Name: Sydney Data Eng meetup, Graph Edition
Start: 2025-11-12T06:00:00.000Z
Location: Airtree Ventures

Hey all, please join us for our November Edition of the Melbourne Data Eng meetup which will dive deep on all things Knowledge Graphs and GraphRAG. Join us for an engaging session filled with exciting discussions and networking opportunities.

Don't miss out—RSVP to secure your spot. Please reach out if you'd like to host us! 🎉

🏠 Location: TBC
🍕 Catering: Neo4j 😊
💬 Join our Slack Group here: [Data Engineers Slack Channel](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd09iTwpNulQH0b1BdslM1RzgImOGlX4WgOx6_rzvmVANwGmw/viewform)

**Schedule:**
\- 5\.30pm: Doors Open
\- 6\.00pm: Announcements and Welcome
\- 6\.10pm: 1st Talk
\- 6\.40pm: 2nd Talk
\- 7\.10pm: Networking
\- 7\.30pm: Doors Close

**Speakers:**
🎤 *[Peter Hanssens](https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterhanssens/), Principal Consultant at Cloud Shuttle*
**Talk Title:** Beyond SQL: Building Conversational Data Platforms with Neo4j Knowledge Graphs and Reactive Notebooks
**Talk Summary:** Traditional data catalogs struggle to capture the complex relationships between tables, dashboards, ETL jobs, and business concepts. What if your data platform could answer questions like "What breaks if I change this table?" through natural conversation?
In this hands-on session, Peter Hanssens demonstrates how knowledge graphs transform data engineering workflows by making relationships first-class citizens. Using Neo4j graph database with marimo's reactive notebooks, you'll see how to build a production-grade semantic layer that bridges complex technical infrastructure and business-friendly data access.
**You'll learn:**

* Why graph databases excel at data lineage, impact analysis, and metadata management
* Building knowledge graphs that capture your entire data platform
* Creating LLM-powered semantic layers with predefined Cypher templates
* Leveraging marimo's reactive execution for interactive exploration
* Integration patterns with SQLMesh, Airflow, and data catalogs
* Production deployment patterns including caching, logging, and access control

**Speaker Bio:** Peter Hanssens is Principal Consultant at Cloud Shuttle, an Australian data engineering consultancy specialising in cloud-native data platforms and analytics infrastructure. With six years building multi-tenant systems and data architectures across Australia, Peter brings expertise in infrastructure automation, real-time data pipelines, and modern data stack integration. As organiser of DataEngBytes—a data engineering community with meetups across ANZ—Peter is passionate about advancing the craft of data engineering. Peter's current work includes graph-based metadata management, local-first data applications, and building developer platforms that make complex data infrastructure accessible to all users.

If you'd like to **present** at future meetups, please submit your talk [here](https://dataengbytes.com/forms/meetup-talk)!

Remember to bring along some great questions! See you all there...

Melbourne Data Engineering Meetup

Peter Hanssens

Shruti Sakarkar

Angad Singh

Piotr Wacholski

Abbas Bagha

Juan Romero

Nadid Linchestein

Prashorst (Eric) Meas

Rafael Athayde Mello

Ngô Thùy Linh

Martin Chesbrough

Lee Lee

Josh Peak

Frankie

Liam

Sanjana Kailasanathan

Tekk

Suresh P

ashima

꧁☆☬KEYUR☬☆꧂ 💕✨

Melbourne Data Eng meetup, Graph Edition

Melbourne

Hey all, please join us for our November Sydney Data Eng meetup. Join us for an engaging session filled with exciting discussions and networking opportunities.

Don't miss out—RSVP to secure your spot. A big shout-out to Neo4j for the catering, we are looking for a venue host! 🎉

🏠 Location: Airtree Ventures
🍕 Catering: Neo4j 😊
💬 Join our Slack Group here: [Data Engineers Slack Channel](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd09iTwpNulQH0b1BdslM1RzgImOGlX4WgOx6_rzvmVANwGmw/viewform)

**Schedule:**
\- 5\.30pm: Doors Open
\- 6\.00pm: Announcements and Welcome
\- 6\.10pm: 1st Talk
\- 6\.40pm: 2nd Talk
\- 6\.40pm: Networking
\- 7\.10pm: Doors Close

**Speakers:**
🎤 George Jayaratnam, Consultant, MCMC Capital Pty Ltd
**Talk Title**: Knowledge graphs for code...a winning combination
**Talk Summary**: Understanding complex codebases can be daunting with numerous interconnected functions, variables, and other dependencies. And that’s even before we get to the data layer. In this talk, we explore how knowledge graphs can offer a powerful way to visualize, navigate, and comprehend unfamiliar codebases more efficiently. Very much in line with the mantra of grounding LLMs with your data (graphRAG), the modular approach taken should enable developers to pick and choose which parts make the most sense given their use case and constraints. Topics covered include knowledge graph basics, a codebase teardown, and time permitting, working with unstructured data (text).
**Speaker Bio**: George Jayaratnam is an independent consultant working predominantly in the field of quantitative risk management. As someone who often walks up and down the stack, you will also find him in the world of data engineering and application development.

🎤 Jeremy Caine, Technology Strategy and Solution Leader, IBM
🎤 Erol Gurcinar, Technology Strategy and Solution Leader, IBM
**Talk Title**: Building Graph RAG with advanced data ingestion and scalable hybrid graph vector store
**Talk Summary**: Graph retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) integrates multiple data sources producing more accurate results over traditional vector search. With advanced parsing and interpreting of content and metadata into knowledge graphs we can ensure important information is not lost in semantic embeddings.This session will explore the benefits and capabilities of Graph RAG in AI systems. It will walkthrough an implementation of Graph RAG using the Unstructured Platform and the scalable, hybrid graph and vector store Astra DB.
**Speaker Bio**: Jeremy Caine is a digital transformation leader who creates technology solutions with organisations as a catalyst for business model innovation. He is expert in complex systems integration, architecture, and engineering for building distributed applications and global scale platforms using hybrid cloud, data, and AI technology.
Erol Gurcinar is a technical account leader who is focused on serving strategic clients as a trusted technical advisor and enterprise architect. He is an expert in complex projects and systems integration within the financial services sector. He leverages his deep technical expertise and leadership skills to understand a client's business challenges, define their technology strategy, and then orchestrate the execution of those strategies (topics such as - Infrastructure-as-Code, GenAI, Data Platforms, and Security).

If you'd like to **present** at future meetups, please submit your talk [here](https://dataengconf.com.au/forms/meetup-talk)!

Remember to bring along some great questions! See you all there...

Sydney Data Engineering Meetup

Francis Chung

mervin mathew

Q. Ve

Abhinav Goyal

Tony

Javeed

Alnis Bajars

Lei Niu

Padma p

Thomas D’Arcy

Milo Joronen

Alistair Rigney

Swati Gupta

George Jayaratnam

Himanshu Shekhar

Naeem

Kai Chung Tang

Amarnath

Sebastian Baeza

Sydney Data Eng meetup, Graph Edition

Airtree Ventures

data engineering meetup

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