Python Leiden User Group fifth meeting

Come join our community of people interested in and working with the Python programming language. We meet up in the city of Leiden, The Netherlands. Exchange experiences and learn from others on the topic of the most popular programming language!

We meet up once every two months. The meetups are low profile, not commercial, and open to both professionals and enthusiasts.

Talk 1: Data Lakes Unlocked -- Apache Iceberg with Python and SQL
by Fawaz Ghali
Big data demands big solutions—but traditional data lakes often fall short on performance, consistency, and scalability. Enter Apache Iceberg: an open-source table format designed to bring ACID transactions, schema evolution, and high-performance querying to modern cloud-native data architectures.
For Python developers and data engineers, Iceberg offers powerful capabilities for managing massive datasets efficiently. Whether you’re ingesting, querying, or evolving data, Iceberg ensures transactional integrity, optimized performance, and seamless integration with various compute engines.
From time travel and partitioning strategies to best practices for scalable data lakes, this session will demystify Apache Iceberg and provide the insights you need to build future-ready, cloud-native data pipelines.

Talk 2: Architecture of the Transformer model
by Priyanjali Goel
A presentation on the architecture of the Transformer model, focusing on the encoder-decoder structure to give people more understanding on how platforms like ChatGPT work.

Meeting format
Our meetings will have presentations with room for discussion, and we will make sure there's also opportunity to meet and get to know your fellow group members.

About our meetups
Our talks happen in a friendly and informal setting. They are a great way to learn new things, share your knowledge, and meet other Python enthusiasts. There is always room for questions and discussion. Our presentations and talks are in English to be accessible for the large amount of non-Dutch speakers in the Python community.

Call for talks
We'd invite you to propose a talk for a future meeting. Talks can be short or longer, they can include a live demo or a hands-on lab. It does not matter if you're not a highly experienced speaker. Meetup groups like this are great for building out your skills.

Meeting venue
Our meeting will take place at the “Technolab”, an organization that offers science education for children and teenagers. We’ll be using the big meeting room, while the people from “The Space Leiden”, a local hacker/makerspace, will also be present in the building. The Space will be open starting 19:00.

The Technolab is located in the building above the Plus supermarket (Bètaplein 28). Go up the steps on the left side of the supermarket building to the first level, enter the door marked "Technolab" in front of you and follow the directions. This is a 5 minute walk from the Leiden Lammenschans railway station. It’s also easily reachable by bus.
If you travel by car, the best place to park your car is at Parking Leiden Lammenschans which is located in the basement of the building where Technolab is. Parking costs around €2 per hour.