
Data Brew by Databricks
Welcome to Data Brew by Databricks with Denny and Brooke! In this series, we explore various topics in the data and AI community and interview subject matter experts in data engineering/data science. So join us with your morning brew in hand and get ready to dive deep into data + AI! For this first season, we will be focusing on lakehouses – combining the key features of data warehouses, such as ACID transactions, with the scalability of data lakes, directly against low-cost object stores.
Latest episodes

Mar 10, 2022 • 30min
Data Brew Season 4 Episode 2: NBA Analytics
For our fourth season, we focus on connected health and how data & AI augment and improve our daily health. While we’re at it, we’ll be enjoying our morning brew.Alexander Powell chronicles the evolution of sports analytics and how professional sports teams use data as a competitive advantage. See more at databricks.com/data-brew

Feb 24, 2022 • 34min
Data Brew Season 4 Episode 1: Reducing Injury & Increasing Retention of Industrial Athletes
For our fourth season, we focus on connected health and how data & AI augment and improve our daily health. While we’re at it, we’ll be enjoying our morning brew.Globally, 38,000 people get hurt on the job every hour. In the United States alone, over $250 billion dollars is spent on workplace injury annually. Sean Petterson, founder and CEO of StrongArm Tech, discusses the role of wearable devices to reduce workplace injury and increase retention of industrial athletes. See more at databricks.com/data-brew

Oct 28, 2021 • 34min
Data Brew Season 3 Episode 6: Open Source
For our third season, we focus on how leaders use data for change. Whether it’s building data teams or using data as a constructive catalyst, we interview subject matter experts from industry to dive deeper into these topics.For our season 3 finale, Nithya Ruff discusses the open-source ecosystem, ways to contribute to open-source projects (hint: it’s not just about the code), and how businesses can balance community and company interests. With 95% of open-source contributions coming from men, Nithya also educates us on how to improve diversity & inclusion in the open-source community.See more at databricks.com/data-brew

Oct 14, 2021 • 32min
Data Brew Season 3 Episode 5: Sustainability & Sake
For our third season, we focus on how leaders use data for change. Whether it’s building data teams or using data as a constructive catalyst, we interview subject matter experts from industry to dive deeper into these topics.We interview Junta Nakai in our most unique location yet - Brooklyn Kura - the first non-Japanese sake distillery in New York. In this episode, Junta shares the philosophical, economic, and tactical approaches to sustainability and ESG, as well as the secrets to brewing sake in the US. See more at databricks.com/data-brew

Oct 7, 2021 • 39min
Data Brew Season 3 Episode 4: Executive Education
For our third season, we focus on how leaders use data for change. Whether it’s building data teams or using data as a constructive catalyst, we interview subject matter experts from industry to dive deeper into these topics.Did you know that the average tenure of a board member is longer than the average tenure of a marriage in the United States? In this episode, Coco Brown discusses the benefits and drawbacks of the long tenures of corporate boards, their current structure, the impact of recent legislation, and the importance of executive education to guide you through all of this. See more at databricks.com/data-brew

Sep 30, 2021 • 35min
Data Brew Season 3 Episode 3: 3 T’s to Securing AI Systems: Tests, tests, and more tests
For our third season, we focus on how leaders use data for change. Whether it’s building data teams or using data as a constructive catalyst, we interview subject matter experts from industry to dive deeper into these topics.What does it mean to make your machine learning system “production-ready”? Yaron Singer walks us through the infrastructure, testing procedures, and more that help make ML systems ready for the real world in this episode of Data Brew.See more at databricks.com/data-brew

Sep 23, 2021 • 36min
Data Brew Season 3 Episode 2: Data Culture Outside ‘The Valley’
For our third season, we focus on how leaders use data for change. Whether it’s building data teams or using data as a constructive catalyst, we interview subject matter experts from industry to dive deeper into these topics.Have you ever had a spam call automatically blocked for you? You can thank First Orion for that - in one day they blocked or scam tagged over 108 million calls - just on T-Mobile alone! In this episode, we have the pleasure to chat with Charles Morgan and Kent Welch, CEO and CDO, respectively, of First Orion to discuss Arkansan data culture, First Orion’s one hundred day program, and team culture.See more at databricks.com/data-brew

Sep 16, 2021 • 30min
Data Brew Season 3 Episode 1: Disrupt: Challenge your Business Assumptions
The podcast discusses topics such as managing culture evolution in a growing company, balancing short term performance with experimentation and risk-taking, strategic planning and sales rep compensation, and the qualities of CEOs. Elena Donio shares her experience using data and domain knowledge to disrupt the traditional service and sales compensation model and talks about building companies that scale and the influence of corporate boards.

Jul 21, 2021 • 31min
Data Brew Season 2 Episode 9: Data Driven Software
For our second season of Data Brew, we will be focusing on machine learning, from research to production. We will interview folks in academia and industry to discuss topics such as data ethics, production-grade infrastructure for ML, hyperparameter tuning, AutoML, and many more.We branch, version, and test our code, but what if we treated data like code? Tim Hunter joins us to discuss the open-source Data-Driven Software (DDS) package and how it leads to immense gains in collaboration and decreased runtime for data scientists at any organization.See more at databricks.com/data-brew

Jul 9, 2021 • 31min
Data Brew Season 2 Episode 8: Feature Engineering
For our second season of Data Brew, we will be focusing on machine learning, from research to production. We will interview folks in academia and industry to discuss topics such as data ethics, production-grade infrastructure for ML, hyperparameter tuning, AutoML, and many more.Is there ever a “one-size fits all” approach for feature engineering? Find out this and more with Amanda Casari and Alice Zheng, co-authors of the Feature Engineering for Machine Learning book.See more at databricks.com/data-brew