Benn Stancil, cofounder and CTO at Mode, returns to The Analytics Engineering Podcast to discuss the evolution of the term "modern data stack" and its value today. Tristan wrote on this idea for The Analytics Engineering Roundup in Is the Modern Data Stack Still a Useful Idea? For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

Most analysts don’t become analysts to build dashboards. We don’t become analysts to do data pulls, or clean up messy data, or put together pitch decks. We become analysts to do impactful, strategic analysis. This is our calling; it’s the most valuable work that we do; and it’s why we put up with the rest of our job—for that afternoon with nothing but a big question, a clear calendar, and a trajectory-changing aha moment buried somewhere in our well-prepped datasets.

But the rapid rise of analytics engineering should make us question all of this. Is strategic analysis actually the holy grail of analytics? Is it the most valuable thing we could do? Is it even what we want to do?

In chasing this ambition, Benn Stancil (Mode) thinks we’ve lost sight of something even more important—and potentially, more interesting: Designing operational models. These frameworks, which are a natural extension of the semantic models built by analytics engineers, are often more valuable than any dashboard, any dataset, or any deep dive analysis.

In his talk, Benn will share what these models are, why they’re valuable, and why, in our eternal quest to both quantify our value and to find work we love, they could prove to be our holy grail we’ve always been looking for.

Check the slides here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1lOH6Sb8DQnnlmZkYOlqqHgQeXKkUEQCm_LOxsjBRJlM/edit?usp=sharing

Coalesce 2023 is coming! Register for free at https://coalesce.getdbt.com/.

A debate has erupted on data Twitter and data Substack - should the modern data stack remain unbundled, or should it consolidate? In this conversation, Benn Stancil (Mode), David Jayatillake (Avora) and our host Tristan Handy try to make some sense of this debate, and play with various future scenarios for the modern data stack.  For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

In this talk, former podcast guest Benn Stancil walks through what he believe the next evolution of the modern data stack should look like - and more importantly, how those who use it should experience it. Register to catch the rest of Coalesce, the Analytics Engineering Conference, at https://coalesce.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is brought to you by dbt Labs.

Benn is Chief Analytics Officer and a Co-founder at Mode Analytics, but you may know him from his Substack newsletter (benn.substack.com), where each Friday he dives into a semi-controversial topic (recent examples: "Is BI Dead?" and "BI is Dead").  In this episode, Benn, Tristan & Julia finally hash out some of these debates IRL: what is the modern data stack, why is the metrics layer important, and what's the point of all of this? For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.