Drill to Detail Ep.118 ‘A Look Into the Future of Looker and Google Cloud Data Analytics’ featuring Special Guest Sean Zinsmeister

In this episode, Sean Zinsmeister from Google joins Mark Rittman to discuss the latest developments for Looker including the integration of Looker Studio, new modeling capabilities and the exciting potential of generative AI for BI.

We discuss how Looker is evolving to be a more open, composable platform that can power advanced analytics and data storytelling, with Sean sharing insights on Google's purpose-built Gemini models for natural language to SQL translation and how Looker customers can leverage these AI capabilities. 

We also explore Looker's agentic API strategy, the long-term vision of using Looker Studio as the primary Looker front-end and the opening up of LookML to tools beyond just Looker. 

• Driving Looker customer innovations in the generative AI era

• Previewing Studio in Looker, the (Eventual) Future of Self-Service Reporting for Looker

• Looker now available from Google Cloud console

• Delivering the third wave of BI in the AI era with Looker

• Drill to Detail Ep.100 Special ‘Past, Present and Future of the Modern Data Stack’ with Special Guests Keenan Rice, Stewart Bryson and Jake Stein

• Drill to Detail Ep. 73 'Luck, Thinking Different and Designing Looker Data Platform' with Special Guest Colin Zima

Drill to Detail Ep.110 'Building a Sequel to SQL with Malloy' featuring Special Guests Lloyd Tabb and Carlin Eng

Mark Rittman is joined in this special episode by previous Looker founder and inventor of the LookML language Lloyd Tabb together with Carlin Eng, Product Manager at Google Cloud to talk about Malloy, a new query language to replace SQL for analytics.

• Drill to Detail Ep.60 'A Deeper Look Into Looker' With Special Guest Lloyd Tabb

• Malloy : An experimental language for data

• A Sequel to SQL? An introduction to Malloy

• Why SQL syntax sucks, and why it matters

• Composing with Queries

• Dimensional Flexibility, one of the things that makes Malloy Special

• Data is Rectangular and other Limiting Misconceptions

• Malloy's Near Term Roadmap

Drill to Detail Ep.102 'LLMs, Semantic Models and Bringing AI to the Modern Data Stack' with Special Guest David Jayatillake

Mark Rittman is joined by David Jayatillake, CEO and co-founder of Delphi Labs, to talk about the role of semantic models and the marketplace today, large language models and the phenomena that is ChatGPT, and how Delphi Labs are planning on bringing AI to Slack and the modern data stack.

• https://www.delphihq.com/#about

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-jayatillake/details/experience/

• For B2B Generative AI Apps, Is Less More?

• LinkedIn post on rationale behind Delphi Labs product development

• Delphi - Jaffle Shop Demo

• Semantic Superiority - Part 1 and Part 2

• Semantic Search product feature

• LLM Implications on Analytics (and Analysts!)

• “Is This You?” Entity Matching in the Modern Data Stack with Large Language models and github repo

• ChatGPT, Large Language Models and the Future of dbt and Analytics Consulting

• RA Assistant

Drill to Detail Ep.100 Special ‘Past, Present and Future of the Modern Data Stack’ with Special Guests Keenan Rice, Stewart Bryson and Jake Stein

Joining Mark Rittman for this 100th Episode Special are Keenan Rice (previously Founding Team, GTM Executive at Looker, now GM at Firebolt), Stewart Bryson (previously CEO at Red Pill Analytics, now Head of Customer Experience at Coalesce) and joining us mid-way through the show as our even more special mystery guest, Jake Stein (previously Co-Founder and COO at RJ Metrics, CEO and Co-Founder at Stitch and now CEO and Co-Founder at Common Paper.

Drill to Detail Past Episodes discussed on the show were:

• Drill To Detail Ep.1. 'After The Gartner BI&A Magic Quadrant 2016', With Special Guest Stewart Bryson

• Drill to Detail Ep.23 ‘Looker, BigQuery and Analytics on Big Data’ With Special Guest Daniel Mintz

• Drill to Detail Ep.33 'Building Out Analytics Functions in Startups' With Special Guest Tristan Handy

• Drill to Detail Ep.71 'The Rise of Snowflake Data Warehouse' With Special Guest Kent Graziano

• Drill to Detail Ep.69 'Looker, Tableau and Consolidation in the BI Industry' featuring Special Guests Tristan Handy and Stewart Bryson

• Drill to Detail Ep.89 'Firebolt and the History of Cloud Data Warehousing' with Special Guest Eldad Farkash

• Drill to Detail Ep.99 “Is the Modern Data Stack Dead?” with Special Guest Chris Tabb

Other show notes below:

• Gartner Makes it Official: The Age of Self-Service Is Upon Us

• RJMetrics Acquired by Magento Commerce, Pipeline is now Stitch

• The Startup Founders’ Guide to Analytics - Tristan Handy

• Analyzing Drill to Detail Podcast Stats using Hex

• Google Completes Looker Acquisition

• Common Paper : Contracts Should Be APIs

• Rittman Analytics : How We Work

• Drill to Detail Ep.96 'Omni's Mission to Answer the First 100 Questions' with Special Guest Colin Zima

• Coalesce : Start Free

Drill to Detail Ep.96 'Omni's Mission to Answer the First 100 Questions' with Special Guest Colin Zima

Mark Rittman is joined in this very special episode by Colin Zima, ex-Head of Analytics at Looker and now co-founder of Omni, a new analytics startup looking to become the fastest way to ask the first 100 questions.

• Introducing Omni: The fastest way to turn SQL into intelligence

• Omni Analytics Homepage