The Data Warrior

Changing the world, one data model at a time. How can I help you?

Archive for the tag “User Groups”

03 Jan 2017

Want to Learn Something New in 2017?

Happy New Year everyone!

This is the time of year when we all make plans and set goals for the new year, right?

So what are you going to do different this year? How about grow your career by learning something new?

How?

  1. Read a book on an area of tech you are not so familiar with. Cloud perhaps?  My recommendation, of course, is to check out the new Cloud Data Warehouse for Dummies book I mentioned in my post last month. Or maybe one of my ebooks listed on the blog sidebar?
  2. Attend a webinar. My favorite user group, ODTUG, has a continuous lineup of FREE webinars through out the year. You can see the list and sign up here. (I will be giving one next week!)
  3. Attend a conference or meetup.  As I mentioned in my post on staying current, nothing beats meeting and learning from folks face-to-face.  Plan ahead, budget some time and training money to attend one of the many industry events that happen all year. For some ideas, check out my speaking schedule for 2017 with options around the US.

 

So what will it be? If possible try to do at least one of each – read a book, attend a webinar, go to a meetup!

Make 2017 a great year!

Kent

The Data Warrior

P.S. If you plan to attend any of my in-person talks, please drop me a line to let me know! And be sure to follow me on twitter or check my schedule periodically as I am adding new talks and locations all the time.

Data Warrior LLC

 

Posted in Training and tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment
30 Sep 2016
1 Comment

Top 3 Tips for Staying Current in the Evolving World of Data Warehousing

The world of data warehousing and analytics has changed! With the advent of Big Data, Streaming Data, IoT, and The Cloud, what is a modern data warehousing professional to do? It may seem to be a very different world with different concepts, terms, and techniques. Or is it?

This is a question I ask myself all the time. So how do you keep up?

Here is what I do:

1 – Follow the Leaders

Yes, social media! Mostly, I use Twitter. I follow the industry thought leaders and analysts like Claudia Imhoff, Tamara Dull, Howard Dresner, Philip Russom, Cindi Howson, and many others. Not only do I see what they are thinking (and speaking) about, but I get to see what they are reading.

2 – Meet the Leaders

While reading books and online articles is great, there is nothing that replaces face to face communication. And the best way to do that is attend educational events where they are speaking. These days that could mean everything from local meet-ups, to regional conferences (like RMOUG), vendor roadshows, and larger annual events (like the recent Oracle OpenWorld).

For meet-ups, simply go to https://www.meetup.com/ and sign up (for free). You can search for meet-ups in your local area by topic. You may be surprised how many there are nearby and how often they have event. This is a great way to network with other professional in your local community.

To learn from the industry leaders, look to larger national and international events. In the data warehousing and analytics world that means groups like The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI). They have local chapters and run larger national events on a regular basis (the next one is in October in San Diego). Another group I am associated with is DAMA International which also sponsors local chapters, national and international events.

And of course your vendors and solution providers may run their own events, like the Snowflake Cloud Analytics city tour.

3- Be a Leader

Volunteer! Yes by getting involved with these meet-ups, associations, and user groups, whether locally or nationally, you not only get to give back to the community, but you will often benefit by getting to know and speak with leaders one on one in a less formal environment.

Start off small by helping organize a meeting, or getting the refreshments. Help with the web site or the mail list. If the group you choose runs a conference, help with the paper selection process (you will learn a ton reading the abstracts). And then, when you are ready, become a speaker yourself. There is no better way to learn than to try to teach what you know to someone else.

I have been helping with user group conferences and events for nearly 30 years now and have never regretted a minute of the time spent.

 

So those are my top 3 tips for how you can stay fresh and informed and ahead of the game in this crazy world of data warehousing, big data, and the cloud.

Seems to be working for me.

Keep Learning!

Kent

The Data Warrior

P.S. One of our Snowflake customers, IAC Publishing Labs (owners of Ask.com), won the TDWI Best Practice award for the Emerging Technologies and Methods category and Keith Lavery will be speaking about the project at the TDWI Executive Summit in San Diego on Monday, October 3rd.

P.P.S.  And don’t forget to follow some of the leaders at Snowflake like @bob_muglia and @jonb_snowflake.

 

Posted in Big Data, Data Warehouse, User Groups and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
19 May 2015

Better Data Modeling: 7 Differentiating Characteristics of Data Vault 2.0

Hard to believe that the 2nd Annual World Wide Data Vault Consortium (WWDVC15) is NEXT WEEK in beautiful Stowe Vermont. It promises to be an excellent event. The speakers include myself, Claudia Imhoff, Dan Linstedt (the inventor of Data Vault), Scott Ambler, Roelant Vos, Dirk Lerner and many more. The focus will be DV 2.0, agile data warehousing, big data, NoSQL, virtualization and automation. Check out the agenda here: http://wwdvc.com/schedule/

So in preparation (and to encourage you to attend), I thought it might be good to review some of the important basics about Data Vault 2.0 and why it is an important evolution for the data warehousing community.

The approach started out as the Common Foundational Warehouse Modeling Architecture as it’s official name. Then it was more commonly known as the “Data Vault” and became a modelling method for Data Warehouses. It also had a methodology with implementation guidelines and worked very, very well on relational platforms for many, many years (over 10 years for those who did not know).

But technology evolved. NoSQL architectures came into the picture primarily as sources. The Apache Hadoop platform started offering a cheaper storage and processing MPP architecture.

Data Vault evolved into Data Vault 2.0 and already has many successful implementations. The original Data Vault is now referred to as Data Vault 1.0 (or DV 1.0) and it primarily has a modelling focus. DV 2.0 on the other hand changes some things, and adds a LOT.

Data Vault 2.0 has the following 7 differing characteristics:

1. DV 2.0 is a complete system of Business Intelligence. It talks about everything from concept to delivery. While DV 1.0 had a major focus on modelling and many of the modelling concepts are similar, DV 2.0 goes a step further and talks about data from source to business user facing constructs with guidelines for implementation, agile, virtualization and more.

2. DV 2.0 can adapt to changes better than pretty much ANY other data warehouse architecture or framework. It can do it even better than DV 1.0 because of the change in design to adapt to NoSQL and MPP platforms, if needed. DV 2.0 has successfully been implemented on MPP RDBMS platforms like Teradata as well (ask Dan for details).

3. DV 2.0 is both “big data” and “NoSQL” ready. In fact, there are implementations where data is sourced in real-time from NoSQL databases with phenomenal success stories. One of these was presented at the WWDVC 2014 where an organization saved lots of money by using this architecture.

A near real-time case study for absorbing data from MongoDB is being presented at WWDVC2015. It’s not to be missed.

4. DV 2.0 takes advantage of MPP style platforms and is designed with MPP in mind. While DV 1.0 also did this to an extent, DV 2.0 takes it to a completely other level with a zero-dependency type architecture. Of course, there are a few caveats you will need to learn.

5. DV 2.0 lets you easily tie structured and multi-structured data together (logically) where you can join data across environments easily. This particular aspect lets you build your Data Warehouse on multiple platforms while using the most appropriate storage platform to the particular data set. It lets you build a truly distributed Data Warehouse.

6. DV 2.0 has a greater focus on agility with principles of Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) embedded in the architecture and approach. Again, being agile was certainly possible with DV 1.0, but it wasn’t a part of the methodology. DV 2.0 is not just “agile ready”, it’s completely agile.

7. DV 2.0 has a very strong focus on both automation and virtualization as much as possible. There are already a couple of automation tools in the market that have the Dan’s approval (just ask). Some of them will be at WWDVC15.

It’s real-time ready, cloud ready, NoSQL ready and big data friendly. And practitioners have already had success in all these areas (on real projects not just in the lab).

And, as you’ll notice on the agenda, the focus at WWDVC15 will be Data Vault 2.0 with examples of sourcing it from MongoDB, with examples of virtualization (from me!), with examples of design mods (also one from me), with examples of Hadoop implementations and more. It’s not something you want to miss, and there’s hardly any time or seats left.

If you are coming, I look forward to seeing you and chatting about the world of DW/BI and agile. If you want to attend, grab one of the last seats over at http://wwdvc.com/#tile_registration  (if there are still seats left by the time you get this message).

See you soon!

Kent

The Data Warrior

P.S. After the conference, the next place you’ll hear about DV 2.0 is in Berlin. There is a bootcamp and certification starting on 16th June at Berlin, Germany. The details are here: http://www.doerffler.com/en/data-vault-training/data-vault-2-0-boot-camp-and-certification-berlin/

Posted in BBBT, Big Data, Data Modeling, Data Vault, Data Warehouse and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
26 Jan 2014
1 Comment

Better Data Modeling: The Oracle Data Warrior Speaks!

Looks like I will be doing a bit of speaking this year at a number of  events around the country, and later on, the globe (more on that later).

As usually all my talks will center around using SQL Developer Data Modeler, data modeling standards, Data Vault, agile, or a combination of all of the above.

If you have budget and time, please come out to at least one of these events this year, I would love to meet you in person and talk about the world of Oracle and Data Modeling.

If you aren’t planning to attend one of these – WHY NOT?

These are all great events with tons of learning opportunities. The networking alone is worth the price of admission.

Here is a list of the first three events confirmed on my calendar (and SURPRISE – they are NOT all Oracle related events):

RMOUG Training Days

In less than two weeks: The Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group Training Days 2014 in Denver, Colorado. This runs from Feb 5-7 , will have at least 1,000 people and you cannot beat the price.I will be presenting Friday at 1:30PM on how I save my clients big $$ by applying repeatable processes and standards to my data models.

Follow it on twitter with #RMTD14.

Data Vault Consortium

Next up March 20 – 22nd , I will be participating in the 1st ever World Wide Data Vault Consortium and User Group meetup in beautiful northern Vermont near the home of my good friend, the inventor of the The Data Vault Model and Methodology, Dan Linstedt. I will be speaking about agile and data warehousing, using SDDM to do Data Vault modeling, and no doubt engaging in some lively debates with Data Vault experts from around the globe. Check out the agenda on the event page for more details on who will be speaking (hint: Bill Inmon, father of  data warehousing is participating!).

Enterprise Data World 2014

The #EDW14 event is really the annual conference put on by DAMA International and the speaker list is a veritable who’s-who of the data architecture and modeling world. This year the event is in Austin, Texas on April 27 – May 1. Since that is quite close to where I live, I figured I would submit an abstract and I was honored to be accepted. I have attended this event only once before when it was in Denver (a long time ago!) and have been a member of DAMA on and off for years, but this is the first time I have been asked to speak. I am looking forward to it for sure (not sure how I will fit my talk into a 45 minute slot!). Sign up for it here.

If you are planning to attend any of these, drop me a line over Twitter or LinkedIn so we can plan to meet up.

Later.

Kent

The Oracle Data Warrior

Posted in Data Modeling, Data Vault, Data Warehouse, Oracle, SQL Developer Data Modeler, User Groups and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
14 Oct 2012

Hurry – Only 24 Hours Left to Get a Free Conference Registration

As I have written before, I love Oracle User Groups.

My two most favorite groups are the Oracle Development Tools User Group (ODTUG) and the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group (RMOUG).

These two groups put on what are arguably the best annual conferences for users of Oracle technology – by users, for users.

Over the past 20+ years I have attended most of their events – and NEVER paid a registration fee.

This was very helpful when my boss said there was no money for training. I just said “I get in free”.

So would you like to attend one of these events for FREE?

All you have to do is submit an abstract to present a session. If you get selected, your registration fee is waived. This is worth over $1000.

But you have to hurry, the deadline for submission is Monday October 15th, 2012.

Details:

RMOUG Training Days is  February 11-13, 2013 in Denver, Colorado. (Right in the middle of ski season!)

Go here to submit an abstract.

ODTUG’s KScope event will be June 23-27th in wonderful New Orleans.

Go here to submit an abstract.

I have submitted multiple abstracts to both events.

So what are you waiting for – go submit now!

See you in Denver and New Orleans in 2013.

Kent

P.S. My Kindle ebook  started out as a user group presentation. No telling what you might do with your presentation.

Posted in ODTUG, Oracle, User Groups and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Post Navigation

← Older Entries
%d bloggers like this: