On October 26, 27, and 28, Xebia hosted its annual GoDataFest, a wonderful collection of talks, discussions, workshops, breakfast sessions, and networking hosted in the Amsterdam office of Xebia.
This blog explores the various sessions throughout those 3 days but specifically focuses on the Cloud Data Platform workshop on Friday the 28th.
What is GoDataFest?
GoDataFest features a multitude of sessions focused on various data technologies and platforms. From fireside chats and presentations to Q&As, workshops, and customer stories, each session is hosted by seasoned experts.
“It is such a great event to for the Dutch data community to meet and learn from each other. We were very happy to see such a wide variety of roles from the data field attending, this really helped the engagement during sessions and increased the knowledge sharing factor of the event.” said Jelle Portegies, digital marketer for Xebia. “The energy was extremely contagious, and after 2 years of doing it online, it is so good to finally meet everyone in person again, it made the experience even better!” he added.
What type of sessions were hosted at GoDataFest?
During the three days of the event, the sessions that took place included a various number of topics and experts from various companies. Sessions ranged from case studies such as “data forecasting” by Albert Heijn to more interactive activities such as the MLOps game, but also more creative sessions such as the Code Breakfast.
“What makes GoDataFest so entertaining is the wide range of attendees that turn up, coming from different backgrounds, fields, and jobs, but with one common interest which is Data. You have data engineers, data scientists, people who are more focused on analytics, and so on. This means that the amount of knowledge shared is quite extensive” said Thomas van Latum, Senior Data Engineer at Xebia.
What is the Google Cloud Data Platform Workshop?
On Friday the 28th, the last day of GoDataFest, two seasoned Google Cloud experts Bas Leenders and Thomas van Latum hosted a Google Cloud Data Platform Workshop, which was an incredible success!
The goal of the workshop was for the attendees to gain more knowledge on data tools from Google.
“Because we have a wide range of expertise among the participants, we decided to divide everybody into three groups based on their expertise, being data engineering, analytics engineering, and data analysts,” said Bas. “After a per-role break-out, people from the different roles had to collaborate in mixed groups. This resulted in a very interactive and fun learning experience.”
“For us, it was important to show a more complete overview of a data pipeline. If you tailor a session for only data engineers, they miss out on what happens after data gets engineered, same goes for a data scientist or an analytics expert. Therefore the goal was really to give them a broad view of the various processes in a data pipeline” said Thomas. “And everybody got to experience Google Cloud as a data platform, really hands-on.”
See you next year!
GoDataFest 2022 was a blast, it was great to meet and share knowledge with all the experts and data enthusiasts that made this event possible. We are looking forward to welcoming you next year, and growing the Dutch data community!