The Data Playbook Podcast

Building advanced analytics is rarely a technology challenge alone. Success depends on understanding the organisation, delivering value incrementally and enabling teams to solve real operational problems. In this episode, Kris Peeters speaks with Max Hubeau, Manager of the Advanced Analytics Team at NMBS/SNCB. They discuss how a central analytics team works alongside business teams, how data scien...

Agentic AI is everywhere. Production-ready AI is not. In this episode, Kris Peeters talks with Dataminded Data Engineer Jesus Garcia about the gap between AI hype and enterprise reality. Drawing on lessons from building a large-scale Agentic AI platform, they discuss security, governance, user adoption, change management, AI skills, and the future role of engineers in an AI-first world. For data l...

Agentic AI is changing how we build software, manage data, conduct research, and learn new skills. But as AI takes over more cognitive tasks, a fundamental question emerges: what capabilities do humans still need to develop themselves? In this episode, Kris Peeters sits down with Frank Neven, Professor of Computer Science at Hasselt University and Vice Director of the Data Science Institute, to di...

What does it take to listen to the universe? In this episode of The Data Playbook , Kris Peeters talks with Tjonnie Li , Professor at KU Leuven , about gravitational waves, black hole collisions, and the massive data challenge behind the Einstein Telescope . They explore how modern science is becoming deeply data-driven, why the next generation of research infrastructure will need to operate like...

How do you transform a broken data landscape into a scalable, self-service data platform? In this episode of The Data Playbook , Kris Peeters sits down with Tom Holsteens to unpack how Brussels Airlines rebuilt their data foundation from the ground up. Coming out of the pandemic, the organisation faced a classic problem: 👉 A “spaghetti” data warehouse 👉 No ownership of data assets 👉 A central t...

How do you move machine learning from notebook experiments to production in a real business environment? In this episode of The Data Playbook Podcast , Kris Peeters sits down with Jean-Michel Begon , Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Luminus , to explore how machine learning models are built and operationalized inside an energy company. They discuss electricity demand forecasting , the machine l...

In this season finale of The Data Playbook Podcast by Dataminded , the tables turn: Kris Peeters (Host & Founder of Dataminded) is interviewed by Pascal Brokmeier (guest from the Episode 2 and former colleague). Kris shares the real story behind 11 years of building Dataminded - from the stress of having zero customers , to landing the first project, to scaling from a small team to a company w...

In this episode of The Data Playbook , we sit down with Dr. Ruth Janning, Head of Data Science & AI at OBI, to talk about what actually drives AI impact in real organisations. We break down: Why GenAI hype leads teams in the wrong direction How to choose between ML, GenAI and agentic AI Real-world retail AI use cases (recommendations, assortment, automation) How a 10-person team delivers outsi...

In this episode of The Data Playbook , Jelena Grujic (Dataminded) explains why the divide between data scientists and data engineers still exists and how to finally break it. We dive into real-world conflicts around unit tests, notebooks, production data access, documentation, and overengineered solutions. Jelena shares pragmatic alternatives like data testing, functional pipelines, and purpose-ba...

Most data leaders know the statistic: the majority of big data initiatives never deliver the value they promised. In this episode, Kris sits down with Frederic Vanderveken from Dataminded to unpack a practical framework to choose and validate the right data use cases . We cover: Why so many data initiatives fail before they even start How to anchor your work in business strategy , not technology H...

Kris Peeters sits down with Amaury Anciaux, founder of River Solutions, to tackle a painful reality for data leaders: critical decisions still depend on fragile Excel models . They explore why Excel won’t disappear, how River turns spreadsheets into visual, explainable and reliable decision models , and what happens when you bring data quality checks, testing and documentation into the analyst wor...

What happens when a bank decides that AI and IP are so strategic they must be built in-house - then actually follows through for more than a decade? In this episode of The Data Playbook , Dr. Barak Chizi , Chief Data & Analytics Officer at KBC Group , joins Kris Peeters to reveal how KBC built one of Europe’s most mature AI organisations and what it took to bring Kate , their AI assistant, to...

EU clouds without the hype. Niels Claeys (Partner & Lead Data Engineer at Dataminded, and our technical hiring lead) breaks down data sovereignty vs. Cloud Act , GDPR realities , and a portable, Kubernetes-first stack with Iceberg, Trino, and Airflow . We compare Scaleway, OVH, Exoscale, UpCloud , look at cost drivers , encryption/KMS , egress policies , and how to avoid vendor lock-in plus wh...

Belfius Insurance’s Head of Data & AI, Hannes Heylen shares how his team scaled GenAI - from a fraud detection flywheel to “Nestor,” a claims copilot that speeds summaries, completeness and coverage checks. We unpack AI agents in the claims flow, build-vs-buy decisions, and why content/data governance drives LLM quality. Plus: a pragmatic delivery mantra - make it work, then right, then cheap...

In this episode of The Data Playbook , we go inside imec , one of the world’s leading semiconductor research institutes , to explore how they scale data governance, self-service, and innovation in one of the most data-intensive environments on Earth. Our guest, Wim Vancuyck , Manager of ICT for Data & Research Enablement , leads imec’s data strategy - bridging IT, researchers, and business to...

How do you turn governance from a bottleneck into a business accelerator - in a bank ? In this episode of The Data Playbook , host Kris Peeters talks with Jan Mark Pleijsant , Senior Data Strategy & Governance Advisor at ABN AMRO Bank , about their move from 300+ dispersed data owners to 15 clear, business-aligned data domains and what it took to make federated governance work in a highly regu...

What does it take to scale data products across an organization? In this episode of The Data Playbook , we sit down with Simon Harrer , CEO and Co-Founder of Entropy Data , recorded live at the POA Summit 2025 in Stuttgart. Simon unpacks his journey from developer to founder, the creation of Data Mesh Manager , and why data contracts are becoming the backbone of modern data governance. We dive dee...

In this episode of the Data Playbook podcast, we dive into how p ubliq , the organization behind Belgium’s largest cultural event database, is building RADAR, an AI-powered framework that enriches and structures event data at scale. Host Kris Peeters is joined by Sven Houtmeyers (CTO) and Elia Van Wolputte (Data Scientist) from Publiq, who share how their team uses LLMs, semantic parsing, and link...

🎙️ In this episode, host Kris Peeters talks with Jelle De Vleminck , consultant at Dataminded , about what it really takes to build a data platform that people actually want to use. Together, they explore: What separates a platform from just “a bunch of tools” How to reduce cognitive load for developers The 5 biggest mistakes in platform design Why adoption matters more than features How data cont...

In this episode of The Data Playbook , we explore what it really takes to turn AI into meaningful business impact. Host Kris Peeters talks with Joris Renkens , founder of AI product studio Guatavita , about how organizations can build AI solutions that truly work in practice. They discuss: Why innovation starts with the right problem, not the latest tech How to validate adoption early, before writ...

In this episode of The Data Playbook , we explore what it really takes to build high-performance data teams. Host Kris Peeters is joined by Rushil Daya , Senior Data Engineer at Dataminded, who shares practical lessons from years of leading successful data team s across industries. They discuss: The link between data success and business value How mentoring beats documentation when upskilling team...

In this episode of the Data Playbook podcast, we explore what it really takes to build sustainable, data-centric organizations, moving beyond tooling and dashboards toward lasting value. Host Kris Peeters is joined by Jonny Daenen ( Knowledge Lead at Dataminded ), who shares insights from years of helping organizations evolve their data strategy across sectors. Together, they discuss why data plat...

In this episode of The Data Playbook , we take a technical look at SQLMesh, a data transformation framework designed to improve the workflow and reliability of SQL-based data pipelines. Hosted by Kris Peeters, the episode features Michiel De Muynck, Senior Data Engineer at Dataminded, who provides a deep dive into SQLMesh’s internal mechanics, including its use of semantic analysis and isolated ru...

In this special episode of "The Data Playbook" podcast, recorded live at the Data Mesh Live Event in Antwerp, Kris Peeters speaks with Data Mesh pioneers Jacek Majchrzak and Andrew Jones . They explore how Data Mesh addresses critical challenges in data management, including data bottlenecks, governance, and decentralization. With years of experience in the field, both Jacek and Andrew s...

Join us in this episode of The Data Playbook as we explore the sense and nonsense of data modeling with Jonas De Keuster, VP of Product at VaultSpeed. Jonas takes us through his journey in the world of data automation, discussing the role of data integration, data vaulting, and how modern data products are built using structured models. From dimensional modeling to the complexities of integrating...