Unleashing some creativity: one idea at a time
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AI Adoption Maturity Model
I was reflecting on some of the transformations we’ve seen internally at Microsoft, especially in teams adopting AI, and I think it’s helpful to frame progress in levels. It cuts through vanity metrics like “does the team have copilot access” and asks a better question: how much has this team actually changed because of AI?…
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Teams AI Library V2 for powering copilot panels in webapps with CopilotKit
Teams AI Library v2 makes it drastically easier to build an agent for Teams. But what if you also want that same agent to show up in your webapp — say, in a Copilot panel — and share functionality between the two? Thanks to built-in support for MCP Servers in Teams AI Library v2, that’s…
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Yes, “To MCP, or not” is the real question
Everyone’s excited about MCP and I love it. But, just because you can expose every API endpoint as a tool doesn’t mean you should. This is something Tom Laird-McConnell and I discussed when OpenAPI based plugins were all the rage, and it stuck with me: APIs and user actions are rarely a clean 1:1 mapping.…
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Weekend Experiment: Can AI Make Scientific Discoveries?
Friday night, I had this thought: If we fed raw observations into AI, could it discover the hidden laws of physics – just like Newton pieced together gravity from centuries of data? Because, if AI could truly discover a fundamental law on its own, wouldn’t that be a scientific breakthrough?! So, I decided to built…
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Keeping up
I checked today and it turns out, I’ve read more than 300 AI research papers in the past year (GitHub repo). Back in college, I suspected that being in software would mean constantly updating yourself. That has proven true over the years, but AI has taken it to a whole new level. As a leader,…
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“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
This famous saying, often attributed to Gandhi, captures the predictable phases of resistance bold new ideas face. But here’s a thought: when you’re having a critical reaction to an idea, have you ever stopped to wonder if you’re the “they” in this quote? Let’s be honest: most of us have been “they” at some point.…
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Squad Leader
How do you ensure smooth execution across multiple teams in fast-moving projects? What’s the squad leader’s role in turning a high-level vision into a phased, actionable plan? How does this role help you navigate challenges like cross-team coordination, upgrade strategies, and rollout plans? And, most importantly, why should you take on the squad leader role…
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Why Building AI Agents for Teams is a Huge Opportunity
Over the past 7+ years, I’ve been deeply involved in developing bots and conversational assistants. One lesson that has consistently emerged is the importance of timely notifications for keeping users engaged. A well-timed notification can be the nudge that brings users back, provided it’s useful and not just noise. As we advance towards AI assistants…
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Unlocking Higher Accuracy using Iterative Prompting with GPT-4o mini
GPT-4o mini represents a significant leap forward in deploying GenAI within our apps. Not only does it offer substantial cost savings (60% cheaper than GPT-3.5 Turbo!), but it also provides a solid base model at a great price. This allows us to use advanced prompting techniques to enhance performance and my tests over the weekend…
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Good drivers
One thing you realize after a few years of driving is that to drive smoothly, you need to look far: Don’t focus just on the car directly in front of you, but look further ahead on the road as far as possible. This wider view lets you spot slowdowns before brake-lights even flash, allowing you…
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Some Creativity 