Factory Fireside is a podcast series exploring the evolving world of Data & AI, spanning strategy, technology, agents, and real-world implementation. We talk with leading practitioners to help you make smarter decisions when starting, running, and scaling Data, AI, and Agentic solutions in your organisation.
How a Power BI Dashboard Reached the Global Championship Finals | Fireside VizTalk Ep. 01
In the very first episode of Fireside VisTalk, Oli and Gus — Frontend and Power BI Delivery Engineers at Insight Factory — break down the dashboard that earned Gus a spot as a finalist in the Power BI Global Dashboard Championship.
Gus walks us through every layer of his submission: the data preparation approach, design thinking process, his enterprise-style colour palette strategy, and the custom HTML/CSS visuals he hand-crafted inside DAX measures — including animated KPI cards, hover-over context chips, a spider/radar chart, an embedded guided tutorial, and a dynamic notifications panel.
Whether you're a Power BI developer looking to level up your design game or just curious about what it takes to compete on a global stage, this episode is packed with practical insights.
🔗 Follow Insight Factory: https://www.insightfactory.ai (https://www.insightfactory.ai)
🔗 Connect with Gus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gusbavia/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gusbavia/)
🔗 Connect with Oli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/odelemos/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/odelemos/)
📌 Topics covered:
Power BI Global Dashboard Championship overview
Data modelling best practices (calendar tables, column labelling frameworks)
Design thinking for dashboards — visual hierarchy & cognitive load
Using colour with purpose (not decoration)
HTML & CSS embedded in DAX measures for custom visuals
Building an embedded guided tutorial for accessibility
Pagination techniques for matrices
Custom spider/radar charts in Power BI
Dynamic notification panels
Conditional formatting & business rule logic pitfalls
Accessibility: alt text, tab order & inclusive design
🎙️ Fireside VisTalk is a data visualisation series by Insight Factory where we unpack the craft behind great dashboards.
#PowerBI #DataVisualization #Dashboard #PowerBIChampionship #DAX #DataAnalytics #BusinessIntelligence #InsightFactory #FiresideVisTalk #PowerBIDeveloper #HTMLinPowerBI #DashboardDesign
2 Feb 2026
2025 AI Year in Review: Is Claude Code AGI? DeepSeek, RL Breakthroughs & What's Next | Agent Talk #1
🔥 Welcome to Agent Talk — a brand new series from Factory Fireside where our young engineers in the trenches building enterprise-scale agentic solutions break down what's really happening in AI.
In this debut episode, Kahn Nguyen, Neil Mazunder, and Harry Nguyen dive deep into the AI developments that actually mattered in 2025 — and what turned out to be just noise.
What we cover: → Is Opus 4.5 + Claude Code basically AGI? (Hot take alert 🌶️) → How reinforcement learning became THE word of 2025 → DeepSeek's papers that shook Silicon Valley → The shift from scaling laws to post-training optimisation → Why Chinese labs are outpacing American research → "Code is solved, but software isn't" — what this means for builders → Our predictions for 2026 and the next age of AI research
About Agent Talk: InsightFactory has been heavily invested in developing enterprise-grade agentic solutions. Agent Talk is hosted by three of our engineers who are right in the depths of building these solutions for clients — not just agentic solutions, but enterprise-scale agentic solutions.
🎙️ Hosts:
Kahn Nguyen — Research Scientist @ insightfactoryAI
Neil Mazunder — Forward Deployed Engineer @ insightfactoryAI Applied AI Team
Harry Nguyen — Forward Deployed Engineer @ insightfactoryAI Applied AI Team
📍 About insightfactory.AI (http://InsightFactory.AI): We're an Australian AI company building enterprise-grade agentic solutions through our Forward Deployed Engineer model.
27 Jan 2026
Dr Sanjay Mazumdar - The biggest threat to Australia isn't an aircraft or a missile, it's someone sitting with a laptop in a lounge room.
In this episode of Factory Fireside, I sit down with Dr. Sanjay Mazumdar — a pioneer who was building neural networks in the early 1990s before the internet even existed, and who has since shaped Australia's approach to AI, data, and national security.
Sanjay's journey spans developing the world's first mobile wallet at Motorola (in 1999!), leading the Data to Decisions CRC that spawned companies like Fivecast, serving as Chief Data Officer at KPMG, and now running the Defence Trailblazer — a $240 million initiative connecting universities, startups, and defence.
We go deep on:
→ Why most organisations get AI adoption completely backwards — and what to do instead
→ The real role of a Chief Data Officer (hint: it's not data governance)
→ Information warfare, deepfakes, and why guardrails alone won't protect us
→ Australia's quantum computing edge — and the encryption risks that come with it
→ What it actually takes to build a successful AI company (spoiler: it takes years)
→ Practical advice for business leaders preparing for the AI wave
Whether you're a founder, executive, or just trying to make sense of where AI is heading, this conversation delivers hard-won insights from someone who's been at the frontier for over three decades.
🎯 Key takeaways:
[00:00] — Introduction
[02:15] — Doing a PhD in neural nets before the internet existed
[08:30] — The world's first mobile wallet (1999)
[15:45] — Why "AI envy" is derailing business strategy
[24:10] — Where the CDO role should actually sit
[32:00] — Information warfare and the limits of ethical AI
[41:20] — Inside Australia's Defence Trailblazer
[48:30] — Quantum computing: opportunity and threat
[55:00] — How Fivecast went from research project to global success
[62:15] — Three things every business leader should do now
21 Dec 2025
Exploring the history and future of AI & Agents with Dr. Don Perugini (CEO - Socontra)
In this episode of Factory Fireside, Peter Inge sits down with Dr. Don Perugini, a pioneer in AI and agentic systems with over 20 years of real-world experience spanning defence, enterprise, healthcare, and startups. Together, they cut through the hype to explore what agents actually are, why most enterprise pilots stall, and what it really takes to move from experimentation to production impact.
This is not a surface-level LLM conversation. Don draws on decades of work building cognitive agents, federated AI systems, and large-scale simulations from predicting bushfire behaviour and modelling entire populations, to improving IVF success rates and enabling privacy-preserving AI in healthcare.
You’ll hear:
Why agents didn’t start with LLMs, and why that history matters
The real reasons 95% of AI pilots never reach P&L impact
Why “narrow problems” outperform grand AI ambitions
How agentic commerce and the agentic web will change SaaS and B2B
Why AGI is mostly a distraction and what progress actually looks like
What founders and technologists should focus on now to build durable AI businesses
This episode is essential viewing for technology leaders, founders, product teams, and anyone trying to understand where AI agents are genuinely delivering value and where the hype still vastly outweighs reality.
🎧 If you care about building AI that works in the real world, this one’s for you.
8 Dec 2025
Factory Fireside - Peter Worthington-Eyre, Stop the FOMO: How to Actually Succeed with Data & AI
South Australia’s first Chief Data Officer, Peter Worthington, joins us for an honest conversation about the state of Data & AI and why many organisations are getting it wrong. In this episode, we unpack:
Why AI pilots fail (and the real reason isn’t technology)
How to know if your organisation is actually ready for AI
The danger of chasing shiny tools and “AI FOMO”
Why we hold AI to a higher standard than humans
The truth about whether AI will “steal all the jobs”
Why you should hire for personality and train the skills
What leaders should really focus on in 2025 and beyond
Peter draws on decades of experience leading data transformations, advising government, and helping organisations avoid the hype and deliver outcomes that matter. 🔥
If you work in data, digital, technology, or leadership this is essential listening.
6 Nov 2025
Factory Fireside - Nicola Dorling Leading Digital Enterprises at Scale,The Evolving Role of the CIO in the Age of AI
In this episode of Factory Fireside, Peter Inge, Co-founder & CEO of insightfactory.ai (http://insightfactory.ai), sits down with Nicola Dorling, Group CIO at Downer Group and ranked #2 CIO in CIO Magazine 2024.
Together, they explore how enterprise technology leadership is being redefined in the era of Data & AI from scaling programs that actually deliver value, to killing Proof-of-Concepts early, to building teams and partnerships that execute relentlessly.
Nicola shares practical lessons on:
Balancing value creation and risk in AI strategy
Moving beyond endless POCs to production-ready outcomes
Aligning AI initiatives to board-level financial metrics
Building resilience and curiosity into technology teams
What “the death of consulting” and “the future of the CIO” might really mean
It’s a conversation packed with candour, insight, and leadership perspective from someone who’s led digital transformation at the highest levels.
31 Oct 2025
Factory Fireside - Strategy - Glenn Smyth
In this fireside, we explain how data and AI programs can work most effectively with enterprise architects in large organisations, cutting through the tension that often exists between the two. We highlight that while data and AI teams are driven by speed and experimentation, enterprise architects are too often perceived as rigid gatekeepers. Done poorly, EA slows everything down with excessive control, but done well it acts like town planning—using principles-based governance to set guardrails while enabling innovation at pace. We discuss how the true value of EA lies in aligning technology, business, and people design with strategy, equipping executives with better insight maps for data-driven decision-making, and establishing “freedom within boundaries” so AI teams can innovate safely. We also challenge the role of outdated architecture review boards, showing how embedding architects directly into agile delivery teams ensures principles are applied in real time. The core message is that effective EA doesn’t police data and AI—it empowers it, balancing safety with speed to drive transformation at scale
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
Contact Factory Fireside
Guest appearances
Books guests
Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.
Host of Factory Fireside?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
