Open Source Europe Tour - Munich, Germany
Registration / Networking: 5:30 pm - 6:15 pm (Drinks and food are taken care of)
AI is everywhere - but what does it actually mean in practice?
Join Will Martin, AI Evangelist, for a clear, practical walkthrough of modern AI - based on his upcoming book AI for Dummies (and actually) - and how it fits into your data stack and lakehouse.
🚀 In this session:
What Agentic AI really is (and how it differs from LLMs)
How LLMs work under the hood (tokens, embeddings, context)
When to use fine-tuning, RAG, or prompt engineering
How MCP connects AI to your data, APIs, and lakehouse
Key benefits, risks, and real-world considerations
Cut through the hype and understand how AI actually works - and how to use it.
Special guest (Munich): Andrew Madson
Head of Developer Relations at Fivetran and former Field CDO at Dremio, Andrew will share insights on building AI-ready data platforms and modern lakehouse architectures.
Expect a practical perspective on applying open table formats like Apache Iceberg to solve real-world enterprise challenges.
About Andrew:
Andrew works with data leaders and engineers globally to design high-performance, open data architectures. He is a strong advocate for the open data ecosystem and co-author of several O’Reilly books, including Apache Polaris: The Definitive Guide, with more on data transformation and AI-ready data on the way.
Next up: Olena Kutsenko
Staff Developer Advocate at Confluent, Olena will explore how Iceberg, Kafka, Flink, and Tableflow come together—and what that means in the world of AI.
Expect a practical perspective on building scalable, real-time data architectures that power modern AI use cases.
About Olena:
Staff Developer Advocate at Confluent, with previous experience at Aiven and AWS, bringing strong expertise in data streaming and modern data platforms.
And last but not least: Alex Merced
Head of DevRel and author at O’Reilly, Alex will walk you through key ideas from his latest book on Agentic Analytics- and how to build data platforms that actually work for AI.
🔍 What to expect:
Why data silos break AI agents
How the lakehouse, federation, and semantic layer fit together
The role of Apache Iceberg, open catalogs, and modern architectures
Why agents need context, not just data
A practical roadmap toward autonomous, AI-driven analytics
Expect a sharp, architecture-focused session connecting modern data platforms with the future of AI.