Dashboards vs. Agents: Navigating the New Era of BI and Analytics with Mike Driscoll

Joe Reis
6,300 views February 4, 2026

In this episode, I sit down with Mike Driscoll, founder of Rill Data, to discuss the evolving landscape of business intelligence and data engineering. We explore why the industry keeps "rediscovering" old concepts like the semantic layer and how the rise of AI agents is forcing us to rethink how we structure data. Mike shares his insights on the "shape" of analytics, debating whether conversational interfaces will replace dashboards or simply complement them. We also dig into the growing demand for data engineering, the importance of watermarks and temporal semantics, and why data visualization remains a critical tool for "trust but verify" in an AI world. Rill Data: ⁠https://www.rilldata.com⁠ Mike’s Podcast: Data Talks on the Rocks https://datatalks.rilldata.com

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