Data Strategy in the AI Age

Joe's Nerdy Rants #76 - Weekend reads, podcasts, and other stuff

I’m very slammed this weekend (family, projects, activities, etc. ), so I’ll keep this newsletter brief. Plus, it’s the weekend. Get outside and do something fun.

Here’s a great conversation I had with Dia Adams and Gordon Wong about data strategy in the age of AI. You’ll notice a recurring theme - the more things change, the more they stay the same. Success depends on the basics, no matter the latest technological revolution.

Please listen to the audio above or on Spotify (or your podcast platform of choice).

Have a wonderful weekend,

Joe

---

Cool Weekend Reads

Here are some cool articles I read this week. I hope you enjoy them.

Will democracy survive technology? An urgent TED Talk from Carole Cadwalladr at TED2025

I so hate the phrase “vibe coding” | artiss.blog

Why Does Switzerland Have So Many Bunkers? — The Dial

Introducing Le Chat Enterprise | Mistral AIFunction calling using LLMs

AI Is Not Your Friend

I use Zip Bombs to Protect my Server

Good answers are not necessarily factual answers: an analysis of hallucination in leading LLMs

The Giants of Silicon Valley Are Having a Midlife Crisis Over AI

Upcoming Events

---

I’m excited to be going to London very soon. Join me for the European data streaming event of the year with Confluent!

I’ll discuss the implications of AI-generated content and a digital ecosystem drowning in bad data and software, and how to avoid this!

Join me at #Current25 London and use my discount code L-PRM-JOEREIS for 50% off!

See you there! https://cnfl.io/438XnTV

---

I'm excited to share that I’ll be speaking at Nexla’s 2025 Data + AI Integration Summit on May 21! This one’s special—not just for the topics (think GenAI, integration, and real enterprise AI) but also for the incredible lineup of folks I get to join from Snowflake, Optum, AWS, DeepLearning.AI, and more.

Register here

---

Snowflake and/or Databricks - June TBA

Iceland - Global Data Summit, June 23-24. Register here

Australia (Sydney, Melbourne) - Data Eng Bytes, July 24-30. Register here

UK - Big Data London, September 24-25. Register here

Helsinki Data Week - October TBA

More to be announced soon…

Podcasts

Freestyle Friday - Navigating Data Strategy in the Age of AI w/ Dia Adams & Gordon Wong (Spotify)

Michael Drogalis - Building a Company in Public (Spotify)

John Giles - The Data Elephant in the Board Room, Data Modeling, and More (Spotify)

Zhamak Dehghani - Autonomous Data Products, Data Mesh, and NextData - Q&A (Spotify)

Freestyle Friday - Advice for 2025 Graduates (Spotify)

Jessica Talisman - Libraries, Knowledge, Shitty Tech Jobs, and More (Spotify)

Freestyle Fridays - “I don’t need to learn anything anymore.” (Spotify)

Juan Sequeda & Jesus Barrasa - Unlocking Knowledge with Graphs (Spotify)

Freestyle Fridays - Wartime Data Teams (Spotify)

Tim Berglund - The Art of Developer Relations, Hardware Hacking, and More (Spotify)

Freestyle Fridays - Coding is Fun (Again) (Spotify)

Juhani Vanhatapio - From the Arctic Circle to AI (Spotify)

Freestyle Fridays - Shifting Left AND Right. The Data Engineering Lifecycle in 2025. - (Spotify)

Mark Freeman - Shifting Left in Data, Startup Rocket Ships, and More (Spotify)

Vaibhav Gupta - BAML and AI-First Tools (Spotify)

Freestyle Fridays - Figuring Out Your Next Move (Spotify)

There are way more episodes over at the Joe Reis Show, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also available on YouTube.

Thanks! If you want to support this newsletter

• The Data Engineering Professional Certificate is one of the most popular courses on Coursera! Learn practical data engineering with lots of challenging hands-on examples. Shoutout to the fantastic people at Deeplearning.ai and AWS, who helped make this a reality over the last year. Enroll here.

• Practical Data Modeling. Great discussions about data modeling with data practitioners. This is also where early drafts of my new data modeling book will be published.

• Fundamentals of Data Engineering by Matt Housley and I, available at Amazon, O’Reilly, and wherever you get your books.

• The Data Therapy Session calendar is posted here. It’s an incredible group where you can share your experiences with data - good and bad - in a judgment-free place with other data professionals. If you’re interested in regularly attending, add it to your calendar.

• My other show is The Joe Reis Show (Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts). I interview guests on it, and it’s unscripted, always fun, and free of shilling.

• Would you like me to speak at your event? Please submit a speaking request if you want me to give a workshop or talk at your event.

• If you’d like to sponsor my newsletter or podcast, please get in touch with me.

Could you be sure to leave a lovely review if you like the content?

Thanks!

Joe Reis