I feel like as an artist, there's different characters and especially when we talk about hip hop, it's like, okay, you're either a thug or you poppin' it open. And there's so much we can talk about and we're only talkin' about one thing. You know, I just feel like it's so much more to woman empowerment and that's another thing because I watch these interviews, I watch the female rappers talk about it and it's always woman empowerment and you know, but it's like, woman empowerment looks like so many other things and we're focusing on this. You know what we're focusing on. It's an old bustin' it open. What's up, what's up, what's up, I'm Brentman Sean. And I'm Cory. And we are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. You can catch us every Tuesday, every Thursday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, wherever you stream your podcast here at the intersection of creativity and currency and as you guys know, we like to bring interesting people who are from different walks of life in the creative industry who represent No Labels. Today we have Nilla all in. She is an influencer, she's an artist and she got a lot of talents going on. If you check her out on social media, over 1.3 million followers on TikTok, over 140,000 on Instagram and I'm forgetting anything else. You hit it right on the nail. Okay, look at that, look at that. So I appreciate you pulling up because I think you're gonna be just a great person to speak to in terms of the transition from a regular career into the creative industry in general, let alone be an artist and obviously even just hacks in terms of how you've built your social media. Looking forward to just seeing what gems you can drop. But let's start here.  Because you said you were doing engineering. Yes, so I have, my background is in math and science but I went to school for human developmental sciences and then I added a specialization in equity and diversity but I did an internship at an engineering company and I did really well on the project so they hired me the next year, like right out of college. And you hated it? Yeah, engineering was not for me. Like it was a great job, it was a great job right out of college to stack and do the things but as far as just being there every day the environment was so draining and it's nothing but like, you know, older men. So a lot of people didn't know how to talk to me in the space. So it was just, it was frustrating. I was miserable, I was miserable. And then, you know, it's kind of just like I'm in the workspace. I literally felt like Hannah Montana because it's like I'm going to work at this engineering job and then I leave and I'm going viral and TikTok and I'm like in the studio and stuff like that. And it's like, I just, I wish this, I need this to be my life. Like I don't want to just, I don't want to, you know, work my job. So were you already somebody on social media while you were in college or? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so in college I started, it actually started when I was 17. When I was like 16, 17, I started posting a lot more on Instagram. My followers started to grow just cause I, you know, cute curly hair girl from LA. So everybody was, you know, following me. And then when I got to college me and my best friend started a YouTube channel. So that's how we kind of, that's how really I started getting into influencing through YouTube. And then from YouTube, you know, the next big thing was TikTok. So I was like, well, shoot, let me hop on TikTok. And it was never a thing for money or nothing like that. I just really like, like, I have a big personality.  I like being creative. I like putting together videos, even with our YouTube videos. I edited all our videos. Like it was, it was therapeutic for me. And I always, I needed that creative outlet especially during college because I needed something else to do, but schoolwork, you know, and other stuff. So YouTube was like my creative outlet. And then once we stopped making videos, that's when I kind of started doing my own thing, writing music, getting on TikTok. I just needed, I just always had like this yearning for a creative outlet.  So yeah, it was, it wasn't like this intentional. Hey, I'm working in engineering. I need to become an artist or something like that. No, it was kind of like, I'm, I'm working as an engineer. Honestly, if I was never on TikTok, I wouldn't have seen the, like what I can do. And I probably would have just stuck it out at my job. But the fact that I knew, okay, everybody is loving me over here. I'm going viral, it's fun, and I'm building a fan base.  Like, you know, I'm popping out this idea. So why, like, why can't I just, you know, build that and monetize that, you know, as a way to get out of this. But yeah, if I didn't, if I didn't have that, no, I wouldn't, I would still be there. So what was the thing that happened that made you go like, I can make this work and leave the space. I would imagine leaving an engineering job, not even just the job itself, but the money, I'm pretty sure it was paying. I feel like that was a hard decision. So what did you see that made you go, oh, I can get out of this space and I'll be cool. So the first time I thought about it was when I got this deal with Instagram. I got to deal with Instagram reels on the influencing side of things. And that was another thing, because like the music and the influencing has kind of been hand in hand. There was a one part where like my content creation or I was known more for influencing than music, but now it's kind of like hand in hand where my music is getting, I'm getting more known for that. But so Instagram had reached out to me to do a deal because I was, you know, going crazy on TikTok. So they were trying to bring more creators over to the Instagram platform to create reels. So they're reaching out to all these TikTokers and they reached out to me. And so it was, you know, it was a long-term deal.  So I was like, well, shoot. I could do some TikToks from my living room, you know, and this is more than I've made, you know, the past four months at the engineering company, you know. So I was just looking at how much money I was getting from brand deals. And I was like, oh, shoot. Yeah, at this point I could probably make some shake.  So what was your strategy? Cause it sounds like in the beginning you were just creative and fun, right? It was an outlet. But did you ever start to say, okay, I want to increase my numbers and these are the formats and this is what's working? Like what is your approach to content that makes your stuff go viral? So even before that, like I had to, I had a list of kind of my inspirations or, you know, goals or milestones or whatever. And I'm looking at what other people are doing. And although the content was fire, I wasn't able to spit out content as much as every other, you know, creative because I'm working this job. So it got to the point where it's like, I got home and I would be so drained. I couldn't even create, I couldn't even write music. I couldn't do nothing just because I was so depressed and just mentally out of it from this job. So I couldn't be creative and I was stuck.  I just feel like I couldn't be myself, you know, the brand deals, they're looking at analytics and stuff. So you have to keep the content going, but I was just so tired. So it got to the point where it's like, I went into work one day and I'm talking to this other guy. He was one of my coworkers and he used to be a rapper. And so mind you, this dude, he was like 40. And so he found me on social media. It got to the point where people at my job were finding me on social media and they were talking to me about it. This one dude came up to me and he's like, you know, when I was younger, I was a rapper. And he sent me, you know, some of his stuff.  Like, what happened?  And I just, I didn't make the decision. And I'm stuck here. And he was like, and you don't want to look up and be 40.  So that kind of changed my whole mentality. I started just doing research, like, you know, YouTube. Man, just crazy. You know, when you try to contemplate a decision and you look up YouTube videos to try to guide your decision. So I was looking up all those videos, like, why should I quit my job? You know, that's, and I came across this one video and it was like, if you have a goal and if there's something that you want to become, you have to start moving like that person before you even get there. So I had to build out Nila All-In. I'm like, okay, who is she? What does she do, you know? And it's like, where does she work? What does she do? You know what I'm saying? And it's like the Nila All-In that I had in my mind does not work there. So I had already, I knew, I mean, the way that I was raised, my parents already taught me about savings and, you know, budgeting and stuff like that. So while I was at the job, that was just second nature for me. You know, so I was already taking a percentage of my income, putting it in my savings. So I was comfortable too, because I'm like, okay, I'm sitting on some savings. So if I do, you know, need to leave or if I do have a backup plan, you know, if I want rap to be the quote unquote, you know, backup or whatever, then I can leave and I can always do that. So it was definitely my savings, but it was also just mapping out the new version of who I want to be and moving like that version of myself. And it was really like, I had to take myself out of my body and look at my page from like somebody coming across my account. And then that's when I'm like, okay, so if I was a fan of me or if I came across my content and I've never seen myself before, what would I want to see? You know? And honestly, like it was at a point in my career where, cause like I said, I started off with the influence and I got on TikTok. Really the influence came from just my comedy. A lot of people know me for like my comedy sketch on TikTok and that's how I first really got my fan base. And you know, the comedy started going up, everything started booming, but I couldn't, like when I would post the music, the music really wouldn't get so many views. And so I'm like, everybody's talking about my personality and how funny I am and how this and this, but nobody is streaming the music.  So that's when I was like, okay, I'm gonna start doing my little skits around my music.  So when the stream started to go up and the content starting to go up and the brand deal starting to go up, that's when like it kind of, you know, pumped me up a little bit and I'm like, okay, I could lead this job, you know. That makes sense. Yeah. But it was, it was definitely like over the course of years. Like it wasn't, it wasn't like an immediate decision that I just popped up and made. What would you say the differences between creating comedy content that pops and music content that pops on TikTok? I would say, okay. So like the comedy for me, like my comedy skits that was popping was more so acting. It's not even really comedy is more so acting. And they were finding entertainment in how good I act in my facial expressions and stuff like that. So as far as comedy, it can be like a, let's say a sound, a sound on TikTok or whatever that I hear. And I re-enacted, I re-enact something that's already viral. It's kind of like the work is already done for you because all you're doing is re-enacting another piece of content that somebody did. But I'm just, you know, this is just me re-enacting it. And since the content was or the sound was already viral, then, you know, my content would, nine times out of 10 go viral because the sound is viral. But with making comedy skits around music, it takes more, a lot more originality and thought because I'm not working with a viral sound. I'm trying to make my music a viral sound.  You know, I'll take that and I just apply it to myself. So, you know, I'll say, okay, this is funny. This is cool. It made me laugh. It's entertaining. I'll hit up the home girl. Let's re-enact this exact same skit. But except doing it with futures music, we're gonna do it with Nila All-In. You know, and we're gonna just promote the new song and then it would go viral just because people are engaged in the entertainment of it all. You know? So yeah, you literally just take out one element and plug yourself in for content that's already working. I like that. Because people are over complicated a lot of times. Do you feel like you need to think about all your, well, obviously not all of them, but do you get into a bag where you're like, I wanna create some ideas from scratch? Oh, absolutely. I feel like I think I'm one of the people who overthink it sometimes because nine times out of 10, it's my simple stuff that like now, now when it, now since I already have eyes on me, when I kind of just put the music out there or when I grab the camera and talk to the camera, like, yo, I just dropped this hot song. You know, again, just using my personality to get it out there. It's more personable. So I feel like it goes more, it does more numbers or it gets more out there when the content is personable. And that's kind of like my brand. But now when I do like, it depends on what it is, but sometimes I'll do some skits like original ideas, very original, that involves my music and stuff and it won't perform as well. But, you know, again, it's kind of like if it doesn't perform well and I know the content is good, then I just have to make some changes, you know, re-edit, turn, you know, do a different hook, you know, a different beginning or try to make it smaller or shorter cause a lot of my, like my videos be like a minute, like 30 seconds to a minute long. So if it doesn't do well, I'm like, okay, maybe I should, you know, condense this into 15 seconds, you know, type. So I kind of just look at the, look at the data. You don't ever feel like, oh, these people don't want to hear music from me at all or maybe just, you know. No, they want to hear some music. No, they want to hear my music. And if they don't, you gon' listen to this music. Okay. You gon' hear this music. I'ma keep pushing it. Yeah. Because sometimes I just feel like too, okay, now the algorithm be playing with me. The algorithm be playing with me. Like, I'll be doing really, really, really good on views with the music.  And then the views won't be viewing. In my head, I never think it's the music because I know the music is good. I think it'd be the algorithm, I think it'd be TikTok. I think it'd be TikTok.   I think it'd be the algorithm sometimes. All right, so I wanna give a reminder that being independent is not just about not being signed to a label. It's actually making money without being signed to a label, being able to have a sustainable career. And for those of y'all who actually want to be able to make money from your fan base, you're serious about figuring out how to monetize. I have a free video that you can check out. I don't need your email. I don't need your phone number. I don't need any information. All you have to do is go to www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash monetize. And I'm gonna show you the lies that artists have been told that have been keeping them probably you too from monetizing your fan base and how shifting that perspective has allowed one artist we're working with to be on track to make over $500,000 this year. This is a different era. Don't fall for that trap saying artists can't make money. Artists do not have to be broke. So if you wanna escape that trap, go to www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash monetize. You do have to make sure you put the www in the beginning when you type it in your URL and watch this free video again. You're not gonna be asked to put in your email. You're not gonna be asked for your phone number, but it won't be up forever. Check it out. Well, one of your highest view videos is straight up off the music on TikTok. It's like 14 million views. I can't remember the song. Edison. Edison, right? Now, one, I didn't see you repeat that formula a whole lot of that content. I didn't, no I didn't. Why not? Because again, that was one of those like basic car videos, right? What's in the car? I'm rapping. People connect with my bars. There wasn't a lot of, I don't wanna say entertainment value, but it wasn't like a lot of extra shit and creativity added to it. But it blew, took off the 14 million views. So that does show that there's some love for straight up like you're rapping, right? For sure. But again, one, why didn't you repeat it? And then two, why do you feel like that one took off the way it did? So, okay, and that's the second one I did. That's the second one I did and it blew up in the car, you know, rapping with a friend. And I think at first back then, when I had did it, it was kinda just, I knew it was gonna blow up just because it was an authentic vibe between like me and the homegirl. Like, when I smile at content, I'm editing and watching back and I'm laughing while editing it.  Cause like it's entertaining to me.  So, I knew it was gonna be lit, but I just, I also don't want, I guess I didn't repeat it cause I didn't want to get, like a lot of times when I'm creative, I don't create for virality. Like I create for what I wanna create. So for that moment, I wanted to do a car video, but I didn't want to, like my biggest fear, you know, I'm middle of all in. So I don't really wanna be like niched in one specific form of content or, I know the, you know, they say you gotta niche down and stuff like that. But I don't know, I just didn't want to, I felt it was so redundant to me. Like doing the exact same thing. I know it's what works. It's what works. But I don't know. I just feel like sometimes I wanna do a car video. Sometimes I wanna do a skate. Sometimes I wanna do a performance video. What if it's just for a period of time, right? Like, you know, like I'm gonna just run this play for about three weeks hard on them. And then it's gonna feel redundant for a period of, which is something that we all have to work through, right? Cause it's working and it does. So you feel like, dang, do they really wanna see this again?  And then it gets the views. And then of course you move on. And then once you do that period, it's gonna feel like forever ago. Right. And even now, like, and again, like my mentality has changed so much with leaving, like just from leaving my job now too and just taking this serious and being all in it. It's like, now it's okay, I know you need strategy, you need, you know what I'm saying? You need to know what you're doing. But back then it was kind of just like, oh, this'll be dope. This'll be lit.  You know, like back then when I was at my job, I was like, I was kind of just chilling.  Because I was like, I mean, this is no effort.   But now looking back, I would have done, I would have done a lot of things differently. Well, because now, like you said, being full in. Yeah, you need a system. Yeah, you need a system. Because especially now it's like, I'm putting out a lot more music. I'm recording a lot more music. And it's just like, when it comes to ideas, like you said, like there's content ideas I can use, do the same thing just with different songs, you know? But, you know, but again, back then I wasn't thinking like that.  Yeah, it was still the creative outlet. The creative outlet, exactly, exactly. Now you mentioned before we, you know, sat down, started recording. One of the things you started to talk about were the difference between L.A. and Atlanta and you feel like you might have to, you know, take a little pilgrimage to Atlanta for a period for the music aspect of things. Can you break down how you see L.A. versus Atlanta as somebody who's coming from L.A.? Yes, so it's crazy because like, so I've been to Atlanta a few times. Oh, we finna get into it. Okay. So Atlanta a few times, literally right, right out the gate, right out the door. I go to, what club did I go to? I went to a couple clubs out there, but I went to Fennin' Feathers too. I remember Fennin' Feathers, there was this DJ and just the vibes was just immaculate. I was like, you know, I got a new song, da, da, da. No issues.  It's a vibe. Went to another club asking the DJ to play my music. It's no issues. It's a vibe. L.A.? DJs are not playing your stuff. Like, if it's not on TikTok or if it's not a hit, if it's not on Billboard, they're not playing you in the clubs. Like, I go up to talk to DJs that, no, that, oh yeah, yeah, I got you, yeah, yeah. You'll be waiting there until 2 a.m. to hear your song. Nothing, to closing, nothing. I said, okay. And there's literally like, I feel like in Atlanta, there's more community. I feel like in L.A., it's so individualistic. Every up-and-coming artist is on their own grind, you know? And I feel like in Atlanta, they reach down.  Everybody record, like, nine times out of 10, people recording in the same studios, you know? People know the same people.  So I feel like in L.A., we don't really, there's not a big community when it comes to the music. It's not a big, it's not a big network. I feel like especially when it comes to other creatives in my space, like most of the creatives that I've collabed with have been influencers, you know? And I mean, I've collabed with a couple artists on music too, but when it comes to, when I'm saying like the space and cultivating a safe environment, I don't get that when it comes to the music industry in L.A. And again, like I already have music. I'm not even from Atlanta. I've been there like a couple times. Even the trip that I took to Atlanta, I made hella music connects, like from DJs, producers, and ours. It's just like, I don't know. I just feel like, cause it's like also too everywhere you go, somebody knows somebody and somebody's in the industry. Somebody, everybody is somebody in Atlanta. That's Atlanta way. You know? Somebody is somebody. And networking is everything. So it's like, you meet one person, and they're like, I'm gonna pull up to the studio tonight.  It seems like it's different in different pockets, which is interesting because it's like, yeah, L.A. with the music for the artist side, it's less collaborative from the producer side. It's more collaborative from what I hear. And then the influencer side is more collaborative partially because we know this all just helps everybody. And I got to create videos anyway. I'm looking for talent, right? So that's interesting to hear. I haven't really heard many people address the artist specific pocket, but it does remind me of somebody I know who was like, yeah, man, like I get in a lot of runs because people say I'm a, I mean, because I'm a songwriter. But it's like, if people knew I was an artist, they'd just be like, nah, bruh. I'm telling you. Yeah, they don't share the same. It's not, man, it's not the same. And I feel like too L.A. like it, I mean, and of course, I mean, it's everywhere, but L.A. specifically, it's a lot of politics too. So, and you got a, like when it comes to the music industry, the music business, it's like nine times out of 10, if you are like collaborating with certain artists or artists who have already built their own, you know, their own stability or their own team or whatever. It's like, they don't always work with everybody. You know, they don't, they don't work with everybody either because they have their own team, you know? And like I said, it'd be some, sometimes you got a lot of hood politics and it's just like, if that doesn't fit your brand, it doesn't fit your image, then it's kind of like, you don't really see, you know, it's like, there's no way we can really work together because it just doesn't fit the brand. So, that's another side of things. Okay, so with that being said, there was a post I saw. Let me see if I can find what that screenshot was. Give me one second. It was a post where they talked about, you responded to it, you replied to it. I'll just say the gist of it. Basically it said, you were more famous in South Africa than your own country, right? Yes, uh-huh. What are your thoughts there and what does that feel like? Honestly, oh no, okay, so, and it's crazy because it's like, they get down so differently outside the country, like outside of the US man. It's like, it's support, like the support, the engagement is crazy. So I went to South Africa, you know, like I said, with me just pushing my music on TikTok, my streams did really well in South Africa. And so I'm looking at my analytics and I'm like, what the heck is South Africa? Like it just popped up, I don't know where. And they had like a really rapid growth. So we booked a trip to South Africa for leisure, you know, but I've always had Africa on my bucket list but I was like, I might as well go to South Africa. That's where I'm, you know, I'm getting a lot of streams. So let's see what's going on over there. So I tell my fans that I'm there, I'm posting my experience and everything is just viral. Like while I was in South Africa, everything's viral. They're teaching me the language, they're teaching me new words.  And so one of my fans was like, put it in the song. So I was like, put food sec in the song. They went crazy. You know, number one trending on South African Spotify. It was just, you know, just listening to the, you know, just engaging with the fans.  Reached out to him, he hopped on it. So, you know, I got a song with, you know, very well known South African rapper.  Like you, you blew up in South Africa. Like, what do you mean you haven't blown up yet? You have blown up in South Africa.  You know, you want to get the recognition. But at the same time too, you got to go where you're appreciated and where you're loved.  So for me, it was kind of just like a change in point in my mind where it's like, okay, my focus has been, you know, US, it's been the club, it's been this, it's been that.   You know what I'm saying? So it's like, it's like, it's crazy because what I wanted or what happened over there is what of course I wanted in the States. But sometimes, you know, God, I think that was God giving me a little taste. I was God giving me a little taste because I think I'm having like a real steady incline on my journey. And I don't think, honestly, if I'm being real, I could say that I wanted, I wanted, but there's still some things that I need to learn, some things that I need to prepare for or something. You know what I'm saying? Because if it just comes and I don't know how to handle it, cause there's been that time, that viral, you know, the viral moment comes and it comes. And so I feel like that was the taste that I needed to like really prepare for, you know, just to be serious, take it seriously and provide the fans with, with what they want. Also too, because I feel like with the music thing in the past, you know, I drop a song and then I kind of get moving. I'd go to influencing, I do this, you know, I do acting, I do all these other things. But with my, when, when I had the blow-up in South Africa and they're kind of like telling me, okay, like, you know, we want this, we want this, we want merch, we want this. It's kind of like the fans are telling me what to do. So I kind of just gotta, you know, listen and just let, let it work. But I think everything happens for a reason. So honestly, it was just, it was the moment that I needed to motivate me to keep going and to just push, keep putting out music, keep putting out music because the music isn't, you know, I feel like a lot of people when they don't see the success they want, they're like, okay, maybe the music isn't good, maybe the content isn't good, maybe this. But I feel like literally everybody has been telling me like, no, you're lit, the content is lit, the music is lit, the personality is lit, everything is lit, you just gotta be patient. And I feel like I was getting, especially before that South Africa trip, I was getting very, very, very down in the dumps, very just discouraged.  Yeah, so how has that moment changed the way that you're pushing your music now? Like what are you doing differently since you experienced that? Engaging with the fans way more, like even with my fan base here at home, because even like in South Africa, I didn't meet in Greek. And mind you, and the reason, like I said, like I'm in South, at home, you know, I kind of just, I do my own thing, da, da, da. In South Africa, I was with the family, so I didn't have, you know, like, and I didn't go with any friends or nothing like that. So nine times out of 10, like when we wasn't on go, I'm bored in the hotel room. So I'm getting on live, you know, I'm talking to people, I'm reading comments, I'm just seeing what they, you know, what's up in South Africa. And I realized too, it's the fan engagement, talking directly to them, responding to the comments, you know, going live, it's, that's what really builds the support and the fan base, the loyal fan base. And so now, even at home, like I'm trying to, you know, I just talk, when it comes to my content, being more transparent in my content, talking to my fans, hosting more, you know, events, fan, you know, for the fans and for the community, so they can get out. What does that look like? So for instance, like, again, when I was in South Africa, I had my meet and greet, right? And then I had a few of the fans come, one of the fans who had came, he was a photographer, so he gave, you know, took pictures for us and da, da, da, but even sharing that on social media, it's like everybody else felt like they missed out on it.  So when I get back home, you know, and something like as far as when it comes to the community, that I wanna do more, like even more listening parties, more events or more pop-up events where it's like, I'm a creator too and I'm a brand. I also like, you know, put it on different types of events. I have some ideas that I wanna start doing just to get people come out and involved in the community, especially around LA. And I feel like that's, it's needed too. It's needed in the city. Just to people to come out, have a good time, you know, pop up, listen to Nila, you know, I could perform, sell merch, just doing more things to get involved in the community so I can kinda just build more on that fan engagement. Cause I feel like I'm really lit on social media, but it's like, I also wanna make sure I'm doing my part in my city and, you know, having people come out physically and stuff like that. So, but that's what South Africa taught me. Cause before, like I said, I was kinda just doing the social media thing, like really the only time you will see me is online. And that's for some other reasons, you know, like I said, just being in LA, going back real quick, cause another quick difference when it comes to Atlanta, like I feel like in Atlanta, when it comes to performances and everything like that, cause even when I was out there, I did a quick little performance when they played my song in the club and everything. But out here- Are they opinion brothers? Huh? Are they opinion brothers? No, it was at the other club. Okay, okay. No, not opinion brothers. It was at the other club when they played my track. I did think that though. I did think that. No, no, no, not opinion brothers. I was just gonna ask after it. No, it was at the second club. No, at the second club. Yeah, no, they passed me the mark. I did a quick little one too. But like even like, and it's just fun, just genuine, just fun, you know? But in LA, like they would be, people be wanting you to pay to perform and, you know, just, my thing is, look, I ain't paying for no exposure. Okay, I'm not paying to perform. I could make a TikTok in my living room for free and get the exposure. Or if I wanna perform, like I feel like I can host my own thing and I can have my own performances.  I just don't feel like that's necessary. So now I'm at the point where it's like, okay, well, if you're not gonna give me a seat at the table, I'm gonna have to bring my own, you know, I'm gonna have to bring the table to chair and it all. So definitely I'm trying to get into more, you know, more shows, but having my own, having my own shows, my own performances, my own, you know, things like that to really get into the music space. And that side of things. Cause like I said, I feel like music was something, like the music was so good that people would just stream it. But I think people were kind of still confused like, okay, well, is she a creator? Is she an influencer or does she do, you know? So now it's more so put in the branding, more so like, okay, no, I rap for real, you know, this is the music. Yes, I'm also funny and da, da, da. But more so leading with the music. And that's gonna have to take, you know, more performances, more shows, getting people out there, getting the fans out there. So yeah, I wanna, yeah, definitely more just community, community stuff. That's what, that's what South Africa taught me. Just focus on community. And then I think everything else kind of just comes together. Can you talk more about, I guess the transition into the music space from being an influencer? Cause we've talked about that before, right? Like there's a guy that we're really cool with name, Iso Kenny. And like he was like a big skit creator, now moved over to music. We've seen people like DDG and even like Kaisa Nat, right? Like it's starting to be this wave of influences who are almost using what they've learned in the content space to move over into music. But then from the fans side, or well, yeah, I guess the fans side, you can actively see almost sometimes the people in the music style like pushing back against that and kind of giving them a hard time. It's like, dude, do you ever feel like there are certain music moves you haven't been able to make or maybe have been held back from because you are presented as like an influencer first? Absolutely, absolutely. Cause I feel like, especially in the music world, like everything is about image. And I feel like also too, the transition was kind of interesting for me because the influencer space is like structured. And there's structure, there's, you know, terms and conditions and- Contracts. Contracts and yeah, you know, and it's just representation and it's just, it's different. So it's like, I'm signed to an agency on the TikTok side of things, but they don't handle none of the music stuff. So it's kind of like, I have a separate team for that, but it's kind of just, it was hard kind of for me to transition because it's like, this doesn't make sense. But like, I feel like there's a lot of things in the music industry that just doesn't make sense. It didn't make sense. And so that's when I'm just like, okay, so I'm meeting with this person. I'm meeting with these, I'm meeting with label execs cause even it got to the point where, you know, like, you know, they will see the TikToks and stuff and they will want to sign me for that single. But again, I'm talking to these labels and just, it's not making sense. And yeah, they definitely, I mean, everything is on image. They want to kind of, you know, they want to, they want to change the image. They want you to be sellable. You know, they want you to be sellable. And granted, I feel like the influencer, yes. In that sense, it's kind of like, you're salesy too, but in a different way because it's your lifestyle. It's your real lifestyle. Telling something else. Yeah, yeah, it's like, you know, it's like I can put these shoes on as an influencer but I actually wear these. So I'm, you know, I'm selling them but I actually wear these shoes. As opposed to the music industry, you want me to sell something that's not me but I have to pretend like it's me, you know, for it to be sold. And it was just a lot, it's just a lot of that, you know? So I want to go deeper into that because I want, listening to your music subject matter-wise is not the same content that a lot of women rappers are popular for right now. Is that something that you're aware of? Oh, absolutely. All right, so can you speak on how you see what women are popularized for talking about at the moment and how you see creating your content, your music and how you feel like you fit in? Yes.   And, you know, it was cool but I feel like as I've grown in my artistry and as I talk to people too, it's kind of just like, I don't want to do what everybody else is doing and I think that's what the music industry is, I feel like, I feel like the music, I feel like there's characters. I feel like as an artist, like there's different characters and especially like when we talk about hip hop, it's like, okay, the male is the gangster, the thug and then the female rapper, whatever, you know, that character is like, you know, the, I don't want to say the stripper but you know, you know what I mean. It's kind of just like, it's two different characters.  And like, okay, what I don't want to do is do what everybody else is doing because I also see myself as an entrepreneur, like beyond being an artist, I see myself as an entrepreneur and I feel like if the market is oversaturated with something and also too, it's not authentic to who I am really. So I really, I mean, I do what's authentic to me. So I, it's never been a thought in my head to even go that direction because that's not me. But again, just being myself and one of the reasons why I'm so, I'm writing and putting out the music that I make is because I feel like in the future, when you pull out the history book of female rap and you only see one thing, you know, like, I think Anilla All-In needs to be, you know, needs to be there, that that content needs to exist. The music needs to exist because especially as women, we go through so much and there's so much we can talk about and we're only talking about one thing. Like, you know, I just feel like it's, it's so much more to woman empowerment. And that's another thing, because I watch these interviews, I watch the female rappers talk about it and it's always woman empowerment and, you know, but it's like, woman empowerment looks like so many other things and we're focusing on this, you know? You know what we're focusing on. And we're focusing on busting it open.  You know what I'm saying? It's just, it's just so much superficial stuff and it's just I'm over it. So if I'm over it, I know somebody else is over it.   Beat this right now.  So here, listen to this, you know. They make it seem like they popping it with tears in there.  I got you. I got you. I mean, like you said, you feel that way, I'm sure there's as many others who feel that way. You know what I'm saying? On that side of the market. And that can be appreciated just to even hear, even someone vocalize that now, with all that being said, what does nilla all in mean? Ooh, I love that question. Okay, well you want the short version? Give me the short, then all of it. You know, we got a little time. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, so nilla all in, to really be all in, it's like you got to put your all in what you do. But not only that, we're multifaceted. So, you know, it's like, I feel like it's more of a realistic version of, and relatable version of really, you know, just who we are, because it's like, like I said, we don't always experience the same emotion 24 seven.  On Wednesday, I'm trying to, you know, I want to get something to the club.  Like she real spinning. This is, you know, I'm inspired to be better, do better and choose better, you know, choose a better partner. So I feel like also too, it just describes kind of being versatile, being dynamic, and yeah, just going all in, putting your all in. And that's really, that's who Nila All-In is. She's relatable, authentic, driven, ambitious, but you know, if she gon' do it, she gon' do it to the neck. So we got to. Do it to the what? Do it to the neck. It's like jumping in a pool. If I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it to the neck. No, it's like, it's a song, but I won't, no, because I ain't finna be on this podcast, no, no, no, I'm playing. No, it just means you gotta, you know, you gotta do it, you can't be, you can't be scared. Gotcha. You can't be scared, you gotta go all in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what do it to the neck means. It is. Okay. Yeah, it is, it's a good name.  But you said all in, where does Nila come from? Oh, okay, so Nila, my name is actually Brene, my line sisters, yeah, I'm a Delta, my line, you see it? So my line sisters, they used to call me Branella. And so, yeah, so Branella came from Brene.  So when I started doing a rap thing, you know, we would be in the crib, like we would put on the beat, we, you know, be a little vibe and I'd start rapping or whatever.  So Nila became like the alter ego, because again, I kind of like double liked that, you know, that Hannah Montana lifestyle from the college student engineer, Delta.  And I felt like they were always kind of clashing. So, so yeah, Nila, Nila came from, from Branella, but that just became my alter ego. But now, one last question. And this is without necessarily the music industry in mind, but you can always integrate music into this. What do you hear when you hear no labels necessary? Mm, ownership. I hear ownership. And I also hear like, independence, just like random things, like they come off the top of it. Independence, and also just options. I feel like everybody thinks you need a label. And yeah, there's other options. There's other ways to put that thing down, flip it in reverse-y. All right, I can't, I know that one. I know that one. You know that one. I know that one. Okay, okay, I was gonna get on you if you get it. I was gonna get on you. I love that, because you actually, you're one of the few people who catch that necessary. All right? It's not necessarily not, you don't have to never. It's not necessary. It's an option. It's an option, yeah. I mean, I feel like there's power in that option versus just saying no or yes automatically. So I'm glad you called that. Everybody, I hope y'all enjoyed this talk with Nila All-In. I certainly have. It was fun. This is yet another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. I'm Brandon Shawn. And I'm Corrin. And I'm Nila All-In. And we out. Appreciate you for watching. If you like content like this, you'll love seeing our music marketing strategies that we use as an agency to actually blow up artists to millions and even billions of streams that are available for free at nolabelsnecessary.com and the cool part about it that's gonna really make you love it is we don't have to be all entertaining and add all this fluff just to get some use that we do on YouTube. We get straight to the information. There's play by play in courses that give you a breakdown of every step that you should do to get success. And you have the ability to have communication with us. We get on live talks, a lot of cool things for members and it's free just to hop in. So check it out right now at nolabelsnecessary.com.


Oh my goodness, good morning, everyone. How are we doing? All right, there's the three shoes. I did something last night that I've never done before on the blog. I put it to a vote for which shoe I would test next for all of you. So here they are, the Hoka Arahi, Arahi 4. There it is, Hoka Arahi 4, the Soccany Canvara 11, and the A6 Evo Ride, the little brother to the A6 Glide Ride. So I put it to a vote on Twitter and on Facebook and a lot of votes came in. I think over 500 votes, let me pull up. Okay, drum roll, what's it gonna be, what's it gonna be? Okay, here's the craziness, craziness. 294 votes on Twitter and here's the breakdown. Soccany Canvara 11, 33.3% of all the votes. A6 Evo Ride, 32.7% of all the votes. And the winner on Twitter is the Hoka Arahi 4 with 34% of the vote, of the 294 vote. But remember what I said, I'm also gonna post it on Facebook so I gotta hop over to Facebook real quick and pull it up. So on Facebook, it was quite a bit different. The winner 100% is, yes, with 136 people voting for the Soccany Canvara 11 is the winner. The Hoka Arahi 4 was in second place with 101 votes. And then third on Facebook was the A6 Evo Ride. So that means first impression of the Soccany Canvara 11 is coming at you today here on the blog. Let's lace it up, go get the first impressions of this shoe. We have never done this before. I love, I love innovation. You know what I'm always talking about, innovation. We will do more of this, where you get to decide the next running shoe. Okay, oh close, you're thin. I think that was a Ferrari. It's a nice neighborhood, nice neighborhood. It's rock and roll, first impressions, not my full review, that'll happen after 50 miles. And there's the Canvara 11 over there on the shelf. And let's just say, my gut is telling me we're gonna get to 50 miles in this shoe. Okay, it's a neutral road running shoe from Soccany. And it's definitely, definitely neutral. Watch this, this is one way to test your shoes at home. Basically just the basic twist test. That is a pretty major twist action happening there through that, it's like doing a dance. There is no stability. So if you need stability, this is not the shoe for you. It's a very, very loosey-goosey midsole, as I like to say. Okay, a few specs, real quick. Looking at a four millimeter drop from heel to toe, 23 in the heel, 19 in the forefoot for that four millimeter drop. It was a nice ride today. That drop felt good today. And then for weight, we're looking at 7.8 ounces in men's size nine and 6.9 ounces in women's size eight. Okay, onto that upper. It's a pretty basic upper. Nothing crazy to write home about. It's an engineered mesh up here through the toe box and the midfoot. The heel counter was very comfortable, very comfortable today. And as I already mentioned inside, the tongue is gusseted to the inner wall, meaning it's attached to the inner wall of the upper. And I must say these gusseted tongues that continue to arrive on the running shoe marketplace, I am starting to lean in the direction of really looking for shoes that have gusseted tongues. I don't know, I just like, it feels like the tongue is more one with the rest of the shoe, with the rest of the upper. And I'll come back to that in a minute. And lastly on the upper, oh yeah, well, there is a hole there at the top for the runner's knot. That's good because the Nike React Infinity Run flying it, the shoe that I just finished testing did not have a hole on the top of the eyelet chain. And for that runner's knot, it was driving me a little insane. So I'm glad there's a hole up there. And then lastly on the upper, the overlays are very, very minimal, okay? Not much overlay action and what are overlays? It's the rubber or sometimes plastic on other shoes. Like sometimes I think ASICS has a few shoes that the overlays can really be built up. And it's basically this design here just to give a little more form to the upper material. And moving on to that midsole, I'm gonna put it in again, kind of that simplified category of midsole. Nothing crazy going on. That's why it's got a little bit of dancing action there when I do the twist. And it's an EVA midsole foam is the actual material, what they call EVA plus. So again, four millimeter drop through the midsole. I'm not sure what else to tell you. I'll get to my thoughts here in a second on the overall ride, but yeah, that's the midsole. EVA midsole, nothing crazy to write home about there. Onto the outsole. So you know what it reminds me of that outsole? Can anybody guess? Can anybody guess? The beacon. Do I have a beacon? Yes, I have a beacon. There we go. So are you noticing what's similar here? So exposed midsole foam through that outsole. And then a little bit of rubber protection in the heels on both of these shoes. And the beacon is from New Balance in case you didn't know. And then some rubber through the toe box through the forefoot right there on the bottom of the outsole. So immediately as I pulled the Kinvara 11 out of the, I'll just set that there. As I pulled the Kinvara 11 out of the box today, I was like, whoa, that's the bottom of the beacon in my opinion. And again, nothing crazy. You probably aren't gonna wanna run on too much snow and ice like I did today with that type of outsole, but I felt fine on the kind of wetter sections of the pavement today. For the fit, I went true to size, absolutely spot on. And my heel was not slipping at all through this heel counter. So really good there. And then also, okay, comforts back to comfort. I just gotta say the tongue. And I remember this in the fast twitch lineup as well from Soccany. It seems like Soccany is really nailing the tongue of their running shoe lineup. At least the shoes that I have tested from Soccany. Really comfortable tongue. Just like it's a little extra padding which probably makes the shoe a little heavier. But I'm usually, I'm willing to add a little bit of weight to a shoe if it means the shoe is just gonna be a little bit more comfortable. So really enjoyed the tongue of the shoe. Again, it's gusseted. And so it just, I don't know. That little extra padding plus the connection to the rest of the shoe was just spot on. Okay, positives real quick. Lightweight shoe, very lightweight. And when I tried to go a little faster today and get up on my four foot, you know I'm doing some four foot practice in early 2020 for some speed in the racing. It just, the ride was spot on. It just was spot on. And for the drawbacks, zero. No drawbacks at this point for the Soccany Canvara 11. Again, we'll see what happens after 50 miles. How will I use this shoe moving forward? Tempo days, yeah. It could be an easy day shoe. It's, for me, it's not a long run shoe, okay? It's not quite enough midsole protection for a long run but tempo days because of how lightweight it is. I have to do more testing, but it felt like it had a little, not pop, not snappy either, but just it felt like I could go if I wanted to. I don't know, it's hard to describe. I'll have some better description after 50 miles.  This could work for kind of a tune up 5K or 10K. And also if you're looking for an affordable half marathon shoe, okay, we'll just go there right now, $110. This could be an affordable half marathon racing shoe. I really think so. Now it is neutral, keep that in mind. So make sure your ankles are nice and strong but I think you could take this up to a half marathon and now it's not the lightest shoe out there on the market, but it would do the trick for a half marathon. And yeah, I really think so. I think that 23 millimeter and 19 millimeter stack height is enough protection for the half marathon distance for your legs. And last but not least, conclusion on the performance after the first run. Again, we'll keep rolling with it but it felt as I was taking the shoe off after the run, I was just thinking, what makes this shoe stand out to me? And it was the way, and it was probably going, okay, going back, I know I keep saying going back to the gusseted tongue. It was the way the upper was working with the midsole. It felt like on the inside of the shoe that the inner wall of the upper material was one with the midsole, meaning it kind of all flowed together, meaning the shoe was really, really comfortable. And I loved, I'm actually, frankly, everyone, I was a little shocked. I was, after the voting today, okay, I'll just say, I was hoping everyone was going to pick the A6 EVO, yeah, EVO ride, A6 EVO ride. And, but after everyone chose the Soccany Canvara 11, sure enough, I took it out and I am pleasantly surprised everyone. So we'll get it to 50 miles. I do believe sooner rather than later. Question of the day, Soccany fans, it's time to come out and force down in the comments. What Soccany running shoe are you running in right now and or racing in right now and why? Okay, why do you love that Soccany shoe? And if you've never trained or raced in a Soccany shoe, now is the time to go down into the comments and start chiming into the comments from the real solid Soccany fans to learn about their lineup. I'm excited for Soccany in 2020. I think I said at the beginning of this year that I predict Soccany is gonna be pushing the envelope forward for a lot of their shoes in their lineup. So there you go. First impressions of the Soccany Canvara 11. All right, we're gonna actually close it out there. Vlog is over. It's a Sunday. I'm gonna go watch the Super Bowl. I hope you guys had a great weekend and we'll toss it back on the right too. The first impression playlist, all the first impression shoes that I've done over the past couple of years that'll be on the right. And then on the left, we'll toss it back too. You know what, the last Soccany shoe I tested out, which frankly, I don't even remember which one it was, but it'll be on the left. All right, everyone, see beauty, work hard and love each other. See you tomorrow.


My name is Chunping Du. Today's my topic is breakdown of new data silos in generative AI. This is about me. I'm founder and CEO of Data Strato. It's a company founded by three Apache members. Two is Hadoop Committer. The other one is Spark Committer. Before founding the company, I have more than 15 years in working in the data and open source industry. I'm expert chairperson for FEN Data. I'm also previously working for Hortonworks Cloudera and look like a Hadoop guide. I also committed a PMC for many Apache projects and also I'm a mentor for a lot of data and open source projects. Let me do a quick survey. Does anyone know FEN Data Foundation? Can you raise your hand? Okay, several of them. Definitely, the FEN Data Foundation is previously, when it's founded, it's called FEN Data. It wants to call F Deep Learning. Then we changed the name from Deep Learning to AI to be more generic. Then in 2020, we changed the AI and data with a margin of ODPI that was open source, Data Foundation stuff. Basically, from the name or change of the AI and data, you can see data and AI is actually binding together. It's just like two sides of the same coin. Just like Jim mentioned in the morning, actually, the model is an AI-S model. I think we have the same perspective. Now, of course, everybody is talking about generality, but this is a very exciting time when we have to do a lot of interesting innovations here. Basically, building on the super powerful foundation model, we're building an ecosystem in the form of different kind of software layers, tours. Eventually, other than chat GBT, chat GBT is definitely a disruptive application, but we'll see a lot of new application here in the coming in the next few years. The interesting thing is the key user experience from this wave of new application will not be the same at the old time, like Internet, like mobile computing at the time. The thing that's important is the UI, how fancy UI it is, how many functionality it is, or about performance. If you look at the chat GBT, its functionality or the UI perspective doesn't differ too much with other chat, chatbot. There's tens of thousands of chatbots, but what makes chat GBT uniqueness is something deeper. That's actually the model and the data. Definitely, yeah, data is under the water about the quantity and quality of data. It's really without how much efficient, how smart your model currently is. Speaking back to our data, because data is so important, so when we look at the data, we will see the data is increasing year over year, and it's continuing increasing. One of the top drivers behind of the data increasing is because of the applications. About 20, 30 years, we have Internet, and we have social media, we have mobile computing, we have Internet of Things. We have Metaverse now, we have Generative AI. All of this application is increasing more and more, and then no matter how it's different, the volume of different or different type of the data, I think there's some first principles for data. That is, data has a gravity. It means a lot, right? But the most important thing I summarized here is, it has to stay where it's being created, and also it's hard to discover once it gets buried, right? And also it's costly to move back and forth. So it's easy to get data siloed in some way. Data silo problem is not a new problem, actually. It's already over 30 years. Over 30 years ago, we started to do the on-silo data. At that time, they only have structured data. They only have the database applications. At that time, we threw the ETL to make sure all the DP database are merged into a data warehousing, providing a data mart to, you know, application to consume it. So that's the way over 30 years how we break the data silos. But the things, it's changed after, you know, the Internet of Things are rising. There's a huge amount of data coming in and a lot of unstructured data or semi-structured data make the data warehousing solution or it's not effective and not efficient. So then we invent something new, like Data Lake. Data Lake technology is a transformer like Hadoop and also something like S3. It can store the data and process the data in a very cheap way. The good news is you find a solution to store your data, you know, together in a very cheap way. Other bad news is there's no single stuff to choose anymore because, you know, no matter what kind of engine you choose, you just handle or process only part of your data but not the data single of the truth of all the things, all the things. In the year about 2020, something new is innovated as the lake has tried to combine what we have in data warehousing we have in the Data Lake. It's doing a good job, you know, to make sure all the data can merge together and also we have some into a same standard table format to be processed by, you know, multiple engines. But still, there are a lot of new silos today we're facing that Lakehouse is not helpful. Just like previously, a lot of infrastructure is moving from unpromised data center to the cloud. Today, a lot of enterprise, a lot of companies are actually choosing the multi-cloud as their strategy. The strategy is not only because of the vendor locking, not only the technical perspective and also maybe business perspective and also there are a lot of cases that the company has to, you know, using multi-cloud including if the company want to expand their business through the international, they have to choose something global cloud vendors instead of local vendors and also there are some M&A case once the company acquire a new company then they may choose a different cloud vendors they have to deal with this complexity. But what's the problem? If the application stay in the multi-cloud then the data has to stay in the multi-cloud. Just like I said, the data has a gravity, right? But this kind of data stack in the different cloud actually they're not working with each other very well to make this data get silenced in this multi-cloud. And also some third-party tours they also had a side of the problem just like, you know, snowflake and database they cannot... You won't expect to query some data from the database to a snowflake in a very efficient and quickly way. And also this is true for hybrid cloud cases. A lot of cases will bring data silos. If I look at the picture a little bigger not only multi-cloud but also the multi-region the things will be even worse and complicated because rather than, you know, physical distance rather than technical silos we also have to take care to think about the compliance the compliance problem because a lot of regions they have their own policy and how to imagine their data how to governance their data how to process their data. So that's the difference. That's why Leakhouse is not enough to handle the today's challenge for data cycle problem because it's a hardly, you know, impossible unified all the data in this situation into one place for cost, for performance, for regulation problem for all these reasons it cannot. If we step back and we think what we want to do to handle they actually in this situation the multi-cloud, multi-region distributed data lakes is endable with distributed and data lakes situation. If you look at the situation most of the company actually need it's a centralized place to governance your data and you can put your analysis workload no matter your data from which cloud or regions you just want to analysis your job or training your data this is what you want. So basically if we step back we will try to building something really innovative thing is we call it a data stratosphere that's a we have a building a cross-cloud layer of data fabric so that you can take care of all your metadata and also we have built something like a federal query engine to allows you the query can work with different heterogeneous data warehouse things that make your analysis work efficient and effective and also for data security and global acceleration part we like to providing a simple solution that you can apply easily in one site and you know apply it to globally and also as a next generation of data infer so you need to providing single substitutes for metadata is also provided smart governance you don't have to care about regulation problem and also some security problem here and it's better to have natural language interface so that data scientist team you don't have to involve all the efforts to writing complicated SQLs it also has dealing with ETL workload today so today a lot of so many efforts and so many cost is spent on ETL for the data preparation or data pipeline that is because this is because we through the traditional data warehousing way we try to prepare all the data into merge into the single place if we release the constraints just like we mentioned we don't have to maintain a very costly ETL across a different color moving data back and forth so let's talking more details the first thing first there's a single substitutes for metadata so metadata is so important because it's data about data instead of the centralized data just like I mentioned is very costly and maybe in most cases is even impossible we actually want to centralized the metadata this is to solve a problem how to governance the data in the centralized way how to secure data in the one place and how to achieve the single source of truth so we have metadata lake no matter it's a data warehousing or it's a SQL database or it's a Kafka topics or even the AM models we can have a unified metadata lake so this important thing once we have metadata centralized that's something like we have intelligent we have the intelligent build on top of it this intelligence is super important just like previous years the people like Ferrari, Lamborghini because the engine is fast they want to driving very fast but nowadays or even the future people more care about how can we do the autopilot to make the drive-through safely and saving my time and saving my efforts I think the data platform is also the same case as previous people won't care about how much time to do the ad hoc query or do the ETL workload but in the future we should pay extra attention on how much less effort for this engineering work we can saving their time to building the ETL pipeline we can saving the data scientists teams work to building the SQLs or the scripts I think that is why we bring intelligent to the data we will show a quick demo I will introduce my colleague Lisa the product manager of data straddle to continue to show the demo thank you my mic is on there is some really exciting stuff that is going on here I am very excited to be able to present this demo for everybody we talked a lot about data silos within an organizational context how can we actually see that played out especially across different departments we want to demonstrate a scenario where we have an HR and sales department running different databases how can we effectively query them in a way that doesn't necessarily have this huge technical data of having to build out ETL beforehand and then how can we platformize this in a way where analysts can very easily query it using a natural language interface so we are going to be going over a little bit but what might that look like to play this video here welcome to the Gratino UI here we have a default meta lake and that meta lake contains two catalogs it's a snowflake catalog which contains a sales database and this sales database has the typical tables that you would find in this sort of database we also have a postgres database and this has a HR database and again this contains the sort of tables you would expect in that database dealing with employees in this demo of Gratino as you can see on the left hand side that we have some multi-cloud metadata that is stored in Gratino we have a snowflake database which contains HR information so that's information about employees and in AWS we have a postgres database and this contains data about sales first off we are going to make a query from the sales database and this is just a simple query to find the top 10 employees with the highest sales we can describe the query in natural language and the SQL will be automatically generated for us the system understands the structure of the data and can infer relationships between tables based on the names of fields as well as generating the SQL we can also generate an explanation of the SQL we can then just run the query and have the results returned the next query we will perform is a multi-cloud query we are going to look up the employee's average performance rating and what their total sales is to do this we need both the employee information from the snowflake database and the sales information from the postgres database again we will use natural language to generate the SQL and run the SQL and the results are returned along with the results we can also see a physical execution plan and this shows where the data is coming from from each cloud provider and shows you where the data is joined together awesome, thank you everybody for watching that demo welcome to the Gravitino UI not again, only one time is good enough for us I wanted to get into the demo architecture and decipher what we saw just now because we talked a lot about data plane and creating that layer but what you saw right now was just an NLP prompt that queried that so the back end of that was DataStratos a project called Gravitino which is open sourced as of today and with that we had two JDBC catalogs one for snowflake and a snowflake database and another one for postgres and then on top of that we saw underneath was a federated query engine that unified everything together which was then used by a technology called Y as our front end there to actually be able to query on top of that and so with this we're able to use the metadata like really effectively and then use a text to SQL translation to be able to query it and then to be able to join really efficiently despite being a multi-cloud environment so in this case we're really skipping so much in terms of having these SQL scripts and doing this really laborious work of building an ETL pipeline and we're actually able to enable like data discoverability here and exploration in a really fun way that's accessible across organizations so a lot of the magic that we have here is within the actual metadata itself and the way that this works is that the meta lake service that you have is going to help build that data fabric that sits across your entire organization so we showed within one organization two different departments but thinking about multi-cloud environments thinking about cross-region environments there's a lot in terms of scale that this could build out to so right now with Gravitino people with authorization can have a global view on what would otherwise be really fragmented data and so just like the demo that you saw you can leverage this and then empower people across your organization in a really fun and exploratory way so a big reason why we've decided to open source I'm sure you saw JP's background and really what we're built on is open source as sort of our core and something like this is inherently going to have to need a lot of co-invention with the community so we want to really work with people as we're still building out this product instead of offering something that's super developed and maybe has no use case out in the real world to build technologies and features and connectors that people are using right now and we want to be really collaborative within that process we are taking the open source community extremely seriously and we want people to have fun with us we want people to be able to reach out to us and have casual questions they're having install issues we want to be right there and we have gone through incredible stakes to be able to have community managers around and to create discourse platforms for people to engage with and we also want to build out an open standard we want people to be able to not have to worry about interoperability and to again this is the whole point of this technology is to unsilow the data and to avoid these vendor lock ins and these silos that do tend to build out if you're really interested in Gravitino which is the back end that all of this sits upon we do have a QR code that takes you directly to our repo give it a star if you're interested and watch our development create issues engage with us we're more than happy to work with people and to to really make sure that it's open right that's really where we're coming from so a little bit more about Gravitino in terms of what a unified metadata lake even is we really want something that's agnostic between so many different database technologies and so whether or not you're working with data lakes or data warehouses you know document or files or Kafka topics or models we want people to be able to have critical features that would otherwise be a really large amount of technical data in an organization such as a single source of truth and also included with that are you know data and AI catalog services having a geo distributed architecture in mind that can scale to an enterprise level really well and then really have a combination of onsite catalogs and offsite data governance so we want people to be able to secure their data and have a very solid idea of what is secured I think as we know maybe software supply chain is very you know well developed these days and as we're moving into this discussion of what is a data supply chain how can we then even step forward even past that and secure things all in one go at this one step that everybody kind of understands to be this common source of truth and I think this is where a lot of headaches lie within organizations so this is our architecture there's four main components to this but I really want people to kind of look at the object model and really what we've done is you know have these different layers that we want to continually iterate on and to support more and more and I hope that you know in a year's time this is just horizontally built out like crazy and there's just an endless amount of things that we support but really we wanted to create a core object model that's generic enough to be compatible with a lot of different types of catalogs and to be able to connect to data warehouses to documents and files on your message queues and then on top of that have the interface layer that then provides a RESTful thrift or JDBC interface to then be used for other catalog services as well and something that's standardized something that people are already using in their stack and then to add on this layer of functional data governance and to provide you know ACL and optimization lineage and all of these different possibilities that can stem from having a solid entrusted metadata layer and the possibilities are so endless there as well so we went through a lot of different types of design choices especially for Gravitino I think that with a project this ambitious there's so many different architectures that you can run through and finding the right one was really hard so again we wanted to keep in mind this forefront goal of single source of truth especially in terms of your metadata context and so again looking at the flexible object model which was you know really wanting to be suitable for all different types of data just because complexity has really grown so much in this space in terms of what's possible and in terms of machine learning and we want this to be pluggable with different types of catalogs so the second thing that we also wanted to look at was to instead of gathering all this metadata into one place that would again just be more processing and more storage we wanted to use a direct managing mode and we wanted to manage the underlying data sources to get rid of these consistency issues the third thing that we wanted to look at was building a geo-distributed architecture especially for cross region joins which can be really difficult and we wanted to get this easily deployed and so in different regions in different clouds you would feel really supported and like all organizations we're having one single source of truth and each catalog request is routed to a location that fits best and to get rid of fragmentation as a byproduct of this so the fourth thing that we wanted to do as a part of this is to support multi-engines and so a lot of our developers have you know really core backgrounds in Hadoop and Hive and so we wanted to also look at Spark as well which a lot of us have really strong backgrounds and also realize that we wanted to be agnostic towards engines in some way and to create this ultimate flexibility and so Gravitino supports multiple engines such as Trino, Spark and Postgres and we hope to add more and more on to that regardless of whether or not it's open source or commercial again we're really looking at interoperability and I think that's what causes this to work at the end of the day and last but not least we wanted to enable security in a really standardized you know single source way where all of your data governance can be done like in this one single plane right so we looked at the Gravitino UI in the demo but we didn't necessarily look at it from the command line and I'm sure a few of us are curious what it looks like in terms of usage from the command line and so we wanted to create a metadata catalog and a metadata lake in this case where the schema and the table can also be attached to it really easily in a typical case a company would have one metadata lake to you know encompass everything in their data and then they can create the catalog underneath it and usually you can have different business groups with different catalogs and so we wanted to introduce that sort of flexibility and you know with different schemas under that as well so once you set up everything you can query your table with the catalog extension and then bind it to the execution engine and let's say it spark in this case and then apply a job configuration to different catalog services so you know one thing we're mentioning here is that this is a restful catalog and so it's really convenient to access and integrate this into you know another you know service if you wanted to compare to like a AGDBC catalog so going through these steps you can see that we're creating the metadata lake we're creating the catalog under the metadata lake and then we're creating the table and using spark to then query it and it can be really nice and easy to do this in an intuitive way without having to learn too much more ahead of time these are some of the milestones that we're really looking at into the future so at December 2023 you're looking at today where we've released 0.3 of Gravitino which is now supported by multi-engine adoption and also metadata operations as well iceberg catalogs if you've used iceberg before and we've open sourced that and we want people to be really involved in this process while we're developing it we're willing to do all of the hard work with implementation but we want to know where people are at and we want to be able to support data engineers across different organizations especially in enterprise as much as possible and in March 2024 you can expect to see our beta release which includes the access control layer security and hetero catalogs as well and we also have our availability release happening in June which will be production ready and compliant in so many ways and then HMS drop-in replacements as well so we're really looking forward to seeing how this scales and how this grows within the next year our team is working incredibly hard and really does believe in this vision so much and we want to get continuous feedback as part of that process so this is our vision for the future and really what we're looking at is as everybody moves into like multi-cloud native architectures and this might not be everybody but it might be a lot of folks who find themselves in messy data situations we want to be able to implement single sources of truth in terms of metadata and have this be really a way that can be leveraged and utilized by so many different parts of like let's say whether it's data ops or data engineering or machine learning to be able to be managed in a way that is leveraged and to also maybe not completely get rid of ETL but to simplify it in such a way that makes data so accessible across different organizations and to make data playful again and not have to deal with all of this under the hood infrastructure just to get one single query that maybe we realize we didn't need after all and to have something a little bit easier to work with and flexible and again we want to pair with platform engineers and we want to develop a platform where people can bring their insights into this data and to have that data itself be intelligent and to be really easy to work with and you saw that with our code demonstration with Y so again hopefully everybody enjoys this cute little picture here I really love it and we are hiring currently so if you're interested you can email HR at data straight .com or visit our website at data straight .ai and you can go to our career section and thank you so much I know that the end here is near so thank you thank you if there are any questions yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of related to the partition stuff so we think the partition this kind of information is actually not data it's actually metadata so we were having some better data describing on the partition details I'm not referring to partition partition how like based on how the data store it could be one to many or one to one among the attribution and how the query optimizer can provide the better query that you can use it when the data is present the thing is we think there's a lot of optimization for a query engine actually the building this optimization this the data metadata mix with the engines it's too tightly we think it's too tightly so that means one engine if you store data into one engine it will be very hard for other engine or other engine to consume because a lot of shortcuts or tricky things there so what do we think we should be moving all this kind of optimization and also the metadata part out of the engines so that this part can be shared by the multi-engines definitely we want the multi-engines because in the multiple cloud scenario situations there's no one engine can feed so we definitely we want to move some of this kind of information to out of the previously engine data engine part yeah but then don't you think you'll have a performance challenges you are differing it to the later state because when you have a queries coming in from natural language demo what you guys have shown it may not be optimal query again you just need to figure it out on how do you optimize the queries yeah so that's a good question so firstly this is SQL translation efficient right and second thing is rather than comparing the ETL the ETL they already do a lot of work ahead and now is we change update to ad hoc query and this will be lower performance as well but this is only for today for now if for the future if you think you know we still maintain some ETL pipeline for just for some high-frequent data you know requirement but for some ad hoc query just like business leaders or CXO they have some ideas I want to ask in some questions or everyone or everyone can have you know this is for this is infrequent data access requirement and that's will be our the power of the demo where it shows and also there are a lot of there are a lot of potential optimization we can do no matter from the SQL translate perspective or the way we execute a physical plan so the actual physical plan if we have noticed a lot of you know operators operations just like we merge the you know the data from different cloud sites and places we notice some tables it's consumed or it's used a lot then we can automatically building some cash index just like we said we have data stratosphere layer across it so we can put it on the view even a materialized view to accelerating it yeah is the join happening on your the data in and then joining it on your side which means you've brought the data over the wire to be able to join the thing is not actually the wire is only taking care of from the input of the languages and how to generate a SQL when the SQL is pushed to us and we have a federated query engine to make sure to you know just like to show that it's a physical plan how to execute it actually it's a way to execute it so you execute it and you have to somehow combine all the answers together to then bring back a single answer yeah that's true rather than you know putting the data from a lot of place we do the you know some operator push down to push different cloud engines with different engines on the bottom so so that's what will be the most efficient way and the most faster way to do so I had a question so for your metadata like are you we can use anything like Oracle or SQL server or anything yeah it's mostly can adding a lot of things just like you said Oracle MySQL from the beginning we're adding the Postgres so this is well tested by for the MySQL Oracle because we are open source project right and we will deliver and also our community member will deliver to it and eventually we will support most of them yeah thank you alright thank you all for the questions thanks