Questions Before Platforms: Building the Data Foundation AI Actually Needs | Episode #0036
Start Small, Think Big - A podcast and newsletter that guides you on your AI and Automation journey.Show Notes
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Sid Atkinson, co-founder and CEO of Applied Curiosity and co-host of The Data Culture Podcast, joins Brad Groux to explain why AI readiness starts with better questions, consistent data practices, and a clear business purpose—not another platform.
Brad and Sid discuss how lightweight governance helps smaller companies move quickly without taking unnecessary risks, why institutional knowledge needs context and effective dates, and how leaders can close the perception gap between what they think is happening and the ground truth inside the business.
They also explore the role of SOPs in agentic work, the danger of treating governance frameworks as the goal, how to balance repeatable processes with innovation, and why human accountability remains essential. Sid closes with a blunt rule for every leader: know the nouns that define your business—customers, markets, segments, channels, and products—before asking AI to reason across them.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Start with the business questions that matter, then identify the data and capabilities required to answer them. • Small organizations need lightweight rigor, not enterprise bureaucracy. • Capture the reasoning and context behind experienced employees’ decisions, not only the written steps. • Tag or retire outdated knowledge so AI does not treat decades of documentation as one current truth. • Use governance frameworks to identify useful capabilities; do not mistake the framework for the mission. • Standardize proven work and reserve deliberate time and budget for larger experiments. • Automate the discovery of commitments and follow-ups, while keeping human relationships human. • Define the shared nouns of the business before attempting advanced analytics or AI.
RESOURCES DISCUSSED, IN EPISODE ORDER
Applied Curiosity — https://www.appliedcuriosity.ai/ The Data Culture Podcast — https://rss.com/podcasts/dataculture/ Veritas Kanban — https://github.com/BradGroux/veritas-kanban Leaders Eat Last — https://simonsinek.com/books/leaders-eat-last Start With Why — https://simonsinek.com/books/start-with-why The Infinite Game — https://simonsinek.com/books/the-infinite-game In Search of Excellence — https://tompeters.com/writing/books/ OpenClaw — https://openclaw.ai/ Like Clockwork — https://samgoodner.com/ Start Small, Think Big links — https://linktr.ee/digitalmeld CRISP-DM — https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/spss-modeler/18.6.0?topic=guide-about-spss-modeler DAMA-DMBOK — https://dama.org/learning-resources/dama-data-management-body-of-knowledge-dmbok/ CMMI Model — https://www.isaca.org/resources/reference-guide/cmmi-model-quick-reference-guide BrainMeld.io — https://www.brainmeld.io/ Claude — https://www.anthropic.com/claude Microsoft 365 Copilot — https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/microsoft-365-copilot-overview PLAUD — https://www.plaud.ai/ Sid Atkinson on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/sidatkinson TASSCC — https://www.tasscc.org/
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Digital Meld helps organizations build the capability to adapt by combining clear business standards, accountable AI, useful automation, and practical data systems.
More from Start Small, Think Big - A podcast and newsletter that guides you on your AI and Automation journey.
AI can help you finish the work. It cannot take responsibility for whether the work is right. Doug Gabbard, Principal Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft and the creator behind Practicing Photography, joins Brad Groux and Robert Groux to talk about using AI where it actually helps: learning unfamiliar creative tools, finding buried knowledge, improving scripts, and turning experience into better requirements. Doug shares how he uses screenshots to get help in Photoshop and Lightroom, builds agents around departmental SharePoint knowledge, and brings engineering discipline to his photography workflow. We also get into the limits: confident wrong answers, missing security requirements, the future of entry-level learning, and why people skills still matter. The question to take back to your next project: What did I miss? Takeaways Start with a real task you understand, not a tool you want an excuse to use. Give AI the relevant context: source material, desired outcome, constraints, and what failure looks like. A script that runs is not automatically secure, scalable, or ready for other people to use. Ask for criticism and missing requirements, then check the response against evidence. Use AI to repurpose your own ideas without handing over your point of view. Keep learning the fundamentals—and learn to explain them to people. Resources discussed Microsoft Adobe Photoshop Adobe Lightroom ChatGPT Gemini Claude Microsoft Copilot SharePoint Backblaze Azure Blob Storage Synology n8n Supabase OpenClaw PowerShell Microsoft Sentinel Microsoft Agent Builder quick start (PDF) Follow Doug Practicing Photography YouTube LinkedIn Follow Start Small, Think Big Find the podcast, newsletter, and our other channels: https://linktr.ee/digitalmeld More episodes and articles: https://digitalmeld.io/podcast/ Recorded February 19, 2026. Product availability, pricing, and policies discussed reflect the conversation at that time. Doug shares his own experience; this is not an official Microsoft product announcement. Recorded and edited using Riverside — https://go.sstb.ai/riverside (affiliate link). Affiliate disclosure: Some links above are affiliate links. Digital Meld may earn a commission if you purchase through them, at no additional cost to you.
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