Thanks for being here!
Announcement(s):
I’ll be at Neudata’s Boston conference February 29th. Let me know if you will be in town.
Theme that emerged in this week’s email is … the growing need for data in this AI explosion.
QUOTES
“But the real evolution of alternative data has been away from calling quarters and towards producing The Missing KPIs.” - Byrne Hobart
News Articles
Podcasts
Cool Charts
Final Thoughts (Time Management)
#1 – Byrne Hobart’s What is Alternative Data, and Why Does it Matter?. February 2024.
My Take: If only today’s alt data was as easy as The Bank of England’s weathervane on the Thames to predict ship traffic. Byrne is a prolific writer and is required reading for readers of this Alt Data Weekly. Of particular interest to me was the idea of generating the “Missing KPIs”. We are moving from alpha in the ability to find, ingest, and analyze data to a period where the alpha is found when you are deep in the data & really understanding what it is and then asking informed questions (finding the “missing KPI”).
#2 – Duncan Cooper’s What are the key data trends for 2024?. February 2024.
My Take: Of most interest to me was the data vendors commentary (#3 below). The key question is “do organisations have the structure, capabilities and technology to fully utilise and distribute such data to the investment teams that need it?” Vendors need to be flexible and get the data to clients in a way they can use it. Not easy.
Next would be the data to support AI (#4 below). It seems we are still a long way from real world AI use cases in the world of investment management given the variability & potential inaccuracies of model output … there is no tolerance for uncertainty in the world of investment management.
Five notable data trends:
Data supply chain.
Transactional data.
Commercial data and data vendors.
Data to support AI.
Data democratization.
#3 – Alex Izydorczyk’s LLM Data Sales: A Market for Lemons?. February 2024.
My Take: See below article about Reddit selling user content (data) for $60m annually. We are data people at an interesting time to be data people. Data owners seem to be sitting on gold mines which are proving difficult to monetize. Alex does a great job framing & articulating a complex problem. AI models want massive amount of data over long periods of time. Marginal Temporal Value is less important (see article). Another challenge is that data is irrevocable. This means once the AI model has ingested the data, it is tough to undo and get back. Lastly is the governance issue, which is common across all data but getting increased attention as the rules around training data are growing in importance.
What else I am reading:
Sequoia’s Generative AI’s Act Two. September 2023 (h/t Alex Izydorczyk)
Reddit user content being sold to AI company in $60M/year deal. February 2024. (Spoiler Alert: It’s Google)
S&P Global agrees to acquire Visible Alpha. February 2024.
Jared Hillam’s When data gets creepy. February 2024.
Samantha Bamberger’s Navigating Geographic Challenges in Products - Accuracy and Precision. February 2024.
Jason Derise’s Meta v. Bright Data Perspectives: A Data Score Interview with Glacier Networks. February 2024.
Lowenstein Sandler’s Meta v. Bright Data Ruling Has Important Implications for Webscraping Activities by Investment Advisers. February 2024.
Non-data-related but interesting: “No inventions; no innovations," a History of US Steel. December 2023.
Source: Hosts of the Data Ideas Podcast, Brandi Beals & Dustin Schimek, interview Sonny Rivera of ThoughtSpot. Impact of AI on Data Analytics Professionals. December 2023.
My Take: Really enjoyed this podcast & Sonny’s thought leadership. AI as the new frontier, huge surge in capabilities. His advice is to get curious & have fun with it. Ultimately, incorporating AI into your day-to-day will have a positive impact. Be proactive. Be prepared.
Resonated the most with me: “Trust is a huge factor”. This is a big deal. Trust is hard to gain and easy to lose.
Analysts will likely see the most upheaval and will be able to focus on higher value opportunities … chance to add more value in their role.
I like the idea of analytics becoming “invisible” or simply embedded into other tools. #unpromptedAI.
People are going from high-touch code solutions to low-code / no code solutions (pitched ThoughtSpot).
Highlights (52-minute run time):
Minute 02:45 – intro from Sonny & his path
Minute 08:45 – Sonny’ thoughts on AI and the rapid progress seen recently; get curious
Minute 12:45 – hiring second career people in the data world; data bootcamps
Minute 14:00 – Switch over to AI & the impact it is having on individuals
Minute 18:00 – AI in context of your role as a professional…this is a tool that will help you; importance of trust
Minute 20:30 – how can individuals use AI to make their lives better? Share what you are learning.
Minute 25:00 – who are the thought leaders Sonny follows? Mentioned: Andrew Ng (Coursera Founder) & Amit Prakash (ThoughtSpot co-Founder); AI certification from Google
Minute 36:30 – What is Sonny thinking about when preparing for coming changes from AI
Minute 39:30 – from the perspective of the non-technical manager
Minute 43:00 – importance of community
Source: ThoughtSpot’s 10 data and analytics trends for 2024. December 2023.
Bit of a head fake here as this is more of an “interesting list” than an “interesting chart”.
10 Trends:
Gen AI kicks off 5th wave of analytics and BI
Dark data gets a bit brighter
Data mesh and data contracts face off with data quality
Data fluency expands to AI fluency
Semantic layers garner more debate than deployment
FinOps evolves to LLMOps
Data roles get even more confusing
Multi-experience analytics delights business users but rattles central CIOs and CDAOs
AI will make products worse
AI innovation continues to outpace legislation
Managing your time is a skill. Like most skills, it takes time to master and constant practice.
It is a struggle to manage time to think & get work done vs time made available to clients, prospective clients, and your co-workers. Balance is the key to maximize your productivity & impact.
“One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I just signed up to use Calendly … I find this to be a great tool to help manage your calendar.
Enjoy!
Bonus: