Back

Speaker "Bryon Jacob" Details Back

 

Topic

Spreadsheets to Self-Describing Smart Data

Abstract

The number of people and machines working with data is increasing at an exponential rate. The majority of those data workers are working with data in spreadsheets and visual analytics tools–whereas machines and the advanced analysis experts that program them are hungry for well curated, labeled, self-describing data that both understands the entities that the data describe and models the relationships. These two camps are competing for finite resources, and no one is satisfied. Data scientists spend 80% of their time curating data for their own use, rather than doing their most valuable tasks. Analysts make day-to-day decisions with emailed spreadsheets and reports. What if there was a way to support agile, collaborative data work by using the tools and paradigms that most users are comfortable with, while at the same time, treating the data as a first-class citizen that can iteratively build in context, metadata, and schema? Bryon Jacob, Co-founder and CTO of data.world will show us an effective way to foster collaboration between your technical and business stakeholders by harnessing the technology of the Semantic Web–RDF and SPARQL. It supports the workflows of every type of data worker, from the BI Analyst to the Data Scientist. It takes the CSVs, Excel spreadsheets, and APIs that normally form the communication paths between data and people, and turns them into a queryable semantic knowledge graph. As data is curated and better understood and the knowledge can be added to the data and kept alongside it. Learn how to build strong datasets to feed into machine learning workflows to power the next generation of predictive analytics at Bryon’s presentation.

Profile

Bryon Jacob is Co-­Founder and CTO of data.world. Prior to his current role, he was Principal Architect at HomeAway, where he was a key part of shaping the technology and product vision from early in the company’s history – through the launch of the flagship homeaway.com brand, the successful integration of 18+ acquisitions, and into the challenges faced by a successful public company operating a global online marketplace. He’s built a playbook of strategies for remaining a responsive partner to the needs of the business while balancing technical debt in a highly complex technological environment.