How many different file formats does your ETL system need to parse? For many data pipelines, several well-defined formats will suffice. Things break, and at times require manual intervention, but not so often that a couple engineers can't keep tabs on the system and keep things running relatively smoothly.
Shopping for geeks can be stressful, especially if you don’t know what to get someone. Take a data scientist or engineer for example: do you get him or her gadgets, clothing, or an experiential gift? Should it be practical or fun? How about familiar or unique?
Conference swag is great, but cash is better. This year, the sponsors of DataEngConf NYC '16, which ncluded over 25 data science and engineering experts from top data, finance and media companies, decided to award one luck open source software project $2,000, plus free tickets to the next DataEngConf in San Frnacisco in Spring, 2017, in lieu of conference swag.
