The Data Stack Show - Shop Talk: What Coalesced at Coalesce?

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

In this bonus episode, Eric and Kostas talk shop around experiences at the Coalesce conference in New Orleans.

Welcome to the Data Sack Show, Shop.Costas. We have talked with people who built amazing data technology at companies like Netflix, Uber, and LinkedIn. But you and I actually don't record our talks about data very much. But we actually talk about data together a ton. And so Brooks had this amazing idea of just recording some of the conversations that you and I have before and after the show about data and our opinions on it. And really, this has been one of my favorite things that we do. So welcome to Shop Talk. It is where Costas and I share opinions and thoughts on a personal level about what we're seeing in

the data space. And it really is simple. We ask one another a question and the other one tries to answer it. So without further ado, here is Shop Talk. Welcome to the Data Sack Show Shop Talk, where Costas and I talk about all things data and share our personal opinions. Maybe too much so. Kostas, it's your turn to ask a question to me. So what's been on your mind this week? Kostas Svoboda Yes. I, my work is very easy this time because I have to ask you about college. You've been there.

David Pérez Ah, yeah. Kostas Svoboda I wasn't there. And I want to know everything. But first of all, I want you to tell me what do you think about New Orleans? Because I think it was happening in New Orleans, right? Have you been there before? Yes. I'd never been to New Orleans.

And it's a cool city. I mean, it's about what I expected. There are so many bars, you know, I mean, it's just the city's like littered with so many bars. And even though it was, the weather was pretty good. You could tell that it's a pretty human place.

And yeah, I mean, my favorite part, this is going to sound probably really cliche to people who have been to new Orleans, but this sort of historic French Quarter district was cool. You know, there's this, the architecture school, you know, the sort of historic nature of it. Evening. And really good food.

So, yeah. Oh, yeah. Tell me more about the food. Why didn't you try there? That was like, oh, man. So many things. I mean mean the sort of seafood there was good we went by this one place and they sort of had an outdoor grill and they were grilling you know just just right there and so you know super fresh and you know it was really cool that

was kind of a it had a really cool vibe lots of vo voodoo. Voodoo themed everything. Did you learn how to destroy your competitors with voodoo? Ah, you should have gone into one of those shops and asked. We did go by what is apparently one of the oldest, or sorry, one of the longest continually open taverns or pubs in the United States. Okay. And it was, it was kind of like a bar.

It was kind of cool. I mean, you know, some history there, so. Yeah. That's nice. Cool. All right. So, that's nice. Cool. All right. So let's talk about the conference. What happened there?

I know that like the folks at dbt are like pretty good in community and community events. So I'm very excited to share of like what they've managed like to come up this year and what's your experience with it. That was your first one, right? Yeah. Well, last year it was all virtual. Ah, true.

Yeah. Because of COVID. Yeah. Right. Yes. Last year was all virtual. It was amazing. It was one of the best conferences we've been to all year.

You know, we've been hitting the road pretty hard. And I would say one thing that really came across to me was that it had a much more intimate feel in part just because you know wasn't wasn't as large as some of the other conferences especially the like vendor hall i think they did such a good job with that you really felt like you could you know walk through and really have meaningful conversations with, you know, a lot of the vendors there because it just, it had a more, the conference didn't feel small. It just felt intimate, if that makes sense, which I think is really hard to do. And so their team, their team really did an excellent job on the event. It really was pretty incredible. And from, you know, vendor standpoint, it was,

they just were so helpful and so supportive. So that was really cool. So I would, I mean, just from that, I would recommend people going. I think one dynamic that I noticed a lot, and I'll caveat this heavily by saying, I spent a lot of time talking with people giving demos. And so I didn't actually get to go to that many talks, you know, which was unfortunate. I did get, I asked a lot of people about the talks, but one thing that I think was a really big difference that I noticed was that there seemed to be really like meaningful conversations, you know, so people would spend a lot of time at certain booths just talking about

whatever data problems they're trying to solve. And I mean, of course, it's the classic, you have vendors there who are trying to get leads and develop pipeline and all that sort of stuff. But at the same time, it just felt like there were longer form conversations that were maybe less geared towards just trying to get the email and like moving on, if that makes sense. Which was really cool. Like that was just, that was a really cool dynamic.

So yeah, those are my initial thoughts. Yeah. Yeah, makes sense. I mean, I was, I felt like I was discussing with someone like today about reInvent and like participating like in reInvent, right, like as a visitor. And yeah, like the guy was like asking like how to navigate like such an event, right, like, because reInvent is also like massive, right, like it's not like huge. And like, okay, what I told him was that, like, dude, like,

you don't want to go there, like, to attend the sessions. Like, the sessions are going to be, like, available online, right? Like, if you just want, like, to listen to what's new and, like, what's hot

or, like, whatever, like, you can do it, like, from your couch, right? Like, you don't really have to go there. Like, what is important with these events is connecting with people. Now, obviously,

doing that at the scale of reInvent is one thing, right? It's definitely a completely different scale compared to something like all this. But making sure as the organizer of such an event that people actually do that. I think that's like the true challenge and how you like, you know, like truly assess if it was a successful event or not, like did people go there and like manage to make like meaningful connections and okay, like at the end, we all go

there because we have a job, right? Like it's not like we are going to, because it's like a theme park or anything. Right. But stimulating, let's say this kind of interaction, I think it's not easy, first of all, and it's very interesting to hear like, and that's my next question. Like, what do you think that like the DB team did well that actually helped people to interact in meaningful ways and at a good enough level? Like they did enough, right? I think there are a lot of space that made it easy to you know sit down and

chat or walk around and talk with someone or sit down you know sort of on a couch or something like that and talk with someone so i think that they did a good job of just physically laying out the event if that makes sense which I thought was really good. The booth areas were actually pretty big. You know, some conferences, it's like really small. It's just like a six foot table or whatever. And like I said before, there's a dynamic of people spending like a good amount of time at a booth because there was plenty of space there for people to kind of congregate, you know? Some people had, you know, like chairs or a table.

Some people had standing tables. One company, Hex, they actually built a diner. It was amazing. Like they had booths, you know, and it felt like we were kind of going into a diner. And so it was a very approachable feel. And so I think that just made it way easier to to connect so just lots of space to do that and so that i thought that was really well done i think the other thing was that there were

like the timing was done really well you know like when things opened and when things kind of closed down, that rhythm felt really good. You know, so it's like, okay, you know, you're sort of in the conference hall all day. And then, you know, things kind of, instead of going like later into the evening, like things kind of shut down early. And then, you know, there are a bunch of sponsored parties or whatever within walking distance. And so you could kind of go to those and connect with people. So I just thought they did a good job of making it flow well and providing plenty of space for people to connect without feeling like we're just standing in between all these booths and like trying to have a conversation.

Yeah. That was really cool. Yeah. What about, you mentioned like, SEX and realmen, like a very, like, unique and like, interesting idea about like the booth. You know, I find events like as the marketing playground where like marketing can really shine. Like you can tell like if a company has a good like marketing based on like what they do with their booths at events, right?

Excluding rather second Starburst, who obviously had the best booths, like there's no like... Yeah. Tell me about like a few vendors that you were like positively, let's say, surprised by like the idea that they implemented there to make it like a fun experience for people to connect with them. You know, one of the companies, Sigma, which is in the BI space, they did this interesting thing, which may not be right for every company, depending on, you know, their product or their demo or whatever, but they had wireless headphones. And so if there is a demo going on, you know,

you could sort of jump in and put on wireless headphones and participate in the demo without, you know, someone having to speak really loud or, you know, they just, that was a really interesting idea, right? Because it created a way for you to, you know, almost, you know, just silence a crowded room and like be focused on what someone was, was talking about, which I thought was really interesting. And, you know, I mean, I, you know, it's, it's hard to see like exactly what's going on but it also made it seem like people could sort of like join ad hoc if they wanted to right so you can sort of come in halfway and be like oh that's interesting

or you know and then say for Q&A I thought that was really cool let's see you know there were several booths with interesting hands on activities you know so like at one booth, I think they were, you know, folding origami, right? Which is kind of a cool thing. And I thought that was interesting, you know, based on like being able to talk to someone while you're, you know, something. I think the company was Datafold. I would have some it's Datafold. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, I think those were some really interesting ideas. I mean, who knows like how effective they were, but I think that, you know, I think that was, I think those really stuck out to me. Okay. And like, in terms of like vendos, did you see anything like new and interesting out there as part of like, because, okay, like dbt, it's, let's say like a very core part of whatever

we call like the modern data stack. So you usually get like around it, like vendors that they associate themselves one way or another, the modern data stack more or less. So what's new there? Like what's new you showed there? Like what's exciting in the space? David Pérez- Well, this is going is gonna sound funny but the biggest thing i noticed with vendors is how many of them have been on the show which was really cool so on some level this is a cheat answer to your question but

there wasn't anything brand new and actually the reason I was familiar with a lot of the companies there was just because we've talked to people from those companies on our show, which was really cool. Um, so that was really fun. I think one of the other really fun things was that there were a couple of companies there that we had on the show, I think in like way earlier stages, and then they had a boot, you know, because we, I'm thinking back to me and I can't believe it's already almost the end of the year, but you know, if you think back to the beginning of the year, you know, we, at least at Redderstack, and I think you have to have been on the data conference circuit all year long.

And so Metaplane was one that was cool to see. I mean, we talked with Kevin a really long time ago, you know, and then out of the booth. And, you know, so that was really cool. SelectStar was there with a booth, you know, and so it was really cool to see some of those companies, you know, which I think for a lot of people, like, you know, those are like somewhat new and they're kind of coming to market and, you know, they probably haven't

heard of them, but so that was cool. I don't know. I was like, Oh, I feel a little bit like an insider because of the show, which was, which was pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. And okay.

One last question. Well, about like announcements from the, okay, one last question. What about, like, announcements from DBT? Like, what's new? What was, like, the big news for them in the event? This is so hypocritical of me, but I don't actually know because I didn't go to any of the sessions. Because I was pretty busy the whole time. But I will say, one thing that I noticed, and actually, I thought about this a lot,

and I was like, at some point, we need to talk about this on the show. But one of the things that really stuck out to me talking to the practitioners who were rolling through there is that people are still trying to solve the same problems right and there's so many new tools that they have to solve those problems but that was really interesting to me and just such a great reminder you know i mean a lot of companies are still just trying to get all of their data into a single data store, you know, and for really large companies, that's super hard, even just culturally inside the organization, you know, regardless of the technology, right? Then other companies are,

you know, we're trying to, you know, sort of finally build that complete view of the customer that we've been working on for some companies years, you know, sort of finally build that complete view of the customer that we've been working on for some companies years, you know? Yeah. You know, so that was really, that was just such a great reminder to me that it was, these people were so excited because they're like, okay, we, you know, in many ways, I think, you know, looking at, you know, many of them being users of dbt or evaluating that, you know, adopting modern warehouses i mean of course there are lots of people there who are like we're we're trying to get off of on-prem you know and move into the cloud even and so it was a great reminder that you know as advanced as all these tools are

a lot of the core things that these data practitioners are working on are, you know, really common problems across every company. And so that was just a good reminder of, you know, when you talk about solving data problems and all these advanced technologies and everything, a lot of times the actual user thinks about things a lot more simply than us data marketers try to, you know, try to spin in all of our fancy marketing speaks. So that was a big takeaway for me. Just to add like to what you were saying, Eric, the two, I think, big things that came out like for DBT on the event was ones like the semantic layer that they announced, which should be available, which is

okay, like a big addition, like the products. And the other thing I think there was like a lot of chatting and presentations around Python supports dbt, which is also like quite interesting. Yeah. It's very interesting, like to see how, see how even a product like dbt that has the traction it has, it still needs to aggressively innovate and iterate on the product, which is super, super interesting. And I think at some point we should get someone from dbt on the show discussing about the new things that they're building and also about their journey. I think it's going to be super interesting. So let's do that.

I agree. And also, here's some free advice. I was talking to a bunch of attendees, and one thing that I heard multiple times was that people really loved hands-on problem solving. Those are the sessions they kept talking about. So free advice for anyone who submits to talk next year. All right. Well, we're definitely over time on this one. Check out Coalesce. It was an amazing event. They did a really good job integrating the online and in-person audiences,

by the way. There was live Q&A via their Slack community. So it was a really, really cool event, whether you were, you know, joining virtually or in person. Next year, I'll try to go to more sessions so that I know what actually happened in the talks. You know, Costas, we learn so much from the data leaders that we talk to, but I learned so much from picking your brain. And actually your questions really make me think really hard.

So I appreciate ShopTalk. I think it makes me a sharper thinker. Well, it's, it's fun. Like, I think it's good to just sit and chat about the stuff that we experience. And yeah, I think like, I hope like people enjoy it. That's why I'll keep asking for people to reach out. Please do this. Come up, like you can do that.

Like send an email. Yeah. Let us know how you feel and like, what are your opinions of like, your experience with the show. So please do that. So me and Derek, we can keep being happy. Of course. And of course we try to take the same types of questions that so me and Derek, we can keep being happy.

Of course. And of course, we try to take the same types of questions to, you know, data leaders from all sorts of companies, large and small. So definitely subscribe to the main show if you haven't yet. Tons of really good episodes there and tons of really good thoughts from data leaders, you know, really around the world. So definitely subscribe if you haven't, and we'll catch you on the next Shop Talk.