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The theme that emerged in this week’s email is … apparently, we are all vibe-coding now.
QUOTES
“The companies that win aren't the ones that collect the most data—they're the ones that make it work for them.” - Lior Barak
New Articles
Podcasts
Cool Charts
Final Thoughts (Peter Tunney Experience)
#1 – Chad Sanderson published The Shift Left Data Manifesto. March 2025.
My Take: After Top 10 lists, Manifestos are my favorite type of article. The author is the Co-Founder/CEO of Gable.ai.
“Shifting Left means moving ownership, accountability, quality and governance from reactive downstream teams, to proactive upstream teams.”
The author’s manifesto provides interesting historical context for his thoughts, including a useful analogy to software engineering’s evolution over the past 20 years. Of most interest to me is the idea that we can move data ops from a reactive cost center, to a proactive “production-grade asset, allowing data management initiatives to scale to their full potential in the AI era”.
Related article: Gable Secures $20M Series A to Scale Data Management Platform and Power the "Shift Left" Movement in Data. March 2025.
#2– Cassie Kozyrkov published What is Vibe Coding?. March 2025.
“Vibe coding is prompting an AI system to generate code based on natural language descriptions, saving you from writing it all from scratch.” - Cassie Kozyrkov
My Take: This highlights that fact that people who can code AND have strong domain knowledge are the best. Now (in theory) people who have domain knowledge can more easily code, so this removes a huge barrier to creating value. There are still pitfalls. If you don’t know what you are doing at all, you can make big mistakes and not realize it. And the question remains that if you are a beginner and you start vibe coding, will you ever really learn to code? Do you need to? In any case, this can help more people create more value.
Starting with the right business question can make all the difference.
Related (short) article: Not the hard part by Sven Balnojan. April 2025.
#3 – Lior Barak published Wabi Sabi Your Data: The Art of Data ROI. April 2025.
My Take: I like the idea of finding small, early wins that are aligned with bigger picture goals. Particularly when execs are pushing for “GenAI wins” … to show quick progress is a big help for everyone.
What else I am reading:
Seattle Data Guy published 7 Real-World Lessons from Data Leaders at LinkedIn, Dropbox & More. April 2025.
Jordan Hauer published Amassed Insights #3: LegAI & Compliance. April 2025.
Michael Spencer published Top AI Newsletters of 2025. March 2025.
Bloomfire published What is Enterprise Intelligence? March 2025.
Chuck Whitten published The Great Debate: Will Agentic AI Kill SaaS?. January 2025.
Source: Driven by Data podcast interviewed Steve Green of SMBC. March 2025.
My Take: I really enjoyed the “real world” nature of this conversation. Steve shares with us some concrete steps he took in the early days of joining SMBC that I found very insightful.
Common themes I hear over & over include the importance of showing early wins; demonstrate business value; focus on business problems; get people on board (culture).
Essential steps include that you set expectations up front for 3-6 months plus longer term goals, preferably during the interview process. Meet everyone; learn pain points. Learn how things work in the organization.
Six Pillars (minute 32:00)
data strategy team (tie everything together)
data governance and data quality
analytics and data science
innovation advisory function (general advice...data acquisition)
information management and governance of unstructured data
data migration
"Think big, then start small" - Steve Green SMBC (minute 12:00)
Highlights (53 minute run-time):
Minute 01:30 - Steve Green SMBC introduction
Minute 03:00 - SMBC Background; focus on EMEA is corporate banking
Minute 04:30 - building data office from scratch; important to centralize; changing culture of the business to be more data centric
Minute 10:30 - importance of taking a step back and thinking about the big picture. Rigid near-term targets cause problems long term. Think big, then start small. Show some quick wins.
Minute 16:00 - data quality will never be perfect; perfect is not possible
Minute 18:00 - what to do with uncertain expectations from senior leadership? Giving CDO a task (do this...) rather than an targeted outcome; bring data into business strategy conversation.
Minute 22:30 - rock of "building cool technology that nobody likes"
Minute 24:00 - how to get into the right room and be included in the important conversations as a data person (a: set expectations up front)
Minute 28:00 - first days at SMBC
Minute 32:00 - what does SMBC data team look like today?
Minute 46:00 - defensive strategy with offense in mind; culture change. Offense is more valued that defense
Source: Chad Sanderson published The Shift Left Data Manifesto. March 2025.
BONUS: Megan Morrone published AI is "tearing apart" companies, survey finds. March 2025.
I was in Miami for Spring Break. I had the pleasure of spending some time with artist & friend Peter Tunney. If you are ever in Miami, please stop by Wynwood Walls.
Much of what Peter communicates to the world resonates with me. On this visit, I was struck by the fact that he is creating art that he hopes will be around 250 years from now.
To me, that is thinking BIG.
Very inspiring.
