by Gary Mintchell | Jun 25, 2026 | Commentary, News
I’ve lost a day’s productivity today driving into Chicago and back home. The backlog of company news continues to stack. I’ll tackle it tomorrow. First some impressions.
I can’t believe how large the show was this year. Someone told me it was a result of consolidating shows—but that was inaccurate. Show officials told me growth was organic, some due to more international presence (both exhibitors and attendees).
Booths were packed with many interested conversations.
Twenty-eight years attending these as an editor/writer, and I’ve never had so many blown off appointments. Don’t know if this is a trend, but if so it is not a favorable one.
On the other hand, the appointments I had were uniformly useful and interesting.
A lot of robotics. Many wanted to talk AI, but those conversations were mostly too vague. The humanoid robotic pavilion was more akin to a toy or game area. Some day, maybe.
Next year will be May in Las Vegas. I doubt that I’ll make that trip. There will not be any compensation to cover expenses, and I can cover any news through press releases.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 12, 2026 | Commentary, Generative AI
Secularism, scientism, rationalist Richard Dawkins wants to end any influence of “religion.” In doing so, he actually tries to start a new religion. This new secular religion most likely began with French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes. The coterie of Silicon Valley Generative AI leaders follow those unfortunate footsteps.
Pope Leo XIV unhesitatingly issued a 42,000-word encyclical, ”Magnifica Humanitas,” in response to the challenges of artificial intelligence.
Cultural technology critic and professor of computer science Cal Newport wrote, “Last week, Pope Leo XIV released I’m still digesting the full document, but early summaries indicate that the Pope is not ready to meekly acquiesce to the AI future that we’ve been told is inevitable.”
Leo wrote, “With the heart of a shepherd and a father, I ask everyone to abandon the construction of yet another Tower of Babel and to join forces in building up the common good, so that humanity will never lose its beauty, and the world once again will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell.”
I’ve been involved with automation for more than 40 years. Its value has always been as a tool to remove humans from dangerous jobs, enhance consistent quality, and eventually providing necessary data to feed business systems. They are best when used to build up the common good.
I wrote a longer philosophical piece last week on the subject. I continue to caution us not to be distracted by the hype. Do not become distracted or distraught by momentary whims in media or by “influencers.”
Just as I wrote on another blog last week about how I’d love to see a huge outbreak of humility amongst us.
Is there some hope in the discourse? Newport concludes his essay this way.
“Thankfully, in recent weeks, there has been a marked shift in how technology executives talk about AI. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called BS on executives claiming they’re laying people off due to AI, calling the excuse ‘lazy’ and ‘just a way for them to sound smart.’ Perhaps even more surprising, just last week, Sam Altman admitted he had been ‘pretty wrong’ about his previous predictions that AI would automate large numbers of jobs.”
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 11, 2026 | Commentary, Leadership
I have appreciated Kevin Meyer’s thinking on Lean, manufacturing, leadership, and life for many years. He recently wrote on his blog:
Bob Sutton posted something on LinkedIn this week that stopped me mid-scroll. He was flagging a Brené Brown interview in the Financial Times, in which she described a troubling shift: leaders feeling a sense of relief and permission from the current political climate to be, as she put it, the assholes they’ve always been. Sutton, who literally wrote the book on this (The No Asshole Rule, 2007), has been tracking the organizational costs of toxic leadership for decades. The fact that he was amplifying Brown’s warning suggests they’re both seeing the same thing.
So am I, and it’s been bothering me.
And also, me. As an aside, Brown’s new podcast conversation with Adam Grant called The Curiosity Shop is my new favorite listen
Meyer points to Brown’s deeper meaning:
Brown’s framing is more precise than it might first appear. She isn’t saying the political climate is creating bad leaders. She’s saying it’s licensing them. Leaders who previously kept their worst instincts in check because social and institutional norms demanded it now feel liberated. The restraints have loosened. That’s a fundamentally different, and more dangerous, problem.
Ah, research from the PhD:
Sutton’s research makes the case against this directly. His concept of the “Total Cost of Assholes” is real and measurable: talented people leave, honest input dries up as psychological safety collapses, decision quality erodes. As he put it, “It takes numerous encounters with positive people to offset the energy and happiness sapped by a single episode with one asshole.” The “but he gets results” rationalization doesn’t survive contact with the longitudinal data.
How many of us have followed leaders from many walks of life who have seemingly build careers on character and morals only to be shown to have been deceived?
I can almost understand, not excuse but understand, a purely transactional leader who drops the character mask when the costs of wearing it exceed the benefits. Cynical, but at least internally consistent. What I cannot get my head around is the behavior of people who have spent careers, sometimes entire lifetimes, building identities around moral and ethical frameworks, often explicitly religious ones, and then abandon those frameworks the moment a convenient “end” appears on the horizon.
Character as relationship, not transaction.
But character works like a relationship, not a transaction. Anyone who has watched someone enter a marriage or a partnership convinced they can change the other person already knows how this ends. You don’t change people by accepting their worst behavior; you ratify it. And you signal to everyone watching that the behavior is acceptable, which is how norms collapse.
The harder path, the one that actually maintains what you claim to believe, is staying true to the principle when the shortcut looks most appealing. Especially then. And the irony is that the shortcut rarely delivers what was promised anyway. The downstream effects of tolerating poor character accumulate quietly at first, then loudly: institutional trust erodes, the culture coarsens, the people who care most either leave or go silent. What looked like a faster route to the goal has created an environment in which the goal is now harder to achieve, not easier, because the foundation it required has been eaten away.
He ends his essay much like I often do on my other blog—making it personal.
So the next time you find yourself excusing a leader’s behavior you would never accept from your own kids, your employees, or your friends, ask what that rationalization is actually costing. Not them. You.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 8, 2026 | Commentary
I’ve been reading about the brouhaha over new owners and management at CBS and specifically 60 Minutes. I haven’t watched the program for more than 30 years. I haven’t a strong opinion about the journalists or the program.
When Mike Wallace was the lead guy, he practiced “gotcha” journalism. He’d set someone up then spring a trap question designed to throw the subject off guard and show how superior Wallace was. Even if I didn’t like the interview subject, I didn’t like the style. Quit watching—except for maybe Andy Rooney’s commentary, which was always thought provoking and a little off the wall.
Guess who copied the Mike Wallace schtick? President Trump. Remember early in this administration when he’d have a foreign leader visit, invite the press for what is always a smile and greet session, and then spring a trick question along the lines of “when did you stop beating your wife”? I still don’t like that style.
I became a magazine editor in my second career. I used to put people I was about to interview at ease by telling them I wasn’t Mike Wallace there to interrogate them. And smile. I wanted the latest technology and application news, not just to show someone embellishing marketing hype. That’s too easy. And not useful. All y’all can see through marketing hype—I hope.
New ownership and management comes with peril for writers. Check my pivot in 2013 from magazine to independent. At the level of network TV these days everything is political. The people there must learn to live with it or find an alternative. The tensions about trade press always revolve around treatment of advertisers or potential advertisers. (I once met PC Magazine contributing editor John C. Dvorak. Even in the 90s, PC Mag Editors’ Choice awards were influenced by advertising. Not surprised. I’ve seen it, too.)
Being independent means lower income, but I can pick. I truly respect the company that sponsors me. If I didn’t, I have FU money enough to walk away.
But for CBS and 60 Minutes, I’m glad I’m not there. Like they say, it’s the golden rule—those who have the gold make the rules.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 3, 2026 | Commentary, Marketing
John Gruber at Daring Fireball pins the Meta strategy regarding more AR glasses:
Spitball: Meta’s entire business is predicated on knowing as much about people as possible. Their interest in building out a virtual “metaverse” world was motivated by the fact they could track everything people do, see, say, and hear there. That didn’t play out so they’re pivoting to building out devices that will let them track everything people do, see, say, and hear in the real world.
PSA: Do you log out after every visit to a Meta site? If not, it continues to track everyplace you visit and everything you do.
by Gary Mintchell | May 18, 2026 | Business, Commentary, Marketing
John Gruber nails it in a recent Daring Fireball post. He refers to a news item quoting incoming Apple CEO John Ternus saying Apple has always shipped products, not technologies. Steven Levy writing in Wired ripped Ternus for not laying out a plan to ship AI. But AI is a technology. Apple will continue to add AI into products that we will find useful and enjoyable.
Check my preceding blog post about “Physical AI” humanoid robots at the upcoming Automate show. Looking at that market, A3 president Jeff Burnstein told me that the developers are throwing out a technology hoping users will find a use. The major AI companies are doing the same thing. Flailing around searching for a market to justify billion-dollar investments.
I was taught, and still believe, that product development means looking for potential user pain points and solving them with a product probably using the latest technologies.
