A bit of belated news but thanks to all the advocacy work we have been doing at Scribd_ I am now a Databricks Beacon. The Beacon program is similar to Docker Captains, Microsoft MVPs, or Java Champions, a group of folks who are considered both skilled with the technology and in communicating/sharing best practices, tips, and short-comings with the broader community.
From the site itself:
The Databricks Beacons program is our way to thank and recognize the community members, data scientists, data engineers, developers and open source enthusiasts who go above and beyond to uplift the data and AI community.
Whether they are speaking at conferences, leading workshops, teaching, mentoring, blogging, writing books, creating tutorials, offering support in forums or organizing meetups, they inspire others and encourage knowledge sharing – all while helping to solve tough data problems.
I’m flattered to be included in the inaugural group of Beacons, which include a number of much more competent data leaders than myself. Most of what I bring to the table is a lot of Delta Lake experience and advocacy. Delta Lake is the bedrock of Scribd’s data platform and I have been investing heavily in the space with our contribution of the delta-rs Rust bindings, upon which kafka-delta-ingest was built.
Scribd is a Databricks customer, and from that angle I have been quite impressed with the organization and technologies they have built. As some folks who have seen my public talks about Databricks, I also don’t hold back in my honest assessment of the platform’s strengths and weaknesses, thus my surprise to be included as a Beacon ;)
I’m looking forward to more events where I am able to share some of the real-world experiences we’re gaining at Scribd in building out massive data platform systems with Delta Lake and Databricks. And as always, if you want to help us build out more feel free to email me!