I'm writing a book!
"What do you mean, writing a book? Weren't you already writing one?"
Yes, but this is another one. Working title: "The Professional BI Developer"
Now, this doesn't mean that I'm completely abandoning the ggplot2 extended project. I will keep on building it, chapter by chapter, and publishing it on the website as soon as a new chapter is ready.
But this spring, I had an epiphany while reading The Missing Readme by Chris Riccomini and Dmitriy Ryaboy and Clean Coder by Robert C. Martin. I've seen and read a lot of technical books about BI, but I can't recall any that were about the job itself. You know, the boring parts that nobody teaches you, but that will trip you up if you don't know them.
Essentially, the book is for myself from 5-6 years ago. New to the data profession, being the only data analyst (and/or BI developer) in the company, having to figure most things out by myself and making mistakes that would've been easy to prevent if I had had someone to talk things through with.
Other sources of inspiration: The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas and Fundamentals of Data Engineering by Joe Reis and Matthew Housley (in the sense that the book I'm writing will be mostly technology-agnostic).
I'm fully aware that I'm writing a book about being a professional BI developer while constantly being told on LinkedIn that the profession will soon be automated by AI. However, if you know me, you know that I like to swim upstream (learning R when everyone else chose Python) and happen to think that the insights and skills I'm writing about will serve you well regardless of your title (I chose BI developer because that's what I know the most about and have the most insight to offer). This book is about fundamentals, not the latest fad in DAX.
I will write a slightly longer mission statement on Substack (and link it here once it's out). I have a blueprint for the book (23 chapters, it looks like at the moment) and have already written the first drafts of the preface and the first chapter.
I don't have all the details figured out yet, but if you'd like to be a first/technical reader, just DM me.
Also, if you were to read such a book, what topics would you expect/like to see covered? I'm genuinely curious. I promise you will be surprised by what I'm about to include, but I would still love to hear what your expectations are without any preconceived notions!