I’m Mr. Ben - curious by nature and a data engineer by trade.

I’ve been a founder, a web dev, a doodler, and a hodge-podge of titles all related to working with data - but on this site, I’m a teacher.

I created Ray Data Co. to share my experiences and help other data practitioners along their journey. My mission is to lower the barrier to entry for people joining the field and extend the impact of seasoned data practitioners.

To make progress toward this goal, I’ll be uncomporoising on two things:

1. Examine real business problems.
   Most tutorials are too sterile. Perfectly cleaned and modeled to arrive at a set answer. However, real data is proprietary. Understandably so, but this creates a gatekeeper effect, where you never really know what you’re getting into until you’re there.
2. Hobbyist price-point - Professional impact.
   Analytic projects can rack up a tab. I want you to be able to practice these skills without breaking the bank. So I’ll be biased toward open core technologies, like dbt, Dagster, and Evidence. Once you’re ready to scale, there is a smooth path to production.

Why am I qualified to share my experiences? Well, I’ve been working with data for over 10 years. In that time, I worked modernized the reporting infrastructurefor Universal Orlando theme parks, instrumented the SaaS metrics suitefor two B2B SaaS companies that led to unicorn valued exits, and have spent the last few years consulting & implementing data solutions for half a dozen companies in different industries.

If you are ready to join in on this journey, I’d love to have you join the Sanity Check newsletter.