Michael Gonzalez - voidschema

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Michael Gonzalez

Active CDO with 10+ years leading data in high-regulation sectors. Focused on the SAGE stack (Snowflake/AWS/GenAI) and the shift from passive reporting to active data engineering. No hype—just pragmatic notebooks on governance and quantum research.

Reflections on titles

Reflections on titles

I've been running a data function for ten years now. A couple of quick notes on how titles have changed, as a way of illustrating how far the field has come. 1. The lexicon didn't exist yet. When I first laid out the structure of the

Some notes on where data offices are headed

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Some notes on where data offices are headed

A few things I've been kicking around. Not fully baked, but worth getting down before I lose the thread. Logical positivism is the language of our field Logical positivism, or logical empiricism if you want the fuller name, has been on the outs in philosophy since Popper punctured

When legacy orgs’ data capabilities catch up

When legacy orgs’ data capabilities catch up

I've noticed something about when a legacy or highly regulated organization quickly "catches up" with the rest of the economy in data capabilities. 1. Velocity becomes critical Time becomes wayyyy more finite because you have to cover more of the hierarchy in the same number of

Four projects we’re building on the modern data stack

Four projects we’re building on the modern data stack

There’s a version of the modern data stack story that is common. Lakehouse architecture, semantic layers, self-service analytics, democratized data. It’s a good story. Mostly told by vendors and consultants selling stuff. Here’s a different version: what you get when you’re a data engineering lead

Matrix multiplication experiments with Manim

Matrix multiplication experiments with Manim

The consistent advice on linear algebra is that calculation alone will only get you so far; at some point the intuition has to click geometrically. With that starting to happen, I wanted to see the transformation actually move. After working through a lot of 3Blue1Brown for intuition, I've

We’re building a bot

We’re building a bot

I held off on this longer than I probably should have. The case for an AI-facing interface has been obvious for a while. The case against it (hallucination risk, data security, governance exposure) was obvious too. What moved me was straightforward: I've spent years building tools for

Fix the day

We don't have direct S3 access. Entra-AWS identity friction makes that a non-starter for now, which means passively reading external tables from S3 isn't viable; not unless we're committing to full truncate-and-reload cycles on billion-row tables. We're

The wall has a name: linear algebra

The wall has a name: linear algebra

I hit a wall in my quantum research. The wall has a name. Linear algebra was, in my entire math education, approximately one day of high school. The lesson went something like: here are matrices, they're easy, moving on. I had no reason to push back on that

Why your LinkedIn marketing doesn’t work on me

Why your LinkedIn marketing doesn’t work on me

LinkedIn is textbook ens—ification. Is anyone going to make a serious argument that the deck is stacked against the normies of LinkedIn? Worse yet, imagine being a person at an organization that is a recipient of daily sales pitches. There's a baseline desperation that most people sense

Toward an applied quantum data theory

Toward an applied quantum data theory

I’ve started working through quantum concepts seriously; not just quantum computing, but the larger theoretical framework underneath it. My gut tells me that the emergence of applied quantum computing in business is going to make the rush to AI seem small. Quantum cryptography, the ability to utilize true randomness,

Give a business owner an empty catalog and watch nothing happen

Give a business owner an empty catalog and watch nothing happen

I'm generally a best-practices person. I think there's wisdom in the consensus positions that the data governance community has built up over decades, and I try not to be contrarian for its own sake. But some recommendations read like they were written for an organization

How Apple and Jobs influenced how I run my data shop

How Apple and Jobs influenced how I run my data shop

Thanks to some heavy recommendations from Macbreak Weekly, I ordered David Pogue’s Apple: The First 50 Years. I’m about a third of the way through and it’s a denser read than I was expecting. I’ve seen some speculation online that it might be too technical, but

Creating a generation of power users

Let's start with a distinction that doesn’t get the right level of attention. In your organization right now, you have passive data consumers and active data consumers. Passive consumers want reports in their inbox every Monday morning, formatted in Excel with formulas, "just in case someone