PyDataMCR June

PyDataMCR June

Hosted this month by Autotrader!

THE TALKS

Using data to drive positive change in local communities - Nathan Shoesmith (he/him)

Nathan's talk will focus on the role of robust data for driving positive changes in local communities. Originally from a non-technical background, Nathan will reflect on experiences sitting between technical and wider teams, providing explanatory and understandable coverage of data analyses to help people to understand often confusing topics.

Nathan Shoesmith is a social entrepreneur, strategist, and author based in the North West of England. A graduate of Management, Politics, and International Relations from Lancaster University, Nathan has worked across a variety of sectors, focusing on creating positive impacts for local and wider communities. Nathan is dedicated to making often confusing topics more accessible, both through his social enterprise work and work mapping emerging economic clusters. At GC Insight, Nathan works on economic development, social and regeneration projects across the UK - while outside of work he additionally offers strategic advice to organisations including YoungMinds. He is the Insights and Analysis Lead for innovative data tool Growth Flag, which identifies businesses with the greatest growth potential to help unlock local growth across the UK. He recently delivered a TEDx talk focused on how we can transform ideas to impact in changing times, including reflecting on his data work.

Scaling for Insight: Lessons from 17 Billion Rows in Convenience Retail - Ed Digby (He/Him)

What happens when you’ve got 17 billion rows of transaction data, 12,000 sites, and millions of products - but your users still want fast, simple, actionable insights? And what if you’re a startup trying to make it all work without burning through time, money, or complexity?

In this talk, I’ll share some lessons we’ve learned building a data platform that helps major UK household names shape their convenience strategy. It’s not just about handling scale - it’s about knowing what matters. How do you cut through the noise, focus on the right data, and design systems that deliver real value to real users? I’ll also talk about doing it the startup way - working smart, keeping costs low, and making choices that balance speed, simplicity, and scale.

Ed is the Lead Software Engineer at Retail Spotlight, where he's led the team building a cloud-native data platform that processes 17 billion rows of transaction data across 12,000 UK convenience stores, delivering insights that directly shape how FMCG companies approach the convenience market.

Previously at PwC's Technology & AI teams and as a contractor helping startups scale fast, Ed has seen what works (and what doesn't) when building systems under pressure. He's passionate about the startup approach to engineering - making smart technical choices that deliver real user value and building products people actually want to use, whether you're handling massive datasets or creating customer-facing applications.

In his talk, he'll share what he's learned about cutting through complexity, focusing on what matters, and building data systems that deliver real value under startup constraints.

Event Details

The event will start at 18:30 with time for socialising until 19:00 when the talks begin. The talks will end approximately around 20:00.

After the talks we'll all head somewhere local for some post-event socialising.

Location
We'll be at Autotrader, who are kindly supplying the venue and catering. The capacity is limited to 80.

EVENT GUIDELINES

PyDataMCR is a strictly professional event, as such professional behaviour is expected.

PyDataMCR is a chapter of PyData, an educational program of NumFOCUS and thus abides by the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct

https://pydata.org/code-of-conduct.html

Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with its contents.

ACCESSIBILITY

There is a quiet room available if needed. Toilets and venue are accessible.

SPONSORS

Thank you to NUMFocus for sponsoring Meetup and further support.

Thank you to Autotrader for their sponsorship and for the awesome venue and catering!

Thank you to Krakenflex for sponsoring PyDataMCR.