Data Driven

Frank is at the Strata NYC conference today working the Microsoft booth. Stop by and say hello!

In this Data Point, Frank talks about his new found respect for the R language.

In this DataPoint, Frank reflects on how useful DataBricks is in a data warehousing environment. That and the importance of coffee after a red eye flight.

This week Frank is on vacation with his family in the North Carolina mountains where gem mining is a popular activity. Ever the data geek, he notes the similarities between data mining and gem mining.

In this episode, Frank and Andy answer some your questions! Show notes coming soon!

In this episode of Data Driven, Frank and Andy catch up with Brent Ozar and have a laugh or two at Silverlight’s expense, NoLock, and playing country music backwards. Links Sponsor: Audible.com – Get a free audio book when you sign up for a free trial! Notable Quotes Season 3 opened with John Lee Dumas aka JLD ([01:30]) Data Soup Summit ([02:00]) Introducting Brent Ozar ([05:00]) “Get out there!” – Brent Ozar ([08:30]) Data work pays better. ([13:45]) Brent started in hotel management ([15:00]) Data is the new oil… but we should avoid spills. ([16:15]) “The job is getting harder, not easier.” ([18:30]) The “Aha” moment and ER analogy. ([21:30]) Brent’s quote voice… ([22:00]) Brent’s “Bad News Doctor” voice ([22:45]) Andy throws NoLock under the bus. Brent helps. ([23:12]) On shrinking databases… ([24:30]) NoSQL ([26:30]) Name-drop: Buck Woody ([28:30]) Name-drop: Scott Hanselman ([29:00]) Ballerina Princess ([32:20]) Brent likes to travel. ([34:45]) “No one comes to me for a good time…” ([36:20]) The data is the choke-point. Again. ([38:30]) On Google Glass ([39:45]) On Past Brent… ([41:00]) Name-drop: Brian Kelley ([41:30]) “We’re published. It’s a license to spell.” ([42:10]) Book Reference: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom ([43:45]) Social Radar ([44:45]) Regarding iTunes… ([45:00]) Brent is into restaurants. ([46:45]) Andy’s Brent Story… ([48:15]) Brent is here to help. ([50:00]) On paying it forward… ([51:30]) “This looks like an engineer built it” is not a compliment. ([52:30]) Learn more about Brent at BrentOzar.com ([53:00]) A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine ([54:30]) Every Tool’s a Hammer by Adam Savage (@donttrythis)([55:30]) Titan by Ron Chernow ([58:40]) Regarding Midgely… ([1:00:00]) Brent’s Epic Life Quest ([1:02:00]) WordPress Plugins I Use to Sell Training Classes ([1:02:30]) Frank’s New Year starts 1 Nov. ([1:03:15]) Sometimes life resembles a country music song… ([1:04:00]) Frank wrote a book about Silverlight. ([1:05:15]) One day there will be a country song about a self-driving pickup leaving… ([1:06:10])   Transcript (Experimental) The following transcript was automatically generated with AI. Hello and Welcome to data driven the podcast where we explore the emerging field of data science. We bring the best minds in data software engineering machine learning and artificial intelligence now hear your hosts Frank Lavigna and Andy Leonard. Hello and welcome back to data driven the podcasts are we explore the emerging field. Some data science machine learning and artificial intelligence. If you’d like to think of data as the new oil and you can consider us Car Talk because we focus on where the rubber meets Virtual Road and with me as ever on this epic road trip down the information superhighway. Can I fill us up with more data cliches Andy is emulated? How you doing? I’m doing great Frank? How are you? I’m doing alright? I’m doing alright so you had a birthday last week? Thank you yes? Yes, I made another trip around the sun. Yeah, yeah, you know statistics show that the more birthdays. You have the longer you live that you know, I wonder. Though if it’s one of those false. Corollary’s just just not sure is that false positive. I don’t know. I think it’s a useless correlation. I was looking for how describing the same thing just in different terms. That’s true. We’ve sound smart when we throw these words around. I need all the help I can get sound in smaller. I’m just saying so last week. We had the jihadis show kicking off season 3. Let’s see 02 of season 3 and. We’ve had a lot of good feedback with that JLD himself actually treated the. The. The episode. Lydia Oh wow, I was super excited with to hear that. We also announced speaking of super excited. I’m doing a play on super we announced the data Soup Summit and so that’s a virtual summit that were put together data soupsummit.com if I’m correct and coming up in. We’re recording this on the 29th of July 2019 and it’s coming up in just under 16 days interesting concept. Now we’re having people record their sessions an it’s for a couple reasons. One is it’s the middle of the night in some of the places where the authors live so the presenters will be probably be asleep when we’re playing their recording, but we’re setting up forms and stuff like that, for questions and we’re just trying something new, and differentso.com. And if you sign up before August 5th. Then you will get a discount if you use 70% discount if you use the code data driven? And beyond that, you’ll get a 50% discount because we love our list. We absolutely do. They’re the greatest listers of our podcast ever? I would say totally totally speaking of funny correlation? Or redundant correlations, maybe that’s that’s the phrase, We’re looking for but I think one of the one of the key advantages here people like well? Why are you doing a virtual summit one we can kind of recruit talent from around the world and we can do it now as opposed to some distant point in future when if we do hit the Lotto or whatever. Well, you now we talked about this. A little bit. Indiana first show last week when we did organizing it was a lot of that was coordinating when people were available and. And that sort of stuff and you’re competing nowadays in you know against all of these other events that are out there in the calendar. Just keeps growing with all of these events that people want to attend that we can have folks record their session. We can play it back and then jump in the middle and do commentary and what have you and then we can actually compile those recordings and people can at a later date sign up and listen to the recording so there’s a lot to like about this. I think it solves a couple of particularly nasty organizational problems. And I love it and I love our guest if you go today to seesummit.com you can see the people that are speaking in this first one. There always is in my opinion, so looking forward to doing more of these we haven’t talked about our future plans for these much. But we’re going to talk about those after we get through with this one that’s right. We want to get the first one. The result and kind of see how it goes. We are using somebody elses software as a solution platform? Which. It’s always easier to find the flaws and somebody else is software, it necessary. It’s almost like that’s a universal pattern of humanity. I don’t know splinters and planks and all that. But with that. Let’s get onto our guest ’cause. I hear he’s a pretty awesome guy. I’ve heard his name come up quite a bit with the work. You’ve done and some other places always in respectful tones just. With that out, there just engaged. I’ll send you send you that dollar by PayPal. Later, you work with them more closely want you do the intro Andy. Well, I’m not totally wing. This introduction our guest today from sunny San Diego. California is Brent Ozar and I consider Brenda Friend. No matter what he says about Maine. We met actually we met on Twitter and I want to say it was 2007. Something like that, and around 2008 or 9. I landed in Seattle for a pass summit aunt, we did. I think I actually used my phone it may be the first week. I sent on my phone had said you know, I’m at the airport is anybody want to share a ride or something like that, and Brett comes back and says. Hey, I gotta car. I’ll come get back. We pick me up and we rode from the Seatac downtown Seattle. How to great conversation. If I remember right you will find this ironic people who follow both their blogs. These days at the time. Brent was just getting started with this blog and he was actually picking my brain for ideas. That’s ironic now ’cause Brent is he’s a master of marketing through and Anna Master or Microsoft. Certified Master SQL DBA. He was an MVP I think you stepped away from the Microsoft MVP program. Yeah. I did that and then I jump back in so but great guy brentozar.com. ZAR is those are if you don’t know who Brent is he’s he’s very popular in our community. Great Speaker One and in Japan, too great. Great speaker, handsome fella helper of folks with database problems walk with the shell. Brett I gotta cut us where you really get into trouble and so we’re going to regret. Well, thank thank God it is totally a pleasure to hear thanks guys. It’s funny hearing that big long winded introduction. I’m like OK now seriously. There are people who are important and worthy of that. I am not well. You’ve got engineers to season. I tell people that all the time is same way. It’s like we think the stuff we know is worth very little and stuff. Others know that we don’t know well. That’s like millions and it’s just a hard thing, but you have done an awful lot you sold out. Pass Summit Pre Conference sessions, yet and presented all over the world. The marketing is not to be not to be besmirched. That’s that’s really important an I am I cannot snatch the Pebble from your hands. I did might I think when I talk to so many people about what you’re going to do for your career and what your long term perspectives look like the thing I can’t say enough to people is that you already know enough technically you have enough technical knowledge to get the job done for a long time in your career. It’s that not enough. Other people know you know that more people. No need to know what you know you need to get out there on the blogs social media whatever in order to say. Here’s the stuff that good at but Frank about here are the areas where I don’t have expertise yet. But if you want to pay me, I’ll go learn those things. But these are the little areas where I presented expertise on and if you want to save time you can hire me and avoid the same burn marks that I’ve got. Yeah, absolutely I think that’s that’s the marketing pieces. What makes careers so much more stronger. The difference between y’all sitting out there on the other side of the podcast those of you who are hearing. The difference that it’s going to make to get on to the other side of the microphone to become podcast guests to start sharing your knowledge, a user groups. That’s when your career really hits the gas it’s bananas. Now that’s absolutely true, I can speak from personal experience is that the more you share the more you get and you know it’s just we’ve gotten a lot of we put a lot into the podcast. But I think we’ve got a lot more out of it, then we put in its especially so important. In this day and age where tools are changing continuously techniques are changing continuously and it’s so easy to sit on the sidelines and go well. Everything I’m learning is just via googling. That same as everybody else out here, we’re all learning this stuff and building the tools as fast as we can. Is that all you have to do is jump in take the plunge and start giving back to people all the sudden, it just makes a huge difference. Absolutely and people shouldn’t think that you know just because somebody’s else is already doing it that they shouldn’t try it themselves. Because you’re going to bring your own unique voice right so one of the things that I’d like to point out is that? Podcasting’s been around since at least 20042 thousand 5. Yeah, there’s a number of podcasters that have started you know as recently as 23 years ago and I’ve had enormous success. You know if you look at John Lee Dumas right like I forget what he makes like 100 thousand dollars a month or something like that. On this podcast or whatever and he only started in 2012. This is not there is not so much, saying such thing as being kind of too late for this. It’s just like musicians or poets or artists or anything like well. Why would I write a love song in the year 2019. Everybody’s already covered love extensively. You know it’s it’s all about what you bring to it, and how you can bring things to life that sooner. There’s going to be somebody who’s waiting to hear the way you’re going to bring it to life. That’s going to be different. Now we are not by any means, saying that you should go start podcasting about love, but you know in terms of data or development or anything like that. The market is wide freaking open get out there and share what you know, so, so true. And you’ve encouraged a lot of people through your blog Brent to begin blogging you’ve gone beyond that, at times. You’ve I remember your week of starting a blog. I still send people to that series and it was written years ago, but it’s still relevant and it’s just really good advice. Thanks, it’s tough for us his data people too because I like I’m so for background on me. I got started in development when into systems administration, then gradually segued into database administrator. When you’re a data person and you’re looking at like website. Analytics of the people who are reading. You and it’s 0000 for 6 months that disheartening but you just remember sooner or later. You’re going to help people in those numbers are going to start becoming larger. It’s just like starting a company or anything else starting your career. The numbers were tiny when you started your career in the beginning, you’re like, Oh my God. Can’t believe I’m actually getting paid to do this and then generally overtime. Later, it starts. It’s not just about numbers. It’s also I think it’s just the weirdest things like I would write about how to do HTTP posts like screen scraping and you WP apps and then somebody would come up to me like I read your post. It was awesome. I’m like OK like wow. So somebody other than my mom read it. If you always took my thumb. I thought initially when people would start saying there is. Like why didn’t you leave a comment? Why did he tell me what ’cause

In the post-Amazon economy, all brick and mortar retailers are struggling. Some have outright failed and others on the brink. However, there are a few outliers that refuse to go down without a fight and are actually innovating. In this DataPoint, Frank notes one that has actually turned physical location to its advantage by helping Amazon process returns!

As we begin season 3 of Data Driven, Frank and Andy wanted to bring it back to the guy who inspired the entire show: John Lee Dumas. Although not yet quite a household name, JLD as he’s known to his fans, is the host of Entrepreneurs on Fire, an award winning podcast where he interviews inspiring Entrepreneurs who are truly ON FIRE. With over 2000 episodes, 1 million + listens a month, and seven-figures of annual revenue, JLD is just getting started. Not to stop there, the Data Driven dynamic duo want to bring the heat and turn up the tech intensity levels to 11 with a virtual summit that covers everything data from soup to nuts. To that end, we are launching the Data Soup Virtual Summit. And are souper excited to give Data Driven Listeners a Discount (70% until Aug 5, 2019; 50% afterwards). Back in the day – Richmond .Net Users Group, now Azure Richmond, and Richmond SQL Server Users Group. Rick and Morty Tech Intensity John Lee Dumas! Entrepreneurs on Fire Age of the Entrepreneur movie Think and Grow Rich movie Pat Flynn – Smart Passive Income Love this: “What gets measured gets managed.” – Peter Drucker EOFire.com “Data is either part of your business plan or part of your going-out-of-business plan.” – Frank Announcing Data Soup Summit – a new virtual summit! Featuring: Reza Rad, author of Pro Power BI Architecture Nick Harris Cathrine Wilhelmsen, co-author of The Biml Book Tim McAliley Dr. Leila Etaati, author of Machine Learning with Microsoft Technologies Register before 15 Aug 2019 and save! 365 Data Science – our first Data Soup Summit sponsor! We are honored to announce 365 Data Science is sponsoring Data Soup Summit! The Dunkin Donuts *DataPoint* raw footage from the DataDriven Facebook page.   Transcript (Experimental) The following transcript was automatically generated with AI. Hello and Welcome to data driven the podcast where we explore the emerging field of data science. We bring the best minds in data software engineering machine learning and artificial intelligence now hear your hosts Frank Lavigna and Andy Leonard. Hello and welcome back to data driven the podcast where we explore the emerging fields of data science machine learning and artificial intelligence is you like to think of data as the new oil then you can consider a scar talk ’cause. We focus on where the rubber meets the road and on with me on this epic road trip. Down the information superhighway as he has been from day one. Season one episode, one episode zero actually we started zero. I take your room with me is Andy Leonard, whose has gone from data engineer to chief data engineer to you had another really data philosopher that’s what it was yeah, started with data philosopher back in today right which is very cool by the way well. I appreciate that Frank it kind of went with the beard and back then. I had the unbreaded version of the beard. And so you know, I still call myself so go ahead go ahead. Now, because I still call myself a date a philosopher at DILM Suite, which is kind of like an offshoot of Edna. They consulting company. I kept the title enterprise DNA for those not in the know not Edna like Dame Edna thanks. Yes, not the insurance company but enterprise data and analytics and. Yeah, we are I work there Frank works at Microsoft. Yep, which wasn’t the case during the whole podcast journey actually. Uh I had been riffed for Microsoft ’cause. They basically said move to Seattle or else and I rejoined. But 18 months ago. Awesome has it been that long wow well April so. Yeah, well still fit OK 15 months, he was 89 since the job opportunity was like first presented to me. Right right so it’s been an interesting it’s been interesting journey. I’m now they changed our titles for this upcoming fiscal year. Microsoft fiscal year goes from July 1st to June 30th. I am now a cloud solution architect. Congratulations. I. I like that title better because it’s easier to explain it party. My cloud solution architect oh OK, it’s cloud its architect. Where before I was a technology solutions professional which? Requires a bit of a follow-up sentence or 2 well it’s vague. Yeah, it is vague so. It’s nice to have something that is. Yeah, it’s funny ’cause throughout my tenure at Microsoft. I’ve always had those kind of weird hard to explain titles like evangelist. Right you right straight folks like you and gathered 99% of our listeners. We get we know what Evangel says right writing, but to normal people. They don’t necessarily like what like televangelists right like like religious religious right? That’s not quite like that, Well, you weren’t although some would argue maybe it is. Well II know you’ve always had a passion for community for those who don’t know that I don’t know that we’ve ever told the back story Frank. Back story you and I when we first met it was, it was November of 2005. I know that and I remember that because the netrichmond.net users group was just getting going or getting re going. I’m not sure. We’d kind of so when I moved to Richmond from New Jersey I had. Wanted to restart the group, yeah, and by the time November happened. We had a pretty good momentum going on. I think you were there when we were at our temporary location and we ended up taking up 2 conference rooms, which was about twice the size of the group that we expected. Wow, Yeah. And I was talking about starting up a Richmond SQL Group. And EDU Dot E. Who was the developer evangelist for the area at the time suggested I meet you? Very cold and I think I told you like yeah, just sent him on by you know, I’ll be here so. And he did an II popped in an gosh who was I’m trying to remember the guys name. It was be. I think it was from New Jersey. I want to scale Castro. It was Miguel Yes, and I didn’t come down. Yeah, that was a fantastic presentation. I had no idea who he was at the time. Uh. But he is an awesome presenter, He really is as very smart guy, very impressive. Just just all around and we also I distinctly remember meeting Nick Harris at that meeting as well. Oh really yeah. Yeah, so we were all just we were all kind of Newish to the Richmond area. I was born in Richmond. But I had lived in Jacksonville, Florida for the previous 3 and a half years. Anne I wish I’d gotten into community. Now there I really didn’t know much about the technical community. Although I lived in the area. You know in the Richmond metropolitan area. You know before I moved down to Florida, but It was it was very interesting an? You know, I kind of caught the bug and I think you and I were both at a spot in our lives where we had a little bit of extra time and we were both very passionate about this whole idea of community so we dove in. Now absolutely and it’s funny, you mentioned Miguel because Miguel and andem sack. I think at the time. He was known as Don XML, where the guys that got me interested in community when I lived in New Jersey. Cool, so cool, so which actually I think leads us to kind of our next topic. One of our themes if you will, for the year. ’cause now there were 3 seasons in 22 and a half years, maybe? Yeah, yeah in this season was a bit delayed, but it’s not been delayed as long as of Rick and Morty season, so count your blessings sitting at Barlow. I love Rick and Morty so much love to harm and I forgot. The other guys name, but anyway, so one of the things I think we want to want to kick off on is. 2 things one is inspiration like what inspired us like you know what? What inspired us to get into data. What can we do to inspire others. It’s kind of pay it forward. You know like what inspired us to get into this? What inspired us to stay in this and how can we pass that onto our listeners. I think that’s really? I think that’s what gets us up in a day and keeps up late at night. And uh absolutely and then the other side of that. The other topic that I think bleeds into it is kind of takes into account our profession is tech intense it. Right and tech intensity is one of those newfangled terms that if you watch the inspire keynote. Last week and internally we’ve been using that a lot tech intensity, which is basically. Helping shit helping spread the knowledge of Technology, too. More people like basically turning up our technology skills just turning it up A notch. Actually, maybe we don’t like these other things that we’re seeing but whatever it is that there were passionate about positively or negatively. We share that exactly we just exactly it’s kind of like a correlation measurement right like if it’s the closer. It is to zero. There’s no correlation. But the closer. It is to -1, +1, there’s either negative correlation or a positive correlation? How’s that for geeking out? I like that. That’s got data science written all over it. It’s almost like it’s a podcast or not data science, which you do want so I think really the key here is and what’s really cool is over the past. Over the past 6 months. We both have had challenges you know in terms of deaths in the family. My wife was half, collage, she’s OK now that’s really what kind of is delayed the season from coming out, but also was part of that I managed to as part of my job is go and. Go through an actually. How people come up to me when I’m presenting at a customer site like how? Yeah, I love to show you know like tell Andy I said hi. You know it, yeah, yeah that happens to me with cool. It’s like you know it’s not just my mom listening. You know, and it’s not like AI. Bots that I program. I don’t actually have that, but it’s actually something. Wait people are listening to and we’re appreciate that we really appreciate that is so true. Well then II’ll just I’ll say ’cause now I know Frank. You said all of this up so I’m not stealing anybody’s Thunder hear Frank did all the work once again. Frank did all the work. But we have 4 season 3 for this kickoff. We have a really cool. Guest all of our guests have been cool. I’ve said this before they are awesome. But this guest is a little higher visibility and some circles that maybe not. Our other guests have been as high visibility in an that’s. That’s a big tease. I’m gonna do. Frank I’m gonna let you take it from there and waited. This inspiration theme. I want to share with you all with our listeners. The guy who inspired me to podcast. His name is John Lee Dumas, he runs a podcast called entrepreneur on fire. It’s an award winning podcast where he interviews. Inspiring entrepreneurs, who are and his words on fire. An he has over 2000 episodes. If anyone posts more content on the Internet than me. It’s probably him 1,000,000 plus listeners a month, 7 figures from his podcast of annual revenue. He’s known to his fans, is just JLD. And he’s just getting started. He’s he’s doing a lot of great stuff, he’s actually been in 2 movies. Documentaries not like Avengers or anything like that, but that is 2 more documentaries that I’ve been in. So you know much props to him and he’s been continual source of inspiration. You can better shut off my Alexa because soon as I start talking about her. She will start playing it. But if he actually has a flash briefing on Amazon Alexa. So if you want to do it. You could just ask play entrepreneur on fire right. He is a genius. He is a veteran you served our country in Iraq. He is awesome, because he he’s just very inspirational. He has a program called Podcasters Paradise, which we kind of talked about. A lot in terms of the training that I did. We always mentioned the training. The Frank dude? Absolutely, you kind of help get the podcast going? Yeah, this guy sounds pretty cool who were talking about oh it’s some gardening. John Lee Dumas. So Alexa Alexa always puts on like a little bit of a French twist on it. Like John Lee Dumas that is the roots. That’s where the fam comes from also another French Canadian, the call. Yes, danger danger danger Andy I’m outnumbered. It’s all good. It’s all good welcome Mr. Dumass. Thank you for inviting me. I’m looking forward to hanging out with. You too, for a little while so Welcome to the show. For those that don’t know. He just mentioned that you were in 2 documentaries one of which I just got the email about today. Do you want to talk about that age of the entrepreneur it was a documentary that features 24 pretty successful entrepreneurs and I mean, this team put in the work I mean, they actually flew down 2. Puerto Rico with a full team with the full video crew. We recorded all day I mean, it was a definite production. It was a couple of years ago, the filming. I mean, this takes a long time for these higher production movies to kind of obviously make the? Progress from conception to reality and it was really cool to see it come out and to sit down to watch it and to see people like Les Brown Russell Brunson T Harv Ecker Jenna Cucheron, just a ton of other successful entrepreneurs be apart of it and think it’s really going to move the needle for some people awesome. I was excited just watching the trailer cool well. I can drop a quick link for people to ask is it still free to watch it won’t be forever, but EOfire.com slash. Video you can go watch the whole movie for free and will be sure to put that into show notes and the next item was you were also I think it was the think and grow rich documentary. Yes, that also was a super highly produced movie that was actually the highest produce. I’ve ever been. I mean, they brought in real characters real scenes were shot. You know they would go back in time. And I mean that was some cinematography at hours in Preston. I just remember I was watching it. ’cause I think it’s like Amazon Prime or something like that. And I’m watching and I’m like and you show up. I’m like holy crap holy crap? Yeah, we wanna things that I think really inspired was kind of talked a lot about this in a number of places about what got...

In this DataPoint, Andy teases some details on Data Driven Season 3, which is set to launch Tuesday, July 23rd along with another special project that we’ve been working on.

Recently, Amazon announced that it will spend $700 Million (USD) to retrain its employees. Why are they doing this? Simple: automation. They know that a displaced workforce would be bad political mojo at a time when the giant is facing increasing calls for regulation, even potential anti-trust action. Anti-trust laws in the US were made largely in reaction to the Standard Oil Company and its founder John D. Rockefeller. In this DataPoint, Frank notes how Jeff Bezos just may be the Rockefeller of our day.