What we’re about
Welcome to Portland Data + AI, the local hub for Databricks and open-source innovation.
We’re a group of engineers, analysts, scientists, and leaders who care about the full lifecycle of data and AI: from ingestion and governance to analytics, apps, and production-ready AI systems.
Our core focus is the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform and the ecosystem around it, including:
Open lakehouse formats: Delta Lake and Iceberg
Data Governance with Unity Catalog: lineage, access control, data classification, certified metrics, and multi-format support.
Modern data engineering: Lakeflow Declarative Pipelines and the new Lakeflow Designer for no-code + AI-assisted ETL.
AI + ML with Mosaic AI: Model Serving, Vector Search, Gateway, and frameworks for production AI agents.
Analytics & BI: AI/BI Dashboards, AI/BI Genie for natural-language queries, and SQL AI Functions, and Databricks One.
Collaboration & sharing: Databricks Apps, Delta Sharing, and Clean Rooms.
Expect a mix of deep-dive talks, lightning sessions, demos, and networking. All experience levels are welcome. If you’re excited about data platforms, open formats, machine learning, or AI, you’ll find your people here.
Upcoming events
1
Portland Data + AI February Session
Beaverton City Library, 12375 SW 5th St, Beaverton, OR, US📣 Portland Data + AI Meetup — February Session
Join us as we kick off our 2026 season showing our love of 💖 Data and AI 💖 with two deep-dive Databricks technical talks — one focused on accelerating migrations to the Lakehouse with Lakebridge, and the other on boosting AutoML performance using ensemble techniques. Whether you're building pipelines, tuning ML models, or modernizing enterprise BI, this session is packed with takeaways you can use immediately.
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🎤 Speakers
1. Sravani Vadali — Specialist Solutions Architect, Databricks
“Lakebridge 101 and Migration Phases”
An overview of the different phases of migrating your legacy data warehouse into a unified Lakehouse, the open-source Lakebridge toolkit, and how it can analyze and convert your legacy code.
2. Dr. Drew Minkin, AI Architect and Instructor Champion
“Supercharging Databricks AutoML with Ensemble Techniques”
An intro to the fundamentals of machine learning through a quick, approachable AutoML demo, followed by a brief exploration of practical techniques for adding robustness to models in ways that go beyond what Databricks AutoML provides out of the box. The talk will include a walk-through of how to automate ensemble methods using Drew's custom Databricks application—Databricks AutoML OBSRVE. (Objects for Blending, Stacking, Routing, and Voting Ensembles)
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🗓 When:
Wednesday, February 11th • 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
📍 Where:
Beaverton City Library – Meeting Room A
12375 SW 5th Street, Beaverton, OR 97005
Apple Maps link
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🍴 What’s Included:
• Delicious bites from Hapa Pizza and other local restaurants
• Join us afterwards for a no-host networking hour at Binary Brewing
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🧠 Agenda:
• 5:00 – 5:05 PM: Welcome plus Community Updates
• 5:05 – 5:35 PM: 1st Talk – Sravani Vadali
• 5:40 – 6:10 PM: 2nd Talk - Dr. Drew Minkin
• 6:10 – 6:30 PM: Networking & Refreshments
• 6:30 – 7:00 PM: Cleanup & Close
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💡 About the Meetup:
The Portland Data + AI Meetup connects professionals and enthusiasts working with the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform and the broader open-source Data and AI ecosystem (Delta, Iceberg, MLflow, Spark, and more). We explore everything from data engineering and data governance to analytics and generative AI.
Thanks to Concentrix Catalyst for sponsoring the Meetup service.
#Databricks #OpenSource #DataIntelligence #Portland #PDX #DataCommunity #Networking15 attendees
Past events
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