The MCTO Awards: Who is THE Modern CTO of 2025?

(Josh at 00:00:03) Happy New Year, Joel. It's the end of the year. How's it going?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:07) Dude, it is going fantastic. I am so excited. For everybody listening, here's what we're doing today. Josh has assembled the top moments of 2025 for us to give an award out. Ultimately, the award is going to be the Modern CTO for the year.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:22) And so we've got all different types of clips, things that did really well, leadership advice, unconventional advice, the clip that got me in the most trouble. All of these exciting moments. I haven't seen any of them. Josh poured over his own personal thoughts and looked at the analytics to come up with this list. Yeah, I'm excited.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:41) Josh, this feels weird. We've never done this before.

(Josh at 00:00:44) First time. That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:45) First time.

(Josh at 00:00:46) Joel, looking at this list, I'm curious. Well, let's just go in order here. The most useful leadership advice from the last year, I thought, came from Art Hu, senior vice president at Lenovo, where he talked about getting speeding tickets instead of parking tickets for implementing AI.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:04) What should CTOs be doing right now to prepare their organizations for AI?

(Multiple Guests (Art Hu, Phil Tee, Maro Stara) at 00:01:09) You want to get, if anything, speeding tickets. You don't want to get parking tickets.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:13) Oh.

(Josh at 00:01:13) And I just thought that was the quickest bite of leadership advice you could give. It says so much in just a handful of words. Art's been on the show a number of times now. An incredible guest over the years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:25) Oh, he's one of my favorite people. And it is great advice too. You know, we clipped it. It was awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:33) You want speeding tickets, not parking tickets. I think it was so well said. I definitely agree with this being—this is what this episode is going to be. It's going to be me judging you on you picking the best clips.

(Josh at 00:01:46) Oh boy, okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:46) I'm a critical person. Ask my wife. She can confirm. I'm hard to work with, and it could always be better. But I honestly, dude, I fully support you picking that as one of the top moments for 2025 because I love Art and it's great insight.

(Josh at 00:02:03) Yeah, Art was awesome and sharp as ever in that episode. Well, next thing I wanted to highlight is, you know, people give lots of hiring advice all the time, and I thought that one moment kind of stood out as the best, most useful piece of hiring advice of the year.

(Josh at 00:02:23) And, you know, we have had a lot of great guests, as we just said, over the past year, but one of them—Joel, I believe in the episode you dubbed the queen of hiring during the episode.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:35) Did I really?

(Josh at 00:02:38) I believe you did. Rebecca, it must be Rebecca. It is Rebecca. Rebecca Carr, CEO of SmartRecruiters. She was awesome, right? She had so much great advice.

(Josh at 00:02:44) And yeah, she gave this fantastic advice about being self-aware.

(Rebecca Carr at 00:02:50) The one question that I have always had the most amount of success in understanding if someone is a fit: give me an example of negative feedback that they have received about themselves and their performance, and tell me what they did about it.

(Josh at 00:03:04) Yeah, that seems to be really just the best litmus test for picking someone worthy of being on your team. So yeah, as Joel said somewhere in that episode, the queen of hiring. CEO at SmartRecruiters, just an awesome guest. And had a lot of really interesting thoughts as well about the future of jobs and the future of work that if you haven't checked out the episode, y'all should go take a listen.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:30) Yeah, they have a lot of data. They build all the software for hiring and all of that. And she's got a lot of insight at scale for that. But, you know, what's funny is I remember weird things about people when I see them because my brain just does this in order for me to exist. And so what I remember about her, she was really smart with hiring and that she was a really good parent, like, really good mom. Because we—I don't know if it made the podcast, but we did have some conversation about her kids and everything. And whenever I talk to somebody, whether it's on the show or off the show about their kids, how they talk about their kids is a really good indicator of what type of parent they are. And so I typically do remember guests when we talk about their kids or their family and stuff, like what type of parent they are. And she stood out to me as a really good one.

(Josh at 00:04:19) Yeah, absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:20) Okay, let's look at this. This is the most unconventional leadership advice.

(Josh at 00:04:25) Yeah, before we get into it, Joel, any idea what it might be? And you might know now. I'm not sure if you've seen who this might be at this point.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:34) I haven't looked at it yet, no. Okay, I'm assuming it's something about punching your boss in the face.

(Josh at 00:04:42) You know, you're not entirely wrong. Or maybe you are. But alright, so the most unconventional leadership advice of the last year came from Adrian McDermott, CTO at Zendesk.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:53) Oh, that was good.

(Josh at 00:04:54) He was fantastic. And he had this moment where you actually had to do a double take and say, "Can you say that again?" And his advice was to stop being a vending machine.

(Adrian McDermott at 00:05:05) I often say in leadership and in management, you need to be a lot less like a vending machine and a little bit more like a slot machine from time to time. Someone should be able to come up to you, hit B12, and get a Snickers bar. Right? That's just not how it should be working.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:18) I haven't heard this one before. Can you say that again?

(Josh at 00:05:23) Be less predictable, which I think on its face sounds like pretty wild advice, I think. But when you listen to what he's saying, he just basically wants to give people more of a spine.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:37) You want to know why I love it? Yeah. I love it because it's wild advice that sounds like it would be horrible, but then he's got this very logical, beautiful explanation for it. And I think those pieces are really great. When you get advice that just sounds wild on the surface, but then there's this really brilliant thought behind it, that to me is like he's click-baiting leadership advice. I love it.

(Josh at 00:06:01) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The next moment that we want to highlight is the most controversial moment of the year. And we don't often get into stuff that I would say is controversial. Usually it's good, wholesome advice and stories. But maybe we had one or two guests over the last year who—you know, tech can get messy, and things you do with tech can get messy. So, Joel, before—

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:25) Can I guess it?

(Josh at 00:06:27) Yeah, please.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:28) Is this the one about the woman and the credit card limits?

(Josh at 00:06:31) It's not. It's not. No, no, no. You're thinking too real life right now. I'm thinking more, what happens after someone might leave this world? Does that ring any bells?

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:48) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. This is the dude that makes the AI so he could talk to his dead dad.

(Josh at 00:06:55) That's right. This is Miles Spencer, the CEO at Reflecta.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:58) So what is it that you're doing?

(Miles Spencer at 00:07:00) Well, through this platform, I'm actually able to talk to my dad every day, and he passed away eight years ago. By simply loading a few files and having a twenty-minute conversation with our biographer, I'm able to launch a recognizable image and likeness of my father.

(Josh at 00:07:18) And man, did we get some wild feedback about this clip.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:22) We got comments on that, didn't we? Didn't we get some really weird comments on it?

(Josh at 00:07:25) We did. We can take a look at them right now if you want.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:28) You know what? In all fairness, this was a wild episode, and, you know, I think it does require a lot of thought. Maybe there is someone grieving out there who wants to use this tech in the way that Miles talked about it on the episode. And if that's you, more power to you. In my case, I couldn't see myself doing it, but—

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:50) No, no, it's not for me.

(Josh at 00:07:52) But—

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:52) Yeah, you know, we don't legislate how people grieve. People get to do what they need to do, you know. And so if you want to make tech where you can upload all of this content about your relative and speak to them, fine, great. I think he's going to have an interesting competitive market for him as the mainstream services get better memory and make small features here and there that will allow people just to do that. Like, I have a writing assistant that I have that's trained on my voice. And anytime I start a conversation in that folder, there's no reason why I couldn't do that with the transcripts of all the recordings of me talking to my mom, you know? So from a competitive aspect, business aspect, it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. But, you know, there's always room for niche players like that. And he was coming from a good spot, and I genuinely enjoyed him as a person. And he gave us awesome content.

(Josh at 00:08:51) Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I think it can be fun to kind of stir the pot a little bit, but, you know, looking at it seriously like you just did, Joel, it's good to think about these things because someone's out there doing it. And, you know, if you have a strong opinion on it one way or the other, you should at least know about it, that, you know, at least know that's happening out there. So thank you to Miles.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:14) Hold on a second.

(Josh at 00:09:15) We didn't—

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:16) We love Miles too. Miles, thank you for doing the show. But we also are going to roast you as much as possible because that's how we show love. Let's move on.

(Josh at 00:09:25) Indeed. What do we got next, Josh? So this was fun. I wanted to find something that kind of counterbalanced the controversy of the last clip. So we also have a lot of chill guests. So I wanted to find the chillest guy of 2025. So for this one, I reached all the way back to the beginning of the year. And I rediscovered Jack Timm, senior vice president at Intuit Mailchimp.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:52) Oh, Mailchimp was good.

(Josh at 00:09:53) So good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:54) Is this about Freddy? No. That's my only takeaway from this episode. The Mailchimp little monkey character guy's name is Freddy.

(Josh at 00:10:03) Yes, but not quite about Freddy. It's actually about something else. Let's find out real quick here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:09) You seem like a pretty chill guy, very grounded. How do you actually do it?

(Jack Timm at 00:10:14) Bigger picture. And bigger picture comes through faith. It comes through family. There's so many things that are bigger than my little microcosm. And so putting things in perspective, number one. Number two, I'd say just some practical things I've had to learn is don't respond to that email. You know, sometimes you get—

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:36) That happens to me once every two or three months, man. So yeah. Oh dude, that's so true. That was good because I'll tell you what. That clip, I remember that day actually because that had just happened to me in that week. But basically, TL;DR guys, if you got an email and you've got this emotional response to the email, don't type the response in the reply. Your instinct is like, "Oh, I'm going to hit reply and then I'm going to type it up in the draft." The problem with that is you can accidentally hit send. So what I do is—and I think what he was talking about as well—is I just put it in my Evernote. I write my reply in my Evernote, and then I sleep. So all of my emotions reset. And I wake up the next day and I read it and I'm like, "Should I send this?" And it's been pretty much no every time forever.

(Josh at 00:11:26) Whatever we can do to be more chill guys, it's a good takeaway from that one. So cool. Yeah, thank you, Jack.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:33) Excited about this next one. Yeah, thank you, Jack. That was great. Absolutely. Yeah.

(Josh at 00:11:37) So the next one is the clip that got Joel into the most trouble. And what could this be? And, you know, there's a lot of ways to read trouble. Like, is it trouble out in the world? Is it trouble at work? Is it trouble at—I'm not sure. But, Joel, do you have any idea what this clip might be?

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:55) Well, usually, the stuff that gets me in real trouble, we cut from the show. Usually we just cut it out from the show.

(Josh at 00:12:03) You know, usually that's true. However, this time, that might not be true.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:09) We're just going to have to see.

(Josh at 00:12:12) This time we're going to have to let's just find out together, Joel.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:15) Let's watch it.

(Josh at 00:12:16) What clip got you in the most trouble this year?

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:19) I removed the sugar from my diet last summer. By winter, my wife doesn't leave me alone now.

(Josh at 00:12:26) What did you say?

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:28) She's very interested in me. I was just trying to get fit for myself. I was like, eventually this is going to wear off. And it's been four or five months, and she's still very, very interested in me. That's the most professional way I can describe it on a podcast.

(Multiple Guests (Art Hu, Phil Tee, Maro Stara) at 00:12:39) You always hear, like, "Honey, I love you to death" part. You hear that, but deep down, it's like they want them to change, not just for health reasons. Let's put it that way.

(Josh at 00:12:52) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:53) So—what was his name?

(Josh at 00:12:54) Maro Stara. That was Maro Stara. But yeah, that—

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:58) Six Pack CEO.

(Josh at 00:13:00) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:01) Alright, give that gift to your wife this year. Call him now. 6PackCEO.com, I think, right?

(Josh at 00:13:09) I believe so.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:09) "Joel sent you." He specifically works with technology leader executives. But if you look on his website, he gets all these dudes to do before and after pictures. They're also business owners, all different types of people. But one of his—I follow him now after the episode. I didn't know him before the episode, but we found him through the research of having him on. And I've been following him for almost a year now on Facebook and seeing all the dudes talk and the posts and stuff that they do. Man, it's amazing. He's got a lot of clients. He actually also gave me a free blood work analysis thing.

(Josh at 00:13:47) Oh, cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:47) And yeah, and so I got to meet his team and all of that. It was really cool. Super good setup over there. But yeah, that's the only clip of the show I think my wife has ever watched because one of her friends saw it and DMed it to her. And she's like, "Why are you talking about me on the show?"

(Josh at 00:14:07) Yeah, yeah. And, you know, full transparency for how I know about that. Usually, clips don't get Joel into any trouble. This is the only trouble I've ever seen Joel get into, but it's only because you brought it up on a few episodes about how Michelle learned about this clip. So I thought that was a funny moment to kind of reshare. And also, get in shape, people. I think getting in shape is great. If you're not doing any exercise, start doing something and you'll feel better. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:35) Absolutely. If you need to get your mind in shape, talk to Rob. What was his name? Rob what?

(Josh at 00:14:39) Rob Kowalski.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:40) I think I'm talking to Rob. Yeah, Rob. He's brilliant. Look at his episode.

(Josh at 00:14:45) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:46) He'll get your mind right and then Maro will get your physical body right, which also helps your mind.

(Josh at 00:14:52) Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Well, moving right along here, we do have another category: Best Storyteller of 2025. There was one guest who rose above the tech details and even told some fun stories that were completely outside of technology that led back to tech lessons.

(Josh at 00:15:12) So this was also the most listened and viewed episode on Spotify. So the Spotify app itself, people watched and listened to this one the very most, and I think for good reason. So Joel, before I reveal to you, does anyone come to mind here?

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:28) No. Who was this?

(Josh at 00:15:30) It was Phil Tee, Executive Vice President and Head of AI Innovation at Zscaler.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:37) Really?

(Josh at 00:15:38) Yeah. Yeah. People loved his episode. It was basically on how agentic AI is the UX of the future. He came prepped with his own title, and he basically just walked in and said, "Here's what I'm talking about." And he talked about it, and people listened. So let's just take a quick look at this one clip because this was so much fun from the show. Yeah, like I said, it kind of veered off the usual path. So let's take a listen to this one.

(Multiple Guests (Art Hu, Phil Tee, Maro Stara) at 00:16:01) There is a touristy destination called the Winchester Mystery House. The Winchester Mystery House is the ancestral home of Sarah Winchester, the heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:14) I'm already sold. I already—

(Multiple Guests (Art Hu, Phil Tee, Maro Stara) at 00:16:15) Like it. She went slightly batty in her later years. She became convinced that if she ceased building on this house, she would be haunted by the spirits of the people that have been killed by Winchester rifles. So as a consequence, this building is just bizarre. It's labyrinthine. There are stairs that go into ceilings. There's windows in the floor. There are hundreds of rooms in this thing. Apocryphally, people have been lost for days in it. If you're a fan of Stephen King, there's a book he wrote called Rose Red, which is loosely based on the Winchester Mystery House story. Those stairs, by the way, that you just saw there, she also suffered very badly from arthritis of the hips as she got older, so she couldn't walk up normal stairs. Kind of wacky.

(Josh at 00:16:59) Wacky indeed. But yeah, Phil was an awesome guest. Very, very knowledgeable.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:04) And I like how that's the clip.

(Josh at 00:17:06) That's the clip. That's right. Totally different from what we usually share. And you know, in the episode itself, he uses it to make a point about you shouldn't build your tech stacks like that house. So things should be organized neatly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:22) He was a good storyteller. He had a nice voice for storytelling.

(Josh at 00:17:25) Oh, absolutely. In any case, Joel, I think we have just a couple more categories here. The third to last here is the Wisest Episode of 2025. Now we have a lot of wise guests on the show. People offer lots of great life lessons. Do any stick out to you at this current moment? Who might have been the wisest guest or episode of the year?

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:54) All I can think about right now is the funniest episode of the year. And I think the funniest episode of the year was Guy Kawasaki.

(Josh at 00:18:01) Well, you know what Guy said in the episode?

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:10) What?

(Josh at 00:18:11) I believe he said, "Humor is a sign of intelligence." So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:14) Oh, no way. I guessed it.

(Josh at 00:18:15) It's very funny you'd say that because—

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:18) Your neighbor assumes you were the gardener? Tell me about that.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:18:18) Okay. We were living in San Francisco on Union Street, a very, very nice area. I'm out there one day cutting the bush in front of my house, and this older white woman comes up to me and says, "Do you do lawns also?"

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:36) You might think—

(Josh at 00:18:37) You're absolutely right. It was Guy Kawasaki, and he told so many great stories. Yeah. No. Guy Kawasaki was hilarious. And yeah, truly, I think the wisest episode of the last year.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:48) So I love it. Alright. What's the last one we've got here?

(Josh at 00:18:51) Alright. The very last little moment on this list is the Top Clip for 2025. This is purely by engagement, views, wackiness. Any idea for this one, Joel?

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:04) This is just the top number of views?

(Josh at 00:19:07) That's right. Top number of views. And in this case, top number of likes and comments as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:12) Alright. It's either going to be—and we look at the stats here and there throughout the year—so I know it's either going to be Seth, something with Seth Godin, because that was an awesome episode. And I'm surprised that's not on this list either. Maybe because he's not a CTO.

(Josh at 00:19:26) Well, and I'll edit this out, but that was actually 2024. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:31) Seth Godin was 2024?

(Josh at 00:19:32) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:33) Don't edit it out. Let people know I'm wrong. It's healthy for me.

(Josh at 00:19:36) No. Yeah. Sure. That was—I mean, his legacy looms large. So yeah, 2024.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:41) Wow. It's been a year since we've talked to Seth. Really?

(Josh at 00:19:44) We should change that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:46) Okay. Well, anyways, he's definitely got a well-performing piece of content or two on our channels. Other than that, the robot wife one would be the—those two were the ones that had the highest views, robot wife and Seth Godin, the last time I looked at analytics. Okay. Well, did it stay?

(Josh at 00:20:07) I mean, you know, your guess is as good as mine, but I don't have a guess. I have the answer. So let me tell you right now what it is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:16) How long until I can buy a robot replacement wife?

(Multiple Guests (Art Hu, Phil Tee, Maro Stara) at 00:20:20) You can buy one now. It just depends on—

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:22) Know the difference and not know the difference.

(Josh at 00:20:24) Oh, man. What? Yeah. People, go watch the full episode or the full clip. It's hilarious. If you want to amuse yourself too, on YouTube specifically, this clip got so many comments. Over 50 comments of people just weighing in on the possibility of a robot wife being real in the next ten years or so. So yeah. Joel, any thoughts on this one?

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:48) I think we should make more content about these crazy, ridiculous future tech topics because they get lots of engagement on YouTube. They want some more YouTube money. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I think. That's my thought when I hear that. Dude, the robot wife joke, I mean, that was so much fun.

(Josh at 00:21:05) Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that episode too, yeah, if you guys haven't listened to it, check it out. Andrew Kegel, CEO at Realbotics. One thing I wanted to mention too is that entire episode kind of spurred from CES 2025. And yeah, if you're listening to the podcast in January, which you should be, we'll be having Jim Harris back on after CES in 2026. Yeah. Jim's awesome. And yeah, who knows? Maybe we'll see some other weird, wacky robotics technology or some other piece of tech that we can make some crazy content about. But—

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:37) Yeah. I had the asterisk. I was like, "When can you buy the robot wives?" He's like, "Today." I'm like, "Well, I mean, like, when can you do it and not tell the difference?" Because that's when it's going to be exciting—I guess is the wrong word to use. But it will be interesting because if you've ever seen Westworld, it's like to be in a room full of entities that you think are people and to find out that they're all robots and you're the only organic human in the room, that's a weird place to be for humanity.

(Josh at 00:22:08) Indeed. Indeed. And we're only ten years away or so, Andrew says. So we'll see what happens. But Joel, the moment is finally upon us here. Oh. The Modern CTO of 2025. We've gone through a lot of great people. We got a few nominations before us. And let's just go through the nominations right now.

(Josh at 00:22:30) So this is all based on audience feedback, number of times Joel organically mentioned the guest in other episodes, and just overall vibes of who we thought was kind of doing the most, or really the best modern tech work in our guest list this past year. So the four guests we have nominated here are Art Hu from Lenovo. He gave great advice on getting speeding tickets instead of parking tickets for implementing AI in your company. So Art Hu. We've got Rebecca Carr, the CEO at SmartRecruiters. She led an AI transformation of her company over eighteen months and changed everything. She has lots of great futuristic ideas on the future of work and jobs in the next five years. She was a fantastic guest with a lot of forward-thinking ideas. We have Rob Duffy, the CTO from HealthEdge. He had a genius strategy for internal AI adoption. And yeah, Joel had lots to say about him, not only on the episode, but on episodes that followed. So Rob left a mark on Joel. And we also have Nick Calver from Palo Alto Networks. He had so much great advice and stories to tell we had to do two episodes to fit everything in. And yeah, he was also a fantastic storyteller and guest from the past year. So Joel, we've got a list of juggernauts right here. Who do you think is the Modern CTO of 2025?

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:04) I'd love to say that we use data and analysis and stuff like that. Well, we didn't. We used a lot—like, if we could turn Joel's feelings into data, then that's what it would be.

(Josh at 00:24:14) We're going on vibes right now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:15) We're going on—yeah. We're vibe coding this, and it's going to make this—it's going to make it less special. It's not though. Look, I'm going to go with, picking from these nominations, the most modern CTO—they're all great. It's actually very hard to pick. I feel like I'm judging Kids Baking Championship right now. They always say the same thing. They're always like, "It's really hard." But it actually is because all of these people are great. You also forgot Rebecca not only did the transformation in eighteen months but then sold the company to a massive tech juggernaut too, which is unbelievable. That story was such a good one. But I would say, if we're going to go—if the qualifier is the one that I'm going to remember in ten years and that I continue to tell people about in future upcoming episodes over the next year, even off the record like, "Hey, you need to check this out because it's useful to your business," and every person listening right now should go listen to this episode because it is by far the best episode I've heard on AI adoption, I'd give it to Rob Duffy. Rob Duffy, the Modern CTO of 2025.

(Josh at 00:25:24) Alright. Should we unveil and see if you're correct?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:28) We should unveil and see if I'm correct.

(Josh at 00:25:29) Let's unveil. Who is the Modern CTO of 2025?

(Multiple Guests (Art Hu, Phil Tee, Maro Stara) at 00:25:35) The biggest piece of leadership advice I've ever given—

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:37) I was—

(Jack Timm at 00:25:37) Running a program—

(Adrian McDermott at 00:25:38) There he is.

(Multiple Guests (Art Hu, Phil Tee, Maro Stara) at 00:25:39) At Akamai. We presented it to Jeff. We presented it to—

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:42) And—

(Josh at 00:25:42) Yeah. Rob gave great advice. Fantastic advice. And Joel had a lot to rave about following the episode. I think at least three or four times following that episode, Joel would ask, "Hey, have you heard of HealthEdge? Have you heard of Rob Duffy?" It was like, "Man, like—"

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:58) Which I had never heard of either of them before the episode.

(Josh at 00:26:01) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Congratulations, Rob. You have left your mark on the show. So thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:08) Yeah. Rob, you are the first in a decade. You are the first time we've ever given this award out. And so I look forward to paying attention to 2026 because now I'll be excited going all through 2026 to see which person might be the Modern CTO for that year.

(Josh at 00:26:25) Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. In full transparency, Joel and I kind of hashed this idea up rather recently. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:33) Yeah. About thirty minutes ago.

(Josh at 00:26:35) Yes. This was very recent. So, you're all winners. Everyone listening in, all of our guests.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:41) You are not. You're not. No. We don't do that. Alright. All the guests in California, you're winners. Everyone else is a competitive situation. Yeah. That's true. Highly, highly competitive. But no. Look. You have to pick one. I feel like it was good because I've been going around off the podcast with my other friends that own businesses. And I'm like, "You have to—" Like, they're nontechnical people, you know? And I'm like, "You need to go listen to—you're the CEO. You need to go listen to how Rob, the CTO, did this at HealthEdge because you need to be doing this within your company." And I found myself just saying that over and over and over to different business owners that I know. And then they would come back to me and they're like, "That's brilliant. That's brilliant." And so I've—I don't think I've ever been so enamored by a piece of advice or how something was executed to the point where we're like, "This is the year we have to give the Modern CTO award because someone stood out so much that we need to do it."

(Josh at 00:27:37) Yeah. And I can attest to that listening to the episodes since Rob. So yeah. Congratulations, Rob. The Modern CTO of 2025. Listen in to next year. Who's going to be the Modern CTO of 2026? Your guess is as good as ours. But Joel, that's a wrap on 2025. How was it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:57) We had a podcast for a year. How do you feel?

(Josh at 00:27:59) Oh, man. I feel great. I feel great. You know, 2026 is coming up. Who knows what's coming in 2026, but all I know is that we're going to be making some great content for everyone out there. We might even have some fun announcements to make. I'm not sure if we do have any fun announcements to make, Joel. Do we have anything fun to tell people right now?

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:21) Well, you tell me, Mr. Producer. Are we rolling with Tech in the Morning? Is that going to actually happen?

(Josh at 00:28:27) You know, I think we might be. And everyone listening in, keep your ears and eyes peeled because, you know, I've thought a lot about this personally. Tech and the stuff that we talk about on the show is converging in on the rest of the world. Everyone's paying attention to CTOs, technology, and AI, and to data, setters, and to everything that we touch here on a daily basis. So Joel and I want to kind of gear some content towards anyone out there beyond just tech leaders who's willing to listen because this is some important stuff. So yeah, there may or may not be a show coming called Tech in the Morning where Joel and I hash the latest in tech news and bring it from the perspective of people who are actually talking to tech leaders on a regular basis. So keep your ears and eyes peeled. It's coming.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:21) Yeah. Yeah. And if you want this to happen, just crowdsourcing it out here, email us. Email [email protected] or [email protected]. Right?

(Josh at 00:29:33) Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:34) Be like, "Hey, we want this to happen. We think it would be fun." So we're going to give it a shot. What do you say we just commit to it and just give it a shot?

(Josh at 00:29:44) You heard it here first, folks.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:46) Let's do it.

(Josh at 00:29:47) Let's do it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:47) Long-time listeners are like, "I heard the same thing like four years ago." It's like, "Alright. Quiet. But thank you for listening."

(Josh at 00:29:54) Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. We really appreciate it. But no, I think this is the moment though, for real. Tech is converging on the real world, I suppose. So let's make it happen.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:03) Let's do it.

(Josh at 00:30:04) Let's do it. Alright. Well, I really think that's a wrap here. Thank you all for listening in. Any last remarks, Joel?

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:13) Tech in the morning. Okay. What's that? That's the song.

(Josh at 00:30:19) There's the song. Okay. Yeah. Let's go, man.