Nic Ryan: Never on Wednesday

Nic Ryan is “The Data Guy”.

He doesn't much like Wednesdays.

He lives on a beach in Queensland and travels around the world with his data.

Listen to my podcast with him here.

In this podcast Nic and I talk about his journey from actuary via basketball to the surf. We bypass how dangerous kangaroos are while sharing insights on how to explain complex ideas, make a better presentation and the mysterious ways of finding work as a contractor or consultant.

Nic even quotes the Joker from Batman. It’s entertaining and you’ll learn at the same time. Who wouldn’t want to listen along?

Please contact me, Cindy Tonkin, if you’d like to build your analytics capability with more soft skills for your data science teams.

From basketballer to actuary

Cindy Tonkin:      Hi there, this is Cindy Tonkin. I’m the consultant’s consultant. I help you build analytics capability. I work with data science teams helping them work even smarter, faster, and nicer. All of the soft skills they need. If you’re brilliant and you want to be even better, this is the podcast for you.

Cindy Tonkin:      Nic Ryan. Nic Ryan. You know, Nic and I have just met, but we have lots of people in common. And so, Nic, maybe you should tell us who you are and what you do.

Nic Ryan:          Okay, starting at the beginning, like the Sound of Music, a very good place to start, right? I grew up in the central coast, New South Wales, played a lot of basketball. Wanted to play basketball overseas, wasn’t tall enough or good enough, mainly not good enough. But was fairly good at maths. And so, I ended up getting scholarship to do actuarial studies at the University of New South Wales.

Cindy Tonkin:      Because basketball and actuarial studies are just, they’re twinned, aren’t they?

Nic Ryan:          Well, I tell the guys here it’s like, “You need to have a backup plan. You need something more than a fish and chip shop.” And they tell me to go away. And so, three of them are now playing college in the States. So, I had a backup plan. Maybe if I didn’t, I would have gone on to bigger things.

Cindy Tonkin:      You didn’t take a big enough risk going into actuarial studies, yeah.

Nic Ryan:          So, I ended up working as an actuary for a long time, different insurance companies. And so, there was a bit of reserving which you did, and also a lot of the pricing work and some of that modelling work. And this was just at a time when data sets started getting a bit wider and we had to do some more statistics and more programming. And it was really the early days of data science. I think it wasn’t until the mid-2000s before there was such a thing. But it was still statistics and we weren’t paid very much money. And so, I did that.

Nic Ryan:          And then, some really interesting projects like reinsurance pricing and pricing for fire and theft and natural hazards and that kind of stuff, rating zones. And so, really had a good time doing that. And then, was drawn into banking. And so, banking building risk models and credit risk score cards for CBA and a whole bunch of different lenders across Australia. And so, did that for a while.

Nic Ryan:          Then worked for a credit bureau and building their internal risk models and also consulting to different lenders all over the place, again building risk models. And so, fell into this thing that was data science from there. And so, I’ve been doing that ever since. And I was the head of data science for Nimble Money as well. A guy gave me a call and then gave me a plane ticket and said, “Come and chat to us.” And I did.

A call and a plane ticket

Cindy Tonkin:      A call and a plane ticket, why not? Yeah, yeah. So, you’ve been firmly entrenched in the numbers around money for a long time.

Nic Ryan:          Yeah. I also did a recommended system for an online advertising and I’ve done a bit of agriculture stuff.

Cindy Tonkin:      So, you’ve done across the board. Yeah.

Nic Ryan:          Yeah, a whole heap-

Cindy Tonkin:      And what are you doing now?

Nic Ryan:          So, at the moment, there’s a few things on the go. One is one of my friends, he was a client, but he’s a friend, just as normal. A lot of my clients become-

Cindy Tonkin:      Yeah, who knows how to distinguish the two? Yeah.

Nic Ryan:          That’s right. He’s over in the UK. And so, I help him out with strategy and also some project stuff. But what he’s doing is he’s trying to apply artificial intelligence and data science machine learning to project management. So, really transforming the project management industry. So, to date there has been spreadsheets tracking stuff. And the same mistakes he saw being repeated again and again. And so, he’s taking a data driven approach to project management. Major construction, major highway projects and stuff like that, which is pretty cool. Now, he’s just got the green light for what is a data trust in project management. So, different companies contribute their data all together, online data, and they can collectively learn from the lessons of what went well and what didn’t from different projects, which is really good.

Cindy Tonkin:      Yeah.

Nic Ryan:          Like, this is world first type stuff. And so, to be on the journey with him with this is just such a privilege. And he’s a heck of a nice guy. And so, his company’s projecting success. And yeah, I think it’s going to be big. I think it’s going to be absolutely transformative for the project management industry.

Cindy Tonkin:      Wow, cool.

Nic Ryan:          I can’t take credit because I’ve just cheered and good work and all that.

People and machines

Cindy Tonkin:      I just like hearing about what people are doing. Literally yesterday I was talking to a client in a pharmaceutical company. I was like, “Yeah, I’ve been working with data science people.” And she’s like, “What’s data science?” And I said, “Let me just give you some examples.” I was just listening to a McKinsey podcast this morning where they were talking about what is data science? And it’s like, here’s some cool examples for the real people to learn what data science is. Last week, I listened to a Farnam Street podcast, and they were saying there’s a hedge fund who have replaced one of their board members. They have been replaced by an algorithm.

Nic Ryan:          There you go.

Cindy Tonkin:      Or a roboty artificial intelligence decision making machine as one of their board members.

Nic Ryan:          Yeah. I can definitely see that heading that way. It won’t be so much like us and them. I can see it will be us working with the machines and that kind of thing.

Cindy Tonkin:      Yeah, because there’s so many things that are just the same process. Yeah, exactly.

Nic Ryan:          Yeah, that’s right. And some of the lessons from the past. So, Martin, for instance, over there is looking at even things like companies and they might be doing similar type of projects, but again, the lessons aren’t learnt. And so, they make the same mistake 10 times. And if you have a data driven approach to it, it does take some of that judgment of humans out of it. So, it’s about making the computers do the stuff the computers are good at and the humans do the judgment that they’re good at with the right information to make these decisions. So, it’s not cheating project managers, it’s just sort of enhancing them to the project manager 2.0 type thing.

Cindy Tonkin:      Yeah, exactly. And there’s so many things I could say. But let me ask you some questions because it’s all about you.

Nic Ryan:          Thank you.

Productivity Hacks

Cindy Tonkin:      What do you do to work smarter or faster? What are your productivity hacks?

Nic Ryan:          Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot that I do as well as that. So, one of the other things that I do is there’s an AI consulting company in Brisbane. And so, I work with them on different projects. They’ve got a bit of gap as a lot of places do, between junior staff and CTOs and not really a technical manager in the middle. So, I help them and advise them on different projects and things and also dive into coding.

Cindy Tonkin:      So, you’re kind of coaching them on skills as much as anything. Are you doing? Or teaching and coaching?

Nic Ryan:          Both. Kind of whatever. Kind of whatever needs to be done, yeah, which is cool. And also, a university in the States, UC Berkeley has me as a course leader for one of their practical machine learning courses.

Cindy Tonkin:      Cool.

Nic Ryan:          Yeah, so it’s good fun.

Cindy Tonkin:      So, you’re working all around the world from paradise.

Nic Ryan:          Yes. Yeah. I’m pretty lucky because I’m a surfer, and out my back gate is the surf. So, I could literally walk with my board under my arm and go surfing, which I do every day. So, it’s pretty lucky there.

Cindy Tonkin:      Yeah, so that helps you work smarter because it’s basically getting your Zen, right?

Nic Ryan:          Zenning out. And also, I missed a lot of my kids when they were younger. Like, I really did because I was working a lot. And so, I didn’t really see them for five years. I was travelling a lot. Working a lot, even to and from work was a lot. Now I try not to miss anything that they’ve got going on. Their karate classes or basketball or aerial or acrobatics or whatever the heck they’re doing, I try to make sure I’m part of it.

That’s pretty special for me as well. So, trying to fit my work around my kids. But what I’ve found to be really successful is I have like a Kanban board for myself. So, for what I need to do for a week. And I’ll lock it in.

I’ll work out the hours I need to work and I’ll lock it in. I’ll make sure my surfing is there, make sure my gym is there, make sure my basketball’s there, make sure my kids’ activities are there, and then comes my work. And I know that I’ve got a certain amount of hours that I can do a day before I go nuts, and that’s it. I just square it away.

Nic Ryan:          And so, I try not to do too much in one day or in one week. But I still manage to get a heck of a lot of work done. So, I’ll still have meetings at seven o’clock or eight o’clock at night, but I may have had an hour gap before them or that sort of thing. Because England, they’ll start at about eight o’clock at night for me. And so, it’s all about a balance, I think, because the reality is, I’ll still be doing this when I’m 80. And so, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Cindy Tonkin:      Exactly. It is a marathon, not a sprint. I love it. All of these things are music to my ears. It’s how I work too. It’s like, “You know what? I’m going to take Friday off and do something deliciously good, make some art or sing some songs or whatever,” because that’s what life’s about, right?

Wednesday is not Nic’s friend

Nic Ryan:          And Wednesdays and I have never been friends. I’ve never-

Cindy Tonkin:      What is it about you and Wednesdays? Tell me the story. Why is Wednesday such a bad thing?

Nic Ryan:          I just don’t know what it is with Wednesdays. I guess it’s not like Tuesdays where you’ve got all the specials and you can go out and eat really cheap and everything like that. And Thursdays, you’re getting close to the weekend and you’ll probably go to a bar as well and they’ll have a jug of Margarita or something, you know? So, Wednesday’s like the nothing day right in the middle. And I try not to do too much on a Wednesday. So, Wednesday morning, for instance, I took my kids to the beach, several beaches, actually. A couple of beaches and different parks and just had a coffee with them. And they had ice cream. And that’s kind of like my Wednesday morning.

Cindy Tonkin:      Nice.

Nic Ryan:          Yeah. So, it’s all right. But I’m probably going to drop dead on a Wednesday. I think Wednesday is probably going to be a bad day for me forever.

Cindy Tonkin:      Right, so when you’re 80 and you’re still working, you will still be not working. Maybe you just don’t work on Wednesdays.

Nic Ryan:          That’s right. Yeah. I try not to do too much on the Wednesday. But working for yourself, you do have that flexibility

There's so much more that Nic says:

Listen to the podcast here.

Click here to get the rest of the transcript and show notes.

Talk to me, Cindy Tonkin, about building analytics capability through soft skills for your talented data science teams. Phone + 61 412 135 426 [email protected]