Data Journeys

Wes McKinney is the creator and "Benevolent Dictator for Life" (BDFL) of the open-source pandas package for data analysis in Python, and has also authored two versions of the reference book Python for Data Analysis. Wes is also one of the co-creators of the Apache Arrow project, which is currently his main focus. Most recently, he is the founder Ursa Labs, a not-for-profit open source development group in partnership with RStudio.   He describes himself as a problem-solver, and is particularly interested in improving the usability of data tools for programmers, accelerating data access and in-memory data processing performance, and improving data system interoperability.   In my conversation with Wes today, we focused on getting to know Wes on a more personal level, discussing his background and interests to get some insight into the living legend of open source he has become.   [3:48] How did coming from four generations of newspaperman impact Wes’s upbringing? [6:00] What kind of hobbies was he interested