One of the skills that I see an increasing demand for Business Analysts is data analysis. Especially when “new” tools like Process Mining shift the landscape towards data-driven analysis.

And besides the need to learn these new skills, I also see multiple tools that are very pricey and might be cost prohibitive for some organizations, so they fall back to the universal Swiss knife in business… Excel.

One of the tools that beats that trend is KNIME, which not only is open-source but also has a great community and great training offerings. Besides the fact that the tool is great, if you have ever watched a video from KNIME you will recognize the voice of our guest, Rosaria Silipo, immediately.

Rosaria has been a researcher in applications of AI and Machine Learning for over a decade. Application fields include biomedical systems, IoT, customer intelligence, financial services, social media, cybersecurity, and automatic speech processing. She is currently based in Constance (Germany) / Zurich (Switzerland).

In this episode of the podcast, we talk about:

• Rosaria's background—she brings decades of experience, from early neural networks in the 1990s to shaping the KNIME community.
• A journey through data science history: hardware limits, Big Data, GPUs, deep learning, and today’s AI-driven shift.
• From building models to consuming and fine-tuning AI: why modern analytics is now more engineering than research.
• Tool evolution matters: visual, low-code platforms lower the barrier without blocking advanced use cases.
• Open source as an accelerator: community, shared extensions, education, and faster innovation.
• Why Excel breaks at scale—and how reproducible data pipelines outperform spreadsheet heroics.
• KNIME’s strength: step-by-step logic, transparency, and workflows you can explain to stakeholders.
• Education over hype: tools are powerful, but data literacy and validation remain non-negotiable.
• Rosaria’s focus forward: growing AI learning communities and mentoring young entrepreneurs.
• AI realities: hype is real, but fundamentals still matter—especially for tabular and business data.
• Community beats lock-in: ecosystems outlast tools and make practitioners better.
• Final takeaway: better analytics isn’t about smarter tools—it’s about people, clarity, and shared understanding.

You can reach Rosaria via LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosaria/.

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