Q&A; - Lynn Langit

Lynn Langit was a developer evangelist for the Microsoft MSDN team for four years before leaving Microsoft in October 2011 to do consulting and training. Prior to working at Microsoft, she founded and served as lead architect of a development firm that created BI solutions. She holds a number of partner awards - Microsoft MVP (SQL Server), AWS Community Hero, Google Developer Expert (Cloud). She's authored and taught for Wintellect and Lynda.com. Lynn's been doing production work with SQL Server, Hadoop, .NET, Java, and more. Her data blog is at www.LynnLangit.com. She is also co-founder of the non-profit Teaching Kids Programming.

Lynn will be presenting a pre-conference, 3 Tools an Hour - 24 FREE Tools every business analyst needs, and also a breakout session, Using Premium Data for Analysts, at the PASS Business Analytics Conference.  We recently spoke with Lynn about her data story, her data hero, her advice for analysts & more:

Tell us your data story: How did you first become interested in working with data, and what path did you take to where you are today?

I am ‘old school’ – SQL Server, first as a trainer, then a consultant, for over 15 years. It was ‘love at first site’, when I took that first class so long ago, studied for and passed the exam, through when I taught every MOC SQL class in existence (remember the class on ORM’s or English Query?), up to today where I am implementing advanced features like Columnstore indexes and Tabular models. I still love SQL Server (I am an MVP) and think it’s an excellent tool for many data jobs.

What excites you most in the world of business and data analytics?

Improvements in machine learning tools. Democratizing those tools increases the size of the pool of people who can use statistics and data mining and other ML algorithms.  Predictive analytics is becoming increasingly relevant as data volumes, varieties and velocities increase.  I am working with Azure ML, IBM Watson and Predixion Software now.

What one thing would you tell analytics professionals to put at the top of their to-learn list this year?

It is impossible to know too much about the cloud.  Learn as fast as you can.  Not all analytics projects are in the cloud…yet, but there are so many options – from infrastructure (virtual machines which can process tons of data quickly, easily and cheaply) to analytics as a service.  I’ve done most of my work on AWS (Redshift) or Google (Big Query) to date, but I am paying attention to Azure (ML and HDInsight).

In 2009 you co-founded the volunteer-run non-profit Teaching Kids Programming. What have *you* learned from the experience and from the young people who’ve participated in the program?

Improved code literacy will change our world.  Learning to program supports mathematical thinking, so critical for thriving in our world of ever-increasing data.  Also that every kid everywhere – from Lusaka, Zambia to Irvine, CA can and should learn basic coding skills.  Finally we have to re-think the way we teach programming.  TKP uses the ‘Intentional Method’ (which we created) to teach in a fun and engaging way – it’s experiential learning.  This means first the kids code up something (led by a teacher), then the teacher ‘peels the onion’ to dig into the concepts presented AFTER the kids have coded at least one lesson.

As a Cloud and Big Data consultant, what’s the biggest Big Data myth you’d like to dispel in the business world?

Every Big Data project must include Hadoop.  Some do, but others are better served with NoSQL solutions, such as MongoDb or AWS Redshift, etc…  The book ‘7 Databases in 7 Weeks’ is a must-read for all of us.  It’s now a menu of database choices; one size does not fit all.

If you were hiring a business or data analytics professional today, what knowledge, skills, and characteristics would you look for?

Curiosity, demonstrated ability to learn technology quickly, mathematical/analytical thinking (i.e. breaking larger problems or questions down into smaller solvable parts).  The top programming languages now are R or Python, however, I’d look for knowledge of ANY programming language, as the ability to learn is more important than skills that a candidate already has.

Who is your data hero and why?

Jake Porway – he founded the #DataForGood non-profit Data Kind and has been a leader in the movement to unite data professionals with non-profits to make a better world.