Speakers 2025

Still Need Tech Talents ? Adapting Talent & Training for the GenAI Age 

Generative AI is infiltrating every layer of the data stack—tools, platforms, workflows, and the skills companies now demand. At the Data Community Conference we’ll open the day by asking the question everyone’s dancing around: What happens to tech talent when AI can code? 

Drawing on the real‑world journey of 42 Lausanne—a tuition‑free, peer‑to‑peer, always‑open coding school launched in 2021 that has already helped hundreds of learners move into the digital workforce—we’ll look at what changes (and what doesn’t) when you train developers in an AI‑saturated market. We’ll unpack myths about “no more programmers,” revisit curriculum design, employer expectations, and outreach/marketing when every slide deck says “AI,” and share data on what Swiss industry actually hires for. 

Spoiler: as Bill Gates recently reminded us, “We still need those software engineers.” More than ever, the differentiator is Power Skills—sensemaking with AI, data fluency, systems thinking, ethical judgment, and collaborative resilience across human‑AI teams. We’ll close with a live Q&A (15 min) to surface your challenges and crowdsource next steps. 

From Lucky Luke to the Daltons: Rethinking Skills and Strategy in the Age of GenAI 

Generative AI is not just a new tool—it’s a new paradigm. In this presentation, Julien Schiess explores how GenAI challenges traditional skill frameworks, role definitions, and organisational workflows. Using the metaphor of Lucky Luke and the Daltons, he reveals how leaders, technologists and boards each react differently to the disruption of co-intelligence. 

The Power of Simplicity: Crafting Durable Software Systems 

Simplicity often takes a back seat in software engineering. Yet, it is crucial for creating durable and efficient systems. 

Crafting simple software requires significant effort. It involves setting high standards and persisting until the simplest and most elegant solution emerges, often recognizable by its beauty and efficiency. 

Drawing on over twenty-five years of software engineering experience, this talk explores the pursuit of essential simplicity across various projects, including digital audio recording at the Swiss Parliament services, weather data management, interactive video kiosks, and web app frameworks. Despite the diversity of domains, common patterns about simplicity have emerged, and have helped us get closer to the radical simplicity that we strive for. 

While there is no magic formula for simplicity, our real-world examples expose key principles and a philosophy of simplicity that can guide you on your own journey. 

Azure Fabric a complete data analytics SaaS platform  

Microsoft Azure Fabric emerges already as the leading data management and analytics platform. Having a good understanding of what Azure Fabric offers and its advantages is important to start the journey to a modern data analytic environment. 

Is AI really surpassing us? 

Is AI truly overtaking human intelligence? This frequently asked — and feared — question deserves to be turned on its head. Beneath the fear of replacement lies a deeper reality: AI does not mimic our intelligence — it extends it, amplifies it, and transforms it. 

To assess this idea, I turn to Descartes, Spinoza, and other thinkers to explore what it really means to “think,” “understand,” or “learn” — and whether these faculties are truly within the reach of machines. 

This talk offers a provocative dive into our relationship with intelligence itself: from the “fourth narcissistic wound” to technicity as a new form of human power. Blending philosophical insight with real-world impact, it opens a fresh space for reflection on what AI reveals — not about itself — but about us. 

From SQL to AI: Why PostgreSQL is Your Strategic Platform for the Next Business Revolution 

The evolution from deterministic SQL WHERE clauses to AI stochastic similarity search represents a fundamental transformation in how businesses extract value from data. 

PostgreSQL, with its foundation in multidimensional data through PostGIS, has naturally evolved to be at the center of modern AI workflows through the pgvector extension. 

This presentation demonstrates why Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) bridges your existing data infrastructure with transformative AI capabilities.  

We'll explore how RAG addresses critical challenges of AI accuracy and enterprise data governance while enabling your DBA teams to naturally evolve into AI infrastructure administrators. 

Through real-world use cases and live demonstrations, we'll show how organizations leverage PostgreSQL-based RAG systems to enhance customer experiences and create new revenue streams for legacy applications as well as solving parts of technological debt and enhancing BI workflows.  

Invest more times in humans than machines 

Invest more time in “human connections” instead of wasting time configuring networks, policies etc. thanks to Cisco's automation and AI solutions in Networking & Security. Learn how networks and network management have evolved over time and how they will evolve further going forward.

From Automation to Autonomy: Future-Proofing DevOps Roles in an AI-Powered World 

In an era where Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping industries, the role of DevOps leaders—including Site Reliability Engineers (SREs), Platform Engineers, DevSecOps Engineers, and Cloud Architects—faces transformative pressure. This talk explores how AI threatens to disrupt these roles, particularly in cloud-native infrastructure, Continuous Delivery, DataOps, and AI-driven automation. While AI excels at automating operational workflows, optimizing infrastructure management, and enhancing efficiency, it lacks the human touch essential for leadership in DevOps transformations. 

The presentation will focus on embedding human-centric leadership within AI-augmented DevOps workflows, ensuring that organizations retain agility, resilience, and alignment with business objectives. By leveraging frameworks such as DevOps Topologies, SRE principles, and Value Stream Mapping, DevOps leaders can create a symbiotic relationship between AI and human expertise to drive innovation and operational excellence. 

High Availability & Failover for MySQL vs MariaDB (What Really Works)

Explore high availability topologies for MySQL and MariaDB, including async/semi-sync replication, MySQL InnoDB Cluster (Group Replication), MySQL Cluster (NDB), Percona XtraDB Cluster and MariaDB Galera. We will cover both local and geographical replication. Key topics include consistency, quorum, and failover orchestration, with a focus on avoiding split-brain scenarios. A live failover demonstration with load balancers will also be included.

Elastic / AI – the developer search experience

Welcome to the search powered data experience, from lexical search, to vector, semantic, and hybrid; we will explore how retrieval is the backbone of the new LLM & AI powered ways of interacting with your data.

Accelerating AI Development with Secure and Compliant Data 

In the age of AI, data is the fuel—but not all data is created equal. As organizations race to develop and deploy AI solutions, the biggest roadblocks are often hidden in their data pipelines: limited access, outdated snapshots, and compliance risks. This presentation explores how enterprises can accelerate AI development by leveraging secure, compliant, and high-quality data. We’ll dive into strategies for rapid data provisioning, test data management, and masking sensitive information—without slowing down innovation. Learn how to unblock your AI teams and scale experimentation, while staying aligned with regulatory requirements like GDPR, HIPAA, and DORA. 

From chaos to clarity: AI’s role in enterprise content management 

AI is no longer a buzzword: it’s a game-changer in the way organizations manage and leverage information. Solutions like M-Files are leading the way, leveraging powerful tools such as the Intelligent Metadata Layer, Aino, Azure AI Foundry, and Copilot. Together, they simplify classification, automate routine tasks, and enhance document accessibility across systems. The result? Smarter workflows, faster decisions, and a content strategy that finally keeps pace with your business. 

AI-Powered Customer Matching made easy 

Identifying the same customer across different systems—each with varying, incomplete, or even incorrect data—can be a daunting task. In this session, we’ll demonstrate how Oracle’s AI and Machine Learning tools make customer matching significantly easier. Best of all, we’ll show how this can be achieved using almost only SQL—no need for complex programming or data science expertise. 

Level up your Cost Observability with the new FinOps standard FOCUS and Microsoft Fabric 

Level up your Cost Observability with the new FinOps standard FOCUS and Microsoft Fabric# 
In this session, attendees will learn how to leverage the new FinOps billing standard FOCUS and Microsoft Fabric to gain better visibility over their Cloud Costs. We will compare this stack against the native Azure Cost Management tools and see why it may sometimes be a better fit (FinOps personas, Subscriptions types, etc.). 

Oracle and Cohesity stronger together – Protect, detect, and respond – Crown Jewels under attack.

Attacks on Oracle workloads occur every day. Sometimes, companies spend weeks or months restoring data. Cohesity demonstrates how customers can back up, restore, and orchestrate their Oracle data.

How much AI is in Oracle 23ai?

Oracle is well known for its Database software. The latest version Oracle 23ai was renamed from 23c (c for Cloud) to 23ai (ai for Artificial Intelligence) in May 2024. But how much AI is in Oracle 23ai? This presentation talks about the possibilities of Oracle 23ai in terms of AI vectors to describe and search semantically similar data and extend Large Language Model responses through Retrieval Augmented Generation.

Why Hierarchical Organizations Are Dying… and Horizontal Ones Are Too 

Christophe delves into the evolving landscape of organizational structures, highlighting the limitations of both traditional hierarchies and overly flat models. He discusses the challenges faced by companies attempting to implement horizontal structures and offers practical solutions for creating agile, purpose-driven organizations that balance autonomy with accountability.