#160 Empathetic Upskilling and Data Literacy - Get Your Data Bootcamp Going - Interview w/ Alex Bross

Sign up for Data Mesh Understanding's free roundtable and introduction programs here: https://landing.datameshunderstanding.com/Please Rate and Review us on your podcast app of choice!If you want to be a guest or give feedback (suggestions for topics, comments, etc.), please see hereEpisode list and links to all available episode transcripts here.Provided as a free resource by Data Mesh Understanding / Scott Hirleman. Get in touch with Scott on LinkedIn if you want to chat data mesh.Transcript for this episode (link) provided by Starburst. See their Data Mesh Summit recordings here and their great data mesh resource center here. You can download their Data Mesh for Dummies e-book (info gated) here.Alex's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-bross-33853837/In this episode, Scott interviewed Alex Bross, VP of Data Engineering at Fifth Third Bank. To be clear, Alex was only representing his own views on the episode.Some key takeaways/thoughts from Alex's point of view:Start from empathy. Being able to empathize with someone will give you a far better chance of understanding their context. And analytics is really about understanding what the data shows with the applicable context.There are 3 main barriers to change: logic, credibility, and emotion. Don't skip any of them.Microservices can teach us a LOT about how to distribute data, especially from the people angle. When moving from the monolith with single branch development to API-driven microservices, how did people feel? How did we get them to the right place mentally and capability-wise? We should learn from that and leverage it for data mesh.Don't try to do all your disruption at once. And data mesh is a disruption to the status quo. The business has a cadence, look to fit to that as best as possible.When looking where to begin with something like data mesh, look at need and/or desire. Is there a team that is really struggling and needs change? Or is there a team very willing to try it out?It's very difficult to have positive change with a team that is already struggling. If you are going to work with them now, make sure to be there to help instead of demand change.Catalysts lower the amount of energy needed in a chemical equation. Be a catalyst for change - make it less difficult to change. Focus on that and many - most? - domains will welcome you with open...