Catalog & Cocktails: The Honest, No-BS Data Podcast

Agents will build data infrastructure at every layer and become its primary consumers. Tristan Handy, President and Co-founder of Fivetran / dbt Labs joins Juan and Tim where we unpack the big shift that is happening: teams need to move from working in the process (picking up individual tickets) to working on the process (building the factories that handle those tickets). In this episode, we break down what this means for data roles, why open components matter more than vendor stacks, and the socio-political problem nobody's talking about, deciding what counts as truth so your agents (and humans) ask the right questions in the first place. Topics discussed:

• Agents as builders and consumers 
• Data roles are collapsing
• From working IN to working ON 
• Loop building as the competitive advantage
• Business understanding beats technical specs 
• From humans in the loop to humans out of the loop 
• Open components over vendor stacks
• Defining truth is a political problem
• Data observability becomes business observability
• Real-time becomes necessary  
• Humans delegate outcomes, set goals, sit in control

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the takeaway episode with Tristan Handy, President and Co-founder of Fivetran / dbt Labs where he joins Juan and Tim to discuss how agents will build data infrastructure at every layer and become its primary consumers. We unpack the big shift that is happening: teams need to move from working in the process to working on the process, what this means for data roles, why open components matter more than vendor stacks, and the socio-political problem nobody's talking about, deciding what counts as truth so your agents (and humans) ask the right questions in the first place. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

AI doesn't create your problems. It inherits the business choices you never made and the results nobody owns. David Krauza, VP of Data Strategy and Governance at Comcast, joins Juan and Tim to make the case that most "data problems" aren't data problems at all. They are accountability problems, definition problems, assumption problems, and what-are-we-even-measuring problems. The fix isn't better tooling. Data teams are so focused on delivery that they never stop to ask what the business is actually trying to do. It's going to the C-suite, asking about the top three goals, and following the definitions until the cracks show up. Topics discussed:

• AI inherits your unmade decisions
• The output trap
• Definitions are the real foundation
• Talk to the business
• Data as a cost center vs. a value driver
• Single source of data, multiple versions of the truth
• Think like a product owner
• The revenge of the liberal arts majors

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the takeaway episode with David Krauza, VP of Data Strategy and Governance at Comcast who makes the case that AI doesn't create your problems, it inherits the business choices you never made and the results nobody owns. David joins Juan and Tim and discuss the accountability problems, definition problems, assumption problems, and what-are-we-even-measuring problems. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most quantum conversations are stuck on the timeline question: five years out? Two? Q-Day, the day current RSA encryption breaks, keeps getting pulled forward. But the actual risk to your data is already here. Adversaries are harvesting encrypted data today to decrypt it once quantum gets there. That makes this a data management problem right now.

John Licata, ServiceNow's futures director and quantum lead joins Juan and Tim, to unpack what this actually means for enterprise data teams. They get into where quantum computing does things classical AI genuinely can't do well: drug discovery, supply chain simulation, personalized medicine, where the quantum + AI combination changes everything, and who even owns quantum strategy? CISO? COOs? But the real argument is on the business value topic, not just focusing on risk mitigation which is where the real argument lives right now.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the takeaway episode with John Licata, ServiceNow's futures director and quantum lead where Juan and Tim unpack what quantum means for enterprise data teams.They get into where quantum computing does things classical AI genuinely can't do well: drug discovery, supply chain simulation, personalized medicine, where the quantum + AI combination changes everything, and who even owns quantum strategy? CISO? COOs? But the real argument is on the business value topic, not just focusing on risk mitigation which is where the real argument lives right now.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shachar MEIR has spent 20 years fixing data teams and understanding why they fail. In this live episode, Shachar joins Juan and Tim to discuss the reason why they fail and what they should be doing in order to succeed. 

Shachar argues that data leaders default to what they can control (cough cough technology_ and underinvest in people, process, and culture. A new CDO comes in, migrates legacy databases to a cloud data platform, and two years later you have the same problems on a better platform.

We get into what's actually missing: building trust in data (which takes time and breaks fast), creating incentives so people actually use what data teams build, and spending real time in the business which is not asking what dashboards they need, but what problems they have. 

Topics discussed: 

• Technology is not why data teams fail
• Why data leaders default to technology
• People, process and CULTURE
• Data trust
• Incentives
• Understanding the business
• Dashboard bloat
• Self-service analytics
• Dashboards aren't dead
• What CDOs do well and what they miss

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the takeaway episode with Shachar Meir, who has spent 20 years fixing data teams and understanding why they fail. In this live episode, Shachar joins Juan and Tim to discuss the reason why they fail and what they should be doing in order to succeed. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Patrick McGarry, Federal CDO at ServiceNow and author of The Adaptive Organization, has spent years watching organizations accumulate data and tools but fail to convert them into decisions. Overhead grows. Outcomes don't. Hence “Intelligence Without Action Is Just Overhead.” Patrick joins Juan and Tim to walk through why federal data programs stall (the idea-to-deployment lag is long enough that the tech moves on), why incentives matter more than mandates, and why the right question should not be "how do we get AI ready" and instead should be "how do we make our organization accountable for AI." 

Topics discussed: 

• Intelligence vs. action
• Ownership and outcomes
• Federal government's speed problem
• The CATALOG framework: Culture & Talent, Analytics & AI, Technology & Architecture, Alignment, Leadership & Governance, Operations & Delivery, Growth & Measurement.
• Governance as clarity, not bureaucracy
• Open standards, vendor lock-in, semantics, interoperability 
• Regulatory standards as a double-edged sword

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the takeaway episode with Patrick McGarry, Federal CDO at ServiceNow and author of The Adaptive Organization, who has spent years watching organizations accumulate data and tools but fail to convert them into decisions. Overhead grows. Outcomes don't. Hence “Intelligence Without Action Is Just Overhead.” 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.