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It’s our favorite Reality Bites tradition: the end-of-year panel! Tom and Tim bring the whole crew together—Megan, Ariana, Sean, and Dina—for a joyful, honest, and insight-packed reflection on 2025. From global travel and AI breakthroughs to personal milestones, hard-won lessons, and the music that carried us through the year, the team shares what defined a transformative moment for DEX, for Nexthink, and for each of us. Expect candid takes on AI balance, ambition, slop, mediation, vibe-coding, human connection—and a full round of “song of the year” picks from the whole panel. A warm, funny, heartfelt wrap to a huge year.

Tim and Tom sit down with Steve Wunker — Managing Director of New Markets Advisors, author, and early pioneer of the smartphone — to explore the big ideas behind his latest book, AI and the Octopus Organization. Steve breaks down why AI shouldn’t just “bolt onto” old processes, how distributed intelligence reshapes the firm, and what leaders can learn from one of nature’s most adaptable creatures. From organizational plasticity to the changing role of middle managers, Steve offers a pragmatic roadmap for thriving amid rapid AI-driven transformation.

In this Reality Bytes reunion, Tom, Sean, Tim, Oriana and Megan unpack the buzzy rise of vibe coding — the AI-assisted development trend coined by Andrej Karpathy and already explored by companies like Meta and Microsoft. The panel digs beneath the hype: from accelerated prototyping and accessibility gains to serious risks around technical debt, shadow applications, governance, security and the loss of human accountability. Oriana and Megan highlight the importance of schema, context and genuine creativity, while Tim warns against mistaking speed for quality. Is vibe coding the future - or just another fragile shortcut?

In a wide-ranging conversation, Robb Wilson—CEO and co-founder of OneReach.ai and author of The Age of Invisible Machines—joins Tim and Tom to explore the rise of agentic AI and its seismic implications for IT, organizations, and society. Robb breaks down the concept of agent runtimes, why conversational interfaces matter more than ever, and how adaptive, self-orchestrating systems will reshape work far beyond today’s service models.

Tim, Tom, and Oriana sit down with Monica Filak, Director of Customer Success at Nexthink, to explore what it really takes to turn DEX from a tool into a transformative methodology. Monica shares how her team helps organizations move beyond technology to rethink their people, processes, and communication — bridging the long-standing divide between IT and the business. From creative internal branding to AI-driven efficiency gains, she explains how companies can evolve from “shiny tool” thinking to achieving measurable, human-centered value.

It’s a milestone moment! Our 200th episode of The DEX Show (and the first ever late one — sorry about that!). To mark the occasion, Nexthink Founder and CEO Pedro Bados returns to reflect on Nexthink’s incredible journey and discuss the company’s next era — from the recent investment by Vista Equity Partners to the accelerating fusion of DEX and AI. Pedro shares his perspective on how AI is reshaping the workplace, Nexthink’s vision for “an IT agent for every employee,” and why he’s optimistic about the future of technology and innovation. A landmark conversation to celebrate our big birthday.

This week, Tim and Tom are joined by RB regular and DEX Hub editor Sean Malvey to unpack Nexthink’s first Workplace Productivity Report, “Cracking the DEX Equation.” Drawing on data from nine million endpoints, the report quantifies the real productivity impact of digital employee experience — revealing where enterprises lose nearly half a million hours a year to poor DEX, and how small score gains deliver measurable ROI.