Data Mesh Belgium Meetup #3 - at Google Brussels

It is time for our third Data Mesh Belgium Meetup!

Join us for our next Data Mesh Belgium meetup, hosted at the Google office in Brussels. We're excited to partner with Google to organize a new meetup session. Once arrived, you'll receive a badge and will be welcomed with some drinks and food.

We're pleased to welcome Steve Loh to share Google's view on data mesh, Tom De Wolf will share insights into the data mesh platform engineering journey for the flemish cultural sector, and Jean-George Perrin will share lessons learned from the PayPal data mesh journey.

SCHEDULE

• 18h 00 - 18h 45: Food & Drinks
• 18h 45 - 18h 50: Welcome by Peter Billen and Tom De Wolf
• 18h 50 - 19h 15: Steve Loh - Implementing Data Mesh on Google Cloud: A Practical Guide
• 19h 15 - 19h 40: Tom De Wolf - Engineering a Data Mesh Platform for an eco-system across organisations
• 19h 40 - 19h 55: Short break
• 19h 55 - 20h 20: Jean-George Perrin - We built a Data Mesh at PayPal, then discovered that Data Contracts were essential

SPEAKER BIOS
► Steve Loh - Google
Steve Loh is the Data Analytics practice lead in Google Cloud Benelux region. He has over 20 years of experience in architectural design, business analysis, application development and technical sales. Steve is passionate in using the latest data and AI technologies to drive enterprise innovation and empower data-driven solutions.

► Tom De Wolf - ACA Group
Tom De Wolf is an experienced hands-on architect and serves as the innovation lead, spearheading new innovative initiatives for future ACA Group projects and offerings. His expertise lies in cloud native platform engineering and 'Data Mesh' platform architectures, leveraging his background in software engineering and experience in designing various architectures. Tom is the founder and host of the Data Mesh Belgium meetups.

► Jean-Georges Perrin - AbeaData / PayPal
Jean-Georges “jgp” Perrin is the chief innovation officer at AbeaData, focusing on building innovative and modern data tooling. He is also chair of the Open Data Contract Standard (ODCS) at the Linux Foundation project Bitol, co-founder of AIDA User Group, and author of multiple books, including Implementing Data Mesh (O’Reilly) and Spark in Action, 2nd edition (Manning). He is passionate about software engineering and all things data, and his favourite theme, Data Mesh. He is recognized as a Lifetime IBM Champion, a PayPal Champion, and a Data Mesh MVP. Jean-Georges shares over 25 years of experience in the IT industry as a presenter and participant at conferences and publishing articles in print and online media. His blog is visible at http://jgp.ai.

TALK ABSTRACTS
► "Implementing Data Mesh on Google Cloud: A Practical Guide" by Steve Loh

Let's uncover the essential building blocks of implementing data mesh on Google Cloud. We'll inspect the architectural principles of data mesh, explore the design process, and discuss best practices for using services like BigQuery, Dataplex, and Looker. You'll walk away with a clear understanding of how to implement a data mesh that empowers business agility while democratizing data on Google Cloud.

► "Engineering a Data Mesh Platform for an eco-system across organisations" by Tom De Wolf

ACA Group has implemented Data Mesh Platform within the Flemish Cultural Sector in collaboration with the Flemish Department of Culture, Youth and Media (CJM) and publiq. Instead of supporting a single organization, the challenge here was to support a whole eco-system of teams across many organisations within the cultural sector. In this talk we will explain why a Data Mesh solution was fit-for-purpose for enabling a data-driven digital transformation in the sector. After the talk, the audience will have insight into this real-world data mesh case, which received the Flanders Digital Award 2023 for Best Digital Transformation Project.

► "We built a Data Mesh at PayPal, then discovered that Data Contracts were essential" by Jean-Georges Perrin

In this talk, JGP will tell the story of the implementation of Data Mesh at this major financial institution. I will be sharing with you nuggets and some wisdom (not too much) I gained from this project, among which the need for data contracts. In the rest of this short and dynamic talk, I will focus on the evolution of the data contract and why it is so critical to follow a standard like Open Data Contract Standard (ODCS) from the Bitol project hosted by The Linux Foundation and AIDA User Group.