We are happy to introduce The Sisense Crew, a new series of community posts that put a spotlight on Sisense employees who are not only experts in their fields, but also active members of the community. We’ll be showcasing their professional roles and sharing some of their personal interests, so you can get to know them a bit better. After all, sharing is caring :)

There’s no better way to kick off this series than with Takashi Binns, a plugins legend and avid snowboarder. Takashi is a Sales Engineer at Sisense and since joining in 2014, he’s been enthusiastically working with potential customers to demonstrate Sisense’s value. With a natural thirst for knowledge, Takashi continually develops professionally and is always happy to help and share his experience with others in the community.

When and how did you start at Sisense?

I started at Sisense in September of 2014. I had been working as a BI Consultant, and I was getting tired of the constant business travel. I heard that Sisense was looking for Sales Engineers, so I downloaded the free trial to give it a try and was amazed by how easy it was to get started. After a deep dive session with one of the cofounders to discuss how the whole technology stack worked, I was really excited to join the team.

You are a part of the Pre-Sales team, here at Sisense. Can you share with us a bit about what you do? What do you like the most in your role?

Our team works with potential customers to illustrate how Sisense can help them with their data challenges. This means coming up with system architectures, creating customizations like plugins, Q&A sessions on how the software works, and using their data to create dashboards/reports on the fly. Since we work with all different companies/industries, the data we look at every day is drastically different, so you get exposed to a huge range of interesting use cases.

Please share your top 3 cool implementations of Sisense.

The longer I’ve been here at Sisense, I’ve worked on more and more complex customizations.  One of the coolest implementations I’ve gotten a chance to work on is the embed.sisense.com demo site. We came out with a way of embedding Sisense widgets directly using JavaScript but didn’t have a ton of examples to show, so I build a basic website using an offshoot of the Bootstrap CSS framework to show what’s possible using this approach. Other than this the two plugins that stand out for me are the Multi-level Sankey Diagram and Force Directed Network Diagram. These were both taken from github projects and converted to Sisense plugins. They are good examples of what’s possible with our extension framework.

Can you share with us a challenge you had to overcome and what have you learned from it?

One challenge I’ve faced over the years is when you know how to solve a problem, but don’t have specific experience with that technology.  For example, maybe the best way to solve a problem is by using R or by creating a python application, but you’ve never used/worked with these frameworks before. It’s very easy to say “we need to find someone else who is more familiar with this” and just pass it off, but  then you lose out on that experience. Even if it takes longer than it should or you are learning something from scratch, it always pays off to invest the time and expand your knowledge base.

Has data ever changed the way you view the world? If so, please explain.

As a consumer, data has changed a lot about my day to day.  For example, if I’m buying a plane ticket, it's going to be on a Tuesday about 8 weeks before the departure date.  I also won’t make any large purchases or pick a restaurant without combing through the reviews.  The difference is not just that this data is collected, but that it is aggregated and presented in a way that an end user can easily navigate. A lot of the customers I speak to every day are facing this challenge. Their end users are getting used to sites like Hipmunk and Mint which provide an easy way to work with large/complicated data, and are demanding the same experience from their vendor.  

What is your favorite activity outside of work?

Outside of work, you’ll find me snowboarding. I grew up north of Boston, so I’ve been skiing/snowboarding since I was a kid. Now I live in New York and my options are more limited, so I’ll take any chance I get to hit the slopes.

If you would have a superpower, what would that be?

If I could pick any superpower, it would be to teleport anywhere I want. Living in New York is great, but it doesn’t have a lot of outdoor activities (hiking, snowboarding, etc). I would love to be able to bounce around between the biggest mountains and most remote beaches.

Can you share with us a puzzle or riddle?

Rubik’s Cube

*Follow Takashi to receive notifications of new posts by email.