Azure for Sports Podcast

The Azure for Sports podcast episode 25 focuses on women's sports, particularly football (soccer), and features guest Nancy Hensley discussing the Mercury 13 project and her role as a founding member. Highlights: Mercury 13's Mission: Promoting women's football by investing in and supporting teams, primarily in Europe. The initiative aims to raise the sport's profile and address disparities in resources and data availability compared to men's football. Impact of Data in Sports: Nancy, with a background in big tech and a focus on data and AI, highlights the crucial role of data in understanding and promoting women's football. The conversation delves into the need for more comprehensive data collection in women's sports to enhance fan engagement, injury prevention, and overall understanding of the game. Commercial Viability and Gender Equity: The episode discusses the different revenue sources for men's and women's football and the importance of commercial success in women's football. It emphasizes the potential for women's sports to drive significant engagement and align with movements like female empowerment.

Don't miss the latest Azure for Sports Podcast episode, where we have a special guest from GitHub, Elizabeth Barrord. She will show us how GitHub Copilot can make our lives easier as developers by helping us write better code faster and with fewer errors. Watch us put GitHub Copilot to the test in a LIVE DEMO and see how it can help you modernize your applications!

To learn more about GitHub Copilot, the fantastic tool we used in the demo, visit: https://github.com/features/copilot

Join exceptional guest co-host Melinda Moyo-Turner as we speak to the amazing 318 Foundation. We get to hear from Founder, and WNBA Champion, Alana Beard, as well as 318 Foundation Program Director, Kristen Kelly.

Please consider donating to the 318 Foundation at the link below.

Foundation Link: https://www.318foundation.org/

Jon and Susanne are joined by Tinus Le Roux, the founder and CEO of CrowdIQ. In this episode, they discuss how the company, using computer vision and complementary technologies, delivers actionable insights to their partners about their crowd composition and behaviors. They also tackle the benefits and potential ethical implications of generative AI.

Jon and Susanne are delighted to welcome Ari Kaplan to the podcast! Ari is Databrick's Global Head of Evangelism, and a leading influencer in AI, databases, and sports analytics. “The Real Moneyball guy”, the popular movie was partly based on Ari’s analytical and scouting experiences innovating Major League Baseball, and later creating the Cubs and Dodgers analytics departments.

Ari is President of the Independent Investigation into the Fate of Raoul Wallenberg, Sweden's humanitarian hero. His background in data includes having been President of the worldwide Oracle users group when they acquired MySQL, Java, and Peoplesoft. He traveled the world with McLaren Formula 1, assisting the racing strategy team to bring AI models to production.

Ari was named Caltech’s “Alumni of the Decade”, Crain Chicago’s “40 Under 40”, and IBM’s “Data Science Celebrity”, and the History Channel made a documentary on one of Kaplan’s analytical investigations.

Jon and Susanne are joined by Beyond Sports co-founders Sander Schouten and Nicolaas Westerhof. In the episode, they discuss the genesis of Beyond Sports, as well as their recent collaboration with ESPN on Big City Greens, and their thoughts on how to make sports more accessible and engaging for younger audiences.

Sander J. Schouten
Sander Schouten is the Co-Founder & CEO of a groundbreaking company called Beyond Sports. With a successful career start in the Oil and Gas industry, he realized the need for sustainable energy solutions, leading him to a renewable energy startup. Inspired by the startup's dynamic atmosphere, Sander embraced disruption and recognized the potential in sports, technology, and data. With the vision to cater the next-gen of sports fans, he started Beyond Sports together with Nicolaas.

Nicolaas Westerhof
Nicolaas Westerhof, Co-founder and CTO of Beyond Sports, has always had a deep connection with sports. He began his journey as a video and data analyst for AFC Ajax, where he honed his understanding of athletic performance. While studying Human Movement Sciences, Nicolaas specialized in talent development, player tracking systems, and Virtual Reality's role in space perception. Motivated by his passion for innovation and a vision to revolutionize sports technology, he co-founded Beyond Sports with Sander, leaving behind his position at AFC Ajax to pursue this dream.

Jon and Susanne are joined by Chris Gordon, Principal Program Manager for Worldwide Media & Entertainment. Here they discuss how cloud technology transformed the landscape of live events in the sports industry and gaming, how modernizing live event production has benefitted fans, and teases something to look forward to in a future episode...

About Chris Gordon

Chris Gordon is a Principal Program Manager for Microsoft’s Worldwide Media & Entertainment Industry team. In this role, Chris focuses on assembling first and third-party partner capability into accessible solutions for Microsoft’s M&E global clients with a focus on media production, distribution, and fan engagement.

His industry experience also includes executive positions at EGT, a video compression company purchased by Arris, where he was responsible for the design, marketing and solution engineering of the company’s digital media video processing product lines.

Jon, Susanne and guest host Jake Switzer are joined by Anthony Brock from the Indiana Pacers. They discussed how customer experience data drives their business, how data and sustainability principles helped shaped the multi-million dollar renovation of the Gainbridge Fieldhouse, and their transition from a traditional data warehouse approach to a data lake house infrastructure, utilizing Azure Data Factory and Azure Databricks. As a bonus, we express our mutual love of Dolly Parton.

About Anthony Brock

Anthony Brock is the Sr. Director of Customer Insights & Business Analytics at Pacers Sports & Entertainment. His career started in sales, then moved to founding a digital marketing firm. After four years in the startup space, he moved to global manufacturing at Endress+Hauser. He joined PSE nearly two years ago to lead the data/insights team. Since joining in 2021, Anthony’s team has restructured the data architecture to drive customer and revenue insights, while reducing operating costs. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Marian University.

For the last podcast episode for 2022, Jon and Susanne are joined by guest host Jake Switzer, and special guest, Jeremy Raadt! In this wide-ranging discussion, Jeremy talks about the key benefits and outcomes to the org. in migrating some of their systems to Azure, considerations for collecting and using data, and his thoughts on the next big thing - from a technology perspective - in baseball. 

About Jeremy Raadt:

Jeremy Raadt (Senior Director of Baseball Systems) joined the Minnesota Twins eight years ago. With over 25 years of experience as a software engineer in numerous industries, from startups to biotech, he now gets to combine his love for baseball with engineering.

Jon and Susanne are joined again by renowned cloud data architect and author Jake Switzer. Here, Jake walks through a live demonstration, featuring a simple yet robust deployment of a scalable sports analytics framework on Azure. Check out the full architecture buildout at Microsoft Learn: https://aka.ms/az-sports-analytics

Jon and Susanne are joined by Andy Beach, Simon Crownshaw and Eliot Sakhartov from Microsoft, where they give a lively post-show recap and discussion of the latest and greatest from the IBC 2022 conference. 

Andy Beach

Andy Beach is the CTO for Media and Entertainment Industry at Microsoft. In this capacity he is responsible for the technical strategy for our three clouds -Azure, Dynamics, and Office 365 as they relate the M+E industry. He collaborates closely with product groups and account teams to help customers and partners in developing their media related technology solutions and reference architectures that address their rapidly changing needs.

Simon Crownshaw

Simon Crownshaw serves as Worldwide Media and Entertainment Strategy Director for Microsoft. He provides leadership and direction to teams across studios, broadcasting, sports and live events and the solutions that power those focus areas. In addition to supporting the hundreds of global customers and helping them harness the power of Microsoft to enable media workflows, he is focused on media cloud adoption and the critical data and AI elements that will redefine content creation and delivery in the future.

Eliot Sakhartov

Eliot has over 20 years of professional technology experience in Media and Entertainment. At Microsoft he is a Business and Technology Strategist for Media and Entertainment, matching business problems with technology solutions. Before joining Microsoft, Eliot was the Director of Technology for Funny or Die, Director of Technology at Endemol Shine North America and Manager of TV Production Technology at NBCUniversal. During his time at NBCUniversal he delivered technology solutions from digital workflows, unified communications to all in-house produced shows like The Tonight Show, The Office, House, Jerry Springer, SNL, Battlestar Galactica and more.

Carl Barton (Co-Founder and CTO) and Alasdair Crawley (Co-Founder and CEO) of Fanbase join Jon and Susanne on the latest episode of the podcast. Carl and Alasdair discuss the genesis of Fanbase as the world's first sports operating system, some of the challenges they've witnessed sports clubs experience in the past few years as it relates to data, and some of the greatest milestones they've experienced in the growth of their business.

About Carl and Alasdair

Carl joined Fanbase as CTO and co-founder from a background in professional services and software engineering. Before joining Fanbase, he worked with some of the UK’s biggest companies to build innovative solutions to unlock the value of their data. He is passionate about delivering creative technical solutions that empower users and building an awesome working culture.

Alasdair is Co-Founder and CEO of Fanbase. Alasdair previously worked across finance, energy and in data & technology transformation and was named in Business Insider’s 35 under 35 list.

More on Fanbase:

Website: https://fanbaseclub.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FanbaseClub2020

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fanbaseclubs

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/Fanbase_clubs

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fanbase_clubs

In their first video edition of the podcast, Jon and Susanne talk with Brett Yorgey (Chief Product Officer) and Nick Zanotto (Vice President, North America Development) of EngageRM. The team discusses how EngageRM became a premier business automation, CRM and data analytics platform for sports organizations, how a sound CRM strategy can lead to greater productivity and additional revenue opportunities, and why EngageRM enlists Microsoft as a partner in their work.

More on EngageRM:

Website: engagerm.com

Facebook: facebook.com/engagerm

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/engagerm

YouTube: youtube.com/user/JayThomCRM/featured

Jon and Susanne talk with Brandon Muto at Swoopt. Swoopt.com was the 1st place winner of the startup competition at the 2022 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

Brandon Muto is the Founder & CEO of Swoopt – a metasearch engine for sports tickets. Prior to Swoopt, Brandon drove product strategy for Baron Davis' sports media platform SLiC and served as Head of Product for an NFT platform BlocSide Sports. Brandon holds a MS in Sports Management from Columbia University and a BSBA in International Business from Georgetown University.

Jon and Susanne are joined by Brandon Martin and Jalen Martin of Reaction Technologies, whose innovative athlete safety and performance solution company won 2nd place at the 2022 startup competition at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference  (sponsored by Microsoft for Startups). Brandon and Jalen talk about their personal journey in becoming entrepreneurs, the 5 reasons behind their mission , and how winning the competition has impacted the future of their business.

The Reaction Technologies Team:

Brandon Martin, Founder & CEO

5+ years experience in sports technology, Former athlete, current coach

Jalen Martin, Co-Founder/CMO

Former 2x National championship collegiate athlete. Masters in Sports administration

Marcus Graham, Co-Founder/Advisor

Graduate from Texas A&M Commerce, former collegiate athlete

Jon and Susanne welcome back cloud solution architect Jake Switzer to the podcast for the release of his new book "Microsoft Certified Azure Data Fundamentals Study Guide" (Wiley, 2022). In the episode, they discuss Jake's motivations and experience on writing the book, as well as why technical skilling and certifcation is important for technologists working within sports teams and leagues.

Jon and Susanne welcome Phil Chang to the podcast! In this podcast episode, they discuss data storytelling, the interplay between player performance and development and data/analytics, how data/analytics professionals can make their mark at any stage in their careers and his take on sports tech.

Phil Chang is in his fifth season as Director of Basketball Analytics and Research for the Los Angeles Lakers. His team assists decision-making and data management within Basketball Operations, including areas like player personnel, coaching, scouting, G League, and player health. Phil previously worked in the NBA League Office’s Basketball Strategy & Analytics group, coming from a finance background at BlackRock. Phil attended Princeton University.

Jon & Susanne are joined on this episode by John Nisi, where they discuss the power of data in decision-making within the sports industry, data literacy and the importance of ethical artificial intelligence (AI).

John is the General Manager & COO of the US Cloud & Enterprise Business, where he is responsible for the US business, marketing and operations across the cloud and infrastructure portfolio of products. Formerly Worldwide Services CTO for Data and Artificial Intelligence for Microsoft Services, John was responsible for technical strategy, delivery quality, delivery readiness and technical sales support for the D&AI Services organization at Microsoft.

Jon and Susanne are joined by cloud solution architect Jake Switzer, where they recap and discuss key takeaways from the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, held March 4 and 5, 2022.

Jake Switzer has been using technology to build data-oriented solutions since his time as a student at the University of Alabama. He has held delivery and advisory roles at Microsoft for over nine years, including as a consultant and cloud solution architect. Jake has designed and developed data platform and advanced analytics solutions for an assortment of Microsoft enterprise customers to ensure that their specific business needs were met. Over the last few years, he has focused on advising Microsoft’s sports customers how to design and build modern data solutions in Azure. His responsibilities in this role include providing architecture guidance, building proof of concepts, aiding in production deployments, and troubleshooting support issues. He is well-versed in a variety of data engineering technologies and frameworks such as SQL Server, Apache Spark, Azure Data Factory, Azure Databricks, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Power BI. In his free time, he enjoys spending time outdoors hiking and can be found most weekends cooking and sharing a scotch with his wife.

Jon and Susanne discuss tech trends and innovations that they believe will have a significant impact on sports tech for 2022.

The first podcast episode of 2022! Jon and Susanne talk with Scott Bounds on how cloud technologies are transforming M&E areas like sports betting, video production, and fan engagement, and how these innovations can offer unique opportunities to professional sports teams and leagues.

Scott Bounds is a Sr. Director of Customer Success at Microsoft, guiding customers on their business transformation to the cloud.  Bounds focuses on content creation and production workflows, asset management, and using Microsoft AI and Cognitive Services for Media and Sports.  He is a 27-year veteran of Microsoft, spending over 10 years in the Media and Sports industries in a variety of management and technical roles.

Hosts Jon Flynn and Susanne Tedrick are joined by Emily Hallinan, Business Applications Sales Executive, for a focused discussion on how professional sports organizations use data to connect with their fans.

Members of the Azure for Sports team at Microsoft discuss their work in digital fan engagement and cloud security.

Guests:

• Jon Flynn, Principal Data & AI Specialist, Azure;
• Tash Tahir, Cloud Solution Architect - Apps and Infrastructure, Azure;
• Susanne Tedrick, Principal Infrastructure Specialist, Azure