I build analytics products.
I work across analytics from the data layer all the way to the UI. I shape data models, build ETL pipelines, and create table schemas. I work with engineers to define metric calculations and the business logic behind them. I have strong opinions about data visualizations and will happily go deep into the weeds on UI.
At Open Architects, my focus is turning raw data into polished products that people who aren't analysts can open every day, understand quickly, and act on. I care about how the data is structured, how the metrics are defined, and how the final product looks and feels.
I'm a tinkerer by nature and an intense learner. If I'm not building something at work, I'm probably building something on a weekend just to learn how it works. Outside of that, you'll find me reading, spending time with my family, and cheering on the Arkansas Razorbacks.
I set product direction and help turn it into something the team can actually ship. That means deciding what to build, what to leave alone, how products should fit together, and how to respond to customer feedback and changes in the market. I work closely with engineers, designers, and leadership from the initial idea through release.
I work across the data stack, from table schemas and ETL pipelines to the models that power the product. I work with engineers to define how metrics are calculated and the business logic behind them. I'm comfortable getting into the SQL and data pipeline details when that's what it takes to make an analytics product work correctly.
I care a lot about design. I think carefully about chart choice, visual hierarchy, layout, interaction, and the small details that make an interface feel polished. I like getting deep into the UI and working through what belongs on screen, how it should be presented, and how the pieces fit together.
I spend a lot of time talking to customers and learning how they actually work. Those conversations help me understand the problems behind a request and figure out what the product should do. I'm happy to get deep into a domain before deciding how we should build for it.
Still hands-on in SQL, Python, BigQuery, and Power BI. My AI of choice varies depending on which model's clichés I've gotten sick of that week.
My digital commonplace book is a tool I built to store all my favorite quotes I find while reading.
I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boggle at a personal Devil. I can imagine that if there existed a God who loved, the devil would be driven to destroy even the weakest, the most faulty imitation of that love. Wouldn't he be afraid that the habit of love might grow, and wouldn't he try to trap us all into being traitors, into helping him extinguish love? If there is a God who uses us and makes his saints out of such material as we are, the devil too may have his ambitions; he may dream of training even such a person as myself, even poor Parkis, into being his saints, ready with borrowed fanaticism to destroy love wherever we find it.
As when a great king has entered some large city and made his dwelling in one of the houses in it, such a city is certainly made worthy of high honor, and no longer does any enemy or bandit descend upon it, but it is rather reckoned worthy of all care because of the king's having taken residence in one of its houses; so also does it happen with the King of all.
When we abandoned what made us good and embraced what made us comfortable and secure, we lost something essential, knew we lost it and yet chose to lose. Material bounty and freedom are so much stronger incentives than sacrifice and character.
I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously unless you keep in practice.
Maybe the right silences are what keep a friendship green.
As one of his staff at the State Department later wrote, Marshall did not possess the intellectual brilliance of someone like Acheson, or the gift of eloquence, but he could distinguish what was important from what was unimportant, and this made him invaluable.