At Big Data LDN 2026, Katie Baker caught up with George Firican for a quick-fire round of questions. He found the event buzzing, with plenty of conversations and sessions to keep him busy.
His conversations with data leaders always come back to foundations. The pressure is coming from above, with executives asking them to support AI implementations. The hard part is tying those projects back to the business, and making sure every AI product is rooted in reality and solving a real problem, not launched because it's the buzzword of the year.
That leads to his 12-month bet. George thinks governed context will be dead, though he wishes it wouldn't be. We've heard the idea in other forms before, he says, from the semantic layer to the ontology to plain definitions. His expectation is a rebrand of the same thing next year.
His advice on where to invest hasn't changed in decades, and he knows it. Put money into data governance, data quality, the right definitions and connections, and lineage. It's the basic stuff, and it's what lets processes, systems and AI models share the same understanding we have as humans.
Before you buy the next rebrand, check that your definitions and lineage are in place.
