My co-founder, Satish Jayanthi, and I got our start in data working for massive Fortune 1000 companies and surrounded by brilliant colleagues who maneuvered through highly sophisticated technology to get big projects done.
When we started Coalesce, we knew that we wanted more. We wanted to support not only the most technically seasoned data architects and engineers, but also data team members who are less experienced or lack formal training in architecting complex data pipelines, as well as data consumers who need more insight into data lineage to make sure they’re using the best and most accurate data for decision making.
We wanted to create a solution that supported the most complex use cases for data while inviting more people in, helping stakeholders get close to their data and contribute to innovation at their companies. That meant creating opportunities for communication and collaboration within and around the product. In short, it meant building Coalesce with community in mind.
Community has always been at the heart of our vision for Coalesce. No person is an island, least of all a data professional. To do our jobs well, we need to learn from our peers—within data teams but also throughout the business. We need to be able to bounce ideas off of one another and have access to experts who can propel our work forward.
Two of our guiding tenets are to inspire others and support continuous growth. To achieve these goals, we’re building a community to foster an exchange of ideas, education, and ongoing innovation.
Data needs extensibility – and community
Data never stands still. Successful data projects are constantly evolving to meet the needs of the business, from the simplest and most straightforward use cases to the most complex future-looking implementations.
That’s why we built Coalesce with extensibility baked in. A business can start using our data transformation platform out of the box, but they can also adapt it to a nearly unlimited number of use cases by architecting complex, yet reusable data patterns that we call custom nodes.
Nodes essentially function as shortcuts to implementation. Coalesce provides dimension, fact, stage, view, and persistent stage node types, but users can also create their own types based on their unique needs and best practices.
With the ability to adapt our core technology, data engineers are empowered to innovate to meet the needs of the business. However, working in isolation can make the process of developing new solutions daunting, time-consuming, and dull. Conversely, a rising tide lifts all ships, as the adage goes. When data engineers are able to collaborate—be it within their team, with other teams in the organization, or with partners and peers across organizations—they accelerate building the proper data foundation for the business and deriving business value from that data.
How we’re building community
A real community is more than a Slack channel or subreddit. In the data world, putting the impetus solely on users to generate every question, answer, and directive can lead to confusion and spinning wheels.
Our aim at Coalesce is to create a community that celebrates learning and collective advancement. Members of the Coalesce Data Transformers community will benefit from the guidance of experts and industry thought leaders, people we call GOATs—or Greatest of All Transformers. These power users have proven their ability to use our platform, they have helped us evolve it, and they have been educating others on the power of automation at scale.
Between these data leaders and the wider network of Coalesce users, our Data Transformers community members can get support for their initiatives while dreaming up new use cases and optimization strategies. As these ideas are developed, GOATs and other community members will help verify some custom nodes as best practice, offering an accelerated path to optimization. With this structure, community members can improve their pipelines more easily and focus their collaborative efforts on impact.
Become a Data Transformer
The data landscape is complex. There are multiple different ways to achieve a result when it comes to data transformation.
The first class of GOATs has been announced and other parts of the Data Transformers community will launch throughout 2024 accompanied by other exciting new initiatives that support data teams in getting their best work done. Our users are among the industry’s best and brightest; by creating space for them to come together, we will all benefit.
Thanks for being part of the Coalesce community. We can’t wait to see what we’re able to achieve together.
