Catalog & Cocktails: The Honest, No-BS Data Podcast It's Friday, Juan and Tim rant with Data Day Texas takeaways
Jan 30, 2026
Two friends unwind over beers while unpacking the biggest takeaways from Data Day Texas. They discuss practitioner-focused talks, the rise of agentic coding, and the librarian-style curiosity AI agents could adopt. Governance, context over models, and the push for interoperable semantics come up. Casual conference moments and debates about semantic layers and AI-ready data round out the conversation.
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Listeners Traveled For The Conference
- Many attendees flew in despite bad weather and came because they heard the podcast.
- Juan and Tim felt honored meeting listeners who attended Data Day Texas because of the show.
Librarian Methods Improve Data Work
- Jenna Jordan's librarian reference interview revealed a formal approach data teams can adopt to better understand users.
- Tim said success is the librarian's responsibility, reframing business literacy as user understanding.
Make Agents More Curious First
- Adopt reference-style disambiguation: slow down, ask clarifying questions, and avoid judging user requests.
- Use these steps to train conversational AI agents to be curious and gather proper context before answering.