Mini Insider #6 - Hannover Recap, 3 Years In, and What's Next
From time to time we publish a “Mini Insider” with some random updates. Typically that means we’re working on new cool stuff that consumes our time. This time is no different.
We’re back from Hannover Messe — and ‘we’ (well, the blog that is) actually turned 3 last week while we were there. That called for a celebratory Schnitzel 😀. In those 3 years, the Substack has racked up 200,000 reads. And that doesn’t even count everyone who follows us on the podcast. So… thank you. Truly.
In this Mini Insider: our Hannover takeaway, the IT/OT Handbook, an article on AI we wrote for IT Revolution, and what’s coming next.
What we heard at Hannover Messe
Last year, we both walked away with the same feeling: most vendors were just slapping “AI” stickers on their existing products. Data was still in the conversation, but AI was the headline.
This year, AI is still everywhere, but the conversation has moved more towards real applications.
Literally every vendor now has some way to expose data as an MCP server. Well… we’ve yet have to meet an operator who’s planning to ask questions to a chatbot. But we get it: this is part of the maturity curve. (Btw: we did a podcast on MCP with Aron Semle a few weeks ago, and we’ve got one on i3X coming soon.)
What stood out most: a lot more talk about a scalable data foundation — and crucially, the discussion is starting to shift towards “we need the right context, the right ontology”. Which makes us happy, because that’s exactly the critique David put out in his article a while back: “What I (don’t) like about UNS”.
On the other hand, the technology is there. What we’re still missing is discipline, and an organization capable of delivering. Jon Smart describes it like this in the foreword he wrote for our book:
“The most important improvements are rarely purely technical. They are social, behavioral, and human. Our behaviors determine our outcomes. If we want outcomes to improve, behaviors must change. Making the most of each successive technology-led revolution is, therefore, both a social and technical endeavor. My own rule of thumb is that improving outcomes is roughly 80% behavior and 20% technology or processes.”
—Jonathan Smart, author of Sooner Safer Happier
(as you might have guessed, our Book and Academy are mostly focussed on the organizational stuff 🎉)
Beyond that, we had dozens of great meet-ups.
Thank you to everyone who came to say hi 🙂
The IT/OT Handbook is almost here
As you most likely saw, we announced the IT/OT Handbook at Hannover Messe. We gave away a seat in the Academy to the first person to show us their pre-order on the spot. HighByte also gave away another Academy seat through their competition, so if you entered, stay tuned ;)
If you’ve already pre-ordered our book — like Raf and Kudzai in the pictures below — make sure to register at itotbook.com to claim the bonus content and get access to our exclusive launch event in October.
We also recorded a new announcement video:
And we received these kind words from Evan Kaplan, CEO at InfluxData (and a previous podcast guest):
“David and Willem have written a practical guide to one of the hardest problems in industry today: getting IT and OT to actually work together…. This book stands out because it connects this organizational shift to the technical foundation required to make it real. It’s a clear, actionable path to building systems that scale and turning data into action.”
— Evan Kaplan, CEO at InfluxData
We wrote for IT Revolution
Speaking of the publisher: we published a piece on the IT Revolution blog called Two Problems Standing Between You and Industrial AI at Scale. If you’re trying to figure out why your AI pilots keep stalling before they reach production, this one’s for you.
What’s coming in the next few weeks
We’re starting a new ITOT.Academy group on May 22 (you can still register). Here are some posts by the participants in our January group:
We’re stepping into industrial cybersecurity. Willem already has two articles on NIS2 in the pipeline. Since not everyone reading this works in cyber, chances are NIS2 is one of those acronyms you’ve heard but never really had to engage with. The next two articles will give you a high-level view of what it means for you as an IT/OT professional — without the legal jargon. Later on, we’ll also be telling some of the stories that shaped the OT cybersecurity narrative in the podcast. Some of them are genuinely fascinating.
On top of that; coming out soon:
“Earning The Right To Close The Loop in Industrial AI” — written together with TwinThread.
A deep dive on Historians — coming up with dataParc.
An episode on IoT platforms — with Cumulocity.
Plenty in the oven.
Until next week!
— David & Willem