Half Stack Data Science

In this episode, we spoke to Richard Makara and Niko Korvenlaita who are CEO and CTO of reconfigured. reconfigured is a journal app that makes it incredibly easy to capture and retrieve on-going notes, thoughts & insights. Richard is the CEO and he has led growth and built go-to-market data systems in high-growth scale-ups. Niko is a second time founder and the CTO. He has been building end-to-end machine learning applications since 2014 and has worked with Natural Language Processing since 2017. We spoke to Richard and Niko about the common problems data professionals face, how data people create knowledge faster than they can capture it and what challenges that creates, why reducing the cost of note-taking to zero is so important for data work, how AI can help with the retrieval and structuring of ideas, and how to use AI in a product in a thoughtful and meaningful way. Please enjoy our conversation with the team behind reconfigured! Find out more about reconfigured here: https://reconfigured.io [https://reconfigured.io] You can also find Richard [https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-makara-6499a273/] and Niko [https://www.linkedin.com/in/nipsuli/] on LinkedIn. — David’s book, The Well-Grounded Data Analyst is out! ⁠https://www.manning.com/books/the-well-grounded-data-analyst⁠ [https://www.manning.com/books/the-well-grounded-data-analyst] If you want to find out more, we have a whole episode about it: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/episode/5D0iDtQRh3tWiIhokrjz3x?si=AiX6YyRET16lnzXDlvdcfw [https://open.spotify.com/episode/5D0iDtQRh3tWiIhokrjz3x?si=AiX6YyRET16lnzXDlvdcfw]

In this episode we talked to Simon Willison. Simon is the creator of Datasette, an open source tool for exploring and publishing data. He currently works full-time building open source tools for data journalism, built around Datasette and SQLite. Prior to becoming an independent open source developer, Simon was an engineering director at Eventbrite. Simon joined Eventbrite through their acquisition of Lanyrd, a Y Combinator funded company he co-founded in 2010. He is a co-creator of the Django Web Framework, and has been blogging about web development and programming since 2002 at simonwillison.net We talked to Simon about his goal of building tools for data journalists, what he's learned about tinkering with, and writing about, AI models for years, his excitement about their code-generating capabilities, how to get the most out of all of these tools, and what generative AI tools have to do with pelicans. You can find Simon at https://simonwillison.net [https://simonwillison.net] Please enjoy our conversation with Simon Willison! -- David's book, The Well-Grounded Data Analyst is out! ⁠https://www.manning.com/books/the-well-grounded-data-analyst⁠ [https://www.manning.com/books/the-well-grounded-data-analyst] If you want to find out more, we have a whole episode about it: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/episode/5D0iDtQRh3tWiIhokrjz3x?si=AiX6YyRET16lnzXDlvdcfw [https://open.spotify.com/episode/5D0iDtQRh3tWiIhokrjz3x?si=AiX6YyRET16lnzXDlvdcfw]

Season 4, all about AI, has launched! In the first episode of the new season we talked to Scott Hanselman. Scott is a programmer, teacher, and speaker. He works out of his home office in Portland, Oregon for Microsoft as the Vice President of Developer Community. He works on .NET, Open Source, and the Azure Cloud Developer Experience, but he also blogs about technology, culture, gadgets, inclusion, code, the web, where we're going and where we've been, and has a number of podcasts and a YouTube channel. We talked to Scott about his role at Microsoft and how he still loves to build things. We talked about AI as a brand, the risks of relying too much on tools like ChatGPT, and how developers can use these technologies meaningfully. We also discussed one of our favourite topics on the podcast, dark matter developers, a term we originally learned from a blog post by Scott himself. See episode 4, Getting Data [https://open.spotify.com/episode/0vEQvguHWuBU8tphSgIBXo?si=K0JVpzy-TWCJNtIyA_lLKA] in our first season for even more about this term. Please enjoy our conversation with Scott Hanselman! You can find Scott at https://www.hanselman.com [https://www.hanselman.com/] -- David's book, The Well-Grounded Data Analyst is out! https://www.manning.com/books/the-well-grounded-data-analyst [https://www.manning.com/books/the-well-grounded-data-analyst] If you want to find out more, we have a whole episode about it: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5D0iDtQRh3tWiIhokrjz3x?si=AiX6YyRET16lnzXDlvdcfw [https://open.spotify.com/episode/5D0iDtQRh3tWiIhokrjz3x?si=AiX6YyRET16lnzXDlvdcfw]

In this episode, Shaun interviews David about his new book, The Well-Grounded Data Analyst. We talk about the data skill gap between the classroom and the real world that made David want to write this book, the importance of tackling real-world projects for further learning, and the underlying methodology of the book that helps you learn to solve any data problem. If you listen to the end, we also tease our upcoming Season 4 of the podcast. Get your copy here: https://www.manning.com/books/the-well-grounded-data-analyst [https://www.manning.com/books/the-well-grounded-data-analyst] Read more about David's work here: https://davidasboth.com/ [https://davidasboth.com/]

If you're an aspiring analyst and want to test your existing data skills on real-world problems while learning both new skills and a framework you can apply to any problem, David's book Solve Any Data Analysis Problem is available on the Manning website through the Early Access Program and it's out in print later this year. Find it at https://www.manning.com/books/solve-any-data-analysis-problem [https://www.manning.com/books/solve-any-data-analysis-problem] In this episode, we welcome back a former guest, Andrea Jones-Rooy, Ph.D. Andrea is the founder of Data Thinking, an organization dedicated to promoting worldwide data literacy and public involvement in data science. Previously, she was the Director of Undergraduate Studies and Visiting Associate Professor at the NYU Center for Data Science, where she developed and taught their flagship course, Data Science for Everyone, as well as advanced courses on Natural Language Processing. Dr. Jones-Rooy believes everyone has a role to play in data science, and you (yes, you!) can get involved at DataScienceNeedsYou.com [https://datascienceneedsyou.com]! We spoke to Andrea about how to teach people the scientific method and to deal with uncertainty, the impact of generative AI on teaching these topics, whether these skills should be called "data thinking" instead of "data science", and how you even convince people these are the skills worth learning. Find Andrea at https://datascienceneedsyou.com [https://datascienceneedsyou.com] or on social media platforms as @jonesrooy