#231 Manage Your Data Better with Shinji Kim, CEO at Select Star

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Aug 1, 2024

Shinji Kim, Founder and CEO of Select Star, is a data infrastructure expert with experience at Akamai and Facebook. She discusses the frustrating data discoverability issues many face in organizations. Shinji emphasizes the critical role of effective data governance and quality, especially with emerging technologies like AI. She highlights the power of documentation in data management and collaboration between data and business teams, advocating for transparency to enhance decision-making. Her insights offer actionable strategies for navigating today's data complexities.

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INSIGHT

Data Quality Definition

Data quality involves technical aspects (freshness, format) and contextual relevance (proper usage).
Focus on technical quality for critical data powering automation, not every dataset.

INSIGHT

Data Discoverability Challenges

Data scientists struggle with data discovery due to numerous datasets and tribal knowledge around proper usage.
Transient tables and the departure of data model creators exacerbate the difficulty.

ADVICE

Documentation Best Practices

Document core tables, business processes, data dictionaries (fields, attributes, usage), and create a business glossary.
Map business terms, metrics, and calculations clearly for shared understanding.

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One of the most annoying conversations about data that happens far too often is: “Can you do an analysis and answer this business problem for me?” “Sure, where’s the data?” “I don’t know. Probably in one of our databases.” At this point more time is spent hunting for data than actually analyzing it. Rather than grumbling about it, it would obviously be more productive to learn how to solve data discoverability issues. What’s the best way to properly document data sets? How can you avoid spending all your time maintaining dashboards that no one actually uses?

Shinji Kim is the Founder & CEO of Select Star, an automated data discovery platform that helps you understand your data. Previously, she was the CEO of Concord Systems (concord.io), a NYC-based data infrastructure startup acquired by Akamai Technologies in 2016. She led building Akamai’s new IoT data platform for real-time messaging, log processing, and edge computing. Prior to Concord, Shinji was the first Product Manager hired at Yieldmo, where she led the Ad Format Lab, A/B testing, and yield optimization. Before Yieldmo, she was analyzing data and building enterprise applications at Deloitte Consulting, Facebook, Sun Microsystems, and Barclays Capital. Shinji studied Software Engineering at University of Waterloo and General Management at Stanford GSB. She advises early stage startups on product strategy, customer development, and company building.

In the episode, Richie and Shinji explore the importance of data governance, the utilization of data, data quality, challenges in data usage, why documentation matters, metadata and data lineage, improving collaboration between data and business teams, data governance trends to look forward to, and much more.

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