Interview: Arturo Rodriguez (Founder, CoFlows)
About today’s guest
In this part of the interview series we speak with Arturo Rodriguez, the founder of CoFlows Ltd which is a technology firm specialising in data science and quantitative analysis.
Arturo and I worked together in London when he was brought into my investment bank as a contractor helping us write a white-paper on our trading strategy and analysis and helping us build out extensions to our existing data solutions.
Since moving to Australia, his company has been consulting with a couple of financial markets firms and he recently helped me pull together better source information for my firm’s Covid-19 tracker (see details in this article: https://medium.com/prosperity-advisers-dna/application-getting-more-up-to-date-numbers-f7cb14e0854e).
Using CoFlows, he was able to pull in a variety of data sources on Covid-19 into a single source that allowed me to create a more up to date tracking app in Power BI (LINK).
In this interview, I ask Arturo for his take on the current crisis and how technology can help us better understand what’s going on.
The Interview
Mark: Hi Arturo, could you tell our readers a bit more about CoFlows?
Arturo: CoFlows is a tech firm focused on helping businesses optimise their workflows and monetise their data. We believe that designing user-centric workflows with open-source and cloud-based technologies is the key to a successful digital strategy.
Mark: That’s great. There’s a lot of organisations who can really use help in that space. Could you tell me more about how Covid-19 affects your day to day work?
Arturo: On the one hand, Covid-19 has changed my social dynamics profoundly… yet on the other hand, it has made my day to day much more efficient since all I do is wake up, walk to my workstation, work and then go to bed. It’s far from a healthy lifestyle but my productivity is amazing. I also find that virtual meetings make it much easier to engage with client that usually want face to face meetings.
Mark: I’m seeing some of that as well with my work. There’s a lot more you can pack into the work day. So when did you start looking at the Covid-19 data and decide to analyse it and why?
Arturo: It was fascinating to me how the data was being shared on a global scale to understand a global problem. I wanted to be part of that and try to add my little grain of salt to the ecosystem.
Mark: Could you tell me a bit more about your style of analysis and your process for coming up with your model? E.g. do you have a particular focus area?
Arturo: I never start off with a model approach. Like so many other data related problems, I found that the first step needed to be to build a coherent and up-to-date dataset. Unfortunately, there were many datasets available with various features, this made any type of global analysis difficult. Hence, I decided to create a workflow that aggregated various data source into one master dataset.
Once the master dataset was available, I felt that accessibility to the dataset was paramount for its use. This is why I designed a set of WebAPIs to simplify access and a simple dashboard to navigate the dataset and related WebAPI.
It was not until this functionality was available that analysis was possible. Our analysis, like any other reasonable analysis, is constrained by the data and its “resolution” or amount of detail. The Covid19 datasets available to the public is only aggregated count’s on a day by day basis. So Growth analysis was the only reasonable direction we saw instead of actual infection dynamics.
Mark: It certainly was a problem of trying to build anything from those sources. So how do you use the CoFlows suite of technologies to build a more robust solution as it relates to the Covid-19 sources of information?
Arturo: CoFlows was designed to integrate amazing open-source technologies in a coherent data-centric environment. The Covid-19 problem, like most other data problems is perfectly suited for a CoFlows implementation. Using Python we could easily use web scraping libraries together with other popular data wrangling tools. CoFlows simplified the aspect of generating WebApis linked to these functions and creation of dashboards using great open-source tools.
Mark: And on this note, how do you see this solution solve problems for other organisational data challenges?
Arturo: At this stage I would say that many organisational data challenges are similar in principle. They all tend to be based on the need for building a data acquisition strategy and workflow that links to a data processing facility which eventually ends up in a visual interface like a dashboard together with an automation interface in the more sophisticated scenarios.
Mark: Do you see mistakes in how people are doing analysis Covid-19 data in the news media and general public?
Arturo: I think that people infer conclusions of features that are not available in the data. If the information is not available in the data, it doesn’t matter what maths you through at it… the maths will never create information, it will only clarify it. As previously stated, the data we collect is only aggregated day counts, without detail about specific patients making it almost impossible to understand the infection dynamics and hence when a peak could occur.
Mark: That’s a really good point. What are some of the key messages you want to convey from your work?
Arturo: The key to a successful data strategy starts with the creation of an automated and coherent master dataset. Furthermore, maths without common sense will lead to very wrong conclusions. Finally, open-source offers an incredible toolset with a vibrant community so it is definitely the way to go.
Mark: Speaking of toolsets, what kind do you use to analyse information?
Arturo: Starting from the bottom up, I always use a cloud setup, my go to environment is Microsoft Azure simply because I have used for a while and gives me access to the tools I need. Second, the CoFlows toolkit allows me to very easily create a full web-service with user permissions and WebAPI management using tools like Pandas, Plotly/Dash, Beautiful Soup and Scrapy.
Mark: What kind of opportunities do you see will come from this crisis in terms of new ways of working or ways in which the world will be different?
Arturo: I truly hope it makes people realise that the problems that matter are problems that affect us all humans and must attack them together. The people that actually made a difference, found insight in data and shared this with the healthcare providers for them to save lives did so by working together and sharing knowledge. I truly hope this dynamic continues. I also hope that remote working stays to a certain degree and virtual teams become more mainstream.
Mark: What is CoFlows doing to help its customers understand the current pandemic?
Arturo: To be honest we are still trying to understand it ourselves… I believe that our added value to our client’s is helping them to adapt to a working dynamic where technology plays an even more central role in their day to day. I think it’s a lot about helping our client’s cope the day to day changes of this new workflow and large part of this is to become even more efficient. Even more able to process data, gain insight and make decisions where the entire workflows is visible to all relevant parties for an enhanced communication between stakeholders.
Mark: Finally, what’s your outlook for Australia considering where we are now with Covid-19?
Arturo: I think that Australia is adaptive and resilient, the two most important characteristics to survive and thrive in scenarios like these. I believe that if our market embraces a technological change and cultural adaptation, we will be in a very good position… relatively speaking ofcourse.
Closing remarks and contact
What a great set of insights from Arturo. To see more about what he does then check out the links in this article. To learn more about CoFlows then check out their website (https://coflows.com/) or you can follow Arturo on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/arturo-rodriguez-aa47642/)
Stay tuned for more interviews like this in future and if you would like to get in touch with me about this or other posts on this blog then feel free to reach out below:
Mark Monfort (Head of Data Analytics and Technology)
- Phone: 02 8262 8700
- Email: mmonfort@prosperity.com.au
