Indiana Women in Tech Week 3 - Data Still Needs People | Toni Holcombe on AI and Data

DESCRIPTION

What happens when you put an AI model on top of a pile of files nobody has cleaned up? Toni Holcombe has a name for one version of that mess: a data swamp. And she has a clear answer when Jason asks whether AI will make data people irrelevant: someone still has to connect the words business users use with what the data actually means.

For episode three of Indiana's Women in Tech Week, Jason sits down with Toni, a data strategy and governance professional he met at an AI and Coffee gathering in Fishers. Toni traces her path from Gateway tech support and paralegal work to teaching herself Python, building a data warehouse, and leading people through data work. They unpack bronze, silver and gold data layers in plain English, talk about structured and unstructured information, and examine why a confident answer from an LLM still needs checking.

This conversation is for anyone trying to make sense of the data inside a small or growing organization, and for anyone curious about a career that mixes technical skill with people skill.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Jason meets Toni during Indiana's Women in Tech Week

02:07 From Gateway tech support to data analytics

05:38 The data terms small businesses keep hearing

06:22 Bronze, silver and gold: from raw records to useful reports

08:29 Structured files, unstructured files and confident AI mistakes

13:03 How a data lake can turn into a data swamp

14:12 What Toni means by a data warehouse

15:37 Why data touches every part of a business

18:38 Will AI replace the data scientist or business analyst?

19:19 Closing and the education conversation ahead

CONNECT WITH TONI HOLCOMBE

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toni-holcombe/

CONNECT WITH JASON PADGETT

Jason Padgett | AI Solutions Architect | Co-Founder, Wooden Boy Industries | Host, AGI Podcast | AI Adoption, LLM Systems & Human-AI Workflows

AGI - Advance Grow and Innovate with AI Podcast Network

🌐 https://schoolsout.agipodcast.ai/

CoFounder, Wooden Boy Industries

🌐 https://woodenboyindustriesai.com/

Chief Solutions Architect, Chakra AI Solutions

🌐 https://chakrasolutions.ai/

📧 jason@agipodcast.ai

#WomenInTechWeek #DataStrategy #AGIPodcast