The holidays bring joy and memories. It is always a joyful memory for me every week when I pen down (or key down š¤·š½āāļø) every edition of Data Engineering Weekly. I want to take a holiday break for this week's edition, and instead, I want to reflect on our journey in 2022.
A Growth To Remember
2022 has been a remarkable year in terms of subscriber growth. We crossed 5-digit subscribers a long back with 126% YoY growth this year.
As we keep growing, we always keep the engagement metrics. Our newsletter āopen rateā throughout the year is close to 50%, a healthy engagement rate according to Substack.
Year in Review of Data Engineering Products
It is also a good time for us to review what worked and what didnāt work with Data Engineering Weekly. You might be surprised when I quote it āData Engineering Products.ā Data Engineering Weekly taught me how consistent value creation could build a sustainable business. I think it is fair to call it a product.
Curated Articles
Our signature weekly curation of data engineering articles continues to grow. We are fortunate to back by industry-leading companies like RudderStack, Firebolt, MonteCarloData, Soda, and Upsolver.
We strive to remain vendor neutral and constantly refuse the addition of vendor promotional content in our newsletter. Every week we shortlist 18+ articles and filter articles by content quality for our readers. We follow simply two principles.
No vendor promotional articles
No clickbait - There are numerous articles with clickbait. The Data Engineering Weekly newsletter may get good engagement featuring the clickbait, but we constantly filter it out.
Readers Article Review
We launched the āReaders Article Reviewā feature via Github. The feature encourages readers to share their views about the articles they enjoy reading. I thought this would be an IMDB for Data Engineering articles. Weāve not made the impact we hoped for; We got a few contributions, some via Github and some via LinkedIn. The articles are mostly a reference to their company blog rather than a 3rd party review. Iām still thinking about structuring this feature more in the coming weeks.
The Founders Story
One of the biggest hurdles in the entrepreneurship journey is getting the first initial set of customers and getting your name into the market. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to succeed, and we can build something beyond our ability.
Founderās story attempts to provide the Data Engineering Weekly platform for entrepreneurs to introduce their founding story to our readers. So far, we have featured ten incredible founding stories in our newsletter. I hope we will see more founding stories in 2023.
What we plan for 2023
Data Engineering Weekly Podcast
In 2022, I attempted two times to launch the podcast; in both times, I failed to release the podcast product into our readers' hands (or ears?). With those two failed attempts, I learned a ton, and in 2023 I'm going to retry again to see if we can bring the Data Engineering Weekly podcast.
But why do you want to run a podcast? Well, it is mostly for my selfish reason. Whenever I read interesting articles, I want to meet the article's author, discuss more context behind their architecture, and learn their thought process for designing such a system. I'm sure you want the same, and I hope the Data Engineering Weekly will bring you that experience soon.
Tech Series with Guest Authors
We will be launching soon āTech Series with Guest Authors.ā It will be deeply technical content where the authors explain the under-the-hood implementation of how system design works.
We are already in discussion with companies like Pathway.com to feature articles. We are opening up to everyone from mid-Jan. If anyone wants to launch their tech series, usually limited to 3 week's edition, don't hesitate to get in touch with me.
The wonderful and daunting truth about writing is that one can always ... ALWAYS ... improve. I remind myself that we can always improve no matter how hard we work on something. Tell me, how can we improve Data Engineering Weekly together?
Thank you for all your kind support. Letās learn together, and Letās grow together. I wish you all a prosperous new year 2023!!!
References
How to add an article review to Data Engineering Weekly
https://github.com/ananthdurai/dataengineeringweekly#contributing-guide
How to add the founderās story to Data Engineering Weekly
https://github.com/ananthdurai/dataengineeringweekly#how-can-i-contribute-founder-story
For some reason I was hoping to find the most read and most discussed articles of 2022 in this post to catch up as Iām a new subscriber. Also, just to give you a shoutout for creating this Substack! Great work compiling high quality content each week! š