The conventional wisdom has been: open-source models are 3-6 months behind frontier models. If you wanted best-in-class reasoning, you had to pay for your tokens through a Frontier model. You could pay through a subscription (all-you-can-eat) or via an API (pay-as-you-go). With the release of agent harnesses like OpenClaw and Hermes, you can switch models with [...]
There's been lots of releases in July 2026. First, Anthropic said after Fable 5 was (re)-released, it would go onto the API, and paid subscribers could only use it via API or usage credits (making it pay-as-you-go, instead of all-you-can-eat) after 7 July. Then, OpenAI released GPT-5.6, with 3 reasoning levels, and your choice of effort : [...]
The years I spent as a marketing automation strategist taught me to see the work move through a workflow, end-to-end. I find myself using those skills more frequently, as I hatch and manage AI agents for clients. To launch an AI agent into a business, 4 things have to go right: Picking the right model Teaching it [...]
Last week I taught a half-day workshop in partnership with the Regional Business Partner Network at Enterprise North Canterbury. We gathered dozens of entrepreneurs and business owners together for an afternoon of AI training. They had heard the hype, seen the demos, and played around with a few tools. But they were still trying to [...]
Xero recently published a report comparing how New Zealanders are using AI. They surveyed more than 1000 professionals, and they found that most people are still using AI like a random toolbox. They open ChatGPT, or Copilot, or Claude, or Gemini. They ask a question, get an answer, copy the useful bits, and move on. That’s [...]
AI agents are changing the way work gets done. As agentic AI systems become more capable, our real advantage will not come from technical proficiency. Our advantage will come from knowing how to manage AI agents well. The ability to scope agentic projects, manage autonomous systems, evaluate their performance, and design the information environments [...]
↠↠ The velocity of learning has increased. ↠↠ As part of TechWeekNZ, I hosted the EPIC AI Conference in Christchurch on 21 May, 2026. There were a dozen speakers and panelists, and lots of practical takeaways. While we did record the sessions (big thanks to Daniel Panjaitan and Greg Dickson for volunteering!) it's a [...]
Last month at EPIC in Christchurch, I hosted a TechWeek panel on Leadership in the Age of AI with four local CEOs: Anya Anderson from RedSeed, Julie Ryan from CustomD, Ali Adams from ChristchurchNZ, and Brad Fraser from Agentic Intelligence. The conversation kept coming back to the human work of leadership: judgment, communication, trust, empathy, [...]
TechWeek in New Zealand is a festival for celebrating technology in Aotearoa. I hosted a lot of AI events. The first day of TechWeek, I delivered a sold-out webinar, AI Agent Management: The Next High-Value Skill Set When I asked attendees for a 🔥 burning question 🔥 they had about AI agents, answers included: How do [...]
It gives me no pride to say this, but when I look at the many hundreds (maybe thousands) of marketers that I know, there are three common characteristics all marketers share: they're smart they're creative and they're losers. Alex Bogusky took these photos because he learned the hard way. 💡 The Irony of Expertise Expertise [...]