Hobart Data Eng meetup, January 2024

Get ready to kick off the year with the first-ever in-person Data Eng meetup in Hobart! 🌟 Join us for an engaging in-person session filled with exciting discussions and networking opportunities.

Don't miss out—RSVP to secure your spot. A big shout-out to Cloud Shuttle for providing us with the venue and Catering! 🎉

🏠 Location: RACV Hobart Hotel
🍕 Catering: CloudShuttle 😊
💬 Join our Slack Group here: Data Engineers Slack Channel

Schedule:
3:30 pm: Doors Open
4:00 pm: Announcements and Welcome
4:10 pm: 1st Talk By Peter Hanssens
4:40 pm: 2nd Talk By Kirk Mower
5:10 pm: Networking
6:30 pm: Doors Close

Speakers:

🎤 Peter Hanssens, Principal Solutions Architect, Cloud Shuttle
Talk: Running Airflow on AWS
Summary: Airflow is still the defacto standard when it comes to data pipeline orchestration. The ecosystem is rich and varied. Whilst there's new kids on the block, enterprises still prefer Airflow due to its maturity. With that in mind, we discuss options for deploying it on AWS and things to keep in mind
Speaker Bio: Peter is the founder and principal solutions architect at Cloud Shuttle, a data focussed cloud consultancy where he has a team of cloud engineers delivering valuable solutions to clients.

🎤 Kirk Mower, Data Manager @ Solstice Energy
Talk: The Mage approach to Data Orchestration
Summary: Join Kirk on a journey beyond the marketing hype of Mordor to a land where Data Engineers can cast their own spells in peace and prosperity without the constant upselling of Sauron's false promises of 'productivity'. The proliferation of so-called Commercial Off-The-Shelf data transformation tools has been fueled by Venture Capital companies seeking the next big IPO pay off. The effect of this in the data tooling market has been analogous to the dumbing down of American politics, with 'alternative facts' taking the place of high-quality data. In his talk Kirk will walk through some real-world examples and show that being able to do work with some actual code is still more powerful and flexible than any drag and drop GUI can ever be. Further, in our contemporary world of ChatGPT-like Large Language Models (LLMs) the Data Engineer will be writing code together with the AI - rather than using some proprietary visual abstraction that supposedly 'democratizes' the work. Nothing is more accessible and 'democratizing' than code humans can read.
Speaker Bio: Kirk had a real career in Data and Information Technology on the mainland of Australia and Internationally before making a decision to move to Hobart 5 years ago. Kirk loves the lifestyle of Tasmania, and has somehow managed to retain his optimistic outlook on data and technology from his native California.

If you'd like to present at future meetups, please submit your talk here!

Together let's kick off our exciting in-person Hobart Meetup series for 2024. See you there for a night of knowledge and connections. ✨