Data Wins Arguments. Stories Win Roadmaps. | Gulrez Khan & Rocky Khan - #36

📖 Gulrez Khan spent nearly two decades inside two of the most data-intensive companies on the planet — Microsoft and PayPal. Built experimentation infrastructure running on tens of millions of users. Drove a 35% increase in Gen AI adoption across PayPal's developer community. And then he sat down and wrote a children's book.

Not because the work got easier. Because he realized something most data professionals never fully accept: the hardest part of this job was never the math.

In the current episode of Masters of Data, BI & AI, he talks about why he wrote Drawing Data with Kids, what almost two decades at Microsoft and PayPal taught him about the gap between insight and action — and the five-part framework he now teaches for turning data into something people actually remember.

A few things that stuck with me:

On why the book had to exist: Gulrez grew up loving to write, but "get a job first" won out over creative ambition. Years later, homeschooling his three kids with his wife, he realized there was no book that taught data literacy the way he wished someone had taught him. So he wrote it — real memories with his own kids, turned into realistic fiction. The Snoring Graph chapter, based on his own sleep apnea, is now the one kids remember longest.

On the moment that made it real: An article he wrote for the Data Visualization Society, "Drawing Data With Kids," unexpectedly took off. That was the signal — not just him, but other people wanted this too. The Kickstarter and the book followed from there.

On the story behind his professional thesis: His father, in India, would text him in Hindi typed in English letters — autocorrect would mangle the words, and every time, his father would apologize below the message: "I'm 76 years old, please forgive me, I don't know how to use these devices." After his father passed away this past December, Gulrez ran an analysis on thousands of PayPal customer feedback entries and found the same pattern from elderly users again and again — people quietly explaining their age as an apology for not keeping up. That discovery became one of his most-shared internal stories, reaching even the CTO.

On the five-part storytelling framework: Start with a personal story. Build common ground. Use contrast. Lead with empathy, not sympathy. Close with a call to action, built together with the people who actually own the outcome. Not a "rule of three" — Gulrez insists you need all five to actually move a room.

On what AI can't replace: Gulrez's answer isn't storytelling in the abstract — it's the specific, personal, unrepeatable experience behind a story. AI can generate a technically competent narrative. It can't generate his father's WhatsApp messages, or the particular blend of a Bengali childhood and a life spent in American tech. That specificity is the actual differentiator, not "creativity" as a general skill.

On what should never change, even as AI evolves: The basics of learning how to learn matter more than any specific tool. Ask better questions about the data you're consuming. Learn to present with intent, not the default rainbow-colored chart your tool spits out. Use contrast deliberately — perception versus reality, side by side.

What do you think — is data storytelling a skill every data professional needs to build, or should organizations be doing more of the translation work themselves?

🎙️ The full episode is live now on Masters of Data, BI & AI — link in the comments.

LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn Profile of Gulrez Khan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gulrezkhan-data/

LinkedIn Profile of Rocky Khan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khanrocky/

Business Books

Effective Data Storytelling by Brent Dykes — Gulrez has been reading it and recommends it directly for anyone serious about the craft.

How I Built This, hosted by Guy Raz — not a book, a podcast, but one Gulrez credits for showing him how founders actually talk about the struggle behind their journeys.

The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins — his pick for anyone stepping into a new role or company, useful well beyond data careers.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:09

A few months ago, I ordered a book for my daughter Alina. It's called Drawing Data with Kids. No screen required, just paper pencils, and a story about a girl named Parisa and her data nerdfather who teaches her to read the world through charts. I bought it thinking this is good for her. And then I read it and thought, wow, I wish I had this when I was at school. Maybe I would have understood data a little bit earlier. Maybe I would have been less afraid of it. And maybe I wouldn't have had to learn it the hard way in a corporate environment, what pattern recognition actually means. And the man who wrote that book is my guest today. He spent nearly two decades at Microsoft and PayPal building the analytics systems that power global product decisions. And then he turned around and decided the most important thing he could do was teach children with his bare hands, no algorithm required. I'm Rocky, host of Masters of Data Beyond AI. Every week I talk with thought leaders and practitioners about the impact of data and AI. A sunny good morning from Neuwerk, Germany to San Francisco. Good race. Good morning.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Good morning. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Oh, I'm very good. At the moment, I'm not enjoying my chai latte. I think it's uh called, we say it in Bengali, dude jha. Dude means uh milk. Yeah. I can imagine, I can imagine you are enjoying uh dude cha. Is this correct?

SPEAKER_02 1:51

Yes, yes. So it's um it's a rainy morning over here in San Francisco, and um so nothing beats a good cup of tea.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

I can yes, I can totally agree with you. I I my morning rhythm, my morning ritual is always that I have a chai latte, that's what we say it here in Germany, or ducha in Bengali every morning after I do a little bit of uh workout. Yeah, so this is how my morning starts, and I hope I can uh send you some sunny race to San Francisco because here in Neuberg it's totally sunny at the moment. It's it's nice. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

It's kind of a break. Usually it's very sunny here in San Francisco, so no complaints.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Okay, I'd so I'd like to start now with with this book. Yes, you so you wrote a book, I think, for your daughter Parisa, and also to learn data through drawing without a screen. That's what it's also written here in the book. And you have spent around 20 years inside some of the world's most data-intensive company. What's broken, Guris, about how we currently teach data, for example, that that made you feel okay, I have to write this book.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Yeah, so my background, like um when I think of or I introduce myself, I introduce myself as father of three beautiful kids, right? Um, but then the most heavy lifting is what my wife is doing. She's uh raising them, she left her corporate job, and uh she's homeschooling our three kids. And uh, since we are homeschooling, like our house is kind of a library, and we would read books to the kids, and uh that's where like I realized uh they don't have any book around data. Like my daughter is uh in ninth grade now, but again, like uh not so much exposure with data. Now, living and breathing data in all in my day job, and um I can't like imagine a world without data, right? So when I try to read books to them or think uh through that, I would think, okay, can I explain it with data, with some kind of a visual? So those kind of things, right? So inherently, like I had this think that okay, there should be something like that. Then the other thing is when I think of my own journey of learning data science, it was very difficult. Uh, I if you remember, like uh the data set that we usually get for learning data science is uh that iris flower data set, right? Um, for clustering. So I remember that uh data set for iris flower, which is very common when you learn this uh unsupervised learning. And when I was learning that, what I saw was uh they had these different uh petal and sepal length, and based on that, you decide figure out which category it belongs to, whether it is vernicolar or uh some other variant, and I cannot even pronounce those different variants, right? So when I thought of introducing data to the kids, I thought it has to be more easier. So that's what like I thought uh to make it in a fun way with examples from our daily lives. So that's what uh um you have in the book. Uh the version that you purchased, that's a German version. Uh, so here's the German version. Uh, and uh we also have a Portuguese version and Arabic version, and behind me you see the English version, which is very popular here in the United States, in Pakistan, in India. So yeah, I thought like I was just writing for my own kids, and maybe 100 people will buy the copy. But here you are, like from Germany, uh reaching out uh just uh after reading the book.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Yeah, I thought this um would be very, very relevant because I'm we you and I were both in the data space, and I thought, wow, um, why not reaching out to you via LinkedIn? And now that's the beauty of LinkedIn. Almost any person you can reach out to today, it's like uh like yeah, glimpsing with your fingers. Very simple. And you said yes, I was very happy to about that, Fulrace. And um what what what I'm always interested, personally interested in, is about the why now. So I know a lot of people also in my circle, friends, relatives who think like, hey, one day I'm gonna write a book, but very few actually do it. Yeah, yeah. Was there one specific moment in like a compelling event, a conversation, something where you said, Okay, I'm not waiting anymore, I have to uh uh build this?

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Yeah, so you rightly said. Um for me, when I was growing up, I loved writing. Like I used to write poems in the in those places where there was no electricity, and I would just sit with my diary and um I try to journal and all of that. I always wanted to become a writer, but then coming from a humble background back home in India, we cannot afford multiple things. And I remember my elder brother saying, Barkridar, get a job first and then think about all these different fancy things. I said, Okay, and uh that's how like I got into the job, but again, like I have this creative niche which was always there. And as I said about my wife, right? So I was talking to my wife, and I said, There is this kind of a book which is missing, and she said, Why don't you write one? So if you're looking for a book and you don't find it, write that book, right? So that's what like they said, but then there is another thing, like which you mentioned a conversation. There is this data visualization society. I don't know like if you're familiar with that, uh, check it out. They have a very active group, and over there, I wrote my first article, and that was about uh how I am introducing data to my kids, and uh that uh got a lot of attention, like there were a lot of people, and that uh the toy title, I believe, for uh that article was drawing data with kids, and uh that's how like it became popular, and then once you get a little boost that okay, it's not just me, there are other people who are interested as well. Then I thought, okay, let's uh see if I can turn that into a book. Now, when I wanted to teach uh data through this book, there are a few more things apart from teaching. If you have read that, it's in the form of stories, right? So here I also capture the stories of me and my kids, right? So these are realistic fiction. So the stuff that you see in the book, like the game of snakes and ladder, that actually happened. My son was crying, he hates that uh game of snakes and ladder because he gets more snakes, the different heat maps that he created. So these are like a realistic thing which were happening, and uh, through the book, I kind of capture those memories so that like once I I'm gone, my kids, my grandkids, they would like kind of cherish these moments that okay, this actually happened with us. So that's one thing. The other thing uh you would see over in the book is uh also some values that I'm teaching. So here if you remember, like uh again the example of uh maybe the there is a Lego straw story over there, and uh my son um in the story, my son uh is uh not very happy because uh because of my daughter, he was um his Lego structures were broken. So I tried to connect this with the earthquake which happened in Turkey and um Syria at the same time when I was writing the book and I was telling, okay, how can we recreate the Lego structures? How it would have been wonderful if we were able to recreate those uh buildings and lives which were broken with the earthquake, right? So those are like a few things here and there, and some are culture things you would see over there. Like uh I mentioned there's a chapter called Paratha Patterns, right? So you might be familiar coming from subcontinent, what is paratha? But you'll see some footnotes that okay, this is paratha, and uh I'm using some other Urdu things, so kind of uh mixed things which I'm trying to add, and uh I and very happy that it's wonderfully uh very well received.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Thank thank you, thank you very much, um Gulrace. I'd like to know like when you were at school, how was math and data taught to you? And now that you have been on the inside of Microsoft, PayPal, what do you see in adults who have never built that early foundation? What's the tell?

SPEAKER_02 11:18

So what I've seen, um not just me growing up, even for us grown-up adults. I've seen so many adults, like the moment you put a math equation or a graph in front of them, they would just like to turn to the next page, right? Because they have some kind of a bad memory associated with this, right? Maybe in their childhood they they they they were not very good in math, right? And that's why like those kind of memories trickle in. Now I'll give you an example. The other day, Parisa, my daughter, like uh she was like she's homeschooling and I'm was working from home. I was on a call, and the moment I stepped out, she called me hey, a book a mover. So she was sitting on the sofa holding a book. The book is called Birds of North America, and she says, Look in this book, there is a graph. And I was hoping she doesn't ask me a tough question. Uh, and in that chart, what she was looking was she was looking at the pitch of different birds. So how high is the intensity? And based on that, uh they kind of infer which kind of species species of the bird it is. And when she looked at it and pointed over it, I was leaning over and she said, This looks so much like snore graph from your book. So, snore graph, you see the first chapter, I try to explain it in a fun way that okay, and I snore a lot. I have sleep apnea, so like uh you see this going up and down. And every time I go and do this kind of a presentation with kids, like they just laugh out loudly like anything, right? And now, with that, what has happened is next time they will come across this kind of a complex graph, they'll not turn the page, rather, they will have a good memory associated with it, and they will be uh not afraid, and uh they will be studying the subject, and that's a win that I was looking for.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

So, with other words, you are trying to rebrand all those um bad associations now with good associations that people have a fun way. So kids have a fun way when they grow up and see, oh wow, actually, this is really fun now. I will not turn it to the next page, I will stick to this page, yeah, because that's a great association which I which I have.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Yeah, so and it's not just data, it can be any subject, right? So what they need is some kind of good memories associated, and that's how our mind works.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

So you have already said that, and I realized you are a good storyteller, and the whole book consists really of tiny stories, always like scenes between you and your daughter, where you are maybe playing, or like one of the first exercises were like um, how many letters does uh the weekday have, like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. And I did this thing with Alina, and she's six years old. And why why why I'm telling this, yeah? And here comes my very provocative question, maybe. Uh you have worked now inside two of the most sophisticated analytics environments in the world. Do data scientists need to become now better storytellers, or do organizations need to build better structures for data to be heard? So, would you say is this Rocky a more people problem or a design problem?

SPEAKER_02 15:04

I think people are seeing the organizations are seeing the value of storytellers. Like, in fact, uh there was this article in Washington Post, I believe, which said uh like they analyzed the different job posting from on LinkedIn and they saw a big increase. I don't know the exact number, but uh a big increase in the storytelling skills that people are looking for, especially in this age of AI where anyone can build almost anything, what differentiates you from others is the ability to tell stories. And uh what you would see is especially in the data science community, what I saw was we are very good in the analytical portion, right? Okay, I'll spend time grabbing the data and then cleaning, massaging the data, and then doing all those analysis. And we love to talk about the technical jargons, but then look at who are you talking to? You're talking to the executives, you're talking to the business stakeholders, and they don't necessarily care how you improve the model from 91.1% to 91.23%, right? So, what they care is how does that impact the business stakeholders, right? How does that impact your users? And they have got their phone in their hand and the kids running in the background, everyone seeking for their attention, and the attention span of humans has reduced to that around eight seconds, and this is less than that of a goldfish now, right? So, now how do you still keep that attention of just business stakeholders? You do that by storytelling, right? So that's the skill I wish I learned at school, right? As an introvert growing up back home in India, and this is not one of the skills I was taught, but then again, I give credit to my kids. I remember my daughter Parisa, like when she was uh maybe three or four, and she was my first attentive audience ever. And uh, she was like listening to my stories with uh glued eyes, and that's when I thought maybe there is a skill that I have here which I can use at the corporate world as well. And uh the way I was telling stories to her, I started telling stories at work, and guess what? The adults I got the same response, and that's how like I moved into a speaker. Like, I go I give keynotes, I go to like international conferences, uh, and I talk about my workshops, my work, and uh it's all about telling stories, right? So if people are not engaged, I'm not telling some stories, then people will not uh hear your uh podcast, right? So we need that kind of a skill.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

100%. I can still remember when I was working at ZAS like 10 or 12, 11 years ago, there was a coach and he was talking about this thing called Toastmasters, and he said this is a very secure platform, and you you're from US, that's the birthplace of Toastmasters, yeah. And uh it came from US, and now almost every city in the planet has a Toastmaster Club, either corporate, so Apple has one, Microsoft has one. Fun fact I created a Toastmasters Club with data rigs together. And um, the thing about the beauty of about Toastmasters is you can learn step by step storytelling. Yeah, and this is something where I said, damn, why haven't they taught me this thing at school at that time? Yeah, because I realized um people who can tell nice vivid stories, they they have they have this aura, this halo effect, and also they can convince better. And this is something where I said, Wow, this is something we we all have to become um better.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

Yeah, that's a perfect platform. I we used to have Toastmaster Club at Microsoft as well, in some of those um uh groups and different buildings, right? So I remember like I used to participate over there, and uh it was good to be do those impromptu speech, and that kind of removes the hesitation. The other thing is you'll see people like you, right? So here these are not like outspoken people, you'll see people struggling, and uh then uh you you kind of uh feel that okay, it's not just you, and there are more people like you, so it gives some kind of a confidence. So I think people should make uh good use of it.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

So I also totally agree with you that storytelling is a very essential part for us with the with not only in the data world, but also outside of it. But if we see the development of all those AI uh things like uh Claude, like ChatGPT, etc. And I I I know you can also tell Claude or ChatGPT, hey, write a story or write a story for my child. I'm just thinking loud now. What are then characteristics which cannot be replaced by AI if we want to still let's say secure our job, or if you if we don't want to get substituted by AI, I would have said maybe storytelling, but what what is your perspective? Is it really storytelling?

SPEAKER_02 20:54

So if you think of AI, like how it works, it it is trained on the data from the past, right? Now, when you think of Rocky, like Rocky has one identity, and he can do things which he did in the past, but he's very innovative. Like he will come with some kind of a new ideas, he can mix some ingredients from his Bengali uh heritage and something from the German and create some kind of a new fusion or something totally different, right? So that is something which is which makes you different. The other thing is when you talk to people, they they kind of uh want to see your own personal thing, right? So here when I tell my own personal stories, that's where like you and me, like we become a little closer. That okay, when I told you the story of okay, my daughter sitting on the sofa, you can actually visualize right now, like so. Many thousands of people have read my book, they kind of know what's going on in Gulray's life, right? So now if I add more kind of those stories, more kind of books, so people would be more interested, right? But then Claude and other things, there are things which is kind of repeatable, right? Uh, you will often see this is not X, but Y, right? The moment I read those kind of a post on LinkedIn, like I want to just turn it off that hey, this is not making much sense, right? So this is what would make you differentiate uh as a differentiator, and then as a storyteller, like you need to get inspiration from different places, not just uh the digital world, but from something from outside as well. I actually teach a course, um, I do these uh live cohorts every month where I'm kind of uh teaching how do you tell better stories with data? So this is like a six uh five-day course, and the first day we just talk about the storytelling, right? How do you tell stories? We do a lot of exercises, and then the second day is around inspiration, right? How do you draw inspiration from a comic book? How do you draw inspiration from nature, right? And those kind of things, and then with that, what is the kind of impact that would have on your end users, right? So you need to be a little different from the default, right? Every time you open a tool, whether it is Excel, Tableau, Power BI, and you drag and drop a chart, and you will show it, it will be that default mode. But then the people who are the differentiators are people who go and change those things, right? So you use those colors, you use those different attributes and make it more relatable. So I think uh we need to do our legwork and uh uh more human skills. I think that is what will make us different.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

More human skills, and you said that you also teach um storytelling technique, techniques, methodologies. And as a Toastmaster, I have to. I I'm just curious. I want to learn that. I want to know like how do you that? For how do you do that? For example, what I have learned in the last 10 years, and I also participated in different competitions, Toastmaster competitions, it's always so things which I have learned is like it's about this the message. Yeah, you need a very strong message, for example, which has to be relevant to your audience. And you also said that in this big beginning in our conversation today, like Rocky, it's not about the improvement of 92.2 percent to 92.4%. The executive is thinking of his impact, like how can it make my business better or reduce downtime or whatsoever? So it's about the impact, yeah. So it's all about the audience, about relevance. I would like to understand like what makes a great story, what are the ingredients from your perspective?

SPEAKER_02 25:14

So I would definitely invite you to my course, but and I also giving a lightning talk, which is scheduled uh, I think uh in next couple of weeks, I think we can add that in the show notes. Uh, but when you think of uh storytelling in the business concept, right? So you what you would see is I try to zoom in and it starts with an individual story, right? And uh let me tell you a story, right? So since we are talking about it, um so the story is about uh okay, so one fine day I was sitting at work and analyzing customer verbatim, customer feedback. And for any new person in the data world, customer feedback that is a gold mine. Like you get a lot of interesting aspects, and if you are new to the company, new to the role, go and look at what people are seeing. So I was working at one of this company and looking at all those customer verbatim, and that's when I got a buzz on my phone. So I picked up my phone and I looked at it, and it was my brother from India, and he sent me a video. The video was of an old lady, and she's trying to type happy diwali. So Diwali is a Hindu festival in India, and the moment she types Diwali, it autocorrects to diners, so happy diners. And she's like, uh. And below that, the caption was from my brother. This looks so much like our father. My father, he passed away recently in December, so I get a little emotional every time I talk about it, but uh, every time when we used uh, so he was not computer literate, but he would be connected to us through these uh WhatsApp, right? And every time he would type, he would type in English, but in Hindi, right? So he wants to talk in Hindi, but he'll type in English. And with those uh typos, it autocorrects and something changes to other. And every time this happens, he would write below that a message, he would say, I'm 76 years old, please forgive me. I don't know how to use these devices. And I was wondering why is he telling me his age? Right? I like scroll through all the messages, and every time this happens. And I was in the middle of all these customer feedback, and I thought, is it just my father who is doing it, or are there more people who are doing this? So I did some natural language processing and sifted through these customer feedback, and I saw Rocky thousands and thousands of people who were mentioning their age. I'm 83 years old and I fell in the bathroom and I broke my hip, so I couldn't return item on time. I am a 79-year-old pensioner, I don't check emails every day, so I cannot I didn't respond to you sooner. So, like that, thousands of stories, and you would think I should just pick up my phone and give them a call. So, so I wrote a blog about it, and this is how I started, right? Telling my own personal story. So, zoom in, invite the audience, and now they are interested, right? So, the principle that I have here is build a common ground. The common ground is my father, everyone can relate everything as I was telling my story of my own father. Maybe you were imagining some of your um people in the in that age bucket, right? The other thing is second is bring data. So even before bringing data, I talked about my father. Then I brought data, seeing thousands of uh such feedback I'm seeing, but then this makes 25% of our user population. Now the stakeholders are listening, right? 25% of our user population is struggling with this issue.

unknown 29:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Then I marry with external data from the World Health Organization, the senior citizen population is gonna increase by 30% in the near future. Now the stakeholders are still listening. Then, but what do we do with that? Right, we brought people, we got that emotions, zoom in, zoom out, and then end with a call to action. That okay, now that we have this kind of information, I ended with a call to action and told that story again and again and again. And it became viral at the company, even like the CTO, like he reached out, and uh a lot of people they were able to relate with that story. So that's the power of stories. It's not just kind of a Toastmaster, like a verbal thing, but even other places you can write blogs, you can do it in different formats, and this is how you can make it make an impact. Imagine if instead of the story, I would have just written a technical blog. Okay, this is what I found out, these were those insights. Would people get that kind of a effect on it? Right? Maybe not, right? So that's uh very powerful. And I remember, like, I know, like I'm stretching the answer. Yesterday I got a message from someone like I worked at PayPal, I never met, and uh what she messaged was, we loved your blogs. And uh still like after uh leaving the company, I'm still getting these kind of messages. So these are like uh things you should do and learn, and you never know how they're gonna benefit you and inspire other people.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Goldiers, thank you very much. This was also now a very short X course, or a little bit of your flavor of maybe of your skills, things what you then teach in your course. So, what I take, what I heard was it was uh start with your own personal story because this is how you also can uh build a connection with the audience, and also um you show you show some sort of vulnerability, yeah, in when you share maybe some personal things. Yeah, this is yeah, also when you should and when you show vulnerability, you get credibility. So this is the result, yeah. So people say, Oh wow, he is now saying, Oh, that's very interesting. And what you also said was say something or create something with relevance and which is relatable. So that's and and I mean you didn't just set that, you didn't say that, and you just did that by giving us the proof. You you just told the story and then you analyzed. So uh just to sum it up, Gulres. So if if a data scientist or data engineer is listening now to our podcast, and he says, Wow, next time I will do it like what Gulres said, I will start with a story instead of just uh counting down the data, which anyone can do. What would be the most three important features or characteristics you would say is super important, apart from the things which we have just said, uh, when it comes to storytelling?

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Yeah. So you asked three, I'll give you five. Okay, so sure. Number one, start with a personal story, and this is what gets the audience engaged, which uh you also described. Number two is uh build a common ground, right? When you build a common ground in the story that I just told, the common ground was story of my father, right? People are able to relate. Number three is use contrast, right? Contrast work in visuals, it works in stories as well, right? So here when people are talking about all these AI innovations, is there a population which is underserved, right? So that's number three. Number four is use empathy, not sympathy, right? When you talk about there's a difference between sympathy and empathy, right? When you say just okay, I cannot do certain things, okay, so you feel some kind a little bad, right? Uh but then if you want to create empathy, you would kind of relate with other person and say, okay, why this happened, and you have that kind of a feeling, right? So, and then the number fifth is around call to action, right? That you did you brought the audience together, they are listening, they are engaged, but don't just stop over there and with a call to action. And this is where you have to work with the subject matter experts, don't do everything by yourself, right? If uh data science, it's a team game. So work with the stakeholders and uh see like what could be the outcome. And that is what separates a beginner from a pro, right? When you become a leader, your scope is not to just create a model, but to land an impact and you build on each other's work.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

Thank you very much, uh um, Gorez, for sharing your insights. I also like you didn't use the most popular rule of three, which is very, very, very popular. So three is something which we can always memorize. Number one, number two, number three. You make truth of rule, rule of five. You added two more. Thank you very much. I'd like to now scope now to the future. We have talked now a lot about your book, about uh why, about storytelling. Yeah, because um, I know you are a good storyteller, and this was also something of my personal interest, but this is also relevant for the audience because uh we and any thought leader who is selling the impact of data should really know how I can convince the person who's sitting on the other side of the table, because this is uh what's all why we're doing everything. I'd like to understand now. I mean, your your book here, this book here, it's it's screen-free. And in a world where kids are growing up AI native right now, and whereas even a six-year-old like my daughter, she's literally chatting with ChatGPT. Yeah, we call it Kitty, we call her Kitty, and she says, Dad, if you don't know it, let's ask Kitty. Yeah, anything like why we have volcanoes and what and and soever. What does the ideal data education look like in 10 years school race? And what should never change?

SPEAKER_02 36:08

That's a very good question, right? So, and we keep talking about it. And yesterday, like I was at a friend's place, he works uh at as a group uh partner, partner manager at Microsoft, like it's um just below VP, and we are talking about uh our kids and what sort of things they should be learning, and uh we we we all are figuring it out, right? What is it like? Is it really relevant what they are studying right now? But the basics are there, right? So basics should be there, but even before that, the art of learning itself, because right now, you, me, and everyone listening, we are re-evaluating our own rules. That okay, how do we learn about Claude? How do we learn about Gemini and all of those things? So we need to be able to learn things, right? So things will change rapidly. The other thing is we don't have to be just uh digital, digital native, like we need to think of uh maybe the fusion, like uh because what happens is uh our eyes get used to all these polished things, and then what would make it different from others, right? So these days, what I'm seeing is like I get a lot of inspiration from data journalism. So data journalists they do a fantastic job in telling data stories in newspapers like New York Times, Washington Post, and Bloomberg. So I would uh encourage the listeners to go and check out those stories and see how you can get those stories at uh for your workplace as well. And uh that's what like uh I when I think of uh the future, what kids should learn, it's again how do you not just uh learn about data, analyze the data, but then also understand, ask better questions like is it the right data? Right in the future, few things that will not change is kids will be exposed to a lot of data. They will either be consuming data or they would be presenting data, right? So when you are consuming a lot of data, do you trust that data? Ask those questions, right? Why that data can be uh you can always lie with data, right? So, you know, like all these different graphs and all of the this information overload. So I would encourage people to learn how to ask better questions and make their own decisions. The second thing is presenting data right now, when you have the data in front of you. Uh again, I'll just add my shameless plug for my course where I also talk about how do you create visuals which appeal and reduce the cognitive load on the audience. The default mode, which I said, when you drag and drop the charts, you get all these rain book colors and whatnot. And there is a very high cognitive load on the audience when they are seeing that kind of a visual in front of them. But as a storyteller, if I want Rocky to just focus on this particular thing, I would use colors, I would use text, I would use uh animation. So there are different techniques which you can use and leverage it. So those are the things which will never change. You would need to get the attention. And uh the principles which I told about the stories, I think they apply to the visuals as well, like in the data world as well, right? Um use contrast, right? So contrast when we say, okay, um perception versus reality, right? So perception create a graph for perception, create a graph for reality, and this right away in front of you, you would see okay, what kind of a difference it is. So I think those things will not change, but again, we all are in this phase where we are learning and things that I might be saying, I I've said right now, I might be re-evaluating and I might change my opinion in the future. So we need to be more flexible and adoptable, right? So just uh be open to that.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

Thank you very much, uh Goldrace, for for your insights. Um there's always one question which I always ask my guests in the end. Which business book, and now please don't tell the book you wrote, but which book business book inspired you most?

SPEAKER_02 40:57

Business book. So I read a lot of books. Uh, there is this uh uh book, not this one, but there is a book by Brent Dykes, I think, if Effective Data Storytelling, which I've been reading of late, which is uh very good. I would encourage you to read that. There is um another book, How I Built This, right? So there is actually a podcast called How I Built This uh by Guy Razi, and uh I learned a lot like this, he talks about uh the struggles of different founders, how they started their own journey, so kind of storytelling of that uh business uh business person's uh life, right? So I enjoyed that. There is another book called First 90 Days. Uh, I would encourage people to take a look into that as well, because as you are moving to this new role or a new company, what kind of things you should be doing? So these are not like technical things, but these are a few things you can learn and apply it any place.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Thank you very much. I I asked only for one book. Now you really made use of the rule of three, and you gave us three examples. And and one was also a podcast. Sounds all of them very interesting and relevant. And the first one I unfortunately haven't heard about it, but I will have a look into it. Uh Gulres, it was really nice that you zoomed in now from uh rainy San Francisco. I hope the weather has turned now more a little bit sunny. I see you are now looking out of the window. It looks a little bit brighter right now. And um what I have perceived is uh you you you you are um you answer questions if someone asks you or writes to you on LinkedIn. This is exactly how we met. Yeah, I just uh I didn't cold call you, but cold emailed you. Yeah, and uh and yeah, and now we are having this podcast. So and I think you also mentioned that uh we can also put maybe something like a coupon or like a code um if someone wants to um um roll up for your course, and I can later put that here in. So again, Gulres, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 43:23

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure talking to you, Rocky.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

Thank you, thank you, Gulres.