Ken's Nearest Neighbors

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Dmitri Mirakyan. Dmitri Dmitri runs the consumer product analytics team at Opendoor. Prior to that, he was a data scientist, analyst, and a consultant at Deloitte. He is passionate about data viz and finding 80/20 solutions to open-ended problems. Outside of work, he enjoys building questionably useful side projects and going fast on motorcycles or skis. In this episode we discuss how he cold emailed his way into a data role, how he is working to automate his dating and professional life with GPT3, and the trade off between fulfillment and achievement. I learned a lot from this chat with Dimitri and I think you will to! 

Dmitri on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmirakyan/
https://www.yourmove.ai/

Episode with Jeff Li: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGq8xIlARoo&ab_channel=Ken%27sNearestNeighborsPodcast

Today I had  @Keith Galli back on the KNN podcast for round 2! Since our last talk, he left his startup to pursue YouTube and data science contracting full time. We talk about balancing our work, finding motivation, and maximizing our habits in this exciting episode! 

Keith's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keithgalli/?hl=en

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Thomas Watkins. Thomas is a thought leader in the User Experience space, a speaker and industry practitioner located in Houston TX.  He is a life-long learner who has a passion for bringing greater clarity to the world.  Thomas has made it his career’s focus to combine technology with design psychology in order to drive business success. He specializes in helping his business partners bring their own brilliant ideas to life, by translating complexity into simplicity.  The scope of his work has included interface design for mobile, SaaS system architecture, usability research, and data visualization. In this episode we take a dive into the user experience field, we learn about human factors research, and we explore how data analystis and data scientists can improve their data visualization by applying some psychology principles. I hope you enjoy this episode, I know I had a great time speaking with Thomas. 

Today I had the pleasure of speaking with  @Data with Zach , a Staff Data Engineer at Air BNB. Zach is best known for his radical transparency about his salary over his career and the other amazing content that he shares on LinkedIn. Today we discuss his controversial posts, what money means to him in the scope of his career, and what he has learned from an incredibly fast career progression. We also get to meet his awesome dog! 

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing  @StatQuest with Josh Starmer   for a second time! We talked about his new book: "The statquest illustrated guide to machine learning", his love for cooking, and what he learned about collaboration through the trip at the #brightdatahouse! 

Josh's first time on the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDrPSKbsWWo&ab_channel=Ken%27sNearestNeighborsPodcast
Josh's new book: https://amzn.to/3dtaffz

Had the honor of chatting with  @Luke Barousse and  @Alex The Analyst at the same time this week at the #brightdatahouse! It was fascinating to hear about how they create content differently with different constraints on their time. It was also great to hear about the specific things they learned from being around so many other creators! 

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing the incredible  @Miki Bazeley - The MLOps Engineer for the second time!  Watch the first interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii2Qo5pwWho&ab_channel=Ken%27sNearestNeighborsPodcast . We dive into everything ML ops in this episode. What is it, what is the future of it, and how can you break into it. We also touch on cultural differences and their impacts on the workplace. 

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Shailvi Wakhlu. Shailvi is the Sr. Director of Data at Strava, where she leads a large team of product analysts and machine learning engineers to enable data-informed product improvements in support of Strava Athletes. In the past, she worked at Salesforce, Fitbit, and multiple other data-rich companies, in addition to previously running her own company. As a data leader, she focuses on harnessing the power of data to build great products, clarify strategic direction, and improve business processes. She is also a passionate mentor in the community and spends her spare time volunteering for programs that further STEM education for minorities. In this episode we learn how self advocacy has changed her career, if jumping companies is a good or bad thing, and some great insights into how data scientsits can hedge their work opportunities during the impending recession. I had a great time speaking with Shailvi, I'm sure you will enjoy this episode.   

Today I switched it up a bit and took some anonymous questions from you all! If you want to ask more, use this link: https://ngl.link/kenjee_ds ! I cover topics around data science, my lifestyle, and content. If you like this one, I will do another next week, then back to regular content! 

Jared Dean is a data scientist SAS and an adjunct professor at Duke University. Jared is the mastermind behind the batting lab at SAS that was the topic of one of my most recent videos. In this conversation, we learn about common misconceptions about statistics, why he left a management role to go back to an individual contributor position, and of course the whole story behind the SAS batting lab. I loved this conversation with Jared and I hope you enjoy it as well.