Episode
From Gaming to Global Efficiency with Evan J Schwartz
- Podcast
- Software People Stories
- Published
- May 22, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3125
- Processing state
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Summary
My guest today is Evan J. Schwartz, the COO of AMCS Group North America, a global leader in sustainable cloud technology. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor and Board Advisor at Jacksonville University, mentoring graduate students in AI, cybersecurity, and technical project management. Evan traces his technology origin from early-1980s bulletin board systems to founding a company that built graphic multiplayer BBS games and a scripted graphics language, that he says predated HTML, reaching 33 titles across a global BBS market before the internet rapidly displaced it around 1995. He then shifted from internet gaming into business software, automating insurance workflows and later working in commodity and “reverse logistics” industries including forestry, natural gas, and waste/recycling at AMCS, citing route optimization across 770,000 trucks that saves 17–20 gallons of diesel per truck. He discusses why ERP adoption is hard, advocating game-design-style gradual introduction, putting people first, and having product teams do end-user jobs. He emphasizes vendor relationships over feature requests, AI governance and risk frameworks, a “person + AI” stewardship model, and evolving education/career paths toward broad skills, clear communication, domain knowledge, and knowing what “good” looks like. The timestamps are approximate and do not include the time for the intro. Add about 90 seconds to locate the section 00:00 Welcome and Setup 00:31 Early Computing Origins 01:20 Building BBS Games 03:02 Internet Shift to Business 05:01 Reverse Logistics Mission 06:34 ERP and AI Adoption 08:31 Gaming Lessons for ERP 11:03 People First Strategy 13:00 Empathy by Doing the Job 17:29 Vendor Trust and Roadmaps 21:31 Universities vs AI Change 24:58 Training Architects Without Coding…