whois
I’m a senior data professional who worked as an engineer, researcher, team lead, and educator in the past. You might know me from tech talks where I attempt to defend common sense over hype in data science.
I’m especially interested in understanding algorithmic systems so that one may prevent failure. As such, I’ve had a preference for simpler solutions that scale, as opposed to the latest and greatest from the hype cycle.
Fun Facts
In the past I’ve been:
- on the front page of reddit
- proud creator of calmcode.io
- a digital nomad with an amazing postcard
- a preferred Rstudio training partner
- co-founder and co-chair of PyData Amsterdam
- co-founder of the satRdays Amsterdam conference
- co-creator of some open source packages
- a data/open source evangelist with a track record of speaking
- host for the algorithm whiteboard
- involved with many data projects
- helping out with the first normconf conference
- featured in a 3b1b maths video
- featured in a freeCodeCamp video
Currently
I currently work as a Machine Learning Engineer over at Explosion. We’re the folks behind tools such as spaCy and Prodigy. Working here is a blast!
Past
Before joining Explosion, I worked as a Research Advocate at Rasa where I collaborated with the research team to explain and understand conversational systems better.
Before that I worked as a consultant at GoDataDriven. I was the first data scientist they hired. Here I helped companies get better at what they do by using data. I had been given a fair amount proper cases with impact for important clients while trying to keep the hype at bay. At some point a culture shift happened within the company. Sadly, this led to some unforgivably unprofessional behavior, which compelled me to leave.
There are still some colleagues around with whom I had a great time, but I can't recommend anybody to trust their career at that group anymore. I wish to no longer to be associated with that group.
Concluding
I believe in open source and don’t mind to evangalise from time to time. I have this blog about slightly less obvious aspects in the world of data science to help people get started as well as to keep a record of things that interest me. I’m known for speaking at events but also for giving free lectures in data science around Europe.
The future is pretty awesome, all we have to do is build it.
Note
This blog has a matured a few times in the past. An earlier version built with Pelican can be found here. A more recent version, built with Distill, can be found here. On every upgrade I only decided to port a subset of the blogposts, partially to save time, but also because the blog matures over time ... and some of the old blogposts feel less relevant.