In Paris...
Joe's Nerdy Rants #35 - Weekend reads and other stuff
Hanging out in Paris, France (once again). This city now feels like my adopted home, as I’ve got a lot going on here. The week was very productive, giving talks at Hymaia and OnePoint, randomly stopping by Kubecon (thanks Demetrios Brinkmann for the fun bike ride through Paris), plus many meetings in between. At night, I hit nightclubs in a hack to keep my sleep schedule on US time. Today, I walked around aimlessly for hours, getting soaked in a cold torrential downpour and seeing lots of cool stuff in Paris (the city is a massive outdoor museum).
In between, I’ve been thinking about ways to improve the newsletter. What I like is the engagement with the content. Open rates and clicks are excellent, and readership continues to grow. I wouldn’t say I like the older newsletter format (article + links + events), which was getting unwieldy, especially when I wrote longer articles.
I’ve decided to switch up the format of this newsletter. Instead of cramming an article plus links plus events, I will split it into two. You’ll get regular long-form articles and a weekly newsletter dedicated to cool reads, events, and whatever seems interesting. If you have ideas for improving the newsletter, comment or message me.
Also, a note to companies, vendors, etc - I am opening my newsletters to sponsorships. If you’re interested, fill out this short form.
Thanks,
Joe
If you haven’t done so, please sign up for Practical Data Modeling. There are lots of great discussions on data modeling, and I’ll also be releasing early drafts of chapters for my new data modeling book here. Thanks!
Cool Weekend Reads
Here are some cool things I read this week. Enjoy!
Tech, AI, Data
“We were very confident in our own ability. We have all the IP rights and all the capability. I mean, look, if tomorrow OpenAI disappeared, I don’t want any customer of ours to be worried about it, quite honestly, because we have all of the rights to continue the innovation, not just to serve the products. But we can go and just do what we were doing in partnership, ourselves, and so we have the people, we have the compute, we have the data, we have everything.” - Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella
Damn… it makes sense why Microsoft just launched Microsoft AI with Mustafa Suleyman at the helm. It's an excellent way to hedge bets and put Microsoft in the driver’s seat, especially after last Fall’s OpenAI drama.
Architecting Marketing for AI (Source of Truth)
“Without further ado, here are our guiding principles:
AI assistants aren’t enough
Embrace first-party data
Turn your customer data warehouse into your data science workbench
Choose technologies that inter-operate
Give your data scientists a seat at the table
Own your own customer identity strategy
Adopt a “crawl, walk, run” approach”
My friend Alex Dean (CEO of Snowplow) is one of the most thoughtful people I know regarding the intersection of data and marketing. This is an excellent read if you work in marketing.
Is Data Snobbery an issue? (Johnny Winter)
“I think I’m trying to encourage people to be kind. That we all start somewhere, that the value of insight shouldn’t be predicated on the complexity of it’s underlying mechanics, that perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of good enough and that we should be less dismissive of approaches that don’t necessarily fit our perceptions of optimal.”
More of this, please.
The demise of coding is greatly exaggerated (Murat Buffalo)
Every hype cycle in ML/AI seems to bring about a frenzy of hysteria about how coding will disappear. I remember hearing that deep learning and Big Data would make data warehousing, SQL, and analytics disappear. Data scientists would rule the universe. That didn’t happen. Despite contemporary demos like Devin, which took the world by storm last week, I agree with the author that coding isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Every dunder method in Python (Python Morsels)
If you’re programming in Python, you’ll encounter dunder methods at some point. Understanding dunder methods unlocks new superpowers in Python. This fantastic article covers everything you need to know about dunder methods.
Biz, Culture, Other Randomness
Intellectual Seat Belt (Investing 101)
I’m a big fan of Kyle Harrison’s writing; this article hits on an important theme. Most people accept consensus narratives at face value and a few swim against the mainstream at all costs. Both approaches are flawed. Instead, the approach should be to “Understand what everyone is thinking about, and then find what is true by understanding where that thinking could be wrong.”
Arguing Ourselves to Death (The New Yorker)
“A central question of our current moment is whether that faith is enough to unite a critical mass of voters, or whether the medium we have chosen for everything, from photos of our children to our most private conversations, will simply not allow for any consensus, especially one that appeals to a population as broadly complacent as the American consumer class. Normies, who are mostly unified in their defense of the status quo, still wield a reasonable amount of political power, and they will continue to exist in some form. But, as even more of our lives take place within the distortions of online life, how much longer will there be a widely agreed-upon status quo to defend?”
Want to Know if AI Will Take Your Job? I Tried Using It to Replace Myself (WSJ)
The big conversation I’m having with industry, academia, and politicians is the displacement of jobs due to AI. I’m sure everyone reading this newsletter is now using some form of generative AI. Drop a comment if you’re finding it helpful or not.
New Content, Events, and Upcoming Stuff
Monday Morning Data Chat
Coming up…
Martin Musiol, Cedric Chin, and more!
In case you missed it…
Tony Baer - The Outlook for Generative AI in 2024 (and Beyond) (Spotify, YouTube)
Ethan Aaron - Is Data a Skill or a Job? (Spotify, YouTube)
Jean-Georges Perrin - Data Mesh, Data Contracts, Modern Data Engineering Standards, Bitol, and More (Spotify, YouTube)
Joe Reis & Matt Housley - The Demise of the Modern Data Stack & Listener Q&A (Spotify, YouTube)
Sol Rashidi - Getting Business Value From Data, the CXO Playbook (Spotify, YouTube). Very popular episode with nearly everyone. - PINNED HERE.
The Joe Reis Show
Coming up…
Angel Narciso, Kishore Aradhya, Keith Belanger, and many more!
This week…
Jess Haberman - How to Negotiate a Book Deal (Spotify)
5-Minute Friday - How I Write and Why You Should Write (Spotify)
In case you missed it…
5-Minute Friday - Learning To See (Spotify)
Sadie St. Lawrence - (Spotify)
5-Minute Friday - “Good Enough” Data Models (Spotify)
Christian Bourdeau - The Data Hiring Landscape (Spotify)
Zach Zeus - Trust Architecture, ESG, and More (Spotify)
5-Minute Friday - Types of Debt (Spotify)
Bill Inmon - History Lessons of the Data Industry. This is a real treat and a very rare conversation with the godfather himself (Spotify) - PINNED HERE.
Events I’m Speaking At
Matillion - Deep Dish (Virtual) - April 23. Register here
Dremio Subsurface (NYC) - May 2-3. Register here
J On the Beach (Malaga, Spain) - May 6-10. Register here
GenAI Conference (London) - May 20-22 Register here
DAMA Days (Vancouver, BC) - June 14th, TBA
(Taking the Summer off)
DataEngBytes (Australia) - Late September/Early October, TBA
Dubai - Fall, TBA
Lots of stuff in Europe - Fall, TBA
Asia - Fall, TBA
Would you like me to speak at your event? Submit a speaking request here.
Thanks! If you want to help out…
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You can also find me here:
Monday Morning Data Chat (YouTube / Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts). Matt Housely and I interview the top people in the field. Live and unscripted. Zero shilling tolerated.
The Joe Reis Show (Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts). My other show. I interview guests, and it’s unscripted with no shilling.
Practical Data Modeling. Great discussions about data modeling with data practitioners. This is also where early drafts of my new data modeling book will be published.
Fundamentals of Data Engineering by Matt Housley and I, available at Amazon, O’Reilly, and wherever you get your books.
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Thanks! - Joe Reis
We're you speaking to them in French,