3532: How AI Keeps Live Events Personal for Fans at Event Tickets Center
Release Date: 12/26/2025
3532: How AI Keeps Live Events Personal for Fans at Event Tickets Center
Tech Talks Daily
What makes live events feel personal in an age of algorithms making the calls? That’s the tension marketers are living in right now. Ben Kruger, Chief Marketing Officer at Event Tickets Center, sits at the center of this shift. He has spent 20 years shaping server-side systems and performance marketing strategies, including a decade of persistence chasing a role at Google before landing a position in New York just as eCommerce demand went into overdrive during the pandemic. Now, at ETC, he runs marketing for more than 130,000 live events simultaneously. It’s a scale that forces automation...
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3531: Scaling Without the Hype Inside Uploadcare’s Technical Philosophy
Tech Talks Daily
What does it really take to build software that can grow from a single line of code to millions of users a day without losing its soul along the way? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I’m joined by Alex Gusev, CTO at Uploadcare, for a wide-ranging conversation about scale, simplicity, and why leadership in technology starts with people long before it gets anywhere near frameworks or tooling. Alex has spent two decades building server-side systems, often inside small teams, and has seen firsthand how early decisions echo through a company’s future, for better and for worse. We talk...
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3530: Candy Crush Accessibility Lessons From a 200 Million Player Game
Tech Talks Daily
If you have ever opened Candy Crush over the holidays without thinking about the design decisions behind every swipe, this episode offers a rare look behind the curtain. I sit down with Abigail Rindo, Head of Creative at King, to unpack how accessibility has evolved from a well-meaning afterthought into a core creative and commercial practice inside one of the world’s most recognizable gaming studios. With more than 200 million people playing King’s games each month, Abigail explains why inclusive design cannot be treated as charity or compliance, but as a responsibility that...
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3529: How Ping Identity Sees the Next Chapter of Digital Identity
Tech Talks Daily
What does it actually mean to prove who we are online in 2025, and why does it still feel so fragile? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I sit down with Alex Laurie from Ping Identity to talk about why digital identity has reached a real moment of tension in the UK. As more of our lives move online, from banking and healthcare to social platforms and government services, the gap between how identity should work and how it actually works keeps widening. Alex shares why the UK now feels out of step with other regions when it comes to online identity schemes, and how heavy reliance on...
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3528: How Boomi Thinks About Scaling AI Without Losing Control
Tech Talks Daily
What does it really mean to keep humans at the center of AI when agentic systems are accelerating faster than most organizations can govern them? At AWS re:Invent, I sat down with Michael Bachman from Boomi for a wide-ranging conversation that cut through the hype and focused on the harder questions many leaders are quietly asking. Michael leads technical and market research at Boomi, spending his time looking five to ten years ahead and translating future signals into decisions companies need to make today. That long view shaped a thoughtful discussion on human-centric AI, trust versus...
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3527: How AWS Is Building Trust Into Responsible AI Adoption
Tech Talks Daily
What does responsible AI really look like when it moves beyond policy papers and starts shaping who gets to build, create, and lead in the next phase of the digital economy? In this conversation recorded during AWS re:Invent, I’m joined by Diya Wynn, Principal for Responsible AI and Global AI Public Policy at Amazon Web Services. With more than 25 years of experience spanning the internet, e-commerce, mobile, cloud, and artificial intelligence, Diya brings a grounded and deeply human perspective to a topic that is often reduced to technical debates or regulatory headlines. Our discussion...
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3526: TinyMCE and the Human Side of Developer Experience
Tech Talks Daily
What does it really mean to support developers in a world where the tools are getting smarter, the expectations are higher, and the human side of technology is easier to forget? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I sit down with Frédéric Harper, Senior Developer Relations Manager at TinyMCE, for a thoughtful conversation about what it takes to serve developer communities with credibility, empathy, and long-term intent. With more than twenty years in the tech industry, Fred’s career spans hands-on web development, open source advocacy, and senior DevRel roles at companies including...
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3525: iBanFirst and the Shift Toward Specialist Fintechs for Global Payments
Tech Talks Daily
What does it really take to build a fintech company that quietly fixes one of the most frustrating problems SMEs face every day? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I’m joined by Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier, the Founder and CEO of iBanFirst, for a candid conversation about entrepreneurship, timing, and why cross-border payments have remained broken for so long. Pierre-Antoine’s story begins in London, where his early career as an FX trader felt like a compromise at the time, yet quietly gave him a front-row seat to inefficiencies most people accepted as normal. That experience...
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3524: Trust, Verification, and Ownership in the Age of AI, with eSentire’s Alexander Feick
Tech Talks Daily
What happens when artificial intelligence moves faster than our ability to understand, verify, and trust it? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I sit down with Alexander Feick from eSentire, a cybersecurity veteran who has spent more than a decade working at the intersection of complex systems, risk, and emerging technology. Alex leads eSentire Labs, where his team explores how new technologies can be secured before they quietly become load-bearing parts of modern business infrastructure. Our conversation centers on a timely and uncomfortable reality. AI is being embedded into workflows,...
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3523: From Chaos to Clarity, Valiantys on Making AI Work for Developers
Tech Talks Daily
How much value do your developers actually get to deliver in a typical week, and how much of their time is quietly lost to meetings, context hunting, and process drag? I’m joined by Phil Heijkoop, Global Practice Head of Developer Experience at Valiantys, for a conversation that cuts through the hype surrounding AI and asks a harder question about why so many engineering teams still struggle to see meaningful returns. Phil argues that most organizations are only unlocking a small fraction of a developer’s true contribution, not because of a lack of talent, but because process drag...
info_outlineWhat makes live events feel personal in an age of algorithms making the calls?
That’s the tension marketers are living in right now. Ben Kruger, Chief Marketing Officer at Event Tickets Center, sits at the center of this shift. He has spent 20 years shaping server-side systems and performance marketing strategies, including a decade of persistence chasing a role at Google before landing a position in New York just as eCommerce demand went into overdrive during the pandemic.
Now, at ETC, he runs marketing for more than 130,000 live events simultaneously. It’s a scale that forces automation to step in. The industry moves in real time, resellers update prices by the hour, artists trend globally overnight, weather can shift demand before a stadium gate opens. Ben credits Google’s AI tools and internal models as a competitive advantage, but he also talks openly about the risks. The early excitement of automation gave way to skepticism after seeing unaligned promises from new platforms and unpredictable campaign behavior in tools that remove control from brands.
There’s a well-rounded argument to explore here. On one side, AI enables a small team to do the work of thousands, writing content at a volume no human team could deliver alone. On the other, removing risk from campaigns, or removing channel-level choices from advertisers, can reduce trust and increase low-quality creative output. Advantage+ tools that make placement decisions automatically, without brand input, might scale reach, but can reduce clarity of intent and control of outcomes. Some CMOs see that as smart acceleration, others see it as an overcorrection that creates opacity and dependency on platforms optimizing for their own incentives.
And somewhere in the middle is the opportunity. ETC’s approach shows a future where repetition in rapid testing generates sharper insight, where lean teams move faster, where humans stay in the loop to validate outcomes, and where creativity stays grounded in audience understanding, economics, and transparency. Marketers listening to Ben will hear someone who wants experimentation, control, clarity, and long-term audience trust to exist side by side.
Useful links:
Connect with Ben Kruger on LinkedIn
Event Tickets Center website