I spend my days in enterprise technology and my nights writing about whatever I can't stop thinking about -- cybersecurity, AI, cloud architecture, mechanical watch movements, and a few things I haven't categorized yet. 38 countries on stage.
I work in product management for an enterprise technology company -- thousands of customers across healthcare, financial services, government, education, manufacturing, and retail. EHR integrations, zero-trust security, and cloud-native deployments. Trading floor deployments and classified data environments. Remote learning rollouts across multi-campus districts. GxP-validated manufacturing lines. POS and inventory systems at scale. The verticals change. The standards don't.
I've been writing here since 2008 -- 220+ articles about what actually works in production. Not theory, not vendor marketing. The stuff you find yourself searching for at 2 AM when something is broken and the vendor docs are useless.
Along the way: Citrix CTP six times (1 of 50 globally), VMware vExpert three times, VMware EUC Champion four times (1 of 42 globally). FBI InfraGard member and speaker. W3C, CERN, United Nations, and IETF contributor.
10 min read · ai-agents
10 min read · ai-agents
7 min read · ai-agents
MS-DOS, BBS boards, building computers as a teenager. Picked up a camera around the same time. Both stuck.
First professional IT role -- at a Swiss watch company pushing digital e-commerce when it was still new to the industry. Rack and stack, structured wiring, data centers, load balancers, VPN, remote access, servers, the website. Hands on everything from day one.
Left the watch world for oil and gas, financial services, healthcare, government. Every environment needed securing. The technology stayed the same. The problems kept changing.
Figured if I was going to learn things the hard way, I might as well document it.
38 countries. 5 continents. Became 1 of 3 people to concurrently hold Citrix CTP, VMware vExpert, and VMware EUC Champion. Along the way, ended up as the only person holding that combination alongside CUGC leadership, InfraGard, and industry working group participation. None of it was planned.
Product leadership for enterprise software used by thousands of the world's largest companies and governments. AI, automation, cybersecurity, and cloud-native infrastructure. Executive briefings and speaking events. Two podcasts. 40+ daily health protocols. Advising thousands of customers -- and still writing about all of it.
I got paid for this. That's the part people miss when they see the camera come up -- this wasn't weekends at the park. This was a professional chapter.
I shot mixed martial arts events for AXS TV. Fashion shows for Simon and New York Fashion Week. Landscapes across the world, some of the most remote regions on earth -- inside ice caves in Iceland, on volcanoes in Hawaii, where I also worked alongside some of the world's top photographers in multi-week workshops. Aerial photography from helicopters. Wine cellars and luxury brand contracts. Product shoots, macro lens work, local businesses, events of every kind.
My thing was always the 200mm zoom. Getting right into someone's moment from across the room without them knowing I was there -- before they could freeze up, before they could pose. Seeing what other people walk right past. The real expression. The unguarded second. That was the shot.
People have taken my photos, printed them, and hung them on their bedroom walls -- because I'd captured some of the most intimate moments of their lives. That's the honor. Not the gig, not the paycheck -- someone looked at something I made and wanted to live with it.
I'm not actively shooting right now. The portfolio lives on.
My first exposure to the watch industry was in 1999 -- my first enterprise IT job happened to be at a luxury watch company. I left that world for oil and gas, financial services, and a dozen other industries. Came back to it among thousands of other clients across every vertical.
I'd stay after hours with the watchmakers -- everyone else went home and I'd be at the bench under the loupe lights, helping remove movements from cases, learning how to open a case back with the same precision I used to crimp Cat 5 cables during the day. I loved using my hands.
It's the engineering: movements, complications, dial work. I don't own these watches. I just can't stop studying them. I also teach -- how movements work, what certifications mean, how everything connects. 65 articles at jasonsamuel.me.
Dufour, Daniels, Journe
Lange, Patek, Breguet
Royal Oak, Cartier Tank
A Systems Thinker's Guide to Watchmaking
I studied Jeet Kune Do as a teenager in the '90s, before MMA even had a name. Bruce Lee's core idea -- use what's useful, reject what's useless, combine the best of everything -- shaped how I approach training, learning, and optimization in general. I lost sight of that for years before realizing the body is foundational -- when it falls apart, everything built on top of it falls apart too. That's when the protocol started.
40++ daily protocols across 8 categories, refined over 3+ years. Supplements, nutrition, hypertrophy and strength training, recovery, sleep, stress response, cognition, and bloodwork.
Fashion -- suits, materials, how weaves work, how dyes set, how fabrics behave under temperature and pressure. I've ruined enough clothes learning. Competitive shooting (IPSC and IDPA) -- draw, aim, fire under the clock. Heated yoga. Grand Cru chocolate -- I travel to specific countries and restaurants to source, review, and rate chocolate from around the world. That probably deserves its own page someday. AI beyond work -- I build with it, I write about it, I can't leave it alone. Independent consulting is paused, but the work is documented at jasonsamuelconsulting.com.
I don't finish. I just add.
There's a specific kind of trust involved when someone hands you their wedding day or their production infrastructure. I've spent 27+years in enterprise technology -- data centers, private clouds before the word existed, multi-billion dollar systems where downtime meant real damage -- and a parallel career photographing people in their most unguarded moments. Both gave me access most people don't get. Both required earning it.
I write because knowledge that stays locked up helps no one. Technology, watches, the body, photography, chocolate. I go deep, I take things apart, and I put what I find where it can help someone else. The access came with a responsibility. This is how I honor it.
Enterprise tech, watches, photography. No schedule, no fluff.
