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Who will speak at Data Day Texas 2025
We continue to announce speakers and sessions. For the latest speaker / session updates, follow us on Linkedin.
Opening Keynote
Ole Olesen-Bagneux (Copenhagen) @olesenbagneux
Ole Olesen-Bagneux (Linkedin) rethinks data and tech by providing perspectives from Library and Information Science. He holds a PhD in Information Science from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, where he lectured in courses pivotal for data cataloging, such as Knowledge Organization and Information Retrieval. Ole is author of The Enterprise Data Catalog (O’Reilly). Ole is also author of the upcoming Fundamentals of Metadata Management (O'Reilly, 2025), in which he introduces a completely new architecture for metadata that he calls the Meta Grid. Standing on the shoulders of microservices, which liberated operational data, and data mesh, which liberated analytical data, the Meta Grid aims to liberate metadata. Follow Ole on Medium, and learn more about Meta Grid at Searching For Data.
AI Engineering Keynote
Chip Huyen (San Francisco) @chiphuyen
Chip Huyen (Linkedin) is a writer, computer scientist, and traveler.
Most recently, Chip founded Claypot AI, which was acquired which was acquired by Voltron Data. Previously, she built machine learning tools at NVIDIA, Snorkel AI, and Netflix. Chip graduated from Stanford University, where she taught CS 329S: Machine Learning Systems Design. Her lectures became the foundation for the book Designing Machine Learning Systems, which after two years, continues to be a #1 bestseller in multiple Amazon categories. Advance copies of Chip's upcoming book, AI Engineering, also from O'Reilly, will be available at Data Day Texas for your perusal. Follow her on GoodReads.
Chip will present the Ai Engineering Keynote:
From ML Engineering to AI Engineering
Data Quality Keynote
Mark Freeman (Sacramento)
Mark Freeman (Linkedin) is a data scientist turned data engineer with a deep obsession for data quality. As the Tech Lead at Gable, Mark builds internal systems and data products that drive go-to-market strategies, leveraging his extensive experience in creating robust, scalable data solutions. He is also the first employee at Gable where he aims to help bring a data contract solution to market. Mark is co-author of the upcoming O’Reilly book: Data Contracts, in which he shares insights and best practices on ensuring reliable, high-quality data flows within organizations. With a passion for turning complex data challenges into actionable solutions, Mark is committed to advancing the field of data engineering and fostering a culture of trust in data across the industry. Check out Mark's courses on Linkedin Learning.
Closing AI Keynote
Jonathan Mugan (Austin)
Jonathan Mugan (Linkedin), Principal Scientist at De Umbra, is a researcher specializing in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. His current research focuses in the area of deep learning for natural language generation and understanding. Dr. Mugan received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin. His thesis was centered in developmental robotics, which is an area of research that seeks to understand how robots can learn about the world in the same way that human children do. Dr. Mugan also held a post-doctoral position at Carnegie Mellon University, where he worked at the intersection of machine learning and human-computer interaction. One of the most requested speakers at the Data Day Texas conferences, he recently also spoke on the topic of NLP at the O’Reilly AI conference, and is the creator of the O’Reilly video course Natural Language Text Processing with Python. Dr. Mugan is also the author of The Curiosity Cycle: Preparing Your Child for the Ongoing Technological Explosion.
Jonathan will present the Closing AI Keynote:
What Superintelligence Will Look Like
Eevamaija Virtanen (Helsinki) @eevamaija
Co-founder of Helsinki Data Week and founder of the DataTribe Collective, Eevamaija Virtanen is at the center of Finland's exploding data community. Currently Data Engineer and Co-Founder at Invinite Oy, Eevamaija began her career as a flight attendant, where she mastered interpersonal skills in high-pressure environments, before transitioning to business process outsourcing, where she learned project management and business development. She pursued her data engineering and analytics education, while exercising her creative instincts as a photographer and videographer, exploring storytelling and design. Eevamaija's broad experience has strengthened her belief in collaboration, trust and building systems that align with purpose. Sharing her passion for community and mentoring, Eevamaija also serves on the board of Finland’s Information Technology Association (TIVIA).
Special thanks to the folks at DataGalaxy for funding Eevamaija's first US speaking engagement.
Eevamaija will be presenting the following session:
Bridge Skills: The Hardest Problem Tech Still Can’t Solve
Bethany Lyons (London)
If you follow data podcasts, no doubt you’ve already heard of Bethany Lyons. In the last year, she has appeared on The Joe Reis Show, Catalog and Cocktails, CDO Matters with Malcolm Hawker, Better Together with Timo Dechau, How to Get an Analytics Job with John David Ariansen, and many others.
Now in her second decade in the data space, Bethany has already held a diverse set of roles. She’s done everything from pre-sales consulting to product management to implementation consulting to building trading algorithms for a hedge fund. Beginning her career with a 7 year stint at Tableau, Bethany was most recently Chief Product Officer at KAWA Analytics, and Senior Product Manager at Salesforce. Currently, she is a Principal Consultant at Assured Insights.
Bethany will host the following session:
Automating Financial Reconciliation with Linear Programming and Optimization
Xinran Waibel (SF Bay Area)
Vin Vashishta (Reno)
Vin will be presenting the following session:
The Outcomes Economy: A Technical Introduction To AI Agentic Systems, Multi-Simulations, & Ontologies
MF Joe Reis (Salt Lake city) @joereis
Annie Nelson (United States)
Annie Nelson is a Data Analyst at GitLab, content creator, and author of How to Become a Data Analyst. She has a background in psychology, and was previously a nanny and an occupational therapist before teaching herself data analytics and switching careers. Annie now creates content about data careers, when she's not working, traveling, or spending time outdoors.
Check out her interview with John David Ariansen on the How to Get an Analytics Job Podcast, and her YouTube channel: Annie's Analytics.
Annie will be presenting the following session:
The human side of data: Using technical storytelling to drive action
LLM Keynote
Vaibhav Gupta (Seattle)
Vaibhav Gupta (Linkedin) is the Founder and CEO of Boundary, a Y Combinator startup developing a new programming language (BAML) that makes LLMs both easier and more efficient for developers. Across nearly a decade in software engineering, Vaibhav has built predictive pipelines at D. E. Shaw, Face Id at Google, and real-time 3D reconstruction at Microsoft HoloLens. In his free time, Vaibhav dabbles in competitive table tennis and board games, and various aspects of compilers.
Vaibhav will be presenting the LLM Keynote:
LLMs in Production - How to Keep Them from Breaking
#ai
Anne-Claire Baschet (Paris)
With nearly two decades of experience in Data, Anne-Claire has spent the past ten years merging Data and Product roles to develop impactful Data & AI products. In June 2018, she received the 'Digital Transformation of the Year' award from Netexplo for her significant contributions to leveraging digital technologies for transformative impact. Her career progression reflects her talent for identifying and harnessing the value of Data and AI to drive company success and align teams for impactful results.
Anne-Claire is co-author of the upcoming title: Crafting impactful AI and Data Products. This will be Anne-Claire’s first appearance speaking in the United States.
Anne-Claire will be co-presenting the following session:
Escape the Data & AI Death Cycle, Enter the Data & AI Product Mindset
Keith Belanger (New Hampshire)
With over 28 years in data management and architecture, Keith Belanger is passionate about all things data. He brings a business-focused approach to designing and leading data solutions, specializing in data modeling across Conceptual, Logical, and Physical layers—from highly normalized 3NF to Dimensional and Data Vault. A recognized Snowflake Data Superhero and the Product Evangelist at SqlDBM, Keith is dedicated to advancing the value of data modeling within modern data practices. Check out Keith's recent discussion regarding the art of data modeling on The Joe Reis Show.
Keith will be presenting the following session:
Data Modeling in the Age of AI
Yoann Benoit (Paris)
Yoann is co-author of the upcoming title: Crafting impactful AI and Data Products. This will be Yoann’s first appearance speaking in the United States.
Yoann will be co-presenting the following session:
Escape the Data & AI Death Cycle, Enter the Data & AI Product Mindset
Jordan Morrow (Salt Lake City)
When not found within his work of Data, Jordan is married with 5 kids. Jordan loves fitness and has run multiple ultra marathons. He loves to travel with his wife and family. Jordan loves to read, often reading (or using Audible) to go through multiple books at a time. Jordan is the author of three books: Be Data Literate, Be Data Driven, Be Data Analytical, and the just published Business 101 for the Data Professional in December 2024.
Jordan will be presenting the following session:
Elevating Data in the Business - Bring Data and AI Skills to Life
Arthur Delaitre (Paris)
Arthur Delaitre is the AI Catalog Manager at Mirakl. He leads the AI efforts in developing features for catalog onboarding and management on both the Mirakl Marketplace Platform and Mirakl Connect. Passionate about leveraging cutting-edge technologies, he applies Generative AI, multimodal models, and fine-tunes custom Large Language Models (LLMs) to solve complex problems. Result-oriented, he delivers production-ready solutions at scale. This year, his team conceived and developed the Catalog Transformer—an innovative solution that enables sellers to automatically onboard their catalogs. This dramatically reduces onboarding time and sets Mirakl apart in the industry.
Arthur will be co-presenting the following session:
Deployment at scale of an AI system based on custom LLMs : technical challenges and architecture
Adam Sroka (Edinburgh)
Adam will be presenting the energy session:
Optimisation Platforms for Energy Trading
Lisa Cao (San Francisco) @lisancao
Lisa will be presenting the following two sessions:
History and Future of Iceberg REST Catalogs
Fundamentals of DataOps
Serg Masís (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) @serg-dot-ai
Data Mesh Keynote
Jean-Georges Perrin (Albany, New York) @jgp
JPG will present the following #dataquality session:
Data Mesh is the Grail, Bitol is your Journey
Weidong Yang (San Francisco)
Weidong also co-founded Kinetech Arts, a non-profit organization that brings dancers and engineers together to explore the creative potential of making art via new technologies.
Weidong will present the following #graphday session:
GraphBI: Expanding Analytics to All Data Through the Combination of GenAI, Graph, and Visual Analytics
Michael Hunger (Dresden) @mesirii.de
Michael will present the GraphRAG:
The Power of GraphRAG - Successful Architectures and Patterns
Jess Haberman (Boston) @jesshaberman
Jess Haberman is Director of Product Content at Anaconda, where she leads content strategy and education. Previously, Jess was an acquisitions editor at O’Reilly Media, collaborating with tech industry leaders to develop instructional books and online content in data science and data engineering. She has presented at and facilitated technology conferences (O’Reilly’s Strata and Data Superstreams, PyCon US, Scale by the Bay, DataCon LA), webinars, live training courses, podcasts, publishing seminars, and writing retreats. Jess earned her BA in English Literature from Denison University and spent 14 years in nonfiction book publishing.
Jess will be leading the following panel:
The Future of Data Education
Bill Inmon (Castle Rock, Colorado)
Susan Shu Chang (Toronto) @susan-shu-chang
Susan will present the following session:
Improve your RAG pipelines with semantic re-ranking
Michelle Yi (SF Bay Area) @michelle-yi
Michelle host the following AI session:
All Your Base Are Belong To Us: Adversarial Attack and Defense
and the following AI Causal Graph workshop:
Causal Graphs in Practice
Michelle will also participate in the following panel:
The Future of Data Education
Amy Hodler (Kettle Falls, Washington)
Amy will co-host the following AI Causal Graph workshop:
Causal Graphs in Practice
Amy will also co-host the following Sunday Data Discussion:
Hyperdimensional Horizons: Exploring Neuromorphic Intelligence and Graph Applications
Clair Sullivan (Breckenridge, Colorado) @cjlovesdata1
Clair host the following sessions:
Empowering Change: Building and Sustaining a Data Culture from the Ground Up
From Office Cubicles to Independent Success: How to Create a Career and Thrive as a Freelance Data Scientist
Hala Nelson (Alexandria, Virginia)
Hala Nelson (Linkedin) is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at James Madison University. She has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. Prior to her work at James Madison University, she was a postdoctoral Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor. Her research is in the areas of Materials Science, Statistical Mechanics, Inverse Problems, and the Mathematics of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Her favorite subjects are Optimization, Numerical Algorithms, Mathematics for AI, Mathematical Analysis, Numerical Linear Algebra and Probability Theory. She likes to translate complex ideas into simple and practical terms. To her, most mathematical concepts are painless and relatable, unless the person presenting them either does not understand them very well, or is trying to show off. Other facts: Hala Nelson grew up in Lebanon, during the time of its brutal civil war. She lost her hair at a very young age in a missile explosion. This event and many that followed shaped her interests in human behavior, the nature of intelligence, and AI. Her father taught her Math, at home and in French, until she graduated high school. Her favorite quote from her father about math is, "It is the one clean science''. Hala is author of the recent O'Reilly book: Essential Math for AI.
Hala host the following session :
Adopting AI in a Large Complex Organization- Aspiration vs Reality
Hala will also participate in the following panel:
The Future of Data Education
Jessica Talisman (Santa Cruz) @jtalisman
Jessica will present the following session:
We Are All Librarians, Systems for Organizing in the Age of AI
Juan Sequeda (Austin) @juansequeda
Juan has researched and developed technology on semantic data virtualization, graph data modeling, schema mapping and data integration methodologies. He pioneered technology to construct knowledge graphs from relational databases, resulting in W3C standards, research awards, patents, software and his startup Capsenta acquired by data.world in 2019. Juan strives to build bridges between academia and industry as former co-chair of the LDBC Property Graph Schema Working Group, member of the LDCB Graph Query Languages task force, standards editor at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Juan continues to be an active member of the scientific community through academic research partnerships, advising students, and member of data and AI scientific conference committees.
Juan will present the following session:
How to Start Investing in Semantics and Knowledge: A Practical Guide
Ryan Dolley (Detroit)
Ryan Dolley is Vice President of Product Strategy at GoodData, and one half of the Super Data Brothers. Check out his discussion on the evolution of BI and moving beyond dashboards on a recent episode of the Joe Reis Show.
Max De Marzi (Chicago)
Max will be presenting the following #graphday session:
Modeling in Graph Databases
Malcolm Hawker (Melbourne Beach) @malhawker
Former Gartner Analyst and Profisee Head of Data Strategy,
Malcolm will be presenting the following Data Governance session:
Data Governance – It’s Time to Start Over
William Lyon (SFBay) @lyonwj
Will will be presenting the following #graphday session:
WTF Is A Triple? My Journey From Neo4j To Dgraph
Alex Dean (London)
Alex is the author of Event Streams in Action.
Alex will be presenting the following session:
Towards a sensory system for AI agents
David Hughes (Seattle)
David will be co-presenting the following #graphday session:
Unleashing the Power of Multimodal GraphRAG: Integrating Image Features for Deeper Insights
Patrick McFadin (SF Bay) @patrickmcfadin
Patrick will present the following session:
Moving Beyond Text-to-SQL: Reliable Database Access through LLM Tooling
Ryan Wisnesky (San Francisco )@gremlinmorgoth
Ryan Wisnesky obtained B.S. and M.S. degrees in mathematics and computer science from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard University, where he studied the design and implementation of provably correct software systems. While at IBM Research Almaden he contributed to the Clio, Orchid, and HIL projects. While a postdoctoral associate in the MIT department of mathematics, he developed the CQL query language for ontology manipulation based on category theory. He is currently exploring applications of CQL to safe AI as CTO of Conexus AI.
Ryan will present the following two sessions:
1. Ontologies vs Ologs vs Graphs
2. Validating LLM-Generated SQL Code: A mathematical approach
Chris Tabb (London)
Chris will present the following session:
The Force multiplier effect. How data platform foundations drive efficiency
Matthew Housley (Salt Lake city)
Leann Chen (Minneapolis)
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