Bradism 360

It's the days between Christmas and New Year's. There could be no better time to reflect on the year that has passed. And also to study for a tech certification to add to my portfolio / meet my KPI during customer downtime.

If we felt like it, we could unify data across multiple, disparate Brad source systems and harmonise them into a common data model. Surely this would be a way to discover insights.
Could that data be normalised? Of course. Would it be normal?

Let's say we used some of the many connectors available out of the box - or from packages - to ingest this data. Perhaps for certain sources we'd need to vibe-code our own integration and push data via the ingestion API.

What Data Lake Objects would those streams provide?

Norway bookings for rooms by lakes.
Health data recording steps walked around lakes.
Purchase history and ATV at the supermarkets at West Lakes.

We could pull Spotify plays, Hevy workout logs, physio case notes, backup physio case notes, Cursor tab completions, licorice deposits, investment profits and losses, X-ray reports, Scandinavian geolocations, dog hairs swallowed, JaVale McGee dunks witnessed. Quiz night questions answered—and botched. Calf raises. Kombucha consumed (free and paid). Solar kilowatts generated. pH and chlorine measurements. Journal entries posted. Board games played (against others, between Brads).

With enough data, we would be getting a comprehensive view of our customers. Music Brad, Gym Brad, Family Brad, Work Brad, House Brad. And then we could unify them. Match them all by fuzzy name and email address, plus a custom rule on an identifier or two. We could get 100% consolidation, but I suspect that would be an overgrouping.

From there, we could create a segment with a filter, limiting our audience to engagements where YEAR(date) = 2025. We could include some calculated insights, though we'd probably need our data-aware specialist for that, and I'd need to check Profile Explorer tomorrow to work out *which* Brad he got consolidated into.

With our segment complete, we can activate it and send it to an activation target. I suppose that target should be "2026".

What 2026 is going to do with all those Brads is hard to say.

And that's why it's important to invest time in the design phase and understand your use cases before you start clicking and ingesting. It takes less time to avoid problems than it does to fix them. In theory.