Data Mesh Radio (Podcast) is Here!

A podcast dedicated to exploring topics important to data mesh

TL;DR: Data Mesh Radio is a new podcast here to dive into topics crucial to data mesh. I (Scott Hirleman) will be interviewing lots of guests about across a wide variety of topics to collect their data mesh insights for you in one place. It is me “learning out loud” about data mesh and related topics. Search for Data Mesh Radio on podcast apps or grab the RSS feed here. The very ugly website (I hope to fix soon) is here if you prefer to listen on web.

As you listen, please provide feedback - including what topics to cover or guests to have - here. Or if you might want to be a guest, see the guest FAQ here and fill out this form here. Guests from minoritized/underrepresented groups are especially welcome! As always, you can grab time with me (totally free) here. Vote on future topics to cover at r/datamesh on Reddit including the first deep dive selection here.

If you like the podcast, please do subscribe and rate in your podcast app - the apps use ratings as the most important metric for showing a podcast to new people.

The longer version

Howdy folks, Scott Hirleman here. I founded the Data Mesh Learning Community to make learning about data mesh easier. And it has grown into an awesome and thriving community thanks to the work and curiosity of awesome community people like you! I couldn’t have dreamed of growing in less than a year to 5K+ newsletter subscribers, almost 5K Slack members, 1.4K meetup members, 1.7K LinkedIn followers, etc. You are part of a huge and important movement!

One thing I have struggled with is sharing my context with the community. I am not a writer. Just doing the newsletter caused me dread every two weeks (massive thanks to Andrew Padilla for taking it over and making it so much better than I ever could! He’s awesome, seriously, reach out to him). And I don’t update the DML website near enough.

So while I have LOTS of great conversations and consume the fantastic content about data mesh, unless someone asks a specific question, it has been hard for me to share what I am learning. And I don’t like to just post about things in the Slack and be the main voice, I prefer to be there to respond. So what can I do that would share what I am learning? And can I provide a low friction way for others to share their insights too?

Many of the conversations I have had were really eye-opening. But they were happening in private. I want to open up what I am learning to a broader audience to let people know they aren’t alone in their questions and also to give people that don’t have access to my awesome guests the ability to learn from them.

Hence: podcast. I have been muddling the idea of a podcast for a while and I finally decided to push for it. You might actually see a few more podcasts from me in the near future too… (TWIL in Data will hopefully launch in full by mid Feb). So far, it has been a blast. 9 real episodes (teaser and call to action don’t count) and looking like I will do ~3-4 episodes a week. But don’t worry if that sounds like a lot, each episode has a brief trailer section so you can decide if it will be useful to you.

Something I had been considering re data podcasts was how often I would get 30min in and realize the topic was just not that useful for me. George Trujillo, Jr. suggested I do a BLUF or bottom line upfront, for each episode. That way, I provide some key learnings and a bit about what we will cover. So if you only have ~5min, you can get the high-level and go. My goal is to be helpful to the community so by summing things up like this, some people may not listen to full episodes and that is totally okay! I’d rather you only listen to ones that are useful to you specifically, especially if it is 3+ hours of content a week. You have my explicit permission to skip some episodes!

Overall, I want this podcast to serve as another useful resource for folks learning about data mesh. You can see my Calls to Action/FAQ here including what types of episodes I want to do - e.g. someone please reach out to do “shooting the breeze” conversation episodes so I don’t have to do more mesh musings! I need some feedback to make sure I am covering the topics people care about most.

I am looking to have a wide spectrum of guests. YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE AN EXPERT ON DATA MESH TO BE A GUEST. Your thoughts and opinions - and certainly your questions and concerns too - are valid and probably echo those of many others in the community. So let’s address them out in the open. If you want to chat with me about doing an episode, you can grab time on my calendar here. You can skip directly to submitting to be on the show here. Submitting/indicating your interest does not mean you are committing to do the show so please don’t worry about it and just do it. Let’s chat and figure out an awesome episode topic!

Representation matters. I want to make clear that this podcast welcomes those from minoritized/underrepresented groups as guests. This is an explicit invitation!

I also need to know what topics you want me to cover and what guests you think I should have on. You can submit feedback, including anonymously, here. Seriously, this is not at all about me. If I can find co-hosts, I will be very glad to do so. And I want to make sure I cover what matters to you.

I will use r/datamesh on Reddit to help select deep dive topics - essentially me doing multiple episodes around one or similar topics to dive deep and try to come to some conclusions. I am sort of doing a series of interviews on data contracts/data testing currently (Olivier, Abhi, and Jesse interviews were all around that) and will do DDD for Data + data-driven development for the Jan 17 - Jan 30 timeframe. You can vote on the topic for the following 2 week timeframe in a Reddit poll here.

Hopefully this podcast is a useful resource for you. I am learning a ton already and really excited to learn more. Please let me know how I can make it better for you and the community!

-Scott