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Brian Madden

@bmad.com

VP & Futurist at Citrix. AI + knowledge work. Built a second brain, published it at brianmadden.ai. 32 yrs in enterprise tech. Paris.

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29.05.2024
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Latest posts by Brian Madden @bmad.com

OpenAI released GPT-5.4 thinking today. It has native computer use capabilities and scored 75% on the OSWorld benchmark. The median human is 72.4%.

05.03.2026 19:53 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Introducing: the "Cognitive Stack".

Whenever you think about how AI impacts work, be specific about which part of the stack you're talking about.

citrix.com/blogs/2026/02/25/understanding-the-cognitive-stack-why-your-ai-strategy-is-focused-on-the-wrong-layer/

05.03.2026 18:49 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Why? Because books, newsletters, and blogs are packaging formats for human consumption. A structured, queryable knowledge repo is the native format for AI-augmented consumption.

If I started the BrianMadden site today instead of 2003, it would be a GitHub repo.

02.03.2026 17:11 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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brianmadden.ai β€” Brian Madden's expert knowledge module for AI Brian Madden's published frameworks, arguments, and frontier thinking on AI and knowledge workβ€”structured so any AI assistant can load it.

I published and open sourced my second brain as an open-source knowledge module any AI can load.

No chatbot. No website to read. Your AI connects via MCP and reasons with all my articles, frameworks, and current thinking on workplace AI.

brianmadden.ai

02.03.2026 17:10 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Your CEO just sent the company-wide "We're now AI-first" memo. Now what?

Trying to figure out "where to apply AI", or "what's our AI strategy?" is the wrong question. The right question is: "What will we do when the things we value in system change?"

www.citrix.com/blogs/2025/0...

20.05.2025 14:04 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

The first slides I have on this are from BriForum 2012, but I think I first spoke about it in 2010, I just don’t have the slides from back that far.

09.05.2025 17:32 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Hey thanks! I’m super happy we can still both be doing this decades later and that many more interesting days lie ahead! Cheers! 🍻

09.05.2025 17:30 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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In 2025, work no longer lives in a fixed locationβ€”it emerges dynamically, wherever a worker connects to a workspace.

www.citrix.com/blogs/2025/0...

06.05.2025 12:33 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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What does β€œAI” mean at Citrix? - Citrix Blogs What is Citrx's AI strategy? Brian Madden takes a closer look at how Citrix is looking at AI and incorporating it into its products and across the organization.

What does "AI" mean at Citrix?

When we talk about AI, we're probably talking about one of these three things:

1. AI in our products
2. AI we use internally
3. AI shaping our customers’ workplaces

Details are in my latest blog post:

www.citrix.com/blogs/2025/0...

21.04.2025 14:54 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Shopify CEO’s leaked memo is brutalβ€”and brilliant.
Meetings, Slack, tools… all friction. It’s a manifesto for the real future of work:

AI-augmented workers cutting through the noise from the bottom up. Not someday. Now.

Execs everywhere are feeling this.

17.04.2025 09:32 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

A good topic for the next blog post! In the context of today's post, a baseline use is leveraging Citrix's existing products to provide the same guardrails for future human/AI workers & automations as they do for purely human workers today.

14.04.2025 14:42 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Making sense of AI in the workplace: A starting point for leaders - Citrix Blogs While companies debate AI strategy, workers are already using it. In this post, Brian Madden explores what’s really happening and what leaders must do next.

Your workers didn't wait for your permission before bringing AI into your org. Now what do you do about it?

www.citrix.com/blogs/2025/0...

14.04.2025 13:31 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Shawn Bass and me on stage at Citrix UNITE 2025 in New Orleans. This photo is from the keynote where Shawn's welcoming me on stage for the first time as a Citrix employee.

Shawn Bass and me on stage at Citrix UNITE 2025 in New Orleans. This photo is from the keynote where Shawn's welcoming me on stage for the first time as a Citrix employee.

I'm blogging again, this time from the official Citrix blog site(!) I'll be writing weekly about the future of work, AI in the workplace, the evolution of Citrix, and what I'm seeing in the industry and the inside Citrix.

First post is live about my 6 weeks at Citrix: www.citrix.com/blogs/2025/0...

07.04.2025 13:19 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Brian Madden on LinkedIn: I just joined Citrix! Those who know me know I’ve spent my 30-year career… I just joined Citrix! Those who know me know I’ve spent my 30-year career orbiting Citrix. From the early years (last century!) when I worked with WinFrame &…

I'll bet you didn't have this on your 2025 bingo card: I just joined Citrix! Details here: www.linkedin.com/posts/bmadde...

18.02.2025 15:04 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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AI pioneer Mustafa Suleyman shares his vision for the future of AI Mustafa Suleyman has played a pivotal role in the evolution of AI, as co-founder of DeepMind and now as CEO of Microsoft AI. This hour, he reflects on his career and shares his vision for the future.

As I told Manoush on @npr.org yesterday, this last wave of tech (social media, search, etc.) helped people access information. AI instead helps people create new knowledge and ideas. That's why this moment feels so differentβ€”that’s why it matters so much. www.npr.org/2024/12/20/g...

21.12.2024 22:51 πŸ‘ 19 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1

o3 looks too expensive for most use (for now). But for work in academia, finance & many industrial problems, paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a successful answer would not be prohibitive. If it is generally reliable, o3 will have multiple use cases even before costs inevitably drop.

22.12.2024 09:55 πŸ‘ 90 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 9 πŸ“Œ 1
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What just happened A transformative month rewrites the capabilities of AI

Bluesky can be a fraught place to post about AI but it is worth noting that the buzz over o1 (& now o3) is not β€œhype.” We know o1 can actually do some very hard tasks (see my post) & o3 appears to represent a big further leap.

They aren’t AGI, but will matter. www.oneusefulthing.org/p/what-just-...

22.12.2024 10:05 πŸ‘ 291 πŸ” 34 πŸ’¬ 23 πŸ“Œ 11
INTRODUCTION

Imagine an alternate universe in which people don’t have words for different forms of transportationβ€”only the collective noun β€œvehicle.” They use that word to refer to cars, buses, bikes, spacecraft, and all other ways of getting from place A to place B. Conversations in this world are confusing. There are furious debates about whether or not vehicles are environmentally friendly, even though no one realizes that one side of the debate is talking about bikes and the other side is talking about trucks. There is a breakthrough in rocketry, but the media focuses on how vehicles have gotten fasterβ€”so people call their car dealer (oops, vehicle dealer) to ask when faster models will be available. Meanwhile, fraudsters have capitalized on the fact that consumers don’t know what to believe when it comes to vehicle technology, so scams are rampant in the vehicle sector.

Now replace the word β€œvehicle” with β€œartificial intelligence,” and we have a pretty good description of the

INTRODUCTION Imagine an alternate universe in which people don’t have words for different forms of transportationβ€”only the collective noun β€œvehicle.” They use that word to refer to cars, buses, bikes, spacecraft, and all other ways of getting from place A to place B. Conversations in this world are confusing. There are furious debates about whether or not vehicles are environmentally friendly, even though no one realizes that one side of the debate is talking about bikes and the other side is talking about trucks. There is a breakthrough in rocketry, but the media focuses on how vehicles have gotten fasterβ€”so people call their car dealer (oops, vehicle dealer) to ask when faster models will be available. Meanwhile, fraudsters have capitalized on the fact that consumers don’t know what to believe when it comes to vehicle technology, so scams are rampant in the vehicle sector. Now replace the word β€œvehicle” with β€œartificial intelligence,” and we have a pretty good description of the

AI Snake Oil is out today! The book has been five years in the making. The first chapter is online. It is 30 pages long and summarizes the book’s main arguments. We're grateful for all the early interest and support. Let us know what you think of the book! www.aisnakeoil.com/p/starting-r...

24.09.2024 12:30 πŸ‘ 89 πŸ” 25 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 6
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It's that time of year when I'm reminded of the earliest #Citrix page on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, complete with all the modern flavor that a website from 1996 can pack in, like animated snowflakes, an animated snowman, and a visitor counter: web.archive.org/web/19961221...

19.12.2024 21:41 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 1

If you read nothing else about AI this week, read this - absolutely fascinating, ties together a whole bunch of recent developments in the field

Wrote my own notes here but really this piece defies summarization, you should absorb the whole thing simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/19/...

19.12.2024 18:13 πŸ‘ 95 πŸ” 18 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 0
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My AI predictions for EUC in 2025, via the "Impact of AI: Explored" podcast with @jamesoreganeuc.bsky.social & @gkunst.bsky.social.

Listen here: www.buzzsprout.com/2317233/epis...

Or watch on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJLp...

19.12.2024 14:40 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
EUC Forum Winter Meeting 2024 - The Evolution and Future of End User Computing (EUC)
EUC Forum Winter Meeting 2024 - The Evolution and Future of End User Computing (EUC) YouTube video by EUC Forum

Part 2 has been posted! www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFgf...

18.12.2024 22:46 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
EUC Forum Winter Meeting 2024 - The Evolution and Future of End User Computing (EUC)
EUC Forum Winter Meeting 2024 - The Evolution and Future of End User Computing (EUC) YouTube video by EUC Forum

My thesis on the future of end user computing (EUC) + AI:

1. AI Agents will be the new knowledge workers
2. They will use Windows desktops
3. Those desktops will be remoted
4. This model will last longer than we think

I gave a talk about this in London last month:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFgf...

18.12.2024 13:40 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Les deuxβ‰οΈπŸ˜œ

26.11.2024 14:00 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I believe yes, they will be recorded. If not I’ll record it at home afterwards.

25.11.2024 12:15 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I will be giving "Part 2" of this talk tomorrow at the EUC Forum's winter meeting in London. I'll dig deeper into how AI agents will impact EUC and the workplace, and why I believe remotely-delivered Windows desktops will emerge as the enabling infrastructure for this revolution. πŸ”₯πŸš€πŸ»

25.11.2024 10:49 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 0

The End User Computing (EUC) community once started with the ThinList, then we moved to Twitter. It was time to move again, so we packed our bags and landed on BlueSky, if you want to find the community, here is a starter pack for you. go.bsky.app/TcjBoLJ

25.11.2024 08:14 πŸ‘ 40 πŸ” 23 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Planning for the next release of the #EUC #HexaGrid: The new infographic and whitepaper will be released in early 2025. 😍
If you have any suggestions, updates, or additions, feel free to DM or - ruben @ dizzion.com #TechNews #VDi #DaaS #DEX #Security #AI

19.11.2024 12:13 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1
EUC World Keynote
EUC World Keynote YouTube video by Dr. Alex

My Oct 2024 keynote from EUC World: Independence, where I reminisced about the old days of EUC and how we got to where we are today, and shared my vision for the future of EUC. Hint: The AI agents will need anywhere, anytime, always-on access to Windows. πŸ€”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkuo...

21.11.2024 14:56 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 2
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Recall: Stealing everything you’ve ever typed or viewed on your own Windows PC is now possible. Photographic memory comes to Windows, and is the biggest security setback in a decade.

Turns out I was wrong about security concerns of the upcoming Microsoft Recall AI screen recording feature being overblown. Great writeup from Kevin Beaumont: doublepulsar.com/recall-steal...

03.06.2024 11:53 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0