A toast to MLOps 🍾

2020 In Review
Werent able to catch all the meetups or coffee sessions from the community this past year? No worries, Byron wrote a TL;DR of some of the best highlights and learnings he has had from some of his favorite meetups.

Some of the main themes he hits on are:

MLOps is a Cultural Thing
All the different names for what we do
2 tools that get you 90% there (spoiler alert its kubeflow and a feature store)
The importance of Ethics

Since we are giving a recap of the year you might want to check out this infographic that we put together giving a few stats on the community and how much we have grown since the start in March.

Not Again!

Yes it is true! we made another feature store animation, this time David did all the talking and it isn't such a metaphor like Santa and his elves!

We wanted to hear your opinion on this one, should we make the videos more metaphoric or keep it straight shooting? We will be having a vote in slack to see which one you all like better and moving forward that will be the style of video we make for our little animations.

For now, though enjoy the groovy background music as David serenades you with his Feature talk.

Vishnu, David and I recorded the latest coffee session with one of the authors of Machine Learning Design Patterns Sara Robinson! We talked lots about writing a book and how she was able to keep a consistent voice while working with 2 other authors, and what the whole process looked like. You can check out her blogpost where she explained the whole story of her journey to becoming an author.

We wanted to jump into all the different MLOps design patterns she lays out in the book but tbh we only really were able to go deep into pipelines. Have no fear though cause on January 24th one of the other authors of the book will come and be our guest on the meetup! Start prepping your questions now! check out the podcast version here or video here.

By the way, we are giving away 3 copies of the book over the next couple of weeks to those who give us their best horror story of a design pattern gone wrong!

Hendrik and I were talking about a month ago about all the different kinds of architecture he has dealt with at various different companies, and one thing became immensely obvious; the evolution of maturity.

You all have probably seen the video with Tim and Nathan about the current MLOps landscape. One thing Tim said in that chat that I thought was pretty profound was the idea of how ML at companies is maturing and the tools are starting to reflect that. the tools that companies ask for and the features these tools have wouldn't be in demand if the companies ML wasn't evolving.

So what's that got to do with Hendrik? I feel like his story is a microcosm inside the macrocosm of what is going on. When he explained what he was having to deal with 5 years ago it made my ears hurt. He is able to walk through all the different learnings he has had over these years and how he has evolved.

This is the kind of talk I feel is needed especially when we are seeing google papers talk about maturity levels or get your ML test score. Here is a classic case of iteration and building on what works. I'm looking forward to what he has to say, as always we will be talking at 9am PST / 5pm UK. jump in with the link below.

I think I mentioned this in the last newsletter but its worth repeating! I am a huge fan of what Sam is doing at TWIML and frequently asked him for advice while starting this community.

This is why I tend to get real excited when TWIMLcon comes around cause I know it is absolute quality knowledge being share by veterans from all different verticles. Check out the full schedule here and you can use my discount code MLOPSCOMMUNITY to get 20% off the ticket price.

Also, this year I have the honor of being the moderator of a debate they are holding! Another reason for me to get excited about this conference!