#68 How To Build Award Winning Data Products with Nick Blewden – Head of Data Product Development

Nick loves playing with, analyzing and visualising data and gets a massive kick out of the change it can bring to people, businesses, and the world. At Lloyd's of London, Nick leads a team of great designers and developers helping people automate processes and get more insight from their data. He gets a buzz from saving others time and surprising them with what surprising insights lie in their data. Out of the office, Nick is keen to mentor or share his experiences and enjoys speaking at events or conferences.

In this episode, Nick discusses some of his favorite projects and describes issues he has faced being part of various teams. When overcoming team obstacles, he listens to every person in the group. If you do not listen to people, then you cannot persuade someone that you are a good guy. Transparency is also essential; explain what knowledge you bring and the processes that you do. People can pick up on integrity, but they can also pick up on suspicion.

Currently, Nick works at Lloyd's of London, the world's leading insurance market providing specialist insurance services to businesses in over 200 countries and territories. He has helped establish a vision and strategy for Business Intelligence within Lloyd's of London and external market published insight. He delivers automated online MI apps to a range of business functions through a roadmap of strategic change while creating a training structure to develop BI analysts across the business.

Nick's data product development team has to work with other teams at Lloyd's of London to create the best products for their customers. They communicate with the innovation team to understand the research. They also work with all the different modelling teams to access their expertise and bounce ideas around with each other. Before working at Lloyd's of London, Nick was self-employed; it taught Nick a lot about customer service, collaboration, and teamwork. Later, Nick explains common mistakes in developing data products, winning global hackathons, and what excites him most about the future of data.

Enjoy the show!

We speak about:

[01:10] How Nick started in the data space

[07:00] The evolution of data warehousing

[11:45] Nick’s favorite projects

[14:45] Navigating team issues

[15:30] Solving problems at Lloyd’s of London

[20:00] Lloyd’s of London customers

[25:40] Interaction with other teams

[30:30] Working for yourself

[35:45] Common mistakes in developing data products

[38:50] Winning global hackathons

[40:20] What excites Nick most about the future of data

[45:45] Nick’s proudest moments

Resources:

Nick’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasblewden

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