What's New In Data

Ever wondered why the philosophical and cultural considerations of data work are essential? You're in for a treat as Santona Tuli, Ph.D. , Upsolver's Head of Data, joins us for an enlightening discussion. Santona shares her takeaways from Coalesce 2023 and the importance of understanding the 'why' behind data work. We traverse the nitty-gritty of grappling with streaming and batch data workloads, shedding light on the imperativeness of balancing data freshness with resource efficiency. Plus, we don't leave out the current happenings in the data scene like the rise of data streaming, portable compute options like DuckDB and the potential hiccups in bringing it back into the cloud for collaboration.

Reliving our experiences at the recently concluded DBT Conference, we muse over the irreplaceable value of face-to-face conferences in fostering connections with fellow data enthusiasts. The conference wasn't just about serious talks; there were also fun-filled booths with puppies and headshots! The mystery surrounding the new product, MotherDuck, doesn't escape our discussion as we speculate about its potential role in the modern data stack. Reflect with us on the philosophical implications of our work and its impact on our mental health and overall job satisfaction. Get ready for an episode packed with insights, reflections, and a healthy dash of speculation.

Follow Santona Tuli on LinkedIn

What's New In Data is a data thought leadership series hosted by John Kutay who leads data and products at Striim. What's New In Data hosts industry practitioners to discuss latest trends, common patterns for real world data patterns, and analytics success stories. 

Ever wonder how a chicken shop got your order just right? Today, we're discussing the transformative power of edge computing in fast food, with insights from Brian Chambers, chief architect at Chick-fil-A, and KC Rakam, head of customer engineering at Google Cloud. Get ready to understand how data centralization enhances customer experience and how the future of the restaurant industry can potentially be driven by IoT and automation.

Next on the menu is a deep dive into the world of AI. We discuss how this revolutionary technology is shaping the creation of AI-powered products, with a focus on three significant use cases: customer experience, marketing automation, and developer experience. We'll uncover the crux of streamlining actions with AI, the importance of having a solid foundation of data before launching AI initiatives, and the invaluable advice for data teams contemplating AI adoption.

As we continue our conversation, we'll delve into the broader implications of AI in shaping modern experiences and business value. From using Warren Buffett's timeless advice in the context of economic downturns to understanding the business value of AI projects, we're covering it all. You'll hear real-world examples, including a tale of an AI-generated Instagram influencer, and understand the infinite possibilities of AI. Wrapping up, we'll discuss the future of data and the challenges of data privacy with Brian and KC. So tune in, engage, and stay updated about the latest trends in data and technology!

What's New In Data is a data thought leadership series hosted by John Kutay who leads data and products at Striim. What's New In Data hosts industry practitioners to discuss latest trends, common patterns for real world data patterns, and analytics success stories. 

John K Thompson is co-author of "Causal Artificial Intelligence: The Next Step in Effective Business AI" and Global Head of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at EY.

John's career path went from being an assembler programmer, to creating the first neural network utility at IBM, and now running the AI group at Ernst & Young. We'll unfold the pages of his acclaimed book, Causal Artificial Intelligence, and gain insights into his fascinating writing process. A relentless seeker of the 'why' behind data and analytics, John's insights are sure to fuel your curiosity.

Fasten your seat belts as we navigate through the multifaceted world of artificial intelligence. With the rise of AI, we are looking at a portfolio approach, focusing on several types such as generative and causal AI. Understand how these AI types generate context-specific responses, and the role of retrieval augmented generation in enhancing AI models. We'll also uncover how John masterly built a production generative AI infrastructure for UI, and some smart ways to sidestep pitfalls while implementing AI.

We examine how AI can be a game changer for businesses. John delivers invaluable advice on team collaboration, secure data management, and the crucial link between data, analytics, and measurable business outcomes. In an era where AI is revolutionizing industries, John's practical insights are the compass you need to chart a successful course.

Check out John's book on Amazon: Causal Artificial Intelligence: The Next Step in Effective Business AI
Follow John K Thompson on LinkedIn

What's New In Data is a data thought leadership series hosted by John Kutay who leads data and products at Striim. What's New In Data hosts industry practitioners to discuss latest trends, common patterns for real world data patterns, and analytics success stories. 

Ever ask yourself how to choose between Microsoft Fabric and Databricks for your enterprise data workloads on Azure? Join this discussion with cloud pricing and cost optimization expert Everett Berry from Vantage.sh as he illuminates the differences between  these two powerful data lake technologies. We delve into the depths of their unique features, pricing models, and deep integration with Azure.

Our conversation ventures into the world of AI and its transformative impact on the modern data stack. Everett offers brilliant insights into how data teams are redefining their strategies to prioritize AI in their roadmaps.

About Everett:

Everett is Head of Growth at Vantage.sh. He is known for creating one of the most widely used indexes of cloud infrastructure costs at Vantage Instances.

Follow Everett Berry on X (formerly known as Twitter)
Everett's original article on this topic: Microsoft Fabric: Should Databricks be Worried?

What's New In Data is a data thought leadership series hosted by John Kutay who leads data and products at Striim. What's New In Data hosts industry practitioners to discuss latest trends, common patterns for real world data patterns, and analytics success stories. 

Join us for a mind-expanding conversation with Abhi Sivasailam, CEO of Levers Labs. At the one year anniversary of our previous episode with Abhi which was recorded at dbt Coalesce 2022 in New Orleans titled 'The Modern Data Team', we circle back and look ahead to the 'Post-Modern Data Team',

 Abhi applies his deep expertise from leading a 100+ person data organization at Flexport. We delve into the intriguing announcements at dbt Coalesce, moving from a focusing on building data pipelines to proving value to the business. From dissecting the recent buzz around dbt pricing changes to unravelling Abhi's captivating presentation on metrics trees at Data Counsel Austin, we are set to explore a wealth of knowledge that will redefine your understanding of this data realm. Moreover, we spotlight the importance of eliminating arbitrary uniqueness within data teams across companies in the same industry. With our guest Abhi, we make the case for modeling the business as metrics, revealing how this can provide a comprehensive understanding of business interrelationships that are crucial for forecasting and asking the right questions.

As we glide into the second part of our episode, we pivot our gaze to the future of data teams and AI. Are you ready for operational and transactional workflows to extract more value out of analytical use cases? Let's uncover the potential impact of AI disruption on every layer of the stack together and discuss why human-in-the-loop data modeling is paramount.

Follow Abhi Sivasailam's incredible work here:
Abhi on LinkedIn
Abhi's talk 'Designing and Building Metrics Trees' at Data Council
The SOMA Standard

What's New In Data is a data thought leadership series hosted by John Kutay who leads data and products at Striim. What's New In Data hosts industry practitioners to discuss latest trends, common patterns for real world data patterns, and analytics success stories.

We dive into AI principles with Patrick Miller, the head of data and AI at Newfront. Patrick, a seasoned expert in enterprise, AI, and machine learning, casts a unique lens on the role of AI at Newfront where they offer modern insurance, emphasizing the crucial role of "human in the loop" systems. Get ready to explore how data teams can leverage Large Language Models (LLMs) to create tangible value for companies, with insights drawn from Patrick's vast experience in AI roles at Google and other tech giants. 

We also dive into the importance of transparency and explainability in AI product development and the impact of LinkedIn data trends on innovation. Patrick shares thought-provoking ideas on tying data initiatives to direct financial impact, providing valuable guidance for data leaders navigating a tightening cycle. This episode is a treasure-trove of insights for any professional interested in the practical applications of AI in business. Tune in to glean from Patrick's knowledge and experience, and understand how to navigate the intersection of AI and insurance.

What's New In Data is a data thought leadership series hosted by John Kutay who leads data and products at Striim. What's New In Data hosts industry practitioners to discuss latest trends, common patterns for real world data patterns, and analytics success stories. 

Zack Hendlin is the CEO and founder of Zing Data – a mobile-first business intelligence platform. He has deep experience and expertise in the tech industry on several products including his work as a product lead at Linkedin enhancing the engagement of the feed and speech recognition at Facebook. In this episode we chat with Zack about the value of having insights at your fingertips (literally) and how teams can get value out of taking action on data in real-time. We also discuss the adoption of LLMs, including what can happen when LLMs are wrong!
 
Follow Zack on Linkedin
Learn more about Zing Data

What's New In Data is a data thought leadership series hosted by John Kutay who leads data and products at Striim. What's New In Data hosts industry practitioners to discuss latest trends, common patterns for real world data patterns, and analytics success stories. 

What's New in Data – a popular podcast and thought leadership series hosted by John Kutay – did a special live episode at the top of Salesforce Tower in San Francisco. Bruno Aziza from CapitalG, Ridhima Kahn from Dapper Labs, and Sanjeev Mohan of SanjMo (former VP of Data at Gartner)  did a recap of 2023 Google Cloud Next's biggest announcements, how (and why) data teams are adopting GenerativeAI, and gave examples of futuristic consumer experiences such as interacting with AI-generated social media influencers. John Kutay moderated the panel in front of a live audience.

Follow our panelists on LinkedIn for more insights!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brunoaziza/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ridhimaah...

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjmo/

What's New In Data is a data thought leadership series hosted by John Kutay who leads data and products at Striim. What's New In Data hosts industry practitioners to discuss latest trends, common patterns for real world data patterns, and analytics success stories. 

The data industry was rocked by dbt Labs' announcement of changes to their pricing model. Striim's John Kutay brings on Jacob Matson who's fresh off his talk at MDS Fest 'Operational Analytics on Prod: using dbt & SQL Server for operational use cases' to break down the pricing changes. 

John and Jacob discuss:

• Overview of the dbt Cloud pricing changes 
• How it impacts data teams
• What it means for the open source community at large
• How data teams should react

Jacob Matson is VP of Finance and Operations at Simetric where he leads their operational data stack. Jacob is also the founder of MDS in a Box

Blogs referenced in the podcast:

Consumption-based pricing and the future of dbt cloud by Tristan Handy 

The next big step forwards for analytics engineering by Tristan Handy

dbt Cloud's New Pricing Model: The Sinister Phase II by Lauren Balik

Step-by-step guide to run dbt in production with Google Cloud Platform by Ivan Toriya

Accelerating dbt core CI/CD with GitHub Actions by DataFold's Kyle McNair

What's New In Data is a data thought leadership series hosted by John Kutay who leads data and products at Striim. What's New In Data hosts industry practitioners to discuss latest trends, common patterns for real world data patterns, and analytics success stories. 

Pete Hunt is the CEO of Elementl. Elementl is the company behind Dagster – a popular Data Orchestration framework. Pete Hunt is also very well known for his leadership developing React.js which transformed the way modern front-end applications are built using functional programming and asset aware re-rendering. Pete talks about how Data Orchestration can also be optimized to be aware of the assets it is computing. Why is this important? As data teams scale the delivery of production data products to the business, efficient compute is critical to meet business SLAs while managing cost and underlying resources.

Follow Pete Hunt on Linkedin
Follow Pete Hunt on Twitter
Learn more about Elementl

What's New In Data is a data thought leadership series hosted by John Kutay who leads data and products at Striim. What's New In Data hosts industry practitioners to discuss latest trends, common patterns for real world data patterns, and analytics success stories.