Future Data Conference Review
⏱ Estimated read time — 12 min
The Future Data Conference, which I happened to participate in, took place on September 8–9. And in today’s post, I’d like to share my observations about thoughts about presented ideas. Before we get started, I apologize for the poor quality of some images, I tried to make the most meaningful screens straight from the video.
Featured Keynote: Automating Analysis
Speaker: Pat Hanrahan
The report was presented by the Stanford Professor and Tableau Co-Founder and mostly touched the use of AI and analytics. Pat discussed where we are now, today’s AI use cases, although the report alone was kind of repetitive, the Q&A part turned out to be interesting.
The Modern Data Stack: Past, Present, and Future
Speaker: Tristan Handy
The main builder of dbt and author of the well-known post serving as a guide to data analytics for startup founders spoke about changes in modern data-stack from 2012 to 2020. Personally, I think it was one of the best conference reports since Tristan made predictions about growing tendencies and the future of data-stack.
Making Enterprise Data Timelier and More Reliable with Lakehouse Technology
Speaker: Matei Zaharia
This report belongs to the CTO of DataBricks. Unfortunately, the audio part had sound issues, but Matei considered the problems of modern Data Lake, promoting a new technology of DataBricks — DeltaLake. The report was more promotional but still interesting to listen to.
How to Close the Analytic Divide
Speaker: Alan Jacobson
The Chief Data Officer of Alteryx went on about the Data Scientist job and wages statistics, citing that the average salary of a data scientist is significantly higher than others in this field. By the way, our recent research with Roman Bunin also confirms this. Alan discussed the revenue of companies at different stages of analytical growth. Companies with more advanced analytical approaches grow faster (surprising fact). A separate part was focused on changes in modern approaches to working with data. Overall, it’s a great report that was easy to listen to.
Hot Analytics — Handle with Care
Speaker: Gian Merlino
The Co-Founder and CTO of Impy compared hot & cold data (a clue to
Snowflake?). Then he demonstrated some BI tool with drag-n-drop in a simple interface. Gian went on talking about possible analytic architectures and overviewed some features of Apache Druid.
