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

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.

🔐 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.

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.

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.

Quantum computing is no longer a distant promise—it’s becoming a strategic business priority and a scientific reality. Two timely developments—one from the boardroom and one from the laboratory—are accelerating the arrival of a quantum-powered future.

💼 Business Leaders Bet Big on Quantum

A recent survey, highlighted by Yahoo Finance, reveals that more than one in four business leaders already consider quantum computing a vital force shaping their operations. This isn’t speculative hype. These decision-makers are actively integrating quantum strategy into areas like optimization, risk modeling, and encryption.

From financial institutions managing portfolios to logistics giants optimizing supply chains, executives are recognizing that quantum advantage could unlock efficiencies traditional computers simply can’t reach. The buzz has moved beyond R&D departments—quantum computing is now a C-suite conversation.

🧪 Teleportation at Telecom Wavelengths: A Quantum Internet Milestone

Meanwhile, in a groundbreaking experiment reported by Phys.org, researchers at Nanjing University have teleported a photonic qubit, encoded in telecom wavelengths, into a solid-state quantum memory built on erbium ions. What makes this especially remarkable is the real-world relevance: these wavelengths are compatible with existing fiber-optic infrastructure.

This is a key step toward a quantum internet—a network that could one day enable ultra-secure communications, entangled cloud computing, and real-time distributed quantum systems. The setup combined entangled photon sources, Bell-state measurements, and solid-state memory tuned to telecom frequency—marking the first successful teleportation from light to a scalable memory system suitable for long-distance communication.

🧭 Where Business Meets Breakthrough

Why do these two developments matter together?

• Businesses are ready—they’re allocating budgets and aligning strategies.
• Scientists are delivering—turning quantum concepts into deployable technologies.

This alignment signals a tipping point. For decades, the field has been dominated by theory, niche applications, and academic curiosity. But today, telecom-grade quantum teleportation and boardroom-level buy-in are signs that the ecosystem is converging.

🔮 What Comes Next

Expect rapid growth in:

• Quantum adoption roadmaps from enterprises across finance, healthcare, and defense.
• Public-private collaboration, especially in network infrastructure.
• Investment in quantum communications, building on existing optical fiber systems.

A future where quantum capabilities are embedded in everyday systems is not only plausible—it’s actively under construction. As science pushes the boundaries of what’s possible, the business world is beginning to fund, scale, and deploy.

One foot in the lab. One foot in the boardroom. The quantum leap has already begun.

A few weeks ago Sujit Eapen (fellow Distinguished Engineer) and I shared our views on the benefits of working in fintech and the importance of technology excellence at Morgan Stanley. We highlighted the impact and how junior level employees can be effective and make a difference, dispelling the myths around the lack of innovation, outdated tech and more – we represented the diverse leaders, thinkers, problem solvers, influencers at the firm. The interns of summer 2025 heard from us sharing our differentiated career backgrounds, our industry insights and our unique perspectives representing ourselves and our divisions.

We covered various topics like:

• What does it mean to be a Distinguished Engineer?
• How do you become appointed a Distinguished Engineer?
• What characteristics you should exhibit to be considered becoming a Distinguished Engineer?
• How to build brand in early stages of a career? How does having a personal brand correlate becoming a Distinguished Engineer?
• What keeps me up at night (for me – how is developing with the opensource is, and how to make those capabilities available internally better)?
• How does a day look like – and how do I manage work-life-balance?

And many more anecdotes we told around mishaps and good things and more 😀 Thank you for the organization, Jessica, Abbygaile and Yein, and looking forward to see other fellow Distinguished Engineers’ sessions in the other locations!

“We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.” – Marshall McLuhan

The interface has always been a negotiation. Between human and machine. Between insight and overload. Between reality and abstraction. But now, the interface is no longer a screen.

The interface is a room.

1. From Screens to Spaces

In finance, we’ve lived for decades in a world of rectangles: terminals, dashboards, spreadsheets, and heatmaps. Information arrives in grids, blink rates, and keystrokes. But this flat world is reaching its limit. As data volumes grow and complexity explodes, trying to cram everything into two dimensions is not just inefficient—it’s limiting our cognition.

Extended Reality (XR) – Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR) – offers a new contract. One where the user is not just a viewer, but a participant. Where analysis doesn’t sit on a screen: it surrounds you. (Check out https://flowimmersive.com/ if you haven’t done so!)

2. Finance Deserves Better Interfaces

Why XR, and why now?

Finance is the most information-dense domain in the modern world. Every decision, every second, is a negotiation between risk, reward, signal, and noise. Yet we ask traders, analysts, risk managers, and compliance officers to make decisions using input devices invented in the 1970s and paradigms built for yesterday’s data.

XR is not a gimmick. It’s the first interface that scales with you. The human brain evolved to understand space, movement, proximity, and depth. XR brings finance into those evolutionary sweet spots.

3. Use Cases That Transcend Screens

Imagine:

• Trade floor holograms where liquidity clusters literally float between asset classes.
• Risk heatmaps that wrap around a room, allowing you to walk through exposure zones.
• Regulatory audits in AR, highlighting areas of concern in a shared virtual boardroom.
• Data storytelling where charts become environments and insights are spatially anchored.

These are not science fiction. They’re prototypes today—and strategic differentiators tomorrow.

4. Beyond Utility: Collaboration, Presence, and Memory

XR does more than display—it anchors memory.

In spatial computing, ideas are not just read—they’re placed. And once placed in space, they’re easier to remember, navigate, and share. A compliance review conducted in a virtual space can leave behind persistent annotations. A team strategy session becomes a spatially encoded experience—harder to forget, easier to revisit.

Remote collaboration in XR is not a Zoom call. It’s presence. It’s subtle glances, posture shifts, and shared spatial understanding.

5. Open Systems, Not Walled Gardens

To thrive, XR in finance must remain open and interoperable.

The future isn’t an XR app. It’s a composable environment where FINOS-backed APIs, market data, internal analytics, and AI copilots coexist in a spatial web. This requires open standards, common ontologies, and shared governance models—something the financial open-source movement is uniquely positioned to deliver.

6. The Architecture of Rooms

When the interface becomes a room, we must ask:

• What does latency feel like in space?
• How do we balance privacy and persistence in shared XR rooms?
• What happens when the market bell rings in VR?
• What symbols will replace the blinking cursor in a world of gesture, gaze, and voice?

These are design questions, but they’re also human questions. Spatial computing forces us to reimagine not just how we interact – but why.

7. A Call to Action

We don’t need to wait for headsets to reach mass adoption. XR is already here – in pilot projects, in innovation labs, in fintech startups, and on the edges of enterprise. What’s missing is a manifesto. A shared commitment to explore, experiment, and embed finance into spatial computing responsibly.

So here it is:

The room is the interface. The market is multidimensional. And the future of finance is spatial.

Join us. Build the rooms. Rewrite the interfaces. Because in this new world – insight is not just a screen away. It’s all around you.

There is a quiet kind of genius in software development that rarely gets the spotlight. It’s not found in systems with a thousand microservices or the cleverest recursive algorithm. Instead, it’s found in the function that’s so clear it reads like a sentence. In the interface that needs no manual. In the system that scales not because it’s complex, but because it’s elegant.

This kind of genius takes a lifetime to develop.

Early in a developer’s career, there’s a desire to prove competence through complexity: elaborate class hierarchies, layers of abstraction, design patterns deployed like trophies. But over time, many learn the truth: anyone can make something complicated. True mastery is the ability to simplify.

Much like in perfumery, where the finest scents are often composed of just a few well-chosen notes, the best software solutions are built from a minimum of high-quality components. These systems are readable, maintainable, and intuitive. They don’t just function—they communicate.

Simplicity in software is not the absence of complexity. It’s the skillful removal of all that is unnecessary. It requires deep understanding of the problem domain, the user, and the trade-offs. It requires discipline to resist the temptation to over-engineer, and wisdom to know when something is “good enough.”

There is a freedom in simplicity. A simple system is easier to reason about, easier to test, and easier to evolve. It’s kinder to future developers—including your future self. It invites collaboration instead of confusion.

It is easy to add complexity. It is easy to fill a codebase with configuration files, dependency injection containers, and sprawling object graphs. But that tends to add clutter and chaos. The real challenge is to convey the essence of a feature, a service, a product—and nothing more.

Seasoned developers often spend more time deleting code than writing it. They refactor, extract, simplify, and iterate until the code says exactly what it needs to say and nothing more. They understand that every line is a liability unless it earns its place.

As with all crafts, this takes time. Years of mistakes, rewrites, and discoveries. Simplicity is not a shortcut; it’s the summit. The path to it is long, but once you arrive, the view is clear.

To code simply is not to code less. It’s to code with purpose. With clarity. With empathy. And in doing so, to write software that lasts.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.” – Frank Herbert, Dune

If failure is the villain we blame, then fear is the quiet saboteur no one talks about.

We often mourn lost dreams as casualties of failure—startups that ran out of money, scripts that never got greenlit, careers that derailed. But look closer. Many of those dreams never even left the runway. They weren’t killed by failure. They were strangled by fear long before they got the chance to fail.

Fear Doesn’t Shout — It Whispers

Fear rarely appears as a monstrous threat. It often disguises itself as “being realistic.” It speaks in tones that sound reasonable:

• “What if you’re not good enough?”
• “Now isn’t the right time.”
• “You’ll look foolish.”
• “Someone else is already doing it better.”

These aren’t warnings. They’re tombstones.

While failure offers a postmortem, fear offers no autopsy. You don’t get the dignity of a lesson. You just quietly move on, telling yourself the dream was probably a bad idea anyway.

Failure Hurts. Fear Haunts.

Failure stings, but it teaches. You learn, adapt, and—if you’re brave—try again. Fear, on the other hand, leaves you with what-ifs that echo louder with time.

Many people say they’re afraid of failure. What they really mean is they’re afraid of judgment, rejection, or discomfort. But in avoiding all that, they end up fearing themselves—haunted by what they could have done.

The Illusion of Safety

Fear gives us a false sense of control. It whispers: Stay where it’s safe. But what’s safe today may be suffocating tomorrow.

You don’t outgrow your dreams. You bury them under layers of fear until they stop talking. But they don’t stop living. They twist into frustration, envy, or quiet regret.

Dreams Don’t Need Guarantees. They Need Courage.

You don’t need a perfect plan to start. You need enough courage to try without one.

Starting a podcast, applying to that role, writing the first chapter, pitching the idea—these acts are not reckless. They are resistance to fear. You may fail, sure. But you might also fly. And even if you fall, you’ll land wiser than before.

Every successful person you admire has failed. What they haven’t done is let fear hold the pen.

Let Failure Take the Blame It Deserves—But No More

Failure kills some dreams. It’s true. But far more die quietly in the shadow of fear—unspoken, unlived, unloved.

So next time fear whispers, remind yourself:

Failure is a bruise. Fear is a cage.

And then take one step—just one—toward the dream you’ve been silencing.