Brian and Don welcome a much anticipated guest for this episode, Professor Fernando Perez joins us for an episode of 26.1 AI Podcast. Dr. Perez speaks about his journey, the community, and all the challenges along the way. Fernando shares in his inimitable style, how he journeyed from straight laced physicist in pursuit of an academic career to doggedly ignoring naysayers and creating one of the most important components of the modern PyData stack. One personal challenge during this journey was losing a friend Dr. John Hunter. John also influenced your host Brian Ray. Though John missed collaborating when Fernando set out with IPython because of conflicts from prior commitments, the two joined in later to collaborate on advancing tools data scientists use every day now. Sit back and enjoy Fernando's dexterity on multiple topics as hosts Brian Ray and Don Sheu hold on for the ride for your benefit listener.
Don Sheu and Brian Ray are friends with one mission: a podcast that covers interesting topics in AI. Don is a dotcom era flameout who was reborn in tech building Seattle's largest tech community; Brian is tech leader known globally as Python Engineer, Data Scientist, and AI Cloud expert. They have joined forces and are interviewing the most interesting practitioners in an emerging AI Space.