Staying Relevant with Jerod and Jordi
Early-stage collaboration with Jerod Santo (formerly The Changelog) on an Elastic-sponsored educational podcast for software engineers navigating the AI and agentic era.
Overview
A proposed Elastic-sponsored podcast series co-created with Jerod Santo. The show would help software engineers stay relevant as AI tools, agents, and spec-driven development reshape the profession — with Elastic's search and context-engineering capabilities woven in as the enabling technology.
Problem
Software engineers face rapid and disorienting change as AI coding tools, autonomous agents, and new development paradigms reshape what it means to build software professionally. Most content covering this shift is either breathless hype or dense research. There is very little that is educational, credible, and practically useful for working engineers who simply want to understand what is happening and what to do about it.
Constraints
- Jerod Santo's non-compete with The Changelog — cleared by Adam Stacoviak on 30 April 2026
- Internal budget approval required before committing to scope or timeline
- Distribution channel is Elastic-owned, not Changelog, given Jerod's departure
- Show format not yet finalised — show design is the first deliverable
Approach
Start with a tight show discovery phase: iron out the medium, topics, style, brand, name, and format. Follow with a pilot scope of four episodes. Regroup and iterate based on results. Jerod's role extends beyond presenting — co-writing, shaping episode flow, and developing interview questions. Elastic handles production operations and distribution.
Key Decisions
Begin with show discovery rather than committing to a full series
Reduces risk and aligns both parties on vision before budget is locked. Jerod's suggestion — sensible given the project is still being defined.
- Commission a full series upfront
- Produce a standalone pilot episode
Jerod Santo as collaborator
Unique combination of technical credibility, storytelling clarity, and an established developer audience built over a decade at The Changelog. Exactly what this kind of content needs.
- Work with an internal Elastic presenter
- Commission a content agency
Elastic-owned distribution
The Changelog is no longer Jerod's channel. Jerod will share and promote through his own channels, but the show itself lives on Elastic infrastructure.
Tech Stack
- Elasticsearch
- Vector Search
- Hybrid Search
- RAG
- Context Engineering
- Agent Tooling
Result & Impact
Project is in early stages pending internal budget approval. If greenlit, potential reach includes Jerod's existing developer audience and a new content property positioning Elastic as the context and retrieval layer for AI-native development.
Learnings
- Non-compete considerations can significantly delay external collaborations — addressing them early saves time
- Starting with show discovery rather than a defined format is the right call when both parties are still forming the concept
- Jerod's instinct to keep initial scope small (4 episodes) is a good model for validating creative partnerships before scaling
This project began as a conversation about what happens after the AI hype cycle settles — and what software engineers are supposed to do with themselves in the meantime.
The idea is to build an Elastic-sponsored podcast that helps working engineers navigate the shift to AI-native development. Not a news show, not an opinion show — something educational and practical, with Elastic’s search and retrieval capabilities woven in as the technology that makes agents actually work.
Jerod Santo, who spent over a decade building The Changelog into one of the most trusted voices in software development, is the proposed co-creator and co-host. He left The Changelog in early 2026 and is now selectively taking on independent projects.
The thread that led here started in March 2026. After several conversations, a call, and some back-and-forth on scope and non-compete considerations, we landed on the same page: start small, prove the concept, then scale.
Where things stand: Jerod is in. His former partner Adam Stacoviak has confirmed there is no conflict. The next step is internal budget approval, after which we move into show discovery — ironing out the medium, topics, style, brand, name, and format before producing a pilot run of four episodes.
The name of this site might give away how I think about what the show should be.