Travis Carlson

Using AI like Claude is cool - but getting a WALL OF TEXT in an IDE isn't how humans learn. enter the /EXPLAIN skill! Most AI "explain X" answers do the same thing — dump a wall of text at one fixed level. Too basic and you're bored; too deep and you're lost. The magic of this skill is that it refuses to explain until it knows who's asking. It runs a four-beat loop: 1. Gauge. Before a single sentence of teaching, it asks you 2–4 multiple-choice questions, adapted to the topic, about what you already know, why you're asking, and how deep you want to go. 2. Explain. It writes a short explainer (150–300 words) pitched precisely at your answers. A beginner gets an analogy first; an expert gets dense precision and skips the hand-holding. Same question, different lesson. 3. Offer. It stops and asks: want a richer visual? No auto-dumping. You opt in. 4. Visualize. If yes, it builds a self-contained HTML page, one interactive figure, a locked "warm-paper editorial" design, that opens in your browser and works offline. The whole trick: meet the learner where they are, then go deeper only on request. You can grab it and try for yourself: https://lnkd.in/gZMbDhxG

At the MIT reunion, I found Don Quixote: I love MIT reunions. I love seeing people return to MIT Sloan School of Management with shining smiles and glistening eyes full of memories, friendships, and stories. As a Latin American, I especially love that many of them see me, open their arms, and give me a huge hug. They tell me how my classes—and especially my jokes—have survived the years. This year, while visiting one of the reunion lunches, I ran into one of my most beloved former students. As always, he was extraordinarily effusive. Some of the best hugs I receive are from him—and he is Chinese, so I know those hugs are meaningful. But this time he was disappointed. A decade ago, I told him that he should spend his life trying to make the lives of others better. He has done exactly that. Yet he looked at me and said: "I've tried. But somehow the world feels worse. I realize I have had only a very small impact." I had only stopped by to say hello. Instead, I found myself answering one of the hardest questions I have received in a long time. As I often do when confronted with a difficult question, I started talking about something else: I talked about Don Quixote. After losing his sanity, Alonso Quijano becomes Don Quixote and embarks on a series of adventures. He loses almost all of them. But he gets up and tries again... and again... and again. He fights giants. He fights oppression. He fights injustice. And he gets beaten up. In the end, after being defeated in a duel, he returns home, recovers his sanity, and abandons his knightly pursuits. To me, one of the saddest moments in literature is what happens next. He has regained his reason, but he has lost something far more important: his imagination, his madness, and his willingness to fight. At MIT, we love to fight. At the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, we fight the emissions that are heating our planet. We fight discrimination and exclusion. We fight systems that strip people of dignity and opportunity. And we get beaten up. And we do it again... and again... and again. Not because we are guaranteed to win. We do it because we believe we cannot afford not to fight. What is the alternative? The alternative is to become a bystander. A spectator to the injustices that take place around us every day. And the distance between a bystander and an accomplice is very small. Sometimes the hardest challenges require an ounce of ingenuity, an ounce of creativity, an ounce of courage, an ounce of patience—and a ton of crazy. That is exactly how I would describe MIT graduates. So, my dear Jay, it is okay to lose. It is okay to be frustrated. It is okay to get beaten up. Because the alternative is not winning. The alternative is becoming a bystander. I would still rather stand with the crazies than with the bullies. The next time you feel that the battle is too hard, just look to your side. You will find me, and many MIT graduates, standing right there with you.

The latest BigPanda intern has arrived safely at the dotslash office in Glasgow. Feed them plenty of bamboo, sit back and let them crack on 🐼

Had the pleasure of attending my first flagship BigPanda event this week. BigPanda26. It was great to see so many customers, partners and prospective businesses attend looking to understand more about how BigPanda can support on delivering an Agentic ITOps vision. One thing that has really stood out since I have joined is the support we are providing to businesses within this AI journey. It is important to ask yourself: - do we have change agents across the team that can deliver on this vision? - does the business case stack up and provide us with alignment against strategic initiatives across the enterprise? - are we in a position to really challenge how we do things today and improve processes and develop our people? The world around us is changing at a rate that we have never seen before, so ask for help, talk to your peers, engage in tech communities or risk being left behind.

What an exciting #Know26 day 2 (and we still have our networking party tonight at the Rosina Cocktail Lounge from 5:30 pm — 7:30 pm!). ✅ The highlight of the day was Jane Thompson, Strategic Partner Principal, and Kevin Wood, Senior Sales Engineer, walking through the BigPanda platform during their session "From Reactive to Autonomous Action: BigPanda Agentic ITOps." 🐼 Thank you to all that attended, and if you haven't had time to connect with our team, we will be at kiosk AIS04 in the AI Innovation Zone all day tomorrow. Book time + learn more about the BigPanda platform here: 👉 https://bit.ly/4bPeduL #BigPanda #ServiceNow #SNOW #Knowledge26 #AIOps #ITOps #DigitalOperations

BigPanda is now a ServiceNow Elite Build Partner! Our certified app brings agentic AI directly into your ServiceNow ITSM workflows. Come by our booth to see it live at ServiceNow Knowledge 2026 in Las Vegas from May 5–7. And read more about this partnership in our blog: 🔗 https://bit.ly/4szUxjM #BigPanda #ServiceNow #SNOW #K26 #Knowledge26 #AIOps #ITOps #ITSM