Ken's Nearest Neighbors

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Jess Ramos. Jess is a Senior Data Analyst at Crunchbase, a LinkedIn Learning Instructor, and a content creator in the data space. She has a bachelor's degree in Math, Spanish, and Business and a master's in Business Analytics. She has focused most of her career in the FinTech data industry, and she's super passionate about impacting the world...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Ruchi Bhatia. She is a 3x kaggle grandmaster and grad student at Carnegie Mellon studying Information Systems Management. Ruchi is also a fellow Z by HP global data science ambassador. In this episode we talk about her experience becoming a kaggle grandmaster, how she was able to kickstart her career through sharing her work, and the implication of ChatGPT...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Serg Masis. Serg is a Data Scientist at Syngenta, a leading agribusiness company with a mission to improve global food security, and a bestselling author of "Interpretable Machine Learning with Python", and upcoming "DIY AI". Before that, he had a prior career in entrepreneurship, web and app development, and analytics for over fifteen y...

This is Michael's second appearance on the podcast! Today we talked about why he left his most recent job in big tech, diversifying income and skills, and his crazy nomadic travel lifestyle.  Michael's Links: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgalarnyk/ Medium - https://medium.com/@GalarnykMichael YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@UC2QvKS5O6QhqaZi4LyAEUnA  Parallel Domain (Bl...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Greg Hogg. Greg was a statistics major from the university of waterloo turned YouTuber with a love for teaching and machine learning and deep learning models. In this episode we learn about Greg's experience with Waterloo's unique co-op structure and how he found himself at the intersection of education, content, and data science. Greg's Link...

Be sure to check out Theo's Session at GTC! You can register here: https://nvda.ws/3XQRqoF  Win a RTX 4080 or DLI credits here: https://forms.gle/htEV2dDgk11t1btr9 Today I had the pleasure of Interviewing Theo Viel. Theo is a French 3x Kaggle Grandmaster (Competitions, Notebooks, Discussions) and part of the Kaggle Grandmaster of NVIDIA (KGMON) team. He’s mostly interested in Deep Learning -...

This Week I had the privilege of interviewing Tina Huang and Zach Wilson. We were roommates for the month in Salt Lake City. Both have been previous guests on the show. In this episode we talk about the future of tech jobs, solopreneurship, and their reasons for leaving San Francisco  (and now going back) Tina's Links: YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TinaHuang1 Newsletter - https://tinahua...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Tabb. Chris is the Co-Founder & CCO at LEIT DATA. In this episode he schools me on the modern data stack and gives me a great look into the history of data and data management. He started his career in the Business Intelligence/Analytics domain 30 years ago. Beginning at Cognos in the 90’s working in the back office before becoming an expert in al...

David “Gonzo” González is an Executive and Data Science professional with well over a decade of experience putting AI and ML into production in mission-critical systems. He co-founded Zeff.ai, acquired in 2020 by DataRobot where he succeeded in bringing a jobs-to-be-done perspective to focus product strategy. He led Zeff.ai as CEO and pioneered transactionally authored training and inference on mu...

Zach Quinn is a data engineer and writer with a master's degree in Data Science and an undergraduate degree in journalism. During his, admittedly, short broadcast media career, Zach worked in radio, television and digital media. At age 20, he worked as a producer for his favorite morning radio show in Baltimore, which he left abruptly after getting an opportunity to intern at the Tonight Show...

Matt Harrison is a renowned author, python / pandas enthusiast, corporate trainer, and meetup organizer. I had the pleasure of speaking with him this week about how he hosting meetups is his biggest hack as an introvert, how he hedges his career with network insurance, why skin in the game is important for learning, and about the future skills we will need as new tools like Chat GPT enter the play...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Jay Feng. Jay is the founder of interview query, a platform that helps you prepare for data science interviews. Jay lives a nomad lifestyle allowing him to work from the beaches of Hawaii to the mountains of Utah. In this episode we dive into the story behind the mass layoffs in tech, why data science job postings are disappearing, and what you should do if...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Ben Doremus. Ben is a leader in Healthcare Analytics with a broad background in data, engineering, and management. His communication skills were refined during a decade as a 3rd-12th grade STEM teacher and teacher-of-teachers. After the stint in public schools, he found a new niche by blending his leadership experience with expertise in Data Science and Eng...

Joe and Matt are two pioneers in the data engineering space. They recently published the book: The Fundamentals of Data Engineering which is now a best seller, and have worked together at Ternary data consulting in the space for the past 5 years. In this episode we learn about the future of data engineering, the scope of new AI models, and about how they make career transitions at this stage in th...

Today I had  @averysmith back for his second appearance on the KNN podcast! We talked about fatherhood, growing your own business, and landing your first data job. Enjoy! 

Devansh is Nomad working in AI Research and Machine Learning. While he is still a college student, Devansh has been able to start a compay, land research opportunties with elite isntitutions and create one of the top newsletters in the tech space. In this episode we talk about how he is able to manage his time across all these opportunities as a student, how he was able to land such great opportun...

Today, I had the pleasure of interviewing Carly Taylor. Carly is a technology strategist, video game enthusiast, and founder of Rebel Data Science. She obtained her M.S. in chemistry from the University of Colorado focusing on computational quantum dynamics. She has authored multiple peer-reviewed publications and holds two non-provisional machine learning patents. In today's episode, Carly e...

interview Austin, Jesse, Nikita, and Lee about unique tech roast style of comedy, their origins, and about what makes the technology scene inherently funny. We also have some good laughs along the way. I hope you enjoy! Links: https://sociallyinept.io/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techroastshow/?hl=en ML Process Course: https://365datascience.com/learn-machine-learning-process-a-z/ Free ML...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Stephanie Wong. Stephanie is a 3x Webby award-winning Head of Developer Engagement. She is a global keynote speaker, engineer, and content creator with a mission to blend storytelling and technology to inspire developers. She has created hundreds of pieces of content, including the Google Cloud Youtube series Networking End-to-End, Season of Scale, and Disc...

​ @Stefanovic92 held a stable job as a data analyst for 7 years. Right at his "career peak" when he was working as a freelancer earning a 6 figure income, he decided to 180 his life completely, leave everything behind and start focusing on building a personal brand while traveling the world. In this episode we talk about why the traditional job path may not be for everyone, what Stefan l...

In this episode I give a short update on the podcast, ask for feedback on ways to improve, and talk about the future of KNN and my YouTube channel.

Dylan Beirne is a quant trader and data scientist, most focused on golf. Currently he works with Nellie Analytics, part of SIG, modelling and trading golf. He’s worked on analysis and strategy with the last 2 Ryder Cup European Teams and 2 International Presidents Cup teams, as well as a variety of golfers, from major winners and world #1s to challenge tour players. As it so happens, As it so happ...

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Maria Parysz. Maria is the CEO of LogicAI, founder of ElephantAI and the mastermind behind kaggle days. Kaggle days is a series of in person kaggle events that has it's own beautiful community. In this episode we learn the origin story behind kaggle days, about the current world championships, and about how Maria AI managers as an underserved commu...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Walter Reade. Walter is a data scientist at kaggle where he helps to prepare competitions. He is also a kaggle grandmaster with an incredible story. In this episode we learn about how Walter landed his role at kaggle, how he became a kaggle grandmaster, and some of the unique projects that he worked on along the way. Walter's Links: Kaggle: https://www...

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Christina Sathopolous. Christina is an Analytical Lead at Google where she works with the Waze. She also teaches at two international business schools and has built a impressive brand as a linkedin creator and public speaker. She is also well known for the #bookaweek challenge on linkedin. In this episode we dive deep into her decision to relocate back to S...