Azure for Sports Podcast Jon Flynn and Susanne Tedrick

The Azure for Sports podcast episode 25 focuses on women's sports, particularly football (soccer), and features guest Nancy Hensley discussing the Mercury 13 project and her role as a founding member.

Highlights:

Mercury 13's Mission: Promoting women's football by investing in and supporting teams, primarily in Europe. The initiative aims to raise the sport's profile and address disparities in resources and data availability compared to men's football.

Impact of Data in Sports: Nancy, with a background in big tech and a focus on data and AI, highlights the crucial role of data in understanding and promoting women's football. The conversation delves into the need for more comprehensive data collection in women's sports to enhance fan engagement, injury prevention, and overall understanding of the game.

Commercial Viability and Gender Equity: The episode discusses the different revenue sources for men's and women's football and the importance of commercial success in women's football. It emphasizes the potential for women's sports to drive significant engagement and align with movements like female empowerment.

Don't miss the latest Azure for Sports Podcast episode, where we have a special guest from GitHub, Elizabeth Barrord. She will show us how GitHub Copilot can make our lives easier as developers by helping us write better code faster and with fewer errors. Watch us put GitHub Copilot to the test in a LIVE DEMO and see how it can help you modernize your applications!



To learn more about GitHub Copilot, the fantastic tool we used in the demo, visit: https://github.com/features/copilot

Join exceptional guest co-host Melinda Moyo-Turner as we speak to the amazing 318 Foundation. We get to hear from Founder, and WNBA Champion, Alana Beard, as well as 318 Foundation Program Director, Kristen Kelly.

Please consider donating to the 318 Foundation at the link below.

Foundation Link: https://www.318foundation.org/

Jon and Susanne are joined by Tinus Le Roux, the founder and CEO of CrowdIQ. In this episode, they discuss how the company, using computer vision and complementary technologies, delivers actionable insights to their partners about their crowd composition and behaviors. They also tackle the benefits and potential ethical implications of generative AI.

Jon and Susanne are delighted to welcome Ari Kaplan to the podcast! Ari is Databrick's Global Head of Evangelism, and a leading influencer in AI, databases, and sports analytics. “The Real Moneyball guy”, the popular movie was partly based on Ari’s analytical and scouting experiences innovating Major League Baseball, and later creating the Cubs and Dodgers analytics departments.

Ari is President of the Independent Investigation into the Fate of Raoul Wallenberg, Sweden's humanitarian hero. His background in
data includes having been President of the worldwide Oracle users group when they acquired MySQL, Java, and Peoplesoft. He traveled the world with McLaren Formula 1, assisting the racing strategy team to bring AI models to production.


Ari was named Caltech’s “Alumni of the Decade”, Crain Chicago’s “40 Under 40”, and IBM’s “Data Science Celebrity”, and the History Channel made a documentary on one of Kaplan’s analytical investigations.

Jon and Susanne are joined by Beyond Sports co-founders Sander Schouten and Nicolaas Westerhof. In the episode, they discuss the genesis of Beyond Sports, as well as their recent collaboration with ESPN on Big City Greens, and their thoughts on how to make sports more accessible and engaging for younger audiences.



Sander J. Schouten
Sander Schouten is the Co-Founder & CEO of a groundbreaking company called Beyond Sports. With a successful career start in the Oil and Gas industry, he realized the need for sustainable energy solutions, leading him to a renewable energy startup. Inspired by the startup's dynamic atmosphere, Sander embraced disruption and recognized the potential in sports, technology, and data. With the vision to cater the next-gen of sports fans, he started Beyond Sports together with Nicolaas.

Nicolaas Westerhof
Nicolaas Westerhof, Co-founder and CTO of Beyond Sports, has always had a deep connection with sports. He began his journey as a video and data analyst for AFC Ajax, where he honed his understanding of athletic performance. While studying Human Movement Sciences, Nicolaas specialized in talent development, player tracking systems, and Virtual Reality's role in space perception. Motivated by his passion for innovation and a vision to revolutionize sports technology, he co-founded Beyond Sports with Sander, leaving behind his position at AFC Ajax to pursue this dream.