The Data Playbook Podcast

What does it take to listen to the universe?
In this episode of The Data Playbook, Kris Peeters talks with Tjonnie Li, Professor at KU Leuven, about gravitational waves, black hole collisions, and the massive data challenge behind the Einstein Telescope.
They explore how modern science is becoming deeply data-driven, why the next generation of research infrastructure will need to operate like a science factory, and how AI, automation, and large-scale compute could become essential for turning petabytes of raw data into scientific discovery.
This episode covers:
what gravitational waves are and why they matter
how black hole collisions are measured
why the Einstein Telescope could transform European science
the data, compute, and storage challenge behind next-gen physics
what academia can learn from industry about automation and orchestration
how AI agents could support future scientific discovery
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#DataEngineering #AI #GravitationalWaves #EinsteinTelescope #BigData #ScientificComputing #ResearchInfrastructure #DataPlaybook

Chapters:
00:00 Intro: Tjonnie Li joins The Data Playbook
02:08 What gravitational waves are - in plain English
05:19 Why science is becoming data-driven
11:28 How we measure black hole collisions today
15:50 The Einstein Telescope: ambition, timeline, and European bid
19:44 The data infrastructure challenge: from terabytes to petabytes
30:56 AI, automation, and the idea of a “science factory”
38:50 Why this matters for Europe, innovation, and society

How do you transform a broken data landscape into a scalable, self-service data platform?
In this episode of The Data Playbook, Kris Peeters sits down with Tom Holsteens to unpack how Brussels Airlines rebuilt their data foundation from the ground up.
Coming out of the pandemic, the organisation faced a classic problem:
👉 A “spaghetti” data warehouse
👉 No ownership of data assets
👉 A central team becoming the bottleneck
What followed was a multi-year transformation focused on:
Building a modern cloud data platform
Moving to a data product architecture
Enabling self-service analytics across teams
Balancing central governance with decentral ownership
Leveraging AI tools to empower non-technical users
💡 You’ll learn:
Why most data platforms fail (and how to fix them)
How to introduce data ownership in business teams
The real difference between controlling vs. BI
How to reduce bottlenecks with hub-and-spoke models
A real use case: cutting food waste by 30% with data
Why perfect data quality is a myth
This is a must-watch for data leaders, engineers, and anyone scaling data in complex organisations.
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https://www.youtube.com/@Dataminded
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https://dataminded.com
Struggling with data bottlenecks, unclear ownership, or slow delivery?
👉 Explore our Data Product Workshop:
https://www.dataminded.com/what-we-do/data-product-workshop
Turn your data landscape into a business accelerator with a shared framework, clear ownership, and hands-on guidance in just one day.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction & Brussels Airlines context
02:30 What is controlling vs. business intelligence?
06:00 The problem: “spaghetti” data warehouse & bottlenecks
12:30 The transformation: platform, operating model & group strategy
19:00 Hub-and-spoke model & self-service analytics
27:30 Data products & the “restaurant” analogy
35:30 AI, data analysts & scaling data adoption
43:30 Real impact: reducing waste & driving business value

How do you move machine learning from notebook experiments to production in a real business environment?
In this episode of The Data Playbook Podcast, Kris Peeters sits down with Jean-Michel Begon, Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Luminus, to explore how machine learning models are built and operationalized inside an energy company.
They discuss electricity demand forecasting, the machine learning lifecycle, model experimentation, industrialisation, monitoring, collaboration with IT, and the role of GenAI and LLMs in modern ML teams.
You’ll hear practical lessons on:
production machine learning
ML team structure
forecasting model development
data pipelines and platform support
model monitoring and performance review
balancing business value with technical rigor
Explore the full podcast series: The Data Playbook PlaylistDiscover more podcasts, blogs, and webinars: Dataminded ResourcesVisit the Dataminded website: https://www.dataminded.com/

In this season finale of The Data Playbook Podcast by Dataminded, the tables turn: Kris Peeters (Host & Founder of Dataminded) is interviewed by Pascal Brokmeier (guest from the Episode 2 and former colleague).
Kris shares the real story behind 11 years of building Dataminded - from the stress of having zero customers, to landing the first project, to scaling from a small team to a company with a leadership layer. We dive deep into what makes an engineering-first culture work: autonomy + responsibility, raising (and protecting) the hiring bar, learning from mistakes, and why timeless engineering practices (Git, CI/CD, testing, monitoring) still matter, no matter the tech hype cycle.
If you’re a data leader, data engineer, engineering manager, or founder, this episode is a practical playbook on building a company (and a culture) that can survive and scale.
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Chapters:
00:06 - 11 Years of Dataminded: Why This Story Matters01:54 - Why Kris Founded Dataminded (Engineers First)04:12 - From Zero Clients to the First Big Win07:53 - First Hires & How Culture Was Born11:14 - Git, CI/CD & Why Engineering Discipline Wins15:59 - Growing from 6 to 20: Chaos to Structure23:30 - Autonomy, Trust & Professional Culture35:13 - COVID, Overhead & the Push to 50 People41:13 - How Dataminded Keeps the Hiring Bar High55:59 - Germany, The Netherlands & What’s Next

In this episode of The Data Playbook, we sit down with Dr. Ruth Janning, Head of Data Science & AI at OBI, to talk about what actually drives AI impact in real organisations.
We break down:
Why GenAI hype leads teams in the wrong direction
How to choose between ML, GenAI and agentic AI
Real-world retail AI use cases (recommendations, assortment, automation)
How a 10-person team delivers outsized business value
AI governance, self-service, templates & AI ambassadors
🎧 Listen to more episodes of The Data Playbook for real-world stories on data platforms, GenAI, data products and cloud independence from Europe’s leading data practitioners and leaders.
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Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/hzI9VizGyHM