Brew Bytes - The Practitioner's AI Show

One Arabic message for the whole region used to be the safe choice. It is now the expensive one.
Then there is the other half of the job. His team handed a Ramadan campaign to AI, trusted the output, and got creative scored with Christmas music. They caught it inside a couple of hours, and Tarek's conclusion is the line the episode turns on: AI will be as good as you direct it.
In this episode:
- Why "standard Arabic" stopped working, and what relevance looks like city by city
- The Kingdom Tower cliché, and personalisation that reads as surveillance
- The Ramadan campaign AI got wrong, and the review that caught it
- Why 10,000 engaged followers beat a million unreachable ones
- Holding the line with a C-suite that has decided AI is a cost saving
- Where AI hands a lead over, and why a high-value sale closes on human instinct
Tarek ElSarw is an automotive enthusiast.
Brew Bytes is the practitioner's AI show. Real stories, from the people actually building it.
🎙️ Guests: Tarek ElSarw
🎙️ Host: Nadeem Ibrahim
🌐 www.brewbytes.io

CREDITS:
Host and Produced by Nadeem Ibrahim
Branding by The Nobull Partners

BREW BYTES:
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Rate 5 ⭐ if this shifted your thinking

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"AI Won't Take Your Job. Your Manager Will"
Asked how to stop students misusing AI, he told a room full of academics to make it mandatory and approve everything. Three days later the UAE approved a mandatory AI curriculum for every public and private school. In this conversation he also explains what three weeks of total AI immersion did to him, why he now runs a 9pm test on himself, and why he insists his students say please and thank you in every prompt.
In this episode:
- Why banning AI in education was never the option
- Techies, practitioners and philosophers, and why the third group predicts behaviour best
- Why AI succeeds as a boss and fails as an assistant
- The 9pm test for problematic use
- What a "legacy human operator" is, and why manners in your prompts matter
- Why bolting AI onto your existing processes is wasting your time
Steve King was an Assistant Professor at Middlesex University Dubai who built a third year AI module inside an advertising programme and co-authored a 2023 paper on generative AI in education.
Brew Bytes. Real stories, from the people actually building it.
🎙️ Guests: Steve King
🎙️ Host: Nadeem Ibrahim
🌐 www.brewbytes.io

CREDITS:
Host and Produced by Nadeem Ibrahim
Branding by The Nobull Partners

BREW BYTES:
Subscribe/Follow for AI practioners' stories
Rate 5 ⭐ if this shifted your thinking

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"You can't bolt a jet engine onto the plane you already own."
What comes out is the clearest picture yet of why so much corporate AI is failing: companies built before 2022 keep bolting the new engine onto the old airframe, and the frame collapses. The ones built after start with the engine and design the plane around it.
In this episode:
The jet engine, and why bolting on always breaks
An RFP that took ten people, turned round by three in 48 hours
Why 500 job cuts at a call centre is a strategy failure, not an AI win
Automate the workflow, not the workforce
58 agents for one role, and who owns your digital twin when you leave
With Wade Eagar (Chief Strategy Officer, FAST), Nigel Hammersley (co-founder, Consentique) and Tony Evans (founder of ONV.ai, author of Generation AI), returning after EP10.
Real stories, from the people actually building it.
🎙️ Guests: Wade Eagar, Nigel Hammersley, and Tony Evans
🎙️ Host: Nadeem Ibrahim
🌐 www.brewbytes.io

CREDITS:
Host and Produced by Nadeem Ibrahim
Branding by The Nobull Partners

BREW BYTES:
Subscribe/Follow for AI practioners' stories
Rate 5 ⭐ if this shifted your thinking

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Most AI fails because nobody defines the problem first, and the model was never the edge. Your data and your people are.

It's a straight line from lost human connection to boardrooms bolting AI onto broken processes, plus a practical map of what winning actually looks like.

In this episode:

Why MIT found 95% of enterprise AI projects fail

"Pipes then people", and why 2 to 5 hours saved per employee is real ROI

Build vs buy, and your real differentiator

Human in the loop: why someone still has to pick

Agent commerce: marketing to a machine, not a person

Charles Gabriel is a media and advertising leader (AOL, Disney's Maker Studios) now at Akkio, the no-code AI analytics platform for agencies.

Real stories, from the people actually building it.

🎙️ Guest: Charles Gabriel, Akkio

🎙️ Host: Nadeem Ibrahim

🌐 www.brewbytes.io

CREDITS:
Host and Produced by Nadeem Ibrahim
Branding by The Nobull Partners

BREW BYTES:
Subscribe/Follow for AI practioners' stories
Rate 5 ⭐ if this shifted your thinking

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Host Nadeem Ibrahim plays devil's advocate, defending the craft agencies get right, from the Mad Men era to today.  While Sameer and Lawrence make the case for tearing the model down to its studs and rebuilding it around transparency, specialists over headcount, and the one thing AI can't replace: the human element. A conversation for anyone who runs an agency, works in one, or signs the invoice.

In this episode:

Why the agency model is "self-serving" — and who really gets the share

"Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity" — a £200k lesson learned young

The retainer problem when AI puts the knowledge in the client's hand

68% of agency staff demotivated — and the exodus to freelance

The pitch theatre: 30 people in the room, 2 doing the talking

Match the specialist, not the logo

The human element AI can't touch

Samir founded the agency in 2009; Lawrence joined as chief strategist after a digital-media career running back to the .com boom.

Grab a coffee. Let's talk about the future while we're still building it.

🎙️ Guest: Sameer Rehman and Lawerence Lartey

🎙️ Host: Nadeem Ibrahim

🌐 www.brewbytes.io

CREDITS:
Host and Produced by Nadeem Ibrahim
Branding by The Nobull Partners

BREW BYTES:
Subscribe/Follow for AI practioners' stories
Rate 5 ⭐ if this shifted your thinking

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.