Life & Work with Johannes Plambeck of Ventura, CA

Today we’d like to introduce you to Johannes Plambeck

Hi Johannes, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
fortress-gridworks is a data science and machine learning consulting practice. I started moonlighting consulting gigs shortly after grad school while working as a site selector and economist at a commercial real estate corporation, having completed one consulting project with cooperative laundry based out of NJ and another for a school district out of Texas. Life got busy shortly thereafter, as I started doing work for various startups as a lead data scientist and machine learning engineer. I worked in the crypto finance, OEM, and health care startup spaces in break-neck environments. I learned what to expect from a startup and decided that I wanted to start my own that would provide the same services that I provided the startups I had worked at.

I transitioned back into corporate America as a senior managing data scientist after working 6 years at startups. I currently work at the Center of Excellence Core Artificial Intelligence Team at Pfizer’s Commerical Analytics Division. The stability of a corporate environment makes it possible for me to get back into consulting. The consulting environment has changed dramatically however since the advent of ChatGPT 4. On one hand, this technology removes most of the nail-biting frustration from writing algorithms, but on the other hand, it makes it possible for entrepreneurs to quickly perform data analysis and even data science tasks that normally would be handled by a consultant. Nevertheless, data is expensive. There are significant costs in building-out data pipelines, data sanitation checks, data merging, and scaling – we call these data engineering tasks. These tasks just 4 years ago commanded considerable respect but have now become easily accessible to even researchers. There are also significant costs in choosing the right algorithms for solving a business problem. Often this requires thorough research, testing, communication with the business, and validation, which necessitates often having a full-time data scientist on staff. Enter fortress-gridworks.

Fortress-gridworks seeks to help small businesses and community organizations modernize their data operation. We know that you don’t need a full staff of engineers and data professionals to maintain your own data stack. We just want to get you over the hump as quickly as possible with open source tools. We choose to work with small businesses and community organizations because we care about local data transparency in civic and commercial spaces. We believe that the data economy can potentially put a lot of people to work serving their local economies. We care about lowering costs of doing good business and good governance, which requires democratizing data analysis and monetizing it for individuals. All we ask in return for our consulting services, is a competitive fee and to take inventory of the meta model that serves your particular need.

Fortress-gridworks is currently finishing an engagement with the Greater Denver Transit and Regional Transportation District in Denver CO. This engagement will help Denver improve its bus and light rail ridership, which has been down since the pandemic. We hope that this engagement will lead to further contract work with the state of Colorado, the tricounty area in Southern California, and the City of LA. We are Yes in My Backyard advocates and advocates of minor party politics. We believe in civic transparency and social innovation, and believe that competency around data is a first step for any organization that believes the same.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
We use on prem hardware for running our own models and recognize that we will eventually need to offer a modular data center model for larger projects. At the moment, we are still completing this big commitment with Greater Denver Transit before we pitch our services to other entities.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I specialize in geospatial data science, machine learning engineering, applied econometrics, and trade engines.

My practice is particularly focused on geospatial applications such as transportation planning and site-selection models. I am interested in where things are, why they are where they are, and where things should be and be moving towards to make the world a better place.

My current work with Greater Denver Transit has applications to migration patterns, trade of goods and services, traffic models, drone swarm behavior, and crowd control. But mostly, I aim to work on economic models that help build resilient communities that guard against social isolation and marginalization.

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I grew up learning to play concert piano and participated in martial arts training. To date, I’ve played in a few symphony orchestras as an alto and tenor trombonist. I’m still close to my childhood friends who I often played computer games with. My favorite games were strategy games, which motivated my work with maps and agent based modeling (spatial artificial intelligence). I often traveled to Taiwan and to Germany where the two halves of my family are from (i’m half Taiwanese half Danish-German). In college I studied economics in Germany for a year and then worked at the US embassy in Berlin as an intern. I wanted to leave my comfort zone as much as possible because I had a very community focused childhood growing up, often spending time with the Chinese American association and with the Lutheran church out in Solvang. Sometimes I wonder if I should have spent more of my time pursuing a career in music instead of economic development and spatial AI, but I am content being able to play in an orchestra. I’m currently engaged with the Ventura College symphony orchestra.

Pricing:

• $10000 for 3 month consulting engagements

Contact Info:

• Website: https://fortress-gridworks.tech