Alain Briancon is currently the Chief Technology Officer and VP of Data Science at Cerebri AI. Cerebri AI is a SaaS Startup that focuses on helping enterprise businesses understand what their customers are thinking, by predicting the next best action to take, that will yield the most value for both the enterprise, and their customer based on their actions. Alain refers to this as: "talk is good, but the wallet is better" for predicting future customer behavior and the true measure of customer experience, by truly measuring everything. You can find more information about Cerebri AI at cerebriai.com.

Alain is an Electrical Engineer by training, with a bachelors in EE from CentraleSupelec in France, and a PHD in Electrical Engineering from MIT - although, he categorizes himself not as an engineer but as a technologist. Alain has a background in telecommunications where he spent time working in areas from satellites, to wired communication, to wireless. Alain's had his hands on the data science aspect of prediction, forecasting, and advanced analytics in industries focused on use cases such as winning elections, auditions for artists, and diet management - and he's been the CTO and CEO of multiple startups (Cerebri is his 4th). While in these leadership roles, Alain really sees his central responsibility as creating a diverse learning environment that enables ideas, creativity, and curiosity.

Big themes we cover in our talk:

-"Being curious, and celebrating creation" - the job of the CTO, creating environments that enable ideas, and creation as the highest value activity of a human being.

-The data science interview: What businesses are looking for in The process, the behind the scenes, and how technical talent should holistically approach how to solve challenges and focus on critical thinking. Learned experience as a crutch, or an accelerator to novel approaches.

-Why we should stop talking about the size of our data - and why we all have a tendency to think the size of the data determines who we are. The idea of "Data debt", dynamically changing data stacks, and the true cost of pandering to large data sets.

-Cerebri AI and the success of relying on highly diverse STEM oriented teams: geographic, intellectual, gender, race, age, and many other considerations to diversity that yield highly different ways to approach problem successfully, and unsuccessfully

-Data science as a craft, intuition, and the importance of explainability and bias. The true measure of the customer experience, and how measuring end customers actions are the best indicators of how they are likely to act in the future.

Thanks for listening!

How to connect with Alain:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alain-briancon-phd-70115a/

Email: [email protected]

Resources and mentions:

Thanks for the referral Nabeel! https://www.linkedin.com/in/nabeeladeni/

https://www.cerebriai.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/cerebri-ai-inc-/

https://youtu.be/hIfl98gdYJE

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/22/bill-gates-says-people-with-these-3-skills-will-be-successful-in-the-future-job-market.html

http://www.dbta.com/Editorial/Think-About-It/The-Enterprise-Data-Debt-Crisis-123008.aspx

Alain’s favorite scene, from his favorite movie, Lawrence of Arabia:

https://youtu.be/_EZCG2Ex8Q0

Learn more at www.thedatabinge.com

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