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Come along to the last meetup event of the year!

In this edition, we'll be discussing cost efficiency and how you can scale without things getting out of hand. This meetup will feature two talks and a panel discussion, so make sure to join us.

We’ll be sharing more details soon, but spots are limited — be sure to grab your ticket before they run out!

When? 17:30 - 18:30 Networking with food and drinks from Altinity 18:30 - 20:00 Talk + Panel discussion 20:00 - 20:30 More networking

Where? London Art Bar (300 High Holborn)

Speakers and Talks: Talk: Fast, Big, and Cheap: Pro Tricks for Cost Control in Analytic Apps (Robert Hodges, CEO @ Altinity) Analytic databases are heavy users of storage and compute that quickly grow into budget-busting behemoths. Altinity has helped thousands of companies build high performance analytics on open source ClickHouse. This talk covers our learnings about keeping systems cheap without sacrificing speed--from optimizing I/O to using compute at low-cost providers like Hetzner to keeping a single copy of data in Iceberg data lakes.

Places are limited, make sure you register!

Note: Please ensure your RSVP status is kept up to date, as this helps us offer spots to those on the waitlist. Please be aware that if you have three or more no-shows, you may be ineligible to attend future events.

This month we’re delighted to be joined by Tesco’s Head of Data and we’ll also hear about the latest in AI Governance on Databricks from the Advancing Analytics team!

17:30 - 18:00: Arrival & Networking 18:00 - 18:10: Opening Remarks & Introductions

18:10 - 18:40: Building Sustainable Data Products with AI Readiness at Scale for Cyber - Varun S Gangoor - Head of Data at Tesco In this session, we’ll explore how sustainable data product design can enable AI readiness and drive innovation in cybersecurity. We’ll look at the key principles behind building scalable, secure and reusable data products that support cyber analytics, machine learning and GenAI use cases at scale. We’ll also discuss practical approaches to data governance, automation and platform engineering that help cyber teams turn data into actionable intelligence and strengthen overall cyber resilience.

18.40-19.10 Governing AI In Databricks: Building Trust And Compliance At Scale - Gavi Regunath, Advancing Analytics CAIO and Databricks MVP, joined by Terry McCann, Advancing Analytics CEO AI governance isn’t optional - it’s foundational. With 45% of organisations concerned about data accuracy and bias, and 40% worried about privacy, the need for robust oversight is clear. From model safety to compliance tooling, we’ll show how to embed trust into your AI systems, without slowing innovation.

19:00 onwards: Pizza, Drinks & Networking Enjoy some delicious pizza and beverages while networking with peers.

Join us for a fantastic evening of learning and networking at the London Databricks meetup!

We're delighted to announce our next meetup will be hosted by Monzo.

RSVP opens on the Monday 24th March (2.5 weeks before the event), this is to reduce our drop-off numbers. Set a reminder to not miss out, this event will be over subscribed!

Agenda: 6:00pm: Doors open, networking, food, drinks. 7:00pm: Talks start! 8:00pm: Talks finish, Q&A. 8:30pm: Further drinks and networking - Drinks sponsored by Omni

Speakers:

• Analytics Engineering - Discipline or Buzzword? Measuring real impact - Daniel McNamara Head of Analytics Engineering @ Taptap Send
• DuckDB: your new favourite database - Bill Wallis Software Engineer @ Sainsbury's

We are always looking to improve the event and get new ideas for talks, if you could please fill out a feedback form, this will help us continue to improve!

London Analytics Engineering Meetup is focused on discussing and spreading best practices in the growing field of analytics engineering. Whether you've set up the "Modern Data Stack" many times over or are brand new to tools like dbt, Looker, Snowflake, Bigquery and more, this is the meetup for you.

No-Show Policy:

• If you miss 2 consecutive events or 2 out of 3 events, you wont be able to attend the next event. We hope you understand this is to keep things fair for venues and other attendees.

The Data Product Management In Action podcast, brought to you by Soda and executive producer Scott Hirleman, is a platform for data product management practitioners to share insights and experiences. 

In Season 01, Episode 17, host Nick Zervoudis ( Head of Product at CKDelta) talks to Grace Halim (Product Manager with Power Digital Marketing). In this episode Grace shares her career journey and highlights the importance of diverse experiences in shaping a successful product manager. She discusses the value of empathy, strong relationships with engineering and data teams, and the role of curiosity in asking the right questions. Listen to Grace as she shares her plans for a career break to explore new projects! 

About our host Nick Zervoudis: Nick is Head of Product at CKDelta, an AI software business within the CK Hutchison Holdings group. Nick oversees a portfolio of data products and works with sister companies to uncover new opportunities to innovate using data, analytics, and machine learning. Nick's career has revolved around data and advanced analytics from day one, having worked as an analyst, consultant, product manager, and instructor for startups, SMEs, and enterprises including PepsiCo, Sainsbury's, Lloyds Banking Group, IKEA, Capgemini Invent, BrainStation, QuantSpark, and Hg Capital. Nick is also the co-host of London's Data Product Management meetup, and speaks & writes regularly about data & AI product management. Connect with Nick on LinkedIn.  
About our guest Grace Halim: Grace is a seasoned product leader with a passion for building innovative products. With over 12 years of product management experience, Grace has honed her skills in leading high-performing product teams and delivering exceptional customer experiences. From crafting engaging data products to optimizing complex enterprise systems, Grace has a proven track record of success in the product management field. Grace is currently on a career break traveling around Australia in a caravan with her young family. Having been a product leader in the last two roles she held, Grace excelled in building and scaling product teams, fostering a culture of innovation, and driving business growth. Her teams' focus on customer focus and strategic thinking have been instrumental in delivering successful products that resonate with customers and drive bottom-line results. Beyond her corporate experience, Grace is an entrepreneur at heart. As co-founder of a data platform, she demonstrated her ability to turn a vision into a paying customer. Stay up to date with Grace’s adventure on LinkedIn. 

All views and opinions expressed are those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect their employers or anyone else. 

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Agenda 18:00 - 18:15 - Welcome 18:15 - 19:00 - Old Name - New CLI - why you should take a look at sqlcmd - Rob Sewell Introduced with SQL Server 2005 and replacing osql, sqlcmd has been a part of SQL Server professionals toolbox for a long time now. Many people only know it from the sqlcmd mode switch in SSMS, while others use it within automation as a lightweight easily available query runner. I have long recommended that DBAs are familiar with using it as it may be the only option to query an instance in severe emergencies. Times they are a changing. There is a new sqlcmd available and it has some awesome new capabilities. Let me introduce you to the new sqlcmd in a fun filled demo session and show you the new things it can do and why they will be of benefit to all Data Professionals We will cover deploying a database into a container from a backup with one command. Querying it, Opening it in Azure Data Studio, all from the command line and much more.

Rob Sewell Be-Whiskered Automator of Things Rob was a SQL Server DBA with a passion for PowerShell, Azure, Automation, and SQL (PaaS geddit?). Now he just helps people make things. He is a Cloud and Data Center MVP and a Data Platform MVP, SQLBits committee member, PSConf EU organiser, and co-leader of Data South West UK User Group. H has spoken at and volunteered at many Data and PowerShell events all over the world. He is a proud supporter of the Data and PowerShell communities. He relishes sharing and learning and can be found doing both via Twitter and his blog. He spends most of his time looking at a screen and loves to solve problems. He knows that looking at a screen so much is bad for him because his wife tells him so. Thus, he is often out riding his bike as his eyes are not good enough to play cricket any more. He has a fabulous beard

17:30 - Pizza and networking

19:30 - 20:45 - Realtime streaming data with Microsoft Fabric - James Dales Realtime streaming data is now possible within Microsoft’s new SaaS environment, Microsoft Fabric, without any Azure resources required. In this session we’ll stream data from aircraft transponder data and other sensors directly into Microsoft Fabric via EventStream into KQL DB and OneLake, and analyse the results, both live and historic in Power BI. The session will be back to back demos as we build the whole solution from scratch – what could go wrong!?

James Dales James Dales is the Global Capability Lead for Microsoft Fabric and Power BI at Avanade and is a Microsoft FastTrack Recognised Solution Architect. As a Microsoft Data Platform MVP he is the co-leader of the London Power BI user group. In 2019 he became the first member of the Power BI Contributors Program, working alongside the Microsoft engineering team to build new functionality into the Power BI product itself. He has a keen interest in spatial analytics and is the author of the Icon Map custom visual.