The Power Crisis No One’s Talking About: How AI Could Break the Grid with Mike Pereira

[00:00:01] Mike Pereira: I’m a technologist, Scott. It’s what I’ve been doing my whole life. I believe in advancements in technology, and I think that if we don’t, someone else is going to do it anyway. It gives us the freedom to do what it is. But, I don’t know that we should. So there’s this space that I think we’re moving into from a technology standpoint where just because we can, I don’t know that we should. And I think there are areas that we should, for sure. But I think with any advancement in technology, there’s going to be the good and the bad side of that. And I think we’re just dealing with something that is moving very rapidly. It’s faster than our capability of keeping up with it is my prediction, and it scares me a little.

[00:00:43] Intro/Outro: Technology has transformed how we live, work, and connect. And behind that change are visionary people with bold ideas. Welcome to the Bridgecast, where host Scott Kinka explores hybrid work, AI, and our evolving future with tech’s brightest minds. Presented by Bridgepoint Technologies, the nation’s leading tech advisory firm. Experience a better way, the Bridgepoint way.

[00:01:12] Scott Kinka: Hybrid work is set to be the new norm. We know that. We are in our new normal, but the tech landscape is evolving behind it faster than ever to meet these new demands. Today’s guest stands at the forefront of helping organizations navigate the shift, ensuring their technology investments align with business goals while optimizing for cost, speed, and scalability. Mike Pereira is the executive vice president of technology at Bridgepoint Technologies, a leader in tech advisory and procurement solutions, and also, as you know, the sponsor of the show. With over a decade of experience—actually, multiple decades of experience—in both sales engineering, Mike plays a pivotal role in helping enterprises simplify their technology stacks and maximize ROI. His approach to tech procurement goes beyond just finding the right tools. It’s about empowering businesses to make smarter, more informed decisions that accelerate their journey to the future of work. Mike, welcome to the Bridgecast.

[00:02:05] Mike Pereira: Thanks, Scott. Happy to be here. I appreciate you having me on. It’s been too long, by the way.

[00:02:09] Scott Kinka: Mike, tell our listeners something beyond their resume. Who’s Mike when he’s not strategizing tech solutions and leading teams?

[00:02:16] Mike Pereira: That’s a good question. I mean, I think for me, Scott, it’s all about family, honestly. I’ve been married to my wife for twenty-two years this year. We have three kids. My daughter’s a junior at Colorado State. My son, Michael, will be a junior in high school, plays varsity basketball. I’m assistant coach for his varsity basketball team, which is—I never dreamed I’d be coaching a varsity basketball team—and then my son, Dylan, is going into eighth grade. So the majority of my time, if I’m not at work, it’s on a basketball court, coaching, mentoring kids, you know, from fifth grade through high school. If I’m not on a basketball court, I’m either in a gym with my son, trying to help him put on some muscle. I inherited the home I grew up in, so I’ve been remodeling a 1900 Victorian home—the home I grew up in—when my dad passed, which is a labor of love and, I guess, probably a healing process. And then, recently also, I’m restoring the 1973 Bronco, which was my stepfather’s of forty-five years when he passed. And then, when I’m not working at work or on a court or in a gym or at a house, I’m mountain bike riding, jet skiing, snowboarding—doing something. And, you know, I try to fill, I guess, every minute of my day with something enjoyable because I feel like time is valuable, Scott. That’s how I look at it. Time is valuable, and I’ve, you know, firsthand, learned that in some ways the hard way. But, yeah, that’s me. And if you ask anyone I work with, they kind of know because I’m a little bit of an open book.

[00:03:40] Scott Kinka: Mike, I get that. And I had the pleasure of working with Mike every day for our listeners. So, I’ve been begging him to do this show, and he’s been avoiding me like the plague. So I’m pinning him down for this one. Mike, you have a long history of simplifying tech procurement and implementation for enterprises. And, obviously, that’s changed, you know, where we work, how we work, the expectations of work, the expectation of the timing of work. You know, I mean, at a macro level, it feels like we’re still talking about this and it’s years later, but we still deal with it every day. Right? How is this evolution really impacting the technology needs of businesses? I mean, you know, you’re in conversations every day. What’s at the forefront of the conversation?

[00:04:18] Mike Pereira: You know, I think, you know, it’s been probably like you said, I think thirty years maybe in this, roughly in this industry. And, you know, when I started here, I feel like it was almost thirteen years ago. You know, the majority of our customers, I mean, data is still at the center of the universe, I’ll say. Right? That hasn’t changed. You know, we’ve been working on large data centers, mid-size enterprise, large data center environments for my entire career, all the interconnection to all the data center environments. That hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s only growing exponentially. Data is still at the center of the universe. And no matter how you look at it, how people connect to it has always been key. We’re just connecting to it in so many more ways. We’re leveraging the data in so many more ways than we had in the past. So that piece has changed. And then, I think the other major change is when I started here, I was the first of my kind, which is in so many ways, Scott, I believe the first of my kind in our industry. All of our, we’ll say, people that maybe our competitors didn’t have a group of engineers or technologists in the company. When I came to Bridgepoint, I was the first of my kind. And, you know, trying to be an expert in everything even then was impossible. Trying to be an expert in everything now is absolutely impossible. And so, what’s changed so much is that, you know, now I’m blessed to be surrounded by a group of people on my team who, quite frankly, are much more knowledgeable than I am in their technology expertise, and I learn a ton from them every day. Quite frankly, I learn a ton from our customers every day and our suppliers every day. So, I think as much as many things are still the same, technology changes at such a rapid pace. If you don’t have a large team around you who is touching the technology on a day-to-day basis with customers, suppliers, and projects, you’re going to fall behind. It just is what it is. And so, what I’ve learned is no less than I knew thirty years ago because things have changed so much. But, I have to rely on the people on my team to support our customers and, you know, learn from them because there’s just not enough time in a day to be an expert in everything.

[00:06:20] Scott Kinka: Mike, is that why, in your mind, you feel like the concept of tech advisory is growing so rapidly? The average IT leader in business couldn’t possibly be knowledgeable about everything that they need to solve on a day-to-day basis, and the people that they might be leading on their teams have a day job, right, from a procurement perspective. Is that the value of the adviser in your mind?

[00:06:44] Mike Pereira: I think 100%. I think, you know, if you think about where you make investments in your business, you’re going to make investments in certain technology, and then you’re going to make major investments in people. I feel like the investments in people are the more important in so many ways, the harder investments to make. Technology, you’re going to purchase it. You can change it. It changes. So, you know, I think when I think about how people leverage my group, I look at my team as an extension of our customers’ teams of people. So, yes, it’s technology-focused, but I’m leveraging a team of experts who have done something in the past to help me make a better technology choice. And the more technology changes, the more you see that. I think when I started here, the percentage in the industry, the number of suppliers in our ecosystem, it was a tenth of what it is today, maybe. So now every day, I think we’re putting 20 new people on the—every month, probably 20 new suppliers in the portfolio. Different verticals and different software segments are leveraging our channel for distribution because they see the value in what we do. And when I relate that to the value for a customer, I’ll pull back to the joke of, you know, I’m remodeling my dad’s house. Okay? So I’m pretty good at a lot of things. I’m doing the plumbing. I’m doing the electrical. I’m doing the sheetrock. I’m doing the framing, concrete, you name it. Right? I watch YouTube videos. I read all kinds of stuff. I’m about to remodel the bathroom. I’m looking at how to do plumbing. I watch all these videos. I consume all this information. I’ve done it before three or four years ago, but not every day. And when I get to the point where I have a plan, I still pick up the phone and I call my buddy, Tom, who’s a journeyman plumber, been doing it for thirty years, and say, “Hey, Tom. Here’s what I think I’m going to do. Here’s my plan. What didn’t I think of, and what should I be thinking of?” I call the expert. So despite all the data that’s out there and all the research I’ve done and all my background, and I’ve done this a couple of times in my lifetime, I still want to “phone a friend.” You’ve been wrong with whatever show that was on years ago. I’d still phone a friend to say, “Is what I’m planning on doing the right decision?” Because you do this every day, and I do it a couple of times every year or something. Right? So I think that’s the challenge our customers are in, is they’re making changes, you know, maybe every few years. We see customers do these changes every day. So I think no matter where you are, what your experience is, that ability to “phone a friend,” phone someone you trust, we do it every day. All of us do it every day.

[00:09:13] Scott Kinka: So you’re taking those inbound calls. And, look, to be clear for those who don’t know our organization, if Mike’s getting tapped in, it’s a particularly hard problem or a particularly large customer or what have you. As you say, he’s got a team of engineers who are working with our strategists in the field. But I think this is an interesting straw man, right, because you get an interesting cross section of problems that you see. We can take each one individually, but what’s dominating the meetings and the conversations that you’re having with CIOs today?

[00:09:43] Mike Pereira: I mean, it’s a little all over the place depending on the vertical, Scott. So, I find every conversation is centered around security and AI. Well, I’ll put those two out there in general. Like, you can’t get on a call with someone who isn’t looking at how we’re going to leverage AI in the business, how we enrich our security program. That’s every conversation. So I think that’s a common thread, but you do see things in certain verticals that their business outcome or what they’re trying to achieve is also common. So when you look in the healthcare space and people were saying, “How do I improve patient experience?” you know, kind of as a general statement. And then the ways they’re going to improve patient experience are all going to be very similar because we’ve worked with a bunch of people in that segment. We’ll look at how other companies have done it, what technology they’ve leveraged, and we’ll help other customers kind of run the same thing. You look at the financial space, similar things. “How do I give better advice? How do I understand what’s being said within my organization? How do I create efficiencies within my organization? How do I leverage the data I have to make better decisions?” So I think those are the big ones. I think, just in a general sense, I kind of take it back to the data. We are creating more data than we ever have in our lifetimes. We’re storing more data. We need to secure that data. We want to leverage the data for making better decisions to create efficiencies in our business. “How do you do that?” I think that’s the question. Right? The big general question is, “How do I do that? Where’s the low-hanging fruit? How do I do it easily? How do I get that off the market this year versus a three-year project?” I think that’s the biggest—if you center every little conversation that happens, it’s all around that. “How do I grow the business?”

[00:11:23] Scott Kinka: Mike, I’ve found over many years of meeting with clients that we would meet with IT leaders, and there’d be a very specific technology-focused project we’re working on. “Go do a thing that has a thing. Connect us to that.” Whatever those things are. And you just described a very different conversation that was more outcomes-based. And let me ask a question. Are you helping extract that, or has the IT leader changed? Meaning, are we more focused as an industry on outcomes today, or are they still coming at us with technology problems that we, when we meet with customers, are trying to fit to a business purpose? What leads today, and where are we in terms of our maturity and understanding the use cases in the business?

[00:12:05] Mike Pereira: It’s both, Scott. It depends on where in the organization you’re talking, how high up in the company you’re talking, and where in the life cycle of a project they’re involving you. So, for example, talking to a large AI company, trying to interconnect their data centers that are not well connected to the cloud, just in general, right? They already know what they want to do. They have a plan. They just are asking us to help them execute it, and they’re saying, “Hey, we need big connectivity between these locations. Help us get it because it’s time-consuming. It’s not what we do. We’re an AI company.” So in some cases, the project’s very mature. They already know what they want to do, and they’re involving us because they don’t have a team of experts in that space and the tool sets that we have and experience, and they’re just trying to say, “Hey, help me make this happen faster. We know what we want to do.” You know, on the flip side, if you get involved in, “Hey, here’s what our 2026 roadmap looks like, and we’re putting that together in 2025. We want to look at that next year. We’re going to implement these large projects.” And someone comes to us and they’re going through that roadmap with us. At that point of a project, it’s more business outcomes. “Here’s what the business is trying to accomplish. Where can we bridge technology partners to make these things happen easier? Because I can’t hire fast enough. I can’t train fast enough to keep up with the change the business wants to make, so I have to partner,” I think is how I look at it. So it’s both, and I think it just depends on where we get introduced into the project life cycle.

[00:13:32] Scott Kinka: That makes perfect sense. I’m going to hone in on some technology. You mentioned a couple, and I might grab another couple of categories. And I’m completely off script, so you’re probably right now already annoyed that you scratched down notes and the notes I gave you. And, oh yeah. So I want to hit you. I knew this was—we were just going to start riffing, which is great. You mentioned AI. We could train this for the next hour. Let’s train it for the next sixty seconds. Do IT leaders—I’m going to ask you that same question specific to AI. Are we in the, “Hey, go get me some AI” boat still? We’re not really knowing what that is, or have we gotten to a point where IT leaders have done the work to kind of build some use cases around which they can generate an AI project of some kind?

[00:14:14] Mike Pereira: It’s both still. I feel like every time you ask me a question, it’s not one or the other, it’s both.

[00:14:18] Scott Kinka: Yeah. Well, that’s fine. That’s a perfectly fine answer.

[00:14:20] Mike Pereira: It actually just tells you the variance of where people are. Right? So, I’ll give you the example. Everyone should be using an AI companion or a copilot or something that’s doing summarization, meeting notes, task generation, because it’s just so much better than doing it yourself and typing stuff down and trying to fall upon stuff. So, if you’re not doing that already, you should have already been doing that, and many companies aren’t. Right? So, many companies aren’t even there yet. And in that scenario, you’re already consuming a platform whether it’s, you know, Microsoft or Zoom or the millions of partners that are out there. You’re already on a platform that provides those capabilities. They make it easy for you to consume. They can show you how to use it, but the adoption rate’s just super low still. Right? And I think in so many ways, those are the most useful tools that you can deploy right now. Right? And if you’re not doing it, you should just go do it. Like, invest money, invest in training, go reach out to your current supplier partners that have that embedded, talk to us. “How do we use it?” Let’s go. So I think that’s happening, and that should be happening, and there’s no excuse for people not to be doing it, honestly. I mean, I think the biggest excuse people have and it’s valid is, “I’m worried about what’s going to happen to all that data that’s being generated.” “It’s insecure.” “Who’s going to read it?” “Where is it going to get stored?” And that’s all valid. Those are all valid arguments. But by the way, those are all easy problems to solve, I think, in my mind. Right? Go get a partner, help you kind of segment the data, throw out some policy around it. So that’s happening. And then on the other side, it’s kind of like, “I need to build something within my business that’s fairly custom to do repeatable, scalable tasks that don’t need to be done by someone anymore.” And that technology is very easy to consume now, but it’s the same question, “How do I consume it in a compliant, secure way that is going to be acceptable to my customers?” And, you know, if you think, to me, it’s, compliance is transitory, I think, as you look at it. So, if you’re doing business with healthcare, government entities, you have to apply to—you know, they’re going to want to know what you’re doing with all that data. “How are you doing it? Where are you storing it? How is it segmented? How do you ensure that? How do you prove that to me?” So I think those things are a little harder. So, it’s both, Scott. It’s some people have identified projects and they’re moving forward. Other people are afraid to get started. And I think the message that I’ll have out there is, “Make a decision and move forward with something, quite frankly, multiple somethings, because you’re going to fall behind very rapidly if you don’t.” And the value, the risk-reward—I know there’s always a little risk, but I think the reward outpaces the risk in certain areas already. And then, like I said, if you rely on a platform that already has some of that stuff in there, I think the risk is much lower when you’re kind of potentially building organically and you don’t have the experience in it. I think the risk can be very high. Find areas in the business that are low-risk and high-value and move forward. Stop talking about it. Start working on it.

[00:17:22] Scott Kinka: Great advice. Let’s jump over to security for a moment because, again, you have a conversation with customers every day. I’m going to ask almost the same question. So maybe it’s a short answer because you sort of answered it. But are we in the “I need a point solution for this portion of my already well-developed front-to-end stack” or “I’ve kind of done some stuff and I got to start at the top with a net new plan and kind of work my way all the way down” scenario? You’re going to say the answer is both, which is totally fine, but speak to each one of those use cases. What do you see in them?

[00:17:55] Mike Pereira: Yeah, you’re right. I’m going to say the answer is both and everything in between. If you’re a small company, I have an IT manager, a small IT staff, don’t pretend to be a security expert. And I would say, leverage an MSSP partner, be an open book with them. I look at some of this stuff in what we do, Scott, as a strategy advisory firm. I look at it almost like you’re a lawyer. The more open and honest you are about what your situation is, the better they’re going to be able to represent you. I mean, that’s a weird analogy to make, but it’s the same thing. So I’m a small business. If you can just accept that, “Hey, I don’t have the expertise. This is changing too fast. I don’t have the time. We don’t necessarily have the budget to hire the people I think I need to,” hire a company that that’s all they do and, you know, be smart about that. Once again, leverage a partner with us. We vet these people. We know they perform well for other people but leverage a partner to kind of help you implement, manage security, continue to grow your security program every year, you know, put compliance and guidelines around it, hire somebody. And there are plenty of companies doing that, and I think that is the right decision. On the flip side, we work with Fortune 50 companies, Scott, Fortune 1 companies. They have more security people on staff than we have as employees. So a lot of times, we may be talking to them, and they’re very specific about “Here’s the current technology that we consumed. There’s a gap in what we’re doing in this one area.” Usually, those companies, it’s not one area. They have like five or six things that they’re trying to do every year that are constantly making their security program more robust. “We are trying to fill these gaps. What partners or technology do you know that’s in the space that can do that well?” And so once again, it’s both. A good example there, API security, for example. More of the applications that we consume these days are SaaS-based applications, communicate via APIs. You go out to almost any mature business out there, large business, they’re going to have, whether it’s publicly consumed SaaS applications or applications they built themselves that are all web-based, communicate via APIs. They have overseas programmers writing code. Who’s making sure that’s all secure and tested? And as an example, not to be negative, CrowdStrike had a major incident, you know, whatever it was this last year. Could that have been avoided, right, in general? And a huge company, by the way, a phenomenal company, but stuff happens. So constantly improving that posture even in the largest organizations is never going to end. And I think AI makes it way harder. I hate going back to the same one because it’s just such a buzzword, but I will still just take it back to data because I think at the root of it, it’s people connecting to data, and how do I use it? That’s been going on my whole career. But I think what’s happened on that front is that if you’re not responsibly deploying this technology for your employees, they’re deploying it without you on the side, and you don’t even know. By the way, that’s true about every technology. Right? If you don’t empower your people to get the tools to make them better at their jobs and more efficient, the ones that want to be better and are more efficient are going to find the technology without you, and they’re going to do it outside your approval, outside your consent, and it’s happening, and you don’t even know it’s happening. Right? So that’s more risk.

[00:21:13] Scott Kinka: The thing to think about there, too, is that if you’re in this “go get some AI” scenario, supporting your champions does two things. One, it protects you in a situation where right now, ChatGPT is the number one shadow IT application of all time, literally, as long as that’s being tracked. Right? But the second thing is, that’s the place to find the use cases. They’re using it to try and solve something in the business that you in IT might not know, or that front line’s going to have all the ideas. They’re just trying to chop more wood every day. God bless them. You know what I mean? So let me transition for one moment. I’m going to have one more little hot-take technology area.

[00:21:49] Mike Pereira: Before you go there, just in that scenario, you know, right now, if you go into a call center scenario, we will ingest a month’s recordings, evaluate them, and look at those things and say, “Where can we apply AI to your process through, like, call recordings? Listen to your call center to provide a better experience, better call flow, automate some of this stuff.” Right? So, now think about taking that same logic and ingesting all the ChatGPT stuff that’s been going on the side in your organization that you don’t even know about and going, “Okay, using the—what do you call it?—crowdsourcing? I’m going to crowdsource what all of our employees have been doing without me knowing so that I can give them back something that is, within the framework of my company, endorsed.” Right? What an idea. I just once again, there’s a service that we need to—we need to deploy that service tomorrow. Right? “How do you—how do I ingest all the rogue AI ChatGPT things happening and use cases so that we can, you know, make them official?”

[00:22:46] Scott Kinka: Totally. Support your champions. I love that. All right. Let’s make this one a quick one because I know some of the deals that you’ve worked on. I’ve worked on some of them with you. It feels like five years removed from the pandemic, maybe we’re tired of having the remote work conversation, but somehow it seems like we can’t get out of it. You know, we’ve added collaboration platforms on top of PBXs, on top of legacy PBXs, on top of hosted solutions. The numbers would still tell you that while we’re recovering a little bit, end users are still in three, four applications a day with islands of information, different levels of consistency. How often when you’re meeting with clients, are they still grappling with “What’s the one tool, one ring to rule them all inside my business?” “Can you help me rationalize this?” Is that still an everyday conversation for you?

[00:23:35] Mike Pereira: Probably 50% of people that are looking to consume that technology, next-generation technology, whether it’s moving from on-prem to cloud or whatever, maybe. I’d say half of them have a company policy that they’re going to go in a certain route. You know, in most cases, it’s Microsoft Teams, just quite frankly. They’ve adopted this tool, and the other half has multiple tools. Right? And there isn’t a real corporate endorsement that’s been made. Now just because I say that, it doesn’t mean that Microsoft is the telephony tool of choice. It just means that we’ve made the decision that internally this is our internal collaboration tool, and that’s not changing. We want to consider whether it is our public-facing communication tool for everything. Probably more than half the organizations are having that conversation. The interesting thing is that I’d say the vast majority don’t end up with that being the single tool. And I think it’s just it’s not mature enough yet in all of its features and functionalities for it to meet every use case for every customer. It does, though, in my mind, meet a large majority of the population. And I’ll just take a great example because on the call, a massive customer yesterday, thousands of large retail locations around the world, tons of physical devices out there still in these retail locations, you know, a butcher, a deli, take a sense of what maybe—what retail that might be. But there’s also this massive back-office employees that all use Teams. So things have changed, but there’s still a massive need for physical handsets in certain areas. So I think that’s still out there. I think the biggest change there is no different than what we’re doing now. When you’re making that change in your technology, you have to go do an audit of who’s still using it. How many phone calls do I make in a day, Scott? Not many. And I say just because I’m on a meeting every hour on the hour all day, and it’s meetings all day. And it’s not as many phone calls. And I think that’s very true about most of the world.

[00:25:30] Scott Kinka: It’s a good one. All right. Let’s rapid fire. I committed to keep this under an hour of total record time. And we’re at the thirty-first minute. We could go forever. I’m going to do a weekly episode with you so we can get all these ideas out. Let’s fire on these. So first off, I need a shameless prediction. Be bold. One trend, one thing that’s going to happen. You can pick who’s going to win the Super Bowl. I don’t care what it is. Something in the next twelve to eighteen months.

[00:25:53] Mike Pereira: Whether it’s twelve or eighteen months, I don’t know, but this is it right here, Scott. This is—I don’t think this is surprising, but it’s embarrassing that I carry a brick in my backpack when I travel still. Laptops. The cell phone device, the mobile device, it’s come so far in our lifetime, it still hasn’t come far enough. So, I don’t know why. It can’t be too long until the laptop’s unnecessary. The mobile device is doing everything, and I don’t know if that’s Iron Man. I’m pulling screens up out of my visual, my glasses. I don’t know how that’s going to be solved entirely. I’d love to sit here and say I had the answer, but I think it’ll be driven on the device that’s in my pocket, not the laptop. And so I think the endpoint, you know, you could have backed up and said, “Will virtual desktop still take some of that?” I mean, they’ve taken some of it, but not really. But the more it’s SaaS-based, the more it’s application-based, the more AI is doing more stuff for us, the more powers on the chipset that we’re using, carrying around a brick in my backpack, it feels thirty years like I did it thirty years ago. Have you been carrying a laptop for thirty years, Scott? Probably roll up an iPad, which is a smaller version of a laptop.

[00:26:59] Scott Kinka: Yeah, I’m working on an iPad for a couple of years now, but I’m with you. And by the way, what made that functional is the format that made it feel like it was a laptop, a lighter laptop. So, at the end of the day, we’re still—we still haven’t changed the input methodology. We haven’t. So I’m totally with you. All right. We can do three episodes on what we think that might be, but that’s a good hot take. We’ll come back and check that. Give me something controversial. A belief you hold. Maybe it’s in AI, maybe it’s in security that you believe strongly that maybe others would push back on. Something controversial we can throw out there.

[00:27:29] Mike Pereira: I don’t know that anyone’s going to disagree or agree. It doesn’t really matter. Should we be doing what we’re doing? I’m a technologist, Scott. It’s what I’ve been doing my whole life. I believe in advancements in technology, and I think that if we don’t, someone else is going to do it anyway. And so that’s kind of—it gives us the freedom to do what it is, but I don’t know that we should. So there’s this space that I think we’re moving into from a technology standpoint where I don’t know that we should just because we can. I don’t know that we should. And I think there are areas that we should, for sure. But I think with any advancement in technology, there’s going to be the good and the bad side of both. And I think we’re just dealing with something that is—it’s moving very rapidly. It’s somewhat faster than our capability of keeping up with it is my prediction. And it scares me a little for all aspects. Right? I have a kid in college, a kid in high school, trying to figure out what they’re going to do for a living. And you go back to, “Okay, well, how many—whether it’s jobs—how many jobs may or may not be replaced by AI technology?” And I think the answer is some will be, and new jobs will be created. That’s always been true. Some will go, new jobs will be created. But I think there’s just this—there’s just something different about this one. And I’ll give you a sense of it too. Another shameless prediction, not that you asked. Power. The amount of power that we’re consuming, deploying this technology, we’re going to be in a power crisis, Scott. I just think that there’s—I really do believe there is a—we need to—”Hey, should we be drilling?” “Yeah, probably.” “Solar?” “Sure.” “Hydroelectric?” “Sure.” I know we probably need to do all of it. Right? We need to do everything because I don’t think there’s going to be enough power to support the technology that’s coming and the people that are coming. Right? So, if you think about what’s the most valuable commodity right now? What’s the most power, probably? In general, isn’t that crazy to think? It’s not food, it’s not water, it’s not shelter, it’s power. Right? And, you know, look at the amount of money being invested in the AI technology that’s power-hungry-driven. It’s incredible. It really is incredible, and it’s a little scary.

[00:29:27] Scott Kinka: Well, I read an article. I don’t remember the specific numbers, but it effectively said something to the effect of, “We can’t power us acting cordially with AI.” We’re so used to saying “please” and “thank you,” and it doesn’t even bother—it takes time processing to not answer because we want to be conversant with Siri or we want to be—so it’s 100%. That’s a whole other episode, too. Like I said, I’m going to hit you every week going forward. What are you reading? What are you listening to? You said not to say “what’s on the nightstand,” so we’ll leave it alone. But, like, what’s—you know, if you have a moment to read or listen, what is it?

[00:30:00] Mike Pereira: Honestly, Scott, it’s—I’m usually going through things that are coming from my team. So, new technology, new suppliers, things they’ve found, and that feels like a full-time job related to work. And if it’s not related to work, yeah, I watch a lot of basketball videos, scouting out teams. We’re playing a team next week. I’m watching all the games, figuring out how we’re going to win. So I watch a lot of high school basketball. It’s going to go—I know, once again, back to the personal, it’s going to go by fast. My daughter’s in college. She’s gone. My son’s going to be through it anytime. I’m going to look back and go, “I wish it was still here,” I think. You know? So, I think from a non-technology place—I mean, you’ll laugh at me as I say this. We’re in Chicago at our tech advisory meeting. My son had his last summer league basketball game. I missed it. It happens. You know, I can’t be everywhere. That’s why I’m not the head coach. I’m an assistant coach because I can’t always be there. I call home. I ask, “How did the game go?” And, you know, I get mixed reviews from my wife and my son, and then I’m like, “Well, I can’t even comment because I haven’t watched the video.” God bless the video streaming. I go jump up on YouTube. One of the dads records every game. I watch the game in its entirety, rewinding lots of segments, taking all kinds of notes. I call my son back at 1:30 in the morning. It’s 11:30 his time. I know he’s still up. And I tell him, “You played so phenomenal. I’m so proud of you.” I know that you didn’t get the minutes you wanted, and he was frustrated because he’s new on the varsity team, and he’s not starting five, and last year he was starting five. So he’s a little frustrated. I’m like, “But I can just tell you, I watched, and the effort that you put out there, the execution, you were phenomenal.” And what’s funny about Scott is that he went from being upset when I talked to him at whatever, ten, where it was, you know, his own perspective of how things went, to he was thankful and super happy at 1:30 in the morning. It was 11:30 his time. And I think the reason that he was that way is because he knows I’m not going to lie to him. Because when he doesn’t play well, I tell him. And when I think he plays well, I tell him, so he knows it’s real. Once again, I know you weren’t asking me. I talked five minutes about basketball. But—

[00:32:15] Scott Kinka: No, listen, you always spend time, and I appreciate that about you, talking about your kids. It shows what kind of man you are. And by the way, if I didn’t want to get this last question in, that would have been a perfect spot to end, but we’re running up against it. So I’m going to hit you with this last question because I have to ask you. End of the world app, man, whatever that is, one app still working on your phone. What is it?

[00:32:34] Mike Pereira: By the way, the second thing that I don’t know that we should or shouldn’t do.

[00:32:38] Scott Kinka: You’re going to say watching basketball videos on YouTube. I think I already know the answer.

[00:32:42] Mike Pereira: Is this a good idea to be staring at all day or not? You know, it’s the other, good and bad, two sides of it. And I don’t even use this on a day-to-day basis for the record. But if you’re telling me it’s the end of the world, it’s FaceTime. I want to talk to my kids. I want to see their face, Scott. And then if it’s really the end of the world, if you ask me the most useful app, maybe that’s not the one. But if it’s the end of the world, you know, I just want to be able to tell the people I love them. I want to tell the people I love them.

[00:33:07] Scott Kinka: Nothing more needs to be said. I’m going to stop right there. Mike, if people want to learn more about Bridgepoint, get in touch with you or your team, what would you recommend that they do?

[00:33:14] Mike Pereira: Yeah, I mean, hit me up on LinkedIn. You know, email is pretty predictable. I’m not sure anyone on here could guess it. Send me an email. It can’t be too hard to find my number. Reach out to us. Right? Hit us up on our website. We’re open for business. Love to talk to people. Love talking technology. Love talking about suppliers that are out there, problems to solve. We love solving problems. I’m a problem solver. You know, it’s why you want to talk about basketball video. Why? Because I’m trying to solve a problem. I’m looking at it. How do I solve a problem? There’s a problem in front of us. How do I solve it? I like solving problems, Scott. That’s all. Give us a call.

[00:33:47] Scott Kinka: I love it. Mike, I appreciate that. If you need some help, let Mike solve your problem. It’s fantastic. Great episode. Mike, thank you for your time. And that is a wrap on this episode of the Bridgecast. If today’s conversation gave you something to think about, make sure you hit subscribe, leave us a review, or share it with your team. We will catch you another time on another episode of the Bridgecast. Thanks for joining us.

[00:34:09] Mike Pereira: Thanks, Scott.

[00:34:11] Scott Kinka: Listen, if you made it this far, there must have been some good content, or you’re just a fan or a relative of mine. In either case, we appreciate you spending your most valuable asset with us, your time. We don’t take that lightly. We’d also like to say one more time that we’re appreciative of Bridgepoint Technologies and their belief and sponsorship of this show. We hope that if you or someone you know is thinking about your company’s digital transformation or simply the next IT project that you may not have the resources, budget, or time to get to, I’m sure that Bridgepoint, one of the country’s fastest-growing technology advisory and procurement firms, can help. Check out bridgepointtechnologies.com. Don’t forget the “e” on Bridgepoint, or simply reach out to me at Skinka, S-K-I-N-K-A, at bpt3.net. Also, take a minute, please, if you would, to give us a five-star review on your favorite platform. It helps give us the visibility to reach other people like you. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Bridge. I’m Scott Kinka. And until next time, there’s a lot of noise out there in business and in life. Do what you can to be the signal.