Reflecting on 2023: Celebrating GetInData’s Achievements in Data & AI

Let’s take a little step back to 2023 to summarize and celebrate our achievements. Last year was focused on knowledge-sharing actions and joining Xebia. Take a look at what we have done!

• We've joined Xebia, marking a major milestone and a new chapter in our journey. Given the rarity of such situations, we aim to contribute to the community Xebia Group. Read more about it here.
• We started a new comedy format called Clueless Computing with Samantha System. Want to take a look at the Data world in a nutshell? Then this one's for you and comes highly recommended.
• We published 49 blog posts about Big Data, ML/AI, streaming, the cloud, the modern data platform, events and more.
• We shared content on Machine Learning, GenAI/LLMs, Cloud and Data Streaming across our social media platforms. Our promotions included events and conferences, and we consistently posted Tech Facts featuring updates from the Big Data realm. Lastly, we provided sample content showcasing life at GetInData. Find us here.
• Both initiatives, the Radio Data podcast and Data Pill are over a year old. Join and create a data community with us. 
• We started a webinar series called Lunch DaIT's. Once a month during our lunch break, we focus on one hot and relevant topic like GenAI, MLOps, Data Strategy, or Building Data-Driven Company - this webinar series is dedicated to any company which would like to start their data transformation journey. 
• We organized 2 Big Data conferences in Poland - the Big Data Technology Warsaw 2023 and the Data Mass Gdańsk Summit 2023, also taking part in Big Data conferences around the world.
• Guilds are a place to bridge the gap between our Labs team and other projects by giving input, sharing solutions and discussing lessons learned. Some of these themes are:
• • MLOps
  • Advanced Analytics
  • Data Engineering
  • DevOps

Let’s dive into our achievements now!

Contributions

Throughout  2023 we presented many solutions in the creation of which our big data experts participated, such as:

• Marcin Zabłocki & Mariusz Strzelecki with their Kedro SageMaker Plugin.
• Maciej Pietrzykowski, Dominik Gniewek-Węgrzyn, Jakub Igla, Mariusz Wojakowski and Piotr Mossakowski wrote the Snowflake User Terraform Module.
• A contribution to the Snowflake Terraform provider was made by Dominik Gniewek-Węgrzyn.
• Piotr Sierkin had a hand in the Airbyte Platform.

Also, Marcin Zabłocki became a member of the Technical Steering Committee at Kedro and Maciej Obuchowski, who has recently become an Apache Airflow committer.

Blog posts

In 2023 we posted even more. You can find 49 published blog posts about data, streaming, machine learning, AI and more here. The top 5 most read blogs are as follows:

• Run your first, private Large Language Model (LLM) on Google Cloud Platform written by Michał Bryś
• Deploy open source LLM in your private cluster with Hugging Face and GKE Autopilot written by Marcin Zabłocki
• dbt run real-time analytics on Apache Flink. Announcing the dbt-flink-adapter! written by Krzysztof Zarzycki, Grzegorz Liter and Michał Soszko
• The 7 Most Popular Feature Stores In 2023 written by Jakub Jurczak 
• What are Graph Neural Networks and why should you consider using them in your Recommendation System? written by Michał Stawikowski

LLMs were a hot topic in 2023, we obviously touched on it a lot.

• How to use LLMs for data enrichment in BigQuery? by Piotr Pilis
• Combining Kedro and Streamlit to build a simple LLM-based Reading Assistant by Piotr Chaberski
• How to build an e-commerce shopping assistant (chatbot) with LLMs by Michał Madej
• Run your first, private Large Language Model (LLM) on Google Cloud Platform by Michał Bryś
• Finding your way through the Large Language Models Hype by Piotr Chaberski

Customer Stories

We also shared our success stories of working with clients:

• How the GID Modern Data Platform’s good practices help us address Intelligent Health data analytics needs in 6 weeks? by Marek Jędraszewski
• From concept to production in 2 months: sales forecasting Machine Learning model for dema.ai by Michał Madej
• Revolutionizing Daily Analytics: Machine Learning for an Unusual Approach to Anomaly Detection. The Truecaller Story by Kornel Skałkowski

And if you want to dive into our hobby let’s read a blog written by Adam Gościcki

Heroes 3: Office Wars - How to build real company culture

We also share our content on Medium. Join us here. 

Webinars and Videos

Last year we started two new webinar series, the first of them called Building a Data-Driven Company. Our latest meetings were:

• Upgrade your Scaleup from using Spreadsheets to Data Platform
• Data Strategy In The World Of Multiple AI Innovations 'almost' Every Week
• Which Analytics Tool Should You Use Or Not Use in 2024?

If you want to watch the recordings, fill in the form here. You will get access to previous events.

Another one, Lunch DaIT’s had its two sessions already titled:

• Generative AI: How to Get The Most For Your Business From The Latest AI Revolution
• Data & AI Strategy in Practice: A Patch to Becoming an AI-Driven Organization

If you want to join the next one and get access to the two last sessions, do it here: Lunch DAIT's #3 - Real-Time Data to Drive Business Growth and Innovation in 2024

Our YouTube channel has grown a lot! We had over 30% of organic growth in channel subscribers. Marcin Zabłocki took control over the MLOps topic. Check out our videos:

• Run machine learning pipelines on ❄ Snowflake using Kedro 🔧 
• Kedro + PyTorch
• Kedro + AWS SageMaker
• MLOps Q&A

Last, but not least, our Marketing Team started a brand new format to make Data understandable for everyone (even for them…;)) called Clueless Computing. Thanks to Sylwia we shared 4 episodes on our YouTube channel and we are not going to stop there!

Check out the Clueless Computing playlist here.

Radio DaTa Podcast

Radio DaTa just hit one year, we have had guests from different companies and touched on a lot of topics, including:

• Varun Bhatnagar (Swedbank) - MLOps in the Cloud at Swedbank - Enterprise Analytics Platform
• Yetunde Dada & Ivan Danov (QuantumBlack) - Kedro - introduction, benefits, use-cases, data & insights used for its development
• Jonas Björk (Acast) - Data & analytics at Acast, AI & trends in the podcasting industry
• Jakub Janicki (Commerzbank AG) - Data, analytics and AI in banking industry
• Kacper Łodzikowski (Pearson) - Data and AI in learning and education

The top listened-to episodes were:

• Adrian Dembek, Piotr Menclewicz (GetInData | Part of Xebia) - Data-driven, data literacy issue, regression-based forecasting model for e-commerce. Two stories on how data-driven approach helped solve different business problems
• Michał Rudko (GetInData | Part of Xebia)  - Data Management, Data Governance, Data Quality, Data Discovery and Observability. How could you and your organization get involved in this topic?

Data Pill Newsletter

DATA Pill has developed a lot this year. If you don’t know what it is, allow me to explain it to you. It is a weekly newsletter sent out every Friday morning with an overview of the best Big Data, Cloud, ML and AI content. 

Up to now we have released 89 DATA Pills. We run it in two forms: as a traditional newsletter and a newsletter on LinkedIn (on Adam Kawa’s profile). 

Last year we reached 2100 people, 300 on our mailing list and another 1900 on Linkedin.

You can read all previous DATA Pill editions and sign up here.

White Papers

In 2023, we released two white papers, one of which is fully dedicated to  recommendation systems. In this guide, you can find the details of recommendation systems, offering insights into measuring their performance and business value, understanding how they work, presenting a Four-Stage Recommender System example and guiding you in developing your recommendation system using QuickStart ML Blueprints.

Download this White Paper here.

The second White Paper focuses on data management and explores data observability, discovery and governance. It answers crucial questions such as the necessity of Data Management, where to begin, tool selection, the adoption process and critical success indicators. It outlines how we can assist with your Data Management needs.

Download this White Paper here.

Our Big Data Experts at conferences and meetups

Last year we organized two conferences: the Big Data Tech Warsaw Summit and DataMass Gdańsk Summit.

The 9th edition of the Big Data Technology Warsaw Summit was both on-site and online. There we had the pleasure of presenting:

• Column-level lineage is coming to the rescue - Paweł Leszczyński, Maciej Obuchowski
• Data Platform - A new stack that promotes self-service with best DataOps practices - Michał Rudko
• The story of the MLOps platform that makes you productive, everywhere! - Marcin Zabłocki

and delivered training:

• Build reliable data pipelines using Modern Data Stack in the cloud by Michał Soszko i Andrzej Swatowski
• Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) by Michał Bryś i Marcin Zabłocki
• Real-time Streaming Analytics using Apache Flink by Anna Naroska

If you weren't there you can still read the review of presentations which will help you to decide to join us this year in April 2024! The 10th anniversary edition of the BTW conference is upon us and you simply can't  miss it. Tickets are now on sale, with the code getindata10 10% discount.

At the DataMass Gdańsk Summit, Marek Wiewiórka gave his presentation:

Data Science meets engineering - the story of the MLOps platform that makes you productive, everywhere!

We have also organised workshops: 

• Build reliable data pipelines using the Modern Data Stack in the cloud by Michał Soszko and Andrzej Swatowski
• Generative AI on the Google Cloud Platform (MLOps) by Michał Bryś and Marek Wiewiórka

That's not all! Our experts had the pleasure of performing in other interesting Big Data Events, such as:

• Maciej Obuchowski had the pleasure of attending the Airflow Summit 2023 and London Airflow Meetup and giving his presentation called OpenLineage in Airflow: A Comprehensive Guide.
• Flink Forward 2023 was an opportunity for Krzysztof Zarzycki to present his Building a Scalable SQL-Based Streaming Analytics Platform with Apache Flink, Kafka and dbt presentation.
• At the Data Science Summit, Paweł Leszczyński gave a presentation about Cross-platform data lineage.

Internal Knowledge Sharing

We continue to share our knowledge internally as well through Lunch & Learn sessions, Guild meetings and in our Labs. Lunch & Learn sessions exist as a forum for our experts to impart their knowledge within GetInData | Part of Xebia. This internal initiative remains paramount, fostering collaboration and learning. In each online meeting, a specialist or team delivers a presentation, providing a platform for the group to engage with inquiries and share experiences in the respective domain.

Some of the previous meetings subjects in 2023 were:

• GetInData as a code
• Midjourney - why artificial intelligence isn’t so smart yet. 

Guilds are a community of people who are passionate about the same topic. Anyone from GetInData can join a guild via slack and presence is voluntary. 

We have 5 Guilds working:

• MLOps
• DevOps
• Streaming (Real Time Data Processing)
• Data Engineering
• Advanced Analytics

Within GetInData | Part of Xebia, we house Labs dedicated to researching and generating inventive solutions. The primary mission of Labs is to advance our business and nurture our personnel, fortifying our leadership position through innovation.

We currently have 5 work streams:

• DataOps Labs
• ML/MLOps Labs
• DevOps/Developer Labs
• Streaming Analytics Labs
• Advanced Analytics Labs

Plans for 2024

Rest assured, we have many fresh ideas to present and plans to enhance existing ones throughout 2024. We eagerly anticipate forthcoming experiences, opportunities and avenues to share knowledge with all of you.

Stay up to date with us and follow our channels: Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, newsletter, and do not hesitate to subscribe to our channel on Youtube.