​Registration & Networking: 5:30 pm – 6:15 pm
(Drinks & food provided)

​AI, Data & the Modern Lakehouse — Munich Edition

​Join speakers from Dremio, Confluent, and Fivetran for an evening focused on AI, modern data platforms, streaming architectures, and the future of the lakehouse.

​Will Martin

​Data & AI Evangelist, Dremio

​AI is everywhere — but what does it actually mean in practice?

​Will Martin will give a practical, hype-free walkthrough of modern AI and how it fits into today’s data stack and lakehouse architectures, based on his upcoming book AI for Dummies.

​🚀 Topics include:

• ​What Agentic AI is — and how it differs from LLMs

• ​How LLMs work under the hood

• ​Fine-tuning vs RAG vs prompt engineering

• ​Connecting AI to your data, APIs, and lakehouse with MCP

• ​Real-world benefits, risks, and implementation considerations

​A clear introduction to how AI really works — and how to use it effectively.

​Olena Kutsenko

​Olena Kutsenko
Staff Developer Advocate, Confluent
Olena will explore what it really takes to move data from Kafka into Apache Iceberg tables reliably and at scale.

Topics include:

• ​Schema evolution & data normalization

• ​Exactly-once guarantees & late-arriving events

• ​Partitioning & table maintenance

• ​Trade-offs between Kafka Connect, Flink pipelines, and custom ingestion approaches

​Using Confluent Tableflow as a practical example, this session focuses on building robust streaming-to-lakehouse architectures — regardless of tooling.

​Andrew Madson

​Head of Developer Relations, Fivetran

​Andrew brings a unique mix of hands-on data leadership and developer advocacy, with previous experience leading analytics and ML teams across organizations including J.P. Morgan Chase, MassMutual, and Arizona State University.

​Today, as Founding Head of Developer Relations at Fivetran, he works with modern data and AI startups building next-generation data infrastructure.

​🔍 Topics include:

• ​AI-ready data architectures

• ​Modern lakehouse and Apache Iceberg ecosystems

• ​Developer communities & data platform adoption

• ​Practical lessons from scaling analytics and ML platforms

​Andrew is also co-author of Apache Polaris: The Definitive Guide, educator, keynote speaker, and creator with a global audience across YouTube, LinkedIn, and technical learning platforms.

​Alex Merced

​Head of DevRel, Dremio & O’Reilly Author

​Alex will walk through key ideas from his latest work on Agentic Analytics and building data platforms that actually work for AI.

​🔍 What to expect:

• ​Why data silos break AI agents

• ​The role of the lakehouse, federation & semantic layers

• ​Apache Iceberg, open catalogs & modern architectures

• ​Why AI agents need context — not just data

• ​A roadmap toward autonomous, AI-driven analytics

​A sharp, architecture-focused session connecting modern data platforms with the future of AI.