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.
Routine work, that best of all anodynes which the twentieth century has tried its best to deprive itself of-that is what I most want. I would not trade the daily trip it gives me for all the mind-expanders and mind-deadeners the young are hooked on.
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.
Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.
Maybe the right silences are what keep a friendship green.
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
To some extent, greater or less, the tendency is present in everyone to enjoy the advantages of community and interrelationship but to reject the corresponding obligations.