Hi. My name is Vincent, AskMeAnything[tm].
I’m a senior data professional who worked as an engineer, researcher, team lead, and educator in the past. You might know me from tech talks where I attempt to defend common sense over hype in data science.
I’m especially interested in understanding algorithmic systems so that one may prevent failure. As such, I’ve had a preference for simpler solutions that scale, as opposed to the latest and greatest from the hype cycle.
In the past I’ve been:
- on the front page of reddit
- a digital nomad with an amazing postcard
- a preferred Rstudio training partner
- co-founder and co-chair of PyData Amsterdam
- co-founder of the satRdays Amsterdam conference
- a data/open source evangelist with a track record of speaking
- co-creator of some open source packages
- a youtuber (sortof) for the spacy project
- host for the algorithm whiteboard
- involved with many data projects
- proud creator of calmcode.io
I currently work as a Machine Learning Engineer over at Explosion. We’re the folks behind tools such as spaCy and prodigy.
Before joining Explosion, I worked as a Research Advocate at Rasa where I collaborated with the research team to explain and understand conversational systems better.
Before that I worked as a consultant at GoDataDriven. I was the first data scientist they hired. Here I helped companies get better at what they do by using data. I had been given a fair amount proper cases with impact for important clients while trying to keep the hype at bay. At some point the hype came from within the company, which was one of the (many) reasons I left.
I believe in open source and don’t mind to evangalise from time to time. I have this blog about slightly less obvious aspects in the world of data science to help people get started as well as to keep a record of things that interest me. I’m known for speaking at events but also for giving free lectures in data science around Europe.
The future is pretty awesome, all we have to do is build it.
Past Consulting/Training Clients
Old Blog
I’ve matured my blog in 2018. Some of the old posts can be found here.