Christopher Schmidt
VP, Solutions Engineering and AI - Enterprise AI, iLink Digital
I write on ontologies, knowledge graphs, and real-time intelligence in Microsoft Fabric — the shift from historical analytics to embedding data into business processes. I created the Data and AI Readiness Framework (DARF), a two-pillar model for whether you can trust an AI system's answer, and whether you can trust it to act on that answer.

Framework
The Data and AI Readiness Framework (DARF) — Semantic Readiness and Operational Readiness, eight layers, a scored maturity rubric. This is the canonical, current version of the framework.
Explore DARF →Recent Writing
- Aug 13, 2026
- Jul 30, 2026
- Jul 23, 2026Who Are You Optimizing For?
Architecture
- Jul 14, 2026
- Jul 9, 2026Stop Dooming the BI Developer
Architecture
Newsletter
The Real Time Dispatch goes out weekly on Substack — covering Eventhouse, Eventstream, KQL, and the shift from dashboards to action systems.
Subscribe on SubstackAlso on LinkedIn as a shorter native excerpt.