# Season 5 Episode 1: Byte: Back on the Mic, Updates, Ai and more

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2024-04-23
- **Format:** Video · 41 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** AI & ML, Industry trends, Analytics
- **Tools:** dbt; Power BI; Tableau (pulse); ThoughtSpot
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/season-5-episode-1-byte-back-on-the-mic-updates-ai-and-more
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vp1VqYFQpk

Ravi and I are back behind the mic after a three-year break, reintroducing ourselves and the relaunched podcast. We catch up on how our careers have diverged since leaving the Information Lab, then dig into AI, why analytics products went stale, the dominance of big tech models, and the looming problems of trust, privacy and disinformation.

## Key takeaways

- The podcast uses three formats: bytes (full topic shows), bits (short snippets) and analogues (guest discussions), now published on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and as video on the YouTube channel.
- Working as in-house staff means upgrading tools once or twice a year and bringing a toolkit to specific problems, whereas consultants bring the toolkit to the problem to accelerate and then move on.
- Analytics tools 'stopped moving' rather than going stale, losing focus on the core mission of helping people get answers fast, hence the shift towards metrics layers like Tableau Pulse, Power BI metrics and dbt modelling.
- Most analytics AI features are just customers of models like ChatGPT rather than models trained on their own knowledge bases, because only the largest firms can afford the hardware to train competitive models.
- Trust, data lineage and provenance (the original promise of blockchain and NFTs) will become critical as AI-generated disinformation spreads across platforms that legislation cannot keep pace with.

## Chapters

- 0:02 Back on the mic and reintroductions
- 5:44 Podcast formats and the video relaunch
- 7:37 Revisiting NFTs, blockchain and crypto
- 11:12 Why analytics products went stale
- 16:56 AI models and big tech's burden
- 27:24 Hardware peaks and augmented reality
- 28:31 Privacy, disinformation and data lineage
- 39:35 What's next for the podcast

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/season-5-episode-1-byte-back-on-the-mic-updates-ai-and-more

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena