The tl; dr
- The event: Data4 conference
- When: Wednesday, February 26, 2025
- Where: Embarc Collective, Tampa
- What: “A fun and friendly environment for all data professionals, no matter the industry, to meet and grow through shared contributions, interests, and mutual discovery. You’ll hear from data thought leaders, make connections across the tech ecosystem, and expand your network. You won’t be sitting down all day listening to speaker after speaker. Discussions won’t be focused on only one industry.”
- How much: $99. There’s also a government and student rate of $50!
A data conference?
You’ve heard the saying: “Data is the new oil.” That observation is generally attributed to Clive Humby, who’s said to have first used it in 2006. The idea is that data shares a lot of qualities with oil:
- It’s a valuable resource.
- It’s not useful in and of itself; it needs to be extracted, then refined and processed before you to highlight the idea that data, like oil, is a valuable resource that needs to be extracted, refined, and processed — but after that you get a lot of benefit from it.
- And finally, like oil, it’s a key driver for several industries and the economy in general.
Something this valuable needs a conference, and we’re having such a conference here in Tampa!
That conference is Data4.
What will the talks be?
Here’s the list of talks and their speakers / panelists:
|
Lakehouse Catalogs 101 – Governing and Transporting your Iceberg, Delta and Hudi tables Alex Merced |
Explore one of the most critical frontiers in the lakehouse ecosystem: catalogs. Alex will demystify leading catalog solutions such as Apache Polaris (incubating), Nessie, Unity Catalog, Gravitino, Dremio Catalog, and AWS Glue, and guide you through navigating this evolving landscape to effectively manage your lakehouse. |
|
AI Safety: Crafting Certainty in an Uncertain World John Licato |
Unpack how robust design, user-centric interfaces, and regulatory collaboration can transform AI from a black-box risk into a predictable and valuable tool. |
|
The Great Analytics Data Strategy Heist! Pradnya Chavan |
Learn to refine problems and apply iterative systems thinking, drive continuous improvement for data initiatives, and develop successful data strategies to reach business analytics objectives. |
|
Defense as a Market: Overcoming Barriers for Tech Innovation in DoD Jim Smith Casey Johnson Daniella Diaz Rocio Frej Vitalle |
Uncover insights surrounding Data, AI, and delivering game changing solutions to the DoD. |
|
Using Top-Level Ontology for Better Governance – A Vendor Risk Case Study Tim Toohill Joe Blankenship |
Explore how top-level ontologies align disparate data sources to address governance challenges in knowledge graphs. |
|
Mapping Ever Larger Data with PostGIS, DuckDB, GeoArrow and deck.gl. Jared Lander |
Learn how to make a high performance geo workflow on large data through covering the four key aspects of the geospatial pipeline. |
|
From Data to Dominance: Navigating Edge and Enterprise Data Needs for Scalable Insights Lisa Costa |
In a world defined by data ubiquity, success hinges on the ability to align edge-based and enterprise-level data strategies. This talk explores the nuanced differences between edge and enterprise data needs and how semantic frameworks, AI, and edge-based processing can bridge the two. Learn how to harness data at the right place and time—enabling hyper-localized decision-making, predictive analytics at scale, and adaptive cyber defense to create resilient, value-driven organizations in an interconnected global ecosystem. |
|
Driving Data Innovation in Telecom: Trends and Opportunities Antra Malhotra |
|
|
Prescription for Precision: Building Smarter Pharma Sales Forecasting Dashboards Tanya Cashorali |
Ensure your regional sales goals are on track while identifying problem areas in real-time. |
There’s also a rumor that there might be some accordion entertainment during the day. Just sayin’.
Afterparty
And yes, there’s a happy hour after the event at American Social. Better still, there’ll be door prizes for a few lucky attendees!
How much will it cost to attend?
$99 for general admission. And that includes breakfast, lunch, and the happy hour.