After six years and one month as the global evangelist for Snowflake (and almost 40 years in IT), I’ve decided to slow down and begin easing into retirement. As such, today is my last day at Snowflake.
I loved the Snowflake product so much that I gave up independent consulting to sign on (as employee 105) with this scrappy little startup in Silicon Valley (my first) and take a chance. Now at the end of 2021, the product is even more amazing than when I started and with #TheDataCloud it is changing the world of data.
The people and culture established by the founders, Benoit and Thierry, along with the leadership of Bob Muglia, Denise Persson, Chris Degnan, and Frank Slootman, have made this the best job (and longest) of my career. I cannot imagine a better way to bring this chapter to an end.
Thank you, Benoit and Thierry, for your vision and for inventing a new architecture for databases.
Thank you, Kyle Rourke and Todd Beauchene for introducing me to this amazing technology at that tiny meetup in Denver. Know you changed my life!
And finally, thank you Francis Mao for your incredible artwork (above) and especially for my Data Superhero uniform and avatar. The #DataWarrior never looked better!
It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with Snowflake from startup thru hypergrowth to the largest software IPO in history! What a wild and adventurous ride it has been. And I know the team will continue to go far and continue to disrupt the way we manage and get value from data long into the future (I am counting on it…after all I am a shareholder too!).
It’s almost time! The annual Snowflake Summit is just a few weeks away.
Data is everywhere and it holds the keys to unlocking your organization’s success today and in the future. Attend Snowflake Summit and you’ll learn how to use the #DataCloud to unify, analyze, and share data previously out of your reach for more impact than you have ever imagined.
Data Together Now will inspire business and technical leaders, data scientists and engineers, data and analytics professionals, and application developers, to lead their organizations to a data-driven future, today. There is something for everyone in the organization.
You can be a DATA LEADER!
SAVE THE DATE:
AMERICAS: June 8-9 | 9 am PT | 12 pm ET | View Agenda
ASIA PACIFIC: June 9-10 | 10 am AEST | 9 am JST | View Agenda
EMEA AND INDIA: June 9-10 | 9 am BST | 10 am CEST | 1.30 pm IST | View Agenda
On the heels of a very successful #DataCloud Summit, I am pleased to let you all know that Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman is publishing a book that really illuminates the Data Cloud and how we got here.
According to Gartner, the public cloud services market continues to grow, largely due to the data demands of modern applications and workloads. And data is one of the leading factors in this transition. In recent years, organizations have struggled with processing big data, sets of data large enough to overwhelm commercially available computing systems.
For a long time, the only real solution was data warehousing services. These services relied on specialized computer hardware to increase the scale of data processing. But these systems had major drawbacks in terms of their extremely high cost and performance constraints. Increasing scale this way wasn’t feasible for many or even most companies. With demand continuing to explode, the world desperately needed a more democratic solution for big data delivery.
A new book, The Rise of the Data Cloud, looks at how that problem can be solved over a few short years. As the founders of Snowflake came together to design a better big data solution, they built an entirely new class of cloud computing in the process.
I have been an active part of many communities over my 30+ year career. I started out attending The Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group meetings in the late 80’s (yes we had meetups way back then).
Over the years I went from an attendee asking lots of naive, newbie questions to presenting at events, then helping organize events, and then onto the board of directors and eventually becoming president of the group. And I did this with the Oracle Development Tools User Group (ODTUG) as well.
To say I benefited from participating in those, and other, database and data communities, is an understatement.
I benefited not only in my career but also personally.
Career
From a career perspective, I learned a massive amount that I could use in my job. Some very practical tips and tricks to build better systems for my employers and clients. The time spent at user group meetups and conferences more than paid for itself in the value returned. It allowed me to grow in my career to higher level jobs, and better pay.
I also built a HUGE network of contacts that were experts in their field. I was often able to email (or even now tweet) them questions and get immediate answers to solve problems I could not solve on my own, saving my time and therefore money.
Some of those experts were/are my mentors.
Some of those experts helped me find my next gig.
Some of those experts have now followed me to Snowflake and are helping our customers on a daily basis.
I can confidently say that my active participation in these communities led to my role as Chief Technical Evangelist at Snowflake. #LoveMyJob
Personal
I made friends all over the world! Not only did I gain a network of like minded professionals who worked in the same field as I did, many of them became friends. There are a fairly large number of folks that I have been friends with now for several decades (some of you no doubt reading this now!).
That has meant that as I have been traveling the world in my role here at Snowflake (and even before as an independent consultant), I find friendly faces in nearly every city, state, or country I visit. When you are traveling a lot for work, and away from your family, it is nice to be able to grab coffee, lunch, or dinner with someone who has known you for years just to chat about life. In our ever more digitally connected world, face to face is still the best. 🙂
That is the power of a good community!
Data Heroes
At Snowflake, we call our community advocates and leaders, Data Heroes.
Data Heroes are recognized as Snowflake experts. They get the opportunity to meet with Snowflake product and engineering teams, receive early invitations to Snowflake events, and are welcomed to speak about their experiences with Snowflake at user group meetups, conferences, and other online events. As a Data Hero, you’ll help and educate other users by sharing knowledge, tips, and best practices–online and in real life.
You even get your own custom, Data Hero trading card and other cool Snowflake swag!
You can become one of the leaders in the new world of The Data Cloud. You might even become a SuperHero! See how to get started today.
Join us for Group By Data Heroes
This coming week on July 15, 2020, we will have our very first Data Heroes learning event that we call Group By. It is a FREE event hosted by myself and our community team with sessions from our expert Data Heroes and Super Data Heroes.
With an opening session from the Co-Founder of Snowflake, Benoit Dageville, the original #DataHero!
This will be a LIVE, interactive event that you will not want to miss so sign up today to reserve your spot and join the Snowflake Community.
The Data Warrior 
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