Venturi's Voice: Technology | Leadership | Staffing | Career | Innovation

David is head of BI & Analytics at Elevate Credit International Limited. David is a data leader with experience in Credit, Payments, Pricing, Revenue Management, e-commerce and retail. Commercially astute, with strong C-level and global stakeholder management. He has an ambition to improve business performance. Assisting local area planning to protect against unsuitable development with analytics. Show Notes: 00.31 Embracing the role of the CDO. 02.47 Extracting the maximum amount of value from data. 07.11 Do we need to change our approach to data? 08.28 How have attitudes to data changed during your career? 10.05 Will we get to a point where there is a linear path to a career in data? 12.03 What characteristics make a good data scientist? 14.11 Commercial thinking is a skill set in itself. 15.26 David’s background and career progression. 17.08 Allocating yourself a mentor. 19.03 Oracle, SQL server and big data. 22.29 Should we be worried about the pace data is advancing? 24.12 Becoming an analyst.

Sam Peck is Product Design Lead for Blackboard Ally At Blackboard Inc. “A lot of design is about communication and collaboration, If you can get people to just work together. Your already getting people to utilise a culture of design thinking” Sam is a big advocate of collaborative problem solving, he believes it is fundamental to a great design team. Design based on data is another area where Sam excels. He sat down with Andy to discuss the direction of UX and the challenges faced by the industry. Show Notes: 00.32 The board responsibilities a UX person has. 03.29 Aligning your technical skill set with commercial goals. 07.45 Are we using our designers to their full potential? 10.00 We like to ignore metrics. 13.41 Do designers have a chip on their shoulder? 15.25 Are we going to see the development of a senior designer role? 18.09 Will we see the design space becoming more formalised in the future. 20.26 How do you keep motivated in your career?

Azeem Azhar is an entrepreneur, investor and adviser with a two-decade career in technology. He runs the highly-cited newsletter, Exponential View, which covers the societal implications of technology and is a totemic source for the investors, entrepreneurs and policy-makers. Azeem is the Senior Advisor on AI to the CTIO of Accenture. Azeem also advises breakthrough entrepreneurial firms, including Kindred Capital, Onfido, Ocean Protocol, as well as the Harvard Business Review. Show Notes: 00.30 Automation is making our lives busier. 01.23 The behaviour patterns needed to make automation a success. 03.49 Why human behaviour is so difficult to change. 7.24 Viewing technological change through the lens of a journalist. 15.21 Azeem’s motivators for moving into tech. 20.33 Will coding be a requirement for individuals in the near future? 26.17 Making coding accessible for everyone.

Peter is an award-winning analytics/ data executive who has held the top data job at either group or divisional levels since 2000. Peter is a globally recognised expert in data management, analytics, big data, business intelligence, data warehousing and driving business value via technology. His background in maths has equipped with a rigorous, analytical approach to learning skills from the ground up. Peter knows that if you truly want to understand a new topic or tech you cannot skip the fundamentals, something that is all too easy today due to the number of tools at the disposal of a data team. Using an orchestra as an analogy Peter acts as the conductor and lays out the roles and responsibilities of a Head of Data with Andy on the show. Show Notes: 00.37 How do you choose what tool to use for your analytics? 03.04 Are we missing learning the fundamentals of the tech we operate? 08.26 What makes individuals valuable from a data perspective? 11.55 The introduction of the CDO role. 12.30 Great technical people don’t always make the best managers. 17.23 Managing internal change in a company. 20.42 What are you writing about at the moment? 24.09 Data cannot solve all our problems. 29.23 Executing on your data plan. 32.59 Finding great data talent.

Sramana is CEO and Founder of One Million by One Million. One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), the world’s first and only global virtual accelerator. Its goal is to help a million entrepreneurs globally reach a million dollars in annual revenue, build a trillion dollars in global GDP, and create 10 million jobs. Sramana founded 1Mby1M in 2010 after a decade as a consultant at some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley. A serial entrepreneur at heart, she has never worked for anyone other than herself. Helping others become their own boss is a motivator that fuels her work at 1Mby1M. Sramana adopted inbound marketing tactics in 2005, back when many people were still figuring out what blogging was. And today, she still places quality content at the forefront of everything she does    She sat down with Andy to discuss Silicon Valley’s influence on the entrepreneur's journey, morning routines, avoiding burnout, and the joys of being your own boss. Show Notes: 00.32 Win the morning, win the day. 03.55 Building your brand with high quality, digital content. 05.28 Ahead of the curve: adopting inbound marketing tactics in 2005. 10.21 Where do you invest your money? An individual's vision or idea? 14.43 How Startup culture standardized funding acquisition. 16.24 Growing up in pre-liberalisation India and Sramana’s journey to CEO. 21.47 Avoiding burnout as a leader. 25.41 Engaging the creative part of your brain. 28.00 Why entrepreneurship is more than just funding acquisition. 29.35 The venture capital phenomenon.   31.26 Success doesn’t come in one shape. 32.38 The joys of being your own boss. 34.52 Sramana’s top tips on becoming your own boss.

Tiffany is CIO and director of technology at Cancer Research UK. Before working in the nonprofit sector Tiffany held several positions at the BBC including the Head of Technology at BBC News. She also spent over 5 years as a member of the CIO advisory board at The Tech Partnership. Tiffany has experience of strategy definition, technology roadmaps, business transformation, change management, outsourced IT services, programme delivery, fostering innovation, public-sector procurement processes, central IT platforms, IT migration, system upgrades, delivering added value through the adoption of new technologies. Show Notes: 00.33 Is it important to have a rigid definition of what a CIO does? 04.17 Has there been an increased awareness of data in recent years. 06.58 Making sure your company has consistent messaging. 08.18 Tiffany’s background and career progression. 11.27 Technologies impact on the charitable sector. 15.16 Better research, better information, better decisions. 16.18 How do you structure your day? 19.20 How do you prioritise your tasks? 21.29 Working remotely vs office work. 25.15 Building out diverse teams.

Mark is a Consultant, Professional Speaker, Author, Podcaster, Improvement Geek, Coach, & Senior Advisor to KaiNexus. His passion lies in applying Lean and Toyota Production System principles in hospitals to improve quality of care and patient safety, improve patient experience, help the development of medical professionals and employees, and build better workplaces and stronger organizations for the long term. Mark has written several well-received books on lean healthcare including; Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements Both books received the Shingo award for research into operational excellence. Mark also runs LeanBlog.org and is a regular speaker at healthcare conferences. He joins Andy to discuss the issues and lessons presented in his latest book ‘Measures of Success’. Show Notes: 00.30 Talking podcasting. 02.32 Countering the demand for traffic with quality content. 05.04 Common mistakes when attempting to measure success. 08.03 Effective metrics for measuring a team’s success. 11.28 Mark’s background and career progression. 14.33 Lean and Eric Ries. 19.09 Failing fast. 22.53 Improving for the sake of improving. 27.32 Using automation to eliminate monotonous tasks. 31.38 Reasons to work in the Health Tech space.

Sam Stagg is VP of Engineering at Pusher. Managing a growing team of developers can be like herding cats, not our words but the words of today’s guest Sam Stagg. A gifted communicator Sam is an expert at managing a large team of cross-disciplinary developers. Heading up the development team at Pusher Sam is responsible for building a multi-tenant distribution system. Show Notes 00.56 Pusher’s developer outreach. 02.35 Scratching your coding itch. 03.56 Having a competitive edge in software development. 06.59 Software developers are the product. 08.40 Finding your management style. 12.27 Hiring the right people. 15.45 What have you learned from your experiences of the hiring process? 17.57 Sam’s background and career progression. 20.55 Making your interview process smooth and efficient. 22.55 Sam’s journey at Pusher. 27.44 Moving to management vs staying technical. 32.06 The role your product plays in keeping your team motivated. 36.07 Advice for young developers starting out in their careers.

Samir is a data strategy and analytics expert and currently founder and CEO at Datazuum. Samir works with companies to help create and execute data strategies. His current clients include; high-end luxury, retail, aerospace & defense, government, postal, telecoms, banking, utilities, insurance, mutual Insurance, and media. He advises board members, the C-suite and directors on how to get the most out of their datasets. Samir loves to use data to tell stories. Seeing clients extract value from data is a real motivator for him. Show Notes: 00.35 Connecting with people using podcasts. 05.34 Hiring talent that is committed to growing professionally. 09.17 Taking a disciplined approach to work. 12.53 The benefits of podcasting. 19.13 Samir’s background and career progression. 26.17 Did you ever get frustrated with the corporate world? 31.02 Taking your business from idea stage to full time. 35.34 How the people around you can help you succeed.

Andrew is Director of Big Data & Analytics at Atos. Andrew specialises in enabling businesses bring their data to life. He is Atos’ chief data storyteller. His roles is to write a company’s story with data. Combining the hard maths of a data scientist with the flair and insight of an analyst means Andrew can tackle any data challenge thrown at him. Show Notes: 0.33 Dissecting the CDO role. 2.51 Catching up with data from a macro perspective. 7.08 Collaborating across departments with data. 11.37 Using education to integrate data into a business. 17.00 The typical questions asked of a data team. 20.50 Europe vs America. 22.43 Attributes required to become a head of data. 26.06 Always being willing to learn.