❄️ DSF WinterFest 2025: Global Online Summit ❄️

Join the global data celebration!

Monday 24th to Friday 28th November 2025 Online \| 2-3 sessions per day \| Theme: Innovating with Data

DSF WinterFest is back, and this year, it’s going global! Join our 50,000-strong community for a week of world-class talks, tutorials, and panels exploring how data, AI, and analytics are reshaping the world. Expect inspiring content, expert insights, and the cosy, welcoming DSF atmosphere we are known for, all from the comfort of your own space!

Why join? 🌍 A global stage with speakers and attendees from every corner of the world 🎟️ One ticket for the full week. Register once and access every session 💻 Easy access from anywhere. Join live or catch replays in your own time ☕ Cosy community vibe. No travel, no stress, just data and connection

➡️ REGISTER HERE FOR FREE! ⬅️

🎟️ Tickets:

Choose your experience and secure your spot today: Free Pass - Watch live and enjoy replays until 30 November 2025 Upgrade at Checkout - Get extended replay access until May 2026

Register on our website to receive your joining links, add sessions to your calendar, and tune in live from anywhere in the world.

Please note: Clicking “Attend” on Meetup does not register you for this summit. You must register via our website to receive your links.

🎁 Competition:

We’re spreading festive cheer! One lucky attendee will win a £300 Amazon gift voucher (or equivalent in your currency). Find out more here.

❄️❄️❄️

Session details:

💡 Competitor Response Planning Suite - Turning Threats into Strategic Advantage 🗓️ Wednesday 26th November ⏰ 12:30 PM (GMT) 🗣️ Rajat Kumar, Applied Data Science Manager @ dunnhumby and Namish Kaushik, Senior Applied Data Scientist @ dunnhumby

In today’s hyper-competitive retail environment, the presence of a competitor store isn’t just a challenge - it’s a direct threat to customer loyalty, sales, and profitability. This session introduces the Competitor Response Planning (CRP) Suite, a pioneering solution that fuses geo-spatial intelligence with predictive modeling to help retailers proactively counter competitive impact.

Built on the theme of “Innovating with Data”, the CRP Suite is a three-pronged modeling framework designed to predict customer churn risk across New Competitor Advent, Existing Competitor Landscapes and Instore Media Optimization.

The session will showcase how the CRP Suite integrates retailer data with third-party sources to extract key variables—store DNA, customer behavior, and geo-location—and trains custom propensity models tailored to different competitor types. This enables targeted retention strategies that replace generic mass offers with personalized interventions.

Attendees will also explore how the CRP Suite has been productionized into the Voila dashboard, empowering non-technical users to self-serve insights, trigger models, and navigate competitive threats with ease. Whether you're a data scientist, marketer, or business strategist, this session will demonstrate how data innovation can transform competitive threats into strategic opportunities—driving measurable outcomes for retailers and delighting customers through personalization.

➡️ REGISTER HERE FOR FREE! ⬅️

❄️❄️❄️

🔗 How to join:

Once registered, you’ll receive your unique joining link by email, plus handy reminders one week, one day, and one hour before each session. Don't forget to add the sessions you are attending to your calendar. If you can’t make it live, don’t worry, your ticket includes replay access until 30 November 2025 (or May 2026 with the upgrade).

📘 Reminders:

Time zones: All sessions are listed in GMT - please check your local time when registering.

Recordings: Access replays until 30 November 2025 with a free pass, or until May 2026 with an upgraded ticket

Please note: Clicking “Attend” on Meetup does not register you for this summit. You must register via our website to receive your links.

➡️ REGISTER HERE FOR FREE! ⬅️

Join the Celebration ❄️ Five days. Global speakers. Cutting-edge insights. Free to join live - replays included. Upgrade for extended access. Register now and be part of the global data community shaping the future. #DSFWinterFest

Welcome to the Orange Network APIs Hackathon 2025

Get ready to leverage Orange APIs to empower trusted customer experience and industry 4.0 flexibility. Do you have a product or idea that could transform the future of telecom, data, or industry? The Orange Network APIs Hackathon is built for developers, startups, and tech professionals ready to experiment, build, and scale with purpose.

Challenge:

Calling for developers, startups, and tech professionals! To prepare for the upcoming deployment of the Network APIs in Orange's production networks, be among the first to experiment with these innovative APIs during our exciting hackathon.

Whether you're bringing a bold new concept or looking to supercharge an existing solution, the Orange Network APIs Hackathon is your chance to prototype, compete, and win by building solutions around the theme:

• Customer Experience: Rethink how people interact with services and technology.
• Trusted Data: Prioritize transparency, privacy, and ethical use of data.
• Industry 4.0: Reinvent connected industries using automation, IoT, and real-time intelligence.

You’ll soon receive detailed use cases and example APIs aligned with each theme to help guide your project (coming soon).

Why join:

• Work directly with technical and business experts to seamlessly integrate our Network APIs into your prototype.
• Gain valuable feedback from mentors and executives while connecting with developers, startups, and ecosystem partners.
• Top teams may earn the opportunity to showcase at major global events like MWC Barcelona or VivaTech Paris.
• Selected projects can be tested and refined in Orange’s cutting-edge 5G Lab environment.
• Personalized support will be offered based on the maturity of your project to the finalist teams, including go-to-market strategies and integration on the Orange production network.

When? Online hack Oct 1st - Oct 29th 2025

How to join: Check the website for more information and to register for the event here: https://hackathon.developer.orange.com

Registration ends October 1st, 2025

Bring your A-Game, good luck!

Welcome to the Orange Network APIs Hackathon 2025

Get ready to leverage Orange APIs to empower trusted customer experience and industry 4.0 flexibility. Do you have a product or idea that could transform the future of telecom, data, or industry? The Orange Network APIs Hackathon is built for developers, startups, and tech professionals ready to experiment, build, and scale with purpose.

Challenge: Calling for developers, startups, and tech professionals!

To prepare for the upcoming deployment of the Network APIs in Orange's production networks, be among the first to experiment with these innovative APIs during our exciting hackathon.

Whether you're bringing a bold new concept or looking to supercharge an existing solution, the Orange Network APIs Hackathon is your chance to prototype, compete, and win by building solutions around the theme:

• Customer Experience: Rethink how people interact with services and technology.
• Trusted Data: Prioritize transparency, privacy, and ethical use of data.
• Industry 4.0: Reinvent connected industries using automation, IoT, and real-time intelligence.

You’ll soon receive detailed use cases and example APIs aligned with each theme to help guide your project (coming soon).

Why join:

• Work directly with technical and business experts to seamlessly integrate our Network APIs into your prototype.
• Gain valuable feedback from mentors and executives while connecting with developers, startups, and ecosystem partners.
• Top teams may earn the opportunity to showcase at major global events like MWC Barcelona or VivaTech Paris.
• Selected projects can be tested and refined in Orange’s cutting-edge 5G Lab environment.
• Personalized support will be offered based on the maturity of your project to the finalist teams, including go-to-market strategies and integration on the Orange production network.

When? Online hack Oct 1st - Oct 29th 2025

How to join: Check the website for more information and to register for the event here: https://hackathon.developer.orange.com

Registration ends October 1st, 2025

Bring your A-Game, good luck!

Welcome to the Orange Network APIs Hackathon 2025

Get ready to leverage Orange APIs to empower trusted customer experience and industry 4.0 flexibility. Do you have a product or idea that could transform the future of telecom, data, or industry? The Orange Network APIs Hackathon is built for developers, startups, and tech professionals ready to experiment, build, and scale with purpose.

Challenge: Calling for developers, startups, and tech professionals!

To prepare for the upcoming deployment of the Network APIs in Orange's production networks, be among the first to experiment with these innovative APIs during our exciting hackathon.

Whether you're bringing a bold new concept or looking to supercharge an existing solution, the Orange Network APIs Hackathon is your chance to prototype, compete, and win by building solutions around the theme:

• Customer Experience: Rethink how people interact with services and technology.
• Trusted Data: Prioritize transparency, privacy, and ethical use of data.
• Industry 4.0: Reinvent connected industries using automation, IoT, and real-time intelligence.

You’ll soon receive detailed use cases and example APIs aligned with each theme to help guide your project (coming soon).

Why join:

• Work directly with technical and business experts to seamlessly integrate

our Network APIs into your prototype.

• Gain valuable feedback from mentors and executives while connecting with

developers, startups, and ecosystem partners.

• Top teams may earn the opportunity to showcase at major global events like

MWC Barcelona or VivaTech Paris.

• Selected projects can be tested and refined in Orange’s cutting-edge 5G Lab

environment.

• Personalized support will be offered based on the maturity of your project to

the finalist teams, including go-to-market strategies and integration on the Orange production network.

When? Online hack Oct 1st - Oct 29th 2025

How to join: Check the website for more information and to register for the event here: https://hackathon.developer.orange.com

Registration ends October 1st, 2025

Bring your A-Game, good luck!

Welcome to the Orange Network APIs Hackathon 2025

Get ready to leverage Orange APIs to empower trusted customer experience and industry 4.0 flexibility. Do you have a product or idea that could transform the future of telecom, data, or industry? The Orange Network APIs Hackathon is built for developers, startups, and tech professionals ready to experiment, build, and scale with purpose.

Challenge: Calling for developers, startups, and tech professionals!

To prepare for the upcoming deployment of the Network APIs in Orange's production networks, be among the first to experiment with these innovative APIs during our exciting hackathon.

Whether you're bringing a bold new concept or looking to supercharge an existing solution, the Orange Network APIs Hackathon is your chance to prototype, compete, and win by building solutions around the theme:

• Customer Experience: Rethink how people interact with services and technology.
• Trusted Data: Prioritize transparency, privacy, and ethical use of data.
• Industry 4.0: Reinvent connected industries using automation, IoT, and real-time intelligence.

You’ll soon receive detailed use cases and example APIs aligned with each theme to help guide your project (coming soon).

Why join:

• Work directly with technical and business experts to seamlessly integrate our Network APIs into your prototype.
• Gain valuable feedback from mentors and executives while connecting with developers, startups, and ecosystem partners.
• Top teams may earn the opportunity to showcase at major global events like MWC Barcelona or VivaTech Paris.
• Selected projects can be tested and refined in Orange’s cutting-edge 5G Lab environment.
• Personalized support will be offered based on the maturity of your project to the finalist teams, including go-to-market strategies and integration on the Orange production network.

When? Online hack Oct 1st - Oct 29th 2025

How to join: Check the website for more information and to register for the event here: https://hackathon.developer.orange.com

Registration ends October 1st, 2025

Bring your A-Game, good luck!

Designing tomorrow's materials requires understanding how atoms behave – a challenge that's both fascinating and incredibly complex. While machine learning offers exciting speedups in materials simulation, it often falls short, missing vital electronic structure information needed to connect theory with experimental results. This work introduces a powerful solution: Density Functional Tight Binding (DFTB), which, combined with the versatile tools of Scientific Python, allows us to understand the electronic behavior of materials while maintaining computational efficiency. In this talk, I will present our findings demonstrating how DFTB, coupled with readily available Python packages, allows for direct comparison between theoretical predictions and experimental data, such as XPS measurements. I will also showcase our publicly available repository, containing DFTB parameters for a wide range of materials, making this powerful approach accessible to the broader research community.

For our 2025 data challenge we encouraged you to find YOUR passion project to round out your portfolio and develop your professional story!

Join us for the solution showcase to celebrate the hard work of those who participated in the challenge!

Tune in virtually on April 8th for a fun and casual solution showcase where several participants will share their submission, inspiration, and/or cool data-driven insights from the 2025 IWD data challenge.

The most creative submission, chosen by the organizing team, will receive a $25 virtual gift card to Maker House, generously donated by them. Maker House offers a curated collection of gifts and homewares, crafted locally in Ottawa and Canada 🍁

Please note only those residing in Canada are eligible for the prizes.

Stay tuned to see submissions on our website!

Join the Orange Network APIs Hackathon and unlock the future of innovation. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just getting started, this hackathon is your chance to push boundaries and create cutting-edge solutions.

Challenge: Participants will be challenged to create cutting-edge solutions by leveraging Network APIs. Collaborate with like-minded peers and showcase your talent in developing innovative applications.

Integrate advanced network functionalities into your applications with standardized interfaces that offer agility, flexibility, and innovation. These APIs enable you to leverage real-time network data without needing deep telecommunications expertise.

As part of the GSMA Open Gateway Initiative and CAMARA open-source project, Orange provides secure and compliant Network APIs across various geographies.

Network APIs Available:

• Device Reachability Status
• Device Roaming Status
• SIM Swap
• Number Verification
• KYC
• Geofencing
• Device Location Verification
• Device Location Retrieval
• Quality on Demand

Why join:

• Get accompanied by our experts and integrate your solution with Orange
• Meet Orange execs and get support from our mentors
• Participate with Orange at major events like MWC and VivaTech
• Test your solution in one of our Orange 5G Lab

Infos: When? October, 2024 - November, 2024 Where? Online and Demo in Paris, France

How to join: Check the website for more information and to register for the event: https://oran.ge/4eUubCv

Registration ends October 30th, 2024.

Bring your A-Game, good luck!

Join the Orange Network APIs Hackathon and unlock the future of innovation. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just getting started, this hackathon is your chance to push boundaries and create cutting-edge solutions.

Challenge:

Participants will be challenged to create cutting-edge solutions by leveraging Network APIs. Collaborate with like-minded peers and showcase your talent in developing innovative applications.

Integrate advanced network functionalities into your applications with standardized interfaces that offer agility, flexibility, and innovation. These APIs enable you to leverage real-time network data without needing deep telecommunications expertise.

As part of the GSMA Open Gateway Initiative and CAMARA open-source project, Orange provides secure and compliant Network APIs across various geographies.

Network APIs Available:

• Device Reachability Status
• Device Roaming Status
• SIM Swap
• Number Verification
• KYC
• Geofencing
• Device Location Verification
• Device Location Retrieval
• Quality on Demand

Why join:

• Get accompanied by our experts and integrate your solution with Orange
• Meet Orange execs and get support from our mentors
• Participate with Orange at major events like MWC and VivaTech
• Test your solution in one of our Orange 5G Lab

Infos: When? October, 2024 - November, 2024 Where? Online and Demo in Paris, France

How to join: Check the website for more information and to register for the event: https://oran.ge/4eUubCv

Registration ends October 30th, 2024.

Bring your A-Game, good luck!

Join the Orange Network APIs Hackathon and unlock the future of innovation. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just getting started, this hackathon is your chance to push boundaries and create cutting-edge solutions.

Challenge: Participants will be challenged to create cutting-edge solutions by leveraging Network APIs. Collaborate with like-minded peers and showcase your talent in developing innovative applications.

Integrate advanced network functionalities into your applications with standardized interfaces that offer agility, flexibility, and innovation. These APIs enable you to leverage real-time network data without needing deep telecommunications expertise. As part of the GSMA Open Gateway Initiative and CAMARA open-source project, Orange provides secure and compliant Network APIs across various geographies.

Network APIs Available:

• Device Reachability Status
• Device Roaming Status
• SIM Swap
• Number Verification
• KYC
• Geofencing
• Device Location Verification
• Device Location Retrieval
• Quality on Demand

Why join:

• Get accompanied by our experts and integrate your solution with Orange
• Meet Orange execs and get support from our mentors
• Participate with Orange at major events like MWC and VivaTech
• Test your solution in one of our Orange 5G Lab

Infos: When? October, 2024 - November, 2024 Where? Online and Demo in Paris, France

How to join: Check the website for more information and to register for the event: https://oran.ge/4eUubCv

Registration ends October 30th, 2024.

Bring your A-Game, good luck!

Join the Orange Network APIs Hackathon and unlock the future of innovation. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just getting started, this hackathon is your chance to push boundaries and create cutting-edge solutions.

Challenge: Participants will be challenged to create cutting-edge solutions by leveraging Network APIs. Collaborate with like-minded peers and showcase your talent in developing innovative applications.

Integrate advanced network functionalities into your applications with standardized interfaces that offer agility, flexibility, and innovation. These APIs enable you to leverage real-time network data without needing deep telecommunications expertise.

As part of the GSMA Open Gateway Initiative and CAMARA open-source project, Orange provides secure and compliant Network APIs across various geographies.

Network APIs Available:

• Device Reachability Status
• Device Roaming Status
• SIM Swap
• Number Verification
• KYC
• Geofencing
• Device Location Verification
• Device Location Retrieval
• Quality on Demand

Why join:

• Get accompanied by our experts and integrate your solution with Orange
• Meet Orange execs and get support from our mentors
• Participate with Orange at major events like MWC and VivaTech
• Test your solution in one of our Orange 5G Lab

Infos: When? October, 2024 - November, 2024 Where? Online and Demo in Paris, France

How to join: Check the website for more information and to register for the event: https://oran.ge/4eUubCv

Registration ends October 30th, 2024.

Bring your A-Game, good luck!

Join us for an evening of AI innovation, exploring how Large Language Models (LLMs) work and their applications in finance. Jonas Thunberg, Data Scientist at Solita, will break down the mechanics of LLMs, and Dmitrii Shiriaev, Machine Learning Engineer, will showcase how his team built a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system for financial data in just 36 hours. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn and network. Food and drinks are sponsored by Solita.

Agenda: 17:30 - 18:00: Doors open 18:00 - 18:10: Welcome 18:10 - 18:40: How do LLMs work? Building intuition on Neural Networks, Transformers, and LLMs 18:40 - 19:10: Break 19:10 - 19:40: Building RAG for Financial Data: LLM-Powered Hackathon Success in 36 Hours 19:40 - 20:30: Networking

How do LLMs work? Building intuition on Neural Networks, Transformers, and LLMs Jonas Thunberg - Data Scientist, Solita

Modern LLM:s are implementations of an artificial neural network model called a Transformer. During this presentation, I will try to give an intuition why these models are capable of generating text with such fidelity. My starting point will be networks consisting of a few artificial neurons, exploring hands on how these can be configured to perform simple tasks. I will describe word embeddings, the transformer architecture and end with a deep dive into how its' so called "attention blocks" learn to generate language. I aim to keep this talk accessible regardless of prior knowledge of machine learning, but I hope the intuitions we build will be rewarding (and useful) also to those more experienced.

Speakers Bio: Jonas Thunberg is a Data Scientist with over three years of experience, specializing in machine learning, data-driven product development, and customer behavior modeling. He is proficient in Python, SQL, as well as deep learning models, and is currently consulting at Solita while holding a Master’s degree in Machine Learning.

Building RAG for Financial Data: LLM-Powered Hackathon Success in 36 Hours Dmitrii Shiriaev - Machine Learning Engineer

The challenge of extracting relevant information from financial reports, often stored in complex PDF formats, creates significant obstacles for both automated systems and human experts. These documents, filled with tables, specialized formatting, and scanned pages, hinder investors’ ability to quickly find key data, leading to delayed decision-making, particularly at scale.

To address this challenge, we developed an AI-driven dialogue-based interface during a hackathon, which allows users to interact directly with financial reports. By combining advanced AI techniques for text and table analysis, knowledge graphs for metadata, and LLMs with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), our solution answers user queries in natural language while ensuring data provenance. This approach not only won the competition but also has the potential to significantly enhance the efficiency of financial report analysis for investors and analysts.

Speakers Bio: Dmitrii Shiriaev is a Machine Learning Engineer with interest in both classic ML and NLP fields. With expertise in Python, SQL, and automation, he is passionate about making data-informed decision process fast and accurate, transforming complex data into actionable insights.

–

About the event: Tickets: Sign up required. Anyone who is not on the list will not get in. The event is free of charge. Capacity: Space is limited. If you are signed up but unable to attend, please change your RSVP 2 days before the event. Food and drinks: Food and drinks are sponsored by Solita. Questions: Please contact the meetup organizers.

–

Code of Conduct

The NumFOCUS Code of Conduct applies to this event; please familiarize yourself with it before attending. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the Code of Conduct, please contact the organizers.

International Women’s Day took place on March 8th, 2024. The theme for this year was “Invest in women: Accelerate progress”.

In honour of this theme, R-Ladies Ottawa hosted a month-long data challenge! You can find the full details on our website.

Join us to celebrate the hard work of those who participated in the challenge!

Tune in on April 30th for a fun and casual solution showcase where several participants will share their submission, inspiration, and/or cool data-driven insights from the 2024 IWD data challenge.

You can read about all our submissions on our website.

For our February meetup we're exciting to announce that we now have a double session.

First off Barry Smart will be presenting Microsoft Fabric & Your Data Strategy: A Decision Makers Guide

Barry has worked in the technology industry for almost 30 years. During the early stage of his career he worked in Australia for 3 years delivering a new system to automate Sydney's water treatment and distribution network. He then returned to Scotland where he spent his formative years as chief architect for ScottishPower's energy trading business. He then moved into a leadership role with Hymans Robertson, the UK's largest independent firm of consulting actuaries, where he spearheaded their adoption of cloud technology. In 2019 he took a career break to complete a Masters in Artificial Intelligence. He now works as Director for Data and AI at endjin, where he helps organisations around the world to deliver impact through data. He specialises in harnessing cloud technology and the latest developments in analytics, machine learning and AI. In his spare time, Barry enjoys mountain biking and playing the trombone in a big band.

Our 2nd session for the evening: Microsoft Power BI Usage Analysis: a practical approach to measuring and improving BI performance

Achieving success with Power BI within an organization goes beyond the initial implementation and maintenance. To unlock its full strategic potential, we must ensure it's not only properly implemented but also widely adopted and effectively used.

In thier presentation, Anna and Gennadii will discuss how Power BI usage data can be analysed to provide a solid ground for optimising the Power BI environment and facilitate a wide range of data and analytics initiatives.

They will share a few client stories, the fundamental questions that usage analysis should answer, the key metrics and KPIs that should be tracked, and actionable strategies to transform Power BI experience.

To demonstrate their approach, they will introduce Accton Auditor, a comprehensive BI usage analysis solution tightly integrated with Power BI.

OPEN DATA CHALLENGE: This is your opportunity to showcase your talent using Microsoft Fabric using Open Data. This month the theme for the challenge is Aviation data, rolling over from last month:

https://atmdata.github.io/sources/

You'll have the opportunity to present a short (max 5 minute) presentation to show road report and and other aspects of Microsoft Fabric used in creating your solution. Please bring a laptop to present, or contact us in advance.

AGENDA: 1830 - 18:45 : Introduction, networking, pizza & drinks 18:45 - 19:00 : Open Data Challenge 19:00 - 20:00 : Microsoft Fabric & Your Data Strategy: A Decision Makers Guide 20:00 - 20:45 : Microsoft Power BI Usage Analysis: a practical approach to measuring and improving BI performance

VENUE: We will meet at the Nigel Frank Offices at 60 Great Tower Street. If you've not been there before, it's just a little further up the street from Brewdog. Google Maps link to help you find the building: https://goo.gl/maps/GRZWr5LfScZhApu6A

We are excited to kick of 2024 with a double session!

Session 1: Realtime Analytics in Microsoft Fabric with Devang Shah:

A LinkedIn User: “Streams come to die in a data lake”. With Fabric Real-time Analytics, you are empowered to capture, analyse, visualize and actionize your data streams in near-real time and eventually putting it to rest in a lake. Join this demo-rich and example-filled session to get answers to the fundamental questions: “Why Real-time Analytics?”, “What is it?” and “Where can I use it?”.

About Devang: Devang is a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft in Fabric Customer Advisory Team focusing on evangelization, and adoption of messaging and real-time analytics suite of products across EMEA region.

Session 2: PBI Inspector with Nat Van Gulck:

Testing the visual layer of Power BI reports has usually been a manual task. Thanks to the new Power BI Project file format however there is an opportunity to automatically check for visuals' issues around accessibility, consistency and performance and thereby align with your organizations Power BI Centre of Excellence guidelines. In this session we will see how PBI Inspector, an open-source community tool, supports this process.

About Nat: I started my career over twenty years ago as a .NET Software Developer while also developing an interest for Data Visualization. This led me to work on Qlik and Tableau data projects. Then Power BI became so compelling that I had to join Microsoft. As a Cloud Solutions Architect I help customers be successful with Power BI; PBI Inspector is part of this endeavour. The adventure continues with Microsoft Fabric.

PBI Inspector GitHub repository -- https://github.com/NatVanG/PBI-Inspector Tutorial: PBI Inspector as part of an Azure DevOps pipeline: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/projects/projects-build-pipelines

LATEST UPDATES Before the main session starts, James and Prathy will present the latest updates to Microsoft Fabric and Power BI

OPEN DATA CHALLENGE: This is your opportunity to showcase your talent using Microsoft Fabric using Open Data. This month the theme for the challenge is Aviation data:

https://atmdata.github.io/sources/

You'll have the opportunity to present a short (max 5 minute) presentation to show road report and and other aspects of Microsoft Fabric used in creating your solution. Please bring a laptop to present, or contact us in advance.

For extra points, see if you can incorporate Realtime Streaming Data into your presentation!

VENUE: We will meet at the Nigel Frank Offices at 60 Great Tower Street. If you've not been there before, it's just a little further up the street from Brewdog. Google Maps link to help you find the building: https://goo.gl/maps/GRZWr5LfScZhApu6A

We are excited to welcome James Hutton from Data Activator team, part of the Microsoft Fabric product group.

Your data is only valuable if you can act on it. But acting on data often requires manual monitoring of reports and dashboards, which can be time-consuming. That's why we have created Data Activator. Data Activator is an experience in Microsoft Fabric that lets you create alerts and trigger Power Automate flows from your data, without writing code. In this session I will demo Data Activator so that you can see it in action.

LATEST UPDATES Before the main session starts, James and Prathy will present the latest updates to Microsoft Fabric and Power BI

OPEN DATA CHALLENGE: This is your opportunity to showcase your talent using Microsoft Fabric using Open Data. This month the theme for the challenge is Weather data from the Met Office.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/services/data/datapoint

You'll have the opportunity to present a short (max 5 minute) presentation to show road report and and other aspects of Microsoft Fabric used in creating your solution.

For extra points, see if you can incorporate Data Activator into your presentation!

Please bring a laptop to present, or contact us in advance.

VENUE: We will meet at the Nigel Frank Offices at 60 Great Tower Street. If you've not been there before, it's just a little further up the street from Brewdog. Google Maps link to help you find the building: https://goo.gl/maps/GRZWr5LfScZhApu6A

We are excited to welcome Simon Whiteley and Terry McCann for our November meetup.

Fabric Notebooks for the Power BI Professional

Microsoft Fabric combines the worlds of Power BI and Data Platforms, and there is a huge array of powerful tools at your now at your fingertips - but if you've never written python, how do you even begin to use the Notebook experience? What is a DataFrame and how do you use them? How can you avoid Python and use SQL instead?

In this session, we'll take a look at how the Spark engine is surprisingly similar to Power Query. We'll load some files into our OneLake, write some PySpark to read the data, transform it a little, and save it as a Lakehouse table that we can then use datasets, warehouses and more. We’ll look at some of the tips and tricks for using a little bit of Spark to speed up your data curation, as well as some of the neat new tools that come in the Fabric experience.

Finally, we'll discuss using notebooks as part of your end-to-end data process, and answer your Fabric design questions!

Simon Whiteley

Data Platform MVP. Databricks Beacon. Cloud Architect, Nerd

Director of Engineering for Advancing Analytics Ltd, Microsoft Data Platform MVP and Databricks Beacon. Simon is a seasoned solution architect & technical lead with well over a decade of Microsoft Analytics experience, who spends an inordinate amount of time running the Advancing Spark YouTube series. A deep techie with a focus on emerging cloud technologies and applying "big data" thinking to traditional analytics problems, Simon also has a passion for bringing it back to the high level and making sense of the bigger picture. When not tinkering with tech, Simon is a death-dodging London cyclist, a sampler of craft beers, an avid chef and a generally nerdy person.

Terry McCann

Microsoft MVP & CEO

Microsoft MVP. CEO & Owner of Advancing Analytics. A consultancy who helps businesses advance their analytics and better understand their data. Frequent speaker at events across the globe. Organiser of the Global AI Bootcamp London, Data Science user group in Exeter, UK and previous co-organiser of SQL Saturday Exeter, UK.

OPEN DATA CHALLENGE: Before our main session we are bringing back the Open Data Challenge. Your opportunity to showcase your talent to the audience. This month's challenge is Women's Football World Cup 2023 data from StatsBomb.

https://statsbomb.com/news/statsbomb-release-free-2023-womens-world-cup-data/

You'll have the opportunity to present a short (max 5 minute) presentation to show road report and and other aspects of Microsoft Fabric used in creating your solution.

Please bring a laptop to present, or contact us in advance.

VENUE: We will meet at the Nigel Frank Offices at 60 Great Tower Street. If you've not been there before, it's just a little further up the street from Brewdog. Google Maps link to help you find the building: https://goo.gl/maps/GRZWr5LfScZhApu6A

For our October meetup we are excited to welcome Francesco Pizzolon who will be presenting:

The Lakehouse and The Medallion Architecture

This session is focused on Data Engineering and the evolution of the different architecture paradigms over the course of the last decades. We’ll talk about:

• The evolution of the Data Warehouse to Data Lake and to Data Lakehouse.
• The Medallion Architecture.
• The most important Data Engineering principles to adopt in your Data Platform, e.g.:
• Data Validation
• Data Pipeline Dependencies
• Referential Integrity

About Francesco

Francesco is a gifted Solutions Architect with an extensive experience in liaising with C-level business executives in the energy, retail, transportation, banking, and public sector industry verticals. With a decade of experience in Data Engineering, Francesco is passionate about architecting, delivering, and supporting Data Platform projects that deliver true business value to his clients.

OPEN DATA CHALLENGE: Before our main session we are bringing back the Open Data Challenge. Your opportunity to showcase your talent to the audience. This month's challenge is Road Safety Data from Transport for London.

https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/cb7ae6f0-4be6-4935-9277-47e5ce24a11f/road-safety-data

You'll have the opportunity to present a short (max 5 minute) presentation to show road report and and other aspects of Microsoft Fabric used in creating your solution.

VENUE: We will meet at the Nigel Frank Offices at 60 Great Tower Street. If you've not been there before, it's just a little further up the street from Brewdog. Google Maps link to help you find the building: https://goo.gl/maps/GRZWr5LfScZhApu6A

Join us on Saturday, June 17 in Berlin for an all-day Vector DB & LLM Hackathon with the MLOps.community and Weaviate using a large corpus of community Slack and Videos! We'll also be hosting a welcome BBQ on Friday, June 16th.

You can register for both events here (spots will not be held for those who only register through meetup.com)

💪 Collaborate with and learn from other like-minded MLOps practitioners in AI, ML, and Data Science industries.

💻 Get access to tools and credits from Weaviate to build end-to-end solutions.

👨🏻‍💻 Get support in-person from Weaviate engineers – who will help you go from 0 to 100 in no time.

💰 Chance to win cash prizes!

📣 Selected teams will be invited to share their solutions at an upcoming Berlin MLOps Community meetup

🦾 Intro: Vector embeddings generated by LLMs – like those provided by OpenAI, Cohere, Hugging Face, and Google PaLM, or those you may fine-tune yourself – opened up a world of possibilities in how we understand and query our data.

Combine this with Weaviate – an AI-native vector database – and you have a recipe for running LLMs at a scale of millions or even billion data objects.

🦾 The Challenge(s): Now the question (and the challenge) is:

“What can you build with a dataset + LLM + vector database in a day?”

Option 1 – MLOps community Slack search MLOps.community is a 17K+ member community, primarily online in a thriving slack channel and through virtual and in-person events. There is a lot of tribal knowledge in the community where experts answer questions from other MLOps practitioners in Slack and via in-person meetups and online videos. We want you to build an LLM-powered application (Web/Mobile/Slack) to answer MLOps and other ML/DS/AI questions that community members may have using the historical knowledge in Slack, videos, etc. For example - you may implement the solution as a chatbot that uses embeddings and a vector datastore to generate the answers.

Option 2 – bring your own use case Bring in your own data and a use case – that you were itching to build but never had the time for. We will help you generate vector embeddings***** and show you how to query your data******. Then you will be able to focus on building the rest of the app to impress us all. ****** if you already have vector embeddings for your data ready, that is cool too – we will show you how to load your data with your embeddings.* ******warning: you may be surprised how little code it takes to do it all.

🔨 What you’ll be building: We’d love to see your creativity in designing your LLM Stack and showcase how useful your app can be to help MLOps practitioners learn from the experience of others. We encourage participants to discover, experiment, and build high-impact solutions using the dataset during this hackathon, and improve their skills to build powerful LLM Stacks! That being said, here are a few dimensions you could consider when creating your LLM

Stack solution:

• Correctness of the answers (and explainability/citations)
• LLM chains
• Data pipelines
• User Interfaces
• System Design tradeoffs
• Security
• Bonus points for transparently sharing your solution so that the community can learn (e.g. OSS, documentation, etc.)
• etc.

💽 The Data:

• Slack data from public MLOps Community channels
• Transcripts of videos from MLOps.community Youtube page
• Other data from the communities’ past events, blogs, etc. (make sure you share the sources used)
• Starter Kit

🗺️ Location:

• 42 Berlin (exact location will be shared with participants on sign-up)

💫 Why we’re having this hackathon: As part of enhancing our community, we are looking to provide the opportunity to our members and other participants to learn to improve their knowledge on building LLM-powered solutions to a common problem of knowledge discovery by designing and building an app that uses LLMs to answer community member questions, just like the human experts.

Here’s everything you need to know to get started: 👷 You can work individually or in groups of up to 4 people 🔨 You can use any Open Source tools to build your solutions and your code need not be open-source. 💽 The data provided for the purposes of this hackathon is under the CC-BY-NC 4.0 license, intended for non-commercial use only. 📅 Projects should be started at the event kick-off to maintain fairness across projects 🔢 Credits: To be announced. 💸 Cash prizes: To be announced. 💫 Looking for creative solutions in the LLM App Stack (UI, System Design, Microservices) that solve real-world problems using emergent LLM technologies.