Voxel51

• Explore, tinker with, and push the boundaries of the latest AI and machine learning technologies to showcase what's possible with open-source tools and frameworks

• Build inspiring prototypes, proof-of-concepts, and example applications that demonstrate creative and impactful uses of AI to the developer community

• Contribute meaningfully to the open source ecosystem by creating and maintaining libraries, tools, datasets, tutorials and guides that enable developers to more easily leverage AI capabilities

• Curate, clean, annotate and publish unique multimodal datasets spanning text, images, audio, video, 3D and other emerging data types to facilitate novel machine learning research and applications

• Create engaging technical blog posts, social media content, videos, and presentations that educate and inspire developers and data scientists to build with AI

•  Collaborate openly with our internal teams and the broader AI/ML community to cross-pollinate ideas, share knowledge, and collectively advance the state-of-the-art

• Evangelize our technology and vision by representing the company at hackathons, conferences, meetups, universities, and other developer-focused events

•  Influence the product roadmap by providing input on the developer experience, uncovering opportunities for new features and improvements based on community feedback and your work

• Continuously learn, experiment with, and provide feedback on beta versions of our latest models and capabilities to help shape the future of our platform

Hacker-in-Residence

LinkedIn

1) Introductory computer vision course for LinkedIn Learning

2) Prompt Engineering with LangChain (releasing March 2024)

3) RetrievalAugemnted Generation with LlamaIndex (releasing Q2 2024)

4) Fine-tuning LLMs with Hugging Face TRL (est release Q3 2024)

5) Text Generation with Hugging Face Transformers (est release Q3 2024)

LinkedIn Learning Instructor

The Artists of Data Science

The ONLY personal growth and development podcast for Data Scientists

Host

Deci AI

Developer Relations Manager

Pachyderm Inc.

Senior Developer Advocate

Comet

ML Developer Advocate

Data Science Dream Job

Principal Data Science Educator

Price Industries

Lead Data Scientist

Bold Commerce

Senior Data Scientist

Emergent BioSolutions

Biostatistician

I create content about deep learning | The DevRel and Deep Learning Dude

Hacking on LLMs, curating multimodal datasets, and writing a book about RAG.

Harpreet Sahota 🥑

sam3 is seriously a step change improvement over sam2

the model is seriously good, glad they brought back text prompts. the automatic segmentation isn't as good as i hoped it to be...but it still works quite well. 

i also got it to output image embeddings and that was cool to visualize in the app

learn more here: https://lnkd.in/gzqJzj6G

🤖 Hacker-in-Residence @ Voxel51| 👨🏽‍💻 AI/ML Engineer | 👷🏽‍♀️ Technical Developer Advocate | Learn. Do. Write. Teach. Repeat.

qwen3vl is literally the best model i've used for video usecases. blows my mind

hosting a virtual event tomorrow about document ai

you may or may not find it interesting, but i guarantee you'll learn something

join me here: https://lnkd.in/dFXPimVc

sony ai released a pretty cool dataset called the fairness human centric image benchmark, super high quality labels

instructions for downloading and parsing the dataset into fiftyone format can be found here: https://lnkd.in/g_VwxJx4

physical AI is top of mind as the next frontier for deep learning. but it'll only succeed if you have good datasets

language models scaled with web-scale text. 

vision models got ImageNet. 

now Voxel51 and NVIDIA are trying to do the same thing for physical AI 

autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots, anything that moves around atoms.

building these systems means millions of hours of testing in high-fidelity sims before you can actually deploy anything. 

petabytes of multimodal sensor data from various modalities

 LiDAR, cameras, radar, IMUs. 

but over 50% of simulations end up completely unusable because the input data is bad.

even small calibration or timing errors between sensors cascade through your neural reconstructions. 

you waste weeks and burn through millions in compute costs before you realize what went wrong.

the new FiftyOne Physical AI Workbench. it integrates with NVIDIA Omniverse and NVIDIA Cosmos and basically sits at the start of your sim pipeline to validate, clean up, and prep your multimodal data before it hits neural reconstruction and synthetic data generation.

what it does:

- automatically audits physical AI inputs across 75+ critical checkpoints

- transforms raw sensor streams into structured, searchable datasets

- triggers accurate neural reconstructions and generates synthetic scene variations

this means fewer wasted compute hours. 

iteration loops go from weeks to hours. 

you build safer, more reliable systems on data you can actually trust.

read more about what we've been building: https://lnkd.in/gC6_zn-X

i recently integrated 4 ocr models into fiftyone as remote zoo models these handle text extraction and document parsing. 

all available as remote zoo sources, you can get started with a few lines of code

different approaches for different needs:

1. mineru-2.5

1.2b params, two-stage strategy: global layout on downsampled image, then fine-grained recognition on native-resolution crops. 

handles headers, footers, lists, code blocks. strong on complex math formulas (mixed chinese-english) and tables (rotated, borderless, partial-border).

good for: documents with complex layouts and mathematical content

https://lnkd.in/dSwimdvp

deepseek-ocr

dual-encoder (sam + clip) for "contextual optical compression." 

outputs structured markdown with bounding boxes. has five resolution modes (tiny/small/base/large/gundam). gundam mode is the default - uses multi-view processing (1024×1024 global + 640×640 patches for details). 

supports custom prompts for specific extraction tasks.

good for: complex pdfs and multi-column layouts where you need structured output

https://lnkd.in/dhJn2h-v

olmocr-2

built on qwen2.5-vl, 7b params. outputs markdown with yaml front matter containing metadata (language, rotation, table/diagram detection). 

converts equations to latex, tables to html. labels figures with markdown syntax. reads documents like a human would.

good for: academic papers and technical documents with equations and structured data

https://lnkd.in/dNdTQYKg

kosmos-2.5

microsoft's 1.37b param multimodal model. two modes: ocr (text with bounding boxes) or markdown generation. automatically optimizes hardware usage (bfloat16 for ampere+, float16 for older gpus, float32 for cpu). handles diverse document types including handwritten text.

good for: general-purpose ocr when you need either coordinates or clean markdown

https://lnkd.in/dCTfGfV8


two modes typical across these models: detection (bounding boxes) and extraction (text output)

i also built/revamped the caption viewer plugin for better text visualization in the app: 

https://lnkd.in/dBebWdga

i've also got two events poppin off for document visual ai:

- nov 6 (tomorrow) with a stellar line up of speakers: https://lnkd.in/gkBEY4_r

- a deep dive into document visual ai with just me: 

https://lnkd.in/dFXPimVc

Open article: Document Visual AI with FiftyOne - November 14, 2025 by voxel51.com

Document Visual AI with FiftyOne - November 14, 2025

hype for this new integration, and proud of the team for shipping it at lightning speed. big ups to Daniel and AdonAI for goin beast mode on this one

🚀 Introducing Physical AI Workbench — integrated with NVIDIA Omniverse NuRec and NVIDIA Cosmos to solve the biggest bottleneck in physical AI.  

More than half of all physical AI simulations fail — not from bad models, but from bad input data. A timestamp off by milliseconds or a calibration drift of a few degrees can cascade through your neural reconstructions, leaving you with unusable results after weeks and millions in wasted compute. 

FiftyOne Physical AI Workbench sits at the start of your simulation pipeline and provides turnkey access to NVIDIA technology to ensure every simulation run begins with trustworthy data: 

✅ Audits 75+ critical checkpoints to ensure every reconstruction starts with validated inputs 
🎯 Enriches raw sensor streams into structured, searchable datasets 
🔗 Integrates directly with NVIDIA Omniverse and NVIDIA Cosmos for high-fidelity reconstruction and synthetic data generation. 

The result: an end-to-end workflow that prevents downstream failures — cutting iteration cycles from weeks to hours and eliminating GPU waste on failed reconstructions. We’re excited to see this workflow power autonomous vehicles NVIDIA DRIVE and robotics NVIDIA Robotics development teams move faster with higher accuracy. 

🔗 Read the full technical breakdown: https://lnkd.in/gTy5-TNF

George Firican

The University of British Columbia

Director, Data Governance & Business Intelligence

Led a team of wonderful and highly skilled people in the areas of:
- Finance
- Human Resources
- Information Systems
- Gift Processing 
- Operations
- Strategic Projects
- Prospect Research & Analytics 
- Data Governance & Business Intelligence 

To support the goals of the fundraising and alumni engagement portfolio across the university.

Chief Advancement Operations Officer (Interim)

Director of Information Technology (Interim)

• Lead the Data Governance/ Quality program and the strategy development of Development and Alumni Engagement’s (DAE) data acquisition, maintenance and dissemination while fostering innovation and long term strategic vision
• Lead the efforts to develop a business glossary as well as a business intelligence (BI) framework and program that provides user-friendly access to the right information for the right people at the right time
• Directed the development and enhancement of standards, procedures, processes, policies related to the improvement and/or maintenance of quality of data within the Blackbaud Enterprise CRM database
• Created and fostered strategic partnerships and influential relationships with DAE senior management, the broader UBC community, campus stakeholders, vendors, and external universities to secure the success of DAE’s data governance, business intelligence and information quality efforts
• Collaborated with Information Technology to manage the development of automated data validations, data cleanses, data quality issue reports, and deployment of new tools and enhancements to aid in the preservation of data quality
• Advanced the data governance and business intelligence profession by participating in professional organizations, acquiring or maintaining required accreditations, publishing articles, and giving presentations at professional events

Associate Director, Data Governance & Business Intelligence

I proudly took part of UBC's "Start an Evolution" campaign (https://startanevolution.ubc.ca/), campaign which raised $1.5 billion dollars for students, research and community engagement and to double the number of alumni involved annually in the life of the university by 2015.

• Established and led an award winning Data Governance/Quality Program to support the university’s $1.5 billion fundraising campaign and sustainable alumni engagement strategy
• Provided oversight of the Data Governance/Quality Program and kept it on track by managing the development of standards, procedures, processes, policies related to the acquisition, management, and dissemination of enterprise data impacting the Blackbaud Enterprise CRM database while leading the Advisory Council
• Developed an award winning Tracing Program through which the returned mail percentage of Development and Alumni Engagement’s Portfolio has been reduced to less than 1%
• Managed the development of business performance metrics and scorecards to monitor and communicate the status and improvement of service of the Records department
• Achieved a 92% address and phone number accuracy for Canadian records, an improvement from ~64%
• Communicated to and educated internal and external stakeholders on the results and initiatives of data governance, quality, master data management, information delivery and advised stakeholders about best practices; was the first and only department to achieve 100% on the annual client satisfaction survey on communication delivery and content

Data Quality Manager

LightsOnData

- Educational Content Creation: Develop and deliver comprehensive courses, workshops, and webinars on data governance, data management, data quality, AI, and more.
- Brand Amplification: Collaborate with data companies to enhance their brand visibility and thought leadership in the data community.
- Engagement and Outreach: Host the Lights On Data Show podcast, featuring industry leaders and experts to share their insights and experiences.

Founder

Pearson

Course Instructor

O'Reilly

iData Quality Academy

Developed course content for iData Quality Academy
- Data Profiling
- Data Quality Costs

Instructor

Self employed

• Provided project management and business analysis expertise to various projects across the different industries (BaniPePost.com, JT Business Group, SMAWS, 8p8, Ashenzi, NetPress Consulting, LTS, AHACommunity, etc).
• Designed and developed unique, highly professional web and print designs, branding and e-learning solutions as well as developing and configuring custom websites (e-stores, online communities, content management systems, blogs, brochure websites, etc.).
• Accumulated experience as a web master by installing, upgrading, performing backups, managing migrations and maintaining a series of complex websites.

Freelance Consultant

Sauder School of Business, UBC

• Served as internal Project Manager for the evaluation, build and deployment phases of a custom-built, scalable web payment gateway (WPG) that complied with the PCI standard requirements and reduced Sauder Finance’s operational time for the allocation and reporting of revenue received via card payments by 75%
• Managed the deployment of a FIPPA compliant e-newsletter tool (Industry Mailout) selected to achieve a standard for design and operational support while reducing expenses by $15k/year
• Planned and managed the development and release of a new service for personal/academic blogging through the use of the WordPress MU environment for faculty members and current Sauder students
• Managed the development of an improved content publishing process to account for 15 digital signs, each with audience specific content & emergency broadcasting capabilities
• Served as the internal project manager for the development and deployment of the Canaccord Learning Commons web presence comprised of a WordPress based website and a BuddyPress student interaction environment
• Developed solutions for integrating the business environment with web 2.0 technologies such as WordPress 3 based sites, online communities (Ning, Moodle), and collaboration tools (MediaWiki, Project Spaces, CoMapping) while providing expertise and system support for these platforms
• Identified customer requirements, analyzed and reviewed product features, integration, security, scalability and performance requirements for projects such as PPM Tool, a collaboration tool to be used between the Center of Health Care Management and BC health care authorities, Desktop Blogging Client Solution, ECM Society Online Presence, Faculty Master Calendar, Form Building Tool, Event Registration, PCI Payment Forms Conversions, and several online presences for different business areas and conferences

Project Manager / BA

Everest iTech

• Promoted to Project Manager for the Showtime Models website and web application and the All Ears accounting software development project due to excellent interpersonal, communication and leadership skills in the relationships with the client and internal development team
• Led the development of several e-commerce sites (ex: SkyHook Solar, Expressive Designs Florist, JT-Autotech) and dynamic websites (ex: Mailinglist System, Informant Zone) and also helped architect their databases
• Increased the employees' knowledgebase by developing e-learning modules and user manuals for the use of the company’s payroll and accounting software
• Enhanced the online awareness of the company’s brand by 40% by creating a new content strategy and redeveloping its website in a WordPress, SEO friendly environment
• Minimized the cost of online advertising by developing free distributed widgets that increased incoming traffic by 5k visitors/ month

Project Manager / Lead Web Developer

Event Technologies

• Developed customer support standards and procedures for the company’s e-store business and helped transition a staff of 12 to this new environment through training sessions and a knowledgebase wiki.
• Minimized the installation time of new systems by 80% by creating and managing standard desktop images based on the employees’ job roles.
• Reduced search time of hardware and software information by 50% by developing a standard for filing all the technical documentation on hardware equipment and software.

IT Consultant

WGOA

• Demonstrated strong leadership skills by acting as the team leader of a software developer group in order to successfully implement and deliver an interactive Go learning application two weeks ahead of deadline and within budget.
• Coded the backend interaction of a merchandise inventory application with a barcode scanner and also contributed to developing the MySQL database and reporting. 
• Facilitated the team members to work remotely by implementing a VPN solution and integrated the use of Subversion to enable software versioning and revision control.

Software developer

💬 Founder of LightsOnData.com and LightsOnData YouTube Channel
Focused on providing informative content such as ONLINE COURSES, templates, guides, best practices, articles, white papers, and other useful resources to help you with your data governance and data management questions and challenges

💬 Creator of online courses that are engaging, new, and thorough. 
Courses: Building an Award-Winning Business Glossary, Data Governance Maturity Models, Data Governance Fundamentals, etc. - check them out here: https://www.lightsondata.com/courses/

💬 Providing LinkedIn content strategy for data-focused companies and products, as well as those with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI), business intelligence (BI, data science, data management, and data governance areas.
Connect with me today and ask how I can help you reach the data audience.

💬 Host of Lights on Data Show - a podcast and LinkedIn Live weekly show that provides insights into the data world and showcases people that help to shape it.

💬 Get some fun data merchandise here: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/lightsondata/all

💬 International key note speaker, conference speaker, and panelist (spoken at over 60 different conferences).

💬 I love being on camera, hiking, surfing, filming, and video editing
YouTube: @LightsOnData


🏛 My experience and specialties: 
• Expertise in data governance, information quality, business intelligence & data management
• Extensive background in web and application development with experience of the full life-cycle of a project
• Strong leadership capabilities, organizational and communication skills

Specialties: 
• Enterprise information management: Information quality, data governance and stewardship, master data management, business intelligence, business process improvement
• Development: Web and application development, relational database design and development
• Planning: Budget and resource planning, agile and waterfall project management, team development and leadership
• Tools and Applications: Collibra, Tableau, MS Visio, MS Project, Premiere, Photoshop

George Firican 💡

It was a pleasure delivering my presentation on “Data Governance in the Age of AI” at The University of British Columbia’s Symposium 2025.

Great sessions, networking and knowledge sharing all around. 

Thank you again to the PrISM team for the invite and for putting together the month-long series of events to celebrate Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

Let’s keep putting the Lights On Data, Privacy, and Security!

—
Special thanks to Trevor Carpenter, Larry Carson, Zoe Armer and everyone involved behind the scenes to make this happen.

Thank you also to all the wonderful speakers and presenters such as Scott Baker, Maliheh Oliver, Salman Shahid, Dr. Gail Murphy, Mark Montgomery, Gráinne McElroy, Gurm Dhugga, Mawuena G., Waii Chow, Julie Le Hegarat, PhD, Tim Szigeti  and many others.

#data #privacy #AI

💡 Award Winning Data Governance Leader | Content Creator & Influencer | Founder of LightsOnData | Podcast Host: Lights On Data Show | LinkedIn Top Voice

What if “data governance” wasn’t a checklist, but a way to ADVANCE your organization?
Here’s the 7-pillar framework I use to make it simple 👇

A – Accountability: Assign clear owners so decisions actually get made
D – Definitions: Create a shared language through glossaries and standards
V – Value Alignment: Tie every governance effort to business goals
A – Adaptability: Use governance as your engine for change
N – Necessity: Start where the value is highest and scale from there
C – Collaboration: Build cross-functional trust and shared goals
E – Education: Empower people to see governance as an enabler

If you could only strengthen one pillar right now, which one would move your organization forward the fastest?

And if you want to go deeper, my Practical Data Governance: Implementation course walks through how to apply each one (includes templates and examples): 
https://lnkd.in/gwBcYQg5

Let’s keep putting the Lights On Data.
-George Firican

#data #datagovernance #datastrategy

7 pillars of data governance

Great energy, amazing sessions, wonderful networking here at the Big Data & Analytics West Summit.

It was a pleasure catching up with the local data community, seeing old friends, and meeting new ones.

Let’s keep putting the Lights On Data!
-George Firican  

#data #ai

No alternative text description for this image

What are your thoughts on AI generated videos or art?
Here’s a good example, in my opinion, on what happens when human creativity and AI-powered implementation come together.

Credit: Le Voyage (Paint World 28)


#ai #artificialintelligence

Tomorrow I’ll be at the Big Data & Analytics West Summit, and there’s something I’m genuinely looking forward to:

I love conversations that bring clarity to where data and AI are headed next, and IBM is putting a spotlight on a topic I care deeply about:
 👉 How organizations can build reliable AI by strengthening their enterprise data foundation.

A major highlight for me will be hearing Paul Zikopoulos share practical lessons and thoughtful perspectives on:
✅ Preparing enterprise data for agentic AI applications
✅ Combining retrieval approaches to improve AI reliability
✅ Real-world strategies for scaling trusted AI across teams 

Paul consistently brings insights that elevate how we think about data and AI, and I’m excited to learn from his session.

These are the kinds of insights I’m excited to learn from, explore, and share.
And of course the discussions, networking, and the exhibitor lounge where there’s always something new to discover.

You can explore the agenda here: https://lnkd.in/gkDXmrnq

If you’re attending #BDW2025, please let me know as I’d be happy to connect.
You’ll find me capturing moments throughout the day, and yes, I’ll also be hanging out at IBM’s booth as their #ibmpartner for the event.

#data #IBMCanada

IBM Big Data Analytics West George Firican

If you want to climb the ladder quicker in your data management profession, checkout my courses at https://LightsOnData.com 

On another note, what type of medium do you like to consume content in?

A) Video
B) Audio only
C) Text
D) Memes 😁
E) Other

#data #datamanagement

Oh wow, what a day!
Excited to have been part of the Big Data Analytics West Summit in Vancouver as an #ibmpartner for the event.

Grateful for the energizing discussions and sessions, especially the great session on preparing enterprise data for AI from Paul Zikopoulos (VP, IBM Technology Sales).

It was great catching up with fellow data professionals and having a day of learning.
Thank you again IBM! 

#AI #IBMCanada #data

I took a photo of my latte this morning.
A simple image…
Completely unstructured, yet full of information if you know how to look at it.

Here is the interesting part…
Unstructured data is everywhere in our organizations:
- Images
- Screenshots
- Videos
- PDFs
- Logs
- Messages

All of them packed with value
But without metadata, that value stays hidden.

Metadata tells us:
- Who created the content
- When it was captured
- What it represents
- How it should be used
- Where it fits in our ecosystem

Suddenly an image is not just an image.
It becomes
- Searchable
- Discoverable
- Reliable

This is why unstructured data is such a huge opportunity.
The insights are already there.
Metadata is what turns those insights into something we can trust and act on.

Curious to hear from you:
Where do you see the biggest metadata gaps today?
- Search
- Ownership
- Retention
- Context
- Priority
Or something else entirely

Let’s keep putting the Lights On Data and its Metadata!
-George Firican 

#data #metadata #dataquality

As organizations deploy AI, how should master data management and data governance programs evolve, or be reinvented, to stay relevant?

Join George Firican and Bruno Billy, President of APGAR North America, and Ken Brown, Head of Customer Success as they will explore how MDM and Data Governance are being redefined for a world shaped by machine learning, generative models, and data products.  
Drawing on APGAR’s experience helping organizations define, build, and run their enterprise data programs, Bruno and Ken will share how AI is transforming the purpose and practice of master data management and data governance.
Tune in to hear how leading organizations are using AI to strengthen their MDM and Data Governance foundations. And why these disciplines could be even more important than before.

#datagovernance #AI #MDM

How Is AI reinventing MDM and Data Governance?

taplio

The Battle

Harpreet Sahota 🥑

George Firican 💡

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Performance ScoreHarpreet Sahota 🥑's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Harpreet Sahota 🥑

George Firican 💡

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Harpreet Sahota 🥑's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreHarpreet Sahota 🥑's LinkedIn Performance