Episode Summary
You’re drowning in data theory. Whitepapers, frameworks, and best practices—but nothing that solves the actual problems your team faces with data platforms. Most data podcasts celebrate success stories or dissect past wins. This one is different. Data Breakthroughs brings real practitioners together to solve problems in real-time. No scripts, no perfect answers—just genuine collaboration where teams work through challenges they’ve never encountered before and figure out solutions together. This season opener, hosted by Lior Barak, shows you exactly what makes this podcast a resource for solving your most pressing data platform challenges.
Episode Type: Season Introduction
Runtime: 5 minutes
Recording Date: September 2025
Why This Format Exists
The Personal Journey
Lior shares his experience as a frequent podcast guest and conference speaker, and the frustration of always discussing solutions after the fact. The realization that his "too pragmatic" approach - both a strength and limitation - meant missing the strategic thinking process that leads to breakthrough solutions.
The Missing Piece
Most data content focuses on tools and implementations: "Here's how we deployed Snowflake" or "Why we chose Python over R." But what's missing is the thinking process - how do experienced practitioners approach problems they've never encountered before?
The Collaborative Discovery
Instead of prepared presentations, Data Breakthroughs features genuine problem-solving sessions where host and guest work together to understand the challenge and develop solutions based on principles and capabilities, not specific tools.
What You'll Hear This Season
Real Breakthrough Moments
The episode features a clip from Artur Yatsenko (Director of Data Engineering at Urban Sports Club) demonstrating the collaborative discovery process - moving from technical debates to understanding business realities and the need to "deliver value quickly because business is impatient."
Focus on Principles
Rather than tool recommendations, episodes explore:
How to understand problem spaces before jumping to solutions
Strategic thinking processes of experienced practitioners
Capability-based approaches that work across different tech stacks
The synergy that emerges when different perspectives collide
Season Structure
Episode Release: New episodes every second week
Season Length: 10-11 episodes
Launch: Two episodes dropping simultaneously to kick off the season
Get Involved
Submit Your Problem
Have a data challenge that keeps you up at night? Something that can't be solved with a Google search or standard best practices? Submit your problem and it might be featured in a future episode.
Become a Guest
Data professionals interested in collaborative problem-solving on challenges they've never seen before - reach out to join a session.
Stay Connected
Newsletter: Wabi-Sabi Data / Cooking Data Blog
LinkedIn: Tag @Lior Barak for discussions
Direct Messages: Open for conversations about problems, solutions, and future collaboration
About the Host
Lior Barak is a Senior Data Strategy Leader and author of "Data is Like a Plate of Hummus." Known for his pragmatic approach to data challenges, he created this podcast to learn from other practitioners' strategic thinking processes while solving real problems in real-time.
What's Next
Episodes 1 and 2 are available now, featuring collaborative problem-solving sessions that demonstrate the format in action. New episodes drop every second week.
Connect with the show: Your comments, problem submissions, and alternative solutions help shape future episodes.
