In our third Speaker Spotlight for 2019, Big Data LDN catches up with Matt Pepper, Senior Sales Engineer at MicroStrategy.

Q – What does your day job entail?

It varies from day to day, but mainly involves meeting customers and prospects to discuss their business problems and coming up with solutions (then proving it with a proof of concept).

Q – When did you realise that you were suited to a career in data?

Way, way back in the mists of time, I was at Legal & General analysing systems that would be affected by the Y2K bug.

Q – What piece of advice would you give to someone starting out in data?

Find out what you’re interested in and go for it! There are so many changing facets that will peak your interest. I started out as a business analyst working on what the users wanted, so UI/UX and what people get out of all the analytics is what interests me.

Q – What do you think will be the hot topics at Big Data LDN 2019?

I think hot topics will be scaling infrastructure using Cloud, uncovering insights using Machine Learning, and presenting those insights to decision makers to provide competitive advantage.

Q – What can people expect from your session?

With so many fast changes occurring within the analytics industry, sometimes security and governance are sacrificed for agility by departments. With regulations like GDPR now in effect, governance is more important than ever. Come and see how MicroStrategy can you provide agility WITH governance.

Matt Pepper's seminar "Governed Data Discovery" will be taking place in the Self-Service Analytics Theatre at 13:50 on 13th November 2019.