June dbt Community update

Welcome to the dbt Community Update, a monthly blog about everything happening in the dbt Community! This month we hosted an AMA on BI reporting and the semantic layer, had 13 in-person Meetups, and facilitated a ton of great discussions on our Slack channel. Are you ready for the recap? Let’s get started.

dbt Community Slack AMA

Each month we host a live Ask Me Anything event. This month, Alex Welch and Roxi Dahlke hosted the AMA and discussed BI reporting and the semantic layer. Here’s a recap if you missed it. You can also check out the full video recording.

Understanding the concept

The conversation started with Alex and Roxi sharing their optimism about pushing the envelope in the BI space. Their excitement was rooted in the increasing inclusion of non-technical users into the analytical fold, thanks to the emergence of the semantic layer. This development fuels various use cases, leading far beyond traditional BI, and making it an interesting paradigm shift to witness.

They also made an interesting comparison - the metrics store is to the semantic layer what a chapter is to a book. Imagine the semantic layer as a broad abstraction of all data objects, including their relationships, while a metrics store zooms into the metrics in particular. Alex added a dash of machine learning parlance – metrics akin to features, with semantics bringing a higher level of business context.

Building and maintaining semantic layers

Building a semantic layer isn't just a technical endeavor – it's a dance between business and data teams, discussing and translating objectives into data. By weaving in YAML configurations for metrics definition, dbt Labs encourages these sometimes tricky but vital conversations. But an essential challenge Alex and Roxi raised was the difficulty of maintaining consistency. Tooling concerns surfaced here, as they warned us against outdated and fragmented documentation in specific tools.

Navigating BI Tools

Speaking of tools, there's a lesson or two to learn from some personal anecdotes. Alex reminded attendees to remain skeptical of BI tools and their promises, pointing out the risks of data sprawl and contradictory figures. Roxi shared a harrowing experience of misdelivering metrics and the lesson it carries.

A journey of data literacy

Both speakers raved about the journey of enhancing data literacy in dbt Labs, celebrating the contributions from even non-data teams. This highlighted their focus on community, encouraging a culture of testing, using, and providing feedback on their products.

Doing semantic right

Making the semantic layer work depends heavily on understanding the subtleties between the metrics layer and the semantic layer. Also, tools like dbt Cloud are crucial for maintaining visibility into your metrics. They also touched on the additional possibilities of the data modeling layer in providing a comprehensive perspective on data.

Keeping up with industry developments

Both Alex and Roxi shared their tactics for maintaining relevance with industry trends, ranging from webinars and blogs to interactions with industry professionals. Both emphasized the importance of continuous learning in an ever-changing field like data management.

Forward-looking insights

Among the final interesting points from the session was Alex’s belief that BI platforms would become more personalized with AI interfaces, providing contextualized insights. Roxi foresaw AI helping users discover new data within BI tools. Last but not least, they discussed the implementation of dbt Cloud on teams or Enterprises. Their advice is to start small, with vital metrics, and gradually build it.

Get ready for another AMA in July

Join us for next month’s AMA on July 30th at 3pm EST with special guest Tristan Handy, Founder & CEO of dbt Labs. Register now to get the link to watch live and join the #dbt-community-merge channel in Slack to participate in the conversation!

June dbt Meetups

In June we had 13 Meetups in nine countries: Washington DC, Oslo, Belgium, Medellín, Chicago, Atlanta, Taipei, Barcelona, Tokyo, Sāo Paulo, Halifax, Bogotá, and Madrid. We also ran a new Community Event Series, dbt Labs on dbt, in Philadelphia and Dublin at our offices.

We were especially excited to bring back the São Paulo dbt Meetup after a little over a year of not having one. On June 24th, over 70 attendees gathered and presented on the following topics:

• How to optimize dbt-core setup in VS Code
• Migrating a pipeline with more than 1,000 tables to the modern data stack with dbt
• From code to insight: The power of dbt Artifacts in the data-driven culture

You can see photos from the meetups below, including São Paulo (organized by Bruno Souza de Lima and Thales Donizet), Barcelona (organized by Infinite Lambda,), Belgium (organized by Sam Debruyn at the dataroots offices), and Medellín (organized by Factored).

dbt 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.

dbt swag shop

To celebrate Pride Month, we released a pride drop on the dbt swag shop. Check out the exclusive designs here: shop.getdbt.com

Upcoming events

• July 30th - Register for our next Community AMA featuring Tristan Handy, Founder & CEO of dbt Labs
• Ongoing Cloud Demo with Experts in North America, EMEA, and APAC-friendly times
• October 7-10th, 2024, Coalesce, by dbt Labs in Las Vegas and Online
• Add dbt Events to your calendar!

July dbt Meetups

We’ve got a busy month coming up with 6 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:

• 🇯🇵 Tokyo | Thursday, July 4th, organized by dbt Labs, Shinya Takimoto, and DATUM STUDIO Co. Ltd. This event will be available to watch online. It will be in English with live Japanese translation.
• 🇻🇳 Ho Chi Minh City | Saturday, July 6th, organized by Joon Solutions and Infinite Lambda
• 🇹🇼 Taipei | Thursday, July 11th, organized by community members Karen Hsieh, Laurence Chen, and Allen Wang
• 🇺🇸 San Francisco | Monday, July 15th, organized by dbt Labs
• 🇺🇸 Minneapolis | Tuesday, July 16th, organized by Improving
• 🇺🇸 Boston | Wednesday, July 17th, organized by Cleartelligence

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.