The Field Manual’s editor, Cisco Caceres, has founded and operates several companies. Articles that touch any of these companies, their competitors, or their direct partners are flagged explicitly at the top of the article. This page lists everything that gets flagged.
Current ventures
- Barbarians Inc — technology consulting studio for startups. Founded 2021. Articles about consulting practice, technical due diligence, or startup architecture get a disclosure note.
- AMBIE — acoustic intelligence ASR. Founded 2025. Articles about speech recognition, voice AI, or audio infrastructure get a disclosure note.
- Abundera family — the Abundera ecosystem includes abundera.ai (hub), qr.abundera.ai (free QR generator), pro.qr.abundera.ai (paid QR dashboard), check.qr.abundera.ai (QR safety scanner), sign.abundera.ai (e-signature), tax.abundera.ai, and several other family sites. Articles about QR codes, e-signature, payment QR, redirect chains, or related security topics get a disclosure note. The QR safety scanner referenced in our QR coverage is built by the editor.
- Damn Good Pepper — small-batch hot sauce business co-owned since 2014. Out of scope for this publication.
- RoamingPigs Inc — the Delaware C Corporation that publishes the Field Manual.
Prior ventures and roles
- Government voice AI work — federal agency engagements 2021 to 2024. Articles touching government voice AI projects keep the framing generic by policy.
- FortifID — chief software architect, 2020 to 2023.
- VoiceMe.AI — co-founder and CTO, 2018 to 2021.
- SmartEar — CTO, 2017 to 2018.
- ZettaZing — CTO, 2014 to 2017. ECHO push-notification platform.
- Einstrong / SmartChannels — CTO, 1998 to 2014.
- Core Logic Software — CEO and CTO, 1996 to 2004. Consulting and dot-com-era products.
- MSNBC — software development engineer, 1995 to 1998. Built the Workbench CMS.
- Spry, Inc — QA engineer, 1994 to 1995. “Internet in a Box” consumer product.
- Aldus Corporation — test engineer, 1993. PageMaker.
- Sierra Online — test engineer, 1992. Bright Star.
- US Navy — Navy Veteran, USS Missouri BB-63, 1990 to 1992. Desert Shield / Storm, decommissioning crew.
Advisory and board roles
Currently none active. When taken on, advisory roles are listed here before any related coverage.
Patents
The editor holds patents in dynamic configuration of context-sensitive sites (US 20020174201, 2002), data encryption methods (US 13/638,570, 2011), walkie-talkie network analytics (17/153,908, 2021), and adaptive environment-aware speech recognition (provisional, 2024). Articles touching these techniques use the disclosure framing.
Advertising and sponsorship
The Field Manual does not accept advertising. The Sunday digest does not include sponsor sections. If this changes, it will be disclosed here first, with a clear separation between sponsored and editorial content.
Compensated reviews
No product reviews on the publication are sponsored or paid for by the vendor. Vendors that provide review units, briefings, or early access are noted in the article’s sources panel. Vendor-supplied units do not buy favorable coverage.
How to report a conflict we missed
If you spot an article that should have a disclosure note and doesn’t, email editor@roamingpigs.com. Confirmed misses are corrected within 24 hours and the disclosure is added at the top of the article.