As the year draws to an end, it’s a good time to take stock of how it started vs. how it’s going on the micro and the macro level. It’s also a good opportunity to try and answer the top two questions I get:

• What is it that you do, exactly?
• Where do you think this is all going?

Hint: the TL;DR answer to both is the same – Technology, Data, AI, Media, Interconnectedness, Graphs, and Cosmo-localism.

In this part, it’s the first question and the micro level that are mainly addressed. A follow up is in the works to address the second question and the macro level.

There were many good prompts to embark on this journey of sorts. Some came from the online world, others from the offline world.

AI Revolution, Therapy, Pragmatism and Training

Being at a festive gathering the other day, in the company of friends and strangers alike, the following statements were shared within one minute of each other:

“My students give me ChatGPT-generated answers to their math tests. They are entirely unintelligible, garbled symbols and all. Students would be able to tell themselves if they spent some time actually studying math”.

“I have a client who comes to our therapy sessions and spends most of the time sharing his interactions with ChatGPT. I have to be professional about it, but it freaks me out – how am I supposed to react to this?”

“Well, at least he’s at the right place. If you are talking to ChatGPT, and are taking this seriously enough to share with a therapist, you clearly need help”.

“How can you be so sure there’s no consciousness in there? This is the greatest invention in the history of mankind. It will revolutionize everything. You may not realize it yet, but it won’t be long before 75% of jobs will be obsolete – including ours, probably. Humanity as we know it will be obsolete”.

Statement #3 was made by me. So then I had to follow up after statement #4, to politely explain where this is all wrong, where there may be some elements of truth, and how come I know this.

I had to share some of the ways I’ve been working with technology, data, and AI for the last 35+ years, and an ELI5 explanation of how it all works. 

Was it easy to do in 4 minutes? No. Did it work? I hope so. This is what subsequent comments and questions seemed to point at. At least the conversation naturally drifted to other topics.

I did have a head start for the 4 minute version of the Pragmatic AI workshop. I’ve worked on 4 hour and 4 day versions, and I’ve been fortunate enough to deliver this to organizations such as GC and GIZ.

The sense of accomplishment of seeing people go from awe and bewilderment to understanding the real potential and limitations of AI, using and developing models themselves, is priceless. The feedback reflects this, the value for organizations is there, and this is something I’d certainly like to do more of in 2025.

AI-Generated content, podcasts, blogging and finding your own voice

These days, I’ve seen a number of people sharing their 2024 LinkedIn Rewind on my feed. It’s a new service powered by Coauthor.studio. It seemed interesting, and it was easy and free to use, so I gave it a try too.

It did a good job of summarizing key metrics, such as number of posts and engagement. The Vibe, Superpower, and Top Quote sections are ok too. But does the promise of “helping busy professionals transform ideas into influential content in their own voice” hold up?

It depends on your definitions of “influential content” and “own voice”. I would not share the post the service created for me, for a number of reasons. Like all AI-generated texts, I found it failed to capture nuance and essence. Sometimes, you actually want to create utilitarian, general purpose text, and AI can help there.

But outsourcing my own voice to AI? I don’t think so. I’d rather invest the time it takes to write a post like this one. Not just because I don’t really think that AI-generated text can be “influential content”, but mostly because I get something out of putting the effort required to genuinely express my own voice. We all do.

It’s the same reason I never go for AI-generated-anything that’s a core part of my creative process. Transcripts and voiceovers, for example, I’m fine with. This is grunt work I’m happy to outsource – just a means to an end. But using something like an AI-generated podcast service, for example? Hmmm.

If your goal is to get “content” out there, you might as well, I guess. It’s fast. It’s easy. It seems cheap. In the end, it’s not that different than asking ChatGPT to do your math for you. It probably won’t get it right. You’ll never be able to tell and fix it, unless you spend the time to learn how to do it yourself. In which case, you’ll end up learning something, and sparing some resources as well.

I like to do my podcasts the old-fashioned way. Do some research. Bring curiosity and honesty to the table. Connect and engage with people. Extract insights and share with the world. 

Not doing this as much as I’d like to is one of the things I regret about 2024. I only published 7 episodes of my own Orchestrate all the Things podcast in 2024, plus 2 episodes of the “What’s new in AI” series for O’Reilly.

I do end to end production and distribution for the former, which goes on for the 6th season, and was part of the team that set up the latter, which I’m no longer involved with. Both featured real people, and did better than ever in 2024. Podcast episodes come with writeups on my Orchestrate all the Things newsletter. More articles and podcasting coming in 2025.

Content, Marketing, Pyramids and Wiz Bites

In all fairness, relying on LinkedIn to determine one’s “voice” will probably give suboptimal results. To paraphrase Bukowski, you can’t share without getting things done, and sharing all the time is not getting things done. Plus, if you apply POSSE like I do, only a fraction of what you share makes it to LinkedIn. 

Also, not all of the “content” I produce is shared under my name, as I work with a number of brands. In the last few years, a lot of what I do revolves around “content”. The reason I use the term in quotes here is because I have an ambivalent stance towards it. 

On the one hand, I do understand why people who invest a lot of time and creative energy in producing and sharing genuine, thoughtful insights and ideas may find the term derogatory. On the other hand, I also realize that not all “content” out there is, or has to be, genuine, thoughtful, or insightful. That’s fine, as long we know which is which, and why.

Being someone with an engineering background, I never imagined telling stories, or crafting “content”, is what many people would come to associate me with. I never set out to achieve this, attended any seminars, or paid any attention to the terminology – except after the fact. I figured things out by doing and learned from people who are more experienced than me.

So I didn’t think I would one day show others how to work with “content” either. But like many other things, it just came naturally. Some of the content marketing gigs I have I’m not able to talk about, as they involve ghost writing for example. Others, like Baresquare, I’m more than happy to talk about.

Bearsquare was founded in 2014 as a boutique data consultancy focusing on eCommerce. Over time, Bearsquare developed its own platform, Tywin, providing online market research and autonomous deep-dive analysis across various brands. We connected as Baresquare needed some help with Tywin’s product launch campaign.

Working through this, we developed a tailor-made approach based on the Content Marketing Pyramid. After some twists and turns, typical both for startups and content marketing projects, the first fruits of our labor are ready for harvest. 

We worked with Baresquare to launch the Merchandising Wiz Bites, a weekly series diving deep into the tactics driving top brands’ performance. It’s been a pleasure to work with the team, combining their strengths and expertise with some creative guidance. We think this will be a win both for Baresquare and for the audience. That’s the kind of work I’d love to do more of in 2025.

Interconnectedness and Graphs

The one thing that most of my time and energy went into in 2024, and a prime example of content marketing resounding success, however, was Connected Data London. Connected Data is a community for those who use the relationships, meaning and context in data to achieve Great things.

It provides events and thought leadership, bringing together leaders and innovators on all things Knowledge Graph, Graph Databases, Analytics, Data Science, AI and Semantic Technology. After a couple of years of hibernation, Connected Data London, our flagship conference, made a comeback.

As CDL’s co-founder, managing director, and program chair, I had a lot to work on. What helped pull this through was the fact that besides the experience myself and my co-founder bring to the table, both of us are also domain experts and members of this community. Organic content marketing was the main approach for CDL24, and the results were impressive.

In the last 12 months, even including January and February when we were still pulling strings behind the scenes, Connected Data’s following grew by 245%. Growth and engagement metrics were far above the competition, second only to O’Reilly. 614K impressions, 10K reactions, 600 comments, 300 shares on LinkedIn alone. 

But this has always been about much more than numbers. It’s always been about connecting more than data – connecting people and ideas. We did our part, but this wouldn’t mean anything without the people who made it happen and the ideas they shared. It was a privilege to get to work and exchange ideas with everyone who was a part of this – and there are so many of them!

And yes, as my 2024 LinkedIn Rewind quote goes, used effectively, these technologies help govern data and manage knowledge in organizations, streamline Al adoption, unlock insights and value. I had my fair share of exploring this hands-on, diving into Graph RAG and working on the open source Connected Data Knowledge Graph project. 

Here’s to more knowledge engineering work in 2025. Here’s also to more knowledge curation via the Year of the Graph, my second brain and newsletter on – you guessed it – all things Knowledge Graph, Graph Databases, Analytics, Data Science, AI and Semantic Technology. The YotG made a comeback in 2024 too, gaining momentum and growing significantly.

I also enjoy presenting and speaking myself. In addition to presenting the Connected Data Knowledge Graph Masterclass and the Knowledge Graph adoption Panel at CDL24, in 2024 I was a guest at Amy Hodler’s GraphGeeks and Larry Swanson’s Knowledge Graph Insights, moderated a panel on Graph RAG on Joaquin Melara’s AI Tech Symposium, and explored the 6 things to look for in a graph database with Aerospike’s George Demarest.

Cosmo-localism, Nature, History, Gastronomy and Culture

Saving the best for last, and coming full circle to the offline world. In the last few years, along with family and friends, we’ve been working on Cricket Hill: a pristine plot of land on the Greek West Coast, where olive trees and people live, grow and bear fruits in harmony.

Cricket Hill is located in the area of Ancient Olympia, in a region rich in history and culture, nature and beauty. We have a limited production of artisan olive oil that is mostly shared among friends and family.

In the spirit of cosmo-localism, we are exploring ways to bring nature and its products to the people, as well as people and their ideas to nature. Cricket Hill was at Connected Data London 2024 as a Speaker Lounge and Buffet sponsor, offering Greek Organic Premium Olive Oil for tasting.

Even if you didn’t make it there, there will soon be exciting updates on how to access nature and its products both on-site and remotely. 2025 will see wider distribution, and cosmo-local events in the area.

We are working on topics ranging from AI and emerging technology to philosophy, history and political economy. Plus, our Nature, History, Gastronomy and Culture Tours to discover the all-around beauty of this land. 

In what’s becoming a tradition, expect the first update in 2025 to come from Cricket Hill. Check out Cricket Hill, follow, subscribe to the newsletter, or get in touch to be in the know about our olive oil and local events and tours.