talk-data.com

Send us a text In this episode, we're joined by Sam Debruyn and Dorian Van den Heede who reflect on their talks at SQL Bits 2025 and dive into the technical content they presented. Sam walks through how dbt integrates with Microsoft Fabric, explaining how it improves lakehouse and warehouse workflows by adding modularity, testing, and documentation to SQL development. He also touches on Fusion’s SQL optimization features and how it compares to tools like SQLMesh. Dorian shares his MLOps demo, which simulates beating football bookmakers using historical data,nshowing how to build a full pipeline with Azure ML, from feature engineering to model deployment. They discuss the role of Python modeling in dbt, orchestration with Azure ML, and the practical challenges of implementing MLOps in real-world scenarios. Toward the end, they explore how AI tools like Copilot are changing the way engineers learn and debug code, raising questions about explainability, skill development, and the future of junior roles in tech. It’s rich conversation covering dbt, MLOps, Python, Azure ML, and the evolving role of AI in engineering.

The 10th edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup will take place in Leuven on April 29th.

dbt Meetups are networking events open to all folks working with data! Talks predominantly focus on community members' experience with dbt, however, you'll catch presentations on broader topics such as analytics engineering, data stacks, data ops, modeling, testing, and team structures.

🏠Venue Host & Catering Provider: Dataminded, Vismarkt 17, 3000 Leuven 🤝Organizers: Sam Debruyn & Sofia Iamskaia 🚆 Getting there: see this link

To attend, please read the Health and Safety Policy and Terms of Participation: https://www.getdbt.com/legal/health-and-safety-policy

Our venue has capacity limits, so please only RSVP if you intend to come. Reach out - send a message in #local-belgium on Slack - if you need to cancel last minute or change your RSVP status on the Meetup to "Not Going."

📝Agenda:

• 18h00: welcome with food & drinks
• 18h45: start presentations
• 20h00: networking & drinks

🗣️Presentations:

to dbt or not to dbt dbt has become king in the world of data transformations, but is it here to stay? We’ll explore how dbt’s competitors are trying to distinguish themselves, and how dbt is responding to the competition.

by Michiel De Muynck, Senior Data Engineer @ Dataminded Michiel did a PhD and postdoc in computer science at Ghent University. In 2022, Michiel joined Datamindeld, where he has both used dbt at clients as well as taught dbt courses for Dataminded Academy.

dbt @ Immoscoop Presentation on how our data platform changed before and after the introduction of dbt. We’ll explore how dbt helped us manage our data warehouse and drive Immoscoop’s strategy, touching on model types, materializations, semantic layers, and more.

by Brecht Van Buggenhout, Data Analyst @ Immoscoop Brecht studied in the United States for six years and earned a Master’s in Business Analytics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. After graduating, he started as a Data Analyst at Immoscoop, where he experienced the complete transformation of their data platform from day one. He now serves as a Team Lead, overseeing all data-related activities.

We are always looking for speakers!

To submit a session for one of the next meetups, please use our Sessionize page. Are you in doubt if you're ready to give a talk? Check out dbt Labs's guide on how to deliver a fantastic presentation!

➡️ Join the dbt Slack community: https://www.getdbt.com/community/

🤝 For the best Meetup experience, make sure to join the #local-belgium channel in dbt Slack (https://slack.getdbt.com/)!

dbt is the standard in data transformation, used by over 40,000 organizations worldwide. Through the application of software engineering best practices like modularity, version control, testing, and documentation, dbt’s analytics engineering workflow helps teams work more efficiently to produce data the entire organization can trust.

Learn more: https://www.getdbt.com/

The 9th edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup will take place in Ghent on February 20th.

dbt Meetups are networking events open to all folks working with data! Talks predominantly focus on community members' experience with dbt, however, you'll catch presentations on broader topics such as analytics engineering, data stacks, data ops, modeling, testing, and team structures.

🏠Venue Host & Catering Provider: Lighthouse, Zuiderpoort Office Tower, Gaston Crommenlaan 6, 9050 Ghent 🤝Organizers: Sam Debruyn & Lise Kerckhove 🚆 Getting there: the office is located in “Zuiderpoort”. If you come by car, you can park easily in the Q-Park right next to the building. We advise you to park on -1 and follow the instructions in the direction of Atrium. Once you get to the ground floor, take the glass elevators to the 8th floor.

To attend, please read the Health and Safety Policy and Terms of Participation: https://www.getdbt.com/legal/health-and-safety-policy

Our venue has capacity limits, so please only RSVP if you intend to come. Reach out - send a message in #local-belgium on Slack - if you need to cancel last minute or change your RSVP status on the Meetup to "Not Going."

📝Agenda:

• 18h00: welcome with food & drinks
• 18h45: start presentations
• 20h00: networking & drinks

🗣️Presentations:

1) Building Custom Packages for Reusable Data Transformations Unlocking the full potential of dbt by creating custom packages tailored to your data needs. In this session, we'll go through why & how to design, build, and maintain reusable dbt packages that streamline data transformations, enforce consistency, and accelerate development across multiple projects.

by Kaan Kizilirmak, Data Engineer at Devoteam G Cloud His career trajectory began in automation and Process Analytic Technology (PAT). Since 2022, he has honed expertise in cloud computing, specializing in data.

2) dbt with Looker Typical use case at Lighthouse on how we use dbt with Looker.

by Karmichael Sultana, Senior Analytics Engineer at Lighthouse As an Analytics Engineer with over 14 years of experience in data analysis engineering and project management, I'm passionate about using data to drive businesses in the right direction.

We are looking for speakers!

To submit a session for one of the next meetups, please use our Sessionize page. Are you in doubt if you're ready to give a talk? Check out dbt Labs's guide on how to deliver a fantastic presentation!

➡️ Join the dbt Slack community: https://www.getdbt.com/community/

🤝 For the best Meetup experience, make sure to join the #local-belgium channel in dbt Slack (https://slack.getdbt.com/)!

dbt is the standard in data transformation, used by over 40,000 organizations worldwide. Through the application of software engineering best practices like modularity, version control, testing, and documentation, dbt’s analytics engineering workflow helps teams work more efficiently to produce data the entire organization can trust.

Learn more: https://www.getdbt.com/

The 8th edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup will take place in Hasselt on November 28th.

dbt Meetups are networking events open to all folks working with data! Talks predominantly focus on community members' experience with dbt, however, you'll catch presentations on broader topics such as analytics engineering, data stacks, data ops, modeling, testing, and team structures.

🏠Venue Host & Catering Provider: DataSense, Corda Campus, Kempische Steenweg 309, 3500 Hasselt 🤝Organizers: Sam Debruyn & Arianna Van de Maele 🚆 Getting there: plenty of parking available around the building - Kiewit train station at walking distance (travel planning)

To attend, please read the Health and Safety Policy and Terms of Participation: https://www.getdbt.com/legal/health-and-safety-policy

Our venue has capacity limits, so please only RSVP if you intend to come. Reach out - send a message in #local-belgium on Slack - if you need to cancel last minute or change your RSVP status on the Meetup to "Not Going."

📝Agenda:

• 18h00: welcome with food & drinks
• 18h45: start presentations
• 20h00: networking & drinks

🗣️Presentations:

1) Containerized Deployment for dbt Projects Simplify your dbt workflows Enhance security Scale with ease Guarantee consistent performance Don't miss this opportunity to learn how containerized deployment can revolutionize your dbt projects.

by Jim Vekemans, Data Engineer at DataSense Data engineer at DataSense, with multiple large-scale dbt projects implemented at different clients.

2) Maintaining your conventions amid the chaos of dbt As dbt projects continue to grow in size and complexity it is becoming increasingly common for each organisation to have its own conventions, standards and ways-of-working. But how can these conventions be maintained as the dbt project continues to expand? Does chaos reign or can we use our engineering knowledge to maintain our conventions? Let’s examine several approaches to maintaining standards in a dbt project.

by Pádraic Slattery, Analytics Engineer at Xebia Data Pádraic has worked across several industries in roles including data analysis, Business Intelligence development and data engineering. He currently works as an Analytics Engineer at Xebia Data, a Data and AI consultancy based in Amsterdam where he helps clients deploy data platforms, onboard business use cases and upskill internal employee's data literacy.

We are always looking for speakers!

To submit a session for one of the next meetups, please use our Sessionize page. Are you in doubt if you're ready to give a talk? Check out dbt Labs's guide on how to deliver a fantastic presentation!

➡️ Join the dbt Slack community: https://www.getdbt.com/community/

🤝 For the best Meetup experience, make sure to join the #local-belgium channel in dbt Slack (https://slack.getdbt.com/)!

dbt is the standard in data transformation, used by over 40,000 organizations worldwide. Through the application of software engineering best practices like modularity, version control, testing, and documentation, dbt’s analytics engineering workflow helps teams work more efficiently to produce data the entire organization can trust.

Learn more: https://www.getdbt.com/

Our friends at Xebia are hosting us at their offices next to the Amstel Station.

17:30 – 🍕 Welcome

18:00 – 🎤 Ruben Huidekoper (Xebia) & Bart Manintveld (The Future Group) - dbt at Van Oord: A case study on how we log runs and handle our HR data

18:30 – 🎤 Sam Debruyn (dataroots) - From Fabric to Fantastic: How dbt Makes Your Lakehouses and Warehouses Shine

19:00 –🥤 Drinks

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About the speakers:

🎤 Sam Debruyn (dataroots) Sam Debruyn is a Cloud Data Solution Architect with a passion for the modern data stack. In his day-to-day, he designs and implements data platforms that support customers in harvesting the full potential of their data. As a true believer in open-source, he is a top contributor to dbt and several adapters and packages. Sam is also a dbt Community Award winner, organizer of the Belgium dbt Meetups, and a frequent speaker at data meetups and conferences.

🎤 Ruben Huidekoper (Xebia) & Bart Manintveld (The Future Group) Ruben Huidekoper and Bart Manintveld are using DBT to develop a centralized data platform at Van Oord, one of world's leading dredging and marine contracting companies.

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About the talks:

dbt at Van Oord: A case study on how we log runs and handle our HR data In this presentation, they will give an overview of the platform architecture and DBT's role in it, and discuss the specific challenges encountered when doing analytics engineering at Van Oord. Furthermore, they will present two analytics engineering case studies: how we handle DBT run logs, and SQL patterns which are commonly encountered when working with HR data. (edited)

From Fabric to Fantastic: How dbt Makes Your Lakehouses and Warehouses Shine Unlock the full potential of your Microsoft Fabric Data Warehouse or Lakehouse. In this session, analytics engineers can learn from the top contributor to dbt-fabric what Microsoft Fabric is all about and how dbt is the perfect tool to build data transformations on Microsoft Fabric. We’ll cover the basics of Microsoft Fabric, how to connect dbt Cloud with Microsoft Fabric, and how to build our first Hello Fabric project.

--- Join the dbt Slack community: https://community.getdbt.com/ Join the conversation in the #local-netherlands channel in dbt Slack to connect with other data practitioners locally. To attend, please read the Required Participation Language for In-Person Events with dbt Labs: https://www.getdbt.com/legal/health-and-safety-policy

The 7th edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup will take place in Vilvoorde on September 5th.

dbt Meetups are networking events open to all folks working with data! Talks predominantly focus on community members' experience with dbt, however, you'll catch presentations on broader topics such as analytics engineering, data stacks, data ops, modeling, testing, and team structures.

🏠Venue Host: DPG Media, Medialaan 1, 1800 Vilvoorde 🤝Organizers: Sam Debruyn & Cedric Raeymaeckers 🚆 Getting there: parking available at Streamz, Medialaan 38, 1800 Vilvoorde - meetup itself is at DPG Media (Medialaan 1)

To attend, please read the Required Participation Language for In-Person Events with dbt Labs: https://www.getdbt.com/legal/health-and-safety-policy

Our venue has capacity limits, so please only RSVP if you intend to come. Reach out - send a message in #local-belgium on Slack - if you need to cancel last minute or change your RSVP status on the Meetup to "Not Going."

📝Agenda:

• 18h00: welcome with food & drinks
• 18h45: start presentations
• 20h00: networking & drinks

🗣️Presentations:

1) The paradigm shift to analytics engineering In this session, we'll explore how dbt's inspiration by software engineering practices made the tool so powerful and brought a new paradigm to data work: analytics engineering.

by Pieter Steenssens, Data Engineer at Bmatix Passionate about all things data & analytics engineering

2) Our dbt journey @ Streamz We will discuss how dbt has changed the way we build analytical data products at Streamz, explaining the story from both engineering and analyst perspectives, and focusing on specific use cases.

by Cedric Raeymaeckers, Senior Lead at Datashift I'm a Data/Analytics Engineer with 10 years of experience in data consultancy. I derive energy from bridging use cases with technical solutions. Nowadays I am primarily active as an architect or lead.

and Line Van Hemel, Data Modelling Lead at Streamz Transforming raw data into user-friendly and high quality data models is my core strength. In my last two roles at Virgin Media O2 and Just Eat Takeaway.com, I was the lead of the Data Modelling team. We led the data migration from Netezza and Amazon Redshift onto GCP (Google Cloud Platform) by capturing user requirements and rethinking the data architecture and lineage. Avoiding work duplication across the analytics departments and ensuring consistent and timely delivered KPI’s were my key principles.

We are always looking for speakers!

To submit a session for one of the next meetups, please use our Sessionize page. Are you in doubt if you're ready to give a talk? Check out dbt Labs's guide on how to deliver a fantastic presentation!

🤝 For the best Meetup experience, make sure to join the #local-belgium channel in dbt Slack (https://slack.getdbt.com/)!

dbt is the standard in data transformation, used by over 30,000 organizations worldwide. Through the application of software engineering best practices like modularity, version control, testing, and documentation, dbt’s analytics engineering workflow helps teams work more efficiently to produce data the entire organization can trust.

Learn more: https://www.getdbt.com/

The 6th edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup will take place in Leuven on June 6th.

dbt Meetups are networking events open to all folks working with data! Talks predominantly focus on community members' experience with dbt, however, you'll catch presentations on broader topics such as analytics engineering, data stacks, data ops, modeling, testing, and team structures.

🏠Venue Host: Dataroots, Tiensevest 132, 3000 Leuven 🤝Organizer: Sam Debruyn 🚆 Getting there: 5min walk from Leuven train station, plenty of parking spots available

To attend, please read the Required Participation Language for In-Person Events with dbt Labs: https://www.getdbt.com/legal/health-and-safety-policy

Our venue has capacity limits, so please only RSVP if you intend to come and reach out send a message in #local-belgium on Slack if you need to cancel last minute or change your RSVP status on the Meetup to "Not Going."

📝Agenda:

• 17h45: welcome with food & drinks
• 18h30: start presentations
• 20h30: networking & drinks

🗣️Presentations:

Gee, stop building into production! In this talk I will give an overview of how you can bring the Write-Audit-Publish pattern from software engineering to your dbt project thanks to the neat features of modern data warehouses. I will also tap on the benefits and costs as well as the limitations of implementing these solutions.

Sonny Nguyen Data Engineer at POLITICO A data folk @ POLITICO who creates scalable pipelines and assists businesses in adopting modern data stack technologies. I have years of profound experience implementing solutions with dbt and the Modern Data Stack in the venture, manufacturing, and fashion retail industry.

dbt semantic layer We will start by exploring the concepts of a semantic layer and why it has been gaining traction recently. We will talk why it is a foundation pillar for LLM and finish with a hands-on demo.

Charles Verleyen Lead architect at Astrafy I am a 34 years old data engineer and have been working for the last 10 years in different industry before founding my company recently with a focus on providing modern data services.

Nawfel Bacha Data Engineer at Astrafy Data Architecture & Data Modeling

Analytics Engineering in Data Team Dynamics The role of Analytics Engineering has gained prominence in the job market, often associated with the use of dbt. However, Analytics Engineers have been integral to data teams even before dbt popularized it. This presentation aims to clarify the role of an Analytics Engineer within a data team. It delves into the challenges faced by Data Engineers, Data Analysts, and Data Scientists, providing insights into the frustrations encountered in these roles. The discussion focuses on how an Analytics Engineer can serve as a valuable support in addressing these challenges. Furthermore, it explores the role of an Analytics Engineer in enabling a more efficient Data Mesh and highlights the synergies with the modern data stack. Additionally, this presentation explores various use cases and detailing projects where an Analytics Engineer has directly addressed data challenges by closely working with Data Engineers and business stakeholders.

Maryam Ilyas Analytics Engineer at Dataroots Maryam started as a data analyst, quickly she encountered the challenges inherent in the field answering business stakeholder. Gradually, she transitioned into the role of an Analytics Engineer.

We are always looking for speakers!

To submit a session for one of the next meetups, please use our Sessionize page. Are you in doubt if you're ready to give a talk? Check out dbt Labs's guide on how to deliver a fantastic presentation!

➡️ Join the dbt Slack community: https://www.getdbt.com/community/ 🤝 For the best Meetup experience, make sure to join the #local-belgium channel in dbt Slack (https://slack.getdbt.com/)!

dbt is a data transformation framework that lets analysts and engineers collaborate using their shared knowledge of SQL. Through the application of software engineering best practices like modularity, version control, testing, and documentation, dbt’s analytics engineering workflow helps teams work more efficiently to produce data the entire organization can trust.

Learn more: https://www.getdbt.com/

Send us a text Welcome to the cozy corner of the tech world where ones and zeros mingle with casual chit-chat. Datatopics Unplugged is your go-to spot for relaxed discussions around tech, news, data, and society. Dive into conversations that should flow as smoothly as your morning coffee (but don't), where industry insights meet laid-back banter. Whether you're a data aficionado or just someone curious about the digital age, pull up a chair, relax, and let's get into the heart of data, unplugged style! In this episode #42, titled "Unraveling the Fabric of Data: Microsoft's Ecosystem and Beyond," we're joined once again by the tech maestro and newly minted Microsoft MVP, Sam Debruyn. Sam brings to the table a bevy of updates from his recent accolades to the intricacies of Microsoft's data platforms and the world of SQL.

Biz Buzz: From Reddit's IPO to the performance versus utility debate in database selection, we dissect the big moves shaking up the business side of tech. Read about Reddit's IPO.Microsoft's Fabric Unraveled: Get the lowdown on Microsoft's Fabric, the one-stop AI platform, as Sam Debruyn gives us a deep dive into its capabilities and integration with Azure Databricks and Power BI. Discover more about Fabric and dive into Sam's blog.dbt Developments: Sam talks dbt and the exciting new SQL tool for data pipeline building with upcoming unit testing capabilities.Polaris Project: Delving into Microsoft's internal storage projects, including insights on Polaris and its integration with Synapse SQL. Read the paper here.AI Advances: From the release of Grok-1 and Apple's MM1 AI model to GPT-4's trillion parameters, we discuss the leaps in artificial intelligence.Stability in Motion: After OpenAI's Sora, we look at Stability AI's new venture into motion with Stable Video. Check out Stable Video.Benchmarking Debate: A critical look at performance benchmarks in database selection and the ongoing search for the 'best' database. Contemplate benchmarking perspectives.Versioning Philosophy: Hot takes on semantic versioning and what stability really means in software development. Dive into Semantic Versioning.

The 5th edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup will take place in Hasselt on January 25th.

dbt Meetups are networking events open to all folks working with data! Talks predominantly focus on community members' experience with dbt, however, you'll catch presentations on broader topics such as analytics engineering, data stacks, data ops, modeling, testing, and team structures.

🏠Venue Host: Digital Hive, Hendrik van Veldekesingel 150, 3500 Hasselt 🤝Organizers: Wim Deca & Sam Debruyn

To attend, please read the Required Participation Language for In-Person Events with dbt Labs: https://bit.ly/3QIJXFb

Our venue has capacity limits, so please only RSVP if you intend to come and reach out send a message in #local-belgium on Slack if you need to cancel last minute or change your RSVP status on the Meetup to "Not Going."

📝Agenda:

• 17h45: welcome with food & drinks
• 18h30: start presentations
• 20h30: networking & drinks

🗣️Presentations:

Streamlining unit testing in dbt: Increasing coverage with the least amount of effort Unit testing of data transformations has long been a cumbersome process. In this talk I'll discuss the goals (and frustrations) we had that led us to look for the most streamlined way to implement unit tests, as well as how we got to our current approach.

Wim Deca Data Architect at Digital Hive Wim has been working with data since the beginning of the 2010s and is one of the driving forces behind Digital Hive's Data Unit, a small consulting boutique shop that specializes in engineering and architecture expertise for the modern data stack.

Reigniting Data Modeling: Sensible Strategies for the 2020s and Beyond This talk covers theoretical and practical learnings from Niko's journey to productize data modeling best practices into performant dbt code, across major data warehouses. In this talk Niko will cover long forgotten data modeling best practices, as well as design you can apply to your own dbt projects. Be prepared: This is not going to be jaffle shop but instead we’ll dive to the deep end with incrementality, temporality and event ledgers. All whilst not blowing up your compute costs. Niko will also share practical learnings on how to build agile data processes in DWH centric setup.

Niko Korvenlaita CTO, Co-Founder at reconfigured Niko Korvenlaita, a seasoned data pro for a decade, with experience ranging from Excel to YouTube scale data setups. Currently building reconfigured - a data modeling platform that enables data pros to convert business logic into production-grade dbt code.

Using dbt to lower BigQuery costs In this session I'd like to share how I used dbt in different ways to lower BigQuery costs in various projects. This includes: - Cost guardrail techniques with max_bytes_billed\, batch jobs and max_concurrency - Cost observability with job labels & smart usage of information_schemas - Cost lowering with partitioning\, clustering and materialized views

Rik Pauwels Data Architect at Devoteam G Cloud I'm a Data Architect at Devoteam G Cloud with a specialisation in Data Warehouses & Customer Data Platforms on BigQuery. Over the past years I helped multiple big organisations in setting up their own data platform on Google Cloud, this included training, the creation of new pipelines and extensive reviews with respect to cost and security. Next to that I'm also the proud possessor of all Google Cloud Certificates as well as being recognized as an Google Cloud Authorized Trainer.

We are always looking for speakers!

To submit a session for one of the next meetups, please use our Sessionize page. Are you in doubt if you're ready to give a talk? Check out dbt Labs's guide on how to deliver a fantastic presentation!

➡️ Join the dbt Slack community: https://www.getdbt.com/community/ 🤝 For the best Meetup experience, make sure to join the #local-belgium channel in dbt Slack (https://slack.getdbt.com/)!

dbt is a data transformation framework that lets analysts and engineers collaborate using their shared knowledge of SQL. Through the application of software engineering best practices like modularity, version control, testing, and documentation, dbt’s analytics engineering workflow helps teams work more efficiently to produce data the entire organization can trust.

Learn more: https://www.getdbt.com/

The 4th edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup will take place in Mechelen on November 30th.

dbt Meetups are networking events open to all folks working with data! Talks predominantly focus on community members' experience with dbt, however, you'll catch presentations on broader topics such as analytics engineering, data stacks, data ops, modeling, testing, and team structures.

🏠Venue Host: Datashift, Oude Brusselsestraat 14, 2800 Mechelen 🤝Organizers: Cedric Raeymaeckers & Sam Debruyn

To attend, please read the Required Participation Language for In-Person Events with dbt Labs: https://bit.ly/3QIJXFb

Our venue has capacity limits, so please only RSVP if you intend to come and reach out send a message in #local-belgium on Slack if you need to cancel last minute or change your RSVP status on the Meetup to "Not Going."

Datashift is only an 8-minute walk away from the 🚆 train station. Are you coming by car? 🅿️ Parking Zandpoortvest is a 10-minute walk away.

📝Agenda:

• 17h45: welcome with food & drinks
• 18h40: Behind the scenes: contributing to dbt - Sam Debruyn
• 19h15: A Journey to Data Culture - Thomas Antonakis
• 20h05: Multi-project collaboration with dbt - Charles Verleyen

Behind the scenes: contributing to dbt-core and its adapters

In this talk, we will go through the inner workings of dbt. How does it do its magic? What better way to learn how dbt works than by contributing to it yourself? We'll dig deeper into how dbt is built and how you can take a look under hood yourself by making your first contributions.

Sam Debruyn - tech lead data & cloud at dataroots Sam is tech lead of dataroots’s data & cloud unit. He is passionate about data analytics and open-source software. dbt is at the crossroads of where his passions meet. Sam is an early adopter of dbt, the Belgian dbt community leader, top dbt contributor, receiver of the dbt Community Award, and dbt community spotlight member. Short to say, he really seems to know a lot about dbt and is eager to share this knowledge!

A Journey to Data Culture

Many companies call themselves data-driven and data-first, but most are still gut-driven. At Orfium, we believe a company cannot claim to be any of these fancy terms if there is no proper data culture embedded in all job levels. We do not need just data literacy but a data culture altogether.

In this talk, we will define data culture and how we built it at Orfium. We will also explain how this connects self-service analytics, data cataloging, and data governance initiatives. This talk is beneficial to all data managers, including those who need to unlock time for their teams to do more advanced initiatives rather than spending time fixing formulas on sheets for non-technical departments.

Thomas Antonakis - Principal BI Engineer at Orfium Experienced Head of Business Intelligence with demonstrated history of working in the internet industry and team-leading. Skilled in Business Planning, Analysis, Business Intelligence and Data Visualization. Strong Business Intelligence professional with a Master of Science (MSc) focused in Operations Research from Athens University of Economics and Business.

Multi-project collaboration with dbt

dbt 1.6 will go one step further into making collaboration between different dbt projects a breeze. In this session, myself and a colleague will go over those new dbt features that will help you get the most out of working with different dbt projects while keeping full inter-operability.

Charles Verleyen - Lead architect at Astrafy I am a 34 years old data engineer and have been working for the last 10 years in different industry before founding my company recently with a focus on providing modern data services. I am passionate about open-source technologies and strive to deliver automated data solutions that can scale.

Aside from my work, I am a sport lover with special dedication for tennis.

➡️ Join the dbt Slack community: https://www.getdbt.com/community/ 🤝 For the best Meetup experience, make sure to join the #local-belgium channel in dbt Slack (https://slack.getdbt.com/)!

dbt is a data transformation framework that lets analysts and engineers collaborate using their shared knowledge of SQL. Through the application of software engineering best practices like modularity, version control, testing, and documentation, dbt’s analytics engineering workflow helps teams work more efficiently to produce data the entire organization can trust.

Learn more: https://www.getdbt.com/

The 3th edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup will take place in Brussels on September 28th.

dbt Meetups are networking events open to all folks working with data! Talks predominantly focus on community members' experience with dbt, however, you'll catch presentations on broader topics such as analytics engineering, data stacks, data ops, modeling, testing, and team structures.

🏠Venue Host: Astrafy, Silversquare Delta, Av. Arnaud Fraiteur 15, Ixelles 🤝Organizers: Charles Verleyen & Sam Debruyn

To attend, please read the Required Participation Language for In-Person Events with dbt Labs: https://bit.ly/3QIJXFb

Our venue has capacity limits, so please only RSVP if you intend to come and reach out send a message in #local-belgium on Slack if you need to cancel last minute or change your RSVP status on the Meetup to "Not Going."

📝Agenda:

• 17h45: welcome with food & drinks
• 18h30: Why dbt will one day be bigger than Spark - Kris Peeters, CEO at Data Minded
• 19h15: Bring your own compute: benefits & pitfalls of developing analytics with DuckDB - Frederik Druyts, Consultant at Datashift
• 19h45: break
• 20h: Speed up ML development with python models in dbt - Dorian Van den Heede, Machine Learning Engineer at Dataroots
• 20h45: networking & drinks

🗣Presentation #1: Why dbt will one day be bigger than Spark - Kris Peeters\, CEO at Data Minded In this talk, I will discuss how the data world is moving from distributed processing frameworks like Spark to more high-level tooling like dbt. It is based on a blog I wrote more than 2 years ago, and we see the transition happen today: https://medium.com/datamindedbe/why-dbt-will-one-day-be-bigger-than-spark-2225cadbdad0

Kris is the founder and CEO of Data Minded. We serve large enterprises and growing startups by designing, building and running data initiatives in the cloud.

🗣Presentation #2: Bring your own compute: benefits & pitfalls of developing analytics with DuckDB - Frederik Druyts\, Consultant at Datashift When was the last time you really needed that 16-machine cluster to quickly check an assumption about your data while writing a new model? Developers often have powerful machines sitting right on their desks, though they rarely use any of that power when doing analytics engineering.

In this session, we will explore how we can leverage DuckDB to efficiently fetch data from cloud storage and build, explore, and test a data model all from a local environment. We will discuss the benefits and pitfalls of this approach, including how it can help us reduce the cost and complexity of our analytics engineering efforts, as well as its potential limitations.

Frederik is skilled at designing, implementing and maintaining end-to-end data solutions. As an analytical mind with a heart for technology, he wants to help the right people ask the right questions and get the right answers from data they can trust. He achieves impact on the intersection of grasping business needs, mastering toolsets both time-tested and new, and writing clean SQL.

🗣Presentation #3: Speed up ML development with python models in dbt - Dorian Van den Heede, Machine Learning Engineer at Dataroots In this talk, Dorian will share his experience on do's and don'ts of python models within dbt for ML and demonstrate a few design patterns to speed up development responsibly within dbt. While SQL is still the preferred language within dbt, python models bring more expressive power to your transformation pipelines. Exactly what we want and need as machine learning engineers for our data preparation! You can go even further to defining your entire ML production pipeline within dbt, inference included.

Dorian (28y) is a Machine Learning Engineer at Dataroots. With his background in Computer Science Engineering and 5 years of experience at multiple clients, bringing machine learning models to production according to software best practices is what he thrives at. Aside of that, he was involved in the AI music band Beatroots, writes punk rock songs on his guitar and can be found blitzing chess moves online.

➡️ Join the dbt Slack community: https://www.getdbt.com/community/ 🤝 For the best Meetup experience, make sure to join the #local-belgium channel in dbt Slack (https://slack.getdbt.com/)!

dbt is a data transformation framework that lets analysts and engineers collaborate using their shared knowledge of SQL. Through the application of software engineering best practices like modularity, version control, testing, and documentation, dbt’s analytics engineering workflow helps teams work more efficiently to produce data the entire organization can trust.

Learn more: https://www.getdbt.com/

The 2nd edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup will take place in Ghent on June 14th.

dbt Meetups are networking events open to all folks working with data! Talks predominantly focus on community members' experience with dbt, however, you'll catch presentations on broader topics such as analytics engineering, data stacks, data ops, modeling, testing, and team structures.

🏠Venue Host: OTA Insight, Gaston Crommenlaan 6, Gent 🤝Organizers: Lise Kerckhove & Sam Debruyn

To attend, please read the Required Participation Language for In-Person Events with dbt Labs: https://bit.ly/3QIJXFb

📝Agenda:

17h45: welcome with food & drinks 18h30: Data Mesh with dbt (Charles Verleyen & Lukasz Sciga - Astrafy) 19h15: Boosting Collaboration and Productivity with DevContainers and dbt Core (Mateusz Marciniewicz - dataroots) 19h45: break 20h: Documenting KPIs: Beyond dbt Semantic Layer (Juan Manuel Perafan - GoDataDriven/Xebia) 20h45: networking & drinks

To attend, please read the Required Participation Language for In-Person Events with dbt Labs: https://bit.ly/3QIJXFb

Data Mesh with dbt (Charles Verleyen & Lukasz Sciga - Astrafy)

Data Mesh has become a powerful buzzwords and every data practitioner has heard about it. The major problem with buzzwords is that there are a lot of interpretations around them and this can generate quite some frustration. In case of data mesh, it can also slow down the adoption of this amazing new paradigm.

In this session I will demystify the main concepts of data mesh and bring those to life with dbt with concrete data products from Astrafy real data. You can expect to see data mesh in actions in a very pragmatic way as we will cover as well activation of data from those data products by downstream applications (leveraging dbt semantic layer).

Charles is a 34 years old data engineer and has been working for the last 10 years in different industries before founding his company recently with a focus on providing modern data services. He is passionate about open-source technologies and strives to deliver automated data solutions that can scale. Aside from his work, he's a sport lover with special dedication for tennis.

Boosting Collaboration and Productivity with DevContainers and dbt Core (Mateusz Marciniewicz - dataroots)

In this presentation we will discuss the benefits of using devcontainers together with dbt Core for data modeling and transformation. DevContainers provide a consistent, isolated environment for development, ensuring that all developers have the same set of tools and dependencies installed. This makes it easier to collaborate and reduces the risk of conflicts or errors. By adding dbt Core to the devcontainer, developers can take advantage of its powerful features and leverage the capabilities of the VS Code IDE. This can greatly simplify the process of working with data and onboarding process of new employees, allowing developers to focus on creating value rather than managing infrastructure.

Mateusz is Polish-born with a background in Computer Science. He came to Belgium to pursue his studies, and he decided to stay and build his career here. In his free time, he enjoys sports and camping.

Documenting KPIs: Beyond dbt Semantic Layer (Juan Manuel Perafan - GoDataDriven/Xebia)

The dbt Semantic Layer has made a lot of teams reflect on the way they document their KPI's. But why stopping there? In this talk, I will break down all the knowledge required to understand a metric. From how it ties to your business goals, perverse incentives, to its technical implementation.

Juan's mission is to help data professionals to create reliable production-grade data workflows that are easy to maintain, have been properly tested, and are impeccably documented. Half of the time, he teaches analysts how to apply engineering best practices to their workflows. The other half, he helps engineers to get in the shoes of the analysts.

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➡️ Join the dbt Slack community: https://www.getdbt.com/community/ 🤝 For the best Meetup experience, make sure to join the #local-belgium channel in dbt Slack (https://slack.getdbt.com/)!

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dbt is a data transformation framework that lets analysts and engineers collaborate using their shared knowledge of SQL. Through the application of software engineering best practices like modularity, version control, testing, and documentation, dbt’s analytics engineering workflow helps teams work more efficiently to produce data the entire organization can trust.

Learn more: https://www.getdbt.com/