Countdown to Data + AI Summit 2021: Event Preview and Flyover

Data + AI Summit 2021, the global event for the data community, takes place virtually in just a few days, May 24–28 — and it’s free to attend! This year’s Summit is truly a can’t miss event - it’s not just keynotes and sessions on a website, it’s much, much more!

Data + AI Summit, formerly known as Spark + AI Summit, will bring together tens of thousands of data teams, leaders and visionaries from more than 160 countries to shape the future of data and AI in an interactive, engaging virtual platform. Attendees can choose from 200+ technical sessions and hear from practitioners, leaders, innovators as they share best practices for Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, MLflow, PyTorch, TensorFlow, and Transformers. Participants can also join deep dives into streaming architectures, SQL analytics and leveraging modern BI tools for the lakehouse.

With Summit only a week away, here’s a rundown of what you need to know:

Our theme: the future is open

This year, the theme of Summit is all about “openness” and the endless possibilities that it provides. So what exactly does this mean?
This year we want our theme to capture the optimism and opportunity for our data community and what’s ahead of us. It represents an ongoing commitment to the open source community and a nod to new product innovations that further enable an open, collaborative data ecosystem. Furthermore, our theme reinforces that now more than ever, we need to band together to do what’s right — to help solve the world’s toughest problems and drive the change we want to see across the globe.

Our virtual event platform launches Friday, May 21, but here’s a sneak peek at what awaits our attendees. As soon as the platform launches, get a head start by building your agenda and personal profile. If you haven’t already registered, there’s still time! General admission is FREE and sessions will be available live from May 24-28 and then the entire platform will be available on-demand through June 28!

Let’s take a tour of what our platform offers!

Personalized dashboard

As you enter the conference, you will be welcomed by your personalized dashboard — a home for everything you need to know about the conference. The dashboard presents the most useful links to navigate the program agenda, featured sessions, and interactive attendee experience. Make sure to keep an eye on your inbox for notifications so you don’t miss any program updates.

Build your agenda

Our agenda is jam-packed with rich technical content, product deep dives, AMA sessions and more. To add sessions to your personalized agenda in “My Summit,” simply click on the ❤️ next to the session title. You can also add each session to your personal calendar.

We have an incredible lineup of keynotes from industry thought leaders such as Ali Ghodsi, Matei Zaharia and Reynold Xin, as well as luminary keynotes from visionaries like Bill Inmon, the Father of Data warehousing, Shadfi Goldwasser, a Turing Award winner for work on the science of cryptography, DJ Patil, the first U.S. Chief Data Scientist, Rajat Monga, co-creator of TensorFlow, Bill Nye, science educator, engineer, comedian, inventor and Malala Yousafzai, Nobel laureate and education activist, and many others. Make sure to take the time to play with the agenda filters by track and topic and explore the speakers’ pages to build your ideal agenda.

Dev Hub + Expo

Connect with your peers and sponsors at the Dev Hub + Expo. We are making live networking happen at our Hallway Chatter rooms, where you can chat with like-minded attendees or hear lightning talks from community members at our expo stage. You can also learn more about Delta Lake, Apache Spark™, MLflow, Koalas and more at the Databricks Booth, and interact with our valued sponsors who are tech innovators in the Data & AI Community by visiting their booths.

Other highlights at the Dev Hub + Expo are our job board, advisory bar where you can chat 1:1 with subject matter experts on just about anything, and our solutions theater where you can hear industry uses cases.

Our goal is to bring people together to learn and connect in a virtual environment. Check out “My Summit” to meet like-minded individuals and to discover recommended sessions/experiences based on your interests.

Each evening, attendees will be able to “choose their own adventure” by joining a musical performance, attend our highly-engaging live Meetups or explore everything the Dev Hub + Expo hall has to offer.

Meetups at Data + AI Summit

Your registration gives you access to Meetups — accessible only through the Summit platform. These special events are free to attend on a first-come, first served-basis.

May 24: Databricks University Alliance Panel
May 25: Women in Advanced Data Analytics: Data + ML
May 26: Data Engineering: Dagster and Spark SQL
May 27: Machine Learning Frameworks, Model Management, Operations

Databricks Experience (DBX)

A curated set of content and sessions to help you learn more about the amazing innovation happening at Databricks. Designed to help you make the most of your time at Summit, DBX offers quick access to the subjects most relevant to your needs. Some key features of DBX include:

1. Product deep dives concentrated on Delta Lake, managing multi-cloud platforms, modernizing to a cloud data architecture and more
2. Training in SQL Analytics, data science, machine learning and more
3. News on upcoming products and features
4. Networking and engagement with other attendees and Databricks experts

There is so much more that we can share, but now it’s your turn to discover what Data + AI Summit has to offer. Take a look at this guide for a deeper dive. If you have registered, join the experience on May 24–28…and if you haven’t yet registered, it’s not too late. Join us for all the action at Data + AI Summit — we look forward to seeing you there!