An evening with Databricks

--- Description ---
Tonight we have a solution architect from Databricks join us and be our guide through databricks. After a short introduction to Databricks, Silviu will give us a demo of how things work. After the break, we'll move on to Databricks Delta and MLFlow, both topics which everyone should know of.

Don't miss your chance to meet and discuss your data issues with Silviu!

Can't make it to Mechelen?
If all goes well, a live broadcast of this evening will be made.
Join us by registering here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3905439311678312204

Attention: There will be NO recording of the session made available afterwards.

--- Agenda ---
• 18:00 - 18:30 - Free food & drinks, sponsored by Ordina
• 18:30 - 19:00 - Databricks Unified Analytics Platform
• 19:00 - 19:30 - Azure Databricks Demo
• 19:30 - 19:40 - Break
• 19:40 - 20:20 - Databricks Delta - presentation + demo (without delta & with delta)
• 20:20 - 20:30 - Break
• 20:30 - 21:15 - MLFlow - presentation + demo
• 21:15 - ??:?? - Drinks, discussions and fun

--- Session 1 ---

• Databricks Unified Analytics Platform *

At Databricks, we provide our users with a Unified Analytics Platform to serve as a common entry point to data and analytics, empowering people across different disciplines to contribute to revenue growth, cost reductions, or risk management. In this section we will introduce Azure Databricks, its unique positioning within the Data & AI space, and common usage in the Azure ecosystem.

--- Session 2 ---

• Azure Databricks Demo *

This is a live demonstration of the Azure Databricks unified analytics platform.

--- Session 3 ---

• Databricks Delta - presentation + demo (without delta & with delta) *

Current data management architectures are a complex combination of siloed, single-purpose tools. There are data lakes for low cost storage, but are difficult to use for data discovery, data warehouses that are reliable and optimized for fast queries, but come at a cost when having to scale, and various streaming and batch systems to shuffle data between them, often times resulting in data integrity issues. Databricks Delta — a new unified data management system — takes advantage of the the scale of a data lake, the reliability and performance of a data warehouse, and the low-latency updates of a streaming system, all in a unified and fully managed fashion.

--- Session 4 ---

• MLFlow - presentation + demo *

ML development brings many new complexities beyond the traditional software development lifecycle. Unlike in traditional software development, ML developers want to try multiple algorithms, tools and parameters to get the best results, and they need to track this information to reproduce work. In addition, developers need to use many distinct systems to productionize models. We will present MLflow, a new open source project from Databricks that aims to design an open ML platform where organizations can use any ML library and development tool of their choice to reliably build and share ML applications. MLflow introduces simple abstractions to package reproducible projects, track results, and encapsulate models that can be used with many existing tools, accelerating the ML lifecycle for organizations of any size.

Speaker: Silviu Tofan
Silviu recently joined Databricks' Solution Architecture team in EMEA, focusing exclusively on Azure Databricks, and integration in the wider Azure ecosystem. Previously, he has worked as a Data Scientist in the housing market, in a greenfield project aimed to assess and build data science capabilities for social housing organizations, as well as delivering consulting and service engagements for a collaborative data science platform with major FMCG and Oil & Gas customers across the UK.