It's not enough to know or peddle one data modeling technique these days. That's like fighting in the UFC knowing only thumb-wrestling. The world is very complicated with respect to data. To be a data practitioner, you need to be awesome in not just one, but MANY data modeling techniques. This is what I call Mixed Model Arts, which will be discusse…

What's up with Finland and data? I think Finland might have among the strongest contingencies of data practitioners in the world. Pound for pound, Finland might rule the planet for data competencies. I chat with the The Finnish Data Mafia, jokingly my friends who are responsible for the upcoming Helskini Data Week.…

Just wrapped up a course with Sol Rashidi on transitioning your career from practitioner to leader. The notion of "success" kept recurring, so I spend this podcast unpacking it. What is success and why should you figure out what it means for you?

This wasn't the interview I expected to do. I thought I'd interview Nick Freund about his startup, Workstream. Between the time we scheduled our podcast and when we hit the record button, he shut down his company. That's a pretty major shift, to say the least. What's it like to shut down a company? Nick discusses the various pivots of his startup, …

I've had plenty of discussions over the last couple of weeks about data teams - what are they, and how do I measure their success? I dive into a distinction I make about data teams - enterprise vs product - and some key ways to gauge them.

Doug Needham is an OG DBA and data architect who built DataOps workflows back in Desert Storm (!) and has managed to stay very current with data to today. We talk about data architecture war stories, the hard work to do generative AI in the enterprise, and much more. Enjoy!

Some things happened over the last day that I need to call out. Women and other underrepresented groups need to be treated better in tech and data. Whether it's all-male panels at conferences or mansplaining on social media, I'm pretty embarrassed and irritated by how women are treated in our industry. My message for this episode - stop being a d*c…

Juha Korpela is a world-renowned expert in conceptual data modeling. He joins me to discuss the power of conceptual data modeling, why the data modeling world is broken today, data products, and much more. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkorpela/

In this episode, I talk about why history matters for technology professionals. When you understand the history of technology, techniques, and approaches, you have the context to understand where they fit into your situation. Ignore history at your peril.

On a panel this week, we discussed the topic of career progressions. It got me thinking about the various ways people navigate their careers. Here's my advice if you're trying to move up the corporate ladder, frustrated in your current role, or want to jump ship and do your own thing.

Yulia Pavlova (Director of Technical Innovation at Thomson Reuters) joins me to chat about the role of AI in disinformation/misinformation in the media, communicating complex topics to nontechnical people, and much more. I personally consider the current state of the media as one of the central challenges today, and I learned a lot chatting with Yu…

Is data modeling a waste of time? I meet a number of people who say it is. In this episode, I dissect some of the arguments against data modeling, and give reasons why it matters more than ever today.

Safiyy Momen and I chat about the good and bad of the Modern Data Stack, controlling cloud costs, boring engineering, and much more. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/safiyy-momen/

Gordon Wong and I chat about why most data teams aren't that valuable, and ways data teams can deliver more value.

Just got off the plane from Spain, and I'm quite jet lagged. Nonetheless, here's your Friday rant. In this episode, I chat about an experience I had with someone telling me Python is a slow language. If you can't tell, I think programming language wars are dumb, and I give some reasons why.

Roman Yampolskiy is an AI safety researcher who's deeply concerned with the dangers of General Super Intelligence. We chat about why he doesn't think humanity has much time left, and what we can do about it. Twitter: https://twitter.com/romanyam?lang=en

I'm sitting in the Amsterdam Airport (Schipol) and wrote some of my book on the flight over to Europe. In this episode, I'll talk briefly about my book writing process, and how it differs today from when I wrote Fundamentals of Data Engineering.

Jarod Santo and Adam Stacoviak from The Changelog join me for 1.5 hours of free-flowing chats about planned obscelescene, old school vs new school consumer tech, the XZ Backdoor incident, the job market doldrums (plus tips for finding work and starting a biz), and being unemployable. Jarod and Adam are two of my favorite people to talk with, since …

In today's Practical Data Modeling group discussion, we chatted about how to get buy-in for data modeling. The question was intentionally vague, because context is key. I give some thoughts on this topic, and how you can generalize this to most situations where you need to get buy-in. Practical Data Modeling: https://practicaldatamodeling.substack.…

Vishnu Vasanth (e6Data) and I chat about what's next for analytical query engines, shifting left, the Indian tech scene, and much more. Vishnu is very wise and has a very deep technical vision for where the industry needs to go. I very much agree with his vision. Enjoy! e6Data: https://www.e6data.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishnu-va…

There's the interview you think you're going to have, then there's the interview you get. This is one of those, in the best way possible. I expected to chat about his time at Snowflake. We didn't even get past his early days building data warehouses because it was so fascinating. Did you know Kent is arguably one of the very first practitioners (pr…

Sometimes I feel like the data world is stuck in a world of tabular data (rows and columns). This has been the data world for decades. Let's think bigger. We've moved beyond data fitting into lakes. With the capability of AI to unlock the power of unstructured data (audio, images, video), it's time to start thinking about data oceans...…

Keith Belanger is an OG data modeling practitioner, having been in the game for decades. We chat about a wide range of data modeling topics. What's changed and what's stayed the same? How to model data to fit the business's needs. Agile data modeling. When it works, when it doesn't. Data modeling for data mesh and decentralization. The art of data …

This morning, the Practical Data Modeling Community held its first group discussion (to be posted very soon). People from all sorts of organizations (biggest companies in the world, universities, small companies) discussed how the approach analytical data modeling. My major takeaway - your mileage will vary. There's the ideal way of data modeling w…

Kishore Aradhya and I both teach, and we agree this is a very difficult landscape to determine what and how to teach. Against the backdrop of generative AI, we discuss the role of universities in teaching tech and data, the role of a teacher, how to teach data, and much more. DSPY - https://github.com/stanfordnlp/dspy…

Toby Mao started his data tooling company, SQLMesh, in 2022, when investing in data tools was unfashionable. Yet, he's managed to get traction with SQLMesh and is on a mission to simplify data transformations and make data easier to work with. We also chat about experimentation best practices, which he learned at some of the biggest tech companies …

Matt Housley hangs out at my house, and we have a random chat about all sorts of stuff - fads in data, data and ML engineering, tech hubs, and more. If you want a glimpse into the sorts of chats that Matt and I have all the time, here you go.

There's an inverse relationship between the value you add and how much you need to tell people about it. If you're adding value, you'll know - you don't need to talk about it. You're doing it. Also, the same goes with "data." If you're putting "data" as the center of the conversation, you just lost the game.…

Angel Narciso and I hung out at LEAP Riyadh, alongside 215K attendees (wtf?). We chat about all sorts of stuff in the data world, including some blunt convos on the modern data stack and AI, among other things.

I often get questions about how I write and advice on how one might go about becoming a "writer." In this episode, I talk a bit about my writing process and why you (yes you) should also write. This will be the first in a few episodes and blog posts where I talk about the writing and content creation process, as I get a ton of questions about this.…

Jess Haberman and I chat about how to negotiate a book deal. She's been in publishing for ages and knows her stuff! Also, I wish I had this episode handy while I was shopping around Fundamentals of Data Engineering, because Jess agreed to publish my book while she was at O'Reilly ;) We also talk about how AI will change publishing.…

Had a great chat with Keith Belanger yesterday (podcast dropping soon) about how conceptual data modeling fell by the wayside. All too often, people seem focused on physical data modeling. This is a shame, because conceptual is the art and lifeblood of data modeling. As an industry, we need to learn to see (again).…

Sadie St. Lawrence chat about all sorts of stuff - mind and machines, community building, optimizing time, focus, and social capital, and much more. Women in Data: https://www.womenindata.org/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sadiestlawrence/

Is it better to make a perfect or good enough data model? It depends…

Christian Bourdeau and I chat about all things data careers - getting hired, getting fired, and finding your gig. We also chat about 75 Hard, lifting weights (we're bros), hackathons, teaching, and much more. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianbourdeau/

Zach Zeus and I chat about trust architecture and how it can work to improve ESG impacts in supply chain. This is an incredibly important topic with massive global impact, cuz climate change. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachary-zeus/ Recommendation 49: https://unece.org/circular-economy/news/unece-support-scaling-transparency-sustainable-…

I'm chilling in Verbier, Switzerland at Skiers in Data (SKID). In this episode, I chat about the various types of debt - technical, data, and organizational debt.

Annie Nelson and I chat about her path to data analytics, writing her new book, "How to Become a Data Analyst", bad career advice, rock climbing, and more. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annie-nelson-analyst/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/discover/annie-nelson-data-analytics Book: https://www.amazon.com/How-Become-Data-Analyst-Low-Cost/dp/1…

Christophe Blefari and I chat about why teaching data engineering is so damn hard, how generative AI will change technology and data education, and more. Site: https://www.blef.fr/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopheblefari

Imagine you're dropped into the middle of a failed data project - no data team, no documentation, and other horrific things - and have to figure out a way to make it work. What would you do? Gordon Wong and I chat about various aspects of how we'd handle this scenario.

Alex Freberg, aka Alex The Analyst, chats with me about playing the long game with content, empathizing with his audience, how he grew a massive YouTube following, his new Analyst Builder courses, and much more. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AlexTheAnalyst LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-freberg/ Analyst Builder: https://www.analystb…

Wendy Turner-Williams joins me to chat about her new project and communty, The Association.ai, unleashing generative AI in organizations, starting and building a community, and much more. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendy-turner-williams-8b66039/ The Association: https://theassociation.ai/

My voice is sort of working, and I chat about Tristan Handy's article that raised quite a ruckus this week, "Is the "Modern Data Stack" Still a Useful Idea?" In the end, the Modern Data Stack won - people use the cloud for analytics. And everything ends, so I'm excited for what's next. Article: https://roundup.getdbt.com/p/is-the-modern-data-stack-…

Randy Bean and I discuss why generative AI is making companies more data-oriented, the latest Wave Stone Data and AI Leadership Executive Survey, his career and writing process and much more.

I consider Steve Hoberman to be one of the original data modelers, having practiced and taught data modeling since the 1990s. He also runs the venerable Technics Publications, which I consider the foremost publishers of data-oriented books. Steve and I discuss data modeling's past, present, and future. If you're into data modeling, this is a must-l…

Andrew Meister and I chat about removing wasted notions and bad workflows, aka "clunk."

Today's rant is a random grab bag of stuff - my thoughts on Data Day Texas, updates to Practical Data Modeling, and more.

Roy Hasson and I chat about career progressions in data and technology, open table formats (Iceberg), and more.

Are your outputs generating the right outcomes? I'm in Austin for Data Day Texas, and I reflect on this topic via a conversation I had last night with Juan Sequeda, Tim Gasper, and Santona Tuli. In 2024, outcomes will matter more than ever. What are you doing to drive the right outcomes for your organization?…

Ari Kaplan (Head of Evangelism at Databricks) joins me to chat about all things data intelligence, data lakehouses, the role of evangelism in tech companies, automation, and much more.