Hey, I'm Alex Merced, Open Lakehouse and AI Advocate, O'Reill/Manning/Packt author, and a voice you might know from the Tech space. I've written 35+ books on everything from Apache Iceberg to agentic AI, spoken at conferences worldwide, and built open-source tools to make data engineering more accessible.

But tech is only half the story. I'm also a musician, fiction writer, and independent thinker, exploring ideas around personal autonomy, economics, and creativity and you can find all of this at AlexMerced.com

Whether it's a deep-dive tutorial on Apache Polaris, a podcast episode on agentic analytics, or an essay on individualism, tolerance, and kindness, everything I create is driven by one belief: People are powerful given the right knowledge to empower themselves.

Your support encourages me to keep writing, teaching, and building in the open. If anything I've created has helped you learn, think differently, or just entertained you, a coffee is appreciated. ☕