After more than two decades at the Bar, from junior clerk to practice manager at 3 Verulam Buildings, Jeremy Hopkins’ adoption of Twitter led to media recognition and sparked an unexpected job opportunity that changed the course of his career Jeremy Hopkins is someone who has seen the rise of social media from more perspectives than most.

Social media influencer: Jeremy Hopkins, head of legal operations, Contentsquare

Contentsquare, a global leader in Digital Experience Analytics, today announced the appointment of Jean-Christophe Pitié as Chief Marketing & Partnerships Officer. In this dual role, Jean-Christophe will lead the company’s global marketing organization and oversee strategic partnerships.

Contentsquare Appoints Jean-Christophe Pitié as Chief Marketing & Partnerships Officer

"Niki joins Five9 at an exciting time in our journey as we continue to expand globally," said Mike Burkland, CEO, Five9. "I'm thrilled to have Niki return to the Five9 team given her impressive background in delivering global growth and operational efficiencies for some of tech's largest and fastest-growing companies,

Accomplished Marketing Leader Niki Hall Joins Five9 as Chief Marketing Officer

Five9 (NASDAQ:FIVN) said on Tuesday that it had appointed Niki Hall as chief marketing officer. FIVN added that Hall previously served as the CMO of digital experience analytics company Contentsquare.

Five9 appoints Niki Hall as chief marketing officer

Five9, (NASDAQ: FIVN) provider of the Intelligent CX Platform, announced today the appointment of Niki Hall, an industry leader with more than 20 years of experience in technology marketing, as chief marketing officer (CMO).

Five9’s new CMO hire demonstrates how important it will be to the contact center market to have talent that fully understands the customer experience and how data can improve it.

Contact Center Growth Hinges on Understanding the Customer Journey

Contentsquare needed notification functionality for many use cases within its platform. The company created a generic solution spanning multiple services as part of its microservice architecture. During the implementation, the developers had to improve ...

Contentsquare Uses Microservices and Apache Kafka for Notification Delivery

Travis McPeak explores the forefront of simple and effective preventative security strategies. Donald Raab, Rustam Mehmandarov discuss three library solutions for managing data based on an example ...

GitHub Copilot Chat in Open Beta: Now Available for All Individuals in Visual Studio and VS Code

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The landscape of g and GameFi, characterized by the convergence of decentralized finance (DeFi) and gaming, is undergoing a tumultuous period. This article delves into the challenges and potential solutions in the realm of applications, particularly focusing on tokenomics, financing strategies, and treasury management. Web3 gamin Web3 The Current State of Web3 Gaming In the recent past, the gaming industry has witnessed a surge in projects promising groundbreaking experiences, leveraging advanced gaming engines. These projects, often led by industry veterans from giants like , have unfortunately paired these gaming innovations with questionable cryptocurrencies, launched prematurely before any substantive game content. Square Enix and Ubisoft This phenomenon can be attributed to a misguided belief, particularly prevalent during the 2021-2022 " ," that massive capital can be raised through the issuance of tokens, bypassing traditional monetization strategies. This approach, however, has led to a situation where many projects are heavily capitalized but lack a sustainable economic model. Ape Market Picture this: talented game developers, fresh from the hallowed halls of Tencent, Riot, and their ilk, promising us the moon with their latest gaming sorcery. And then, what do they do? Pair it up with some dubious 'shiny new coin' - because why not throw a bit of cryptocurrency chaos into the mix? Between Token Hype and Treasury Management Everyone's a genius in a bull market, especially during our beloved 'monkey run.' Remember the good old days when projects threw around fancy smart contract lingo and DeFi jargon? They would sell you dreams of gaming utopias, backed by nothing but hot air and token economics diagrams that looked like a toddler's art project. Some of the brightest minds were convinced that minting tokens out of thin air was the equivalent of striking gold. Who needs a solid monetization strategy when you've got digital gold, right? Wrong. The real test of a project's viability comes during market downturns. The challenge lies in balancing the aggressive promotion of tokens (the "balls-to-wall" approach) with responsible treasury management. Neglecting the need for an actual product can lead to short-term gains but risks long-term sustainability. My Thesis: The Future of GameFi The true value in gaming and metaverse applications lies in the unique in-game assets they create, not just the tokens they circulate. These assets, often , derive their value from their uniqueness, utility, and the reluctance of users to sell them. NFT-based This perspective suggests that projects do not necessarily need their own tokens to monetize. Instead, tokens should be seen as a means of exchange for the assets generated within the virtual world. A successful Web3 game should be able to operate using existing liquid tokens or stablecoins. If it cannot, it's a sign that the project needs reevaluation. Practical Steps for Web3 Game Developers Launch your token in the bull market frenzy, no game necessary. Step one: hype it up like it's the next big thing since sliced bread. Step two: cash out before the house of cards collapses. Rinse and repeat. : Delay launching your own token until you have a stable, engaging product. Use existing tokens like USDC or SOL for transactions within the game. Token Launch Strategy : Monitor core game loops and revenue streams. Understand user behavior and preferences, and adjust your strategies accordingly. Observation and Analysis : Design your project token to incentivize user retention and engagement. Offer discounts for using your token and charge a premium for other currencies. Token Utility Design : Diversify your treasury by holding USD, your platform's native token, and your project token. This approach mitigates risks associated with market downturns and token volatility. Treasury Management : Continuously improve your game. Remember, the success of a game is determined by its quality and user engagement, not by its associated token. Focus on Game Quality In conclusion, the future of Web3 gaming and GameFi hinges on a shift in mindset from token-centric to asset-centric development. It's not just about fixing what's broken; it's about building something so awesome, so epic, that tokens become the cherry on top, not the whole sundae.

What to Expect from Web3 Gaming in 2024: Potential Rise, Risks, and Realities

I recently spoke with Constantin Garreau, founder of . In our conversation, we discussed the problems of the Web3 gaming industry and a potential strategy for its revival. Stables Constantin also discusses the potential impact of NFTs and in-game asset ownership on the broader gaming industry. Hello Constantin, it’s great to have you with us. Can you please introduce yourself and share your journey with our readers? Hi, I’m Constantin Garreau, the founder of Stables, a French horse-racing fantasy game that integrates real horse-racing with Web3 capabilities. I’m building Stables for Pari Mutuel Urbain (PMU), the 1st horse-racing betting organization in France. I joined PMU in February 2020, and since January 2022, I’ve been working as the Director of Innovation at PMU. Prior to that, I was a Senior Strategic Accounts Advisor at Contentsquare, a digital experience insights platform. I’ve also worked at Salesforce as a Marketing Account Executive for South EMEA and Strategic Account Executive. Currently, I’m focussing on Stables to build an innovative game and rethink financing the French Equestrian industry. Why do you think the blockchain gaming sector crashed so severely? Can you tell us the main problems affecting the Web3 gaming industry? I think there are multiple factors that led to the crash of the blockchain gaming industry. To begin with, most Web3 games focussed on unsustainable tokenomics models that were just get-rich-quick Ponzi schemes. These games relied on market speculation where the game economy compelled users to cash out their rewards in secondary marketplaces. Most of these games had a shabby layout without any engaging narrative or interesting gameplay. Thus, players didn’t come to Web3 games to play and enjoy but to participate in a speculative frenzy over token prices. The absence of high-level graphics, compelling characters, and a fun community experience contributed to the steady decline of blockchain gaming. Is there a way out for the Web3 gaming sector in 2023? How do you think the industry can recover without harming general users? Yes, I’m hopeful that the Web3 gaming industry can come back with a bang if they follow a robust multi-pronged strategy. The key is to capitalize on the fundamental principles of blockchain technology to ensure better protection for common users. On one hand, developers have to focus on building games with interesting plots and graphically-rich gameplay. Rather than focussing only on tokenomics, Web3 gaming studios must ensure that they offer an AAA gaming experience to players. On the other hand, blockchains can function on the backend to benefit gamers by enhancing the utility of in-game assets. Leveraging NFT technology, developers can build games with better digital asset ownership and asset provenance capabilities. Apart from true ownership of in-game assets, NFTs can create a strong community based on mutual interests. This community will help games to retain players in the long run and collectively contribute towards a game’s development. For instance, Stables is utilizing NFT technology that will offer a unique gaming experience to its players. Tell us about how you feel Stables is contributing to the revival of the crypto gaming industry. As I mentioned before, Stables is a fantasy horseracing game where you can truly own your horse and participate in horseracing. Each virtual horse is an NFT that is linked to a real horse in the French Equestrian market. Players can use their NFT horses to compete against each other and earn exciting rewards. We’ve put special emphasis on making Stables an engaging Web3 game that doesn’t depend on purchasing costly NFTs to win races. Although each NFT horse has unique abilities depending on its real-world twin, players can hone their horse’s skillset. Thus, strategic decision-making will help players to win races, keeping the game interesting and open-ended. Stables also intends to build a well-knit community of gamers who are passionate and invested in horseracing. Using a token-gated feature, we will offer exclusive experiences and privileges to the Stables community. We hope that Stables will lead the revival of crypto gaming with a combination of high-quality gameplay, transparent asset ownership, and a robust community. How is Stables different from other Web3 games? I think the fundamental difference is that Stables comes from a century-old company with an ambition to venture into the Web3 world. We’re not here for short-term gains but want to change the French Equestrian industry forever with Web3 gaming. Stables uses the official licenses of France Galop and , bolstering our vision to take horseracing to a global stage. Le Trot Apart from such institutional backing, our gameplay rewards players who make intelligent decisions to win races. So anyone can become the Most Valuable Player (MVP) in the Stables community without any intensive monetary investments. We believe that NFT technology will empower players to have sovereign ownership over their gaming assets and build a well-knit community. Stables is just getting started, and we have a lot lined up in 2023 with Gen1 and Gen2 NFT minting. Built on a secure and energy-efficient Tezos blockchain, we’re hopeful that Stables will create an impact in the Web3 gaming scene. How do you think the Web3 gaming industry will shape up this year? Given that you talked about NFTs and in-game asset ownership, how important will these concepts be in affecting the broader gaming industry? It’s an interesting question. Let me answer this by sharing an anecdote that some people might already know. Vitalik Buterin, one of Ethereum’s founders, in a World of Warcraft game due to centralized control of gaming assets. lost a spell’s power Buterin wanted to build a technology that can give true ownership of digital assets to users. Blockchain technology, in general, and NFTs, in particular, have the potential to offer sovereign ownership of in-game assets. Although NFTs are a revolutionary technology in Web3 gaming, most traditional gamers have perceived this to be just another money-grabbing scheme. Thus, gaming studios like Ubisoft and Electronic Arts have faced severe backlash for introducing NFTs into their games. I think the messaging has been wrong, and there’s a lot of work to do in educating people about how NFTs work. Despite the current slump in market conditions, there has been to develop Web3 games. steady funding So I think we’ll see a lot of high-quality crypto games this year with NFT-powered technology revolutionizing in-game asset ownership and monetization channels. A last word from Constantin… Why do we recruit gamers instead of gamblers, and why do we think this is important? We believe gaming is a new way to consume digital content and that our industry will grow through these gamers. Additionally, we want to pre-empt new markets that are forming, such as Sorare, because the link with the real world and physical experiences can add real value to the player's experience.

Devising a Revival Strategy for Web3 Gaming: An Interview With Stables Founder Constantin Garreau

After 7 years working as Senior Data Manager at Criteo and as Head of Data at Payfit, and after interviewing 200+ data leaders for user research, I am starting to have a good overview of data stacks in action. So, by popular demand, I’m dropping here and there some advice on the trends I observed. Earlier in March, I had two different calls: one from a former colleague, now head of data at , and one from a friend, now head of data at . Both had taken a new job and had to build a complete data stack, from scratch! I assume this could interest others. Here is the piece of advice I gave them. Swile Cajoo Before we start, here is a Decision Matrix that you can use for benchmark purposes: Ease of Use Integration in Cloud environment Community & Documentation Governance Capabilities Pricing To keep things simple, we’ll just follow the data, from source to reporting. Data Warehouse Where you store your data for analytics needs A data warehouse is a place you store and organize your data before analysts use it My recommendation is simple: If your dev stack runs on Google Cloud, then go for BigQuery (BQ) If your dev stack runs on AWS, then go for Snowflake (SF) Here are a few reasons. Redshift was indeed the first big player on the Cloud Data Warehouse market, but it means they’ve made mistakes that followers could avoid, and they haven’t changed much for the last few years. Redshift has a poor UI/UX, especially for end-users (data consumers). BigQuery and Snowflake are quite similar in terms of features and pricing models (based on usage: BQ bills you by scanned data, Snowflake bills you by query time). A slight difference is that the first one is stronger when the whole stack is run on Google Cloud while the second is slightly more “Analytics” focused, making it a perfect match for AWS users. Snowflake is heading towards being a full data platform (multi-cloud, Snowpipe, jobs, data share, python/js functions) with a friendly user interface. BigQuery’s strength is its integration within the Google Cloud systems: read/write from GCS, IAM rights management, billing, Google Spreadsheets native integration, …) Ingestion Get Data in your Data Warehouse Stitch and Fivetran are extracting data from all your business sources and bring them to your Data Warehouse For data originating from a SaaS, use or . These two companies do a great job at maintaining these data dumps for their thousands of clients, and their pricing is linear as well as predictable. The sources they can retrieve data from is numerous, check these and . StitchData Fivetran here here You may want to cherry-pick some tables to ingest yourself, for frequency reasons or whatever. Make sure to leverage the numerous open-source taps made available . here Want a mix between the fully managed and the fully homemade? Check . You’ll have to host it but it comes with the necessary bunch of features, sources, and destinations. Airbyte provides similar features, depending on the plan you’re on. But focuses more on event tracking, it’s a must-have to sync your marketing campaigns with user activity. Think of Segment as the big ears listening to what is happening on your website/app. It also demands an ongoing tagging plan. An alternative is which does not integrate that well with other data sources but does not require a tagging plan Segment Contentsquare Do not worry, there is still plenty of DE work to do: you’ve got ingestion pipelines to build for all your data. If your PROD is in NoSQL (such as Mongo), then you’ve got the transformation to do before ingesting the data in your data warehouse. If your PROD is already in a SQL format, then you can dump all needed data in your analytics warehouse, and directly move on to the next paragraph production Transformation From raw data to model/reports ready Like any raw material, you want to transform it to deliver value. Use DBT to transform data. First things first, (note the L now in the middle). In recent years, storage costs decreased to a point (< $30 per Tb/month) where you can now load all raw data in your data warehouse, and then do the transformation in SQL. Keep in mind that storage in SF and BQ is as cheap as S3 storage is, it’s computing that costs money. ETL is dead, long live ELT Now, putting the spotlight on what became the obvious tool in 90% of the data teams I’ve talked to: the notorious . There is even a new job title that comes with it: . DBT is open source, quite easy to set up, and comes with a bunch of interesting features oriented on quality, such as unit tests. DBT Analytics Engineer The general idea is to load all your data in your warehouse, then use DBT to create your datamart ie: refined data, ready to be used for analytics purposes. As a side note, DBT is not a scheduler, you’ll still have to schedule it. It’s your scheduler who’ll launch the DBT executions… which naturally leads me to the scheduler section below. One last note: end of last year Google , it’s now free and well-integrated with Big Query, but the community is not that big. acquired Dataform Scheduler Run job 1 then run job 2 In any transformation process, there is a schedule. Things have to happen in a certain order. Use Airflow for data transformation scheduling. The market standard for scheduling really boils down to Airflow, the question is which deployment setup you want? You can go for: Self-Managed: dockerized airflow Managed: AWS version / GCP Version Fully-Managed: Astronomer Astronomer helps you get off the ground faster. But there is a cost for that… Data Viz Make your shiny dashboards Once you have a high-value dataset, you will want to show the output in the sexiest and most understandable way. Data visualization with , , or is the best option. Tableau Looker Metabase This one is tough, as competition is fierce within this segment. This will also be the only part your business users will see, out of the whole stack you are building. Strong options are , , or . I know that there are a lot of other options out there, that’s just my opinion Tableau Looker Metabase I’ll make a dedicated article on the matter, but to start, go for Metabase. First, on the data Viz side, it’s simple and straightforward, it takes a few minutes to go from a table to a dashboard. Keep in mind that for a while your dashboards will be simple, as you need to educate the different teams. Oh, and it’s free as long as you host it yourself. Data Discovery Find, understand and use data faster High-value datasets or analyses are useless if no one knows they exist. Make sure people do. Castor is the tool for that. Do you think that data discovery is only for people with too much data or many people? Did you know that after a few data dumps from Stitch or Segment, you’ll already have hundreds of tables? On top of that, I’m quite sure that the first data analyst or engineer you’ll hire will make their own data documentation on a google doc or else. Wouldn’t it be better to have that info accessible to everyone and especially to the second hire? At Castor, we provide just that! is a data documentation tool for the Notion-Figma-Slack generation. Or data-wise, for the Fivetran-Looker-Snowflake-DBT aficionados. We designed our catalog to be . Castor easy to use, automated, delightful, and friendly Want to check it out? and we will show you a demo. Reach out to us

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