Catalog & Cocktails: The Honest, No-BS Data Podcast

Juan and Tim are back for a LIVE episode with Nachiket Mehta, an experienced data leader who has lived and breathed the “shift left”. In this episode we unpack how ontology, events and culture unlock enterprise AI.  We discuss the gap between what your systems think is happening and what's actually happening on the ground and dive into real world examples: a trailer with expensive...

This is the takeaway episode with Nachiket Mehta, an experienced data leader who has lived and breathed the “shift left”. In this episode we will unpack how ontology, events and culture unlock enterprise AI. We discuss why your ontologist needs to visit the fulfillment center, how to shift data teams from afterthought to proactive partner, and why the five why's matter more than your t...

Tim and Juan unpack why Vaibhav Gupta, co-creator of BAML, states that most agentic AI code out there is  dumb . It's ugly, fragile, and built by people who've never had to wrestle with probabilistic systems before. But here's the thing: we've seen this movie before. Remember when building websites was painful? Then jQuery showed up... then React... then Tailwind. Abstraction always wins. It...

This is the takeaway episode with Vaibhav Gupta, co-creator of BAML, where we unpack why most agentic AI code out there is dumb . If you like what you hear, you should listen to the full episode.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Juan and Tim grab a beer and rant about decision intelligence and context graphs, MCP vs Skills, and how companies really have a work problem (not a data/AI problem) and what is the maturity model to get that work done See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tired of executives breathlessly asking "what's our AI strategy?" while your data team drowns in 1,000 dashboards that nobody uses? In this episode, Juan and Tim cut through the noise with Juan Gorricho a data and analytics executive with more than 25 years of experience delivering business value at TD Bank, Visa, The Walt Disney Company We cover: Why do data leaders keep building vanity metrics i...

This is the takeaway episode of our chat with Juan Gorricho, a data and analytics executive with more than 25 years of experience delivering business value at TD Bank, Visa, The Walt Disney Company. We cover: Why do data leaders keep building vanity metrics instead of business value? How do you go from being an "order-taking reporting team" to a trusted decision intelligence partner? And why does...

Juan and Tim got together for a beer to rant about what's on their mind, the latest in the data world and share Data Day Texas takeaways See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr. Irina Steenbeek is a data practitioner, and author of multiple books including Data Lineage from a Business Perspective. In this episode, Juan and Tim discuss with Irina the practical realities of implementing data lineage and its relationship to Data and AI governance. For example, do you really need to have a comprehensive technical lineage? A lot of honest no-bs nuggets in this episode! See...

This is the takeaway episode with Dr. Irina Steenbeek, a data practitioner, and author of multiple books including Data Lineage from a Business Perspective. In this episode, Juan and Tim discuss with Irina the practical realities of implementing data lineage and its relationship to Data and AI governance.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ontologies are suddenly everywhere but they didn’t come out of nowhere. In this episode, Juan and Tim chat with Professor Oscar Corcho, who has been doing ontology engineering since the early 2000s (check out his book Ontological Engineering from 2003), to demystify what ontologies actually are, where they came from, and why that history still matters today. If you’re new to ontologies...

This is the takeaway episode of our conversation with Professor Oscar Corcho, who has been doing ontology engineering since the early 2000s where we demystify what ontologies actually are, where they came from, and why that history still matters today.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Juan and Tim rant about Context Graphs and categorizations of how companies work with data. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tim and Juan chat with Tony Baer and Matt Housley, hosts of the “It’s About Data” podcast about what are the trends they are seeing with the start of 2026. We talked about AI magical thinking, Agentic architectures, Graphs, careers and much more.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the takeaway episode about the chat that Tim and Juan have with Tony Baer and Matt Housley, hosts of the “It’s About Data” podcast about what are the trends they are seeing with the start of 2026. We talked about AI magical thinking, Agentic architectures, Graphs, careers and much more. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the opening episode of 2026, Juan and Tim discuss what happened in the data world during 2025 and what they are looking forward to in 2026. We discuss semantics, ontologies, context, tool/vendor consolidation, data teams, platform convergence, governance, and of course... AI! In the episode we mention the talk we gave at BigDataLDN "Why Data Teams Must Lead the Next AI Revolution" which you can...

Tim and Juan chat with Lena Hall, the Senior Director of Developer Relations at Akamai, and an AI practitioner where we dive into what it means to build AI agents.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the takeaway episode with Lena Hall, the Senior Director of Developer Relations at Akamai, and an AI practitioner where we dive into what it means to build AI agents. If you like what you heard, you should check out the full episode! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tim and Juan chat with Arielle Rolland, a Data & AI Strategy Manager and Data Product Enthusiast and dive into how many teams are overcomplicating data products. We discuss what makes a good data product initiative and a good data product. Is a waterfall approach actually that bad? And how to balance between strategy and delivery. If you are scratching your head about data products and feel lo...

This is the takeaway episode with Arielle Rolland, a Data & AI Strategy Manager and Data Product Enthusiast where we dive into how many teams are overcomplicating data products. We discuss what makes a good data product initiative and a good data product. Is a waterfall approach actually that bad? And how to balance between strategy and delivery. If you are scratching your head about data prod...

Tim and Juan chat with Danielle Crop is the EVP Digital Strategy & Alliances at WNS, former Chief Data Officer of Albertson and also the former Chief Data Officer of American Express about how data leaders and practitioners need to be thinking about AI and how to focus on what truly provides business value. We get into who will be building models, and how roles will be evolving in organization...

This is the takeaway episode with Danielle Crop is the EVP Digital Strategy & Alliances at WNS, former Chief Data Officer of Albertson and also the former Chief Data Officer of American Express where we chat about how data leaders and practitioners need to be thinking about AI and how to focus on what truly provides business value, who will be building models, and how roles will be evolving in...

Jessica Zuñiga is the Head of AI Readiness & Data Governance at BlueYeti and one of the most important voices in data governance in Mexico and Latin America. Tim and Juan discuss with Jessica about when data and AI governance truly becomes a business enabler and how to use frameworks like DAMA effectively.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the takeaway episode with Jessica Zuñiga is the Head of AI Readiness & Data Governance at BlueYeti and one of the most important voices in data governance in Mexico and Latin America. Tim and Juan discuss with Jessica about when data and AI governance truly becomes a business enabler and how to use frameworks like DAMA effectively. If you like what you heard, you should check ou...

A few months ago, Netflix engineering published a blog post titled “Model Once, Represent Everywhere: UDA (Unified Data Architecture)” which is an RDF knowledge graph connecting domain models to data through mappings, all grounded in-house metamodel. In this episode, Tim and Juan sit down with Alex Bertails to understand the motivations behind UDA, how it’s implemented and the va...