Our Journey to 1K ✈️ | Issue #32
Conversations, Innovations, Milestones, and More!
Drum rolls 🥁🥁🥁……….
We're excited to share that MD101 has hit its first milestone with a readership of over 1000 folks spanning across 79 countries! Our global community spans a vibrant spectrum of data whizzes, from CDOs to Data Engineers, Product Managers to Architects, and many more.
What a ride it’s been! So many great conversations, collaborations, and even constructive disagreements because what’s a community without some diverse opinions, right? The journey has been enriching with so many experienced data folks coming together to create and narrate stories around better data. With 12 co-authors and external collaborations with over 10 data leaders, MD101 has been a boiling cauldron of a variety of spices and ingredients.
MD101’s knowledge base, as shared and consumed across multiple channels, including our captain’s wide community presence, has so far amassed a viewership of over 1 Million 🎉 And the best part? Our readers are our co-pilots. Your ideas, feedback, and even those friendly nudges of critique have shaped our content to be more engaging, relatable, and downright practical.
In this edition, we’ll take you through the journey so far. So sit tight and enjoy the read!
What some of our readers and collaborators have to say 🎙️
It's not just the individual readers who've been talking about Modern Data 101 - some of the most renowned communities in the data sphere have given us a nod too! They're spotlighting the impactful work we're doing here at MD101.
This recognition is like getting a high-five from the data world's coolest clubs! 🙌
📢 Features You Might Have Seen Too 👀
MD101’s thoughts and ideas have been cited as top reads across some amazing platforms and communities, including Data Mesh Learning, the most prominent community of Data Mesh practitioners, Metadata Weekly, a mass favourite, Data Engineering Weekly, one of the most notable voices in all things Data Engineering, the Modern Data Stack Newsletter, an eminent community featuring innovative data stacks, and more!
Modern Data 101 has been featured in over 15 substacks run by prominent data leaders! We're thrilled to see data practitioners across LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, and various data communities adding their unique spins to our resources. This journey isn’t just ours; it's been a collective effort. The community has played a massive role, guiding us at every turn to reach the right audience. Their contributions have not only spread the word but also enriched our understanding and approach.
Our Stories on Brewing Better Data 🍶
The Basics: Data Contracts and Modeling
We started with some fundamental instruments behind building better data experiences. While Data Contracts ensure data quality and governance, solid data modeling practices pave the way to operationalise data into actionable results.
We found a huge community of data practitioners actively involved in these narratives and engaged in several conversations with industry leaders for the same. Our chief, consequently, was part of the first highly acclaimed book on Data Contracts as one of the reviewers - authored by the creator of Data Contracts, Andrew Jones. We were also part of a few amazing panels to share and discuss opinions on the current and future state of Contracts.
Some reads from MD101 on data contracts:
The Big Picture: Data-First Stack
We moved on to painting a picture of the end-to-end data stack, aka the Data-First Stack (DFS), as the next evolutionary stage to Traditional and Modern Data Stacks. We were amazed at the response we received from the community and found a similar inclination on the direction of the universal stack.
Related reads:
The Enabler: Data Developer Platforms
The Data-First Stack brought in a lot of discussion and innovations on how to establish it, and we pitched in our take as well with Data Developer Platforms (DDP). While we ourselves are building a DDP, DataOS, we also observed several other DDPs popping up in the industry to implement the post-modern data stack or DFS. We got together with several such experts in the community who are building a DDP in some form to present a more holistic and ideal framework for DDP.
Note that ‘DFS’ and ‘DDP’ might go by different names for different data practitioners, yet the conscience we observed was the same. We have started standardising it through datadeveloperplatform.org. Consequently, DDP was also featured and discussed by several data leaders. A few comments which strongly resonated came from Martin Fiser and Brian Greene, who were building in very similar directions. Interestingly, DDP also went viral for a couple of days in a large Data Engineering Community in Japan, and we were thrilled with the overdose of positive comments and discussion around the same.
Related reads:
The Outcome: Data Products
We finally unleashed the star of the show or the true impact of everything we do for and around data: Data Products. There is still a lot of controversy on the true definition of Data Products, but we believe, given its novelty, it is and should be allowed to be an evolving definition. We are, however, more concerned with the purpose of data products and see them as levers that are entirely metrics-first or help push the business forward by operationalising the org’s data quickly, consistently, and with a high impact on customer experience- the primary reason we want to consume and crunch data.
With the same sentiment, we shared our data product strategy with the community along with the end-to-end Data Product Lifecycle inspired by real-world implementations and authored in collaboration with ThoughtWorks, the pioneers of Data Products and Data Mesh implementations. With the curiosity drawn in from data practitioners and data-product aspirants, we have decided to soon share a data product template that you can customise to strategise data products for your own use cases and organisations.
Related reads:
Today, Modern Data 101 is the single source of truth for all things Data Products, especially when it comes to real-world implementations, which we created on noticing a gap in the resources doing the rounds. We highly encourage expanding on these existing resources and bringing in more diverse innovations and ideas. So, if you think you’ve something which is relevant to the MD101 community, feel free to reach out. We’d love to hear what you’ve to say!
🔏 Some Notable Contributions
We’ve had several amazing data practitioners and thinkers participating in the MD101 platform, and we highly appreciate the diverse voice they have helped bring in. Below are some of the most memorable and valuable contributions we cherish:
🤝 Relationships Along the Way
On the way to building MD101, we've had the privilege of engaging with numerous community leaders. These aren't just masters in data engineering and strategy; they're genuinely wonderful individuals. Take Roy, with his razor-sharp, constructive feedback, or Ananth, whose insights on emerging data industry trends are always eye-opening. Then there's Niko, a champion in driving platform democratisation, and Brian, whose thoughts often mirror our own. We can't forget Martin, a persuasive thought leader, or Sanjeev, with his profound perspectives on data platforms. Andrew's genius is undeniable, and Robert's infectious curiosity is nothing short of inspiring. The list goes on!
Long way ahead! 🛣
We've hit our first milestone on this exhilarating journey with MD101, and it's just the beginning. We started this initiative to forge a community of data enthusiasts eager to master the evolving landscape of modern data. Our goal is to simplify your journey, keeping you abreast and adaptable to the ever-shifting narratives in the data world.
The positive response has validated our vision of this community, and it's clear we're on the right track. Based on this validation behind the scenes, we're cooking up some exciting initiatives that we can't wait to share with you all. And there's a special treat lined up in next week's edition – so stay tuned.
The journey with MD101 is only getting more exciting. Let’s GO 🚀
 | A guest post by
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Congratulations. Great milestone! Keep up the good work.