David Smith

David has extensive product management and developer relations experience, focused on bridging the gap between technical experts and the stakeholders who rely on their expertise. He has a proven track record of growing and nurturing diverse user communities, and building products to serve their needs, in a range of companies from startups to Big Tech. With a background in Data Science, David has over 20 years of experience in the applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to industries as diverse as pharmaceutical research, financial analysis, manufacturing and healthcare IT. He is also an experienced speaker and presenter, and an early contributor to the open-source R project. After leaving his homeland of Australia for the UK to study for a PhD in Statistics, David joined Insightful Corporation in 1998. As the Director of Product Management in the Seattle headquarters, David oversaw several major software releases leading to its acquisition by TIBCO. From 2006 to 2008, David was the VP of Product Management at startup Zynchros, the pioneering provider of hosted formulary management software for health insurers and pharmacy benefit managers, until its acquisition by SXC Health Solutions. At Revolution Analytics from 2008 to 2015, David dramatically grew the worldwide community of R users and the enterprise market for open source data analysis software, leading to a successful acquisition by Microsoft in 2015. David remained at Microsoft post-acquisition, where he has held roles in program management and developer relations, and is currently a Principal Cloud Advocate leading the AI and Machine Learning team in Developer Relations. He is Microsoft’s representative to the board of the non-profit R Consortium. David holds an Australian passport and a US Green Card, lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and speaks English and French.