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Big AI models need big I/O. If your storage can’t keep up, your GPUs are bad investments. Legacy systems choke on modern training and inferencing workloads—and that’s burning time, money, and opportunity. AI is a journey; whether you are on the AI lite side with cloud or the AI heavy side with in-house compute - we've got you covered!

In this session, we’ll call out why your current infrastructure is failing AI and discuss how next-gen tech—like blazing-fast NVMe arrays, IBM Ceph’s scale-out muscle, and IBM's Openshift based Fusion Hyper-converged container-native brains—are built to feed the beast. Stop starving your GPUs.

Join us and discover how to Kill the bottlenecks & crush the pipeline. Let’s go!

Details and RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ai-infrastructure-that-doesnt-suck-tickets-1571172321709

Big AI models need big I/O. If your storage can’t keep up, your GPUs are bad investments. Legacy systems choke on modern training and inferencing workloads—and that’s burning time, money, and opportunity. AI is a journey; whether you are on the AI lite side with cloud or the AI heavy side with in-house compute - we've got you covered!

In this session, we’ll call out why your current infrastructure is failing AI and discuss how next-gen tech—like blazing-fast NVMe arrays, IBM Ceph’s scale-out muscle, and IBM's Openshift based Fusion Hyper-converged container-native brains—are built to feed the beast. Stop starving your GPUs.

Join us and discover how to Kill the bottlenecks & crush the pipeline. Let’s go!

Details and RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ai-infrastructure-that-doesnt-suck-tickets-1571172321709

We’re improving DataFramed, and we need your help! We want to hear what you have to say about the show, and how we can make it more enjoyable for you—find out more here. Understanding where the data you use comes from, how to use it responsibly, and how to maximize its value has become essential. But as data sources multiply, so do the complexities around data privacy, customization, and ownership. How can companies capture and leverage the right data to create meaningful customer experiences while respecting privacy? And as data drives more personalized interactions, what steps can businesses take to protect sensitive information and navigate the increasingly complex regulatory picture?  Jonathan Bloch is CEO at Exchange Data International (EDI) and a seasoned businessman with 40 years experience in information provision. He started work in the newsletter industry and ran the US subsidiary of a UK public company before joining its main board as head of its publishing division. He has been a director and/or chair of several companies and is currently a non executive director of an FCA registered investment bank. In 1994 he founded Exchange Data International (EDI) a London based financial data provider. EDI now has over 450 clients across three continents and is based in the UK, USA, India and Morocco employing 500 people. Scott Voigt is CEO and co-founder at Fullstory. Scott has enjoyed helping early-stage software businesses grow since the mid 90s, when he helped launch and take public nFront—one of the world's first Internet banking service providers. Prior to co-founding Fullstory, Voigt led marketing at Silverpop before the company was acquired by IBM. Previously, he worked at Noro-Moseley Partners, the Southeast's largest Venture firm, and also served as COO at Innuvo, which was acquired by Google. Scott teamed up with two former Innuvo colleagues, and the group developed the earliest iterations of Fullstory to understand how an existing product was performing. It was quickly apparent that this new platform provided the greatest value—and the rest is history. In the episode, Richie, Jonathan and Scott explore first-party vs third-party data, protecting corporate data, behavioral data, personalization, data sourcing strategies, platforms for storage and sourcing, data privacy, synthetic data, regulations and compliance, the future of data collection and storage, and much more.  Links Mentioned in the Show: FullstoryExchange Data InternationalConnect with Jonathan and ScottCourse: Understanding GDPRRelated Episode: How Data and AI are Changing Data Management with Jamie Lerner, CEO, President, and Chairman at QuantumSign up to RADAR: Forward Edition New to DataCamp? Learn on the go using the DataCamp mobile...

This IBM® Redpaper® Product Guide describes the IBM FlashCore Module (FCM) history, a general overview and then a deeper dive on the way IBM leads the field in the adoption of high speed, low latency storage. The IBM FlashCore Module is used in the latest IBM FlashSystem® solutions, which is are next-generation IBM FlashSystem control enclosures. The IBM FlashCore Module combines the performance of flash and a Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) optimized architecture with the reliability and innovation of IBM FlashCore® technology and the rich feature set and high availability (HA) with IBM Storage Virtualize software.

Please register using the zoom link to get a reminder:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/3017138780213/WN_MjvWrSIYQy6wfGgU5Q3F5g

This presentation focuses on how organizations can embark on Gen AI journey from Prompt Engineering, RAG to Fine Tuning LLMs. It delves into how to unlock the power of retrieval-augmented-generation (RAG) for generative AI apps. Discover the art of designing, building, and optimizing RAG applications using Google AlloyDB Omni, a PostgreSQL-compatible database, in tandem with powerful LLMs like OpenAI, VertexAI, or other Open Source variants. Learn how enterprises can transcend from foundational RAG frameworks to Advanced RAG systems, unlocking unprecedented relevancy and accuracy in query responses. Delve into the best practices for deploying RAG applications and gain insights into the evaluation of RAG systems, ensuring optimal performance and maximum impact.

Agenda:

(PDT) 11:50 am - 12:00 pm Arrival, socializing, and Opening (PDT) 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm Prasad Venkatachar "Unlocking generative AI in your enterprise with Google AlloyDB Omni and LLMs" (PDT) 1:00 pm - 1:15 pm Q&A

About Prasad Venkatachar

Prasad Venkatachar is Sr Director - Solutions Engineering & Products at Pliops. He is focused on Solutions and Product strategy and leading and driving AI/GenAI, Data, Analytics & Storage solutions with partners. He has launched multiple industry-leading Data & AI/ML products & solutions collaborating with Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Cloudera, and ISV partners to grow revenue & gain market share at Lenovo & HPE. He also served as a Microsoft Data and AI Partner Advisory Council Member and Member of Lenovo Technology Innovation. Served fortune 500 enterprise customers as SME to deliver business value outcomes for Datacenter and Cloud deployments. He has good experience and certified with Multiple Cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP/IBM) and Database (Oracle/DB2/Azure Data) and AI/Gen AI certifications. A regular speaker in Industry Conferences: Microsoft Ignite, Oracle Open World, Developer conferences: Pass Summit, Oracle users group, Flash Memory Summit, SNIA & Gartner Conference

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/3017138780213/WN_MjvWrSIYQy6wfGgU5Q3F5g

Webinar Passcode 216172

Please register using the zoom link to get a reminder:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/3017138780213/WN_MjvWrSIYQy6wfGgU5Q3F5g

This presentation focuses on how organizations can embark on Gen AI journey from Prompt Engineering, RAG to Fine Tuning LLMs. It delves into how to unlock the power of retrieval-augmented-generation (RAG) for generative AI apps. Discover the art of designing, building, and optimizing RAG applications using Google AlloyDB Omni, a PostgreSQL-compatible database, in tandem with powerful LLMs like OpenAI, VertexAI, or other Open Source variants. Learn how enterprises can transcend from foundational RAG frameworks to Advanced RAG systems, unlocking unprecedented relevancy and accuracy in query responses. Delve into the best practices for deploying RAG applications and gain insights into the evaluation of RAG systems, ensuring optimal performance and maximum impact.

Agenda:

(PDT) 11:50 am - 12:00 pm Arrival, socializing, and Opening (PDT) 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm Prasad Venkatachar "Unlocking generative AI in your enterprise with Google AlloyDB Omni and LLMs" (PDT) 1:00 pm - 1:15 pm Q&A

About Prasad Venkatachar

Prasad Venkatachar is Sr Director - Solutions Engineering & Products at Pliops. He is focused on Solutions and Product strategy and leading and driving AI/GenAI, Data, Analytics & Storage solutions with partners. He has launched multiple industry-leading Data & AI/ML products & solutions collaborating with Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Cloudera, and ISV partners to grow revenue & gain market share at Lenovo & HPE. He also served as a Microsoft Data and AI Partner Advisory Council Member and Member of Lenovo Technology Innovation. Served fortune 500 enterprise customers as SME to deliver business value outcomes for Datacenter and Cloud deployments. He has good experience and certified with Multiple Cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP/IBM) and Database (Oracle/DB2/Azure Data) and AI/Gen AI certifications. A regular speaker in Industry Conferences: Microsoft Ignite, Oracle Open World, Developer conferences: Pass Summit, Oracle users group, Flash Memory Summit, SNIA & Gartner Conference

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/3017138780213/WN_MjvWrSIYQy6wfGgU5Q3F5g

Webinar Passcode 216172

Join us for this limited event with the opportunity to learn from two founders. Please note there are only 70 spaces and entry will be strictly limited to first registered.

Date and Time: 🗓️ Thursday 6th June, ⏰ 18:00 PM - 8:30 PM 🕘

Venue: Central London

Attending Brands: OSO, Conduktor, RisingWave Labs

Networking: Pizza + Beer at the end

Schedule: 6:00pm: Doors Open 6:00pm - 6:30pm: Food, drinks, networking 6:30pm - 7:00pm: Yingjun Wu, Founder of RisingWave Labs 7:00pm - 7:30pm: Stéphane Derosiaux, Co-Founder and CTO of Conduktor 7:30pm-8:30pm: Additional Q&A, Networking

🎙️ \~Talk 1\~ Talk Title: Streaming Analytics on Kafka: Not Your Father's Streaming SQL Engine!

Summary: How do you query Kafka data in real-time? Use streaming SQL engine! It sounds straightforward, right? However, when it comes to handling schema changes, dynamic scaling, high availability, and complex streaming joins, the challenges become apparent. The root cause often lies in how internal states are managed in these systems. In this talk, I will introduce RisingWave, a scalable streaming database that utilizes S3 as its primary storage. By decoupling compute from storage, RisingWave enables independent scaling of these components. From underlying technology to real-world scenarios, I will illustrate how RisingWave supports heavy traffic workloads in enterprise-grade production environments.

🗣️ Speaker: Yingjun Wu, Founder of RisingWave Labs

Yingjun Wu is the founder of RisingWave Labs, a database company developing RisingWave, a distributed SQL database for stream processing. Before running the company, Yingjun was a software engineer at the Redshift team, Amazon Web Services, and a researcher at the Database group, IBM Almaden Research Center. Yingjun received his PhD degree from National University of Singapore, and was a visiting PhD at Carnegie Mellon University. He has been working in the field of stream processing and database systems for over a decade.

🎙️ \~Talk 2\~ Talk Title: How to Avoid Shooting Myself in the Foot with Kafka?

Summary: How do you develop a robust applications dealing with Kafka? How can we use CI/CD to make our life simpler? How to handle invalid messages, schema evolution, and data quality? Many challenges ahead. Here, I will focus on common mistakes and challenges in the Kafka landscape and how to mitigate them. We will cover how CI/CD practices help address these issues and their limitations. We'll discuss how to deal with poison pills and DLQ (what makes a good DLQ?), and how to deal with your Product Owner requirements. Finally, we'll compare the creation of a custom SDK versus using a Kafka proxy, and look ahead to future innovations that could transform the Kafka landscape. Don't miss this opportunity to enhance your Kafka knowledge and skills.

🗣️ Speaker: Stéphane Derosiaux, Co-Founder and CTO of Conduktor

Stephane Derosiaux is the co-founder and CTO of Conduktor. An Apache Kafka enthusiast, he's dedicated to creating the best data streaming experience for developers and organisations. He has more than 15+ years of expertise in software and data engineering, acquired through extensive large-scale Adtech and Retailtech organisations.

Venue: Riverbank House, 2 Swan Ln, London EC4R 3AD - IMPORTANT: LOCATION UPDATED! Please note:

1. 🚨🚨🚨A valid photo ID is required by building security. 🚨🚨🚨
2. This event follows the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct, please familiarise yourself with it before the event.

If your RSVP status says "You're going" you will be able to get in. No need to show your RSVP confirmation when signing in.

If you can no longer make it, please unRSVP as soon as you know.

Code of Conduct: This event follows the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct. Please get in touch with the organisers with any questions or concerns regarding the Code of Conduct.

As always, there'll be free food & drinks, generously provided by our host, Man Group.

Main Talks

Toolbox of a not-so Data Scientist - Tambe Tabitha Achere

This talk is about building data science solutions in scenarios where demos cannot be done on a notebook and dashboards do not suffice as a final deliverable. By the end of this session, the audience will have an idea of how data scientists can build the logic behind full-stack applications without the need to learn a backend framework.

I will do a deep dive into one of my projects and there will be lots of code samples accompanied by explanations that led to design decisions. The project I'll be diving into is one in which the data could not be pulled in so if you've ever had to build for data you couldn't see, this session is for you too. I'll highlight the tools, packages and processes that enabled it to be built.

Boosting Similarity Search With Real-time Stream Processing - Fawaz Ghali

The goal of similarity search and vector databases is to find similar results to the search query for unstructured data, such as text, images, and videos. The unstructured data first is vectorized, and stored in a vector format. There are publicly available tools to create vectors from unstructured data; similarly, there are vector databases to store and perform similarity searches. This is important because of the rising popularity of Large Language Models (LLMs) and their combination with vector databases. Here, we present a hybrid approach by taking the strengths of vector databases and boosting them with traditional search and filtering techniques based on real-time stream processing. Vector databases are good for building high-performance vector search applications. On the other hand, stream processing can be used for real-time fast data storage for structured data (filters, tags, and contextual data). In this work, we're adding context and memory to vector databases to ingest, enrich, predict, and act on your data in a simplified but efficient approach. In this talk, we’ll focus on how Real-time compute APIs help leverage the processing capabilities of a distributed cluster, so you aren’t leaving large potential performance gains on the table. The combination of Real-time storage and computing provides a unique synergy that enables applications to address real-time use cases at any scale.

⚡ Lightning Talks

Open-Source Science (OSSci) - Tim Bonnemann

Open-Source Science (OSSci) is a new NumFOCUS initiative – launched in July 2022 in partnership with IBM – that aims to accelerate scientific research by improving the ways open source software in science gets done (built, used, funded, sustained, recognized, etc.). OSSci connects scientists, OSS developers and other stakeholders to share best practices, identify common pain points, and explore solutions together. The five OSSci interest groups to date cover domain-specific topics (chemistry/materials, life sciences/healthcare, climate/sustainability) as well as cross-domain topics (reproducibility, map of science), with more to be rolled out in 2024. This lightning talk will provide a brief overview of OSSci’s activities to date, our plans for 2024, and how you can get involved.

(Maybe) faster Pandas with CuDF on the GPU (perhaps) - Ian Ozsvald

NVIDIA's CuDF promises 100-1000x GPU speed ups with 100% compatibility, with a bit of effort it can be made to work. This talk shows what could work and which bits (including setup!) can be painful

Logistics Doors open at 6.30 pm (get there early as you have to sign-in via building security), talks start at 7 pm, drinks from 9 pm in the bar. We will have reduced capacity for this event but there will be plenty of people to discuss data science questions with!

Please unRSVP in good time if you realise you can't make it. We're limited by building security on the number of attendees, so please free up your place for your fellow community members!

Follow @pydatalondon (https://twitter.com/pydatalondon) for updates and early announcements.

Topic repeated at 2 different times, please join the session that is best suited for your time zone. The cloud offers more than just a bucket for data and applications to be delivered “as a service.” Isolated virtual environments, air gap gateways, recovery tools, virtual networking, immutable storage, clean rooms, and new security tools such as scanners and AI are all a part of the next generation of cyber security solutions against advanced threats.

This session will explore real use cases and VMware client examples of how these tools can be used and, in some cases, combined to augment existing security strategies against ransomware and the new regulations and compliance requirements.

Presenter: Ana Biazetti, David Mitchell

Ana Biazetti is a Distinguished Engineer at IBM who is passionate about developing cutting edge technology solutions that address real world problems. She is a Chief Architect at the IBM Cloud for Financial Services CTO team and helps Banks and Financial Institutions bring their regulated workloads to Hybrid Cloud while fulfilling their resilience, security and compliance requirements. With her extensive experience in software development, dev/sec/ops and cloud solutions, she has implemented High Availability, Disaster Recovery and Continuous Availability across many products and solutions and has been recently focused on Operational Resilience and Cyber Resilience capabilities for Hybrid Cloud.

David Mitchell is currently a Senior Product Manager for IBM Cloud Global Solutions and has three decades of successful experience in product management for technology and security companies worldwide. David specializes in new and emerging cybersecurity technologies and regularly sets data protection strategies for financial and government organizations. A strong believer in the power of design thinking and customer perspective, David leads the cyber resilience strategy for IBM Cloud. David enjoys creating music, watching the latest binge, and mountain biking when he can.

*** Please join us at the session that is best suited to your time zone. Note that this topic is: 1. Repeated at two different times to accommodate various time zones\, because it is 2. Posted simultaneously in multiple meetup groups world-wide *** It is recommended that you register at this Webex link ahead of time to receive a calendar invite and reminder. https://ibm.webex.com/weblink/register/rebc36b8e2d1b74048c7195154762e8f8

Topic repeated at 2 different times, please join the session that is best suited for your time zone. The cloud offers more than just a bucket for data and applications to be delivered “as a service.” Isolated virtual environments, air gap gateways, recovery tools, virtual networking, immutable storage, clean rooms, and new security tools such as scanners and AI are all a part of the next generation of cyber security solutions against advanced threats.

This session will explore real use cases and VMware client examples of how these tools can be used and, in some cases, combined to augment existing security strategies against ransomware and the new regulations and compliance requirements.

Presenter: Ana Biazetti, David Mitchell

Ana Biazetti is a Distinguished Engineer at IBM who is passionate about developing cutting edge technology solutions that address real world problems. She is a Chief Architect at the IBM Cloud for Financial Services CTO team and helps Banks and Financial Institutions bring their regulated workloads to Hybrid Cloud while fulfilling their resilience, security and compliance requirements. With her extensive experience in software development, dev/sec/ops and cloud solutions, she has implemented High Availability, Disaster Recovery and Continuous Availability across many products and solutions and has been recently focused on Operational Resilience and Cyber Resilience capabilities for Hybrid Cloud.

David Mitchell is currently a Senior Product Manager for IBM Cloud Global Solutions and has three decades of successful experience in product management for technology and security companies worldwide. David specializes in new and emerging cybersecurity technologies and regularly sets data protection strategies for financial and government organizations. A strong believer in the power of design thinking and customer perspective, David leads the cyber resilience strategy for IBM Cloud. David enjoys creating music, watching the latest binge, and mountain biking when he can.

*** Please join us at the session that is best suited to your time zone. Note that this topic is: 1. Repeated at two different times to accommodate various time zones\, because it is 2. Posted simultaneously in multiple meetup groups world-wide *** It is recommended that you register at this Webex link ahead of time to receive a calendar invite and reminder. https://ibm.webex.com/weblink/register/rebc36b8e2d1b74048c7195154762e8f8

Topic repeated at 2 different times, please join the session that is best suited for your time zone. The cloud offers more than just a bucket for data and applications to be delivered “as a service.” Isolated virtual environments, air gap gateways, recovery tools, virtual networking, immutable storage, clean rooms, and new security tools such as scanners and AI are all a part of the next generation of cyber security solutions against advanced threats.

This session will explore real use cases and VMware client examples of how these tools can be used and, in some cases, combined to augment existing security strategies against ransomware and the new regulations and compliance requirements.

Presenter: Ana Biazetti, David Mitchell

Ana Biazetti is a Distinguished Engineer at IBM who is passionate about developing cutting edge technology solutions that address real world problems. She is a Chief Architect at the IBM Cloud for Financial Services CTO team and helps Banks and Financial Institutions bring their regulated workloads to Hybrid Cloud while fulfilling their resilience, security and compliance requirements. With her extensive experience in software development, dev/sec/ops and cloud solutions, she has implemented High Availability, Disaster Recovery and Continuous Availability across many products and solutions and has been recently focused on Operational Resilience and Cyber Resilience capabilities for Hybrid Cloud.

David Mitchell is currently a Senior Product Manager for IBM Cloud Global Solutions and has three decades of successful experience in product management for technology and security companies worldwide. David specializes in new and emerging cybersecurity technologies and regularly sets data protection strategies for financial and government organizations. A strong believer in the power of design thinking and customer perspective, David leads the cyber resilience strategy for IBM Cloud. David enjoys creating music, watching the latest binge, and mountain biking when he can.

*** Please join us at the session that is best suited to your time zone. Note that this topic is: 1. Repeated at two different times to accommodate various time zones\, because it is 2. Posted simultaneously in multiple meetup groups world-wide *** It is recommended that you register at this Webex link ahead of time to receive a calendar invite and reminder. https://ibm.webex.com/weblink/register/rebc36b8e2d1b74048c7195154762e8f8