Catalog & Cocktails: The Honest, No-BS Data Podcast (data.world)

Join Tim, Juan and Karen Lopez, aka @datachick from InfoAdvisors, to discuss what assumptions people and applications make about the simplest data. We’ll also try and answer the question, “why are phone numbers, and addresses so damn hard to model?!?”

This Takeaway episode will feature the summary of the upcoming episode.

How do the most successful companies stitch together data governance, understanding, access, and use to create active and engaged data cultures? The answer, as usual, can be found in the knowledge graph.

And what better place to talk nodes and edges than the Knowledge Graph Conference in New York City? In this episode, Tim and Juan are joined by conference chair, Francois Scharffe, to discuss how knowledge graphs are driving the automated enterprise.

This episode will also feature:

• How to apply knowledge graphs to address critical business problems
• What automation looks like when powered by a knowledge graph
• What kind of graph is the New York Subway system?

How can you be certain the data you’re working with is trusted, up-to-date and understandable?

Data lineage tells you where data originated, how it's used, and what transformations are applied as it flows from data sources and ETL workflows to downstream data marts and dashboards. In episode 7, Tim, Juan, and special guest Ernie Ostic from MANTA discuss how mapping data - and all its associated metadata and dependencies - leads to cleaner analysis and better business decisions.

Join Tim, Juan and special guest Arjun Narayan, CEO of Materialize to discuss all things data streams and how these pipelines fuel the modern data stack.

This Takeaway episode will feature the summary of the upcoming episode.

Data Storytelling is a topic that constantly comes up, but do we really know what it is? And what it isn’t? Who best to have this #honestnobs discussion than Kat Greenbrook, author of the upcoming book The Data Storyteller’s Handbook: How to create business impact using data storytelling.

What’s the secret behind Airbnb’s famously data-driven culture? It’s the company’s ability to provide all employees - not just the ‘data people’ - the ability to discover, understand, and trust data. Join Juan, Tim, and special guest Jeff Feng, product lead at Airbnb, to learn how the vacation experience juggernaut designed and developed its enterprise data catalog, DataPortal.

Whether you’re still unclear on the business value of a data catalog, or debating whether to build or buy, do not miss this episode.

This episode will feature:

• The good, bad, and ugly of a build-it-yourself data catalog
• How data democratization can promote data literacy and deliver business value
• Juan talking about how much he misses flying

For all the incredible innovation in the field of data and analytics, one practice unfortunately remains stuck in neutral. Data governance, when applied with an agile approach that aligns with business objectives and focuses people first, can be a boon for data-driven organizations. However, most companies today still think about governance in terms of tools, workflows, or privacy and compliance.

If data governance had a help line, it would likely be staffed by this week’s guest. Join Tim, Juan and Laura Madsen, author of “Disrupting Data Governance,” for a discussion on how we can all be better ambassadors for data.

This episode will feature:

• How to talk to your execs about agile data governance
• How to measure the effectiveness of your governance program
• What’s your favorite story of data governance malpractice?

This week, we are having a throwback elixir with some very special surprise guests.

Tune in with hosts Juan and Tim to find out who.

Key Takeaways:

• [00:26 - 01:51] Episode intro: Data Day and What keeps you up at night in data?
• [02:04 - 02:54] Joe Reis, the economy and showing value
• [02:59 - 03:30] Omar Khawaja: Anything that ends with board, data dashboards
• [03:54 - 04:05] Vip Parmar: Jet lag & underutilized data
• [04:16 - 04:51] Laura Ellis: Data governance and change management
• [04:59 - 06:18] Mohammed Syed: Change management and data solutions
• [06:22 - 06:49] Tim: Determining focus in a sea of technology opportunities
• [06:50 - 07:58] Juan: Disconnect between executives and how data teams work with the business

Data architecture is more layered than an onion. Data, metadata, access, transform, virtualization, visualization. And with the modern data stack, we’re now talking more about semantics and metrics layers.

This week, Tim and Juan are joined by Nick Handel, CEO of Transform, to talk all things semantics and metrics and why enterprises need to be thinking more about more about relationships.

This episode will also feature:

• Clear definitions for semantic layer and metrics layer and the relationships between them
• How to design your architecture to take advantage of semantics and metrics
• Cake, dip, or sandwich. What is the best layered food?

Let’s talk data management frameworks. What is a data fabric and how is it different from a data mesh? No, seriously, we’re trying to figure it out ourselves. Is this an attempt by industry analysts and enterprising vendors to rebrand existing technology or are these fundamentally new data architectures?

In this episode, we’ll explore who and what are driving the conversation and try to demystify these emerging data disciplines.

This episode will feature:

• Clear definitions for data fabric and data mesh
• Where these frameworks overlap, intersect, and chart their own course
• Tim’s excuses following a Cleveland Browns playoff loss

You can’t buy a predictive model off the shelf. And if you COULD… would you? It’s the old “build versus buy” debate and with data in a constant state of change, building and deploying AI is more challenging than ever.

Join Tim, Juan, and Andrew Eye, CEO at ClosedLoop.ai, to discuss the challenges of AI deployment, AIOps, and maintaining models as data changes.

Key Takeaways

• [00:08 - 01:45] Cheers for AI
• [01:48 - 04:44] Taking advantage of incoming data and considering the data footprint
• [04:45 - 05:55] Building the most accurate and useful model, no best solution
• [06:01 - 09:26] AI strategy and developing prediction models
• [09:33 - 15:17] Should you build or should you buy?
• [15:21 - 20:02] Verticalized AI versus Horizontal data science and AI-oriented solutions
• [20:04 - 23:16] Build a custom predictive model
• [23:42 - 25:24] The concept of "feature drift" in AI
• [25:26 - 30:02] Vertical AI and the opportunity with healthcare
• [30:07 - 33:52] The concept of a click and the idea of semantic contracts
• [33:53 - 38:08] Great minds designing AI for Facebook instead of healthcare
• [38:12 - 39:41] Designing AI for good is addictive
• [39:47 - 41:27] The next generation and the promise of AI that can really impact lives
• [41:41 - 47:57] Lightning Round
• [48:02 - 52:03] Takeaways
• [52:05 - 53:24] Three questions

Santona Tuli is the head of data at Upsolver. She's a voice we like to listen to about how data teams assemble: data roles, data culture, the function of data at a company...She stops by Catalog & Cocktails to talk workflows, architecture, and looking at data teams with a 10,000-foot view.

The data science discipline is in a constant state of evolution with new techniques and applications being introduced almost daily. And this journey often begins at institutions of higher learning around the world. Many universities offer bachelors and masters degrees in data science, but are these programs adequately preparing the data professionals of tomorrow?

In this episode, Juan, Tim, and Prof George Fletcher of Eindhoven University of Technology will discuss the state of data science education and explore how these programs can be extended to satisfy industry needs.

Other topics include:

• What universities get right and wrong about data science education
• What skills we should be teaching that we aren’t today
• What should be the mascot at Data Science University?

Data governance and security may be scary and hard, but with the right solutions in place, data teams can enable the right balance between security and usability to drive their businesses forward!

Juan's Trip Takeaways from MIT CDOIQ

The coronavirus pandemic is also a case study in public data. Everywhere we look we find statistics: number of coronavirus cases, unemployment levels, economic predictions, etc. But this unprecedented access to data also leaves us with lots of questions:

• Can we trust the data?
• Is there unintentional bias in the data and analytical algorithms?
• What role does data governance play?

In episode 9, Tim, Juan, and Anoop Lalla, former VP Enterprise Data and Analytics at Workday, chat about data governance and how organizations can deliver meaningful and accurate analysis today and in a post-pandemic future.

In this episode, Tim, Juan, and Sanjeev Mohan, former Gartner analyst and principal at SanjMo, explore how metadata acts as a proverbial travel guide for your data and analytics journey.

This Takeaway episode will feature the summary of the upcoming show.

Juan and Tim sit down for Catalog & Cocktails with Dora Boussias, Director of Enterprise Architecture and Data Strategy.

This Takeaway episode will feature the summary of the upcoming episode.

In a relatively short time, we’ve gone from collecting and neglecting data to managing, enriching, and learning from data. We are in the age of collective data empowerment, where user-friendly apps and data ubiquity mean almost anyone can answer complex business questions. So why does the “data-driven” enterprise still sound like a pipe dream?

Join Tim, Juan and special guest Kelly Wright, president and COO at Gong and former EVP at Tableau, for a discussion on data and analytics past, present, and future.

This episode will feature:

• Ways organizations can maximize the value of data they are already collecting
• How to address challenges with data and application sprawl
• The Gong Show was a popular TV talent show in the 70s. What was your favorite game show growing up?

In this wildly diverse yet hyperconnected world, it's hard enough to understand how people communicate with one another. So how do machines do it?

Join Juan, Tim, and special guest, Steve Whitla from Visual Meaning for a discussion about how humans and systems talk to one another, and even have meaningful conversations.

Also in this episode:

• The role of semantics in reaching shared meaning
• What constitutes "understanding" when it comes to machine to machine communication
• Better talking machine: K.I.T.T. or Johnny 5?

Is business the problem or is it the data? Business science hasn’t changed since Peter Druker. But, it needs to change. It was designed in an era of certain technologies and data limitations. We had to work in isolation.

Those days are long gone.

So who’s to blame for inefficiencies, unsolved problems, mismanaged processes and other barriers? Join this weeks episode of Catalog & Cocktails with hosts Tim, Juan and special guest Benny Benford to find out where the buck stops.

What's the state of data stewardship today and where is it going? Will data stewards continue to exist? How is this evolving with respect to data products? And what is the impact of AI? All of these questions and more is what Tim and Juan ranted about in this episode.

When you think about Gen AI applications, one of the first things that comes to mind is Vector Databases as part of the stack. In this episode, Tim and Juan chat with Bob van Luijt, co-founder of Weaviate, to demystify Vector Databases.

We all need a break sometimes.

Juan is on vacation but he wasn't skipping this week's episode of Catalog & Cocktails.

Join Tim Gasper and Juan Sequeda for this weeks mini-sode.

You don’t have to have the word “data” in your title to be a data person. For example, Juan and Tim don’t, but they are very much part of our data team. In this episode, we will chat about the myriad personas that interact with data, from producers to consumers and everything in between.

Jeremiah Owyang is a general partner at Blitzscaling Ventures. His career arc has spanned web, sharing economy, and autonomous/AI technologies. He believes that AI is going to help humanity accomplish many of the big challenges we have for society, from health to learning to work and more. But the way we communicate and measure work will change - radically. What does our AI-future look like? He stops by to discuss.

Where does this data come from? Who created it? How has it been used? Like the origins of the universe, there can be quite a mystery surrounding the genesis of your company’s datasets. Understanding data provenance is the first step in answering those critical questions.

Join Tim, Juan, and Professor Deborah McGuiness of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, renowned AI scientist and pioneer in provenance research to discuss data provenance and why it matters to you.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The origin story and evolution of data provenance
• Provenance standards every data person should know
• Which fictional character has the best origin story

Ever wondered how Catalog & Cocktails happens?

How does the show go from an idea to a full-blown episode every single week?

Karli Burghoff, Producer of Catalog & Cocktails AND data.world Demand Generation Specialist, joins this bonus episode to talk about the processes, pains and prizes of creating a podcast. Oh, and she roasts the hosts multiple times in this episode too, don't miss that.

Get excited. A half day of new ideas, practical guidance, and journeys into the latest innovations in data practices, technology, and leadership, headlined by DJ Patil (former US Chief Data Scientist) and Amy Gershkoff-Bolles (Chief Data Officer, Bit.ly). All that and more at our inaugural digital event, data.world summit, on September 23rd, 2020.

Register now for free at: https://data.world/events/summit/

Join Tim, Juan and special guest Shane Gibson from AgileData.io, to talk agile in the domain of data.

This Takeaway episode will feature the summary of the upcoming episode.

Let's wrap Season Two of Catalog & Cocktails with the Takeaways of the Takeaways!

There’s a high turnover of CDO/CDAO positions. Data teams are not directly contributing to ROI. What’s the root cause? It’s all in the DNA of the organization.

Understanding this will be critical in addressing this issue in organizations.

Hosts Juan and Tim will be joined by special guest Alex Vayner, from KPMG US to also discuss the data roles in the different types organizations and also dive into the buy vs. build decision-making process.

Everyone - including us - wants to talk about how to get value from your data, but the truth is you can’t even get your data program off the ground without policy. Policies guide our decisions, our access controls, and even our data supply chains. But can policy make us more productive?

In this special episode, Tim and Juan are joined by Nong Li, CEO of Okera, to discuss why and how the data world should be thinking about policies.

This episode will also feature:

• How to think about policy as it relates to GDPR, CCPA, and the right to be forgotten
• The impact of the modern data stack on data policy
• One of the lyrics In the 1990 Depeche Mode song, “Policy of Truth,” is “Never again Is what you swore, the time before.” What’s something you swore you’d never do again, but did it anyway?

So much of the focus of the analytics and vendor community today is on data. We have solutions for data visualization, warehousing, observability, cataloging, transformations, and more. But data is nothing without context. So why does metadata tend to draw the short straw?

In this episode, Tim, Juan, and Sanjeev Mohan, former Gartner analyst and principal at SanjMo, explore how metadata acts as a proverbial travel guide for your data and analytics journey.

This episode will also cover:

• Visions of a data catalog, the ordinary and profound
• Who needs lineage and why
• In the Magic Quadrant of summer foods, what goes in the leaders quadrant, and what’s in niche?

Tim and Juan provide an honest no-bs summary of what they observed and learned at Big Data London and the AI Conference in San Francisco. Tune in to get the latest on Data and AI and short interviews from Peter Norvig (Google), Nazneen Rajani (Hugging Face), Fabiana Clemente (YData), Danny Bickson (Visual Layer), Gev Sogomonian (AimStack), Yujian Tang (Zilliz), Patrick McFadin (Datasax) and Ofer Mendelevitch (Vectara)

Join Tim, Juan and special guest Luke Slotwinski, VP of Data & Analytics at Prologis, to discuss how data leaders can empower their teams by asking for more from their data.

This Takeaway episode will feature the summary of the upcoming episode.

Fall summit 2021 is right around the corner!!!! Join speakers from Nationwide, ThoughtSpot and MANY MORE to discuss hot topics like Data Mesh, DataOps, and the future of data management on Sep. 29: data.world/events/summit

________________

With the hype of graph databases and knowledge graphs, a common (mis)practice is to quickly migrate your existing siloed data into a graph database. But be careful! You may just be bringing the complexity of your silos into the graph.

Join Tim, Juan and guest Jans Aasman from Franz Inc, the makers of AllegroGraph, for a conversation on why your graph-based machine learning and 360 projects should start with data modeling.

This episode will feature:

• Data modeling approaches you should consider
• Tips to avoid data modeling pitfalls
• Juan and Tim striking their best model pose

Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it. If there is someone who can speak to data history, it’s Bill Inmon. How did data warehouses start? Why is the computing profession still immature?

Join Tim Gasper, Juan Sequeda and Bill Inmon, the father of the data warehouse and Founder of Forest Rim Technology, to learn about the past and present of data, and where things might be heading in the future.

Key Takeaways

• [00:05 - 01:00] Introduction to the Father of the data warehouse, Bill Inmon
• [01:11 - 02:28] Cocktails & Cheers
• [02:31 - 03:33] What actor would you cast for yourself?
• [03:39 - 06:47] Running in circles in the data world, a result of the profession's maturity
• [06:49 - 10:20] Bill's recent post about loyalty to technology versus loyalty to business
• [10:22 - 12:58] Specialists in computer technology, how programming has changed over time
• [13:06 - 15:08] Continuing education and certifications with programming paths
• [15:10 - 24:40] The history of computing: from army, to mafia, to your pocket
• [24:40 - 32:22] Key moments and milestones Bill has observed throughout his career in networking
• [32:28 - 33:59] Understanding the customer and looking after them
• [33:53 - 38:00] Microsoft Chatbot
• [38:00 - 41:04] A solution in search of a problem, showing business value
• [41:10 - 43:41] The Inmon and Kimball approaches
• [43:58 - 45:50] What's next for Bill?
• [46:11 - 58:46] Lightning round
• [58:53 - 01:04:16] Takeaways

You are listening to great talks, podcasts, webinars on how to improve and take your data and analytics to the next level. You want to take all these ideas and start implementing them in your organization. But how do you start? Join Tim, Juan and Roel Pot, Global Data Manager at Vopak where they discuss how to go from thought leadership to practice.

Conversation highlights:

• [01:09] Today's drinks
• [05:02] Sifting through noise and convincing your organization on the importance of data
• [07:11] Challenging tradition in data governance and modeling
• [09:53] Data as an asset and finding business value
• [14:06] Data and business literacy through the data academy
• [18:16] Bridging the gap in language, business, and data literacy
• [19:48] The academy's purpose
• [21:16] Building Vopak into a resilient company to last another 400 years
• [25:21] How being an asset-rich business has affected Vopak's data strategy
• [27:45] Connecting the dots with data acquisition and distributed systems
• [29:58] Decentralized teams and better collaboration
• [31:51] Real-time data sensors and minimizing time for data analysis
• [35:24] Why real-time for analytics?
• [36:24] To Data Mesh, or Not To Data Mesh
• [38:46] Self-service and understanding ways of gathering and processing data
• [40:19] Different roles and the confusion it can cause within organizations

The modern data stack is often defined by the type of technologies that exist within it. Cloud-based, open source, low/no code tools, ELT, and reverse ETL. But surely there’s more to it… isn’t there?

What holds the modern data stack together and makes it the architecture of choice for so many data-driven enterprises? Join Tim, Juan and special guest, Nick Schrock, founder of Elemental and creator of Dagster and GraphQL, to chat about all things MDS.

This episode will feature:

• Is modern data stack a methodology or a set of disparate cloud technologies?
• Thoughts on consolidation among MDS tools

Describe your reaction upon glancing at Matt Turck’s latest data landscape diagram

Have you ever heard someone call data a "team sport"? The comparison makes sense: you can’t be successful on your own, you need to work well with peers, you run up against tough opposing forces. But data work is so much more. Join Tim and Juan as they discuss their favorite fundamentals of data culture and why companies often forget to think about them.

Does the very idea of creating and managing new data assets keep you up at night? Do you get goosebumps just thinking about the state of your column headers? Never fear: there’s an effective way to battle your data and metadata demons. Join Tim and Juan for this spooktacular episode on agile data spirits—er, sprints. We’ll share tips on how to create data assets using an agile, iterative, and inclusive approach.

Disclaimer: this episode may include gory details of data and metadata management, unfortunate Halloween puns, and the Corpse of Traditional Data Governance. Listen at your own risk.

Analytics are great for answering the “what.” Did we hit our sales targets or not? Did our supply chain hold up under the strain of a prolonged pandemic? But smart data leaders recognize that real transformational insights come from people, processes, and tools that answer the bigger question of “why.”

Join Tim, Juan and special guest Luke Slotwinski, VP of Data & Analytics at Prologis, to discuss how data leaders can empower their teams by asking for more from their data.

This episode will feature:

• Questions everyone should be asking about their data
• Critical tools and skills for diving deeper into data and analysis
• Why did the chicken cross the road? Data-driven answers only, please.

Live from CDOIQ, we will joined by Tom Redman, The Data Doc, to discuss what's broken, why we go in circles, and how we can objectively evaluate the data world. Oh, we will also chat about his upcoming book: People and Data

Some of the greatest breakthroughs throughout human history can be attributed to the biotech field, from life-saving vaccines to advances in supply chains. So it’s no surprise that biotech is also a fast-mover when it comes to innovative socio-technical paradigms like data mesh.

In this episode, Tim, Juan, and Omar Khawaja, Global Head of BI at Roche, break down the good, the bad, and the ugly of the company's data mesh journey.

This episode will also feature:

• How to identify potential use cases and pick the one to prioritize
• How to think about ownership when data and tools are widely distributed
• You’ll be at Snowflake Summit in Las Vegas next month. So will we. What’s the best buffet food?

RAG, Retrieval Augemented Generation, is the term you now constantly hear in conjunction with LLM that provides context. But how does it actually work? And what's the relationship with Vector Databases and Knowledge Graphs? This will be a geeky AI episode with Mike Dillinger.

In this episode, Tim, Juan, and Sarah Krasnik get back to first principles and remind us why everyone was excited about the modern data stack to begin with.

This Takeaway episode will feature the summary of the upcoming episode.

Juan and Tim sit down for Catalog & Cocktailsv with Laura Madsen, CEO of Moxy Analytics and author of “Disrupting Data Governance,” for a discussion on how we can all be better ambassadors for data.

This Takeaway episode will feature the summary of the upcoming episode.

Amy works at the cross-section of arguably the most important thing to a business: aligning data strategy with corporate vision. How do you ACTUALLY use data to achieve business goals, and how do you know if you're going in the right direction? Amy stops by to discuss.

Companies spend an obscene amount of money every year on data and analytics initiatives. And almost all of that spend goes toward applications that employ vastly different data models. Normalizing data structures is a painstaking process that most IT teams are used to by now. But should we normalize normalization?

In this episode, Juan, Tim, and Dave McComb, President of Semantic Arts and author of Software Wasteland and The Data-Centric Revolution, discuss what it takes to shift from an application-centric to a data-centric mindset.

Other topics include:

• What it means to be data-centric
• How to undo decades of questionable data management practices
• Debate: French Revolution vs. American Revolution vs. Beatles Revolution

Paco Nathan has a career on bridging innovation and open source project on Data and AI to the real world. This episode will be his honest, no-bs take on the impact of open source in the real world. And of course, we will also talk about Knowledge Graphs and LLMs.

What do companies like Airbnb, Google, and Lyft have in common? They put knowledge graphs at the center of their metadata and data strategy. In episode 6, Tim and Juan talk about knowledge graph technology - how it works, why it works, and why it should be part of your metadata and data management strategy.

You can’t get from your home to the grocery simply by owning a car. You have to actually drive the vehicle to get to a place that delivers value. Sounds obvious right? But we don’t instinctively think this way when it comes to data. We focus so much on tools, processes, and architectures, but we don’t talk enough about actually using the data.

This week, Tim and Juan are joined by Mike Ferguson, managing director of Intelligent Business Strategies Limited to look at why we’re not using data nearly as effectively as we think and what can be done about it.

This episode will feature:

• Data usage do’s and don’ts
• How to get your company aligned on effective data use and measurement?
• What’s the most expensive thing you bought that you’ve never used?

How is your data team driving revenue and reducing costs? How is the impact of your data team being measured? All of these business value topics and more will be discussed with Ethan Aaron, CEO of Portable.

There’s a dashboard for everything in the enterprise now, so it’s easy to answer your complex questions in graphical form. And new features like natural language processing (NLP) make interactions and queries faster and easier than ever. But surely there’s more on the horizon in BI and analytics, right?

Join Tim, Juan and special guest Peter Bailis, CEO of Sisu Data for a conversation on the current state of business intelligence and data analytics. We will also discuss what’s next and the all important question: why?

This episode will feature:

• The state of BI today
• The evolution of BI and why it’s no longer “the new black”
• Where analytics should be heading
• The data-driven culture and why it matters
• Tim and Juan’s New Year’s resolutions

Data transformations, dbt, data catalogs, data teams, data culture, data mesh. It’s a lot. But pour yourself a drink and enjoy this special edition of Catalog & Cocktails.

Hosts Juan Sequeda and Tim Gasper broadcast live from the 2021 dbt Coalesce conference and were joined by special guests, Meetesh Karia and Claire Look from The Zebra to take a glimpse into the future of analytics engineering.

This episode will feature:

• Why is dbt such a big deal?
• Data teams and the role of an Analytics Engineer
• What have you transformed (you, someone else, a product, …) in your own life?

In this episode, Joe Reis, best-selling author of Fundamentals of Data Engineering explains why data modeling and semantics need to take the center stage for AI to truly succeed.

Juan and Tim recap the biggest ideas and perspectives shared at this year's data.world summit. In a whirlwind half hour, we boil down insights from a long list of trailblazing data and analytics leaders, including former US Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil, three-time Chief Data Officer Amy Gershkoff Bolles, CEO of PoolParty Software Andreas Blumauer, and more. Oh, and if you're curious about Juan's garage bar, see it for yourself at next week's live broadcast.

* Watch each episode being recorded Wednesdays at 4 pm CT, then stay for a virtual afterparty: https://data.world/resources/webinars/catalog-and-cocktails. * Missed the summit? Catch up and share your own favorite moments: https://data.world/events/summit

Juan and Tim give their ultimate takeaways from Gartner in Orlando with a TON of guests.

Guests like:

Cindi Howson, Chief Data Strategy Officer at Thoughtspot, and Host of the Data Chief Podcast

Wayne Eckerson, President at Eckerson Group

Sean Anderson, Host of Sources & Destinations Podcast, and Head of Product Marketing at SelectStar

Benn Stancil, CTO + Founder @ Mode

Malcolm Hawker, Head of Data Strategy, Profisee

Malcolm Chisholm, President, Data Millennium

Kuldeep Sharma, Sr Manager Data Governance, Enterprise Data

Vassil Momtchev, CTO at Ontotext

Anthony Colichio, Senior Value Engineer, Reltio

Join Juan and Tim for the Season Three Finale of Catalog & Cocktails. The hosts discuss the takeaways of the takeaways, best guest moments and valuable advice from some of the guests from the last 20 episodes!

AI Ops is a new and upcoming role focused on understanding and improving the business process by using AI. In this episode, Brandon Gadoci, VP of AI Ops at data.world shares his experience on how to get started and what are the opportunities for the business.

If data is the new oil, does that mean the Chief Data Officer is the new baron? Not exactly, but it is one of the fastest growing and most critical executive roles in the enterprise. So... what exactly does a CDO do?

In this episode, Tim and Juan welcome special guest Mohammed Aaser, CDO at McKinsey & Company, the world’s largest management consulting firm. We’ll discuss the unique responsibilities and challenges for a CDO in an increasingly data-driven economy. Plus, we’ll learn how the firm builds and maintains its own thriving data culture.

Discussion topics include how a CDO drives critical value for the business, future trends and potential disruptions in the data space, and a clear verdict on whether Tim or Juan would make the better CDO.

The data landscape is constantly evolving: Data warehouses, big data, data lakes. How did we get here? Where is it all heading? Step up to the bar, and join Juan Sequeda and Tim Gasper as they discuss the future of enterprise data management.

The insurance industry thrives on robust, diverse, accurate, and innovative data. In fact, it’s one of the most data rich verticals around, dealing in claims, ratings, coverage, pricing, geographic, and people data and so much more. But let’s be honest, working with the disparate data sources and applications is incredibly messy and inefficient!

In this episode, Juan and Tim will be joined by insurance veteran, John Lucker to find out what we can all learn from the data and analytics challenges in insurance.

This episode will include an honest look at the ugly side of insurance data, opportunities to address insurance data challenges, and an important deep dive: State Farm vs. Progressive. Which has better commercials?

Tim Gasper and Juan Sequeda debrief after 4 days on-site at Snowflake Summit 2023 in Las Vegas.

Key Takeaways:

• [00:00 - 00:40] Intro, Tim and Juan are at the Snowflake Summit in Las Vegas
• [00:43 - 01:27] AI
• [01:27 - 04:04] Large language models (LLMs), and associated costs
• [04:04 - 04:46] Costs of maintaining data infrastructure for larger models
• [04:50 - 06:58] AI and LM use cases for businesses
• [07:07 - 09:52] New capabilities added to Snowflake: Snow Park and Snowflake Container Services, and Streamlit
• [09:52 - 11:15] Juan predicts that Snowflake will build their own data centers
• [11:18 - 12:47] Databricks conference announcements
• [13:29 - 19:11] Introducing Ethan Aaron from Portable, and his take on trends with Snowflake

If there were a tombstone for this episode it would read “here lies Master Data Management,” But would you agree?

In this episode, join Tim, Juan, and special guest Malcolm Hawker from Profisee, will discuss the history of master data management, the buzzwords surrounding it, and where it’s headed, assuming it’s still alive.

Key Takeaways:

• [00:01 - 00:54] Introduction
• [02:31 - 04:55] Toast to sun on the beach
• [05:21 - 10:09] What's something in the world that is popular or trending that really needs to fade away and RIP?
• [10:36 - 13:33] How do we define MDM today?
• [16:43 - 19:52] How did we get here? Understanding the history of how MDM began
• [20:50 - 24:04] Governance: Where do we start? Approaches to figuring out how to decentralize
• [26:52 - 29:51] With the single version of the truth and for each context, how do we preserve the data integrity across independent or interconnected functions?
• [30:45 - 34:35] How data modeling and MDM apply to new capabilities such as data sharing and DBT
• [39:43 - 43:13] What does data ownership mean?
• [46:27 - 56:08] Lightning round
• [59:20 - 01:01:56] Advice, and important resources

Tim and Juan are joined by special guests Dean Allemang, Fabien Gandon, and James Handler to discuss their latest book: Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist. Together, these experts look at the past, the present, and the future of the semantic web and debate whether it can truly become the universal medium to exchange data and knowledge across the enterprise. Oh, you'll also hear references to a discount on your very own copy of Dean, Fabien, and James' book. Sorry: that was exclusively for our live listeners. But to get access to upcoming offers and experts, join us every Wednesday as we record these episodes live (virtually), followed by a casual off-the-record conversation where you can ask questions, share your point of view, and network with both your peers and our panelists. Sign up here to learn more: https://data.world/resources/webinars/catalog-and-cocktails/

The most effective way to understand your business is the special balance between things like tribal knowledge and extracted knowledge, technical teams and business teams, confidence and skepticism.

Join Tim, Juan, and Loris Marini, CEO of Discovering Data, as they zoom in to find that balance and the humility it may take.

Key Takeaways

• [00:11 - 03:10] Introduction & Toasts
• [03:13 - 05:32] What's the weirdest place you've ever misplaced your keys?
• [05:44 - 08:01] The most effective way to follow the business is to follow the money
• [08:02 - 10:35] Thinking about business literacy and how to learn that perspective
• [10:37 - 12:35] How do we make change happen?
• [12:37 - 13:39] Having genuine conversations with people
• [13:44 - 18:19] Coaching, psychological safety, and communicating better at work
• [18:20 - 22:10] The definition of creating knowledge within an organization
• [22:11 - 25:34] Knowledge, insight, and levels of knowledge distributed in your team
• [25:35 - 28:52] You've got to spend time and you have to have a platform
• [29:10 - 31:48] We can do better than "just the smartest will survive"
• [31:57 - 35:56] Incentives are about subtle things like a team that listens, not just pay and flexible time
• [35:59 - 39:35] A data therapist and becoming more aware of issues
• [39:43 - 41:32] Advice to engineers who write the data pipeline, engineer the SQL queries
• [42:06 - 45:24] Lightning Round
• [45:28 - 51:10] Takeaways
• [52:06 - 53:57] Three questions

Mesh is everywhere. It’s in our clothes, our fishing nets, our Wifi networks, and now our data architecture. But what is a data mesh? Do you need one? And if so, how do you start?

Zhamak Dehghani is the director of Emerging Technologies at Thoughtworks and the leading expert on data mesh. We’ll chat about the emergence of the data mesh as a concept, why the approach works for eliminating architectural silos, and how it's producing more data-driven cultures.

Other topics include:

• Key tools, technologies, and skills for adopting a data mesh
• What to do if you’re data mesh curious
• Inspiring architectural designs outside the data space

With the hype of Generative AI, how do we keep focused on the goal of delivering the right valuable and business facing analytics and data use-cases with as low friction and maximum agility as possible? Jon Cooke, founder of Dataception has a lot of honest no-bs thoughts to share!

Data Catalogs are at the center of every enterprise’s data strategy. It’s important to explore the current state and how data catalogs are evolving. Who better to talk about Data Catalog than the author of the upcoming O’Reilly book “The Enterprise Data Catalog”, Ole Olesen-Bagneux from GN.

Join Tim, Juan, Ole to discuss the future of data catalogs and why knowledge is at the center.

Conversation highlights:

• [00:07 - 03:06] Intro & Drinks
• [03:10 - 05:11] Warm up, if data catalog were a cocktail what would it be
• [05:19 - 07:06] Where the hell are data catalogs going
• [07:07 - 09:01] What the library and information sciences world is bringing to data catalogs
• [09:03 - 10:43] Don't think that catalogs should move away from a Google Paradigm
• [10:43 - 12:14] Finding more valuable data sets, and Boolean queries
• [12:16 - 16:23] Accessing what is inside a catalog and thinking about metadata
• [16:27 - 23:36] The "shopping experience" and expressive ways of searching
• [23:44 - 26:55] How cataloging intersects and impacts search and metadata
• [26:55 - 29:00] Catalogs will evolve into repositories and a thesaurus
• [29:01 - 32:05] The lifecycles of data and system life cycles
• [32:24 - 35:19] The POSMAD Framework
• [35:26 - 38:56] Data monetization and modern data architecture
• [38:57 - 42:11] The potential for POSMAD and practical relation to data catalogs
• [42:16 - 43:15] Here's the data, what are you going to do with it?
• [43:19 - 44:30] Data to Information to knowledge to wisdom
• [44:40 - 47:06] Cataloging ontologies and knowledge layers
• [47:07 - 50:00] Knowledge graphs and combining with simple search and browse features
• [50:18 - 56:34] Lightning round
• [56:35 - 01:02:12] Tim and Juan talk takeaways
• [01:02:17 - 01:05:55] Three questions about data, life, and the show's next guest

Last week we chatted about data producers, data consumers and the need for a data product manager; and their pain points. In this episode, we will chat how these pain points should be addressed by a data catalog in order to provide value to data teams. Juan and Tim will compare and contrast old-world data access and collaboration techniques with a modern approach.

Data Storytelling is a topic that constantly comes up, but do we really know what it is? And what it isn’t? Who best to have this #honestnobs discussion than Kat Greenbrook, author of the upcoming book The Data Storyteller’s Handbook: How to create business impact using data storytelling.

This Takeaway episode will feature the summary of the upcoming episode with Roel and Valentijn from Vopak.

Why do some data-driven decisions seem to go so disastrously wrong? Ironically, the answer to this question likely isn’t found in the data at all, but rather our subconscious. In a time when companies have never been more data rich, it’s often our inherent information biases that doom critical analytics and data science work.

Is it possible to take the bias out of data work? That’s the question we ponder in this episode featuring Ciaran Dynes, chief product officer at Matillion.

This episode will also cover:

• What responsibilities companies and people have to curb information bias
• How hypothesis testing and experimentation can improve data work
• What’s the most egregious example of information bias in the wild?

In this episode, Tim, Juan, and Brett discuss what it’s like to fundraise and scale a data company in this challenging economic climate, who inspires him and why, and how he sees the data and analytics landscape evolving.

This Takeaway episode will feature the summary of the upcoming episode.

Juan and Tim sit down for the Catalog & Cocktails Season Three Premier with Sarah Catanzaro from Amplify Partners to discuss what’s in store in 2022.

This Takeaway episode will feature the summary of the upcoming episode.

Survival guides, rulebooks, blueprints and more. The best way to prepare yourself as a next generation data leader is this episode of Catalog & Cocktails with Tim Gasper, Juan Sequeda, and special guest Veronika Durgin, VP of Data at Saks 5th Avenue.

Get deep into some preparation-curriculum with topics like:-Do’s and Don’ts of Data Leaders

-Are you skeptical enough?

-How curious are you?

-Joining communities that educate and inspire

-and MORE

*Corrected Audio*

Data Architecture is evolving and there are many questions with various perspectives. What is the balance between centralization and decentralization? How do you start treating data as a product? How do you incentivize people? What’s the role of Data Mesh, Data Fabric, Knowledge Graphs?

This special edition of Catalog and Cocktails is the Data Architecture panel from the Knowledge Graph Conference, moderated by Juan Sequeda. Listen and learn from Teresa Tung Chief Technologist of Accenture’s Cloud First group , Zhamak Dehghani director of emerging technologies at Thoughtworks and founder of Data Mesh concept, and Jay Yu, Distinguished Architect at Intuit.

You can watch the panel here and follow Juan’s takeaways.

Companies have most of the last decade in pursuit of data. We’ve waded through data lakes, explored data warehouses, routed through data hubs, and migrated our data to the cloud. But the end goal was never about the data. It was the pursuit of knowledge.

In this special episode, Tim and Juan are joined by a legend in our industry. Bob Muglia, the former CEO of Snowflake, will hang out and chat about the modern data stack, new approaches to governance, and the search for the enterprise holy grail… knowledge

This episode will also feature:

• Demystifying the approaches between lakehouses and warehouses
• Interesting developments in data governance technology
• You were the first product manager for SQL Server. What’s your favorite movie SQL?

What does it take to build a successful data & analytics business? An entrepreneurial spirit, a problem-solving mindset, a sense of adventure, and the strength to get started.

We are live from the data.world All Hands and joined by Brett Hurt, CEO and co-founder of data.world, author, and serial entrepreneur. Brett will share what it’s like to fundraise and scale a data company in this challenging economic climate, who inspires him and why, and how he sees the data and analytics landscape evolving.

This episode will also feature:

• How to hire and retain great people
• What we can all learn from failure
• Recommendations for wines under $20

In October, veteran election "race caller" Dwayne Desaulniers shared how The Associated Press has evolved their process to provide neutral, third party analysis of our most critical elections. It's even more interesting to revisit this conversation months later as we look back on what turned out to be a tumultuous election cycle.

As the year winds down, we're revisiting our favorite (and most popular) episodes exploring some of the more unique data roles out there. Next year, we hope to keep bringing guests like Dwayne onto the show, and we want to know: what are you curious about? Whose story would you like to hear? Do you have an interesting perspective to share? Drop us a line at podcast@data.world. We'd love to hear from you. Have a happy, healthy new year, everyone. We'll see you again in 2021.

Technical folks miss the boat and are boring when they talk about the features of data catalog such as glossaries and data lineage to business people. In this episode Krystin Kim will share how a data catalog should be presented to the business: the ultimate place to share ideas across big companies, a treasure trove of use cases for others to discover and make even better, recipes to make amazing things that returns millions in business value.

This week, Tim and Juan are joined by Nick Handel, CEO of Transform, to talk all things semantics and metrics and why enterprises need to be thinking more about more about relationships.

This Takeaway episode will feature the summary of the upcoming episode.