your wallet. No registrar can take it from you.
• Multi-chain ready: You can attach Ethereum, Bitcoin, or even Solana addresses.
• Smart contract composable: Used by thousands of dApps, wallets, and protocols.
• Verified identities: ENS records can link to your GitHub, Twitter, and more using EIP-4361 (Sign-In with Ethereum).

Example:

Instead of sending crypto to 0x123..., you send it to vitalik.eth. It’s human, portable, and secure.

🚀 Unstoppable Domains

Unstoppable Domains builds on the idea of blockchain-based identity but with a more consumer-oriented and cross-chain approach. It supports extensions like .crypto, .x, .wallet, and .nft.

🛠️ Key Features:

• One-time payment: No annual renewal fees—own it forever.
• Multichain support: Built for Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, and more.
• Web hosting: You can deploy decentralized websites using IPFS.
• User profiles: Includes metadata like email, website, social handles, and verified credentials.

Trade-offs:

Unlike ENS, it’s not fully decentralized—the registry is controlled by a company. But it offers great UX and integration.

🌿 Lens Protocol

Lens Protocol is not just a naming system—it’s a decentralized social graph built on Polygon. Think of it as your Web3 social ID, not just a URL.

📌 Why Lens is different:

• Social-first: Your peter.lens profile holds your followers, posts, and social reputation.
• Composable: Any app can read/write to the graph—Twitter clones, blogs, and even marketplaces.
• Portable followers: Your audience moves with you between platforms.
• Own your content: Posts are NFTs, stored on-chain or on IPFS/Arweave.

While ENS answers “who am I?” and Unstoppable answers “where do I go?”, Lens answers “who do I know and what have I created?”

🧠 Why It Matters

These tools solve the core pain points of legacy DNS—and more:

💡 The Future is Composable Identity

Traditional DNS gave us the web. But to build a truly decentralized, user-owned internet, we need composable identity. ENS, Unstoppable Domains, and Lens Protocol are stepping stones toward a Web3-native world where you are the domain, the wallet, and the platform.

Your name isn’t just a vanity—it’s your passport to the decentralized web.

🔚 TL;DR:

• DNS is outdated: centralized, fragile, and not privacy-friendly.
• ENS gives you decentralized naming and on-chain identity.
• Unstoppable Domains offers lifetime ownership and wide integrations.
• Lens Protocol reimagines social media with composable Web3 identity.

The next internet won’t be built on .com. It will be built on .eth, .lens, and you.

There are rare, powerful moments in life when you feel something shift—not just in your circumstances, but in your soul. The wind that once pushed against you begins to propel you forward. The doors that seemed bolted shut creak open. The people who once doubted you now want to collaborate. The silence turns into applause. It’s not always loud or dramatic. But you feel it: the world is turning towards you.

And it’s not magic. It’s momentum.

🌍 The Turning Point Is Often Earned

What feels like a sudden turn is often the result of quiet consistency. Those early mornings, those late nights, those times you kept going when no one was watching—they compound. The world doesn’t just “turn toward” people randomly. It turns toward people who have been turning toward it all along—with curiosity, commitment, and care.

When your values, your vision, and your velocity begin to align, things around you begin to align too. That’s when you see synchronicity instead of resistance. Invitations instead of rejections. Allies instead of obstacles.

🧭 It’s Not Just the World—It’s Your Orientation

Sometimes it’s not that the world has shifted—it’s that you have. You’ve grown into someone who can receive what’s been there all along. You’ve done the inner work. You’re no longer shrinking to fit in. You’re taking up space. You’re leading, not chasing. That shift in energy ripples outward. The world responds differently when you show up differently.

🚪 What to Do When the World Turns Toward You

1. Say yes—but wisely. Not every open door is the right one. Choose what aligns, not just what’s available.
2. Stay humble. This isn’t the time to coast. Keep learning, keep listening, keep contributing.
3. Lift others. If the light has found you, reflect it onto others. Share the mic. Create room at the table.
4. Build sustainably. Don’t just ride the wave—shape the current. Think long-term.

⚖️ Don’t Wait for It—Create It

If you’re still in the season where it feels like the world is turning away from you—keep going. These shifts often arrive disguised as failure, fatigue, or frustration. Keep showing up. Keep getting better. Keep turning toward yourself.

The world has a funny way of catching up to people who do that.

And when it does, when you feel it shift—breathe it in. You’ve earned it.

🌀 You’re not lucky the world turned toward you. You’re ready.

Ah, the age-old debate: should developers code in the sweltering embrace of summer or the frosty grip of winter? It’s a question as divisive as tabs vs. spaces, dark mode vs. light mode, or whether pineapple belongs on pizza (spoiler: it does, but not on your laptop).

Let’s break it down scientifically.

🔥 Hot Weather Devs: The Sweat-Driven Coders

Pros:

• Your fingers move faster because they’re slipping across the keyboard.
• You don’t need a heater — just your CPU at 99% compiling a React build.
• Sunlight might remind you that there’s life beyond GitHub issues.

Cons:

• You can’t tell if your laptop is overheating or if it’s just in empathy mode.
• Your water-cooled PC is now a sauna.
• Coffee turns to iced coffee. Without ice. By itself.

Developer profile: They wear tank tops and shorts year-round. They prefer typing on keyboards with fans underneath. They’re powered by iced lattes and vibes. Their motto? “If I’m not sweating, I’m not shipping.”

Laptop’s response: 💻 “Please, I beg you, not another render loop test… I’m already at 92°C and hallucinating Blender objects.”

❄️ Cold Weather Devs: The Frostbitten Builders

Pros:

• You can layer up. Hoodies. Two hoodies. Blanket hoodies. Cat.
• CPUs stay frosty and happy. Fans? What fans? They’re on vacation.
• Every keystroke is a warm rebellion against frostbite.

Cons:

• Fingers cramp after 20 minutes of coding and look like spaghetti left in the freezer.
• You type so slowly, GitHub Copilot finishes your thoughts before you think them.
• You mistake coffee steam for a production server on fire.

Developer profile: Lives in thermal socks. Has a keyboard warmer (it’s just a cat). Believes productivity is directly proportional to the number of cups of hot tea consumed. Their motto? “Cold hands, clean builds.”

Laptop’s response: 💻 “Thank you for this igloo. I’ve never compiled so coolly. I might even update your drivers without crashing today.”

🌡️ So… What Do the Laptops Actually Prefer?

Let’s not kid ourselves — your MacBook or ThinkPad doesn’t want to be anywhere near a heatwave. That aluminum chassis? It’s not a heat sink. It’s a cry for help.

Laptops thrive in the cold. The only downside? Developers might stop typing midway through a function call to microwave their fingers.

🧣 Final Verdict:

• Hot weather makes developers cranky, sweaty, and creative with bug excuses.
• Cold weather slows down human execution time but keeps machines happier than a clean git log.
• Ideal compromise? A perfectly climate-controlled cave, hoodie optional, GPU ventilated, and a steady stream of caffeinated beverages.

If your laptop could vote, it’d choose winter. If your fingers could vote, they’d just ask for heated keys. And if your code could vote? Well, it’d vote to work… in the cloud.

#TeamCold or #TeamHot? Choose wisely. Just remember: your productivity may be frozen, but your bugs are eternal.

I was one of the panelists at SPGI-FINOS Community Networking Panel: Agentic AI – and like all other FINOS events, I really enjoyed presenting about the topic of Agentic AI.

Me representing both a bank and FINOS gave me a rare and powerful dual lens here – to balance the practical enterprise adoption concerns (due to security, scaling, etc) with the open collaboration and interoperability advocacy.

My major core message was, that Agentic AI is not just about autonomous capabilities, it’s about trustworthy delegation in a regulated context. MCP, being the HTTP of AI, gives us a framework for this delegation to be standardized, secure and interoperable, across teams, tools and institutions.

Representing us, a bank, I shared:

• Risk & accountability – Agentic AI has to be traceable, auditable, explainable; cannot be a black box
• Delegation with oversight – Agentic AI always should operate under role based constraints, compliance layers, escalation protocols, just like any junior team member would be
• MCP is the Rosetta Stone for AI behaviors – with it, banks gain the uniform way to describe what agents can do, how they are governed, how they interop, across depts and firms

When I represented FINOS (and I put up a FINOS Ambassador hoodie – I would not go for the neighbor for some theatrics), I spoke about the other angle:

• Avoiding vendor lock in – future of agents cannot be tied to single vendor – FINOS pushing for the open governance, interchangeable agent skills, cross platform compatibility
• MCP enabling financial grade AI agents – just like FDC3 from FINOS standardized inter app comms, MCP standardizes agent governance and orchestration if we do so – opening the door for agent market place, p&p, composable trust and more
• Collaborative dev & shared protocols – banks do not need to reinvent governance wheels in silos, as FINOS do offer sandboxing, and hopefully soon sandbox for shared MCP schemas, safety patterns, audit templates and more: helping the industry move faster together, safer.

I touched some practical example, like:

• Agent skills via manifest saying “this agent can only draft emails, not send them”
• Versioned agent behavior, to track it like we do track code changes
• Cross firm collaboration for example for a KYC agent

I closed it with explaining how Agentic AI is not a product, it’s a new (junior) teammate. MCP helps us ensure that this teammate plays by the rules, explains its decisions, works well with others. Through FINOS, and their https://air-governance-framework.finos.org/ platform, we make sure those rules aren’t just good for one bank, they are good for the whole industry.

I would like to thank Olivier Poupeney for thinking about me and moderating us, Adam Dikker for organizing, Sudeep Kesh for bearing with me on the stage, Ryan Morris for his presentation and demos about S&P Global ‘s AIxtra platform, and Frank Tarsillo ‘s opening remarks.