What's good, Josh Boros back again with another video. So we're going to check out Jim Cornette reviews, CM Punk and Jack Perry altercation footage on AEW Dynamite. Now, y'all know I had to check out what Jim Cornette had to say about this whole situation with AEW airing the backstage footage of CM Punk and Jack Perry getting into it. And I am sure that this one is going to be a good one, because you already know how Jim Cornette feels about AEW and how things have been going on their television. So this should be very, very interesting. Let's get right into this one. I already noticed it's going to be a great one, man. Let's do it. Well, and there was no audio whatsoever. And when the buckaroos pitched to it, they couldn't narrate over it. I'm thinking there's some legal reason that they couldn't... Yeah, so Punk doesn't sue them. Well, but I mean, so maybe they couldn't transform it in any way or it would be, because here's the thing. They've announced an incident took place that distracted them and caused them to lose. If we're just talking about an audience that watches this television program, if you're not following on Twitter, I know for our audience that's hard to...  Imagine that. But if you're just watching this TV show, not social media, whatever, they've announced backstage footage of an incident between Jack Perry and another individual. And then when the footage comes up, there's no audio and there's no narration. There's no... There's Jack coming back from his match. There is the other individual walking. None of that... You see Jack Perry and it's in color. And there's eight or 10 people in the immediate area. And here's one thing.  And if you had room to stand in the corner, if you weren't in the way, you could sneak in there.   But this is a goddamn building hallway. It's lit up. There's doorways and hallways and there's eight or 10 people standing around doing their things. There's some producers. There's goddamn some technical people, apparently, not recognizable as wrestling folks. There's wrestlers. There's everybody, right? And you see Jack Perry walk back from his match and you see then punk. If you know who you're looking for, then you can see him.  And I think that's the point he's trying to expound upon is the fact that if you didn't know what was going on, like you didn't keep up with it, keep up with the situation that happened on social media. Granted, this happened like almost eight months ago. So if you really didn't know about this, then you probably don't know about this now. So you're kind of, if you're new to the show or new to what's going on, you're going to be so out the loop. There's like no kind of real explanation. It's more of a, if you know, if you know type of situation, the grant a lot of people do, but I'm pretty sure there's going to be some that, like, wait, what's really going on here? Why are they showing this segment with no audio like what's happening? So it could be confusing for a new viewer or someone that doesn't really keep up with the social media side of wrestling, which if you don't keep up with the social media side of wrestling, you're actually in a good space.  And if you're studying them, instead of everything else going on in this picture where people are talking or standing around, then you notice that they speak to each other for how many seconds. This artwork is wild, by the way.   Yep, pretty much. And then as we've also heard, Samoa Joe was there. He was one of the people in the, in a camera shot all along, he runs up. A couple of things there that we heard from the, what you have to presume is the Jack Perry side of things that were kind of disproven. We heard that Punk tried to hit Jack Perry, but missed. Yeah. Punk tried to get him in a headlock, but he couldn't get it and Jack Perry escaped. No. Samoa Joe had to pull CM Punk away. No. It's the exact opposite of what happened. Chris Hero came around to help. Everyone was there. Punk did exactly what he said. All those stories about, oh, he can't really fight. He didn't do anything to Jack Perry. That was spin from day one about this whole thing. Yep. Well, and the fact that this was a fight, I think was spin from day one, could let's face it, Brian, of all the hundreds and thousands of locker room skirmishes. This, by the way, the first time a legitimate one's ever been caught on video.  I'm talking about something in backstage or the locker room first time ever because nobody had cameras and nobody had phones.  But of all of the thousands of them that have happened in pro wrestling over a period of time, there was less to this than there was to almost any of them, wasn't there? Yeah, this wasn't a fight. It really wasn't. It wasn't no brawl. It wasn't. It didn't even get to that point. That's why it's like, when it's all said and done, none of this, none of this needed to even be seen by the public eye, to be honest with you.   Like, I've seen more brutality from Draymond Green on an NBA basketball court. And these guys are out here trying to compete to win games and win championships. I've seen that. I've seen, you know, worse there than what we saw in this footage. Hell, we've seen Draymond Green punch out his own teammate at practice, legitimately punch him, lean in and try to sleep this man. We've seen that. So what we saw here, this was child's play. How could this be any less than a shoving match? You escalated from shove to face lock. Boom, pulled part in a story. God, this wouldn't have been remembered till Thursday years ago. If you remember Samoa Joe at the media scrum after this when he was asked about it, he was pretty nonchalant. You know, I've seen worse fights. Yeah. It wasn't much of anything. It wasn't. Tony Khan, who was on the other side of the table, whose hand reached out like a fan at some point in the video, he was scared for his life. Samoa Joe, who was in the middle of it, said, eh, it wasn't a big deal and you watch it. It wasn't. That's the thing. I got Paul Turner was there, the referee. Samoa Joe was coming from the other side of from behind of Jack Perry to pull him back. Jerry Lynn, I believe it was from the footage available. I think it's one who got punk.  The same thing that he said on the interview, he backed up and looked at everybody. He turned to the right. You can see him. Oh, you can't see Tony on this show because he's around the corner on this shot. He turns around. He says, this place is a joke.   I quit. He turns back around and yells something across the room.  That's it. And there's a carry standing there dazed and confused. Yeah. Malachi Black was going with him. Yeah. Exactly. And so the point is everybody's story was redid. This wasn't even a fight. And they were all somehow kind of shocked by all of this that Tony feared for his life and came out and said that publicly the following week on television as we've seen on this program since we heard it. That was legal verbiage that he was instructed to say by his crack legal staff at the time.  But also it's a Tony. This is what he was feared for his life for.   The only sucker punch said that.  It's not a sucker punch. If you're standing face to face with someone and saying hey you got a problem let me know and they're saying do something about it. It's not a sucker punch. And boom both hands. People I've seen that stop it stop it. You're not you're not being objective about what you saw because you're a fan of AEW or you don't like CM Punk. When you're not objective like that then your any point that you make it's already invalid because we already know you have a preconceived notion.   It wasn't a sucker punch. It would have been a sucker punch if Jack would have turned Jack Perry would have walked away turned around and then CM Punk would have hit him or something like that or Jack Perry didn't see it coming. But dude asked what you're going to do about it and he pushed him. You asked he received like what are we talking about. It's nothing sucker punch about that.  Boom headlock done.  It's not a sucker punch if you're looking at it. Yeah that's ridiculous.  Almost to the second he's narrating it. It is so it validated Punk's story. But how about what we had heard remember this apparently allegedly is the footage that Brian Daniels and the attorney saw that made it crystal clear that had the fire see him punk. It was this footage that we can hear in that what Daniel says his friend and he saw the footage and he said there's no way that we can't fire him.     No but it happens it happens. My man Draymond Green been out here punching people kicking people stepping on people and he still has a job once again people could say well maybe he shouldn't be in the league but at the same time he's still there. So this this right here definitely didn't warrant a firing but I mean see him punk wants to leave anyway so I don't know. I don't know about that man.   Nope and that's the point is I can see Lawyer saying oh my god but Danielson I'm sure I'm sure he's seen a bunch of better fights than this.  There we go. Jungle Jack. There we go.  It's right here in front of Tony Khan. Probably. Probably just thinking well he doesn't have time right now he's got to go out.   But this was not a big fight. What is sideburns got to do with anything Jim?  I don't like your sideburns. I want to punch you. Damn.  But thank you Tony because we're getting a great programming out of it now. Yep. I'm talking about big time programming over on the other channels since you let Punk go over to be another one of the biggest star with. Cody's got the spot right now as the biggest star in the business but I think Punk's coming up behind Tony's let both of them go in the last two years. Yeah, bro. I'm sorry.  That's like Vince McMahon saying hey you know what Stone Cold I don't want you. I don't want you. You can go to WCW and he willingly let Stone Cold Steve Austin go to WCW or he lets even the rock go to WCW even if it wouldn't have worked out at that time they were the hottest action wrestling.    Fuck. So it proves Punk's side of the story is what was legitimate and what happened. And you still at the end of this if you didn't know that you were looking at CM Punk you didn't know you were looking at CM Punk did you. They've never said his name yet to this time. Well don't put a note because we did see footage I'm assuming you may have too on Twitter on social media people in the room filming the the Tron the big screen so you get the live room reaction. Yes. They were chanting CM Punk. Yeah yes. They popped when he pushed Jack Perry and when he grabbed them. Yes. If they could get any of their angles that they do on purpose to get over like that in front of the crowd they'd have something. But yeah the the the fans were chanting CM Punk in the building but they still couldn't say CM Punk's name on the video that confirmed the story that CM Punk had told. How does this help Jack Perry in any way for the future. It did it doesn't because this. Apparently it somewhat did. I guess his his merchandising sales had went up like his shirt sales had went up. So I guess but I don't know if that's a long term thing because to be honest with you it's like he did get kind of punked out no pun intended. So I don't know but that's the report. After this happened the reports were is that his his shirt merchandising sales had went up like I think he had recently sold out or something like that. So I'm not sure how true that is. But I don't know. I don't know.    Aren't they. He's wrestling on a New Japan show in Chicago I think in the next week. Oh boy. I'm whether it's New Japan whether it's AEW they're going to be chanting CM Punk. If they're chanting CM Punk at an AEW show now when there's footage of CM Punk choking out Jack Perry playing on the tron without him being identified. And what do you think there would be chanting when his little dipshit shows his face again. Did you see that you talked about the footage of Ariel Hohani put up AEW working overtime into the middle of the night putting up copyright strikes or going after people. Oh yes. Who put up the surveillance footage. Well but now here explain this to me because yes as soon Ariel Hohani even he's a noted journalist he got his copyright struck from old Aubrey Ed Don Stevens. And got that that video that I just talked about where he put it up split screen taken down. And everybody that tried to put the footage up they've been copyright striking them.  Twitter and on social media where when they put the clip up on YouTube of the buckaroos interview. Stupid. Which the buckaroos came back after the clip and supposedly closed up with trying to sell their tag team match. The security camera footage wasn't in there.  I don't know because you know you brought up an interesting point earlier because we don't know how it works in England but they got this footage and they were able to air it but no commentary no running dialogue nothing nothing to change the footage in any way. It could be their legal department saying that but they took it out of the video. That means on their own they then put it there but the strikes that people are getting I mean people are getting it pulled down from Jacksonville Florida. So AEW is pulling down other people's videos for a different reason and they pulled down their own. Well maybe it's the same reason maybe they realize shit we didn't want people to see this after all but then riddle me this then. This is did they they've got bad what you're saying is AEW on their very own YouTube channel put up the the Maddie and Nicky's interview without the security camera footage. Did they edit it or do they pitch to footage that doesn't live there and then come back and refer to it. I was told that it edits right from them pitching to the footage to the thing with FTR which we'll talk about shortly. They probably jumped it out but they were pitching to the foot they were talking about that that was the whole setup was talking about this footage post probably.  This was just a shit show I don't care what nobody says it wouldn't worth the views that they got it wouldn't even I it was better than the past couple of weeks but that was a shit show that was embarrassing that was embarrassing to see for them considering that they could be so much better but I think you got a Tony Kong got to step down and kind of let other people run the show with better concise ideas that make sense to push their talent because whatever this is if this is a sign of things to come it's not looking good for AEW bro they can do so much better. Can you imagine going through all this and then you're going to use the footage and then you can't make any money with it. Maybe they can't because it's government footage they can't monetize it on YouTube maybe that's it maybe that was a clue they shouldn't have put it on TV maybe that was the clue. Well they already knew they couldn't monetize anything on this TV show so this and again before we even get to FTR coming out right then to do the things that they did people didn't like this even the normally the people who like this kind of thing didn't like this kind of thing.  We have not I see someone here I remember we talked to one of his tweets before I don't remember which one Gareth WWE Gareth on Twitter. Yeah I did see this I did see this he uh WWE Gareth on Twitter got a shout out from the gym cornet this obviously this particular clip so I saw a lot of people talking about it on my timeline so that's crazy he got a shout out he got a shout out from the gym cornet podcast. CCTV footage is classified as personal data under GDPR law in the United Kingdom CM Punk could quite possibly do the funniest thing ever. What I guess would be the funniest thing ever if it's personal data if the footage of punk in the fight is punk's personal data I think that means he gets to AW for airing the footage but no but everybody in the fucking video then would be it would be their personal data would you have to have a class action suit or a majority rules or can anybody just get pissed off about it I don't know well we will find out but no nothing no comment from Tony Khan no comment from the Bucks still this it wasn't even close was it I mean I know I've tried to block most of the buckaroo you know fanatics out there but I saw pretty much majority rule that it was a stupid thing they did and nobody can figure out why they did it facts it's one of the most amazing counterproductive moments in wrestling history it's like Hogan went on arsineo but it was at bash 91 no good came out of it the live house you know the telling thing was the live house's lack of reaction edges promo last week that should have been a sign for these guys that they're making a mistake with all this leave it alone and the CM punk chance are louder now than they've been in AEW since he left because every now and then you'd hear some of them and the AEW fans would say oh boo don't know he almost killed the company they're louder than ever before lately this was an amazing self-inflicted wound to the groin by Tony Khan and the young Bucks who were laughed at by everyone yep who watched this show and Jim if I had said beforehand would you put money down on whether this will be a positive or a negative for AEW what do you think you would have done well I would have put that money down courtesy of our friends over at draft kings because that was a good segue but yeah man yeah they shot themselves in the foot on this one big blunder big blunder and they have some stuff that they can really sink their teeth into and really be pushing obviously uh Samoa Joe in uh Swerve that's that's really something that they need to keep pushing keep focusing on keep building upon that's a match I'm actually looking forward to seeing because right now Swerve is uh becoming their top babyface or someone say he probably is even though he does heel like things people you know you know think he's super cool you know and Samoa Joe is fucking Samoa Joe he's a great very great AEW world champion and he's killing it he's fantastic so I'm looking forward to Swerve and Samoa Joe having their feud they need to focus on things like that the good stuff on AEW television expound upon that keep that going don't worry about whatever everybody else is saying don't worry about what you know CM Punk had said on an interview let it go move on move forward focus on telling great stories and having great matches and building great feuds and long term booking that makes sense and is an interesting because right now right now we're in a different period in wrestling and at one point AEW was the superior product especially with Vince McMahon at control and what he was doing with the product in WWE it was very stale so it was understandable to watch AEW more and being more invested in AEW but now things have changed and WWE is starting to cook on a consistent basis it's not perfect no wrestling show is perfect but it's much better than it's ever been and you know I wouldn't say ever been but in a very long time consistently pretty good shows consistently pretty good PLEs this needs to be something that AEW needs to be focusing on for themselves that's it I still think AEW deserves a space in the wrestling world because competition breeds great wrestling for its fans the end of the day I know a lot of people say oh this should be the death of AEW it won't and it shouldn't because I don't want these guys to lose jobs so WWE is the only real major company in the United States no I want these guys to work I want these guys to put on the best shows possible best views possible because if AEW dies we don't have Samoa Joe as a world champion we don't have a swerve as the the new you know trying to be the next top guy in AEW and the momentum he's getting we don't have some of these great matches and great potential feuds we don't have them so yeah comment down below let me know man how do y'all feel about uh Jim Cornette's assessment of this whole situation are you in agreeance uh damn I can't even talk are you in agreeance with uh what Jim Cornette had to say about this whole situation or do you disagree you think he's being a little bit too harsh and too mean let me know down below but I appreciate all of sport road to 150k and I'm still unspeakably the rest of the world appreciate y'all kicking to me see y'all next one peace


Hello, and welcome to the My Career in Data, a podcast where we discuss with industry leaders and experts how they have built their careers. I'm your host, Shannon Kemp, and today we're talking to Jeff Chow from St. Computing. With a robust catalog of courses offered on demand and industry-leading live online sessions throughout the year, the DataVersity Training Center is your launchpad for career success. Browse the complete catalog at training.dataversity.net and use code DVTOX for 20% off your purchase. Hello and welcome. My name is Shannon Kemp, and I'm the Chief Digital Officer at DataVersity, and this is My Career in Data, a DataVersity Talks podcast dedicated to learning from those who have careers in data management to understand how they got there and to talk with people who helped make those careers a little bit easier. To keep up to date in the latest in data management education, go to DataVersity.net forward slash subscribe. Today we're joined by Jeff Chow, the CEO at St. Computing, and normally this is where a podcast host would read a short bio, the guest, but in this podcast, your bio is what we're here to talk about. Jeff, hello and welcome. Hello, hi, Shannon. Great to meet you. I'm really excited to be here. Likewise. I'm so excited to meet you as well. It's one of my favorite things about this podcast is meeting new people. It's been a great bonus of this podcast. So tell me, OK, so you're the CEO at St. Computing. So tell me what type of business is St. Computing? So we are in the we're automating Databricks cluster management is kind of the very short summary of what we're doing. And with the goal of we basically help enterprises make their Databricks clusters cheaper, faster, and can help them hit their SLAs for all their kind of data processing needs. That's kind of where we're at today. Happy to get into our history and origin. I'm also the co-founder of the company. So there's there's lots of origin story stuff as well. That's that's where we want to go. Yeah, well, I definitely want to hear about how and why you co-founded this company. But but let me we'll get into that for sure. Because that's super. I love it when when we get to talk to you, founders, because it's such a scary thing, right, to take this step. And it's such an admirable thing. I'm scared every day. That's very true. Well, tell me as a CEO and co-founder, what is your typical week look like? That's a good question. There are probably like three big buckets that I'm probably any CEO as part of the biggest one probably is customers, both in like finding them. How do you know how to move them through the system? And then obviously how do we make money with our customers? Two is more of the internal management, just making sure all the teams are coordinated and moving is information flowing or any blockers. And then three is more like kind of external slash road map. This is where I talked to the board investors. This is a little bit more longer thinking is there has to be one person in the company who's thinking like six, 12, 18 months out. What are we doing? Are we on the right path? Are we going in the right direction? Those are like the main three big buckets. And so then in any typical week, I am having usually my days are just meetings. I'm just sitting on Zoom all day, but I'm doing one of those three either like pitching to a new customer, having a one-on-one with an internal team member, or talking to a board member or an investor and kind of like triangulating, okay, is everything kind of moving in the right direction? Yeah. I imagine you use a lot of data to facilitate those decisions. Yeah, we try to use data. I think in any startup though, you're sometimes you have to kind of make a decision when you have like 60, 70% of the information, right? You never really have all of the information because you're trying to move fast. All right. We have enough intel, let's make a decision. Yeah, yeah, I can understand that and relate. So tell me, is this what you wanted to be when you grew up? So say you're six years old, was this the dream I'm gonna be a co-founder of Sync Computing? My background is I was a researcher. So I got like my PhD and that's kind of the genesis of the company. So I think when I was young, I always liked science and technology. So I always kind of went into research. But as I got older and in college, I actually had a second life where I did a lot of comedy stuff. So I did a lot of improv comedy. So there was a time where I was like, do I want to do comedy or do I want to do technology? And comedy, that's a tough life. I kept doing this hobby, but so I always knew I liked technology and computers. I didn't know I would be on the business side. That's probably unexpected, business, selling, sales, pitching to investors. That wasn't something I really envisioned that I would ever do. Yeah, so you love tech. And so as you get into high school and onto college, so what was your interest in as you went in that direction? What was your original? So I was an electrical engineering and computer science major in undergrad. I went to UC Berkeley for undergrad and then I stayed there for grad school. So I was there for like 10 years. A little too long, I think. So I was always kind of interested in really at the intersection between software and hardware. I thought that was kind of getting low level code and then understanding how does the transistor actually make it all happen. That was always kind of fascinating to me. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and then how did the comedy come about? Was it just something that you have always been interested in and just decided, I'm gonna explore that? It started, I think, in high school.  And so in college, in any college campus, there are always comedy sketch groups. So I joined the main one on campus and it was just a ton of fun. Oh, nice. It was always my side thing. That was just something I liked to do that I really enjoyed. I knew there wasn't really a career or a job there, but it was just tons of fun and the friends were always great. I will say you're not the first to dip their toe into the comedic world that I've interviewed. Oh, nice, nice. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so then where did you go from there?  So then I stayed at Berkeley for a PhD and I was on the electrical engineering side. So I kind of built hardware, was that or not built? It was like research. My first project was for a Hewlett Packard HP and one of their data centers. So I was doing research on like advanced communication in kind of their large data centers. That's cool. So that's kind of where my, I started getting more and more into like large scale computing. That's kind of where my career went. Fun. So that certainly naturally leads into where you are now. So after you get your PhD, so what's your first job then after that? Real job, yeah, that's true. Yeah, grad school is not a real job, that's for sure. Actually I had a very interesting little break. I wanted a little break from I guess research and technology and so I went to New York City and I joined a patent law firm and I was like, what's the title? Like technical patent agent, something like that. So it helped patent lawyers like look at kind of big patents from all the big tech companies. I did that for about like, I forget, almost a little less than a year, I think. And I kind of went back to technology after that, but it was a nice little break to just try something totally new. Oh, that must have been interesting about reviewing cool new things. Yeah, it was interesting to read patents. Like I learned a lot about the legal world of patents. I think they're both the good and the bad. It's interesting, it's not as altruistic as I maybe thought it was, because there's a lot of, it was just a lot of legal, it's about money, it's a money-making system. And so I saw kind of like the whole thing. I was like, oh, all right, I kind of want to go back to technology. So after that, I went to MIT for a post-doc actually because I went back to academic roots. Nice. And from there, I went to MIT Lincoln Lab and that's where I did the research that started Sync Computing with my co-founder. Okay, so tell me about that, and very cool. So tell me about your time there at MIT and how that progressed and what made you decide to start Sync Computing? Yeah, so when I was, my post-doc at MIT was actually more in the materials and optics. So I kind of drifted into the energy space, but it was still optics and optical communication type work. And then when I went to Lincoln Lab, Lincoln Lab, by the way, is like the government research arm of MIT. So it's like a large research facility, about half an hour away from campus. And when I was at Lincoln Lab, they have these like exploratory research projects you can kind of pitch and one of them was an advanced computing concept. Basically kind of a new chip architecture to solve a certain class of optimization problems. And so that was the genesis. The roots of basically Sync Computing was that research work we published a paper and we got funded by MIT's venture arm, essentially. And that's kind of how it all got started. Wow, that's amazing. How exciting and how cool. Yeah, yeah, it was a wild ride. This was in like 2019 when the venture world was flush with cash. I think COVID was just about taking off, unfortunately. But the VC markets were just, it was a lot easier to fundraise back then than it is these days. Sure. We got lucky with the timing. Sure, sure. So it really went into like, I wanna do this on my own, I'm gonna get some funding and I am gonna start this company and what was the need that you were seeing for customers and who was your target customer? That's a really great question. I think, well, to answer your first question, like why did we wanna jump out? I think we saw this as a really unique opportunity. First of all, the funding from the VC world was so much larger than if we just kept, we could have kept on doing it inside a government research arm. But the funding was literally like one-tenth of the value. And so we're like, wow, we could do a lot more VC money than we could do with kind of internal R and D funds. That was a big one. Then I've also, I've always kind of been, start up curious. I'm sure a lot of folks probably listening to this podcast are like, oh, sort of sound like a lot of fun. Now that I've been in it for a little while, I'd say it most days it's pretty rough. It's really, it's a lot of hard work. But anyways, I've always had that itch, that entrepreneurial itch, I've always been kind of considered and very curious about that. Versus kind of working at a giant company, which I was working with government, which is obviously one of the largest entities out there. So working at a startup was always very kind of exciting to me. Yeah.  Oh yeah, that's right. So we had a very kind of windy path. Originally we, we were actually going to be a hardware company, trying to solve a certain class of optimization problems. So we were going after large enterprises, like large pharmaceutical companies, logistics companies, shipping companies like UPS. And to see like, are they like bottlenecked by an algorithm? Are they like, you know, if we have a UPS trucks, are they unable to solve their like optimal routing problem?  Do they know exactly where every truck should go everywhere? And so that was, we were kind of going after those customers. They're like, do you need help accelerating, solving these routing problems? These optimization problems faster? That's kind of where we started. Nice. Nice. And you said it's evolved. Yeah, it evolved quite a bit. So we started there, we ran into some challenges. We found out that they weren't really mathematically bottlenecked. You know, for example, we talked to UPS and they published papers about this, it's all public, but they actually do have an algorithm that does route all their trucks. And they solve all the routes for all their trucks across the United States in like two minutes. And it's an amazing piece of work. And we talked, when we talked to the person who created it, he said it took about like a year to develop the algorithm. And then about nine years to convince everyone else, because you have to put in a lot of sensors and tracking, and you have to train the drivers.  And so there was just the, I think the reality of bringing an algorithm like that was really the hard part. And the math was actually wasn't so crazy. So because of that, we had to like find a new problem. All right, well, what's the problem that doesn't have people involved? That, you know, if you just solve it and solve the optimization, you instantly unlock value for a company. And we kind of obviously our routes weren't computing. And so really, well, large scale computing is a mess. And there's inherently an optimization problem there, which is like resource allocation.  And so we really liked that space. And we found out, oh, okay, you can actually map that to a mathematical problem and then solve that. If you solve that, then you make all of your like big data jobs, for example, run a lot faster. Yeah. That's kind of how we, and does that make sense? That's kind of how we evolved like large scale and how we eventually got into the data world. Cause obviously the market is huge, you know, there's lots of big data stuff runs on lots of large clusters. And so it's like a multi-billion dollar market. So that's kind of how we kind of got pulled into the data world, kind of from the outside. Yeah. So yeah, just not ever a linear path, right? But it all comes down to the data. I love that story. And I love how you just kind of keep on learning and keep on growing and throughout your school even and into your career. More and more companies are considering investing in data literacy education, but still have questions about its value, purpose and how to get the ball rolling. Introducing the newest monthly webinar series from Dataversity, Elevating Enterprise Data Literacy, where we discuss the landscape of data literacy and answer your burning questions. Learn more about this new series and register for free at dataversity.net.  That's a really good question. Certainly over the past couple of years as I've been kind of part of SYNC, I've probably learned the most over the past, my years here at SYNC that I haven't any other point. So if anyone wants to just drown in lessons learned, I recommend to start a company because you will learn a ridiculous amount about yourself, about how business works and startups work. I don't know if I could pick one, I mean literally hundreds of lessons, but maybe two I would circle that were maybe surprising to me. One was to trust your gut. And I think when I first started SYNC, especially I'm a first time founder and it's not like I had tons of experience, I knew exactly how a company should run next YZ, this is how this should work, that's how that should work. And so you're often kind of doubt yourself and this might be good life advice. You're always like, I don't know if I'm right or if I'm wrong. You might be like, this doesn't feel right, but then you kind of doubt yourself. Maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about or I don't understand. And so maybe you get some external advice and you follow that advice and then you turn to, oh, maybe you feel like, I don't really understand that advice, but I trust that person, right? I guess I'll do, I'll try that. And then it turns out actually that's not right. And so I think from a life advice, like if it doesn't feel right to you, if it's just like, this isn't right, doesn't make any sense to me. I don't agree with this. Maybe I don't really know why, but it's not, it's just doesn't, the inputs and outputs aren't making any sense to me. Probably you should listen to your internal voice. Okay, I gotta stop this or like this, even a really fancy person with a lot of experience or kind of a big company or a big university, you shouldn't even follow them. Like only you know kind of what you're seeing. And so you should really put more weight into yourself. It's kind of a big lesson that I learned. And probably the second big lesson is like, this is more like perhaps CEO company perspective is that within a company, alignment is really, really critical. And this was maybe something I didn't put enough weight into in the beginning where, especially in an early stage startup, we were just trying to figure out what's going on. Like everyone has to be aligned on what's going on. It can't just kind of have acid, it has to be really like, okay, seriously, like we are doing this goal. Yeah. Does everyone agree? Are we all on the same page? And like it's not, it's not like you have one meeting and everyone gives a thumbs up and they're, okay, good, we're all aligned. It is a grind, it is a continuous pressure of like, are we aligned next week? Are we aligned next week? You know, in any small like, well, I kind of see that, but I want to do this instead of that. All right, wait, wait, let's zoom in on that. And so I think that aligned, especially in the leadership team, well, this whole company in general, that align is really critical. So maybe some advice for folks listening, like if you're a new person at a company, you know, talk to your manager, boss and really understand like, what do you want? Your stakeholders like, are we aligned? Like you want like customers to be happy? Are we trying to make the CEO happy? Is this just an like an internal thing? Like what's going like, who is happy with what? What is the goal? What is the output? Sorry, I'm kind of rambling, but those are kind of maybe two big lessons that I think I learned. Those are great lessons. And again, I can certainly empathize with the latter, being a smaller company ourselves. We talk about Tony, our founder and CEO, when I first started, I talked about, I wish I could just plug in a net cable into his brain and download. But we've learned, it's that communication and we talk about now how there's no air between us because there's just a lot of communication. So we're always on the same board. We work hard. Yeah, we work hard at it to be on the same page. Yeah, very intentional. Yeah, it's not just like once a year. Right, yeah. Is this good? All right, good, we're done. It is constant work to be like, are we aligned? We're on the same page, right? Yeah, communication is a constant, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That was something that kind of underestimated, yeah. Yeah, I went and gave up, yeah. Well, that's amazing. So now that you've dipped your toe into data and it's become a major component of your company, do you have, what's your definition of data? That's a very good question. Probably the simplest definition is, I don't know if it's too profound, but it's information, right? It's, at the end of the day, that's probably pretty obvious. But it's information and it's all about what are you trying to do with that information? You know, in the data world is like, I'm trying to create a dashboard so that some executive can see what's going on with the sales team. In AI and generated AI, you're like trying to predict or generate text. In an ML model, you're trying to predict the recommendation for your retail system. But to do any of that, you need the information to base your algorithm or your output off of it. And so I think that's the simplest definition of it's just information. Yeah, no, it's great, it's perfect. And you mentioned AI and machine learning, which, you know, it's hard to have a conversation in the data world without AI coming up anymore, right? So, and you talked about managing the data and we're finding too that what we're doing has become far more important because as people try and stand up AI initiatives, they're learning that they missed the data management or piece of it and the adage of garbage and garbage out. Yes. Right? Yes. So are you finding that as well, helping customers make sure that the quality going into their algorithm, that the data going into AI is quality and managed and comes from a reliable source? I think we actually, so we have a machine learning algorithm that we use that we built in-house internally. So we're consumers of AI and algorithm world. What we do for customers, what we help them with is basically optimize their compute infrastructure. So we actually, for customers, we don't actually look at their data. So we're not kind of in the data quality world, we just help them optimize the compute.  And that we had to take a lot of lessons learned as we were developing our system.  Maybe this is good data, then you run it and you try and go, oh, no, that's not good enough, we need more. Then you try this, oh, that's not good enough, we need more. So, it's easy to say garbage and garbage up, but in reality, especially when you're small startup, you're trying to be scrappy and efficient, you don't want to over design or over engineer. So it's not always trivial to kind of get to that, to understand what is garbage and what is not. Yeah. Fascinating. I love it. Well, so do you see the importance of data management and the number of jobs working with data? I mean, even from the adjacent position that you're in, increasing or decreasing over the next 10 years and why? Yeah, I definitely, I think the answer is obviously definitely growing. Data memory capacity has only skyrocketed over the past several decades. I don't think data is ever going to go and get smaller across the world, right? Just the growing population itself is maybe the fundamental driver, so why data will never get smaller? And I think obviously with generative AI and all that, the crazy height that's there, that consumes an enormous amount of data. And so, I, yeah, I think that it's a very, very safe that the data's only become bigger and more important. How do you process it? How do you move it? How do you compute? What algorithm are you building? What's your purpose? I think that's probably what's most exciting is what are you going to do with the data? Generative AI is just one application. And now there's like, I know there's like crazy new robots that are combining generative AI with robotics now. So that's really cool. So like, what are you going to do with the data?  Technology won't stop. It's only just going to grow more and more and more stuff. But the fundamental thing that will never change is you need data to do anything intelligent. So I think I am very comfortable saying it. It's only going to be bigger. More jobs, more data, more memory, more storage. That's never going to shrink. Where are you with quantum computing? I'm sorry, how do I feel about quantum computing? Yeah, where are we with quantum computing? Yeah. Oh, interesting. You know, I, so I actually have some of my research roots were in quantum computing. So I know a bit about that world. Quantum computing is interesting. It's still very researchy. So while theoretically it is very powerful, I think it's still like probably decades away before it's like practically useful. Like right now your laptop can outperform all of the quantum computers out there today and probably for many decades that will be true. So I don't think the industry is going to be threatened by quantum computing anytime soon. It's still very much like a laboratory R&D thing. I think probably hardware-wise as we were seeing with NVIDIA, they're going crazy. OpenAI is trying to, they're like trying to do hardware now too. Oh really? Yeah. So I think from a hardware perspective, I think NVIDIA OpenAI has a very unique perspective because they know the algorithm and it's their secret sauce and so they know exactly what the hardware challenges are. And so I'm actually very excited to see what they do and what they output because they have a unique advantage and they even have something NVIDIA doesn't have which is like their core algorithm. So that'll be really cool to see over the next like five, 10 years, if that's true, if they do create hardware, that'll be really cool. Yeah, just add to the fun. Yeah, yeah, it's only going to get crazier. It's a really exciting time in computing to see kind of where our stuff goes. Indeed. So then what advice would you give to people looking to get into a career in data management? That's a really good question. So we actually do work with a lot of kind of data managers and kind of large enterprises. And so we've seen some of their pain points and I think a couple pieces of advice, one that I kind of mentioned earlier was like, what is the business objective, right? You're at a company doing a thing. You really gotta know what exactly is important. You're not just building random dashboards and building pipelines for no reason. Like it serves a business purpose. So definitely fundamentally you gotta understand why are you building, before you touch any code, just like why are we doing this thing? What do you care about? What is the metric of success? Number two, I would say one of the things we see with data managers like platform managers is that there is a segregation between, in any company there's usually like a platform manager and then below that person, like a team of data engineers. And so the data engineers are the ones who are actually writing the code and then you have platform managers who are kind of overseeing everything, making sure they're using data bricks or snowflake well, et cetera. And what we see is like a division of labor. Like data engineers are doing the coding and the platform managers are managing everything. But it's hard for the platform managers to kind of make things better, to change anything because they have to go bug a data engineer and like, hey, can we change this thing? Can we do this thing? And maybe the data engineers are really busy, they're trying to get code. They have a different set of priorities versus a platform manager, perhaps being kind of yelled at by the CTO saying, hey, your costs are too high or we need this to go faster or we need some other goal. And then the data engineer is being yelled at by their boss saying, hey, where's my code? Where's the output? And so I think one of the challenges in data management at any enterprise is just competing priorities. Everyone at different layers of the cake have different priorities. And we've seen it firsthand, it's just hard to get things done because what I care about is we're doing what you care about, even though someone's yelling at me and I'm like, okay, I can't do anything else to have another person help me. So I think maybe one thing that's interesting is like the, I don't know if it's politics but the amount of like coordination between other humans that's needed. You know, it's not just living in data bricks and when you're done, it's a lot of like, okay, I gotta check person A, I gotta get security involved, I gotta get DevOps involved. There's just so many bodies that you need. So I would say be nice to people because maybe that's one good advice because it is not a solo job, you're more of a people coordinator and get things done. Well, that is so true. I was just having a conversation with someone earlier about that today, actually. So the communication again, it's just so key and lots of communication. I have to ask, do you find that your comedic skills come into play?  Does that help in your communication and does it help, do you leverage that at all? I think it actually has probably one of the biggest advantages of me personally is I did it for like 10, 15 years. So like me getting up on stage, talking, I have like zero apprehension. I'm actually pretty comfortable on stage, so I enjoy it quite a bit. Public speaking, you also learn, because I did a lot of improv comedy, which is like improvise sketches. And so you have to learn how to read people as you're talking. And so I think you gain a lot of emotional intelligence trying to like say, oh, you can really read body language really well. Ooh, that person didn't like what I said. Maybe it helps a lot in when you have like group team meetings, one-on-ones, or even when you're pitching investors, you kind of have to like be able to read the room. And a lot of it, like 90% of it's non-verbal communication, you're just like, ooh. All right, and that person does not like me. I need to see what's going on with that. Yeah. So I think I'm very thankful for the time that I was doing a lot of that stuff. And I think if I didn't do that, and I was just like pure tech, I was just like in the basement voting, I probably would have none of that skill set. Probably sync would not exist, because that helps a lot, especially in fundraising. It's all about like convincing people, pitching, believing what you're saying. And I think my comedy background really, or performance background kind of helped out a lot. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. And that's so amazing. And it just goes to show that if you follow your passions, you can tie it all together, right? It doesn't have to be one thing or the other, and it doesn't have to be separate. It all leverages, builds on each other. I think a diversity of life experience is really, really important, right? Don't just be one dimensional if you like painting. Go get into it. Don't just get as aggressive as you can. If you like, I don't know, any hobby, like actually do it. Maybe can you make a living off of it? That's really hard. That's like 0.001% can make a living off of like any, especially like creative arts hobby. But I would definitely encourage people. Even, you know, I read a lot of resumes when we were hiring, I think it was very, it says a lot when you have like another hobby. I'm like, okay, this person like kind of, is more multi-dimensional, perhaps can think a little bit deeper, a little bit more differently because they understand in a completely different field. And so it helps kind of color people and personalities. It helps your resume stand out too. Oh, wow. This person is like an international skydiver. That's crazy. It helps a lot. So I definitely believe in, definitely diversity in your life experience. Life's too short. Don't just come all day. Go do, follow your passions, right? You just kind of, you gotta do what you gotta do. Oh, well, Jeff, this has been such a pleasure. You know, and I'd be remiss if I didn't ask, you know, if people wanted to find out more about sync computing, how would they find you? Yeah, you can check us out at www.synccomputing.com, or two C's in the middle there. Quick plug, so yeah, we do help enterprises and companies kind of optimize their data bricks, clusters, lower costs. So if there are any listeners out there that are like, oh, I would love this system, it can automatically make things all more efficient. Please check us out. Happy to jump on a call. Or you can find me on LinkedIn as well. Yep, happy to chat with anyone. Oh, I love it. And we'll be sure to add those links to the podcast page as well. So people can find you and check you out. Oh, that sounds great. Awesome. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. Well, no problem. Thank you, Shannon. This is a lot of fun. Indeed. And for all of our listeners out there, if you'd like to keep up to date in the latest in podcasts and in the latest in data management education, you can go to dataversity.net, forward slash subscribe. Until next time, stay curious, everyone. Thank you for listening to Dataversity Talks, a podcast brought to you by Dataversity. Subscribe to our newsletter for podcast updates and information about our free educational webinars at dataversity.net, forward slash subscribe.


Thank you for the letter out of the club that you sent to the 5 o'clock club. I know you've been doing this so just turn about. That is a belt.  And for the boys that's a jelly bean so there can be no brothers sister fights. Thank you.  Your mom sent it. I understand it was late. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the gift. All right. All I want to say is chief.  The farmer's wife was going away on a trip where she left and said to him, why am I going, can't you do something about that rickety old barn of ours that's just falling apart out there. So right after she left he went down the road to his friends place named Seville. And asked if he could borrow his cow herd. Sally said, well yeah, but I have to warn you. He said, when they're in a strange place they get pretty rambunctious. They get all upset. And I said, it's all right. We took him up and put him in a barn. And sure enough they started stamping around that barn. Knockin' the devil out of everything. And he went in and called insurance company. When his wife came home there was a brand spanking new barn out there. And she said, how did you accomplish that? He said, I just wrecked the stalls with cows of Sally. If that's on the taper racing guy. He's much better usually. He doesn't dirty at all. How are you? I'm good to see you. Maybe you have to do it this way. I was going to wake and go around the table later. Let me just see you. Long on this one too. We are of course most appreciative of your time. And I'll try to be as direct and precise as possible. We took a fact-finding mission to five countries in Africa. And we took a total of 13 Red Cross delegates. And a media contingent. Four countries, excuse me, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Mali, and Senegal. Much of our attention was focused on Ethiopia as much as that seems to be. The area that is most seriously affected. The purpose of our mission was very simple. To see for ourselves the nature of the need. And also to verify that that, which is being rendered by the Red Cross movement, is going directly to the recipients who need it. And we did assure ourselves of that. And when we will go before the American public in the next six weeks, asking for their assistance, we can say with certainty that it's been Red Cross that it's been Red Cross. And we can say with certainty that it's been Red Cross that it's been Red Cross. We saw the funds. That's the Red Cross. We saw the funds. I'm glad you're here. Thank you. Thank you. Be a pretty picture if you're between us. How do you do? Pleased to have you here. And Mr. Sia? How do you do? I'm sorry. All right.  We have one paper. And please, my congratulations because in my year, I met him in 1981 at Mexico, and I'm meeting there, congratulating on his selection in the O&U. And thank you. Thank you very much. I was with him last weekend in Miami. And I asked him what message he wanted me to send. And I said to you his congratulations for your electoral triumph. His best wishes that you will continue. And we will continue with the friendly relations we have been having. You will bear great support in favor of the process that he has undertaken. We shall continue that support. You are very pleased with the advance of democracy. Public of Yemen? Yes. How do you do? How do you do? There are sons. Hello. Thank you. You and I will go over in front of the fireplace for a photo and then you will come in and join us for a group picture. And this is your second time increasing the relationship between the son and the son. Mr. Babadej? Yes, your best. How do you do? How do you do? Son, we are. How do you do? How do you do? How do you do?  We hope that you will continue. To the State of Bahrain? Yes. It is a pleasure to welcome you here again. The time is ambassadorial. I express my appreciation also for our hospitality to our units there. Thank you. Mr. Ambassador welcome. Thank you very much. And Mrs. Alredi? Nice to see you. What do you do? I'm Selma.  A group picture if you all get the tweets. How are you? I didn't send for an interpreter because Air Force has talked here. Well, I don't have any experience. I'll be in the plane. See you sir. I didn't take care of her. She's getting better. She wants to spend New Year's back here. I think the real reason is she wants to go to the inauguration. I told her we'll go down and watch her sworn in but no dancing. That gets to the old. Can you give us a moment Mr. President? Can I talk to you a moment sir? Can you give us a moment up here? Not only late here, but now I'm even more late for my next appointment. I've got it in there. South Africa's South Africa's arrested two people who were in the British Embassy and there's a report that we had sort of told them that they would not be arrested if they left. Where have you been? That was a great program. Mr. President, how are you doing? Good to see you. Thank you. Well, it was a nice part last night. You left too soon. You left before I started to boogaloo and I wanted to get dancing in there. Oh, that's why you left. Let's see what you were going to do. Then you don't want to be a damper or whatever you're saying. You were going to be a damper. A receiving line. Oh, yeah. I very much appreciate you giving me this little opportunity to come and express...


So I'm the type of person to forgive you, but I'll never forget what you did because in the back of my head I'll never be able to trust you a hundred percent and I'm always doubt your intentions But I guess I got some more healing to do


Main centre-back today, Mola is putting a big work. O'Dayne Samwells, he's with Dwight Cherry-Mile.  I mean, you're really putting a touring performance in defence.  You sought to set the tone for this game. Yes, because I know that as long as I have a good game, the team will have a good game. But unfortunately, we fell asleep in the last moment. But after this regroup, I'll come again and stay positive for the next game. It's not the blame game, but what do you think was the cause of that goal in the end? It's more of a communication card. I was told in my right back that he's going to use his left, he's going to use his left. But unfortunately, he didn't hear me, so it's just one of those days. But you can take heart from the fact that you came to the home of the league leaders and it took 90 plus eight minutes for them to get a point. As you can see, we're building a good unit here at Molinez. Positive things are happening now. So any team come now, we'll be able to much of them. Manteman, whatever they come in, we're able to withstand it. Well, that's something you can take from it. So good work from you and all the best. Thank you. There you have it. Sam was really good performance as a defender. He really almost carried out the tactical plan of his coach. It took you 90 plus eight minutes to break this team down. It was a real good performance from your opponent tactically. But somehow I just felt that your team wasn't so creative in the final third. They didn't, they went side to side. And you had moments where you had a link up, but not enough. Well, I think we were influencing in attack this afternoon. I'm the combination player. We didn't use the weight of the field. You know, the Molinez team score against the runner play. We find it difficult to find our footing back in the game. And as I said, we left it late. Left it late. It was a really good goal. You talk about the Molinez goal. What would you say when you look at it just now? I know you'll analyse it more. But where would you lay the blame in terms of that goal? Well, I would have to see it a bit more, really. But I don't think anyone could have been at fault at that goal. You know, it's just one of those moments. You just have to give credit to the opponent and the kicker who scored. Finally, I have to ask you, you've been getting results, winning games, not the most fluent of your team today. It could have gone the other way. But for that goal again from your saviour, if I may call him that way, Makala, is it there a concern for more players and that you're not really playing as fluent, as you said? Yes, I would say it's a concern. But again, we're creating chances and just feel to put them away. So we just have to continue work. Well, you're still top of the table, coach, all the best. All right, thanks. So coach Whitmore, it's a sign of champions when you can get something from a game when you didn't play your best football, talking about best football. We know from your days with Magra, you know how to set the team up and you know how to be organised. It almost paid off today. It was almost a tactical masterclass. I mean, we planned, we came, I thought we delivered with laps in the end. But I mean, not feeling good, obviously disappointed, because I think we should have gotten all three points. But let me say, thumbs up to the guys. I thought they played a discipline and for most of the game, they were very organised and I want to say, you know, big up to them. You have to say big up. I look at your team. You didn't come with the eye-press, but you were as fluent as you were against Sambalan in attack. But you were much better defensively because, again, Sambalan, you let up two goals in the second half. That must be pleasing to take away here. Well, definitely. We saw where we went to rung it on Sambalan game. We brought in some new players. They would have been a little bit more trusty. So we needed some more time to get them to get some work and we did just that. We included them today and it almost, almost paid off. Funny enough, in the end of the game, I know you're not going to play the blame game, but the end of the game, I heard Harrison and Nelson, they were at it and Nelson, they were looking to lay the blame at Nelson's feet. But, however, he was the player that you were having to communicate with throughout the game of wanting to stay deep, doing his defensive work. It's just ironic that at the end, it was... Nelson is a very good player, very, very good player and very, very experienced as well.  Human beings will make mistakes. So it is for us now to go back, get them back up psychologically and look at the next assignment. Well, a lot for you to take from this one at the home of the champions. All the best, coach. Yeah, man, thanks much. Yeah.