Ever wondered what happens when we feel truly safe to create, innovate, and express ourselves authentically? In this episode, Donna Preece-Jones, Creative Leadership Facilitator and founder of the Dynamic Potential Academy, shares her journey from running award-winning, pragmatic personal development support for a university to experiencing a profound personal breakdown—and how creativity became her pathway to healing and professional transformation.

During this challenging time, unable to articulate her emotions, Donna turned to painting and discovered her most authentic work yet, as well as a deeper way to connect with herself and others. This pivotal experience inspired her mission: helping others unlock well-being and creative potential in psychologically safe environments.

Key insights from this episode include:

• Psychological safety is the foundation for effective transformation, learning, and team innovation
• Creative leadership centres around communication, workplace well-being, and team unification
• Creativity is problem solving, a skill applicable to all areas of life and work—not just for artists
• Emotional intelligence is about connection, relationships, and creating space for all voices
• Vulnerability in creativity is courage and authenticity, not weakness
• Lifelong learning provides both knowledge and well-being
• Art and creative expression can help externalise emotions when words fail

Whether you’re a leader seeking to foster innovation, exploring your own creative potential, or curious about the connection between psychological safety and creativity, this conversation offers insights that will transform your perspective on creativity and workplace culture.

Connect with Donna at www.thedpa.uk or at Linkedin

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Copyright © The Open Group 2023-2026. All rights reserved.

The energy data world is racing toward a milestone that promises less friction and more progress: a vendor-neutral foundation that operators, cloud providers, and innovators can all trust. We invited Stef Jacobs, Chair of The Open Group OSDU® Forum, to unpack the plan to make that real by 2026 and what it means for seismic interpretation, AI readiness, and day-to-day workflows.

We start with purpose—why a reference platform matters—and move into concrete takeaways from The Open Group Houston Summit (November 2025): a community implementation that encodes the standard, a data model designed to support seismic interpretation workflows, and the first steps toward certification. Stef explains the “Journey to Venus,” a landing point where the community delivers a neutral, coded reference that vendors can verify against and innovators can build on without lock‑in. The theme is balance: protect the open standard while encouraging a thriving ecosystem on top.

Governance and execution anchor the story. Stef shares how OKRs align a global community to enterprise-grade outcomes, using a practical example of targeting specific workflows to drive measurable progress. We explore how operators will feel the impact in real terms—cleaner interoperability, smoother AI and machine learning pipelines, and faster path from data to decisions. We also confront the hard part: sustaining the standard, keeping the community implementation evergreen, and operating a credible certification program that boosts trust without stifling innovation.

If you are interested in interoperability, seismic-ready data models, cloud-native adoption, and AI at scale in subsurface domains, this conversation lays out the why and the how. You’ll walk away with a clear picture of what 2026 delivers, why it’s pivotal, and how to get involved through focused working groups and upcoming face‑to‑face sessions.

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Copyright © The Open Group 2023-2026. All rights reserved.

AI is racing ahead, and the power bill is coming due. We sit down with Forrester Senior Analyst Abhijit Sunil to unpack how energy, climate risk, and circularity now shape every serious IT roadmap—from where to place AI workloads to how to buy, refresh, and retire hardware without blowing the grid or the budget.

We trace key signals from New York Climate Week: services firms positioning tech as a decarbonization catalyst, sustainability platforms moving beyond compliance into operational decision‑making, and climate risk analytics becoming essential for business continuity. Abhijit breaks down why fragmented regulations—CSRD changes in Europe, climate disclosures in California, and emerging rules across APAC—demand better data governance, auditability, and a clear strategy for supplier requests. We dig into the practical: mapping physical and transition risks across IT estates, modeling energy resilience and long‑term capacity, and using renewable energy deals and time‑bound incentives to stabilize costs.

The heart of the conversation is a tough trade‑off many teams face today: upgrade to more efficient systems or extend existing assets to avoid embodied carbon. We offer a simple way to decide—total carbon of ownership—balancing embodied emissions, operational efficiency, grid mix, utilization, and end‑of‑life outcomes. Expect actionable insights on liquid cooling and PUE, AI workload placement across cloud and hybrid, product carbon footprint methods, and how take‑back programs can turn waste into value. We also spotlight the human side: cross‑training architects in lifecycle assessment, giving sustainability leaders fluency in cloud and chips, and making climate risk a standard gate in architecture decisions.

If you’re steering AI adoption, optimizing data centers, or preparing for sustainability audits, you’ll leave with a sharper plan and the language to win support across finance, facilities, and procurement.

Revisit our previous episode with Abhijit (from Season 1) here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2112772/episodes/13787229-open-comments-episode-14-unleashing-the-power-of-it-sustainability-a-dialogue-with-abhijit-sunil

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Copyright © The Open Group 2023-2026. All rights reserved.