Pedro Alexander Medina is Founder & Chief Analytics Officer at Haystack, LLC - an Advanced Analytics Agency specializing in custom managed solutions across the data value chain. With deep expertise in information management and advanced analytics, his mission is to help organizations optimize their strategic data assets by converting complex data into intelligence; intelligence into innovation; innovation into success.

Interviewer: Rajib Bahar

http://www.soundcloud.com/data-podcast

Todd is a Microsoft Technology Center Architect based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota and is primary focused on data, analytics, and IoT scenarios. Todd’s background ranges from application development and architecture to implementation of data and analytics solutions in the field for many years as well as work at a Microsoft ISV prior to joining Microsoft. In addition, Todd has authored several books on Microsoft technologies such as .NET and SharePoint.

Interviewer: Rajib Bahar

- Bill Gates said, if he was a fresh college graduate, Artificial Intelligence would have been is top choice for career. I am really interested in learning about what Microsoft is doing in the Artificial Intelligence World! Please give us the big picture of how Cortana Intelligence Suite, Azure ML Studio, and Cognitive Toolkit tie in.

- How does Microsoft Bot Framework work? What kind of task can it automate? Any limitations or risks? Can it take my conversation and execute commands on a remote server?

- Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining information or input into a task or project by enlisting the services of a large number of people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the Internet.We have seen it's application in social media for fundraising, team collaboration, organizing events. With that said, how does data catalog in Cortana utilize that concept?

- Customer Churning is a common scenario in any organization either profit or non-profit. Is it easy to implement a solution in Cortana to discover the root cause? How does that approach differ from building charts in Excel or visualizations in PowerBI? I'm curious to learn how would you balance when you need Cortana or some other traditional tool that already exist?

- Tell us about the books you have written and your Cortana Intelligence suite course in MS Virtual Academy.

- How can we connect with you in Twitter or other professional network?

Colin Bartol has led a team that built 46% of the servers for Tricare West which covers 2.6 million people for the military which required security for NIST, PCI, and HIPPA. He has his MBA from Carlson school of management, CISSP, and is a SME for the CompTIA Project+ exam. Having been a consultant at 5 Fortune 100 companies in e-commerce, financial services, and retail sectors Colin has a wide experience of what happens in information technology. He is currently employed in telecommunications at a major health insurance company.
Interviewers: Rajib Bahar, Shabnam Khan

Discussion:
- Your background is largely in computer security infrastructure... Tell us about your Data Science related experience? We would like to hear about Affinity project
- What is Data Lake? How have you utilized it?
- I noticed HealthCare industry is hiring Big Data experts like crazy... Are you involved in similar project in your department?
- We are interested in learning about Tricare West
- As it relates to computer Security, what tips or recommendations do you have on securing data and infrastructure in general? and Social media presence

Last few months Shabnam, & I were working on creating a podcast. Our podcast brings industry experts working in various Data practices. We focus on topics related to Big Data, Data Science, Database technologies, RDBMS. Many thanks to our colleagues & friends for their support in this initiative.

 

Here are links to our podcast:

Soundcloud -> https://soundcloud.com/data-podcast

iTunes -> https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/data-podcast/id1247751397?mt=2