We knew that the Information Council is a really well-established convention for knowledge folks. However studying about it’s all the time completely different from attending, proper? This yr, we determined to seek out out if the convention was the precise platform for our firm. To get issues began, we determined to sponsor the convention.

So, what’s this text about?

I wish to share with you my experiences from the entire journey (not solely) to the USA, how we skilled the convention itself, and what different surprises we had.

Let’s begin!

Tyler Durdan

Although the GoodData headquarters is in San Francisco, the vast majority of staff, together with me are primarily based in Prague and Brno within the Czech Republic. So each convention in the USA means to journey throughout the Atlantic. Normally, which means greater than 10 hours of uninterrupted flight time. Is there anybody who likes it? I don’t suppose so. Typically, it jogs my memory of the Tyler Durdan character from the film Battle Membership. I hope to (by no means) find yourself like him.

Day 1 – The Day of My Presentation

I’ve been doing developer advocacy for practically 2 years, however I all the time get so nervous earlier than displays! Properly, it’s getting higher, however it’s nonetheless removed from zero-stress.

This time I didn’t have sufficient time to soak up the jet lag, and the day earlier than, I visited a buyer in one other state, so I wasn’t actually recent.

Nevertheless, being harassed has its perks – I all the time put together a slide-deck lengthy earlier than the presentation, rewrite it a number of instances, and repeat it in my head many times. Generally my spouse will get mad at me for presenting even in my sleep.

So, when my presentation began at 10:40 AM. It went easily, as all the time. I used to be in a position to improvise and introduced a reside demo with none hiccups. Individuals have been engaged and requested a number of questions – that’s why I’m doing that!

And what was my presentation about?

Just lately we rolled out a brand new coronary heart of our analytics platform. The general idea is named Analytics Lake. It consists of a semantic layer uniquely mixed with a bodily execution layer referred to as FlexQuery. It’s powered by state-of-the-art open supply applied sciences reminiscent of Apache Arrow and DuckDB.

Wish to be taught extra about FlexQuery?

• I like to recommend you to learn it an umbrella article I wrote simply earlier than the convention
• Try the Information Council web page containing a hyperlink to my slide deck. Quickly it can comprise a hyperlink to the recording too.
• And final, however not least, we’ve got a white paper in regards to the Analytics Lake idea from Donald Farmer.

What else occurred throughout the first day?

Along with Ryan Dolley we recorded a LinkedIn reside stream recapping what’s occurring on the convention.

And what higher factor to do on the finish of the day than go to a celebration? Ryan and I have been invited to a particular celebration for audio system. Ryan is aware of principally everyone within the business so he launched me to many attention-grabbing folks there together with Zhamak Dehghani, the keynote speaker and CEO of a really attention-grabbing firm Nextdata. And naturally we additionally drank some nice combined drinks.

Day 2 – Speaking with Communities

I got here; I introduced; I conquered. What else?

Being overdosed by lack of stress, I wished to satisfy actually everyone.

And now the hassle of being an energetic member of many communities paid again.

I had made preparations with some folks in Slack communities prematurely. Some approached me via LinkedIn. Some ping me throughout the convention. Most attention-grabbing discussions I had with:

Tobiko Information

Tobiko Information are the homeowners of SQLMesh(different to dbt) and SQLGlot(SQL manipulation).

My blueprint knowledge pipeline now makes use of dbt for transformations, however I’m not totally happy. Let’s attempt SQLMesh in its place!

We closely depend on the Apache Calcite framework for SQL era (from our semantic layer and selfmade MAQL metric language). Might SQLglot be a sound substitute? Might we assist SQL metrics as a substitute for MAQL metrics? Might we contribute our SQL optimizations to SQLglot?

I met 4 folks from Tobiko Information, together with their Chief Architect, Iaroslav Zeigerman. They weren’t solely very sensible but additionally actually pleasant. Thanks to your time!

And also you, readers, ought to watch them rigorously!

MotherDuck

No must introduce MotherDuck, proper? Powered by the presently hottest OLAP DB DuckDB, they purpose to be usually out there in June with a cloud database service.

I met Tino, CPO of MotherDuck. We continued discussing a possible partnership and supreme use circumstances we will do collectively:

Embedded knowledge functions working on high of MotherDuck

GoodData is the highest participant on this space with its first-class assist for embedding and UI(Javascript, Typescript) SDK.

Multi-tenancy

MotherDuck plans to offer first-class assist for multi-tenancy as part of GA.

It is going to be doable to outline numerous consumer teams and assign (dedicate) sources to them.

GoodData, once more, is the highest participant on this discipline, with an idea of workspace hierarchies and storage tiers in FlexQuery. To mix capabilities from each to ship an actual end-to-end multi-tenancy, nicely.. that may be one thing!

Arch.dev

I’m a giant fan of Meltano, the device for extracting and loading knowledge. I additionally described why I selected Meltano.

In the meantime, Taylor Murphy, one of many leaders of the Meltano undertaking, began a brand new firm, Arch.dev. They purpose to offer declarative and multi-tenant ELT pipelines working on high of the Hydra DB engine (100% suitable with PostgreSQL, columnar, optimized for OLAP queries).

What a match for GoodData!

We agreed to construct a demo integrating each worlds and propagate it.

MinIO

MinIO is a substitute for cloud object storage, reminiscent of AWS S3, that’s totally suitable with AWS S3 and offers extra superior options.

Brenna (Craft) Buuck from MinIO visited our sales space, probably due to my presentation about FlexQuery. I particularly talked about that my reside demo of FlexQuery is totally working regionally on my laptop computer and is built-in with Minio. She expressed her motivation to check it on her facet, ideally utilizing a corresponding docker-compose.yaml. Sadly, we deprecated our neighborhood version although I used to be combating laborious towards it. Hopefully, quickly I can give a related expertise to Brenna so she will be able to play with that and write an article about that.

Stackless Information

Stackless Information is our buyer. So, why am I speaking about them right here?

Properly, as a result of they developed one thing superb and inspirational. They constructed a market for analytics objects. Customers can decide(and uninstall) insights/dashboards they actually worth. The best way how the content material is marketed to finish customers is absolutely attention-grabbing.

However how have been they in a position to develop one thing like that? Really, with our Python SDK. They routinely and seamlessly provision analytics objects with it. We prolonged our SDK to assist them even higher. It is a actually useful partnership!

Day 3 – Calm Down

Ultimately, the stress of the previous few days caught up with me, and I fell asleep. 😀

No huge deal, the final day most individuals already left the convention. I had a couple of conversations, we packed our sales space and left the constructing of the convention on the Texas Univesity.

Then we took a visit to city. We visited the native Capitol and it was attention-grabbing to see the inside, photos of all of the governors (nicely, the primary two have been presidents, do you know?), and so on.

Lastly, we discovered a widely known donut store. I like sweets, however once I ate two donuts, I used to be nearly unable to return to the lodge. We European candy lovers nonetheless have lots to be taught from the American ones. Or ought to we fairly not?

Loopy Concept – Costa Rica?

We, with my colleagues attending the convention, have been enthusiastic about extending our keep in the USA. We have been contemplating visiting Dallas or New Orleans.

However throughout the convention, my colleague Lukáš Uher had a loopy concept—how about organizing a visit to Costa Rica? He is considering investing in an residence there and wished to see it together with his personal eyes.

“Would you be a part of me?” he requested. The one doable reply from us was, in fact, “sure”!

After which every little thing occurred all of sudden. Lukas purchased flight tickets and organized automobile loans (Austin -> Houston, San Jose -> Puerto Jimenez). We awoke on Friday at 2 AM, traveled by automobile to Houston, and took a 3-hour flight to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. There, we took a automobile and headed down the coast to Puerto Jimenez (southwest).

Would I like to recommend visiting this a part of the nation? Undoubtedly, particularly right now of yr! The climate was excellent, and the ocean was stunning. However nature, a couple of steps from the ocean, was much more thrilling—each fauna and flora. Additionally, this a part of the nation has not but been found by vacationers.

Nothing like getting on a seashore and having fun with the peace!

Houston – One Big Leap for Mankind

As soon as we returned from Costa Rica to Houston, we nonetheless had a day earlier than the flight house. It was my flip to invent one thing. What else may I counsel aside from to go to the House Heart?

I anticipated a lot, however the actuality exceeded my expectations. You get to the primary constructing and see all of the artifacts, nice. However then you definitely take a small prepare and transfer to an enormous constructing with the Saturn V rocket. Under are a couple of photographs, however they’re nothing in comparison with if you end up bodily there. I learn each information board till I used to be notified by my colleagues that we didn’t have the entire day, as we needed to return to Austin to not miss our flight to Europe. If you’re as huge of a fan of cosmonautics as I’m, reserve sufficient time for this!

Ultimately, it’s also possible to look contained in the aforementioned House Shuttles! Terrific!

So, Is the Information Council Convention Value Attending?

After the third day on the convention we voted if we need to attend the following yr.

The conclusion?

• Because the a, I voted “Sure, positively.” As a result of the viewers is greater than related and inspirational.
• My colleagues (lead-wise) voted largely “no.” GoodData is sort of a giant firm with even a lot greater clients. Related prospects normally don’t go to such a convention for “nerds,” not even their builders (like what we observe at dbt Coalesce).
• Nevertheless, we discovered a brand new alternative – potential companions. For instance, we had a really attention-grabbing dialog with Astrodata.

Typically talking, in case you are a small startup or a enterprise capitalist, that is your convention. If you’re an organization like GoodData, it relies upon. However personally, I can’t do something however suggest you to attend! 🙂