Open to Collaborate | Storyteller | Lead Data Engineer@Wavicle| Linkedin Top Voice 2024 | Globant | Linkedin Learning Instructor | 2xGCP & AWS Certified | LICAP'2022

Data Engineer with 7+ years of experience working on data engineering, analysis, and modelling projects for various domains, such as banking, healthcare, sales, and e-commerce. I leverage my strong statistical and analytical ability to explore business ideas and provide innovative solutions. 

Skilled with technologies and strong intellect with enthusiasm as an avid learner with challenging opportunities. I’m working as a LinkedIn Learning Instructor to bring change as a data evangelist.

Post Graduated in Master of Technology in Data Science and Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani in 2023, where I learned advanced concepts and techniques in data science and engineering, machine learning, cloud computing, and visualization. 

I hold multiple certifications in GCP, AWS, and Azure, and I enjoy working with cloud technologies and big data platforms.

I am passionate about data science and women empowerment, and I have been recognized as the 
- Linkedin Top Voice 2025, 2024
- Data Science and Women Empowerment Thought Leader by Global AI Hub. 

I am also a proud participant of the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program 2022, where I share my insights and experiences with the data science community. 

I am open to collaborate and share ideas, or explore various opportunities in the data field.

Pooja Jain

The Great Orange Processing Wars: ETL vs ELT vs EtLT

Three factories. Three philosophies. 
One truth most data engineers miss.

𝗘𝗧𝗟 — The Juice Bar
Squeeze before you store. Quality-first, schema-first, compliance-first.

Works perfectly until your business logic changes — then you re-run everything.
Best for: fraud detection, classical ML, regulated industries.
Hidden cost: you can't un-squeeze juice. Raw fidelity is gone forever.
These need strict compliance and clean, pre-processed data before loading.

𝗘𝗟𝗧 — The Warehouse
Store everything raw. Transform strictly on demand. Pure flexibility.

Works perfectly until nobody knows what's in Aisle 47 anymore.
Best for: ad-hoc analytics, LLM training data, fast-moving startups.
Hidden cost: "we'll clean it later" becomes never. Swamps, not lakes.
Here, raw data is loaded first, then transformed as needed—great for massive, unstructured, fast-changing datasets.

 𝗘𝘁𝗟𝗧 — The Gourmet Factory
The lowercase t changes everything.

E — Extract faithfully
t —  Fix only what must be fixed early (PII masking, dedup, type casting)
L — Load into columnar storage
T — Transform richly at query time, per use case

The small t handles what belongs at ingestion: compliance, deduplication, partitioning.
The big T handles what belongs at consumption: business logic, ML features, aggregations.
Best for: RAG pipelines, LLM training, GDPR systems, real-time personalization.
Used, when different data types need different strategies.

The real choice isn’t just technical; it’s about timing.
→ ETL commits early.
→ ELT commits late.
→ EtLT commits minimally early — but maximally late.

That tradeoff shows up everywhere in system design.
Eager vs lazy. 
Compiled vs interpreted. 
Normalized vs denormalized

💡 The Modern Data Engineering Playbook
Stop asking: "ETL or ELT?"
Instead, start asking: "What fuels my AI use case?"
🍊 Traditional ML? → Serve up that perfectly squeezed juice (ETL)
🥤 Exploratory AI? → Keep the whole fruits on hand, blend them later (ELT)
⚡ AI at Scale? → Prepare smartly, create a variety (EtLT)

🎯 The Truth Bomb
AI is like the promised land—bringing automation, intelligence, and scalability.
But without the right pipeline? It’s just chaos.
The best data engineers don’t play favorites.
They choose the right tool for the right need.

What’s your philosophy on data pipelines? 👇
Share it in the comments!

🔍 𝗔–𝗭 𝗼𝗳 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴: 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗨𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗹𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗽!

In a world of limited time but unlimited tools, 
Data Engineers are expected to master everything — from ingestion to orchestration, from storage to serving, and from DevOps to AI.

The demand is booming. 
The ecosystem is evolving.
And the lifecycle? 
It’s massive.

📚 Sharing the A–Z snapshot of the tools & frameworks every data engineer should know:-
 
 𝗔 – Airflow, Avro, AWS
 𝗕 – BigQuery, Beam, Bigtable
 𝗖 – Cassandra, Cloudera, Couchbase
 𝗗 – Databricks, dbt, Dagster
 𝗘 – Elasticsearch
 𝗙 – Flink, Fivetran, Fault Tolerance
 𝗚 – Git, Glue, Grafana
 𝗛 – Hadoop, Hive, Hudi
 𝗜 – Iceberg, InfluxDB
 𝗝 – Jenkins, Jupyter, JSON
 𝗞 – Kafka, Kubernetes, Kestra
 𝗟 – Looker, Lakehouse, Luigi
 𝗠 – MongoDB, Metabase, Matillion
 𝗡 – NiFi, Neo4j
 𝗢 – OLTP/OLAP, Observability
 𝗣  – Python, PostgreSQL, Prefect
 𝗤 – Query Optimization, Qlikview
 𝗥 – Redshift, RabbitMQ, Redis
 𝗦 – Spark, Snowflake, SQL
 𝗧 – Terraform, Tableau, Talend
 𝗨 – Unix, Unity Catalog
 𝗩 – Versioning, Vertica
 𝗪 – Workflow Management, Warehousing
 𝗫 – XML, XGBoost
 𝗬 – YAML, YARN
 𝗭 – Z-Ordering, ZooKeeper

📍 Bonus: Don’t miss emerging trends like Data Mesh, LLMs, and Generative AI reshaping the future of data engineering.

👉 What tools or concepts would you add to this list?
Drop your favorite in the comments and let’s build the most complete A–Z cheat sheet together!

#Data #Engineering #ETL #BigData #Cloud #AI

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The Iceberg nobody shows you about Data Engineering!

Data engineers don't surface level things like,
Spark and Kafka and Snowflake
$150k salary dreams
Building ML pipelines
Modern data stack vibes

Here’s how the life of a ℝ𝔼𝔸𝕃 𝔻𝔸𝕋𝔸 𝔼ℕ𝔾𝕀ℕ𝔼𝔼ℝ looks like  😮‍💨
(The brutal truth nobody tells you)

1️⃣ 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿: “I’ll master Spark, Kafka, and Snowflake in 3 months and land a $150K job!”
2️⃣ 𝗝𝗼𝗯 𝗛𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿: “Why do they want 5 years experience for an ‘entry-level’ position? And what’s a ‘take-home coding challenge’?”
3️⃣ 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗖𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲: “I spent 40 hours building their pipeline assignment. They ghosted me after the final round.”
4️⃣ 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿: “The production data is nothing like the tutorial datasets. Why is everything broken and undocumented?”
5️⃣ 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿: “I’m not building ML models. I’m fixing CSV parsing errors and explaining why dashboards show different numbers.”
6️⃣ 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿: “60% of my time is meetings about data governance. The other 40% is arguing with stakeholders about SLAs.”
7️⃣ 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿: “The pipeline that worked for 2 years suddenly failed. Nobody knows why. The person who built it left 6 months ago.”
8️⃣ 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗳𝗳 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿: “I spend more time in Slack explaining why data is 2 hours late than actually engineering. Also, our AWS bill is $50K this month.”
9️⃣ 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁: “I designed the perfect architecture. Nobody followed it. Everything runs on Excel sheets shared via email. I’ve accepted this.”
🔟 𝗖𝗧𝗢 (𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿): “We need to be more data-driven. Also, can you build this by Friday? And make it real-time. Budget is $500.”

The real job description: 
• 20% building cool stuff 
• 80% debugging, meetings, and existential crisis

What they don’t tell you:
→ You’ll become a CSV therapist
→ “Data quality” means fixing the same broken pipeline every week
→ The hardest part isn’t the tech—it’s managing expectations
→ It's about business chaos and technical constraints
→ Data quality isn't a tool. It's an ownership issue
→ Most failures aren't technical. They're communicational
→ Scalability is easy to achieve. Designing and enforcing are two different things
→ The more senior you get, the less you're involved

The most challenging production bug is about stakeholder misalignment.
"Real-time" data usually means we didn't plan for this. 

Data engineers, put differently, are part therapists, detectives, and negotiators.

And despite the 2AM alerts, data pipeline issues and never ending slack threads —

It’s a privilege because in the end, 
the pipeline runs, 
the dashboard matches,
… And leadership finally trusts the numbers. Pure magic ✨

But here’s the thing… Despite all this, we still love what we do.

Do you remember, when did you automate your first pipeline?

Dear Data Engineers — meet your new coworker. It's not human.
Monday, 9:47 AM. Analyst pings: "orders_final is missing 10K rows."

You: Open Airflow. Query source. Compare counts. Find schema drift. Manual backfill. 45 minutes. Annoyed.
The Agent: Queries metadata → checks logs → detects schema drift → generates fix → asks "Run this?" 90 seconds. Done.

Here's the analogy that makes it click:

AI Agents = Self-modifying Airflow DAGs
𝖸𝗈𝗎 𝗁𝖺𝗋𝖽𝖼𝗈𝖽𝖾: 𝖾𝗑𝗍𝗋𝖺𝖼𝗍() → 𝗍𝗋𝖺𝗇𝗌𝖿𝗈𝗋𝗆() → 𝗅𝗈𝖺𝖽()

Agents do:
𝗐𝗁𝗂𝗅𝖾 𝗇𝗈𝗍 𝗌𝗈𝗅𝗏𝖾𝖽:
  𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗄() → 𝗉𝗂𝖼𝗄_𝗍𝗈𝗈𝗅() → 𝖾𝗑𝖾𝖼𝗎𝗍𝖾() → 𝖾𝗏𝖺𝗅𝗎𝖺𝗍𝖾()

Your DAG just became sentient and stopped asking for help.

The good news? You already have 80% of the skills.

Your Python scripts ARE the tools. You just need to make them agent-callable — add clear docstrings, wrap them as functions, expose them to the loop. 

The real shift isn't technical. It's mental.

Before: you were the pipeline. 
After: you design the system that runs the pipeline.
Before: 2 AM Slack pings wake you up. 
After: the agent handles it. You review the decision over morning coffee.

You're not being replaced. You're being scaled.
One DE + three agents = a five-person team's output.
Agents handle 2 AM fires. You architect system!

Working with AI Agents? Here are a few rules I always find myself returning to.

Do's:
✅ Debug it weekly? Automate it. Agents thrive on tools, not just shared knowledge.
✅ Document as if the reader knows nothing. Trust me, the agent definitely doesn’t.
✅ Record every decision made by agents. When things go wrong, you’ll want a clear trail.

Don'ts:
❌ Granting write access on Day 1. Start with read-only. Trust is something you build over time.
❌ Skipping human checkpoints on critical operations. Always gate anything that changes data.
❌ Assuming agents understand your context. They don’t. Make it crystal clear.

What’s the takeaway?
Agents reflect your habits—both the good and the bad.
So, build cleanly. Document thoroughly. Keep communication open where it counts.

You were building systems for humans,
Now build them for Agents.
This post is inspired by Vu Trinh's article on AI Agents. Find the link below. 👇

🌊 A fish thinks water needs it. Water thinks it needs the fish.

Then the net drops.

The fish gets captured. 
The water? It simply flows through.

𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝗔𝗜 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆.

Raw data thinks AI can't survive without it. 
AI systems think any data is worth training on.

Then comes the real test — production.

And suddenly:

🐟 Ungovernated data gets 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗱 in compliance failures
🐟 Unobserved pipelines get 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁 in silent corruption
🐟 Poor quality features get 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗱 by model drift
But the water — the Governance framework — just flows right through.

It was never enslaved by bad data.

Here's the truth nobody tells you:
Most organizations treat data like fish — abundant, assumed, and disposable.

The ones building real AI treat data like whales.

Whales can't be netted…
They're too governed, too observable, too quality-conscious to be trapped by broken systems.

The 3 pillars that separate fish from whales:

⚙️ 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗚𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 = The ocean itself (Ownership, lineage, policy — the environment data lives in)

👁️ 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗢𝗯𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 = Knowing where the whale is (Freshness, volume, schema, distribution — real-time awareness)

✅ 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 = The whale's immune system (Completeness, accuracy, consistency — what makes it survive production)

The ocean doesn’t mourn the fish lost to the net.
It only protects what chose to become sovereign.
Your data can survive capture — or it can command the ocean.

𝐴𝐼 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠𝑛’𝑡 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑏𝑎𝑑 𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑠. 𝐴𝐼 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑟𝑔𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑧𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑓𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑠.

💬 Are you fishing for data or raising whales?
#AI #Data

Communication is the key - From raw data to profitable outcomes!

It’s the TRUST,
With CLEAN outcomes,
To deliver solutions with IMPACT!

…. That helps you refine — Raw data into reliable solutions to deliver PROFIT.

Most data and AI teams are sitting on a treasure trove — and they might not even realize it.  

What separates a $1M budget line from a $10M+ profit powerhouse? 
It’s not just your algorithm or your tech stack. It’s all about how you navigate through these five stages:  

1️⃣ RAW DATA = The Ore It’s messy, unstructured, and often trapped in databases that no one fully trusts. Every company has it, but very few know how to refine it.  

2️⃣ SORTED = Refined Ingots Now we’re talking! Cleaned, labeled, and structured — think Metal, Copper, Gold, Silver. It’s got form, but just having form doesn’t mean it’s market-ready.  

3️⃣ ENGINEERED AI = The Component This is where your machine learning models, logic layers, and automation triggers come into play. Your engineers have crafted some impressive parts, but they’re still just that — parts. 

4️⃣ INTEGRATED SOLUTION = The Product Costs drop ↓ and revenues rise ↑. Now you’ve got something the market can actually USE. This is where the $10M+ potential lies.  

5️⃣ EXPLAINED STORY = The ROI “We transformed from a $1M cost center into a $10M profit machine.” This is the kind of statement that gets budgets approved, deals sealed, and careers launched.  

Here’s the hard truth:  
Most engineers stop at Stage 3, 
while many managers only get to Stage 4. 

The true winners — the leaders who really excel — are the ones who thrive at Stage 5.  

Keep this in mind:
Communication transforms beans into drinks.
Trust transforms drinks into habits.
Impact transforms habits into profits.

Stop building houses. 
Start constructing Profit Factories.  
That’s the 10X leap.  

♻️ Save this if you’re leading a #data or #AI team. 
💬 Which stage is your team currently stuck in? Let us know in the comments!

When DATA GOVERNANCE comes as an afterthought, you're literally screwed!

Agree?
Ignoring foundations that builds data trust can be painful.

Someone once asked me — Pooja, do you really think a simple data pipeline could cost such a huge bill?

Absolutely, it can. 
Data solution that is easy to represent.
But, here's the common pitfall many teams encounter:

→ The pipeline looks pristine on a whiteboard
→ It’s easy to draw. Easy to demo.
→ But scaling it? That’s a whole different ballgame. Trusting it? Even harder.

Here's what nobody tells you right off the systems:

📌 A sleek diagram ≠ a dependable data system
📌 Quick data movement ≠ accurate data movement
📌 More pipelines without governance = more confusion, not more clarity

What does DATA GOVERNANCE truly offers the teams?

✅ Everyone knows "who’s responsible" for what data
✅ No more debates over "which version is the right one?"
✅ Teams spend less time troubleshooting — and more time making "decisions"
✅ Your data builds "trust". Both internally and externally.

What’s the real price of skipping it?

It’s not just about the money.
It’s about team frustration.
It’s about flawed decisions.
And it’s about data that no one trusts.

Governance isn’t just a tech problem.
It’s a people + process + discipline problem.

Build the foundations before you start building floors.

Start small, but make it intentional.
Be honest, don't let a chat with the CFO at 9 AM cause chaos.
The $1150K surprise bill on a Monday morning can be thrilling over the week 😬

Here’s are some amazing folks to follow and learn more on Data and AI governance —

What's your perspective data leaders? 
George Firican 
John Wernfeldt 
Clare Kitching 
Charlotte Ledoux  
Dylan Anderson  
Piotr Czarnas 

What’s the one governance gap your team keeps revisiting?
Share it below 👇

George Firican

💬 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

Director, Data Governance & Business Intelligence

George Firican 💡

Pst…there’s a raffle coming up for a chance to snag a cool grand prize!

Join me at Data & Analytics After Hours on Monday, March 9th, 5:00–6:30 PM in the Exhibitor Showcase at the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit! 

I’ll be there with the wonderful:

💡Kate Strachnyi 
💡SCOTT TAYLOR  
💡Ravit Jain 
💡Aditi Jain  
💡Andreas Welsch 

Let me know if you can join.

Still need to register? Use code DATA2 to save $450 off registration: https://lnkd.in/gZh6rfQC

#GartnerDA #DataCommunity #DataSummit

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

How do you scale AI without increasing risk at the same time?
Well…

Many organizations are still trying to figure this out.

Moving AI into production isn’t just a technology challenge.
It’s an AI and data governance challenge.
A risk challenge.

And often a coordination challenge between data, data science, and risk teams.

If this question is on your mind, this session at the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit should be an interesting one to attend.

Join Ali Can Toprak (Enterprise Data Governance Manager at ExxonMobil) and Felix Van de Maele (CEO & Co-Founder of Collibra) as they discuss how data management is evolving into a unified AI governance discipline.

What you’ll learn:
✅ How to bridge the gap between data, data science, and risk teams
✅ The secret to building a shared semantic context to scale AI
✅ How ExxonMobil strengthens accountability across the enterprise

⏱️ 1:15-1:45 PM 
📍 Sun 4, Level 2

See you there!

#data #AI #datagovernance #partnerpost

Collibra Gartner 2026 George Firican Felix Van de Maele

There was a large exodus from ChatGPT lately.
So which is your go-to LLM?

Graphic Source: Amit Rawal  

#llm #AI

Italy is known for many things: culture, incredible food, beautiful landscapes.
But during my visit, I also discovered something else:

Innovation.

At the Italian Pavilion I met Donato De Ieso (Co-Founder and CEO of dillium), who showed me what they are building with spatial computing and the Apple Vision Pro.

One example that stood out: creating interactive 3D models from simple photos.
Imagine being able to:

✅ Take a photo of a product and instantly turn it into a 3D model
✅ Zoom in, rotate it, or even explore inside it
✅ Break it apart piece by piece to understand how it works

This has huge implications for training, maintenance, design, and product visualization. Instead of transporting large equipment or complex machinery, you can interact with it digitally in a shared spatial environment.

It felt a bit like stepping into a "Tony Stark style" interface.

What I find fascinating is how technologies like spatial computing move us from just looking at data and models on a screen to actually interacting with them.

And that opens the door to entirely new ways of learning, collaborating, and making decisions.

Sometimes innovation shows up in the places you least expect it. Even between a cafe latte and a plate of pasta in Italy.

What industries do you think will benefit the most from spatial computing?

#innovation #VR #technology

Would you like one of these modular phones/ gadgets?

Why do you think these aren’t taking off?

Note: video not mine

#technology #tech #gadget

One of the most valuable things you get from the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit is perspective.

Not just from the sessions.
From the people.

At this summit there are hundreds of conversations happening between data leaders, architects, analysts, and governance professionals.

Some will be about AI.
Some about data platforms.
Some about governance and trust.

But many of the most interesting insights is also happening in the hallways, between sessions, and during those spontaneous meetups with people who care about the same challenges you do.

These are the conversations that spark ideas.
The ones that turn into collaborations months later.
The ones that remind you how strong and passionate this data community really is.

Looking forward to reconnecting with friends and meeting new people over the next few days.

If you are here as well, come say hello.

What is one topic you are most excited to discuss or learn about this week?

#Data #AI #GartnerDA

At the Zoho Analytics booth, we had a really interesting discussion about where analytics is heading across industries and…

…what it takes to turn data into decisions that actually shape how organizations operate.

And of course, there was a live demo.
It’s always fascinating to see how it approaches the journey from data → agentic insight → decision.

I also had the chance to sit down with Sailas Sundaram, Head of Product Strategy at Zoho Analytics, for a conversation about the evolving role of analytics and what teams should be thinking about as AI becomes more embedded in how we work with data.

(The full interview will be coming next week so watch out this space.)

I’m curious:
“What do you most want to see when a vendor gives an analytics demo at a conference?”

#data #analytics #AI

How many of you have run into these problems when trying to move AI into production?

⚠️ Governance and access issues
⚠️ Missing business context
⚠️ Data that can’t be trusted

This is where many promising AI initiatives stall.
The model works. The pilot looks great.

But connecting AI to real enterprise production data turns out to be the hard part.

If you’re here at Gartner D & A Summit 2026, this session tackles that exact challenge:
“AI Has a Production Data Problem. Here’s How Teams Are Solving It”

⏱️ Monday, March 9 | 1:40 - 2:00 PM
📍 Theater 1, Exhibit Showcase

The session explores how organizations are moving AI into production with Simba Intelligence, giving AI governed access to enterprise data without copying data, breaking pipelines, or losing control.

If you're curious how teams are solving this, it’s worth attending.

And if you'd like to start or continue the conversation, visit Simba Intelligence from insightsoftware at Booth 329.

#data #artificialintelligence #AI #partnerpost

Did you know the Inca civilization managed one of the largest empires in the Americas without a written language?

Instead, they used quipu. A system of knotted cords that allowed them to record numbers, track resources, and manage logistics across thousands of miles of roads.

All of that… centuries before spreadsheets, databases, or dashboards.

Sipping a cafe latte in an old Inca town made me think about how humans have always tried to bring order to information. Whether through knots in rope or modern data platforms, the goal has not changed much.

Understand what you have.
Organize it well.
Use it to make better decisions.

Different tools. Same mission.

Sometimes data history goes back further than we think.

Let’s keep putting the LightsOnData.
-George Firican 

#data #history

At conferences, I usually ask vendors one question:
“How does this help shape a decision?”

Not a prettier or quicker dashboard. A decision.

This year, I’m curious how analytics platforms are handling the shift toward AI-assisted and agentic experiences.

When a platform talks about AI-assisted or agentic analytics, I’m especially interested in:
✅ How it sits on top of a real data foundation
✅ How the semantic layer holds up
✅ How it helps shape decisions in practice 

That’s the lens I’m bringing to the Gartner floor this year.

Zoho Analytics is at Booth 428 and offering on-site demos, so if you’re evaluating BI or analytics platforms, it’s a chance to explore how they’re approaching this shift.

You can book a demo slot here:
https://lnkd.in/ekEpps8g 
Now I’m genuinely curious:

When you visit analytics booths at Gartner, what do you actually want to see demonstrated?

#data #analytics #partnerpost

Turning retail data into real business results can be a tough problem, but the solution isn’t more tech. It starts with grounding your data strategy in business outcomes and building from there.

In this article, I break down how retail teams can move from disconnected dashboards and siloed analytics to a practical, value-focused data strategy. 

Key lessons include: 
1️⃣ Start with the business problem not the tools + Clarify the goal first (like reducing churn or improving customer experience)
2️⃣ Empower better questions across teams so insights actually lead to action
3️⃣ Put data governance in place early to build trust in your numbers
4️⃣ Balance pace with capacity so you deliver wins without burning out
5️⃣ Build data literacy and ownership so everyone speaks the same language 

I also cover where the retail data push usually starts, how AI fits in practically (not hype), and what future trends are shaping smarter operations. 

If you work in retail or data and want strategies that actually move the needle, I hope this will help you:
https://lnkd.in/gEubetHW

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Pooja Jain

George Firican 💡

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taplio

The Battle

Pooja Jain

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);}Pooja Jain's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScorePooja Jain's LinkedIn Performance