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Blog July dbt Community update

July dbt Community update

Kathryn Chubb

Aug 01, 2024

Community

Welcome to the dbt Community Update, a monthly blog about everything happening in the dbt Community. This month we hosted an AMA with our founder and CEO Tristan Handy. We also presented the Summer 2024 dbt Community Spotlight, had 11 in-person dbt Meetups, and facilitated a ton of great discussions on our Slack channel. Are you ready for the recap? Let’s get started.

Community Slack AMA

Each month we host a live Ask Me Anything event. This month, Tristan Handy, Founder & CEO of dbt Labs, hosted the AMA. He discussed the future of analytics engineering, the impact of AI, and the evolving role of dbt Labs in the data transformation space. Here’s a recap if you missed it. You can also check out the full video recording.

The future of analytics and AI integration

Tristan dived into how AI is expected to play a bigger role in analytics, but he was clear that AI isn’t going to replace us anytime soon. He said, “I believe that the Semantic Layer is an interactive governed analytic experience. As long as the flow is large language model to Semantic Layer to data, you can trust that the data you're getting back out is correct.” In other words, AI can help us work smarter, but it’s still up to us to make the big decisions. He also talked about how AI could be a game-changer in sorting through hypotheses, helping us zero in on the most promising ones. “What I would love is not just something that could help me move faster, but that could evaluate a hundred different hypotheses and say, here are the five that I think you should probably spend your time looking into,” he added.

The growth and evolution of dbt Labs

Tristan gave us a behind-the-scenes look at how dbt Labs has evolved from a small side project to a powerhouse in the data transformation world. Today, dbt Labs is used by over 25,000 companies, including big names like JetBlue and HubSpot. Tristan shared, “dbt Labs started out as an organization building a project on the side, it was open-sourced. And then there were so many people that used it. They were like, we literally cannot pay for enough software engineers to work on this thing to support all these users.” This overwhelming demand led them to create a commercial business to keep up with the growth and continue investing in the open-source community. His vision is clear: make dbt Labs profitable so they can keep pouring resources into the project and the community.

Embracing competition

With the rise of new competitors in the data transformation space, dbt Labs remains focused on maintaining its position as the standard tool in the modern data stack. He explained, “There have been a lot of competing takes on dbt over the past eight years since we've been building this thing. We're incredibly mindful of when new approaches to data transformation come out, being analytical about what they bring that's advantageous over dbt." It’s all about continuously improving their tools and investing in the dbt community to ensure they remain the go-to solution in the industry.

Additional insights

Tristan also highlighted some interesting trends during the session. One of them is the growing number of people within organizations who are getting involved in the dbt workflow, which is pretty exciting. Additionally, there’s been a noticeable increase in demand for Power BI integration among customers, reflecting the changing needs of the industry. As Tristan put it, “I think that customers do want to buy fewer things. And they want those things to integrate together.” This sentiment captures the importance of seamless integration in today’s data-driven world.

Get ready for another AMA in August

Join us for the next AMA on August 28th at 5pm EDT with Joel Labes, a Senior Developer Experience Advocate on the DX team. We’ll be tackling topics such as starting a data team and dbt project from scratch, exploring the new compare changes functionality in dbt Cloud, and more. Register now to get the link to watch live and join the #dbt-community-merge channel in Slack to participate in the conversation!

Summer 2024 dbt Community Spotlight

Every quarter, we highlight community members in the dbt Community Spotlight. These are individuals who have gone above and beyond to contribute to the community in a variety of ways. We're excited to present the Summer 2024 dbt Community Spotlight!

This round, we are featuring Meagan Palmer, Mikko Sulonen, and Radovan Baćović. Visit the Community Spotlight page to learn about their backgrounds, their plans to grow as leaders, and their experiences—both learning from others and sharing their own knowledge.

Meagan Palmer

Mikko Sulonen

Radovan Baćović

If you’re interested in being selected for future rounds of the Community Spotlight, learn more about becoming a contributor.

July dbt Meetups

In July we had 11 dbt Meetups: Tokyo, Ho Chi Minh City, Taipei, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Boston, Seoul, Lagos, London, Dallas, and Dubai.

The dbt Meetup in our San Francisco office was part of a new Community Event Series, dbt Labs on dbt. Two dbt Labs employees, Lauren Benezra, a senior analytics engineer, and Paige Berry, a senior data analyst, discussed how they use dbt to collaborate. They talked about how dbt Cloud has changed their workflow, the game-changing features they can't live without, and how they use dbt Mesh to streamline complex projects. They also shared their tips for debugging data issues and why they believe in the power of collaboration and self-service in data teams. Check out the blog to see the full discussion.

The July 4th dbt Labs on dbt Meetup took place in Tokyo. Andrew Escay, a Lead Analytics Engineer at dbt Labs tuned it remotely. Shinya Takimoto hosted a live audience from the dbt Community in Tokyo at DATUM STUDIO. They met to stream the presentation, ask questions, and mingle and network with each other.

Community announcements

We’ll wrap up this month's update with some of the exciting announcements that are regularly posted in our #announcements channel on Slack.

The dbt Mesh course has been released

You’ll learn how to boost data product reliability and development speed, at any scale, without sacrificing governance. This is a great chance to learn more about multi-project enablement and model governance features like model contracts, model versions, groups, and access modifiers. The course takes approximately 2.5 hours to complete. Take the free course now.

Upcoming events

Upcoming dbt Meetups

We’ve got a busy couple of months coming up with 8 in-person dbt Meetups scheduled. If you’re looking for opportunities to learn with fellow members of the dbt Community, and have fun while doing so, join us at one of the sessions listed below:

There are so many exciting things going on in the dbt Community, and we can’t wait to see you all there. If you haven’t yet, join the community today.

Last modified on: Aug 27, 2024

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