What a funny place LinkedIn can be. Since I dropped most social media, I’ve met quite a few cool data people from all over the globe on LinkedIn. I met a group of fellow “data heretics” from places like Australia, Singapore, and Montana. We all have contrarian views on data science, and decided to film … [Read more…]
For people who’ve asked where I’ve been lately on various social media, here’s a quick answer. My only public social platform right now is LinkedIn. In the last few weeks, I deleted my Instagram and Twitter accounts. This means I’m totally removed from those platforms. You won’t find me there. Similar to what I did … [Read more…]
The coronavirus pandemic has suddenly changed quite a few things with respect to meetups and how people network. Having helped run several popular tech meetups over the years, I’ve got a good handle on how to run physical meetups. We did our first virtual meetup – the Utah Data Engineering Meetup – on March 18th … [Read more…]
In the last few weeks, we’ve suddenly found ourselves in a brand new world. Some might rightfully call it a hellscape. In a matter of a few weeks, the economy went from blazing hot to an ice age. Last Friday, the US government carpet bombed the economy with $2.2 Trillion. The day before, 3.2 million … [Read more…]
Are IT certifications a waste of time? An article about the worthlessness of IT certifications recently made the rounds on the front page of Hacker News. The author dismissed the validity of Java certifications, equating them to Hamburger University diplomas. While I disagree with the author’s view, I’ve also heard – and said – various … [Read more…]
What’s more important when starting a business? Making a pile of money quickly, or building a great reputation for the long haul? When we started Ternary Data in late 2018, we very quickly decided that while growing our revenues was vital, it was more important to grow our pile of reputational capital. It seems counter-intuitive, … [Read more…]
An old Scott Hanselman article about “dark matter developers” made the rounds on Hacker News this summer. Much like the dark matter that makes up much of the invisible universe, these developers are also largely invisible. As Scott said, “We call them Dark Matter Developers. They don’t read a lot of blogs, they never write … [Read more…]
Another Berkshire shareholders meeting in the books. As always, I walked away slightly smarter. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal posted a funny article “When Warren Buffett Takes the Stage, Try Your Hand at Berkshire Bingo”. If you’ve watched or attended the meeting enough times, you’ll laugh. It’s spot on. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are … [Read more…]
Since 2014, my buddy Faris Chebib and I (along with a few other hardcore friends) have run the SLC Python Meetup . We started the meetup because we were too lazy to drive to the other Python meetup – 20+ miles away – during rush hour. From 2014 to now, we’re close to 2500 members. … [Read more…]
Every morning, I read almost a dozen articles. A few articles usually relate to data science (I hate the term “data science”, as it’s very overloaded. Here, I’ll confine data science to AI or machine learning). Lately, I notice more and more articles echoing something I’ve been saying for years – data science is hard, … [Read more…]