Monday Morning Data Chat - The Finale!

Speaker A: Happy Monday.

Speaker B: Happy Monday. How's it going, Joe?

Speaker A: Doing good.

Speaker B: How's your jet lag?

Speaker A: I'm pretty tired, but, uh, I imagine.

Speaker B: Apologies to everyone. I've got a cough, so I'll probably be sucking on cough drops a bit to try to not cough into the microphone, but mostly whole these days.

Speaker A: Yeah. So you're sick, I'm jet lag. This would be a great show, um, you know, finishing out on, ah, a great note here.

Speaker B: I mean, we got to maintain the Wayne's World vibes to the end.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker A: Well, that's kind of how we started it, right? I mean it was, I, uh, think very much you and I, um, recording conversations, uh, that we'd have anyway.

Speaker B: Right, Exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, Walk us through, you know, kind of the early days. Like, what was, uh, what was it like for you to. To do a podcast? Because I think you're a bit more the, uh, reclusive end of the, uh.

Speaker B: Remember, I think the first one we did. Refresh my memory here, but I think the first one we did, I was in New Jersey and you were in Utah. And so we like remotely recorded it. It wasn't live. And then like one of my nieces ran through the shot or something like, ah, we got to re. Record.

Speaker A: Oh, that's funny. I don't think I remember that, but I think I do remember that now. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: And then later on I like recorded from Oregon at one point. Um, and it was just. It was usually just us and it was talking about who knows what at the time. We'd have to go back to the early days and see.

Speaker A: Well, I mean, our conversation though, right? So, I mean, you know, for, for the audience out there. And thanks to, ah, good to see everybody showing up here. The old, uh, um, let me see here. We got a lot of people, um, too many to name. So, um, anyway, everyone, for coming today.

Speaker D: Yeah, thanks.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, and that's Lana over there. That's my dog, so she's um, she's pretty cool. So anyway, yeah, I think when we started we'd often go on walks. Um, you know, I think this was during COVID so we wanted a chance to get outside. Uh, but I mean the types of conversations we ended up recording, these are the things we talk about basically for years before because we were running, uh. So we ran it. Um, we have company ternary data, which we talk about in a bit. That was their data engineering data architecture consulting firm as Matt and me for a long time. And uh. Um, yeah, so I mean, but you know, I think really rewinding. You know, I met Matt, what was it, 2017 I believe through that, um, hit it off like we realized uh, we were kind of the yin and yang of uh, personality wise. I don't think we could pick two opposite personalities, but we nerded out I think, found a really um, kindred ah, connection with technology, uh, and data specifically. So we'd go have just, I would say sort of endless conversations that would last for hours about, lord knows, even what topics, a lot of them, I think so.

Speaker B: And it was, it was an interesting time in the industry. I mean it's been an interesting time for the last several years. Things have changed really fast and there have been a lot of big shifts. But like when I got really into the data side of things as opposed to the data science side of things like data engineering, data processing, it was just when the shift from Hadoop to cloud was happening. And so that's where I started to think, okay, like this is actually a good place to be in consulting because all these companies want to migrate their data systems to the cloud. They want to rethink these systems in a more scalable fashion, but they don't have the resources, resources to do so. And so that's the kind of stuff we talked about and we talked about on the show and that's kind of what the foundation of the company and the book was.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think we uh, um, we found a connection in that. I think that you had sort of a disdain for the uh, um, kind of the legacy big data era and tooling. I think from the perspective that there was a lot of ceremony and um, frankly a lot of bullshit, um, with that. And so I think you, you felt like you uh, I don't know, found religion in some ways and it's like it's good to meet a guy who's found religion or Satanism, something like that.

Speaker B: Well, I think at the time part of the problem was that the promise, well there are two main promises of Hadoop specifically. So one was that you could process data at amazing scale. And the second was that it was supposed to be cheap. And we found in practice that the companies struggled so much with basic data quality issues or use case issues that like they weren't either weren't processing that much data or they weren't really using it for anything. And then we also found that it turned out to be very, very expensive because the cluster was cheap but like the people to maintain it would cost a lot of money and it was just like constant babysitting and Monkeying with things to keep the system running.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: A lot of heroics and all this stuff. Yeah. And I think there was. And it was interesting. So we were in Salt Lake when we started, um, and it really felt like our focus was, I think, a bit provincial in that sense. Cloud, I think was just becoming popular in the data circles, uh, for some context. I, um, been in Salt Lake for a while, uh, doing data, ran some meetups, uh, co founded a few, uh, see very popular meetups in the area. SOC, Python 2013 and then data engineering meetup. I think it was 2017 or 2018, but, uh.

Speaker B: 2017. Yeah, yeah, maybe it was early 2018. That's possible. Yeah.

Speaker A: Can't remember. Um, but in either case. Right. So they think the. So it was interesting seeing, you know, and maybe for the audience there you can see like your, um, uh, um, you know, maybe your locale had, you know, certain trends, whatnot. But cloud, I would say, especially with data, like it was just starting to take off around maybe 2015, but I'd say 2017, 2018 in earnest is when it really started becoming a thing around here. And there's still a lot of On Prem installations and stuff.

Speaker B: But yeah, I mean, things like, uh, Redshift and BigQuery went back further, but that was like the time when adoption was just really exploding. And the other thing was the cloud had been around for.

Speaker E: Let her out.

Speaker A: Sorry.

Speaker B: She's okay.

Speaker A: My dog, um, she likes to hit the, uh, spring on the door as a signal to open or she opens doors.

Speaker B: She's pretty smart, but she's scary smart. Like, watch, uh, out, you know, keep your doors locked at all times.

Speaker A: Yeah, she might take over the podcast. Who knows?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's possible. But anyway, Cloud had been around since the early 2000s in various incarnations, like early features of AWS, early services and such. But also around that time was when a lot of companies were looking like major enterprises and not just startups were looking to make that jump. And so that tied in very much to the stuff we were doing because often you were going to migrate your data systems and your website and your, you know, application databases kind of all at the same time, potentially over. Over years. But like you kick that process off together.

Speaker A: Sure. I think we'd seen the, um. It's Chris Tabs. His nice mug. It's a Chris Tab mug. My son Nate. I'm going to sell these at some point. Proceeds will go to, um, some. Some proceeds will go to Chris Tab, I suppose. And, uh, maybe. I'm just kidding um, so, yeah, kind of segueing. So we're kind of going through a retrospective of how we got to the show and uh, how we met. So if this is exciting to you, great. If not, and come back later. Um, so, uh, so yeah, it's, it was interesting. Then we started Turner, I think as a result of kind of understanding that, um, we had, I think kindred, uh, feelings about the cloud and modernization and data. And I think, uh, that uh, we did ternary. Right. So we originally, um, it was interesting. I mean, we originally wanted to partner with aws, uh, which we did, but then made some other partnerships along the way. I think we helped Google Cloud in the early days here get off the ground. They helped us get off the ground too. So that was kind of cool. And I think for people that want to start consulting companies, consider ways you can leverage, um, your partners out there too and find, uh, ways that, you know, you can leverage each other's strengths.

Speaker E: Right.

Speaker A: We had the ins and a lot of companies, they wanted to get into a lot of people. Obviously we tried to do it in a tasteful way. We're not just there to, you know, aimlessly shill, but at the same time, um, you know, we could leverage their sales team to help get us into doors as well. So I'd say if you're looking to do that, figure out those, those paths that work really well for us. I would say, um, and then kind of fast forward, you know. And the model we took was interesting too because it felt like we did a couple peer service engagements like Hands on Keyboard originally. But I think we realized that, um, we just had a glorified job with no benefits. So we took it. Maybe explain the approach that we took that was maybe different than other, uh, consultancies do.

Speaker B: Uh, let's see. I mean, we kind of shifted pretty quickly to do more of a training oriented approach and then architecture. It's like you, you overestimate other people's familiarity with things you're familiar with. We realize like, these companies have heard of the cloud, but I'm like, we have no idea how to do this. Like, what are even the considerations for doing a deployment? And like, yeah, can I move my entire, you know, teradata in two months? The answer is no, you can't do that. You have to kind of rethink everything and, you know, road mapping, training the team, showing them what services to use, um, generally steering them away from doing too much bespoke work. Because it's like if you have a reason to do something Bespoke, great. But you probably don't like most of these problems have been solved before. Use something off the shelf and get it up and running and then focus on the stuff that's really unique to your company where you need to.

Speaker A: Oh yeah. And the training approach we took was interesting, um, Matt and I, and we'll get into why this might be and why we wrote a book but uh, it turns out we're actually pretty good at teaching people. This is a nice thing that. Well you used to actually be a professor so you.

Speaker B: I was for a long time. Yeah, I did that for about a decade between, between grad school and postdoc and adjuncting and such.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And I um, done some as well so it was interesting. I felt like um, the approach that we took was sort of this jujitsu move too because if you're doing hands on keyboard work a lot of times, uh, you know, the team that you're working with, ah, at ah, the client's team may or may not like you. Right. I think there's some built in animosity in some ways or built in skepticism like well this person seems like a higher paid, less informed, probably crappier version of me. Right. So we're like, well why don't we just teach you how to do these things, you know instead of like doing your job. I um, think that definitely helped uh, a lot in terms of just uh, allying us with other uh, data teams and practitioners more. And um, that sort of evolved us into you know, I think doing some instructional videos which we dabbled in a bit. Then we did the podcast. You know that was helpful because then we could uh, I think you know that the podcast was very instrumental. So that started with the Monday morning data chat. That must have been, I think I looked at our earliest recording that was published to YouTube. It must have been August 20, August 2020 I think.

Speaker B: Sounds about right. Interesting.

Speaker A: So we were, I mean everyone had a Covid project back then, right. So like I think um, some people gardened and baked bread.

Speaker B: Bread, yeah.

Speaker A: And we decided to uh, you know, do that. And along the way um, you know the podcast I guess, you know, got pretty popular. It was just originally Matt and me talking, uh, about, I don't know, just random stuff. Again the stuff we just have conversations about. Right. And this is also during the, I think kind of peak. It was almost peak modern data stack as well. So I think we had a lot of rants on that. Um, you know how it's great how it also kind of Was I think a bit inflated.

Speaker B: Yeah, because recall the, I mean from my perspective, the modern data stack really got kicked off by the Snowflake IPO. So Snowflake IPO is September 2020 and biggest tech IPO of all time as far as I know. And of course venture capitalists at first were worried about is there going to be enough money? Well, there was a lot of money flowing around during COVID understandably, people were struggling in various ways and venture capital figured out how to leverage that money and they decided, well, if this is the biggest IPO of all time, how do we get into the game? And that was basically the modern data stack. Is the modern data stack still?

Speaker A: Yeah, it was. It's interesting you fast forward to today. Um, uh, IPO I think had a lot of built in expectations in terms of like they even said it too in the ipo, like we, you know, we have to hit this growth rate and these projections and obviously they haven't been able to meet that. And so the ah, um, you know, whoever invested, um, you know you can almost completely underwater at this point. Uh, even if you did the IPO, even I think at 120 per share, I believe it was. Yeah, you're uh, ain't doing well. But I think that more speaks to just the difficulty of um, hyperscaling a data business too. And we can talk more about that. But um, you're right, that was sort of uh, the watershed moment. And suddenly lots um, of money and data all of a sudden. Right. Lots of tools. Tooling, ah, company not tools like people. Um, lots of those too probably. Um, but um, so we started giving ah, um, so I had getting guests on I guess. Right. Like originally it was just like friends.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And then at one point like Jordan Tagani came on and I mean I think at that point Mother Duck had been founded, but it was like brand new. And so I explained the whole concept. He was actually in a hotel room at the time.

Speaker A: Yeah, he was.

Speaker B: Podcast episode. Right. But it was like right after the Mother Duck concept came around. But it's just interesting to watch the trajectory of that company because it's very much an idea whose time has come. And you know they were. He could see it in advance because he actually helped to build BigQuery. And so he knew how these cloud data products work. And I think I, I think as he saw the modern data stack and his co founders like, oh well this is what we should do from here to. This is the next thing after the modern data stack. Well before it had Really? I wouldn't say ended, but the hype cycle had wound down a bit.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. He was a good guest. Still is a good guest. Good dude. And then we had like, a lot of other guests showed up. Um, which is kind of cool.

Speaker B: Chris tab is, Is here, right? He's in the chat commenting on your. Your cup. Yeah. Uh, that was a, that was a funny one, right? That wasn't actually Monday morning data chat first, was it?

Speaker A: No, no, that was, um, that was, that was on Ben.

Speaker F: I can't remember.

Speaker A: So I had like this, uh, data show, a separate one. I have these like rogue ones out there. Um, but it was kind of funny. Like he, uh, Chris was trolling me and stuff. I wonder, I wonder if you can join, actually. Let me see. Uh, um, I'll send out a invite to people. Um, but it was. He was trolling me. Uh, and then, uh, I was like, cool, you want to, um, join, uh, show and end up becoming good friends. Right. But it was funny, so. Yeah, but you had a lot of experiences like that, I would say were, you know, a lot of the people that we're Talking to on LinkedIn right now, people in the chat, which I'm seeing on my phone right now. I don't have, have it on the, um, uh, monitor here, unfortunately. But, uh, you know, there's a lot of friends, a lot of people that we, um, met. I would say that, you know, without the podcast, like, a lot of things wouldn't have happened. Like, um, I don't think we would have met, you know, all the cool people that are commenting here. Um, you know, we wouldn't have had, uh, um, you know, the book, which we can talk about and obviously wouldn't be, uh, at a point where we can pursue other options.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Apart from Turner.

Speaker B: And I think that's the important thing is that with this particular show we're not doing. But I mean, you have things and I have things and we'll, we'll continue to present together in various venues.

Speaker A: We'll get into that in a second here. Like, um. And it's, it is interesting. Like the podcast gave us, I think, and a lot of people did podcasts. Like, I'm looking at one Cicada. He did, um, catalogs, uh, and cocktails at the time.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And then we had a lot of amazing guests. I can't, I, I don't want to offend anybody. I'm not going to name names. Too many names. Right. Um, notably, like Bill Inman was a regular guest and that was cool. Because he was like, um, uh, you know, sort of the Godfather, uh, in my opinion. And that was cool. Obviously, lots of other people too. Um, final name, some names, Everyone here, Sunny one, Scott Taylor, um, Bart, uh, never got Pete Fishman. I have to get him on a different one. Um, you know, and a lot of people like that. Right. Jess Abrams even been on. Uh, yeah, a lot of, A lot of awesome people who. I don't think in Colleen, I don't think we would, um.

Speaker C: Uh,

Speaker A: Colleen's wondering if we're going to burn down the data world in the last show. We might get there, um, but we're reminiscing right now. Then we'll, then we'll, um, then we'll turn violent.

Speaker B: Um, I have no intention of turning violent. I don't.

Speaker A: I'm fine. I'm pretty jet lagged.

Speaker B: Um, I mean, you're wearing the shirt

Speaker A: for it, I guess, the Terminator. Um, but so, I mean, a lot of great guests. Um, and I think that that helped. I think the conversations we had was sort of a, uh, master class in terms of getting to know, um, you know, the players behind a lot of things in the industry. And also I think, understanding, you know, of getting, um, previews into stuff that was coming up in the industry. Right. And that I think if you want, if you wanted a really, to get a really good perspective of what's happening. I'm talking to the audience here. Matt already knows this. You know, I would say do a podcast, but it's, it's also really hard work. Um, you know, but you also get a chance to talk to, um, you know, luminaries and people with, uh, you know, a ton of vision. Ah. And, or pushing the industry forward. Right. So I think that's the benefit of it. But, um, you know. Yeah, so we out, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's just a chance to have a lot of conversations you wouldn't otherwise have. I mean, you can try to just get on calls with all, all these cool people, but, uh, people don't have time unless there's something.

Speaker A: Podcast has a meaningful benefit too, where they get, you know, they get something out of it. They get it, you know, um, that good conversation, hopefully some exposure if, you know, if people, if the audience likes the podcast. And really, you know, the main arbiter is always the audience. Right. So on that note too, I think one of the things that made this podcast a bit different was, um, you know, we never had any commercial interest in this podcast. It's not like we went out and tried to leverage it into, um, you know, sponsorships, uh, or, uh, you know, any of that kind of stuff. Like, I don't think we ever did an ad read like for manscaped or anything.

Speaker B: Is that, I mean, may. Maybe you should be doing that now on one of your shows.

Speaker A: Well, I think I'm going to. Well, I think. And I might do like really different ads and not data ones. If I'm going to do it, I'll take advertising from like.

Speaker B: Yeah, well that's the problem, right? Like if you take product ads, then inevitably it sort of bleeds into your editorial content. Like you can try to maintain a firewall, but especially where you don't have a separate team doing ads, which you have to do. We really big to do that. Your ad people buying ads say, well, you know, we don't really m. Want you. I mean, people try to coerce us now into saying or not saying things,

Speaker A: even though they don't all the time.

Speaker B: Dude, if they're paying you, then they definitely have some leverage over you.

Speaker A: Unfortunately, that's a big reason why we never took money. I mean, Lord knows we had enough opportunities to like, you know, I would, I would say it's probably one of the most respected, um, data, uh, shows in the world. Um, and with that respect though comes, I think a great, uh, responsibility to make sure that we're respecting our audience. Right. And so the way you do that is don't shill. You know, I think it has always been about providing, I think a really good conversation, uh, for the audience first and not, um, you know, letting sponsors or companies dictate what we can say. I mean, the funniest one, the funniest example of this is when, uh, uh, Bill Inman was, um, on our show, trash talking Snowflake live on the show. Well, he wasn't trash talking it though. I mean, it was just, it wasn't, it wasn't about an article. He had Snowflake a critique where he said that they are basically calling themselves a data warehouse. They, you know, they weren't. They'd since moved on from that verbiage. They called themselves a data cloud. Now it's a data and AI cloud. But the whole point was Bill was um, uh, you know, being Bill, right, He speaks his mind. And I think there's a lot to be. There's a lot. That's pretty awesome. And then all of a sudden, Snowflakes, a bunch of people from Snowflake hopped onto the, uh, live comments. I think one of their heads of marketing was saying you need to reign him in. And I'm like, dude, we're not raining anybody in.

Speaker B: You know, Bill does not care.

Speaker A: Like, yeah, we're not raining in. Bill.

Speaker B: Not hanging up.

Speaker A: This isn't our job. Like, um, you know, that person later apologized, uh, for that, you know, in a call after. But I, I, I thought that was interesting that, you know, um, because I was like, they don't even watch the show. I was like, okay, I guess I watch a show. Um, but I think at that, that's the moment I realized, okay, so, like, we, there's actually, um, there's more to the show and that's, we had to protect this at all costs. Uh, versus, I think, leveraging that platform into, you know, um, a money making machine. I think there's other ways we can make money which we'll get into in a bit. But I think for us it was about maintaining the editorial integrity and quality of the show and being able to, I think, run our mouths, really.

Speaker B: That's true.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: I mean, that's the ultimate privilege is to be able to run your mouth.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, there's something to be said for that though. I mean, well, yeah, I mean, I do it more than you, I think, but it's possible.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah, but it's just one of those things where I felt like, you know, and this is, this is, I think goes to the ethos of the show. It's just, it's always about, you know, providing, I think, good quality content for, for you. All right, you all listening and watching this? Uh, uh, oh, man. We have a. Actually Chris here real quick. Um, might send out an invite to some other friends if you want to join, but hey, hey, guys.

Speaker F: I'm good, I'm good. First of all, what you've done in this show over the years, kudos to you. Um, I know how hard it is to do these things now and I'm still learning as well. So you, you've perfected it.

Speaker A: And, uh, yeah.

Speaker F: Cool. And also it's been fun. I've enjoyed these gate crashes. I'm, I'm having, I'm having flashbacks to when this first happened. Uh, I had more hair then. Uh, not much on your beard. Yeah, actually. Yeah. But well done, guys. Well done.

Speaker B: Thank you, thank you.

Speaker A: That's good to see you, man. It's funny because I think we met just like we were talking about, just, uh, almost an inadvertent troll. I think earlier that week I was on, um, let's posted something in Greg's KEO post a Comment. And then you were like, who's this wanker? Then it was like, it was, it was the afternoon and Friday and I was like, it was me and Ben Rojan. And um, I met. I probably. You were in the comment, uh, section of the post and I was just like. As I looked, I looked at where you were though. I was like, it's UK and it's night. This guy's got to be drunk. This is gonna be hilarious.

Speaker F: It was covered Friday nights. You know, you started drinking about three in the afternoon on a Friday, and then you just hoped it last through the night. But, um, yeah, and it was great. I think the topic, data engineering, which was like, no one had like unpacked it and really, really like, um, um, provide a clear definition of what it was. And then Greg's post had all of these skills, you know, that uh, uh, a unit only a unicorn would actually have, like all of the audibilities that they requested. And I, I think I put a comment on there. I said, what are the key skills, you think, Joe? And then I think you're a bit obtuse. I thought, right, that's it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, um, I'm gonna ask you, I'm. Opportunity comes up, I'll ask you some questions. And um, I actually watched the show not that long ago. Um, but a bit of a, bit of a wince as well think, oh my God. But I think the um, yeah, the topics and um, being able to unpack really what data engineering was, um, from those podcasts to your book, uh, you've helped demystify it and probably create great loads of data engineers. Some of them good.

Speaker A: Well, we'll see. Well, we're gonna boot you off now, so no worries.

Speaker F: I've got to go do what I wanted. Thanks guys. Well done.

Speaker A: Yeah, um, so, yeah, it's um. So then we did a book. Uh, Chris is actually one of the, uh, tech reviewers for it. Yeah. Why didn't we do a book? Why did we do a book?

Speaker B: I mean, I think we have slightly different takes on this, but my take was that in 2015 there was a career called Big Data Engineer. And a Big Data Engineer would work with Hadoop. And then all of a sudden, like again, um, Redshift and BigQuery had been around for a couple of years by then, but those tools really started to take off and people started saying, well, why, you know, for the workload we have, why do we need Hadoop? And that's where that, that title of Big Data Engineer basically evolved into something called data engineering. And of course, none of this was brand new. It was an evolution of a lot of other tools and, uh, professional skills that had been around over the years. But basically we had the opportunity to kind of just survey the field and then, like, summarize the current state of that profession, that it evolved out of the older skill, which is someone who typically works in the cloud now and can manage large volumes of data and pipelines to support other use cases. That was the fundamental idea. So we wrote this book to describe that and explain, you know, not just how to write code and use a tool, but how to actually think about the product profession from a business perspective.

Speaker A: Like, what is first principles, too? Yeah, yeah, because, you know, I think it was geared towards data scientists, software engineers and big data engineers and so forth. Right. Because I think the common question we'd always get is, you know, and I see this on online as well, but how do I learn data engineering? And if you looked at the resources there, a lot of them were pretty terrible. It was like, um, you need to learn Pig and Spark and Hadoop and all this. Like, that doesn't teach you. That's not data engineering. That's like, you know, those are, those are tools and it's certainly great, but that's not the same as teaching somebody a field for first principles. And the other one I would always see, I was like, well, you need to go read Martin Kleppman's Designing Data Intensive Applications. Terrific book. But I think it was too, um, deep for a lot of people. I think if you're starting out, like, that's not the book I'd recommend. It's a bit, uh, it throws you off the deep end pretty quick. And the other one would be Kimball's, um, Data Warehouse Toolkit, which, albeit, is a terrific book. It stood the test of time, but to me it's more of a reference manual for data modeling. Again, none of these things teach you data engineering from first principles. And I think that was one of the goals we had. Uh, we also needed a Covid project, so I think we're getting really bored. So, um, it's funny how you can

Speaker B: be working yourself half to death and yet also getting bored, if that makes any sense at all. Because, like, oh, I want something to do with my brain besides, like, staring at people's code and training all day.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, it was. And I remember, um, you know, Jess Haberman from O'Reilly, when we first talked to her, um, uh, you know, she, she actually, you know, in the gentlest way that Jess is capable of doing. She would. She kind of just tried to dissuade us from doing this book. She said it was just ambitious for two first time authors to try and, uh, tackle this, you know, this field, um, um, you know, from first principles. And I don't blame her for saying that. I think we were, I think, intimidated by this, but we didn't write. Want to write another book. Um, you know, and so this is when we wrote. And so it took what, like a year and a half? Ish.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, something like that. Yeah, exactly. But we ended. We got published in. What was it, July 2022.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, in July 22nd of 2022. And I think that that, um, changed everything, really. Um, you know, we've had plenty of, uh, uh, you know, discussions on how to publish a book and so forth. Um, but that, that did change a lot of stuff, uh, for us, um, you know, because shortly after that, what, we went and spoke at Mac Turks, uh, Data Driven nyc, which I think is like, that's, that's an honor to be invited to.

Speaker F: Go.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I mean, it was really. It was a great experience.

Speaker A: We got a.

Speaker C: Hey, guys. How are you? Just, just catching up on.

Speaker B: Thank you for showing. We appreciate it.

Speaker C: I'm gonna miss you on Valentine's Day, which I keep coming.

Speaker A: Well, we might. We will figure something out for, uh, Valentine's Day.

Speaker C: That would be wonderful. I literally have a call at 2.2minutes. So I should just send.

Speaker A: No worries. Um, but I just wanted to bring you on and just say hi real quick. You know, I think it's, uh, it's good to see you and, um, thanks for being a, I think a regular part of the cast.

Speaker C: I think I'm a regular part of the, uh, the entourage. I love it. And I never got a chance to thank you both for thanking me twice in your book.

Speaker B: I better put it in the Rock Times.

Speaker C: If you want to use this, there's

Speaker A: a. Scott, um, still hasn't been changed. Uh, we'll just leave it. That's a pretty funny story.

Speaker C: Yeah, I like. It's my favorite page in the book, so.

Speaker A: It's so hilarious.

Speaker C: Please don't change. Important, but not in the acknowledgments.

Speaker A: That's really the entire book. It just says Scott Taylor the whole time.

Speaker C: So you know me, I have such a healthy ego. But really it's about you today, guys. It's a great show. We're gonna miss you on a weekly basis and you're uh, non. Chill. No attitude is, uh, refreshing.

Speaker A: Likewise. Thank you. Appreciate it, man. All right, I'll see you on the flip side, buddy. All right, you gotta get to your call.

Speaker B: Bye.

Speaker G: Bye.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, so. That's awesome. Yes, Scott's awesome. I love that guy. Uh, just, um, one of the, one of the, you know, the industry has characters.

Speaker B: Yeah, he's one of them.

Speaker A: Like, just one of the cool.

Speaker B: Uh, my question is, is he a human or is he a puppet? I haven't decided. He's a Muppet.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, so it's, it's, ah, it's pretty dope. Um, uh, keep talking real quick. I'm just texting people.

Speaker B: Okay, let's see, what else are we talking about?

Speaker A: So the book.

Speaker F: Right?

Speaker A: We did the book and then I think that that opened up a lot of opportunities. I think that's, you know, if you fast forward to today, like if we hadn't written the book, I think we still would be just doing consulting full time. But maybe we can talk about that real quick. I think a lot of questions I'm getting right now is, um, you know, are you guys still doing ternary?

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, not, not going forward. I mean, we might still collaborate on stuff, but. Yeah, keeping that together at this point.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think we have other, other things, uh, that we have in the pipeline right now. Like I'm starting a new company which will unveil early next year. Um, I think at a certain point we just, uh, you know, consulting is just one of those things where, I don't know, like, I think we're just ready to move on.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's fine to do once in a while. It's not. I, I do it occasionally, but it's not a full time thing anymore. I've got various other projects going on, so it's, it's always more complicated than you think it's going to be. It can be fun, especially if they actually implement some of your suggestions. But that doesn't always happen for frustration and sometimes occasional triumph.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, but that's, I think that's just par for the course and any type of consulting, uh, engagement, I don't think it's. But, you know, I mean, it is interesting. So we have no shortage of inbound inquiries these days. I mean, you know, we get, um, you know, inquiries very frequently. But at this point I would say we're just, uh. If you're looking for us to consult with you, I guess maybe contact one of us separately. But ternary data as an ongoing concern will be no More by the end of the year. Um, I think we're just both ready, very eager, eagerly awaiting our, you know, and m working on our next, next, uh, moves right now it's just you registered. But the book afforded us that. If we hadn't done the book, it would have just. I think we'd still be doing ternary and consulting and all that fun stuff. Speaking of fun, by the way, we have a really fun guy. Uh, one cicada. What's up, dude?

Speaker F: Sorry,

Speaker H: before we jump in, I, I texted this day.

Speaker A: I don't know if you can see it. Let's see, it says right there, yeah,

Speaker H: never write a book again.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm a liar. Um, just the worst, worst family man possible. Um, yeah, I'm writing a new book right now, so, uh, and this one is actually harder than Fundamentals of Data Engineering, which I think was a very difficult book to write. But yeah, um, but yeah, dude, it's been super fun like having you on the show and uh, you know, and being on your podcast as well.

Speaker H: I just want to say, I mean it's uh, I, I do, I do not join live a lot. This is always busy times during the day. But uh, you guys have really just made such a gigantic impression into the entire data world and I really hope that this, this time that happened like, like right before COVID and the whole covet and everything that's happened with the modern data stack history will be written about this and, and you guys will have a gigantic stamp on that. So you've really changed the lives of so many people and, and included. So thank you so much for everything you've done and I know I'm speaking to everybody in the community, like, like it's, it's just pretty ridiculously awesome. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker A: Appreciate it. Huh, man. Yeah. And well, you, you get to carry on the tradition in some form. I know Catalogs and Cocktails is an insanely popular podcast, so it's, it's good. You know, I think you carry a very similar tone where it's just, uh, no bs, uh, all honest, no bs, honest obs. That's, that's the way

Speaker H: we, we represent a vendor. But, but we never talk about the vendor. It continues to be. I think that's what we, that that's what the audience is craving. I think the community just wants freaking no and just and non salesy stuff.

Speaker A: So, so yeah, we will, we'll do it. And you know, I'd say stay tuned for what's next with us, but there's, you know. But yeah, you're carrying that. You're carrying that same tradition too, which is why I, I, uh, really, you're like a brother now. So it's, it's good.

Speaker H: Yeah, love, Love bumping into you in different parts of the world and, and

Speaker A: hopefully we can do that.

Speaker F: Cool.

Speaker H: See you Wednesday, Thursday, here in Austin.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that's right. I am. Sure.

Speaker F: Um.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Do you still have a ticket? Like.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, I'll be in Austin, so I'll see you there. See you in a couple days.

Speaker F: Cool.

Speaker A: See you.

Speaker B: Talk to you soon.

Speaker A: So I think that's. Yeah, one's. One's dope. I love that guy. Um, just saw it in, uh, Australia, uh, last month, uh, walking around Sydney and giving a talk at Data Engine Bytes. Um, um. But yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty cool. Um, let me see who else. Keep talking real quick. Um, just do a puppet show or something.

Speaker B: A puppet show? I didn't bring any puppets, unfortunately. So, yeah, it's. I mean, it's been a very interesting time in the data world. I, I think we're seeing. From my perspective, we're seeing another big evolution now. I mean, obviously there's the whole Gen AI thing and it's kind of funny to observe the current moment because on the one hand, uh, a lot of these tools are starting to work their way into real products. Like Apple Intelligence, for example, which I started using that.

Speaker A: I don't like it at all.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, interesting. Yeah, that's an interesting.

Speaker A: Because the. In the, um. Well, in the update too, it stopped collecting my emails for some reason. But, uh, I don't know, it's dumb. Um, but yeah, it just summarizes everything, which is great. But like, the emails I always send or get are usually really short.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. They're quick and to the point and like, I don't know, can you trust the summarization enough to actually rely on it for anything?

Speaker A: I'm sure it'll get better. The thing I want is. A thing I'd actually want is assuming, uh, it works, is to set up workflows, um, within, uh, the iPhone. They actually have a way to do that now, but it's pretty crude and, um, you know, but, uh, anyway, that's. Yeah, Apple Intelligence, if you want to. If you have an iPhone update, you know, if you don't. I mean, Android already has it anyway, so.

Speaker B: Yeah, I guess my point is that these tools are starting to be deployed into real products, not just like toy products at the Same time, we're kind of. It feels like we're heading a bit into the trough of disillusionment with this technology. And I think they. Yeah, to some extent.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Ah, it's like they're. We're at this interesting branch or something where we have to decide what exactly. But I think part of that is that there will be a shift back to more fundamental data engineering skills. I mean, for a variety of reasons. First of all, we're running out of training data. Um, second, there are a lot of issues with things like hate speech and misinformation that we're trying to deal with that so far the industry is not dealt with at all. And third, the cost of these gen tools is so high that, uh, I think we're going to be going back to some more traditional approaches and kind of fusing those with modern approaches.

Speaker A: Let's see what Colleen Tarto thinks. Uh, hi, Facebook.

Speaker B: Thanks for joining.

Speaker I: Doing it. So I felt like I needed to do it too, but I also want to read what Joe wrote because it was hilarious.

Speaker A: What did I write?

Speaker I: You, Colleen. Reach for the stars. See what I did there? And then you wrote, P.S. i'm a Pisces.

Speaker A: I wrote that. That's pretty funny. Um, reads for the stars part's funny because, uh, what's your background?

Speaker I: Um, astrophysicist. And Matt and I went to grad

Speaker A: school together and you probably looked.

Speaker B: We overlapped.

Speaker A: Yeah, you overlapped at grad school, which is funny. Um, and I figured, you know, reach for the stars is really something that an astrophysicist like. Wow, that really speaks to me. Idiot.

Speaker I: Um, you guys are hilarious.

Speaker A: Well, thank you.

Speaker I: I had to go get this off my bookshelf where I have, like, my whole O'Reilly section. But it was a.

Speaker D: It was.

Speaker I: It's nice being here.

Speaker A: You have an O'Reilly section. That's pretty cool. What have you been up to?

Speaker I: Um, AI Building an AI platform.

Speaker A: So what do you think about what Matt said? AI is just, you know, what do you say?

Speaker B: Well, I think it's going into real tools, but there's all. We're also feeling a bit maybe at the trough of disillusionment at the same time, which is kind of an interesting juxtaposition.

Speaker I: Yeah, I don't. I don't think you're wrong about that. Um, I think that we'll get through it. I do. I think there's a lot of creativity that people are starting to exercise that muscle right now. Right. Because, like, you've got the model builders and then You've got everyone who's like, ooh, we need to do AI. And then it's like, well, what does that mean? Right? Like, we can all do chat bots, but like, you know, and we're having fun with chat GPT or Perplexity or whatever you're using, but I think there's just, like, so much more we can do with it. And we're not even scratching the surface.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. Um, yeah, and I think we'll. We'll have good stuff and maybe duds. That's just how technology goes. Right. Like Matt mentioned, Apple intelligence. I'm using it on my new latest update. I'm like, I. I don't really have a use for this.

Speaker D: It's.

Speaker I: Well, it's funny because I was asking. My kid was asking Alexa something last night, and Alexa was like, not getting it, and the two of them were like, starting to get irritated with each other. But I was thinking, like, how funny would it be if Alexa could get irritated with him and be like, nicholas, you are just not asking the right questions. Maybe we'll get there.

Speaker A: I hope so. I want snarky responses.

Speaker I: Right. Uh, like attitude for my AI. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker I: It's too polite.

Speaker A: The Joe Respot just unhinged at a certain. Just will snap at you and make

Speaker I: you cry like, Joe, do the work yourself.

Speaker A: Actually, that shouldn't exist. That's. That's like Skynet. You don't.

Speaker F: Um.

Speaker A: But, uh, yeah, so thanks for, you know, obviously supporting the show, um, along the, uh, you know, throughout the years and just being a good friend too. So it's.

Speaker I: Yeah, you guys are awesome. And I'm gonna miss this. I actually, I'm on another meeting right now. That's always a Monday at 11 meeting. And so I'm always like double marching with captions out. But I dropped out to come on.

Speaker A: So thanks. Well, we'll, uh, get. Let you get back to your meeting free get in trouble.

Speaker D: Thanks.

Speaker I: This has been great.

Speaker A: Take care.

Speaker F: Bye.

Speaker A: Bye.

Speaker C: Um,

Speaker H: cool.

Speaker A: So we'll cause people to lose their jobs today. It's great.

Speaker B: I'm kidding. That's right. Well, turning over a new leaf, I guess.

Speaker G: Yeah.

Speaker B: New opportunities for all of us.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Um, let me see. Who else can we, uh. But yeah, so I think AI is obviously the story right now. Um, what do you think is the next story going into 2025 and 2026?

Speaker B: So I think there are several things. I think part of it is that so far we're trying to use AI to Do things that we already know how to do, but better. And in general, if you look at really successful technologies, what happens eventually is that we find entirely new use cases that no one's thought of, and that's where the technology becomes really, really successful. Yeah, so the iPhone, when it first came out, it's like, okay, it's a phone and it's got a cool touchscreen. And, oh, by the way, you can use it as an ipod, which no one even talks about ipods anymore. And eventually they came out with the App Store, and then it's like, oh, you can use it to, like, check in with Square, for example. And all these, like, crazy apps came out Uber. Just so many different applications that no one had really thought of. And I think maybe that's the next thing for, like, what. What exactly does this look like? And how is it actually useful? I think that will take some time to sort out. And I think on the data side of the house, um, right now the focus is just like, shovel as much data as possible into these models. And I think, first of all, we'll start doing a lot more with filtering, preparing data than we're doing right now. And second, I think for many applications, it will turn out still to be more, much more economical to use more classical statistical NLP methods to analyze data. And a lot of companies are already starting to do that because the cost, if you look at the numbers, what it costs to run Aquarium, one of these models, it is not cheap, and that will come down. But I think classical NLP will always be cheaper for certain applications. So that's where we're going to start hybridizing.

Speaker A: On the cpu.

Speaker B: Yeah, you can run it on a cpu.

Speaker A: The talk we had with Paco the other, Other week, right where he had that, um, I think he showed us one of the, One of the papers. Uh, I don't know how this guy finds the time to read all these papers. Yeah, guy's just like a walking encyclopedia. Um, but it was interesting, like the, um, that paper talked about. Yeah. Just, you know, we sort of. We're maybe hitting the limits. And also I think the questions of scaling are valid. Like, do we really need to scale this high and like, everything, um, you know, to the point where we're using, uh, you know, a lot of energy to do all this, or there are simpler ways to do it. Like this Mac Studio that I have here, it's got 30 cores on it. I mean, that's sufficient for a lot of stuff. Um, so we'll see. I don't know, um, talk more about prognostications a bit. We have Jason Taylor. Jt. What's up, Jason?

Speaker B: How's it going?

Speaker F: Jesus.

Speaker B: Hi.

Speaker A: Thanks for. Thanks for the plug.

Speaker E: I saw everybody was holding their book up, so I was like, okay, let me go.

Speaker A: Actually, there's a spot in the book for you for the acknowledgments we've seen across out that extra Scott Taylor and put Jason on there.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. That's what we'll do in the next edition. We'll go update it right now.

Speaker E: Harley and Jepson, too, and just. Just put my name for all of them. That'd be totally, totally okay. No offense to any of them that are watching right now. And, uh, two things. One, uh, I also dropped out of a meeting to come jump over and listen and watch because this is the last meeting. Obviously, I wanted to be here. Uh, and the other thing, Matt, just because you were just talking about the ipod, so. In college, I actually worked at one of the Apple stores.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker E: Yeah.

Speaker F: So.

Speaker E: And we talk about this a lot, but especially in today's day and age, I think the importance of UX is so wildly understated. And I think that even just the chat mechanism today has been so crazy. Um, I definitely remember we had a very funny conversation when the iPad first came out, and there were ipod touches before this. So the iPads came out, and. And we're like, this is just a big ipod touch. Like, who wants this? And then you touch it and you're like, oh, now I get it. But it took physically touching the actual device, um, to understand that. Um, also shout out to anybody else who ran the marathon yesterday. I am in a lot of pain.

Speaker B: Oh, boy.

Speaker A: Um, so that was a lot of fun.

Speaker E: Which marathon New York City was yesterday?

Speaker A: Oh, okay.

Speaker E: I'm wearing this thing. I never wear them ever, but I. Congrats.

Speaker A: I was wondering what that was. If you, like, just blinged out, but, you know, you earned that. That's.

Speaker E: Yeah, I'm, like, flavorfully, if I'm just gonna, like, spin my clock here on the deal.

Speaker A: Well, you can be like some UFC fighters, uh, who I knew they would, um, walk around with their title belts to, like, Chili's and stuff.

Speaker B: Of course they were going to Chili.

Speaker A: No, they would. I mean, I'm not kidding. It was Tim Sylvia. He was a heavyweight champion, and he would, like, literally wear his belt to, like, apple peas or something. Pay him five bucks to get a picture. Just like.

Speaker E: I mean, after I beat somebody up, I'm Trying to go to, like, a major chain restaurant and just have something like a blooming onion or something.

Speaker A: You should. I mean, you can go to Chili's more than that thing and be like, wow, you're so fit. Why would. How could you possibly be here right now?

Speaker B: Um, burn it off.

Speaker E: Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely trying to consume as much food as possible at this point.

Speaker A: That's a good idea.

Speaker E: Also, I'm appreciating your Terminator shirt right now. Like, I don't know if this is a call out to, like, the show coming back or something thing or, like, a subtle hint.

Speaker A: I don't know. I. I, uh, There's. There's a lot to read into things.

Speaker E: Uh, I'm also looking forward to having Matt back for our regular book club. Whenever. Whenever Chris comes back from wherever the hell he is these days.

Speaker B: Um, so we'll reboot. We'll reboot the book club.

Speaker E: Yeah, we have to reboot book club. Okay. In case anybody's wondering, I'm in the city. In New York City only on Wednesdays. If you are around, I'm always happy to chat.

Speaker B: Go hang out at the NH Hotel.

Speaker A: I'll be there actually, on the 13th. Uh, uh, so shout out to Data Galaxy. Gonna do a, um, talk at their conference. Uh, if you happen to be in New York on the 13th. They're doing that. JT will be there. I'll be there. I think Chris tabs there. A bunch of people are going to be there and they have a party on the 14th. I won't be there because I'm traveling every week and gotta actually see my kids once in a while. But, um, yeah, anyway, man, it's good to. Good to see you. Uh, so, likewise.

Speaker E: Happy to be part of the finale.

Speaker A: Yeah. Have fun.

Speaker E: Take our guys.

Speaker A: All right, we got another guest here. Uh, Ramona. Hi.

Speaker D: Hi.

Speaker A: Can you hear me?

Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, you're coming through. Great.

Speaker D: Oh, so I have. I have the book, too, now that everybody is bringing the book. And I think I have the most, um, original signature because the book has a third author. Joe, I shared this with you.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. That's so cool. My son wrote that.

Speaker D: So. Milo contributed to the book a lot.

Speaker B: We should have had him do it all, do all the diagrams. I guess next time you do a book, he'll have to do all the diagrams for you.

Speaker A: I don't want to torture him on my next book. Could have him do it right now.

Speaker D: It's great to see. It's great to see you.

Speaker F: Yeah.

Speaker A: Good to see You.

Speaker D: Hi, Matt.

Speaker B: Good. Good to meet you. Actually, I think we mostly only communicated by message.

Speaker A: Yeah, you comment. I think you've been commenting religiously on every, um, uh, show, and you just been, uh. You end up becoming a good friend. So it's good to, you know, good to close it out by having you on for a bit. And, um.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker D: So. Can I say something?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker D: Because I've been dying to say this. Matt, why don't you have a microphone holder, like, every single time you hold the microphone in your hand?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's just the head setup I've had. I've got one in one place where I cast from sometimes. But when I met Joe, he only has the one microphone arm, so then I'd have to lean all the way over.

Speaker F: Yeah.

Speaker A: Then he has to kind of. Then it. Yeah, it wouldn't really work like this because then he's like. His head's this tight the whole time. He's good at holding the mic. He's like a. He's like a rapper. So, um. Yeah, it's good. So.

Speaker D: So of all the things that I could have asked, that's what I asked.

Speaker B: That's the one question that you were d. It's, uh.

Speaker A: You. You got a magical genie, and that was your, uh. Your. There.

Speaker D: There were. There were times when I. I thought I. We should, uh, have a collection. Fundraise something to. Because, uh. There were times when it felt like it's so heavy in your hand that I. I don't know. So never mind. Thanks for.

Speaker B: It's more about mobility and having. Not having a lot of stuff to move.

Speaker C: Okay, uh.

Speaker D: Okay, uh, guys, I know I wrote that post, and I want to say thank you again.

Speaker A: Thanks for the post.

Speaker J: Yeah.

Speaker H: Thank you.

Speaker D: Um. Yeah, it's gonna, uh. You're gonna leave some really big shoes, uh, to feel. So, uh, we'll see. We'll. We'll have to see who. Who are gonna fit those pictures.

Speaker G: Yeah.

Speaker A: Who knows? We, like, uh. We keep indicating that. Who knows what happens? Yeah, exactly. So I would say for people out there, maybe don't take this time slot. Um, but we'll see

Speaker D: some aces in your sleeves. Uh, not short sleeves.

Speaker A: I wear a T shirt.

Speaker B: There's not much to hide anything, but

Speaker A: it's sort of like the, uh. Yeah, it's sort of like the. The parking spot of the, uh. The owner who retires that from his company or something that just might show

Speaker B: up anytime you might show up still.

Speaker A: I don't know.

Speaker F: Yeah.

Speaker A: But. Yeah, anyway, cool. It was good to see You, Ramona. So, yeah. So I guess that begs the question, what's next?

Speaker B: Yeah. What do you have on the agenda right now?

Speaker A: Well, we're not doing ternary anymore, so consulting, I would say, is sort of out of the, uh, uh, getting out of that game, at least for. Until, uh, I get bored and want to do it again. You know how that is. You know, it's a cycle of boredom. Like you just like.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: But, you know, starting a new company, um, which, you know, I'm not going to say too much about. You'll learn more early next year. Uh, writing a book. Maybe these things are related. I don't know. You'll find out. Um, you know, I. There's gonna do a lot more video, uh, after this book is done, probably while I'm doing it, actually. Like, uh, you know, so I think you'll see me on a lot more channels, um, doing video, which is sort of what I've been hinting at. What does that look like? Um, I would say stay tuned, but, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's. I feel like, you know, LinkedIn's great still beyond there, but there's a lot of other channels I think, to explore, um, and I think build a good base on. So that's, that's what I have going. Um, plus probably more Travel accounted even 20, 25 right now. And there's already, what, 10, 11 trips already.

Speaker B: Oh, man, I don't know how you

Speaker A: do it, but that's just like what we have in the docket now. Right. Um, and I mean, I'm traveling every week until almost Christmas somewhere in the world, so that's kind of what I'm doing. How about you?

Speaker B: Um, let's see. I have a new project with a friend of mine who. So Mark Thunason is a PhD in Philosophy, and we're going to start basically talking about books, among other things. So the first book we're going to review is Nexus, which was recently published by, uh, Yuval Noah Harari. So he's most famous, I think, for Sapiens. And this book is more meant to address the current, like, moment of, uh, writers of artificial intelligence and such. And so he actually knows what he's talking about from the philosophy perspective. So this will be interesting. We're still figuring out details in a name and getting things recorded and figuring out how to launch it. But that's, that's the project.

Speaker A: That's Google Book Club. Sounds fun.

Speaker B: Yeah. So if you have books you want to talk about sometime, maybe we'll have you on and have a discussion. So that's, that's the current thing, but

Speaker A: yeah, like 50 shades of gray or something. Um, yeah, books are fun. Um, so, uh, yeah, I like books. Um, I don't know. I'm reviewing a lot of books right now.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I know. You're reading like, so many different data books at the moment.

Speaker A: Well, you saw my, uh, study upstairs. I have like about, I think, two or three places, like offices in my house, um, and all the nooks and crannies. But one area's got just books piled on each other right now. And my office, uh, not this one, this is just records and stuff piled. And synths. But then the other office is like, I don't even know how many books are in there right now. But it's just, um, I think. I don't know. Charlie Munger said his wife described him as a book with legs sticking out. Um, that's kind of how I am too. So, yeah, happy to do a book club anytime or, um, you know, pretend to be in a book club.

Speaker B: Yeah. You've read a lot of.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I'm sure there's stuff you'd love to talk about. It's been on your reading list or you already read, so.

Speaker A: I read a really good book, the Art of Business Value, over the weekend. I just read it, um, on my flight back and, um, I thought it was really good. I'm going to do. I have a blog post coming out about that and just the notion of business value, at least as how I see it in a rant form, probably won't be complete. That's rant. Um, but I thought it was a really good book because it really described the, um, the subtleties of business value and like, how it's. I think everyone tries to think that it's like, ROI or cost, or, you know, cost reduction or revenue, uh, increases, which is certainly great, but that there's a lot more to it than just that. So. But speaking of books, we have, um, an unhinged, uh, friend.

Speaker B: Are you going to be unhinged? That's what's. What's.

Speaker G: I am not promising that.

Speaker A: This is Jess Haberman. Um, she, uh. Uh, yeah. You signed our book. So you.

Speaker G: Ah, against my better judgment. But it worked out. It worked out all right.

Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know.

Speaker F: Um,

Speaker A: I think it worked out for everybody.

Speaker G: It was, it was a lot of fun. I learned a lot.

Speaker B: What is your general opinion on books and publishing these days?

Speaker G: Well, you know, books and publishing, um, are centuries old. Uh, they don't change that much really. I think it's funny, back in maybe what the early mid to like early 2000s, mid 2000s, when like ebooks were released, like starting to make a real, um, you know, uh, they really like kind of jumped in the market and people just thought, oh, that's, that's the end of print books. And like, obviously that didn't happen. So it's just interesting. Like it's really hard to disrupt publishing. Um, but there's, there's, I mean AI has a lot of, you know, there's, there's a lot of opportunities for AI to make a difference in publishing in good ways and bad. So it'll be interesting. I think like we're, it's like keep an eye out. But I, it's, it's hard for me to believe that publishing is going to undergo like some major shift um, anytime soon.

Speaker A: But the thing I'm noticing though is a selection of books is becoming I think a bit more dodgy in the sense where you don't know like what's AI crap and what's not. But I think it actually opens up and I made a post about this a few weeks ago. I think people, I meant literally that I think we're in the golden age of like human creativity for precisely the reasons that not a lot of people are going to be creative. So those who are, I think it means you can stand out a lot

Speaker G: more versus old days personality based publishing. Like people trust specific authors. Like, so if you're a well known personality like Joe or Matt or a lot of the folks that have been on this, you know, this stream, um, you know, if you're trusted in the marketplace or you talk, you know, you're just well known, you talk to people, you know what's happening, like that's going to make a big difference in terms of like if you get a book deal and if people actually buy it.

Speaker A: Yep, yeah, exactly.

Speaker G: That's always been the case. But I think I agree with you that that's like increasing in relevance.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, it is. So I mean, I think it's an exciting time to write books, um, for precisely the reason that it's, I think it's actually going to be ironically easier to stand out amidst all the uh, the crap out there. I mean I sort of like that,

Speaker G: but I do, I do think it's an exciting time.

Speaker A: That's exciting. I mean, you know, I mean there's, there's books, I mean I counted probably, you know, a dozen or more books called Fundamentals of data engineering on Amazon over the years. A lot of them sort of rotate out or aren't. Aren't searchable anymore. But it's like, um, you know, five

Speaker B: fake reviews on there.

Speaker A: Five fake reviews in one case. Fifteen, uh, some guy who was dumb enough to use his real name. I called him out a few weeks ago.

Speaker G: It's hard. It's hard to replicate, like, Theo Reilly, you know, branding the. Like you, obviously you guys. People know your names. Like, so it's like, you know, you. It's a. It's really a clear product that's like super unique in the market. So it's hard to. It's hard to sort of fake that, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah, it is. But you, you know, you're a part of that, right? I think, um, you know, you get to deal, ah, with Matt and me and for all. For warts and all. Um, yeah. You're like, oh, ah, that was a life changing experience.

Speaker G: Um, well, it was. I mean, like, I met m. I miss publishing so much. I love. I work at Anaconda and I. I run education and technical writing now and it's. It's great. Um, but it is, uh, I miss publishing. So I'm doing a little side hustle working with folks who are interested in publishing. So if we know each other, you want to talk about publishing, get in touch.

Speaker A: One call, that's all.

Speaker G: We're all here with new plans, new. We're exciting, new possibilities.

Speaker F: Just pivots.

Speaker A: Pivots. Right. It's the end of the year. You're all. We're all excited about it. Then come like, February. I'm like, never mind. That was dumb. We'll just be great.

Speaker B: I gotta get back to work. Like in February. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: It's all good.

Speaker G: Everybody go vote.

Speaker A: Yes. Go vote. It's important. Yes. Tomorrow is d. Ah day. So.

Speaker F: Awesome.

Speaker I: Thanks for having me, guys.

Speaker F: Bye.

Speaker A: Bye. See you. Uh, I got another guy here. Um, Sonny. Sonny. He's a good dude. What's up?

Speaker J: Hey, man, how are you doing?

Speaker A: Good, good.

Speaker J: Great to see you both.

Speaker A: Likewise. Um, yeah, figured we say hi and bye.

Speaker J: Yeah, I get to be the last cameo. Maybe.

Speaker E: I don't know.

Speaker A: It depends how long we want to go. I mean, we don't really have anything else going on. I have a call at 11, so I could just. We could just keep this going for like forever, really.

Speaker B: Uh, is this going to be a telethon? As though.

Speaker A: What we didn't tell the audience is we're actually going to be going for 24 hours.

Speaker J: Um, uh, um, I wanted to show you my book. This is, uh, this is Joe's new book.

Speaker A: You haven't seen it yet.

Speaker J: He sent me a super secret copy,

Speaker A: so it's a planner.

Speaker J: It says, to my best friend, Sonny, I couldn't have done this without you, everybody. So thank you so much, Joe.

Speaker A: I really, really appreciate that. Anytime, anytime. I love being there. It's like. It's like John Cena, uh, visiting kids in hospitals or something. So, um, yeah. So what are you up to these days?

Speaker J: So, Warren, I'll say I love the topic on books and, you know, how valuable they are and that it, you know, it is going to be valuable. It is going to be a way to stand out. Next week, I'm in Atlanta. I'm with, um, Serena for. With Serena Data. With Serena to help her publicize her new book.

Speaker A: Oh, nice.

Speaker J: I'll be doing a fireside chat with her. Um, let's see, I don't know, in about an hour, I'm doing Chris's show. Right.

Speaker A: So an hour. I thought it goes on, like, right now.

Speaker J: I hope not.

Speaker A: I think it does.

Speaker J: Well, that better leave your show.

Speaker B: Better do a time zone check.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker J: Well, anyway, I really think it's one one o', clock, but I will double check.

Speaker A: Yeah, maybe he moved it. You feel we'd be going on for at least.

Speaker J: I hope I don't miss it. Yeah, we went back and forth about that. And, uh, anyway, so that's what's going on with me. And of course, you know, I. I love seeing you guys. Great, great material from you all the time. Um, you know, and I think having someone that says, look, this is how things really are as opposed to what we would like them to be, or, or maybe all this icing, uh, on the cake, just really talking about the real issues is really important.

Speaker A: So thank you. Awesome, man. Well, see you, as they say. So enjoy that book. That's a good book. Um, there's nothing in it, but it's good.

Speaker J: All right, well, y' all take care. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker C: Thanks.

Speaker A: Later.

Speaker B: Thanks for joining.

Speaker A: So, yeah, um, we can keep talking for a bit. I don't really care. Um, like I said, I only have a call in an hour, and they'll probably cut into Chris's show. So then he'll, uh, be like, why are you doing a show on mine? Because, uh, we can just do that. That's what we do. Um, yeah, but I guess it is interesting, I think, hearing, uh, from all these people and sorry if we didn't get to you, uh, that we don't like you. Uh, I just went through the comments and pick the people who are immediately

Speaker B: in front of the top of the.

Speaker A: Yeah, like, immediately, like, oh, there's a chat from them, um, and so forth. But, you know, apologies if we didn't get to the show would be like. Well, that would be as long as a Monday morning data chat. I suppose if we were to have like, all the guests on.

Speaker J: Um.

Speaker A: I think We've had almost 200 shows, but it's like we haven't actually. And I think the, um, the ones on Spotify, for example, aren't. It's not the complete playlist. There's actually quite a few that we didn't have on there.

Speaker B: Oh, they haven't actually.

Speaker A: There's a couple hundred episodes. Uh, we did. Um, you know, obviously I have my own podcast. I don't even know how many podcasts I've done there. So, I mean, I think in total we've probably done like thousands shows. Yeah, yeah, but it's just. I don't know. So it's, it's interesting. But, um, yeah, in terms of what's next, I would say, you know, it's. It will be, um, fun to watch. Like, I think you got some really cool stuff in the works. Um, you know, obviously I'll. I'm not really quick to reveal too much at once, but you'll. You'll see, uh, you'll see stuff, um, at some point soon. Um, I've also been thinking just about how do we maintain the sense of candor that I think we've, uh, developed, but maybe in new mediums and maybe in a way that's, um, maybe more broadly applicable too. I think data is a nice niche, but is there more? I don't know. That's something I've been thinking about a lot. Um, you know, so. Because I feel like the danger of having a show like this, the downside is you can easily either create a filter bubble or you can become part of one. And that's. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. And then after a while, maybe it feels like everyone is saying the same thing or something like that. If you get stuck in your own filter bubble.

Speaker A: Well, why did we decide to close the show? I guess maybe we can end on that. Like, I think people are wondering.

Speaker B: I think it's just fundamentally having other projects basically. Like, I think, for example, your other podcast takes up a lot of your time because you have a lot of great guests on there.

Speaker A: And so it's like four episodes this week. I Gotta record.

Speaker E: Right?

Speaker B: Oh, man, that's. That's insane.

Speaker A: Right? But it's like, then, you know, and I. And I think, honestly, you know, we've. I think we've done what we needed to do with this show. There was no agenda to it in the beginning, which is kind of weird to say that you did what you needed to do. But, um, I think we've. We. I think we've accomplished what we wanted to with this. With this particular, um, show. And of course, the show actually starts now, so I, um, think we just merge the two.

Speaker B: Uh, let's just take over our audience, basically.

Speaker A: We'll just merge into master. It's fine. Um, so. But it, you know, I feel like this, um. You know, it's better, I think, to kind of go out at the top, which I think we are in this one, versus just like, letting it drone on and on and on and just, you know, and get. No, um. You know, I think we'd rather just, uh. We really. I think after Andrew Ng having him on, we're just kind of like. I don't know. I mean, what do you. Are you gonna. Are you gonna top that? There's obviously other guests we can do, but I felt like, at least for me, that was like the perfect, um, note. And then having, you know, the other guests on that we've had, um, you know, Paul and, um, you know, and others like that and Paco and so forth. This is awesome. But after that, it's kind of like, you know, um. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker F: Ah, yeah.

Speaker B: And again, you're covering. I mean, you have the opportunity to cover new developments in your other show as well, and so I think.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker H: Yeah.

Speaker A: So anyway, um.

Speaker C: Cool.

Speaker A: Well, Matt, it's been fun. See y'.

Speaker D: All.

Speaker A: And, uh.

Speaker B: Yeah, and we'll have to, uh. We'll have to figure out that Valentine's Day with Scott Taylor. Maybe we do occasional, uh, special episodes or something like that. Something better ideally than, like, I don't know what's. There must be a more recent reference for Terrible Christmas episode than Star Wars. But something along that. We want to avoid that kind of debacle.

Speaker A: I mean, maybe we just do it live from New York City. I don't know. Might be kind of a fun one. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, thanks to everybody for supporting the show for, um, you know, last few years.

Speaker B: It's been.

Speaker A: It's been awesome. So. But, uh, yeah, there's more coming. I, uh, suppose. But you'll find out soon. So anyway, dude, it's been fun.

Speaker B: Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker A: All right, talk to you all later. Goodbye.