MDS Newsletter #6

Aayush Jain -

Hey All!

We hope you had a fun Halloween and are enjoying our MDS newsletter series.

We constantly try to improve the MDS newsletter for all of you, so any of your suggestions are most welcome!

Let's take you through what is hot in the data stack world this week.

Featuring the "Feature Store" this week

Feature Stores have become a crucial part of today's modern data infrastructure. The term "Feature Store" was coined by Uber back in 2017. It acts as a warehouse, but for storing features used for developing & training ML models.

You might have heard that data is gold. If so, features are the tools needed to dig that gold.

Here is an awesome article & tweet thread on "Feature Store" by Gaetan Castelein: VP Marketing at Tecton

Here are this week's featured companies from the Modern Data Stack.

Endgame lets you connect the dots between user behavior and sales opportunities, without expensive data scientists or engineers. It is a PLG CRM that helps you take immediate action on prospective and current customers based on real-time data signals.

Sisu Data's Augmented Analytics platform is the fastest and most comprehensive way to understand why business metrics are changing. Based on years of research at Stanford University and proven at scale with Microsoft and Google, Sisu uses machine learning and powerful statistical analysis to help anyone diagnose changes to their business.

Good reads and videos

Keep pace with the latest developments in the modern data stack. Always be learning!

The Continual Team: Modern Data Stack is paving the way for a data-driven future. The modern data stack consists of a lot of elements that are rapidly growing each year and its ever-increasing popularity in the data-driven business world has made an impact. The team at Continual has done a great job with this article that shares what is in the  "Modern Data Stack" ecosystem in 2021. Here's the full article: The Modern Data Stack Ecosystem - Fall 2021 Edition.

Eitan Chazbani: Inefficient data operations within an organization or an inefficient DataOps team can have an impact on both data inputs and the outputs that are generated. So it becomes very  important to have a data ops team that is efficient & well organized. In his article, Eitan has discussed how you can achieve this at your organization. Here's the full article: The ideal DataOps org structure.

Joann Starke: Though organizations have a large amount of data at their disposal to build and train their ML models, there are certain challenges that also arise due to this large amount of data - data access approaches, the need to migrate and/or reformat data before analysis can begin, and the adoption of different operating models to name a few. In her article, Joann has discussed 4 key actions that a data analytics team can take to overcome these challenges due to large volume of data and simplify their approach to data analytics. Here's the full article: How to Simplify Your Approach to Data Analytics.

Anna Filippova: In this edition of dbt roundup, Anna has discussed some crucial issues related to data warehouse. It's a great read with a spooky Halloween touch. Three data horror stories that are guaranteed to keep you up tonight: Zombie data, Knowledge spiderwebs, Data discovery witchcraft.

Here is the full article: What's haunting your data warehouse?

Nicholas Leong: In this article Nicholas has talked about how he redesigned over 100 ETL into ELT data pipelines due reasons like cost & scalability. He has discussed the "How" & "Why" of this entire process in detail. Here's the full article: How I Redesigned over 100 ETL into ELT Data Pipelines.

Latest funding news

The latest happenings in the VC world for data stack companies.

Anomalo for raised a $33M Series-A funding round!

For @anomalo_hq this funding round was led by Norwest Venture Partners(@NorwestVP) along with some other participants - Two Sigma Ventures(@TwoSigmaVC), Foundation Capital(@FoundationCap), First Round Capital(@firstround), and Village Global.

Anomalo is a complete data quality platform that automatically detects and explains issues in your enterprise data.

Get the full article here.

Upcoming data stack events & webinars

Upcoming conferences, summits, and webinars for you. Start networking!

Tableau is organizing a global data conference. Tableau Conference is a global, interactive event that unites the world's largest data community. It is a global event in a virtual mode and 100% free with three broadcasts.

Americas: November 9–11, 2021, 9am–3pm PST

Europe: November 10–12, 2021, 9am–3pm GMT

Asia Pacific: November 10–12, 2021, 9am–3pm SGT

Get the full details of the conference here.

PASS Data Community Summit 2021 is the year’s largest gathering of Microsoft data platform professionals. This is a free online Summit where you can connect, share, and learn with 1000s of your peers from the global data platform community.

The summit is in virtual mode from November 8-12.
Get the full details of the summit here.

Ai, Data Analytics & Insights Summit DACH Online - This is an online event with 250 Senior Participants from DACH Region. It is an interactive senior-level online meeting being held on 11th – 12th November 2021.

Get the full details of the summit here.

What's trending on Twitter in the Data Stack world!

Just for fun

If you've made it this far, you deserve a meme😄

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