NYC Data #386: Weird Database Showcase, Mapping Relationships, Climate Modeling, Work with Taxi Data, Flink Tradeoffs, Braze, Versant, Free Parking in NYC
Also, a call for potential mentors & sponsors!
Hi friends, I hope you are enjoying Juneteenth and have a wonderful Father’s Day weekend! We’re entering the summer slump for events, so if you know of something interesting going on in the world of data, please let me know!
As always, help me keep this space up-to-date: please send me posts, events, and job openings. If you know someone who might enjoy or benefit from this newsletter, please share it with them. [image credit: u/mid-centurymodern]
Good Local Posts
My favorite thing I saw this week was FLIP TABLE: a mini hackathon and showcase for "weird" databases held in May at Hex House in Brooklyn. NyQL / AlarmDB made me laugh out loud, and Secret Nonograms is adorable and I will definitely use!
A new interactive from Alvin Chang and The Pudding on a longitudinal study of relationships, including the impact of COVID and implications of meeting online on relationships later on.
A worthy ask from the community: Geneviève and Kathy (formerly of Insight Data Science) have launched Hack Your Summer with DJ Patil and Coding it Forward. Hack Your Summer is a free, unpaid program for college students and recent grads who came up empty on internships and want to ship a public-facing project. They need mentors and sponsors. If you can pressure-test a student's logic and help them deal with thorny questions, or if your company can chip in with money, compute, or licenses, please sign up here!
Upcoming In-Person Events (new listings in bold)
6/22 - 6/26: UN Open Source Week
6/25: Open Source Responsible AI Evening Meetup
6/25: Search, Streams, and System Design Tradeoffs
9/28 - 10/2: MLCon
Open Roles
There have been a number of major layoffs in the last few weeks. If you are hiring for a data role in the NYC area, please let me know and I’d be happy to post it here.
I’m hiring a number of roles at The New York Times, including:
Senior Analysts (many roles)
Data Engineers (many roles)
… and many more. Please apply through the website: feel free to let me know as well!
Outside of The Times, others are hiring as well:
Braze is hiring a Forward-Deployed Data Scientist.
NYC’s Taxi and Limousine Commission is seeking a Data Scientist.
Versant Media is looking for a Senior Manager, Data Visualization.
First Street Climate Modeling is hiring a Senior Data Engineer.
Montefiore Einstein is seeking a Data Engineer - Research Informatics.
Miscellany
The Times had a great interactive last week on free street parking in NYC and options, including the residential parking permits they use in Chicago. I didn’t realize how arbitrary the placement of meters is!
Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country. I did not have this on my 2026 bingo card!
Thanks so much for being a subscriber. To see previous job listings (many of which are still open!) and blogs, check out the archive. Feel free to forward this to anyone - they can subscribe here:
