This is episode 298 recorded on July 9th, 2025, where John & Jason talk the Microsoft Fabric June 2025 Feature Summary including lots of Notebook updates in Data Engineering, lower cost for AI functions in Data Science, Copilot for RTI dashboards, and more.

For show notes please visit www.bifocal.show

Episode 298 - Microsoft Fabric June 2025 Feature Summary

DAX in my veins (Vocal mix)

In this episode of the ODSC Podcast, Alex Landa, the head of content at ODSC, interviews Nick Walton, CEO and co-founder of Latitude and creator of the groundbreaking AI-powered storytelling game, AI Dungeon. Nick shares his journey from machine learning for self-driving cars to reimagining interactive fiction through generative models. They dive into the challenges and magic of building persistent, emergent game worlds with AI, and discuss how AI enables new modes of player agency and storytelling that go far beyond traditional game mechanics.
🔥 Key Topics Covered:
-The origin story of AI Dungeon and how GPT-2 sparked its creation
-How AI Dungeon enables open-ended, player-driven storytelling
-Technical and creative challenges in AI gaming: model curation, memory, and narrative tension
-What makes AI-generated characters compelling and emotionally resonant
-The upcoming game engine Latitude is building to power rich, persistent AI-driven worlds
-How AI can unlock new creative possibilities for indie and non-technical game creators
-Multiplayer and long-term visions for dynamic, socially evolving AI worlds
-Ethical considerations in using AI for gaming and storytelling
Memorable Outtakes:
💬 Nick Walton: “If every dwarf you meet is a gruff miner whose clan got eaten by goblins, it gets a little old after a while... you need higher variation.”
💬 Nick Walton: “You’re not just playing a game. You're building a story, and when loss happens, it becomes meaningful. That's the magic of AI Dungeon.”
💬 Nick Walton: “We’re building not just a game, but a living world—one where your choices shape everything, and the AI evolves with you.”
💬  Alex (Host): “It’s not about replacing anyone—it’s about creating something entirely new that couldn't exist without AI.”
🖥 References & Resources:
- AI Dungeon: https://aidungeon.com
-Latitude (Nick’s company): https://latitude.io
-Whispers from the Star (AI game mentioned): https://store.steampowered.com/app/3730100/Whispers_from_the_Star/
-Nick Walton’s X (Twitter) profile: https://twitter.com/nickwalton00
-Nick Walton’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/waltonnick/
-Nick Walton's profile on Crunchbase: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/nick-walton
-AI Dungeon Dev Blog: https://latitude.io/blog


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Creating Unique Narrative Experiences with Generative AI in Gaming with Nick Walton

In this episode of the ODSC Podcast, host Sheamus McGovern is joined by Veronika Durgin, Vice President of Data at Saks. Veronika brings over two decades of experience in data engineering, platform architecture, data modeling, and analytics. She joins us to expand on her ODSC presentation, The 10 Most Neglected Data Engineering Tasks, offering practical insights into often-overlooked practices that can make or break modern data systems. From defining what “done” really means to preparing for seasonality and building self-recovering pipelines, Veronika shares hard-won lessons, entertaining stories, and a deep well of practical advice.

💻 Key Topics Covered:
- Veronika’s unconventional career journey from biology to data leadership
- The “bridge strategy” in build vs. buy decisions and how it improves agility
- Why “definition of done” must include more than just working code
- The value of empathy: walking a mile in the business team’s shoes
- The dangers of ignoring business seasonality in data pipelines
- What makes a truly self-healing data pipeline
- Testing with production data vs. data in production
- Handling date/time data with precision and naming conventions
- The forgotten bucket of work: tech debt, improvements, and innovation
- The environmental impact of data systems and responsible engineering
- The rise of “vibe coding” and the challenges it poses for data engineering

💬 Memorable Outtakes:
- “If you don't know why you're working on this and who needs it, you shouldn't be working on it.” 
- “Everything we build today is tomorrow's legacy. Build things to be replaceable.”  
- “We automate, not because we’re lazy—but because we care about sleeping at night.” 

🖥 References & Resources:
- Veronika Durgin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vdurgin/
- Veronika Durgin on Medium: https://veronikadurgin.medium.com
- The Phoenix Project (pdf of book): https://shorturl.at/Ce5gA
- “Definition of Done”: https://medium.com/@durginv/definition-of-done-eea52c472cc3
- Tsedal Neeley Digital Mindset (book referenced): https://www.tsedal.com/book/the-digital-mindset/
- Stargate AI data center project (referenced during energy discussion): https://openai.com/index/announcing-the-stargate-project/

Sponsored by:
🔥 ODSC West 2025 – The Leading AI Training Conference
Join us in San Francisco from October 28th–30th for expert-led sessions on generative AI, LLMOps, and AI-driven automation.
Use the code podcast for 10% off any ticket.
Learn more: https://odsc.com/california

The Most Neglected Tasks in Data Engineering with Veronika Durgin

We're joined by Brett Ferrin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-ferrin-8504b8346/) VP of Sales at Traffic Logix. Together we have a conversation about how technology and data can be used to proactively improve traffic safety. If you're into data, urban planning, or transportation, this is an episode for you.

Resources and Shoutouts:
-   Traffic Logix: https://trafficlogix.com/
-   Vision Zero: https://www.cdc.gov/transportation-safety/vision-zero/index.html

Music Credit: Tumbleweeds by Monkey Warhol

98 Proactive Traffic Safety

This is episode 300 recorded on July 31st, 2025, where John & Jason talk the Microsoft Fabric July 2025 Feature Summary including tags in Fabric Domains, Fabric Data Agent integration with Microsoft Copilot Studio, enhancements to Activator, manual control of Auto-Refresh in pipelines, and CosmosDB in preview now in Fabric.

For show notes please visit www.bifocal.show

Episode 300 - Microsoft Fabric July 2025 Feature Summary

In episode 41 of Generationship, Brighthive CEO Suzanne El-Moursi joins Rachel Chalmers to unpack the “three-layer cake” of modern data architecture: composable stacks, agentic AI, and governance-first design. From integrating hundreds of data sources to enforcing real-time compliance, Suzanne shares how her team is tackling the grunt work of data so humans can focus on innovation. Plus, her vision for turning every organization—big or small—into a data powerhouse.

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Generationship - Ep. #41, Covenant with Suzanne EL-Moursi

In episode 20 of Open Source Ready, Brian and John sit down with data engineering and cognitive science expert Vasilije Markovic to explore AI memory and how we can build more intelligent systems. From the challenges of "context rot" to the practical applications of AI memory in construction, education, and finance, this conversation covers how to give your AI the context it truly needs.

Open Source Ready - Ep. #20, Exploring AI Memory with Vasilije Markovic of Cognee

In this special episode of the ODSC AI+ Podcast, host Sheamus McGovern dives into the real-world impact of GPT-5—from routing and hallucination issues to cost savings and open-weight models.

Joining him are two expert guests:
- Ivan Lee: Founder and CEO of Datasaur, who helps enterprises build private LLM stacks and has deep experience evaluating model upgrades.
-Nir Gazit: Co-founder and CEO of Traceloop, and co-creator of the OpenTelemetry Generative AI SIG, who brings insight into model routing, evaluation strategies, and observability tooling.
Together, they unpack what GPT-5 actually changed—and what teams should do next.

Key Topics Covered:
-Why GPT-5’s biggest shift is routing, not reasoning
-What casual vs. power users gained (or lost) with the rollout
-Hallucination benchmarks vs. real-world results
-Evaluation strategies using open-source tools like Phoenix and LangChain
-OpenAI’s OSS model release and its enterprise implications
-Why developers worry about black-box routing and the lack of traceability
-How to migrate safely: pinning snapshots, running evals, shadow testing
-Whether GPT-5 gets us closer to AGI, or just better infrastructure
-What to expect from agent workflows, tool selection, and model specialization

Memorable Outtakes:
- Ivan Lee: “GPT-5 is an upgrade for 98% of users—but for the power users, the loss of model choice felt like control was taken away.”
- Nir Gazit: “Of course, every new model crushes it on benchmarks—they’re optimizing for the benchmarks. That doesn’t mean it works for your use case.”
- Ivan Lee: “OpenAI’s OSS release might be the bigger story than GPT-5. Suddenly, enterprises are back at the table.”

References & Resources:
Guests
- Ivan Lee – CEO of Datasaur
Website: https://www.datasaur.ai
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iylee/
- Nir Gazit – CEO of Traceloop
Website: https://www.traceloop.com
Blog: https://www.traceloop.com/blog
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nirga/

Resources Mentioned
- OpenAI GPT-5  https://openai.com/gpt-5
- OpenTelemetry Project: https://opentelemetry.io
- Traceloop OpenLLMetry: https://www.traceloop.com/openllmetry
- Phoenix (Arize AI open-source evals): https://github.com/Arize-ai/phoenix
- LangChain Evals: https://python.langchain.com/api_reference/langchain/evaluation.html
- GPT-OSS Open Weight Models by OpenAI: https://platform.openai.com/docs/models/gpt-oss
- Claude + Model Context Protocol (Anthropic): https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/tool-use
- ARC-AGI Leaderboard: https://arcprize.org/leaderboard

Sponsored by:
🔥 ODSC AI West 2025 – The Leading AI Training Conference
Join us in San Francisco from October 28th–30th for expert-led sessions on generative AI, LLMOps, and AI-driven automation.
Use the code podcast for 10% off any ticket.
Learn more: https://odsc.ai 


GPT-5 Unboxed: What Changed, What Broke, and What’s Next with Ivan Lee and Nir Gazit

This is episode 301 recorded on August 20th, 2025, where John & Jason talk with friends and fellow podcasters Andrew Connell & Julie Turner of the Code.Deploy.GoLive show about how this podcast is AC's fault in the first place, what they are doing with their new podcast, community, and general shenanigans to celebrate the BIFocal.show's 300th episode.

For show notes please visit www.bifocal.show

Episode 301 - Interview with Andrew Connell & Julie Turner of Code.Deploy.GoLive

Heavybit is the leading early-stage investor in enterprise infrastructure. Since 2013, we've helped launch and scale visionary technical startups—from DevSecOps and feature flagging to AI code generation and beyond. We go hands-on from day 0, backing founders as they turn code into companies and build the future of software from the bottom up to the top down.

With Ai X Podcast, Open Data Science Conference (ODSC) brings its vast experience in building community and its knowledge of the data science and AI fields to the podcast platform. The interests and challenges of the data science community are wide ranging. To reflect this Ai X Podcast will offer a similarly wide range of content, from one-on-one interviews with leading experts, to career talks, to educational interviews, to profiles of AI Startup Founders. Join us every two weeks to discover what’s going on in the data science community.

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Civic Tech Chat is a podcast about the civic technology movement.  We seek to harness the power technology has to  improve the delivery of public services to people everywhere.

Having started DJing at 15, music has always been a passion. Now well into my 40s I spend any spare time I can get creating music solely on the iPad. Please leave feedback and don't forget to click like and repost if you do…

New tracks tagged #DATA SCIENCE