Turning Notebooks Into Collaborative And Dynamic Data Applications With Hex The Python Podcast.__init__

Summary
Notebooks have been a useful tool for analytics, exploratory programming, and shareable data science for years, and their popularity is continuing to grow. Despite their widespread use, there are still a number of challenges that inhibit collaboration and use by non-technical stakeholders. Barry McCardel and his team at Hex have built a platform to make collaboration on Jupyter notebooks a first class experience, as well as allowing notebooks to be parameterized and exposing the logic through interactive web applications. In this episode Barry shares his perspective on the state of the notebook ecosystem, why it is such as powerful tool for computing and analytics, and how he has built a successful business around improving the end to end experience of working with notebooks. This was a great conversation about an important piece of the toolkit for every analyst and data scientist.

Announcements

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Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Barry McCardel about Hex, a managed platform to turn your notebooks into collaborative, interactive data apps and stories

Interview

Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python?
Can you start by describing what you have built at Hex and your motivation for starting the business?
Who are the primary users of the Hex platform?

How has that focus influenced your product direction and the features that you prioritize?


What are the biggest roadblocks that you see data analysts and data consumers running into?

How have those roadblocks shifted in recent years?


What is it about the concept of a notebook that has caused them to see such a massive rise in usage and popularity?
What are the barriers to productivity