Helsinki Data Mafia - Podcast You Can’t Refuse
The Official Podcast of Helsinki Data Week! By data nerds, for data nerds, in Finland and abroad. Top-shelf guests & hot topics from the world of Data, Analytics, and AI. Presented by Juha Korpela, Eevamaija Virtanen, Säde Haveri,
and Antti Rask - the Helsinki Data Week Crew.
Juha and John Giles discuss the power of business-focused data modeling and how a good-enough high-level understanding of core entities and relationships - a “Data Town Plan” - can be a powerful tool to build trust, shared understanding, and business value in any organization. Even better, such a model can be built quickly and easily by utilizing common patterns.
If you find John’s thoughts interesting, check out his recently published book “The Data Elephant in the Board Room”!
In this episode of Helsinki Data Mafia, Juha and Säde interview Tommi Vihervaara and Markku Mäenpää, renowned Finnish data experts and hosts of their own podcast, Datapääoma. We discuss the concept of 'shifting left' in data management, emphasizing the importance of treating data quality as a priority from the outset. Challenges of data quality management, the role of data contracts and standards, and the significance of communication between data producers and consumers are all key topics in the discussion. How far left we should actually shift with these, and where does "data work" actually start?
In this episode, Aya Matsuyama, former aerospace engineer turned environmental philosopher, joins Eevamaija Virtanen to talk about what Japanese cultural wisdom teaches about failure, vulnerability and collective survival.
Aya started by building planes and nuclear robots and ended up running world simulations where people destroy the world to learn why they do it.
We explore how gamification forces people to slow down, face their blind spots and ask: Where are we going, and why?
In this episode, Katariina Kari, the Head of Data at In Parallel and former Lead Ontologist at IKEA, is interviewed by our Säde Haveri and Eevamaija Virtanen. The topic is Knowledge Graphs: what are they, how do they enable organizations to enhance their AI solutions, and how did Katariina actually end up working with them? Real-world use cases, value-creation, corporate memory - you don't want to miss this!
In this episode of Helsinki Data Mafia, Juha interviews Tiankai Feng, a data leader and author whose new book Humanizing Data Strategy came out recently. With Tiankai and Juha both also being musicians, the discussion takes an interesting and unique angle to the issues of data governance and strategy: how does all this stuff compare to playing in a band, and what could we learn from the world of music? Even if you're not a musician yourself, you will likely find some very fresh viewpoints here!
In this wide-ranging discussion (recorded live in Helsinki!) Juha and Säde talk with Alec Sharp, a world-renowned modeler of both data and business processes. Alec literally wrote the book on process modeling, and has practiced and taught classes on data modeling for decades. But is it really "data" modeling, when we're simply talking about "things" that exist in the actual business? And why are empathy and simplicity so important? And how do you know a $3B project is not going to work out? Listen to this episode of Helsinki Data Mafia to find out!
In this episode, Juha chats with Karin Håkansson, a Data Mesh Learning MVP, speaker, and Head of Data at Adapteo Group. The topic is Data Mesh - the federated, domain-driven, and product-oriented framework everyone's been talking about for the last few years. What is it really about, what is the role of data products in it, and what does it take to succeed with the Mesh?
Welcome to Helsinki Data Mafia! In this very first episode of the podcast, the Helsinki Data Week crew explain what this whole thing is about and why they are launching a podcast - and what exciting things lie ahead for the podcast & for Helsinki Data Week 2025!
