About Michelle

profile_squareI’m a published author, patented developer, popular speaker at tech conferences, award-winning blogger, and well-known thought leader in the data industry.
I’m also an advisor on big data topics for large companies including Microsoft and Hortonworks, and I’ve been awarded as a Microsoft Data Platform MVP for the past 6 consecutive years.

Things I know about include:

  • (big) data platform architecture
  • (big) data engineering (Spark, Pig, Python, SQL)
  • (big) data warehousing
  • (big) data process automation
  • feature engineering
  • (big) data pipeline frameworks
  • (big) data quality automation
  • operationalizing predictive models
  • prescriptive recommendation engines

Fun facts about me:

  • I’m an extrovert, which is probably obvious if you’ve ever met me at a conference 🙂
  • my first blog, sqlfool.com, exceeded 1 million visits in 2014
  • I’ve lived in 13 cities across 7 states; currently, I live in Los Gatos, CA (Silicon Valley)
  • my SQL Server scripts have been downloaded over 150,000 times across the world & are used by major companies such as Microsoft, SAP, & CitiBank
  • Before starting a local SQL Server user group, I ran a 128-member World of Warcraft guild; running both groups is surprisingly similar!
  • I like REALLY big data! I’ve worked with a 16TB SMP SQL Server database, 1PB Teradata appliance, & a 100PB Hadoop data lake
  • I’m entirely self-taught: I had just completed an Associates in English when my part-time programming job turned into a lucrative full-time offer
  • I built a SQL Server database that reached 27k TPS after the airing of the first-ever push-to-web Super Bowl commercial in 2009
  • I’m a mom! One of her favorite activities is building Legos with her 2 amazing kids 🙂

You can find me on Twitter @sqlfool and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mufford.