I love to teach. I post about #dataengineering and #mentalhealth daily. 

Many years of data engineering experience doing growth analytics at Facebook, security infrastructure at Netflix, and pricing and availability infrastructure at Airbnb. 

You can find me by looking up EcZachly on all social networks 

Join my Data Learning Platform https://www.dataexpert.io

Zach Wilson

Databricks is going to win “data” the same way that Meta won “social media” 

They are uniquely positioned because of the convergence of a few trends:

- the death of the data analyst
We are moving away from analytical architectures and towards action-oriented architectures. Instead of “the data engineer does ETL so analysts can look at it” it will be “the data engineer creates context for AI agents to do something” Actions will reduce timelines and speed up business velocity. Humans will no longer be the analytical bottleneck. 

- the crushing of data siloes 
Open table formats like delta and iceberg will make business able to do things that were previously though impossible! We’ll finally have all the context for our AI in one place. Entire business context + Agents = a waterfall of business value! 


I’m launching a paid Databricks boot camp on February 9th. Send me a DM with the word Databricks and I’ll get you the details!

Founder @ DataExpert.io | ADHD | 500k+ followers | Angel Investor

No alternative text description for this image

The first speaker lineup for the analytics engineering boot camp is going to be so amazing! 

These sessions are what truly separates my boot camp from “just another data course”

Data modeling is far from dead! It’s actually more relevant than ever. 

There’s been an interesting shift in the seas with AI. Some people saying we don’t need to do facts and dimensions anymore. This is a wild take because product analytics don’t suddenly disappear because LLM has arrived.

It seems like to me that multi-modal LLM is bringing together the three types of data:

- structured

- semi-structured

- unstructured

Dimensional modeling is still very relevant but will need to be augmented to include semi-structured outputs from the parsing of text and image data.

The necessity for complex types like VARIANT and STRUCT seems to be rising. Which is increasing the need for data modeling not decreasing it.

It feels like some company leaders now believe you can just point an LLM at a Kafka queue and have a perfect data warehouse which is still SO far from the actual reality of where data engineering sits today

Am I missing something or is the hype train just really loud right now?

I'm doing a live with Karan Dwivedi to talk about a cybersecurity boot camp that is launching on January 9th! 

This boot camp has an amazing capstone project where you do all of these on a company server!
- threat modeling
- detection engineering
- preventative controls 

Don't miss this webinar tomorrow!

January 9th Cybersecurity Boot Camp Webinar

Chief Engineer, Co-founder at VAST-OSINT, Author

With more than twenty years of IT and security experience, I am proficient in a very wide spectrum of programming languages, databases, operating systems, and data analysis techniques. I am a hybrid software developer, data engineer, data analyst, and security practitioner.

Certifications: CISSP, Security+, Network+

Education: Bachelor's and Master's in Information Systems Management

Data Science Stack: Python, Pandas, Matplotlib, Seaborn, Scikit-learn (Also familiar with R, but prefer Python stack)
Big Data Tech: Hadoop/HDFS(Cloudera, Hortonworks, MapR), Kafka, Spark, Storm, Impala, Drill, Hive
Programming Languages: Python, R, C#, C++, C, Bash, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Pig, Java, VBA
Databases: SQL Server, MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Sybase, HBase, MongoDB, VoltDB, fluent in SQL

Equally comfortable in Linux and Windows server environments.

Project Management, Hadoop, Cloudera, Hortonworks, Storm, Kafka, Hive, Pig, Impala, Drill, HBase, OLTP, OLAP, SSIS, ETL, AWS RDS, Cassandra, Microsoft Azure, SQL Server 2012/2008/2005, Oracle 10g/11g, MySQL, PostgreSQL, T-SQL, database design, Matplotlib, scikit-learn, pandas, seaborn, PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby, C#, C++, C, VBA, Centos, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL, FreeBSD, chef, puppet, ansible, docker, configuration management, index configuration, stored procedure development, application development, Microsoft Project, risk analysis, risk management, disaster recovery, business continuity planning, systems architecture, project management, high availability techniques (failover clustering and replication), backup and recover,  penetration testing, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, security awareness training development, Metasploit exploitation, security architecture, risk analysis, risk management, disaster recovery, business continuity planning, systems architecture, project management, high availability technologies (failover clustering and replication), backup and recovery.

David Knickerbocker

I think I read this for the first time in 2017 or so, but I don’t even know exactly anymore. This is the book that captivated me with regards to Network Science and Graph Theory.

I could not put this down. It led me to mapping out production dataflows around the world, getting pulled onto an AI research team, detecting ransomware and identifying other unknown malware, creating three companies, building reliable realtime AI interfaces w temporal graphrag attached to “living systems”, and I’m just getting started. 

Pretty important book. 

So, now, in 2026, I bought a brand new copy and am reading it again. 

And it is even better than the first time, because I have done many of the things he has described, like mapping out the internet. I used his ideas and work as inspiration and went builder mode, back around 2019, which is why I build differently. 

I love this book. You should read it. 

#100daysofnetworks

Realtime AI, Founder and Intelligence Architect, Author#100daysofnetworks

There is something just so relaxing about practicing and improvisating w fingerpicking. I’ve used guitar picks for 31 years, but about two years ago I started working on independence from them as I like the flexibility and creativity that fingerpicking unlocks. 

I’m working at it. I started at punk rock and Radiohead at age fifteen, not classically trained. I’ve enjoyed taking inspiration from a lot of different techniques and genres, not just one. Work in progress. In ten years this will be solid. 

This song is “Sway as We Kiss” from the video game Elder Scrolls Online. I’m not trying to cover it, just playing in the chord progressions.  

This Gibson Hummingbird is ridiculous. It sounds good no matter if I am playing in bed while on reading breaks, or anywhere. 12/10, do recommend. 

Thought it’d be fun to take a “Saturday reading under blankets and also playing guitar every now and then” video. 😁

What a sweet kitty. I woke up a few hours ago, but my ears are ringing. It’s hard to remember to rest, sometimes, and I am always gogogo!!! with graph and data work. 

Eddie just walked in the room, walked up to me, and put his arm on me like a hug. Then he laid down for a nap. 🥰

I built GrooveSeeker’s GraphRAG last night and it is really cool. I’m gonna play w it and write about it soon.

First users are using the Living Library of Knowledge and I am LOVING the feedback. 

Everything is very exciting.

I have a phrase from some science fiction that I was working on: “return to the song”.

I’ve hit my milestones. My jira is clear. Things are built. I’m returning to baseline, to the song. Hard to describe, it’s more of a feeling. 

Return to the Song.

Eddie is helping me. He is so heavy. I guess I live on this bed, now. Haha

Weirdly warm sunny day. I will take it. ❤️

Good day to play outside.

This was a very nice guitar weekend. It was nice to stop thinking about all the crazy stuff I do and just play music. Thanks for being enthusiastic on my music posts. It's nice to feel like a human and have a weekend. These last two weekends were my first two "real" weekends (the last two weeks) since about August, so it's been nice to finally rest. I have just been go-go-go trying to build something that will help people.

I'm building a different future. I've been pretty open about that. I don't follow crowds, I build differently. If you like the sound of that, please message me.

I'm still in guitar mode right now, enjoying my weekend. But this week, I would love to meet other founders and people who are like me. I am a people-first kind of person, not chasing big fish. Please say hi if this resonates with you. I am an introvert, attempting to do my part, right here.

I am not rushing to find people who will pay for this. I am going at the right speed, finding my crew and people I can help.

This is really cool to explore. Just exploring the Living Library of Knowledge's primary database. I'm always going to love this graph stuff. I'm not zoomed in on the activity, but this is stuff happening across the United States. There is a lot that happens in a single day.

Just sharing screenshots. They give perspective into the amount of stuff actually happening all the time. We often only hear about a few things. With Verdant Intelligence, information leads to awareness. Your AIs will be empowered to be able to answer about what is happening in the world, as it happens.

This is also a valuable tool for research, and database access is available. Please message me if this sounds useful to you. Platform access is already beginning to open up.

I don't see a whole lot of difference.

2005 Blogs: Build a website in ten minutes using Ruby on Rails!

2026 Blogs: Build a website in ten minutes using Agentic AI!

Any tool that you can build reliably with is useful. The reliability bit is on you, anyway, not on the tool. I have been happy to meet non-techies who have been thrilled with the new ability of being able to build things. Their goal wasn't to write code.

Insight: they apparently understand building better than a lot of coders.

Coding is not everyone's goal. Coding is NEVER my goal, and I don't use vibe tools. Building a reliable thing is most people's real goal. Even the code will eventually fade away, someday.

Was having a conversation with a friend. One-upmanship is an eternal thing in this industry. It has been a thing for as long as the www has been a thing, from what I can remember. Worthless thing.

I remember at the www2005 conference in Japan meeting a guy who mentioned to me that his grandmother was using Ruby on Rails to build things she wanted. Legendary.

Builders build.

Just playing around w the guitar. 

For the longest time, I did not ever want to sing. I decided as a kid that I did not like singing, and I turned that idea off two years ago. 

So, for about 25 years, I played guitar but never sang. So I kinda developed a way of playing that makes my guitar do the singing for me. 

But it’s just stuff I picked up from listening to a lot of folk music and many genres. 

No big story. Just sharing. Now I’m opening up to singing. There’s a song behind this, rooted in world history.

Feel like I have always been Verdant Intelligence

Hi everyone. I wrote a new article. This is my only spontaneous article in the series, so far! I had to write it! This was awesome to remember and to write. 

This is a story about how eight years ago I had an idea to convert the Book of Genesis from the Bible (or any ancient text for that matter) into a graph that could be explored. This graph completely changed my life. Please have a read. This could change your life.

https://lnkd.in/gvnzgMGS

Day 65 of #100daysofnetworks

Open article: Day 65 of #100daysofnetworks by 100daysofnetworks.substack.com

I love Packt and I always will. 

Lately, I have been very busy building my own company and platform. I have been a bit tired and kinda burnt out, but I persist. 

So, when Packt mentioned this book to me, I was happy, relieved. I learned OOP back around 2004, and it is so nice to just come back home, so to speak, and read a book such as this. 

I’ll have more to say as I get through the reading. Cool book, and absolutely practical. 

Returning to foundations is one of my favorite feelings. 

Check it out. Looks like it is 20% off right now, too. Lucky, accidental timing! 

https://a.co/d/3RPp8L4

BREAKING NEWS

Marijn Markus rules. Haha.

AI Lead | Managing Data Scientist | Public Speaker

☝️ Since I did not receive the Best Person of the Year award, despite being a very good person, I no longer see it as my duty to do anything nice for anyone!

I’m at 899 subscribers! 

Who will be lucky number 900?!

Thank you everyone. This is growing so fast. Feels like we just hit 800.

Open article: 100 Days of Networks | David Knickerbocker | Substack by open.substack.com

100 Days of Networks | David Knickerbocker | Substack

I just want to say thank you very much to the readers of my blog. I just saw the nicest subscriber message, and my heart is very full. Thank you very much. 

I love doing this writing, because it is a very important topic. I like to share important information with people. People can be uplifted by learning new things that empower them. It can be very beneficial to learn useful skills.

In 2016, I personally used Graphs and Network Science in my Data Operations work. I didn't come from the Social Sciences, or academia. I come from the world of fixing important servers and databases... I come from the world of being on calls at 3am and needing to fix the thing so it doesn't break anymore.

In 2018, I realized that Graph and Natural Language Processing belong together, and I wrote about it on the last article on my blog, about the Genesis Graph, my origin story. In 2018, I was using Graph and Natural Language Processing together for things such as malware detection, and other cybersecurity things.

In 2021, three years later, I was so frustrated by people still not getting that Graph and Natural Language Processing go together that I gave up every weekend for a year and a half and I wrote a 400 page book about the importance of Graph and Natural Language Processing together. It's pretty much a love letter to Graph and NLP. <3

In 2026, people have realized that Graph and Natural Language Processing are very useful together, and GraphRAG is useful in building reliable AI. I have three, and they are very useful. Reliable AI is a very nice thing! On my blog, I show you how to build them from scratch!

I hope you enjoy the writing. If you read it and learn from it, you will be ahead and able to build reliable things. I really love the friendships that have come from this series and across my Graph Life. I've met so many wonderful people and have had so many amazing adventures.

I will probably never stop writing this series. This is already the second iteration, and the first one went past 100. This is an innovation forge.

#100daysofnetworks

Influence networks are always so interesting. It's one thing to say something, but narrative and information is carried by more than sources. To understand anything, you need to understand first how information itself is constructed.

#100daysofnetworks Verdant Intelligence

Hello everyone,

#100daysofnetworks just blew past 900 subscribers and is flying towards 1000! Incredible...

This is crazy. In 2021, I set off to write a book about not-super-popular topic, Network Science. 

I didn't want to write another popular machine learning book and make more money. There were already a lot of those. I would just be more noise. I wanted to uplift the industry, give it some new tools and ways to understand the world.

So, I wrote a book about Network Science with Python, and after three years, it is STILL 4.9/5.0 on Amazon, which is just crazy, because I was so afraid that everyone was going to hate it.

And then I made this weird blog where I talked about things like ecosystems, temporal network analysis, reverse boycott playback, living systems, bursts, artificial life.... what a weird blog.

And yet! 900 and climbing fast!

And through it, I am meeting people who I will collaborate and partner with to build a better future.

Unbelievable. The blog is paying enough to support the Artificial Life Research database, COMPLETELY. I am just incredibly thankful to you.

I have been quiet lately. Just focused. I can share cool screenshots, but you've seen them. I'll share more, soon. The Living Library of Knowledge is a thing, people see it, and people are now using it.

Related, please reach out to me if you would like to build a better future. I meet good people through this blog and through my writing. I am already shy. If you are shy too, we may never meet. I wrote this, to try to be outgoing. :D

#100daysofnetworks

Hi everybody. I've made some nice improvements to #100daysofnetworks

You can always access it at https://lnkd.in/gEAKZMGe (lol thanks LinkedIn, that's memorable)

I wanted to give the website a better look and make it a bit more usable as a resource. 

So, if you scroll down, you will not only see recent articles, you will see the most popular articles, the top articles.

I typically recommend starting at the start, but after the latest article, you should start there, and then go to day 1 and read my book. The latest article is a very good reset.

I love this series. I can't imagine ever stopping. It will go beyond 100, for sure. That is a legacy name I came up with in 2020, I think. It doesn't fit anymore, but I'm keeping it.

I can tell when the universe wants me to write a new article. My subscriber count flatlines, and I can almost hear, “We are waiting.” 😁

Hehe. 

I know, I know. Soon…

There are already 63 articles to read and learn from! Enjoy!

Here is my most recent! https://lnkd.in/gnKrMiYz

Completely successful weekend.

1. Chapter One of Graph: Zero to Hero has been written

2. The Living Library of Knowledge is opening up and people have begun using it

3. GrooveSeeker's GraphRAG interface will be built soon

Have a read, and please send me a message if you would like some free stickers! These are limited. :)

Open article: Day 64 of #100daysofnetowrks by 100daysofnetworks.substack.com

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David Knickerbocker

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Zach Wilson's LinkedIn Performance

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