Hi, I’m Dan. I run data teams for a living and I’m a huge fan of all things data-driven. I’m equally excited about the everyday things data can do for you, like telling you how many products you sold last month or how much money you spent on widgets last quarter, as I am about the ‘clever’ stuff like machine learning and AI.

Whether you’re a big business, a non-profit or an amateur meteorologist, you’re going to be better at what you do if you have fast access to well-presented and accurate data. That’s because good data can tell you if there’s been an error on your website, a sudden surge in demand for men’s sandals, a rise in sea-levels or a change in oil prices - then you can act quickly to capitalise on the situation.

Over the last two or three years I’ve been deeply involved in Data Strategy - which is a relatively new and increasingly important topic. I believe that success in data comes from a holistic approach, bringing all those who manage and interact with data together and creating an effective balance between:

  • Data as a Differentiator: How data-driven products help you deliver value to your customers.
  • Data as a Capability: How data technology enables better products and new ways of working.
  • Data as an Asset: The value of your data and how you organise, share and secure it.
  • Data as a Culture: Using data to measure performance, communicate goals and make decisions.

You can read more about this in a post I wrote on the subject: The Data Compass: How to build a data strategy.

I’ve worked as VP of Data at Infogrid, Data Director at Trainline and before that I ran most of the data team at Compare the Market. I’ve worked on geolocation tools for mobile telecoms, IoT, broadcast and even commercial refrigeration. I’ve written software that’s controlled live TV at the touch of a button, monitored fridges with neural networks and collected and analysed data at a very large scale to optimise telecoms networks. Throughout all that, the same themes have been ever present: “time to market is the only true differentiator for a software team”, “customer value is the only measure of success”.

  • To find out about my professional interests and career, check out my LinkedIn profile.
  • If you want to check out some code (of varying degrees of quality!) check my Github.

In my spare time I like tinkering around, making stuff. Anything from flying machines to steam engines to simple stuff like shelves and cupboards. I own an ex-RAF Land Rover which I restored to working order over a decade ago. I guess I’m living proof that you can learn to do pretty much anything if you watch enough YouTube videos!

I do a few software projects on my own time too, I’m particularly proud of the neural network face clustering project and I always love working with open data sources, especially geospatial data.

I tend to blog randomly about all these things - sometimes just to record an achivement, sometimes to remind me how I did something, so this site is a bit of a mix of random stuff.

This site goes by a couple of other names too - formerly it was logicalgenetics.com and some of the more Land Rover-centric posts came from danandtheduke.co.uk.