The Sunday Schedule

8:30 am

Coffee - Yes please
on the first floor (M1)

9:00 am

Room 204 - Lynn Bender : Rules of engagement
How this emerging thing got started. What do we do today?

9:30 am

Room 204 - Bill Inmon AMA Sessions - led by Joe Reis
Everyone has questions that they'd like to ask Bill Inmon. There is no single presentation that Bill could give that would address more than a fraction of those questions. MF Joe Reis will lead a 60 minute open AMA session where you can ask Bill anything.

Room 105 - Mark Freeman - Implementing Your First Data Contract (90 MIN WORKSHOP
In this hands-on workshop, co-author of the O'Reilly book Data Contracts, Mark Freeman, walks you through the book's hands-on coding tutorial, which implements data contracts in a PostgreSQL database and enforces them via CI/CD and automated GitHub PR comments. The entire workshop uses open-source tools and leverages GitHub Codespaces for easy setup.
What is the prerequisite knowledge for attendees: Familiarity with Python, SQL, and GitHub actions.

Room 108 - Media Lounge

10:30 am

Room 204 - Elevate your Data and Analytics Teams - led by Shachar Meir
This an open group discussion where we will talk about what's working right now, what's not working, what I see in the industry, and I will share actionable tips and advice from my playbook for elevating your data teams and connecting them with the business.

Room 104 - Jean-Georges Perrin - “AI-Ready Data”: Switch, Spectrum, or Just Buzzword?
Everyone claims to have AI-ready data — but what does that even mean? Is it about perfect pipelines, labeled datasets, or governance frameworks? Or is “AI-ready” just the new “data-driven” — a shiny phrase that hides more than it reveals?
• What role do semantic layers, ontologies, and knowledge graphs really play in achieving AI readiness? Are they enablers of understanding or just another abstraction layer with good PR?
• Can open standards like ODCS (Open Data Contract Standard) and ODPS (Open Data Product Standard) help transform “AI-ready” from a marketing slogan into something measurable, testable, and trustworthy?
We’ll take inspiration from the community-driven success of Defining Data Products: A Community Effort — a reminder that shared understanding doesn’t come from ivory towers, but from practitioners challenging each other’s assumptions.

Room 108 - Media Lounge

11:30 am

Room 204 - DuckDB Ask Me Anything - with Hannes Mühleisen

Room 104 - Paul Blankley - What to do about agents eating the semantic layer?

Room 107 - Karl Ivo Sokolov - Why Finance Killed Your AI/Data Project
Why NPV and 5-year DCF projections fail for the exploratory nature of Data/AI initiatives in 2026. The questions Finance asks v. what they actually mean. When "we don't know the ROI" is the honest answer, and how to make that fly.
Real options as an alternative framing: does it actually work in practice?
The "dual-run tax" and compounding costs nobody budgets for. War stories: projects that died in budget review, pilots that couldn't graduate, platforms nobody would fund. What would have changed the outcome.
Traditional project budgeting worked for data warehouses: you knew the scope, timeline, and payoff. AI and modern data platforms don't work that way. They evolve, pivot, compound costs unexpectedly, and reveal value over time. Finance tools built for deterministic projects fail here. We'll discuss what actually works: options thinking, kill criteria, honest uncertainty. And we’ll swap war stories about projects that died because nobody had this conversation.

Room 108 - Media Lounge

12:30 pm

Lunch - Gabe's

2:00 pm

Room 204 - Alexandra Pasi - How do the foundational principles of AI/ML inform engineering and implementation decisions?

Room 105 - 60 minute BAML Workshop with Vaibhav Gupta

Room 107 - Tech Books and Content - Ask Me Anything session wih Aaron Black of O'Reilly

Room 108 - Media Lounge

3:00 pm

Room 204 - Trey Blalock - Emerging Threats and The Weaponization of AI

Room 104 - Sarah McKenna - Web Scraping Ask Me Anything session
Web scraping shouldn't be considered a "black hat" activity. It's a legitimate interoperability layer of the open internet, and practitioners should be allowed to operate openly (but are often penalized if they do). Terms like "ethically-sourced" and "compliant web data" get thrown around a lot in our industry. But what do they actually mean? And how can you be sure that your team or organization is doing the right thing? Join us to talk about how we navigate the current landscape both technically and legally while conducting industrial scale web scraping on behalf of clients. We can discuss standards and legality or just plain how to get past today's ferocious bot blocking. Ask us anything!

Gabriel's Cafe - Clair Sullivan - Build Your Solopreneur Roadmap: A Workshop for Data Professionals
In this two hour workshop we'll discuss the real stuff people need to figure out when thinking about going solo. I will walk participants through an actual calculation of what they presently make an hour, exploring how this compares to typical hourly rates for contractors from large contracting companies. This exercise will demonstrate that individuals working in a solopreneur capacity are much more competitive than they realize in this market. This will then be the basis for an exercise on setting rates, where a lot of people get stuck. From there we will discuss the nuts and bolts of setting up a business such as legal structures, taxes, and contracts. This will include practical, from-the-trenches advice for getting started. Finally, we will discuss strategies for landing your first client, following the philosophy that it is easier to land your first client than your next job.
NOTE: This will be located in Gabriel's Cafe - in the lower lobby of the hotel.

Room 107 - Arthur Bigeard - - communicating the value of graph data to your boss/stakeholders (perhaps in comparison to relational databases)

Room 108 - Media Lounge

TBA - 1st Floor - Room 115
TBA - 1st Floor - Room 116

4:00 pm

Gabriel's Cafe - Juan Sequeda - Honest NO BS on Knowledge Graphs and Ontologies
NOTE: This will be located in Gabriel's Cafe - in the lower lobby of the hotel.