Intro to & experiences implementing Databricks

--- Description ---
Attention: Date has changed! Microsoft requested a change of date to May 14th due to agenda constraints.

"how you can simplify Big Data and AI"

In this meetup we have 2 speakers from Microsoft and 2 from Business & Decision.
You'll be able to enjoy a sneak preview of the Microsoft Techorama BE session!
You'll also get to hear experiences from the field from B&D consultants who have already done implementations with Azure Databricks!

If you're curious about Spark or already using it, you don't want to miss this evening! Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform that unifies data science, engineering and business. Combined with the ease of deployment and management in Azure, you can only win!

--- Agenda ---
• 18:00 - 18:30 - Free food & drinks, sponsored by Microsoft
• 18:30 - 19:30 - A gentle introduction to Databricks
• 19:30 - 19:40 - Break
• 19:40 - 20:40 - Leveraging Azure cloud to deliver real-time analytical pipelines
• 20:40 - ??:?? - Drinks, discussions and fun

--- Session 1 ---
A gentle introduction to Databricks

With the announcement of Azure Databricks you get access to a fast, easy, and collaborative Apache Spark-based analytics platform in a fully managed way. But how does it exactly work and what are some of the architectures that work best? Join us in this session to learn more about it.

Speaker: Wesley Backelant & Nathan Bijnens
About: In his role as a Cloud Solution Architect - Advanced Analytics & AI at Microsoft, Wesley is responsible for supporting customers in their journey to the cloud with their data related workloads. Before joining Microsoft, Wesley was a Database Architect working on some of the largest implementations of SQL Server in Belgium. Wesley started his professional career in the SQL Server 6.5 timeframe and remained true to his passion ever since. Wesley is active on Twitter (@WesleyBackelant) where he handles topics related to his favorite technologies.

--- Session 2 ---
Leveraging Azure cloud to deliver real-time analytical pipelines

In this session, we aim to discuss on what is our approach for defining your next-gen data platform to enable the delivery of advanced analytics use cases... in real-time, in the cloud. We will then share experience from one of our projects, the technical setup as well as on how we went about industrializing the use cases.

Speakers: Guillaume Van Delsen (https://twitter.com/GVD07) & Luka Riester (https://twitter.com/portisto)
About:
Guillaume is an experienced data engineer capable of envisaging, developing, setting up and industrializing advanced, new-age, data pipelines in various architectural setups.

Luka is a seasoned consultant working together with clients in defining the architecture and use cases around data-driven products and solutions.