I joined Narrative Science almost 10 years ago, while I was in the midst of finishing my Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from Northwestern. At the time, I was dead set on becoming a professor and had verbally accepted a tenure-track position. But then my advisor approached me about a really interesting problem he was solving—automatically writing stories from data. He was starting a company and wanted me to come help out for a few months. What started as a consulting engagement has resulted in a decade-long career that has been one of the best moves of my life.

So why did I do it? There are a few obvious things—the people, the culture, the perks. But my real answer? Data storytelling—writing stories and having conversations with your data—is an incredibly complex, difficult, and exciting problem to solve. Maybe more importantly, I felt deeply that it’s a problem worth solving, and one I was eager to spend a good chunk of my career pushing forward. Read More

#nlp