From Data Dump to Data Product

About this episode

The episode discusses the distinction between data and data products with Jed Sundwall, focusing on the importance of intentionality in data management and sustainability.

This conversation with Jed Sundwall, Executive Director of Radiant Earth, starts with a simple but crucial distinction: the difference between data and data products. And that distinction matters more than you might think. We dig into why so many open data portals feel like someone just threw up a bunch of files and called it a day. Sure, the data's technically "open," but is it actually useful? Jed argues we need to be way more precise with our language and intentional about what we're building. A data product has documentation, clear licensing, consistent formatting, customer support, and most importantly - it'll actually be there tomorrow. From there, we explore Source Cooperative, which Jed describes as "object storage for people who should never log into a cloud console." It's designed to be invisible infrastructure - the kind you take for granted because it just works. We talk about cloud native concepts, why object storage matters, and what it really means to think like a product manager when publishing data. The conversation also touches on sustainability - both the financial kind (how do you keep data products alive for 50 years?) and the cultural kind (why do we need…

People in this episode

Guest: Jed Sundwall

Topics covered

• data products
• open data
• cloud storage
• sustainability
• data accessibility

Keywords

• data products
• open data portals
• object storage
• cloud native
• sustainability
• data accessibility
• product management

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Radiant Earth, Source Cooperative

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