Show notes

🎙️ In This Episode of Joe Reads the News:

Live From a Clever Hideout in Texas: John Christensen on Mandolin, Farmer’s Market Weekends, The Seven Stories AI Brand Reveal, Data Migration & Regression Testing, LinkedIn News, Bobby Small’s Microsoft MVP Win, The Algorithm Award, DynamicsCon Regional in Dublin, Ohio, Hiring a Data Solutions Lead, AI Apps Promising Instant Millions, Amy Keenan & the ISV Society, Founder Branding, Jeff Schiefelbein’s Undivided Life, B2B Marketing, Tiffany Allen on North American Companies Going Global, Murray Fife’s AI Era, Summit North America, Databricks & the Future of ERP Data, Guest Plans for the Fall, Pool Cues, Coffee, Technical Chaos, and John Playing the Show Out.

Key Segments:

00:02:09 Joe kicks things off live from a “clever hideout in Texas,” introduces John Christensen—aka Il Mandolino—and explains the simple premise of Friday’s show: whatever the LinkedIn community is posting, Joe is going to read it.

00:03:45 Weekend plans enter the newsroom: farmer’s markets, kids’ sports, hiking, and possibly people voluntarily jumping out of airplanes. Meanwhile, Restream has deprecated video clips, adding the first technical wrinkle of the day.

00:04:44 Joe introduces the new Seven Stories AI brand and its core idea: companies lose enormous amounts of context during long software projects, so Seven Stories aims to preserve that context while handling data migration, reporting, master data management, and regression testing.

00:07:33 The LinkedIn-reading machine officially fires up. Joe promises that if you posted something this week—an award, conference announcement, obligatory airplane photo, or enthusiastic comment—it could become news.

00:09:50 The Algorithm Award leaderboard comes into focus, with Anya sitting at ten wins before Joe discovers this week’s surprise winner: Microsoft MVP Bobby Small.

00:11:13 Bobby Small gets his moment. Joe recalls Bobby’s early Dynamics 365 writing as part of his own introduction to the platform and celebrates Bobby entering his second year as a Microsoft MVP—while naturally refusing to let a typo escape permanent News immortality.

00:14:33 Bobby officially receives the semi-prestigious—or perhaps pre-semi-prestigious—Algorithm Award, determined by a rigorous jury consisting largely of whatever LinkedIn happens to show Joe first.

00:16:55 Joe encounters a B2B marketing discussion about CMOs facing greater pressure to demonstrate bottom-line results and the claim that much of the customer journey happens before a prospect ever speaks with sales.

00:17:43 DynamicsCon Regional comes up, and after a little geographic detective work the destination is confirmed: Dublin, Ohio—not Ireland. Joe notes the growing buzz around the Ohio event.

00:19:52 Joe accidentally turns LinkedIn into a recruiting session, announcing that Seven Stories needs a delivery/data solutions lead focused on ERP data migration, reporting, data management, and regression testing.

00:21:54 An AI ops ad inspires a new experiment: Joe wants to start a business and test the growing collection of AI tools that promise founders they can build companies and reach massive recurring revenue almost instantly.

00:22:23 Amy Keenan and the ISV Society get the branding treatment. Joe likes the “professional highlighter” positioning and argues that Amy’s messaging actually differentiates her in an ERP ecosystem where company descriptions can otherwise start sounding remarkably similar.

00:24:01 Jeff Schiefelbein’s “undivided life” messaging sparks a conversation about founder and investor branding. Joe’s takeaway: effective positioning should attract the right people while pushing some others away.

00:25:32 A Dallas Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations job post sends Joe down another path: why not visit firms like HSO, Deloitte, and Slalom and bring them onto the news?

00:26:38 A LinkedIn marketing post argues that reach without context or relevance isn’t enough. Joe immediately recognizes the concept as suspiciously close to the entire operating model of Joe Reads the News: plenty of reach, relevance not guaranteed.

00:28:41 Tiffany Allen explains a common misconception about her work: her target isn’t international companies, but North American companies that operate globally. Joe works through the distinction live—same customers, different questions, bigger opportunity.

00:29:23 Bobby Small makes another appearance—this time for actual theater in Denver—before Joe tries to bring Murray Fife onto the show and discovers Murray has been posting prolifically about AI alongside Sean Geller.

00:31:53 After surveying the week’s LinkedIn news, Joe turns back to the office, the Microsoft Surface setup, and the pool cues sitting conspicuously behind him—raising questions about exactly what kind of newsroom this is.

00:32:40 Summit North America is coming, and Joe announces that he’ll be sponsoring and unveiling Seven Stories, the new venture being spawned from Aqueducts. The focus is Databricks, reporting, data migration, and the broader data work surrounding ERP implementations.

00:33:46 Joe lays out the deeper Seven Stories thesis: data becomes the foundation for AI, reporting, automation, and future growth, yet project teams often struggle to preserve all the context surrounding it. Seven Stories intends to document and retain that context throughout the project.

00:35:13 Summit North America gets another plug, including a Seven Stories/Aqueducts discount code and Nashville’s apparently irresistible combination of conference activity, high-volume food, coffee, and guitar riffs.

00:36:13 Joe declares the news officially read and previews a fall lineup with more guests, inviting people to come on the show so their work can be highlighted for the audience.

00:36:53 The episode closes on Joe’s philosophy that plenty of stuff comes your way—just like the news—and how you react to it is what matters, before John Christensen gets the final musical spotlight.

00:38:11 “Live from a clever hideout in Texas.” Joe signs off the August 21, 2026 edition of Joe Reads the News, accompanied by an apparently gravity-defying Airstream and one final “good day.”