Catalog & Cocktails: The Honest, No-BS Data Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Malcolm Hawker, Chief Data Officer at Profisee and host of CDO Matters Podcast, recently sparked a heated discussion on LinkedIn about where data catalogs are heading. His view? Data catalogs today are being commoditized and we need to pivot from data management to knowledge management. Join Malcolm, Tim, and Juan as they break down this debate and explore what other data professionals had to say about this shift in thinking. Enhance your listening experience with C&C Chat at data.world/podcasts

Andrea Gioia, CTO at Quantyca and Co-founder of Blindata, shares his insights on the real issues holding back data management. Spoiler: It's not the technology. Andrea discusses how the biggest challenges stem from people, collaboration, and the ways we handle knowledge. As AI continues to evolve, poor data management becomes an even bigger obstacle, making it clear that prioritizing knowledge management is more urgent than ever.

Enhance your listening experience with C&C Chat at data.world/podcasts

Dael Williamson, EMEA CTO at Databricks, joins us to reveal how interoperability is the key to unlocking expertise, exchanges, and ecosystems. Tune in for an honest, no-BS conversation on navigating the complexities of data ecosystems—and how standardization, context, and interoperability can be leveraged to tackle organizational challenges. Enhance your listening experience with C&C Chat at data.world/podcasts

In this episode of Catalog & Cocktails, Kristin Schooley from Learning Care Group sits down with Juan Sequeda and Tim Gasper to discuss the importance of teamwork and building relationships when it comes to scaling an analytics team within a large organization. The conversation covers a lot of ground, including the need to understand what reporting is needed and what story is being told, how to ensure scalability and compliance, as well as the importance of measuring usage and interpreting why certain data may not be utilized.

Key Takeaways:

• [00:00 - 01:10] Introduction & Cheers
• [01:15 - 03:11] What was your favorite class in school and why?
• [03:16 - 06:34] A data team of five
• [06:36 - 11:29] Partnering with business units and thinking about what is being learned
• [11:43 - 14:07] Data as a product and lifecycle management
• [14:22 - 15:13] Data literacy isn't necessarily the phrase we should be using
• [15:15 - 18:13] Business analytics and understanding how to present data
• [18:16 - 22:51] How organizations organize their data teams with checks and balances
• [22:52 - 26:18] Business literacy, centralized teams, and scaling beyond a bottleneck
• [26:20 - 30:31] Incentivizing for having documentation up to date
• [30:40 - 34:57] Lightning round
• [35:00 - 39:46] Tim & Juan's Takeaways
• [39:46 - 43:06] Three questions

Are we doing data and analytics correctly? Self service, centralization vs decentralization, analytics vs operations… so many aspects that data teams need to consider.

Join this week’s episode of Catalog & Cocktails with hosts Juan and Tim as they speak with special guest Bethany Lyons to discuss how we should have a separation between data operations an data analytics

Key Takeaways:

• [00:10 - 02:36] Meet Bethany Lyons, Chief Proctor Officer at KAWA Analytics
• [02:40 - 04:23] What's your favorite board game?
• [04:24 - 05:29] Encouraging self-service analytics is why Bethany thinks we are doing data analytics wrong
• [05:30 - 08:04] How the self-service analytics problem started
• [08:10 - 11:12] How business operators utilize data, and examples with Tableau deployment
• [11:13 - 14:09] Tying business logic to an analytics tools and what could go wrong
• [14:10 - 15:55] "Is this an analytics request or an operational request?"
• [15:55 - 16:35] Changing parameters and asking the right system
• [16:35 - 19:35] Evolving from self-service analytics to self-service governance programs
• [19:39 - 21:14] Spreadsheet data, security, and incentives
• [21:22 - 24:25] Self-service governance, shared accountability paired with great security
• [24:26 - 25:50] Data stewards and ownership over business areas
• [25:51 - 27:04] Sharing, auditing, and tracking
• [27:12 - 28:50] Decentralizing accountability and mindsets when dealing with data
• [28:50 - 32:40] How to make the switch to prioritizing decentralizing accountability over who writes SQL queries, and KAWA's role
• [32:41 - 35:15] Centralized policy frameworks and definitions
• [35:22 - 39:05] Thoughts on self-service operations and the centralization of analytics
• [39:06 - 40:52] Critical business logic and Excel spreadsheets
• [40:53 - 42:06] Centralizing business logic vs decentralizing business logic
• [42:06 - 44:33] Avoiding business logic being owned by one individual, and looking at decision models
• [44:33 - 45:45] Critical documents, and the idea of a Google Drive for data
• [45:49 - 52:41] Lightning round
• [52:42 - 57:26] Takeaways
• [57:44 - 01:00:16] Three questions

This week, we are having a throwback elixir with some very special surprise guests.

Tune in with hosts Juan and Tim to find out who.

Key Takeaways:

• [00:26 - 01:51] Episode intro: Data Day and What keeps you up at night in data?
• [02:04 - 02:54] Joe Reis, the economy and showing value
• [02:59 - 03:30] Omar Khawaja: Anything that ends with board, data dashboards
• [03:54 - 04:05] Vip Parmar: Jet lag & underutilized data
• [04:16 - 04:51] Laura Ellis: Data governance and change management
• [04:59 - 06:18] Mohammed Syed: Change management and data solutions
• [06:22 - 06:49] Tim: Determining focus in a sea of technology opportunities
• [06:50 - 07:58] Juan: Disconnect between executives and how data teams work with the business

Increasing adoption of data products, by design

Look no further than Brian T. O’Neill’s bio to tell you that’s what he does best.

Our special guest this week knows that low adoption of data products are enterprises biggest enemy. Not just in terms of quantity, but also quality of these investments. Why are teams so often creating technically right, effectively wrong data products? Why do people fail to adopt when it’s them post crucial part of becoming data driven organizations?

These burning questions have answers.

Join hosts Juan, Tim, and guest Brian T. O’Neill on this weeks episode of Catalog & Cocktails.

Key takeaways:

• [00:06 - 03:30] Intro & Cheers
• [03:33 - 04:54] What is your instrument of choice and what would your band name be?
• [04:59 - 07:55] Honest no BS definition of a data product
• [07:59 - 11:17] Alternative definitions of data as products
• [11:18 - 14:11] Data products can be many things, and definitions are broad
• [14:11 - 19:39] How human centered design interplays with defining data products
• [19:47 - 25:17] Data therapists, knowledge scientists and engineers
• [25:21 - 33:48] Where does the burden lay, and with whom
• [33:49 - 38:35] Brian's perspective on data product management versus software product management
• [38:38 - 43:59] How do you achieve good adoption?
• [44:05 - 46:39] What is the best way people can start learning about human-centered design?
• [46:42 - 47:20] Can dashboards be data products, and can machine learning be data products?
• [47:32 - 49:45] Should companies be investing in data managers
• [49:45 - 52:45] Value and adoption, should companies track data ROI
• [52:58 - 58:20] Takeaways
• [58:23 - 01:02:09] Three questions