Tel Aviv Apache Iceberg™ Community Meetup
Tel Aviv Apache Iceberg™ Meetup!
Join us on September 10th (Wednesday) from 5:00-8:00 PM
Connect with fellow enthusiasts, share insights, and dive into the latest developments in the Apache Iceberg™ ecosystem! Whether you're a seasoned pro or new to Apache Iceberg, this meetup is the perfect place to exchange ideas and spark innovation.
Agenda
5:00p - 6:00p: Drinks, Food & Networking 💃
6:00p - 7:00p: Iceberg Talks! 🧊
7:00 - 7:20p: Fireside Chat! 🔥
7:20p - 8:00p: More Drinks, Food & Networking 🕺
The event will focus on deep dive talks and real-world use-cases about Apache Iceberg (https://iceberg.apache.org/)
We will discuss topics around Open-Source Data Analytics, Open Table Formats (OTF), software concepts like Transactional Data Lakes or Lakehouse, advancements in AI/ML including generative AI, and many more topics of mutual interest that leverage Apache Iceberg.
During the sessions, we will provide you tips to get involved within the community, you will learn more about how the community is collaborating to grow the technology, and software/solutions that ease problem solving and improve user experiences.
Topic 1: DuckDB & Apache Iceberg: Optimizing Data Pipelines from Spark to Quack
Abstract
This talk explores our journey from a traditional Spark-based data pipeline to a hybrid approach incorporating DuckDB. We'll share how we optimized our workflow by selectively using DuckDB for specific workloads, achieving significant performance improvements and cost reductions for small to medium-sized tables. Through real-world examples and performance comparisons, we'll demonstrate both the benefits and challenges of this approach.
Speaker Bio
Dor Bernstein (Founding Engineer @ Clutch)
Dor Bernstein is a Founding Engineer at Clutch Security, where he architects and implements data pipelines and infrastructure solutions. His work focuses on building efficient, cost-effective data processing systems that balance performance with practical engineering constraints.
Topic 2: When Iceberg Tables Go Bad: Real-World Data Corruption and Loss in Production
Abstract
Iceberg makes data lakes more powerful - but it also introduces new ways for things to go wrong. From overwritten files and broken metadata to queries failing with cryptic errors, table corruption and data loss are real risks in production environments.
In this session, we’ll walk through real-world examples of Iceberg data loss, and table corruption we've seen in the wild: what caused them, how they were detected (or weren’t), and what it took to recover. We’ll cover how metadata mismatches, file naming collisions, and version inconsistencies can lead to silent data loss or unreadable tables - without triggering obvious failures.
You’ll leave with techniques for detecting, preventing, and remediating table corruption. We’ll share best practices for monitoring metadata health, hardening ingestion pipelines, upgrading safely, and restoring integrity when things go wrong. If you rely on Iceberg in production, this is a must attend.
Speaker bio
Lee Oren (Senior Software Engineer @ Ryft)
Lee is a Senior Software Engineer at Ryft with 8 years of experience developing large-scale data infrastructure systems. At Ryft, she works on Ryft's core Iceberg Maintenance and Optimization engine, focusing on making data infrastructure simpler, faster, and more reliable for teams working with Apache Iceberg.
Topic 3: Talking to Your Data - The Hard Way
Abstract
Discover how to transform chaotic, sporadic data sources into a structured, AI-ready layer using Apache Iceberg, RisingWave, and complementary tools, enabling seamless access for agentic applications. We'll explore the "hard way" of rebuilding fragmented logs through collection, normalization, and enrichment pipelines, then wrapping them in the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for secure, tool-based interactions with LLMs and agents like Cursor, Claude, or Windsurf. Attendees will learn how this approach empowers teams to query petabytes of data efficiently, unlocking complex insights without vendor lock-in while maintaining full ownership in their cloud environment.
Speaker bio
Aviv Erez (Senior Staff Engineer @ SentinelOne)
I've been working with data for the past 14 years. For 10 years, I built large-scale analytics, geospatial, and semantic search systems for the Israeli intelligence community. Over the past 4.5 years, as an architect at SentinelOne, I've developed and maintained a petabyte-scale data pipeline handling 8 petabytes daily from millions of global endpoints and third-party vendors to deliver actionable intelligence for major enterprises.
Community Fireside Chat
We are happy to host Yonatan Dolan from Clickhouse (Prev. AWS), Jonathan Kaplan from Forter (Prev. Unity) and Yossi Reitblat from Ryft to talk about lessons from working with Iceberg in production, where Iceberg is headed and practical tips to on how to navigate the Iceberg landscape.
About AWS
Apache Iceberg is an open-source table format that simplifies table management while improving performance. AWS analytics services such as Amazon EMR, AWS Glue, Amazon Athena, and Amazon Redshift include native support for Apache Iceberg, so you can easily build transactional data lakes on top of Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) on AWS.
Additional Resources and Information:
📚 Workshop: Running Apache Iceberg on AWS
📚 Blogs: Apache Iceberg on AWS
📚 AWS Prescriptive Guidance: Using Apache Iceberg on AWS
🖥️ Subscribe to AWS Events and AWS Developers
💜 We’re hiring, join our team
About Ryft
Ryft is the Automated Iceberg Management Platform. We help data teams create a truly open, automated and cost-effective Iceberg lakehouse, by maintaining and optimizing Iceberg tables in real time, all based on actual usage patterns. Ryft also automates governance, GDPR compliance and data lifecycle so data stays secure and compliant.
Additional Resources and Information:
📚 Visit Ryft website
📚 Blogs: GDPR Compliance with Iceberg
Location
The event will take place at the AWS offices, Azrieli Sarona building, Floor 28.