Jean-Georges Perrin is a serial startup founder, currently co-founder of AbeaData [https://abeadata.com/], and co-author of "Implementing Data Mesh." He is the one who championed the PayPal's data contract project, which is now part of Bitol and the Linux Foundation. In this episode, JGP speaks about building and maintaining open-source data contract solutions using open standards. He shares a lot about why and how he came to it and the challenges of maintaining it to avoid appropriation of the solution. JGP discusses how they balance the interests of different groups in developing a community around open data contract standards. More importantly, he shares how data contracts can positively change the life of every data engineer.Check out JGP's LinkedInCheck out Bitol -  Open Standards for Data Contracts and become a contributor.

Andrew Jones, principal engineer at GoCardless, is the author of the book "Driving Data Quality with Data Contracts." During this session, we talked a lot about what a data platform is, who data platform engineers are, what it takes to make a data platform reliable, and, most importantly, how Andrew and his team managed to build a reliable platform at GoCardless. Sure enough, we touched a little on data contracts, their implementation, and the possibility of vendors doing the same as Andrew's team did.Andrew's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewrhysjones/

Tiankai Feng is Head of Data Strategy & Governance Services at Thoughtworks Europe. Tiankai joined us to discuss inclusivity in data teams, data work, and beyond. While it may sound vague and unclear, during the discussion, we actually tried to unfold what it really means. In essence, we emphasized empathy to understand what it takes to do data work and, conversely, what data teams need to understand from business stakeholders to deliver outcomes that truly matter. Check out Tiankai's LinkedIn; he does a great job there!

Rui Falhas Santos - is the Manager of Data Analytics at one of the largest banks in the world. He joined us to discuss the AI applications they have implemented. The creativity and the use case are very captivating, as it is applied in one of the most regulated and legacy-bound industries. Rui is a hands-on manager with an extensive background in data. His data team helped build a solution that reads, on average, 300k articles a month to catch any alarming signals about their clients. Additionally, we discussed responsible AI from the decision-making side of model output and how data is collected for model processing.

Andrii Yasinetsky is a serial startup founder, ex-Uber, and ex-Google. Now, he is building a healthcare AI startup in stealth mode; he joins us to talk about the enablers and obstacles in the current AI startup ecosystem. Andrii shares his views on the following challenges for organizations applying LLMs, such as converting bytes into high-quality data, ensuring the safety of LLMs, the implications of legal regulations on innovations, and expanding AI applicability to broader and more complex problems. Despite all the hurdles, Andrii sees AI as a great equalizer that will make many services more accessible and significantly enhance their speed and quality in numerous industries yet to be disrupted. Connect with Andrii: Twitter - twitter.com/yasikLinkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasinetsky/substack - https://yasik.substack.com/

Maya Mikhailov from ⁠Savvi AI⁠ joins us to discuss AI, startups, and the real-world delivery of value to enterprises. The pressing challenge for organizations today is that while the C-suite is both willing and financially prepared to invest in AI strategies, there remains a significant gap between effectively applying AI, extracting tangible value, and overcoming the perception of AI as a miraculous fix-all. Connect with Maya - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayam/