Your Data is the Foundation

This talk, co-facilitated with a partner at Technology First, works through the tension between moving fast on AI and getting the data foundation underneath it right. The core argument is that data is the most commonly neglected element in a platform decision, because it is the least visible part of the stack until something built on it breaks.

The practical frame offered is three questions to ask of any dataset before it becomes the foundation for an enterprise intelligence system: where did it come from, what is actually in it, and can it be validated. Teams skip these questions under deadline pressure, and that's where platform decisions go wrong.