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Please register here: https://pipple.nl/en/pydata-x-pipple-meetup/

The power of data and AI in practice

AI goes beyond experiments and isolated analyses. During this meetup, speakers from Pipple and PyData Eindhoven will share concrete cases and technical learnings from practice, from data model to deployment. Discover how organisations are making the transition from smart analyses to solutions that are actually used: reliable, scalable and with practical impact.

Meet the community, share your knowledge

Together with PyData Eindhoven, we are bringing data scientists, engineers and AI professionals together for an evening full of content and inspiration. Expect three technical talks, practical examples and valuable conversations with colleagues who work daily on the theme of from data to production.

| 17:30-18:00 | Walk-in & welcome | | ----------- | ----------------- | | 18:00-18:15 | Intro PyData Eindhoven & Pipple | | 18:15-18:45 | From code to production: how to keep pipelines running smoothly at scale

In this talk, Yannick and Joshua will share how they designed and evolved the CI/CD pipelines that power a global retailer’s data platform across 30+ countries. From the first setup to today’s architecture, they’ll dive into what worked, what didn’t, and why. Expect real-world lessons around dbt, Terraform, and security – from failed builds to the automation wins that finally made life easier.

This session offers practical insights for anyone working with data:from engineers maintaining pipelines to analysts and ML developers relying on them. | | 18:45-19:00 | Break & pizza 🍕 | | 19:00-19:30 | Learnings from integrating AI within CyberBench: the good, the bad and the ugly

In this talk, Lucas shares his journey of building CyberBench: a framework that automatically benchmarks Large Language Models (LLMs) for direct security risks such as prompt injections and data leaks.

After a brief introduction to the cybersecurity risks of GenAI systems and the motivation behind CyberBench, Lucas dives into the technical lessons learned from integrating LLM-based components into a software system. Expect practical insights into building reliable and efficient LLM pipelines and lessons on what worked (and what didn’t).

In short: learn to maximize the good, minimize the bad, and make the ugly a little prettier when building LLM systems in production. | | 19:30-20:00 | Speaker 3 – to be announced! |

Data storytelling isn't just about presenting numbers—it's about creating shared wisdom that drives better decision-making. In our increasingly polarized world, we often miss that most people actually have reasonable views hidden behind the loudest voices. But how can technology help us cut through the noise and build genuine understanding? What if AI could help us share stories across different communities and contexts, making our collective knowledge more accessible? From reducing unnecessary meetings to enabling more effective collaboration, the way we exchange information is evolving rapidly. Are you prepared for a future where AI helps us communicate more effectively rather than replacing human judgment? Professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland is a leading computational scientist, co-founder of the MIT Media Lab and Media Lab Asia, and a HAI Fellow at Stanford. Recognized by Forbes as one of the world’s most powerful data scientists, he played a key role in shaping the GDPR through the World Economic Forum and contributed to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as one of the Secretary General’s “Data Revolutionaries.” His accolades include MIT’s Toshiba Chair, election to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the Harvard Business Review McKinsey Award, and the DARPA 40th Anniversary of the Internet Award. Pentland has served on advisory boards for organizations such as the UN Secretary General, UN Foundation, Consumers Union, and formerly for the OECD, Google, AT&T, and Nissan. Companies originating from his lab have driven major innovations, including India’s Aadhaar digital identity system, Alibaba’s news and advertising arm, and the world’s largest rural health service network. His more recent ventures span mental health (Ginger.io), AI interaction management (Cogito), delivery optimization (Wise Systems), financial privacy (Akoya), and fairness in social services (Prosperia). A mentor to over 80 PhD students—many now leading in academia, research, or entrepreneurship—Pentland helped pioneer fields such as computational social science, wearable computing, and modern biometrics. His books include Social Physics, Honest Signals, Building the New Economy, and Trusted Data. In the episode, Richie and Sandy explore the role of storytelling in data and AI, how technology reshapes our narratives, the impact of AI on decision-making, the importance of shared wisdom in communities, and much more. Links Mentioned in the Show: MIT Media LabSandy’s Booksdeliberation.ioConnect with SandySkill Track: Artificial Intelligence (AI) LeadershipRelated Episode: The Human Element of AI-Driven Transformation with Steve Lucas, CEO at BoomiRewatch RADAR AI  New to DataCamp? Learn on the go using the DataCamp mobile appEmpower your business with world-class data and AI skills with DataCamp for business

On today's Promoted Episode of Experiencing Data, I’m talking with Lucas Thelosen, CEO of Gravity and creator of Orion, an AI analyst transforming how data teams work. Lucas was head of PS for Looker, and eventually became Head of Product for Google’s Data and AI Cloud prior to starting his own data product company. We dig into how his team built Orion, the challenge of keeping AI accurate and trustworthy when doing analytical work, and how they’re thinking about the balance of human control with automation when their product acts as a force multiplier for human analysts.

In addition to talking about the product, we also talk about how Gravity arrived at specific enough use cases for this technology that a market would be willing to pay for, and how they’re thinking about pricing in today’s more “outcomes-based” environment. 

Incidentally, one thing I didn’t know when I first agreed to consider having Gravity and Lucas on my show was that Lucas has been a long-time proponent of data product management and operating with a product mindset. In this episode, he shares the “ah-hah” moment where things clicked for him around building data products in this manner. Lucas shares how pivotal this moment was for him, and how it helped accelerate his career from Looker to Google and now Gravity.

If you’re leading a data team, you’re a forward-thinking CDO, or you’re interested in commercializing your own analytics/AI product, my chat with Lucas should inspire you!  

Highlights/ Skip to:

Lucas’s breakthrough came when he embraced a data product management mindset (02:43) How Lucas thinks about Gravity as being the instrumentalists in an orchestra, conducted by the user (4:31) Finding product-market fit by solving for a common analytics pain point (8:11) Analytics product and dashboard adoption challenges: why dashboards die and thinking of analytics as changing the business gradually (22:25) What outcome-based pricing means for AI and analytics (32:08) The challenge of defining guardrails and ethics for AI-based analytics products [just in case somebody wants to “fudge the numbers”] (46:03) Lucas’ closing thoughts about what AI is unlocking for analysts and how to position your career for the future  (48:35)

Special Bonus for DPLC Community Members Are you a member of the Data Product Leadership Community? After our chat, I invited Lucas to come give a talk about his journey of moving from “data” to “product” and adopting a producty mindset for analytics and AI work. He was more than happy to oblige. Watch for this in late 2025/early 2026 on our monthly webinar and group discussion calendar.

Note: today’s episode is one of my rare Promoted Episodes. Please help support the show by visiting Gravity’s links below:

Quotes from Today’s Episode “The whole point of data and analytics is to help the business evolve. When your reports make people ask new questions, that’s a win. If the conversations today sound different than they did three months ago, it means you’ve done your job, you’ve helped move the business forward.” — Lucas 

“Accuracy is everything. The moment you lose trust, the business, the use case, it's all over. Earning that trust back takes a long time, so we made accuracy our number one design pillar from day one.” — Lucas 

“Language models have changed the game in terms of scale. Suddenly, we’re facing all these new kinds of problems, not just in AI, but in the old-school software sense too. Things like privacy, scalability, and figuring out who’s responsible.” — Brian

“Most people building analytics products have never been analysts, and that’s a huge disadvantage. If data doesn’t drive action, you’ve missed the mark. That’s why so many dashboards die quickly.” — Lucas

“Re: collecting feedback so you know if your UX is good: I generally agree that qualitative feedback is the best place to start, not analytics [on your analytics!] Especially in UX, analytics measure usage aspects of the product, not the subject human experience. Experience is a collection of feelings and perceptions about how something went.” — Brian

Links

Gravity: https://www.bygravity.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thelosen/ Email Lucas and team: [email protected]

Register here: https://platformengineering.org/events/repo-tricks-for-scaling-gitops-across-kubernetes-2025-10-14?utm_source=meetup

Scaling Kubernetes across environments brings operational complexity, particularly when managing upgrades. Join AWS Container Specialists SAs, Tiago Reichert and Lucas Duarte, as they share real-world strategies for structuring repositories to support scalable GitOps workflows, covering MonoRepo vs repo-per-cluster models and their trade-offs in upgrade management.

In this session, you'll discover: - How to choose between repository models (MonoRepo for all components/add-ons vs repo-per-cluster) based on your upgrade management and environment consistency needs - Practical implementation using Flux v2\, Kustomize\, OpenTofu\, and Helm to simplify deployments and manage environment-specific variables - Actionable patterns for repository organization that ensure scalable\, secure\, and maintainable GitOps practices across Kubernetes clusters Bonus\, a discussion on Gitless GitOps.

After a 30-minute talk there’ll be a 15-minute Q&A, for which we encourage you to submit questions in advance. A webinar recording and related materials will be shared with all attendees after the event.

Speakers: Tiago Reichert - Senior Container Specialists SAs @ AWS

Tiago is a Solutions Architect at AWS, focused on assisting startups across Latin America to optimize their container strategies. With over 10 years of experience in tech, he has a deep passion for Containers, SaaS, and Platform Engineering. Tiago works closely with businesses to design scalable, efficient, and cost-effective cloud solutions. Tiago also actively contributes to the tech community as an organizer of KCD Brazil and meetups focused on promoting cloud-native technologies. He presented at major events such as re:Invent, KubeCon, and PlatformCon. His influence extends beyond speaking engagements, having released open-source projects, authored blogs, workshops, and white papers.

Lucas Duarte - Senior Container Specialists SAs @ AWS Lucas Duarte is a senior specialist solutions architect for containers at AWS, where he focuses on supporting ISV customers across the Americas through AWS container services. With extensive hands-on experience in Kubernetes and DevOps leadership, Duarte has been a key contributor to several companies in Brazil, driving DevOps excellence. His expertise and leadership in cloud technologies have made him a valuable resource for organizations seeking to optimize their containerized environments.

Register here: https://platformengineering.org/events/repo-tricks-for-scaling-gitops-across-kubernetes-2025-10-14?utm_source=meetup

Scaling Kubernetes across environments brings operational complexity, particularly when managing upgrades. Join AWS Container Specialists SAs, Tiago Reichert and Lucas Duarte, as they share real-world strategies for structuring repositories to support scalable GitOps workflows, covering MonoRepo vs repo-per-cluster models and their trade-offs in upgrade management.

In this session, you'll discover: - How to choose between repository models (MonoRepo for all components/add-ons vs repo-per-cluster) based on your upgrade management and environment consistency needs - Practical implementation using Flux v2\, Kustomize\, OpenTofu\, and Helm to simplify deployments and manage environment-specific variables - Actionable patterns for repository organization that ensure scalable\, secure\, and maintainable GitOps practices across Kubernetes clusters Bonus\, a discussion on Gitless GitOps.

After a 30-minute talk there’ll be a 15-minute Q&A, for which we encourage you to submit questions in advance. A webinar recording and related materials will be shared with all attendees after the event.

Speakers: Tiago Reichert - Senior Container Specialists SAs @ AWS

Tiago is a Solutions Architect at AWS, focused on assisting startups across Latin America to optimize their container strategies. With over 10 years of experience in tech, he has a deep passion for Containers, SaaS, and Platform Engineering. Tiago works closely with businesses to design scalable, efficient, and cost-effective cloud solutions. Tiago also actively contributes to the tech community as an organizer of KCD Brazil and meetups focused on promoting cloud-native technologies. He presented at major events such as re:Invent, KubeCon, and PlatformCon. His influence extends beyond speaking engagements, having released open-source projects, authored blogs, workshops, and white papers.

Lucas Duarte - Senior Container Specialists SAs @ AWS Lucas Duarte is a senior specialist solutions architect for containers at AWS, where he focuses on supporting ISV customers across the Americas through AWS container services. With extensive hands-on experience in Kubernetes and DevOps leadership, Duarte has been a key contributor to several companies in Brazil, driving DevOps excellence. His expertise and leadership in cloud technologies have made him a valuable resource for organizations seeking to optimize their containerized environments.

Veel organisaties hebben de data en tools, maar missen volwassen regie. Volgens het DDMO 2025 blijven marketingteams steken in adolescentie: ambitieus, maar stuurloos. Lucas Bos 'laat zien hoe data door structuur, discipline en cultuur wel het gewenste resultaat oplevert – aan de hand van praktijkvoorbeelden en tips waar je direct mee aan de slag kunt.

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Lucas Thelosen and Drew Gilson from Gravity talk about their development of Orion, an autonomous data analyst that bridges the gap between data availability and business decision-making. Lucas and Drew share their backgrounds in data analytics and how their experiences have shaped their approach to leveraging AI for data analysis, emphasizing the potential of AI to democratize data insights and make sophisticated analysis accessible to companies of all sizes. They discuss the technical aspects of Orion, a multi-agent system designed to automate data analysis and provide actionable insights, highlighting the importance of integrating AI into existing workflows with accuracy and trustworthiness in mind. The conversation also explores how AI can free data analysts from routine tasks, enabling them to focus on strategic decision-making and stakeholder management, as they discuss the future of AI in data analytics and its transformative impact on businesses.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Lucas Thelosen and Drew Gilson about the engineering and impact of building an autonomous data analystInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you describe what Orion is and the story behind it?How do you envision the role of an agentic analyst in an organizational context?There have been several attempts at building LLM-powered data analysis, many of which are essentially a text-to-SQL interface. How have the capabilities and architectural patterns grown in the past ~2 years to enable a more capable system?One of the key success factors for a data analyst is their ability to translate business questions into technical representations. How can an autonomous AI-powered system understand the complex nuance of the business to build effective analyses?Many agentic approaches to analytics require a substantial investment in data architecture, documentation, and semantic models to be effective. What are the gradations of effectiveness for autonomous analytics for companies who are at different points on their journey to technical maturity?Beyond raw capability, there is also a significant need to invest in user experience design for an agentic analyst to be useful. What are the key interaction patterns that you have found to be helpful as you have developed your system?How does the introduction of a system like Orion shift the workload for data teams?Can you describe the overall system design and technical architecture of Orion?How has that changed as you gained further experience and understanding of the problem space?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Orion used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on Orion?When is Orion/agentic analytics the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of Orion?Contact Info LucasLinkedInDrewLinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links OrionLookerGravityVBA == Visual Basic for ApplicationsText-To-SQLOne-shotLookMLData GrainLLM As A JudgeGoogle Large Time Series ModelThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

The relationship between humans and AI in the workplace is rapidly evolving beyond simple automation. As companies deploy thousands of AI agents to handle everything from expense approvals to customer success management, a new paradigm is emerging—one where humans become orchestrators rather than operators. But how do you determine which processes should be handled by AI and which require human judgment? What governance structures need to be in place before deploying AI at scale? With the potential to automate up to 80% of business processes, organizations must carefully consider not just the technology, but the human element of AI-driven transformation. Steve Lucas is the Chairman and CEO of Boomi, marking his third tenure as CEO. With nearly 30 years of enterprise software leadership, he has held senior roles at leading cloud organizations including Marketo, iCIMS, Adobe, SAP, Salesforce, and BusinessObjects. He led Marketo through its multi-billion-dollar acquisition by Adobe and drove strategic growth at iCIMS, delivering significant investments and transformation. A proven leader in scaling software companies, Steve is also the author of the national bestseller Digital Impact and holds a business degree from the University of Colorado. In the episode, Richie and Steve explore the importance of choosing the right tech stack for your business, the challenges of managing complex systems, the role of AI in transforming business processes, and the need for effective AI governance. They also discuss the future of AI-driven enterprises and much more. Links Mentioned in the Show: BoomiSteve’s Book - Digital Impact: The Human Element of AI-Driven TransformationWhat is the OSI Model?Connect with SteveSkill Track: AI Business FundamentalsRelated Episode: New Models for Digital Transformation with Alison McCauley Chief Advocacy Officer at Think with AI & Founder of Unblocked FutureRewatch RADAR AI  New to DataCamp? Learn on the go using the DataCamp mobile appEmpower your business with world-class data and AI skills with DataCamp for business