My guest today is a good friend and colleague - and not to forget with whom I was a co-author for a book, Paramu Kurumathur.

In this episode, Paramu discusses how his recent development work evolved from small Google Apps Script utilities copied and adapted from online examples to building AI-connected applications via APIs to tools like Gemini and ChatGPT, including enabling Q&A over his book content.

He describes surprises from “conversing” with his books—especially that LLMs retain details he has forgotten—while noting key risks such as hallucinations and the need for precise prompts. He explains learning Cursor with guidance from our colleague, Raja, discovering that it can generate code, and rapidly producing a proof of concept that maps citizens to the Government welfare schemes using PDFs, Chroma DB, sentence transformers, and queues—work that took about a week instead of months.

The conversation contrasts older development eras with today’s dependency-heavy environments, argues many SDLC intermediate steps are compressed, and highlights transferable mid-career skills in requirements and problem translation, alongside concerns about limited debugging and testing depth.

The timestamps are approximate and do not include the time for the intro. Add about 90 seconds to locate the section

00:00 Welcome and Setup

01:16 Rediscovering Coding via Apps Script

02:02 Connecting Scripts to LLM APIs

03:21 Talking to Your Own Book

05:32 Hallucinations and Prompt Control

06:50 Learning Cursor and Building a POC

09:09 Old School Dev vs Modern Tooling

12:00 AI Changes the SDLC

13:36 Testing and Trusting AI Output

15:10 Debugging Gaps and Assumptions

16:34 Setting AI Standards

17:20 Mid Career Transfer Skills

18:48 Prompting Without Hallucinations

20:21 Courses vs Learning by Doing

23:25 Overcoming First Step Fear

25:24 LLM Limits in Astronomy

28:24 Cursor for Reliable Code

29:37 Anybody Can Code Now

31:13 Next Projects and Wrap Up

My guest today is Evan J. Schwartz, the COO of AMCS Group North America, a global leader in sustainable cloud technology. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor and Board Advisor at Jacksonville University, mentoring graduate students in AI, cybersecurity, and technical project management.

Evan traces his technology origin from early-1980s bulletin board systems to founding a company that built graphic multiplayer BBS games and a scripted graphics language,

that he says predated HTML, reaching 33 titles across a global BBS market before the internet rapidly displaced it around 1995.

He then shifted from internet gaming into business software, automating insurance workflows and later working in commodity and “reverse logistics” industries including forestry, natural gas, and waste/recycling at AMCS, citing route optimization across 770,000 trucks that saves 17–20 gallons of diesel per truck.

He discusses why ERP adoption is hard, advocating game-design-style gradual introduction, putting people first, and having product teams do end-user jobs.

He emphasizes vendor relationships over feature requests, AI governance and risk frameworks, a “person + AI” stewardship model, and evolving education/career paths toward broad skills, clear communication, domain knowledge, and knowing what “good” looks like.

The timestamps are approximate and do not include the time for the intro. Add about 90 seconds to locate the section

00:00 Welcome and Setup

00:31 Early Computing Origins

01:20 Building BBS Games

03:02 Internet Shift to Business

05:01 Reverse Logistics Mission

06:34 ERP and AI Adoption

08:31 Gaming Lessons for ERP

11:03 People First Strategy

13:00 Empathy by Doing the Job

17:29 Vendor Trust and Roadmaps

21:31 Universities vs AI Change

24:58 Training Architects Without Coding

26:03 AI as Faster Camera

26:58 Stewardship Over Replacement

28:34 Why Hallucinations Happen

29:52 Capstones in One Class

30:37 Excel to AI Migration

33:08 M&A Governance Interop

35:45 EU AI Act Reality Check

37:56 Culture Shapes Adoption

40:31 Interstellar Waiting Trap

41:53 Career Skills for Stewards

44:41 Quiet Failure Risk

45:57 Protect Time and Values

48:52 Closing Thanks

Evan J. Schwartz is the COO of AMCS Group North America, a global leader in sustainable cloud technology. With 35+ years of experience in resource-intensive industries like waste, recycling, and natural gas, he drives digital transformation through AI and data science. Formerly AMCS’s Chief Enterprise Architect, Evan is also an adjunct professor at Jacksonville University, mentoring future IT leaders. A Forbes Technology Council member and sought-after speaker, he advocates for AI-driven sustainability and ethical tech. His bestselling book, People, Places, and Things, cements his expertise in seamless ERP implementation.

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS:

Website: https://www.evanjschwartz.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evan-schwartz-live/

My guest today is Chaitra Partha Rao, Vice President at Daimler Truck Innovation Center India – Manufacturing , Sales & Aftersales.

Chaitra shares how her childhood aspirations to become a neurosurgeon shifted to commerce due to cost constraints, eventually leading her into IT through an internship at a medical diagnostics firm automating stores processes.

She describes observing early requirement-gathering and MVP-style delivery, learning the importance of user empathy, and contrasts it with a later failure where a $15M trading interface was rejected because designers didn’t listen to analysts.

Her career spans core banking, Fidelity-style investing, equity trading transformation (including crypto/digital assets focus in 2015–2017), and automotive/trucking, emphasizing designing for human touchpoints even amid AI trends.

She discusses patience versus outcome-chasing, staying focused via “recalculating” and timeboxing, scaling systems using “day in the life” simulations, cross-cultural user commonalities, cautious optimism about synthetic data, guidance for women returning from career breaks, and grounding routines like yoga, reflection, cooking, and music.

The timestamps are approximate and do not include the time for the intro. Add about 90 seconds to locate the section

00:00 Welcome and Setup

00:42 From Medicine to Commerce

02:37 First IT Breakthrough

05:41 Curiosity Meets Automation

10:56 User Empathy in Practice

16:33 Human Touch vs AI

18:39 Patience and Ambition

22:04 Staying Focused Timeboxing

26:07 Commute Predictability Hacks

26:37 Banking vs Trading Reality

28:10 Learning Traders Language

31:27 Designing for Scale Patterns

36:38 Cross Culture User Insights

40:12 AI Synthetic Personas Limits

44:27 Returning After Career Break

49:12 Staying Grounded Daily Routine

51:13 Closing Reflections Thanks

Chaitra is a seasoned leader with 26 years of experience in IT traversing through Fintech & Automotive domains. Her formative leadership experience stems from working for Fidelity Investments , a company that shaped who she is while putting it to practice and being able to coach and nurture A teams is an opportunity that she experiences with her current organization.

She has played various roles that have taken her through learning paths that have been challenging as well as fulfilling in the areas of technology, process and team building.

She calls herself as ‘still a work-in-progress’, curious learner who takes one day at a time , enjoying it to the maximum and helping coach leaders and teams to bring their best.

She may be reached on: chaitrasreesha@gmail.com