Call for Speakers

in 3 months

dataMinds Saturday 2026

event date

21 Feb 2026

location

Thomas More Mechelen Mechelen, Belgium


Speakers must currently reside in Belgium. We're making this a locally focused event for speakers, but free to attend for anyone. 

dataMinds Saturday will be an in-person event, hosted on February 21st 2026.
Most important of all, it will be free to attend for anyone. 

In the past years, we’ve noticed an upward trend in the number of data-related User Groups and conferences sprouting up in Europe and all over the world. The data community is a great community, and there are a lot of talented international speakers ready to share their knowledge.

Recognition is key, and there are not many opportunities for local talent to grow their acknowledgment as a lot of international speakers fill in speaker slots quickly. This doesn’t leave much room for the rising stars. With dataMinds Saturday 2025, we want to shift the focus and pass the mic along to local talent, granting them their place in the spotlight and offering them the opportunity to add more speaking experience to their portfolio.

dataMinds is therefore organising another edition of dataMinds Saturday on February 21st 2026 with a focus on Microsoft Data & AI Platform enthusiasts residing in Belgium, ready to deliver great content.

Throughout the year, and with our other events, we welcome any speaker with open arms, but making sure our local talent can grow is still one of our primary goals as a local user group in Belgium.

To conclude, a reminder that should be obvious to anyone. We believe that anyone should be able to attend our event, regardless of their characteristics.
We require everyone to adhere to our Code of Conduct, and will remove anyone that doesn't do so. 

open, 3 days left
Call for Speakers
Call opens at 8:45 AM

07 Oct 2025

Call closes at 11:59 PM

06 Dec 2025

Call closes in Romance Standard Time (UTC+01:00) timezone.
Closing time in your timezone () is .

The session length for all sessions is 60 minutes, in which 5 minutes are blocked for Q&A. Speakers are advised to not run over the allotted time, to allow the next speaker to prepare, and the attendees to take a small break.

The sessions will be held in 3 rooms throughout the day. Please submit your session to which of these tracks you think it's linked the most. If need be, the organisation can swap sessions to different tracks, if we deem it necessary.  

  • Analytics
  • Administration
  • Visualisation
  • Architecture
  • Engineering
  • Strategy

Sessions can only be submitted in English.

When in doubt, don't hesitate to contact us!


all submitted sessions

publicly listed on this page

event fee

free for speakers

0€


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51 submissions
Submitted sessions
Artur Tyvaert
  • Understanding the Spark UI, Metrics, System Tables and How to Use Them to Optimize Your Clusters
Teo Van Lier
  • Distributed Isn’t Always Better: Performance Trade-Offs Between Spark and In-Memory Solutions
Jonathan Moeyersons
  • From custom to consistent: a button's tale
Tom Van de Velde
  • Getting Started with Notebooks in Microsoft Fabric
  • Choosing the Right Incremental Load Strategy in Fabric
Peter Vantomme
  • Building Value with Databricks Apps: Real Use Cases and Key Takeaways
Pieter Vanhove
  • Drive security-focused features from concept to general availability
  • Get to grips with encryption in Azure SQL and SQL Server
Giorgi Gobronidze
  • Databricks Asset Bundle
Juan José Buitrago
  • Diving dip into Terraform modules to manage complex infrastructures
Reiner De Smet
  • The Different Levels of Securing a Self-Service Environment with Unity Catalog in Databricks
  • IaC Smackdown — New kid on the block Azure’s Native Bicep vs Terraform’s Heavyweight Champion
Chidi Nweke
  • MCP ❤️ Azure: The Real Story
show all submissions
Sofie Theys
  • Data Mesh explained and how dbt helps you implement it
Thibauld Croonenborghs
  • Demystifying Spark Profile Optimizations in Microsoft Fabric
  • Medallion Magic with MLVs: Faster Fabric Data Pipelines
Nico Jacobs
  • Fabric Data Agents
  • What's new in T-SQL?
  • What are Fabric Materialized Lake Views
  • KQL Know-how: Mastering the Art of Kusto Query Language
  • Modify Data from Power BI: When Translytical Task Flow meets Fabric Data Function
Majda Kasmi
  • Data Transformations Fail Because Humans Don’t: Why People Break Before Systems do
Tarigulu Khasizada
  • Human factor in Data and AI strategy
  • Power BI and Copilot in action: Practical ways to work smarter with data
Michael Finlan
  • Deterministic AI in Data Work
Olivier Van Steenlandt
  • Apache Spark for SQL Data Warehouse Developers
Michiel Vromans
  • You don't need Purview to start data governance in Microsoft Fabric
Benni De Jagere
  • Using Lakehouse Data at scale with Power BI, featuring Direct Lake mode
  • Understanding Fabric Capacities
  • Troubleshooting Power BI Reports
  • How to write a Session Abstract, to get chosen to speak
  • Setting yourself up for success when submitting to present
  • Star Schema ALL the things! But why?
  • Low friction data transformation and data movement using Fabric Dataflows
  • Fabric Capacities, beyond the obvious
  • Exploring permission boundaries in Microsoft Fabric
  • Copilot in Fabric - Explained for the Administrator!
  • Demystifying the on-premises data gateway (for Power BI Semantic Models)
Jesus Garcia Ramirez
  • From Friction to Flow: Building an MLOps Platform with Data Product Thinking
Serhii Savin
  • Geospatial Data Science in Action: Optimizing Routes and Reducing Costs at Scale
  • Full-Stack Data Science: From Data Engineering to Business Impact
  • Advanced Data Science Techniques Using Geospatial SQL
  • A/B Testing at Scale: Best Practices, Pitfalls, and Automation
Jo David
  • A wizards introduction to Semantic Link
Dennie Declercq
  • The scary truth about labels
  • Coaching people with AInxiety
Hannes De Smet
  • The Data Product Factory: enable Data Product Creation for enterprises
Sam Debruyn
  • From Lock-In to Openness: The Shift in Data Platforms
  • Fabric Capacities: Divide and Conquer
  • Thread by Thread: Lessons from Migrating to Fabric
Jasper Theunis
  • Good artists copy, great artists steal