Today, many companies rely heavily on third-party event tracking platforms for collecting event data. Perhaps the most well-known of these is Google Analytics. However, at Wayfair, we chose to go another route, largely eschewing the third-party vendor model to develop our own first-party event tracking platform. It’s called Scribe.

On May 2nd, I had the pleasure to speak on a panel at the Global Conference put on by the Milken Institute. The topic was something that Wayfairians are intimately familiar with—“Retail's New Reality: Technology, Innovation, and Consumer Behavior.”

The Time Informed Calibration process extends the capabilities of Wayfair’s customer models by converting raw model output to realistic probabilities and incorporating information on expected trends.

When I first started learning about web development, I discovered an instant infatuation with design. I would scroll endlessly through Dribble, thinking that everything on there felt perfect and was in an untouchable realm of its own – one I didn’t feel worthy of entering. I think that’s in part why I was drawn to web development – I wanted to be in the presence of designers and get to touch those (seemingly) infallible creations they produced. My curiosity for both development and design eventually led me down a path of learning and self-discovery, a path which brought me to my current role as a creative technologist. If that name is new to you (or perhaps sounds like what programmers in the 1940s were called), I’m right there with you! I’m still getting used to it and discovering what the role is myself, so come along and I’ll share what I’ve uncovered in these dark and inky corridors!

I recently had the honor of speaking at EmTech Digital, MIT Technology Review’s signature conference on artificial intelligence (AI) and business leadership. This isn’t my first time speaking at the conference, but it is my first time doing it in person.

A few years back, Wayfair jumped into the microservices revolution feet-first. The results were dramatic. We had tons of activity—hundreds of Wayfair teams launched thousands of microservices. It was great to see so much enthusiasm for microservices, but it came at a cost. We had a lot of confusion about infrastructure permissions: for any given infrastructure resource, who was authorized to manage that resource?

Have you considered contributing to open-source software but were not sure what the work entails? Maybe you heard some people even get paid to work on open source and are curious about where to begin. A good first step is to understand the common challenges and pitfalls that come with open-sourcing a new library, so you can avoid them. Come join me and the rest of the Dynamic Services team on our journey...to open source!

As a technology company, Wayfair encourages all team members to roll up their sleeves and innovate. We take immense pride in how our work impacts customers and contributes to the business’s success. We also derive great satisfaction when a team member is recognized by the larger technology community.

Suppliers are an integral part of Wayfair, and providing them with real-time and high-quality data with flexibility is important for our mission. Today I’m going to highlight two specific areas: how Wayfair is leveraging real-time data to provide suppliers with up-to-date sales information and how our team has tackled some of the problems that emerged along the journey.

Every day, Wayfair customers sift through more than 33 million items. Their goal? To find the perfect items to create a home they love. It’s not a grueling and stressful search, and their success isn’t the result of good luck. It’s the byproduct of a technology team committed to enhancing the customer experience through cutting-edge solutions.