Data Saturday Romania 2026

"Data Saturday Romania 2026" is a conference for all data professionals, students and enthusiasts interested in the Microsoft Data Platform and not only.

This event, which will be held on March 7, 2026, is designed anyone who want to expand their knowledge and skills in key tools such as Excel, Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, SQL Server, Data Visualization, and much more!

During this event, renowned experts from all around the world will give presentations and practical workshops on how to make the most of tools for data management and analysis.

No matter if you are a beginner or a professional who wants to expand your skills, the “Data Saturday Romania 2026” is the ideal place for you.

Don't miss this unique opportunity to learn, connect, and grow in the field of data.
We look forward to seeing you in Timisoara!

Event is organized by Romania Power BI, Modern Excel UG, IoT Meetup Timisoara, Microsoft Azure Meetup Timisoara together with Polytechnics University Timisoara

Agenda:

https://bit.ly/RoDataSat2026_Agenda

Saturday, March 7, 2026

** 9:40 am @ Room 1 Catalin Gheorghiu**
⭐️ WELCOME WORD
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** 10:00 am @ Room 1 Marco Dal Pino**
⭐️ VIBING WITH SQL: AI IN THE DEVELOPER’S SEAT
AI is changing the way developers interact with SQL Server—but is it just autocomplete on steroids, or something more transformative? In this session, we’ll explore how modern AI tools are reshaping SQL development workflows, from query generation to optimization, across environments like Visual Studio Code and SQL Server Management Studio. Whether you're skeptical or curious, this session will challenge your assumptions and offer a fresh perspective on what it means to "vibe" with SQL in the age of AI. Expect demos, surprises, and maybe a few lines of code that write themselves.

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** 10:00 am @ Room 2 Danish Rehman**
⭐️ GENERATING 1 MILLION COUPONS RELIABLY: SCALING SHOPIFY AUTOMATIONS WITH TEMPORAL
At Attentive, we’ve built a large-scale, event-driven messaging platform powered by Apache Pulsar to support the dynamic demands of user shopping behavior. Last year, during peak events like Black Friday / Cyber Monday, our platform scaled to handle 4 billion sms and emails, including 700 million texts on Black Friday alone.
Large-scale e-commerce campaigns often require generating and distributing hundreds of thousands to millions of coupons in a short time window; while respecting strict Shopify API rate limits, handling partial failures, and guaranteeing exactly-once execution. Traditional cron jobs, queues, and ad-hoc retry logic quickly collapse under this complexity.
In this talk, we’ll walk through how we built a fault-tolerant, horizontally scalable coupon generation system using Temporal to orchestrate 1M+ coupon creations via the Shopify API. We’ll cover how Temporal workflows enabled deterministic retries, backpressure, and safe recovery from failures—without duplicating coupons or overwhelming Shopify.
Attendees will learn concrete patterns for modeling long-running workflows, isolating noisy tenants, scaling workers safely, and turning business-critical batch jobs into observable, debuggable systems.

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** 10:00 am @ Room 3 Zita Pelok**
⭐️ YOUR DASHBOARD ISN’T BROKEN - YOUR PERSONA STRATEGY IS
Most dashboards fail not because of weak visuals or unclear KPI, but because they are designed for “everyone.” In reality, no two BI consumers behave the same. So, when we treat all of them as one audience, dashboards become overloaded, misunderstood, or ignored.
In this session, we explore a persona-driven BI approach that blends human-centered thinking with scalable BI architecture. Using People Analytics examples, I’ll show how defining clear BI personas improves not only dashboard design, but also data models, navigation flows, RLS strategy, and KPI interpretation.
You’ll learn how BI personas help you:
- Prevent the “one dashboard for everyone” trap
- Translate human behavior into BI requirements
- Build scalable BI structures that align with organizational hierarchy
- Improve dashboard adoption by giving each audience the level of depth, story, and context they expect
Whether you work in HR analytics, finance, operations, or enterprise BI, this framework will help you create reporting experiences that are intuitive, role-aligned, and strategically impactful.
You will leave with a reusable persona blueprint and a clearer understanding of how to design BI solutions that people genuinely understand, and actually use.

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** 11:05 am @ Room 1 Ieran Liviu**
⭐️ SMARTER SQL SERVER PERFORMANCE: TROUBLESHOOTING WITH AI
Performance issues in SQL Server can be complex and time-consuming to diagnose. In this session, we’ll review essential performance concepts and then demonstrate how modern AI tools can accelerate analysis, uncover root causes, and support real-time troubleshooting. See how AI can become a practical assistant—not a replacement—in your SQL Server performance workflow.

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** 11:05 am @ Room 2 Massimo Bonanni**
⭐️ DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE AZURE STORAGE ACCOUNT
No one ever mentions the Storage Account, no bombastic title on posts or articles, the sessions dedicated to it can be counted on the fingers of one hand, in practice it is the least considered Azure service. But the Storage Account has tons of advanced features that it would be good to be aware of. Features such as lifecycle management, object replication, immutable policies, blob inventory and encryption scope (just to name a few) allow us to provide a persistence layer for the "objects" of our applications that is scalable and affordable. So, come with me to re-evaluate this fundamental service for your Azure solutions.

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** 11:05 am @ Room 3 Dennes Torres**
⭐️ FABRIC USER DATA FUNCTION: WRITE BACK WITH TRANSLYTICAL TASK FLOWS
Fabric User Data Function: Write Back with Translytical Task Flows
User Data Functions in Microsoft Fabric are so powerful and versatile that they’ve become known by many names. One of their most anticipated capabilities—Write Back—has finally arrived, unlocking an entirely new dimension in Power BI solutions.
This new feature, now rebranded with the dynamic title Translytical Task Flow, allows users to interact with and update data directly from their Power BI reports. It empowers us to go beyond analytics and truly close the loop between insight and action.
Among the many exciting use cases enabled by Write Back, one that stands out is the ability to capture unstructured contextual information—adding real-world nuance directly into your reports
Join this session to explore how User Data Functions and Translytical Task Flows can elevate your Fabric solutions. Discover practical scenarios, implementation tips, and the transformational potential this functionality brings to your data platform.

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** 12:10 pm @ Room 1 Alberto Acerbis**
⭐️ EVENT-DRIVEN ARCHITECTURES WITH SQL SERVER 2025 AND CHANGE EVENT STREAMING
SQL Server 2025 extends its role beyond traditional relational storage by introducing native capabilities that enable it to act as an Event Store and event producer. With built-in support for Change Event Streaming, SQL Server can emit data changes in near real time and integrate directly with event streaming platforms such as Azure Event Hubs and Apache Kafka.
This session explores how these capabilities can be used to implement event-driven architectures, supporting patterns such as event sourcing, CQRS, and data replication across distributed systems. Through concrete demos and architectural examples, we will analyze how to propagate state changes reliably, decouple microservices via asynchronous messaging, and keep heterogeneous data stores synchronized, while preserving consistency and scalability.

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** 12:10 pm @ Room 2 Radu Vunvulea**
⭐️ MODERNISING IN THE CLOUD: FROM LIFT&SHIFT TO AI-NATIVE
Many companies stop at “lift-and-shift,” missing the chance to unlock the real power of the cloud. This session explores how to modernise workloads into cloud-native, AI-enabled platforms that drive innovation and resilience. Radu will share actionable frameworks, patterns, and lessons learned from enterprises that are already creating new digital products and services with cloud and AI.

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** 12:10 pm @ Room 3 Elena Udrescu**
⭐️ ENGINEERING IN THE AGE OF AI: HOW TO LEAD TEAMS THROUGH THE SHIFT
AI is reshaping engineering organizations, from day-to-day workflows to roles, quality standards, and delivery velocity. This session presents a practical leadership framework for adopting AI across the software delivery lifecycle, from copilots to emerging agentic patterns, while maintaining strong security, reliability, and a healthy engineering culture. We’ll explore operating models that scale across teams and technology stacks, define metrics that capture real business and engineering impact, and introduce governance and guardrails that enable autonomy without compromising control. Attendees will leave with a clear rollout approach and concrete steps to apply immediately within their own organizations.

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** 2:10 pm @ Room 1 André Melancia**
⭐️ MELTING MICROSOFT (AI) FOUNDRY: AN EVIL AZURE STORY
Things are getting hot and heavy for AI, now that Microsoft (AI) Foundry is doing its sinister business. Forging devilish bots, torturing text and extracting diabolical knowledge, generating demonic cat images, or simply using someone else's not-so-malicious models (and then also the zero-humped Llama from a certain malevolent social network), and so much more villainy...
Disclaimer: Doctor Evil will now control your life and
║ The generated content was filtered due to triggering
║ Azure AI Content Safety filtering system.
║ Reason: This response contains content flagged as Malignant (very high).

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** 2:10 pm @ Room 2 Anil Nair**
⭐️ ORACLE RAC WITH CMAN ONS PROXY FOR MULTICLOUDS DEPLOYMENTS
Oracle Database Sevices on Azure is a popular offering that offers customers the reliability of Oracle Database on the cloud platform of customers choice. In this session, we will cover deployment details and best practices to configure CMAN for notifications

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** 2:10 pm @ Room 3 Cristian Prifti**
⭐️ ORGANIZATIONAL THEMES AND VISUAL STYLES IN POWER BI
Consistency in reporting isn’t just about the numbers—it’s about the look and feel too. In this session, we’ll explore how Power BI Organizational themes and visual styles can help organizations create a unified reporting experience. You’ll learn how to:
- Apply and customize themes to align with your brand identity
- Standardize fonts, colors, and layouts across multiple reports
- Speed up development, improve adoption and consistency
- Balance creativity with consistency so reports are both engaging and professional

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** 3:05 pm @ Room 1 Catalin Gheorghiu**
⭐️ CLOSING WORDS AND RAFFLE

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** ALBERTO ACERBIS**
⚡️ Passionate dev, Microsoft MVP, author, learner
Alberto Acerbis is a hands-on software architect with a strong background in distributed systems. Recognized as a Microsoft MVP in .NET technologies, he actively contributes to the tech community.
In his role, Alberto helps customers transform their ideas into robust and scalable solutions. Beyond his professional work, he is a passionate technical speaker, having delivered numerous sessions at conferences over the years.
His dedication to knowledge-sharing extends to the communities he has founded and actively participates in, fostering collaboration and continuous learning in the tech ecosystem.
Outside of technology, Alberto enjoys mountain activities in all seasons and has a keen interest in philosophy and other disciplines beyond the tech world.
https://sessionize.com/alberto-acerbis8252

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** ANDRÉ MELANCIA**
**⚡️ Human Being **
Developer / DBA / Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) focusing on Microsoft's Data Platform, AI, Azure, IoT and Security.
Developing information and multimedia systems, DBA, project and IT management, for over 26 years.
Speaker with over 320+ sessions delivered since 2015 at international conferences and community events (mostly in-person before pandemic times) on multiple technologies, Internet Governance and Human Rights, as well as volunteer and moderator.
Organiser and founder at technical communities: IT Pro Portugal, PowerShell Portugal, Data Community Portugal, and multiple other online communities such as IPv6 Portugal, DNSSEC Portugal, etc.
Organiser of technical events: Global AI Bootcamp Lisboa, Global Power Platform Bootcamp Lisboa, Ctrl-Alt-Shell, Ctrl-Alt-Xmas, Global Diversity CFP Day Lisboa, Power BI Roadshow Lisboa, Programar Saturday, Community Evenings, etc.
Go to https://Andy.PT and you'll know the same as the NSA...
https://sessionize.com/Andy

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** ANIL NAIR**
⚡️ Oracle, Distinguished Product Manager
Anil Nair is the Product Manager for Oracle Real Application Clusters. Oracle RAC is a cluster database with a shared cache architecture that overcomes the limitations of traditional shared-nothing and shared-disk approaches to provide highly scalable and available database solutions for all your business applications.
Anil has been involved with Oracle RAC since inception. He has helped various customers with Oracle solutions specifically around Performance, availability, Scalability aspects for about 20+ years

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** CATALIN GHEORGHIU**
⚡️ Epam Systems
Catalin Gheorghiu is a solution architect from Timisoara Romania. The current interests are in the area of (I)IoT, industrial mobile and cloud solutions. In addition to addressing the software development and architecture, is a trainer and consultant. In his spare time is member of the technical community, contributing with articles and blogs (signed MrSmersh), presentations to several user groups/meetups (also is RONUA Timisoara user group leader), and lecturing all over Romania and abroad.
Since 2011, every year he was awarded the Microsoft MVP Award. Is also a current holder of the Intel Software Innovator Award. Is a current Microsoft Certified Trainer.
https://sessionize.com/MrSmersh

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** CRISTIAN PRIFTI**
⚡️ Solving Puzzles @ Bytewise
With 6 years of experience as a Power BI Solution Architect, I specialize in turning complex data puzzles into actionable insights. My transition from operational business roles to business intelligence has given me a unique perspective on the strategic value of data. Passionate about using Power BI to deliver top-notch actionable insights across various industries, I create customized, data-driven solutions that help organizations unlock their potential and make informed decisions. My dedication to continuous improvement ensures clients consistently receive high-quality insights and exceptional service.
https://sessionize.com/cristian_prifti

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** DANISH REHMAN**
⚡️ Attentive - Staff Software Engineer
Danish is a Staff Software Engineer at Attentive, where he plays a key role in shaping the architecture and scalability of our product. With nearly 15 years of experience in building distributed systems for high traffic ad-tech and e-commerce, he has been instrumental in developing our next-generation marketing solutions powered by AI. Outside of work, Danish enjoys gardening, vermiculture, and rock climbing. He loves sharing his harvest with his four-year old son before they head out on climbing adventures together.‍
https://sessionize.com/danishrehman

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** DENNES TORRES**
⚡️ Data Platform MVP (2020-2023)
Dennes is a DBA and Data Platform MVP (2020-2023) living in Malta who loves Data Platform, including Azure Data Platform, Microsoft Fabric, SQL Server and recently got involved by Generative AI. In the past, he was married with software development, resulting in a total of more than 20 years of experience between Data Platform, cloud and software development. He moved to Malta after more than 10 years leading devSQL PASS Chapter in Rio de Janeiro and now is a member of the leadership team of MMDPUG PASS Chapter in Malta organizing meetings, events, and webcasts about Microsoft Data Platform. He is an MCT, MCSE in Data Platforms and BI, with more titles in software development. He can be found working for DTower Software and speaking in SQL Saturdays around Europe
https://sessionize.com/dennes-torres

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** ELENA UDRESCU**
⚡️ Chapter Lead – Software Engineering | Transforming Tech Teams with AI & Modern Engineering
Leader in software engineering with extensive experience in leading large-scale engineering organizations, defining technology strategy, and delivering business-critical enterprise software systems. Proven track record in leading and developing engineering organizations of 40+ direct-report engineers across multidisciplinary technology stacks (.NET, Java, React). Strong ability to align technical architecture with strategic business objectives while building high-performing, autonomous, and results-driven teams.
https://sessionize.com/elena-udrescu

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** IERAN LIVIU**
⚡️ Passionate Data Engineer
More than 16 years working with data (SQL Server, Cosmos DB, Data Factory, Fabric, Data Explorer, Databricks, Power BI)
https://sessionize.com/ieran-liviu

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** MARCO DAL PINO**
⚡️ Microsoft MVP Alumni, Intel BlackBelt & Innovator, Speaker, Microsoft Certified Trainer, Senior Technical Consultant @Microsoft
Marco Dal Pino is working in IT for more than 30 years as Developer, Team Leader, PM and Cloud Architect.
He mostly experienced Microsoft dev Platforms around .NET, for LOB, Desktop, Mobile and embedded apps.
He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and a Speaker at the main technical conferences all around the world.
He is part of the staff of DotNetToscana a community focused on Microsoft technologies.
He received many awards from IT companies as independent Advisor like:
Microsoft MVP, Intel BlackBelt & Innovator, Nokia DevChamp, Hackster Live Ambassador
He works in Microsoft as a Senior Technical Consultant.
https://sessionize.com/marco-dal-pino

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** MASSIMO BONANNI**
⚡️ Microsoft Technical Trainer @ Microsoft
Massimo Bonanni is a Microsoft Technical Trainer with a rich background in technology and community leadership. With six-time recognition as a Microsoft MVP in Windows and Developer Tools, Massimo has demonstrated exceptional expertise and contribution to the tech community. His accolades also include being an Intel Black Belt and Software Innovator, showcasing his ability to drive innovation and excellence in software development.
In his role at Microsoft, Massimo empowers customers by enhancing their Azure skills, enabling them to leverage the power of Azure more effectively in their solutions. His commitment to education extends beyond the workplace, as evidenced by his role as a technical speaker at various conferences, delivering more than 200 sessions over the last decade.
Massimo's leadership skills are further highlighted by his initiative in founding and managing several communities in Italy, fostering a collaborative environment for learning and growth. His personal interests include a love for dogs, a passion for reading, and an enjoyment of building LEGO sets, reflecting a well-rounded individual with diverse hobbies.
Massimo's professional journey is a testament to his dedication to technology, education, and community engagement, making him a valuable asset to any team or project.
https://sessionize.com/massimobonanni

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** RADU VUNVULEA**
⚡️ Technology Enthusiast, Microsoft Azure MVP, Microsoft Regional Director, Group Head of Cloud - Endava
Radu Vunvulea is a technology enthusiast working as VP of Cloud for Endava. He has a vast experience in different technologies and industries. Most of his time is spent working with the cloud, helping companies to innovate and finding solutions to their business problems. He enjoys building bridges between people and helping others to grow. He shares his knowledge on his personal blog and at different events where he is invited as a speaker. In his spare time, he drives an IT community and he is also a Microsoft Regional Director and Microsoft Azure MVP.
https://sessionize.com/vunvulear

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** ZITA PELOK**
⚡️ People Analytics Enthusiast, Senior Data Analyst & Senior BI Developer
Enthusiastic People Analytics professional and organizational sociologist with over 10 years of experience in HR and 5 years in Business Intelligence (BI). Passionate about transforming HR data into actionable insights that support strategic decision-making and enhance organizational performance. Holding a master's degree in Economic and Organizational Sociology, which provides a unique perspective on the social and behavioral aspects of human resources.
Based in Kecskemét, near Budapest, Hungary, and a proud parent of two boys. Loves to dance and is dedicated to continuous learning, always seeking new knowledge and skills to bring to the field.
https://sessionize.com/zita-pelok