Meeting Title: Brainforge BI Handoff Training Prep Date: 2026-04-29 Meeting participants: Greg Stoutenburg, bpeiair
WEBVTT
1 00:02:00.230 ⇒ 00:02:01.049 Greg Stoutenburg: There we go.
2 00:02:02.820 ⇒ 00:02:04.610 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, Brian, sorry about that.
3 00:02:04.780 ⇒ 00:02:06.919 bpeiair: Hey, no worries, all good.
4 00:02:06.920 ⇒ 00:02:08.280 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep, nice to meet you.
5 00:02:08.280 ⇒ 00:02:09.690 bpeiair: Nice to meet you, how’s it going?
6 00:02:10.110 ⇒ 00:02:18.359 Greg Stoutenburg: Doing well! So, yeah, so, Thomas said that you’ve done some work for Brainforge before, working on dbt and that kind of thing, I guess?
7 00:02:19.050 ⇒ 00:02:21.849 bpeiair: Yeah, I think it was his first year,
8 00:02:22.040 ⇒ 00:02:25.299 bpeiair: But yeah, Utsama and I are from the same alma mater, we’re both from Bucknell.
9 00:02:25.440 ⇒ 00:02:28.410 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, cool. Alright, cool. I’m in York… I’m in York, Pennsylvania now.
10 00:02:28.910 ⇒ 00:02:31.340 bpeiair: Oh, cool. I’m in New Jersey.
11 00:02:31.340 ⇒ 00:02:32.899 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay. Where are you from originally?
12 00:02:33.680 ⇒ 00:02:36.689 bpeiair: Also, well, I guess not New Jersey, New York.
13 00:02:37.020 ⇒ 00:02:39.040 bpeiair: Always between New York and New Jersey, yeah.
14 00:02:39.040 ⇒ 00:02:40.770 Greg Stoutenburg: Alright, you’re an Atlantic guy.
15 00:02:41.170 ⇒ 00:02:42.610 bpeiair: Yeah, basically.
16 00:02:42.610 ⇒ 00:02:43.810 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, yeah, cool.
17 00:02:43.910 ⇒ 00:03:00.279 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, cool. Well, alright, I guess, I mean, I guess just to sort of dive into it, so basically where we’re at is we’re, we’ve done an implementation of BI for a client, and it’s handoff time, and we want to give them some trainings. They…
18 00:03:00.280 ⇒ 00:03:14.809 Greg Stoutenburg: They’re using MotherDuck… I mean, I can send you a data architecture diagram, but, they’re using MotherDuck as a source, and we’ve got a dbt layer, it connects to Omni, and they’re using AI to interact with their data.
19 00:03:14.810 ⇒ 00:03:15.760 bpeiair: Cool, very cool.
20 00:03:15.760 ⇒ 00:03:40.749 Greg Stoutenburg: One of the reasons why we wanted to reach out is just there have been some… in, like, the last few weeks, the client has been sort of on edge about things leading up to the handoff, because their hope is that they don’t have a data engineer, they have, like, sort of hardly a data analyst. They really want to be able to just self-service all their own stuff, and so what they’re hoping for is that we’ve taken them from the land of spreadsheets to the land of interactive
21 00:03:40.750 ⇒ 00:03:48.800 Greg Stoutenburg: And then, like, don’t need us anymore. And might call us up if they decide that they do later, but that’s the hope. So they really want to understand
22 00:03:49.130 ⇒ 00:04:14.099 Greg Stoutenburg: their data that is, modeled in the marts. They want to understand how to use dbt, which my understanding is that none of them ever have before. And a reason why we reach out to you is because, you know, you’ve worked with UTAM, and, you know, you know how to handle these sorts of things, and just to have, like… I guess they’re gonna kind of think of it a little bit as… this wasn’t their request, this was UTAM’s idea, a little bit as, like, someone who’s not actively been involved in the development
23 00:04:14.100 ⇒ 00:04:18.139 Greg Stoutenburg: of this, showing, here’s how all of this works. So, sort of like that.
24 00:04:18.140 ⇒ 00:04:18.620 bpeiair: interested.
25 00:04:18.620 ⇒ 00:04:25.430 Greg Stoutenburg: expert perspective from the, you know, outside, in a way, if that makes sense. Yeah.
26 00:04:25.850 ⇒ 00:04:29.780 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, so what do you need from me to do that?
27 00:04:30.520 ⇒ 00:04:41.480 bpeiair: So, when I’ve done this before, as an outside person, I would usually not ask for…
28 00:04:42.780 ⇒ 00:04:56.549 bpeiair: Hmm, it goes two ways. I’ve done trainings where I’m in their repos, and I’ve done trainings where I have a template repo. I think this can just be a template repo, there’s no reason to give me a single… it’s just a headache to give me access to everything.
29 00:04:56.550 ⇒ 00:05:15.999 bpeiair: And then there’s also two kinds of trainings where if they don’t know anything about what’s going on, I can definitely explain, like, like, explain, like, a five-type situation of this is what dbt is actually doing, and show a demo of just, like.
30 00:05:16.210 ⇒ 00:05:36.400 bpeiair: because I don’t know their level of, SQL, even, so I would almost need to know, like, am I… am I diving into any SQL, or am I just talking about what it actually does? It sounds like either you guys have set up some sort of templated dbt on top of things, and then maybe AI
31 00:05:36.500 ⇒ 00:05:39.089 bpeiair: Build stuff for them?
32 00:05:39.210 ⇒ 00:05:44.619 bpeiair: Which is great, and so what I would need… well, okay, so are they using…
33 00:05:44.940 ⇒ 00:05:49.050 bpeiair: dbt Cloud? How are they executing their scripts?
34 00:05:49.390 ⇒ 00:05:55.969 Greg Stoutenburg: That’s a good question. I… I can ask those questions and get back to you. I don’t know how our engineer has set that up.
35 00:05:56.560 ⇒ 00:06:01.130 bpeiair: It’s… yeah, it would basically be, are they okay with me
36 00:06:01.130 ⇒ 00:06:17.280 bpeiair: sharing my screen of a sample dbt project, and going through, you know, very basic, like, these are folders, and in these folders, these are models, these are tests, and then I would talk out loud of, like.
37 00:06:17.310 ⇒ 00:06:29.850 bpeiair: There’s one YAML in dbt that takes all your credentials, and so it talks to your database, and then there’s another thing that then takes DBT’s code, and…
38 00:06:29.850 ⇒ 00:06:39.679 bpeiair: Yeah, I would give them examples. I’d be like, okay, so you have transactions in your database, and you want a BI table that aggregates
39 00:06:39.840 ⇒ 00:06:49.900 bpeiair: invoices by month. So you could… you would either write that SQL custom, and return it, or dbt, or you would write, you know, select
40 00:06:50.040 ⇒ 00:06:56.070 bpeiair: month, whatever, this, ag, and then what dbt does, and then I’m kind of, like, doing it to you right now, of how I.
41 00:06:56.070 ⇒ 00:06:56.780 Greg Stoutenburg: Right, right.
42 00:06:56.780 ⇒ 00:07:14.240 bpeiair: It’s like, yeah, and then you write that, and then dbt has a scheduler, so instead of a person writing a query and checking it every morning, dbt can run it once a day, twice a day, three times a day, so that it’s up to date, and then it lives as a separate object in your database, and then your BI can sit on top of that, and so it’s automated.
43 00:07:14.240 ⇒ 00:07:14.740 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
44 00:07:14.740 ⇒ 00:07:23.940 bpeiair: So, I would go in that direction, which I could definitely fill a half hour or an hour, because also people have questions, but, with…
45 00:07:23.940 ⇒ 00:07:40.889 bpeiair: with the very small context that I have, my plan was to do that, instead of the, here’s your whole ecosystem, and me screen sharing their repo, and being like, these are all, like, I wouldn’t be able to do that on short notice anyway. But those are, like, the two types of training, so I would do the first type that I just explained to you.
46 00:07:41.070 ⇒ 00:07:52.669 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, okay. Sounds good. I can answer some of those questions. They might have particular follow-on questions about certain modeling choices, but they’ve already got their own conception of, like, how they think
47 00:07:52.740 ⇒ 00:08:09.440 Greg Stoutenburg: things should look, like, what good looks like, and we’re giving them documentation on what we’ve done for them. So, I think between you giving the general overview, like, this is what DBT does, and, you know, sort of just adjusting for their level of understanding as you go,
48 00:08:09.440 ⇒ 00:08:21.129 bpeiair: Well, and I would introduce myself as, like, you know, I wasn’t involved in this project, so, you know, here, but I’ve been using dbt since dbt was born, so I can at least, like, tell them that. Yeah.
49 00:08:21.130 ⇒ 00:08:28.330 Greg Stoutenburg: Tell them the tale, yeah. Yeah, and I didn’t promise anything, like, that you would give them a deep dive on their data. I said…
50 00:08:28.330 ⇒ 00:08:28.910 bpeiair: Okay.
51 00:08:28.910 ⇒ 00:08:40.450 Greg Stoutenburg: you’d give a dbt intro and a training, and we would provide documentation on what we’ve done for them. So, I think that they should have reason to be satisfied with this arrangement.
52 00:08:40.880 ⇒ 00:08:46.949 bpeiair: Okay, awesome. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, that sounds good to me. Can I ask, so, are you a full-time Brainforge?
53 00:08:47.180 ⇒ 00:08:55.989 Greg Stoutenburg: I don’t know if anyone is full-time at Brainforge. The meaning of full-time at Brainforge seems to be, I don’t know, I can work potentially unlimited hours, but I’m paid by the hour.
54 00:08:56.150 ⇒ 00:09:00.260 bpeiair: I see. I think I said that because you have a Brainforge email, but I guess I also once had.
55 00:09:00.260 ⇒ 00:09:01.979 Greg Stoutenburg: You also have a Brainforge email.
56 00:09:01.980 ⇒ 00:09:11.160 bpeiair: I had one, and then I, and then I was like, Utam, I can’t, like, do stuff anymore, which is fine, like, people come and go. Yeah. Or how long have you been working with Utam?
57 00:09:11.160 ⇒ 00:09:17.470 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have since, since December, I did, like, a… I did, like, a 2-week, 10-hour-a-week
58 00:09:17.590 ⇒ 00:09:28.910 Greg Stoutenburg: like, single project for one client, and then in… since, yeah, since early-middle January, I’ve been, like, this has been the main thing. Got it. So, yeah, about 4 months then.
59 00:09:29.100 ⇒ 00:09:31.749 bpeiair: Okay, very cool. Yeah. I was just curious. Yeah, yeah.
60 00:09:31.750 ⇒ 00:09:36.519 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, well, hey, I mean, hey, you’re welcome back, we can use you, you know, send you up in front, do this kind of thing.
61 00:09:36.520 ⇒ 00:09:38.800 bpeiair: That’s what he always tells me. I mean.
62 00:09:38.800 ⇒ 00:09:39.430 Greg Stoutenburg: They told me to tell you.
63 00:09:39.430 ⇒ 00:09:48.799 bpeiair: I told them, I’m always happy to do stuff. It just, the last, like, full project that I did, while I was still working, my primary job was a little tough.
64 00:09:48.800 ⇒ 00:09:49.690 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I understand.
65 00:09:49.690 ⇒ 00:10:06.789 bpeiair: So I was like, yeah, so that’s why I like stuff like this. I am happy to. Yeah. Yeah, before… the year before Utam worked at Brainforge, me and Utam were just 1099 contractors on, like, a year-long
66 00:10:06.880 ⇒ 00:10:13.909 bpeiair: Athletic Greens, the, like, vitamin company. Yeah. Dpt Snowflake implementation.
67 00:10:13.910 ⇒ 00:10:28.239 bpeiair: So, you know, I knew him very well from that, and then he told me he was gonna start Brainforge, and I, like, talked him through how I, like, I tried to help with that, because I’m a little bit older than him, but I was like, but I can’t do this with you, man.
68 00:10:28.630 ⇒ 00:10:30.130 bpeiair: But it’s been cool to see, you know.
69 00:10:30.130 ⇒ 00:10:30.470 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
70 00:10:30.470 ⇒ 00:10:37.950 bpeiair: he took that after Athletic Greens, and he’s… yeah, he’s been die-hard on this for many, many years.
71 00:10:37.950 ⇒ 00:10:38.300 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
72 00:10:38.300 ⇒ 00:10:48.280 bpeiair: through ups and downs, I get some updates, I get a lot of win updates, I get a lot of, oh my god, clients, blah blah blah updates. Yeah. But I still, yeah, I keep in touch with you, Tom, so…
73 00:10:48.280 ⇒ 00:10:49.010 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, cool.
74 00:10:49.200 ⇒ 00:10:55.909 bpeiair: you can, you know, if I… let’s say I do a good job tomorrow, you can keep me in mind for other stuff. Sure, yeah. It’s totally, totally all good.
75 00:10:55.910 ⇒ 00:11:00.539 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, cool. Well, hey, I mean, in the meantime, you know, just bill them a few hours.
76 00:11:00.540 ⇒ 00:11:02.319 bpeiair: Yeah, that’s what I… yeah, exactly.
77 00:11:02.320 ⇒ 00:11:21.549 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Okay, cool, yeah. No, my… I mean, my background is, I’d been, so, I mean, I was a philosophy professor until 2021, late 2021, and then I got a job at Stack Overflow, working in product-led growth, and then, wow. And then I did… yeah, I know, it’s been a ride. Here’s my… this is fun, here’s my Stack Overflow.
78 00:11:21.570 ⇒ 00:11:23.809 Greg Stoutenburg: Little widget. Oh, is it gonna work?
79 00:11:24.600 ⇒ 00:11:26.030 Greg Stoutenburg: Let me turn off the,
80 00:11:26.830 ⇒ 00:11:29.510 Greg Stoutenburg: Turn off the blur. Yeah, it was in April for.
81 00:11:29.510 ⇒ 00:11:30.149 bpeiair: That’s true.
82 00:11:30.150 ⇒ 00:11:31.900 Greg Stoutenburg: They actually made them. Maybe…
83 00:11:31.900 ⇒ 00:11:32.360 bpeiair: Okay.
84 00:11:32.360 ⇒ 00:11:37.259 Greg Stoutenburg: All you need to be a developer is just Stack Overflow copy and paste. Anyway.
85 00:11:37.260 ⇒ 00:11:39.620 bpeiair: Honestly, yes, and then… and then AI has kind of made that even.
86 00:11:39.620 ⇒ 00:11:46.990 Greg Stoutenburg: And then AI, yeah, and now we have a step up from there, even. Yeah, so I was there, and then I did a, you know, sort of a couple growth roles for a few years, and then, like.
87 00:11:46.990 ⇒ 00:12:01.310 Greg Stoutenburg: the company made a strategic pivot and wanted to go heavier into manufacturing, I don’t have that background. And so, like, the day I commented in the Amplitude Slack channel on jobs, like, you know, I just posted my resume, I was like, hey, you know, kind of looking for the next thing. That day, I got a message from him.
88 00:12:01.310 ⇒ 00:12:02.099 bpeiair: Oh, very cool.
89 00:12:02.100 ⇒ 00:12:06.540 Greg Stoutenburg: So, yeah, it’s been basically just right into this. So, pretty neat.
90 00:12:06.710 ⇒ 00:12:07.590 bpeiair: Wow.
91 00:12:07.590 ⇒ 00:12:08.140 Greg Stoutenburg: Hell.
92 00:12:08.140 ⇒ 00:12:11.980 bpeiair: That is, yeah, that’s a way more interesting story than…
93 00:12:11.980 ⇒ 00:12:12.700 Greg Stoutenburg: Man.
94 00:12:12.700 ⇒ 00:12:13.569 bpeiair: I just…
95 00:12:14.100 ⇒ 00:12:20.839 bpeiair: I mean, now I just vibe code, which is, cool. I don’t know if it’s cool, it’s scary.
96 00:12:20.840 ⇒ 00:12:21.190 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
97 00:12:21.190 ⇒ 00:12:23.259 bpeiair: It’s easier,
98 00:12:23.770 ⇒ 00:12:39.939 bpeiair: like I said, I’m a little bit older than Utah, but I’ve been doing, I graduated in 2013, from Bucknell as a math major, and then I learned how to code, like, right after that, and then it’s just been kind of, like, startups up until now. Now, I’ve been at Spotify for 6 years.
99 00:12:39.940 ⇒ 00:12:40.670 Greg Stoutenburg: Oh, okay, cool.
100 00:12:40.670 ⇒ 00:12:42.950 bpeiair: And it was…
101 00:12:43.270 ⇒ 00:12:49.320 bpeiair: it was like a dream come true, and then I was like, oh, I don’t actually get to work on music stuff, but it’s fine, and then… and now it’s like…
102 00:12:50.250 ⇒ 00:12:52.309 bpeiair: Are people gonna get laid off? Who knows?
103 00:12:52.310 ⇒ 00:12:55.190 Greg Stoutenburg: Brace yourself.
104 00:12:55.190 ⇒ 00:13:03.979 bpeiair: into vibe coding, which is interesting to learn from somebody who actually knows how to write code, at least I would like to think, versus somebody.
105 00:13:04.410 ⇒ 00:13:24.360 bpeiair: Who has no experience and wants to, like, vibe code an app, which they can do. Right. So, like, I’m now… now it’s, like, my team needs to prove that, vibe coding only works with people who have context, or, you know, at least can read the code that it does, versus, you know, having AI do it itself.
106 00:13:24.360 ⇒ 00:13:33.400 bpeiair: every… it seems like every two months, there’s some sort of, like, crossroads in the tech business, where now I have to, like, learn this and then prove that I shouldn’t be replaced by it.
107 00:13:33.400 ⇒ 00:13:35.549 Greg Stoutenburg: Going up and up. Right.
108 00:13:35.730 ⇒ 00:13:37.800 bpeiair: But that’s the… that’s the journey. It’s…
109 00:13:37.800 ⇒ 00:13:41.779 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s a journey, yeah. You just keep hoping that the checks don’t stop. That’s kind of like the game.
110 00:13:41.780 ⇒ 00:13:45.259 bpeiair: That’s… that’s mostly… that’s… that’s number one. I would like to be able to pay for.
111 00:13:45.260 ⇒ 00:13:55.779 Greg Stoutenburg: Number one. Yes, yeah. Yeah. Well, same boat then, same job. Cool. Yeah. All right, yeah, alright, that sounds good. So let me,
112 00:13:55.800 ⇒ 00:14:10.369 Greg Stoutenburg: But, I mean, I’ve got our notes, I’ll ask, our engineer who’s been working on this stuff how comfortable SQL, the client is, and then, yeah, and just sort of tee them up that you’re gonna give them a walkthrough of just, like, what DBT does, and how.
113 00:14:10.370 ⇒ 00:14:11.780 bpeiair: Yeah, mostly that.
114 00:14:11.780 ⇒ 00:14:13.530 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, and then,
115 00:14:13.810 ⇒ 00:14:18.489 Greg Stoutenburg: to… I’ll share whatever documentation we have in advance, just… just in case they happen to ask questions.
116 00:14:18.490 ⇒ 00:14:20.319 bpeiair: Oh, yeah, yeah, I can agree with tonight.
117 00:14:20.320 ⇒ 00:14:21.000 Greg Stoutenburg: follow-up.
118 00:14:21.300 ⇒ 00:14:21.720 bpeiair: Yeah.
119 00:14:21.900 ⇒ 00:14:27.309 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool. So, I think… what did we schedule this for? I think this is scheduled for…
120 00:14:27.310 ⇒ 00:14:28.459 bpeiair: Was it tomorrow at 2, I think?
121 00:14:28.460 ⇒ 00:14:36.659 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep, tomorrow at 2. Yep. So… and I just added myself just to… I’ll be there, and, you know, can help field questions or register follow-ups.
122 00:14:36.660 ⇒ 00:14:47.310 bpeiair: That would be nice. Sometimes, even when I say that I wasn’t involved in this, clients would ask me a very specific business context question, and I’ll be like, I don’t even know what your business does. Right, yeah.
123 00:14:47.310 ⇒ 00:14:57.569 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I could… and I could see them doing that, because they’ve got a certain amount of just unease about, you know, like, this handoff coming up, they don’t have an engineer.
124 00:14:57.570 ⇒ 00:14:58.040 bpeiair: Yeah.
125 00:14:58.040 ⇒ 00:15:12.649 Greg Stoutenburg: something will come… like, this happened last week, they’re like, why is this hard-coded, rather than, we’re just pulling from, you know, directly from Snowflake, or whatever, and getting a filtered answer here, and they, like, they don’t know the answer, then they go, oh god, we don’t know what we’re doing! So, like, there will
126 00:15:13.020 ⇒ 00:15:17.970 Greg Stoutenburg: Amount of just, you know, like, here’s how this works, to help soothe that anxiety.
127 00:15:18.310 ⇒ 00:15:31.710 bpeiair: I think that’s fair. When clients that don’t have an engineer have those questions, I think it’s fair. I think very soon in the future, they could literally… they just… they could ask AI why something
128 00:15:32.090 ⇒ 00:15:36.930 bpeiair: it is, and then AI will just tell them. But, you know, you guys still get checks, so maybe we don’t.
129 00:15:36.930 ⇒ 00:15:38.669 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep, but for now, you bill that hour.
130 00:15:38.670 ⇒ 00:15:40.530 bpeiair: Yeah, exactly.
131 00:15:40.530 ⇒ 00:15:41.649 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep, yeah.
132 00:15:41.650 ⇒ 00:15:42.370 bpeiair: Oh, man.
133 00:15:42.370 ⇒ 00:15:42.730 Greg Stoutenburg: Awesome.
134 00:15:42.730 ⇒ 00:15:55.959 bpeiair: Okay, cool, yeah, it all sounds good to me. Fingers crossed, you know, I’ve never met them, don’t know the client, but I’ve done this quite a lot of times, so I can chameleon my way into figuring out what kind of vibe they give, so it should be fun.
135 00:15:55.960 ⇒ 00:16:06.430 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, just follow… yeah, just trust your instincts. I think it’ll be fine. They’re nice. They’re nice, they’re anxious, but they’re positive, and they’re sort of determined to get this done, so…
136 00:16:06.430 ⇒ 00:16:09.469 bpeiair: Okay, cool. Yeah, sounds like my life, so that’s great.
137 00:16:09.470 ⇒ 00:16:10.150 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
138 00:16:10.580 ⇒ 00:16:12.740 Greg Stoutenburg: Alright, sounds good. Alright, thanks, Brian. Nice to meet you.
139 00:16:12.740 ⇒ 00:16:13.140 bpeiair: Yeah.
140 00:16:13.140 ⇒ 00:16:15.849 Greg Stoutenburg: That’s me as well Meanwhile, yep, thanks. Bye.