Kick off your Global Data Summit experience by checking in and meeting fellow attendees. Enjoy a warm welcome as we set the stage for the final day of cutting-edge insights, networking, and innovation in Reykjavik.

Hear from GDS Coordinators Remco Broekmans and Bjarki Stefansson as they preview what to expect during the final day of the Summit.

Joe Reis

For years, data engineering was a story of predictable pipelines: move data from point A to point B. But AI just hit the reset button on our entire field. Now, we're all staring into the void, wondering what's next. While the fundamentals haven't changed, data remains challenging in the traditional areas of data governance, data management, and data modeling, which still present challenges. Everything else is up for grabs.

This talk will cut through the noise and explore the future of data engineering in an AI-driven world. We'll examine how team structures will evolve, why agentic workflows and real-time systems are becoming non-negotiable, and how our focus must shift from building dashboards and analytics to architecting for automated action. The reset button has been pushed. It's time for us to invent the future of our industry.

​Take a break and network with fellow attendees over a light breakfast, exchanging ideas and building connections before diving into the next session.

Peter Avenant

In a world where AI promises to automate and optimize everything, it's easy to imagine a future where data models build themselves and solutions simply happen. But here's the truth: even the most advanced AI is just the suit — without skilled operators behind it, it’s nothing more than potential left unrealized.

This session explores how AI-enabled data modeling is revolutionizing the way we deliver consistent, scalable, and future-proof solutions — but only when paired with the expertise, intuition, and leadership of a strong data team. Just like Iron Man needs Tony Stark, AI needs human expertise to guide, refine, and elevate its outputs.

We'll dive into:

• The tangible benefits AI brings to data modeling (speed, consistency, scalability)

• Common myths about "AI replacing data teams" — and why they're wrong

• The critical role of data professionals as designers, decision-makers, and drivers of AI-powered solutions

• Practical strategies to make AI your co-pilot, not your competitor

Whether you're a data engineer, modeler, architect, or leader, this talk will reframe AI not as a replacement, but as your ultimate amplifier.

Come rethink the future — and why your skills are more important than ever.

Cameron Turner

Generative AI (genAI) has graduated from workbench POCs to critical production systems across most industries.  While progressive enterprises seek to gauge value and future investment in fledgling AI applications, conservative organizations are leveraging the expanded capabilities of cloud platforms to catch up. 

During this 20 minute session, AI veteran Cameron Turner will share some of his experiences (successes and pitfalls) leading teams to build and deploy industrial AI systems within Global 1000 companies in the US, EU and UK.  Topics will range from technical to cultural, and include observed trends across multiple industries specific to the adoption of genAI.

Attendees will be left with real-world examples and actionable recommendations/best practices for genAI adoption to apply in their own work.

Jody Johans

Data is woven throughout any business. It is tied to business outcomes at each and every layer of business architecture. When data loops through an organization loosely, void of context and clarity, and purpose, it just creates a tangled mess.

This session focuses on data being connected, reinforced with communication and solid understanding, to strengthen the enterprise to become resilient, adaptable, and primed for growth.

Take a quick break and use this time to network with fellow attendees and recharge before the next session.

Ndivhuwo Makondo

Majority of business data required for critical decision making in enterprises is stored in databases distributed across a multitude of environments. However, business users, such as HR managers, marketing campaign developers, etc., often do not have easy access to this data. Furthermore, even with access to it, they rarely have the necessary technical skills to efficiently retrieve and analyze it.

This talk will explore the development and use of LLM-powered technology to enable such non-technical data consumers to easily explore and use business data and to automatically design business processes. At the core is the problem of text-to-SQL translation, generating SQL code directly from natural language utterances to query a database. We’ll explore pre-training, fine-tuning and prompting techniques for Large Language Models (LLMs) for this task and explore state-of-the-art models, including some from IBM Research.

TRUST YOUR DATA TRUST YOUR DECISIONS

with Datavault Builder, the award-winning business-driven data warehouse automation solution.

Datavault Builder is a reliable and efficient visual data integration solution. It leverages standardization and cooperation between business and IT people as the key to success. Datavault Builder increases productivity and enables its users to benefit from the fastest possible time-to-insights. It adds full auditability and governance without any extra effort.

Datavault Builder contains all data warehousing functionalities in one solution and can replace up to nine different software tools. It reduces complexity, lowers risk, and total cost of ownership while increasing maintainability.
Datavault Builder empowers organizations, companies, and corporations around the world, such as Totally plc, ProSiebenSat.1, C&A, Ministry of the Environment of New Zealand, RWJBarnabas Health Insurance, Goldhofer or Melitta, to trust their data and turn data into assets.

In the BARC Data Management Survey 24, Datavault Builder performed significantly above average in all KPIs in the Data Warehouse Automation peer group. Overall, Datavault Builder achieved 6 top positions and 22 leading positions.
Please visit our website for further information: https://www.datavault-builder.com/

Karen Lopez

AI is a hot topic for the world and often a challenging subject in traditional data programs. What will be your response when AI is introduced to your organization? This workshop features discussions of recent successes and disturbing incidents. We will focus on understanding how they were discovered, their handling, and lessons learned. We will focus on people and process issues encountered with each incident. We'll end with 10 tips to help you build a strategy for updating your data governance and management programs.
 
Highlights:

• Transparency

• Data Quality

• Fairness

• Human Verification

• Privacy and Data Protection

Enjoy a nutritious lunch prepared with fresh, local ingredients while establishing meaningful connections with your fellow attendees.

Stefán Baxter

Most companies still treat data like museum pieces: cleaned, catalogued, and frozen in a warehouse or lake long after the moment has passed. That approach worked when “yesterday’s totals” were good enough. Today, they’re lethal. Modern operations run at the cadence of live transactions, sensor pings, supply chain jitters, and customer swipes - data that’s born real-time and contextual, not batch loaded and siloed.

In this talk we’ll expose the gap between what leaders think their warehouse delivers and the decisions the business actually needs to make in-flight. We’ll unpack the true form of operational data: a living stream of semantic events instantly linked to a knowledge graph of every asset, process, and customer touchpoint. You’ll see how this model turns raw telemetry into immediate opportunity detection, root-cause clarity, and autonomous action—capabilities no SQL star schema can fake, no matter how many views you stack on top.

If you’re still betting your competitive edge on nightly ETL jobs and weekend report packs, buckle up. We’ll show why the next generation of winners will view your “single source of truth” as an elegant relic—and how you can pivot before they
leave you staring at taillights.

Remco Broekmans

All data modellers want to translate the business needs into a logical data model. Yet, communication gaps between business and IT have historically hindered the development of efficient, aligned solutions. In this presentation I will explain my journey on how we can translate the business story towards the Ensemble Logical Model while engaging the business on this path. The use of the 6 ELM artifacts to be used in the workshops will guide both data modelers and business. And it also helped in the development of a GPT based modeling assistant, using AI for data modeling in short.

Moderated by Joe Reis
Featuring Eevamaija Virtanen and Marco Wobben

This panel explores the ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence, focusing on fairness, transparency, accountability, and the societal impact of AI systems. Experts will discuss real-world dilemmas, regulatory frameworks, and best practices for developing AI that aligns with human values. The session aims to foster dialogue on responsible AI and the shared role of industry, government, and society in shaping its future.

Take a break and network with fellow attendees over a light snack, exchanging ideas and building connections before diving into the next session.

Bob Tapscott

You'll discover how and why AI's power is now exploding, its growth driven by smarter approaches to neural networks trained on a new hardware architecture that can derive its intelligence from ever more massive datasets.

You'll also find:
 

• Discussions of the multiplicative and exponential power of trivergence on the core technologies discussed in the book

• Explorations of IoT's tendency to bring the physical world to life as it harnesses the capabilities of AI and the blockchain

• How trivergence morphs Big Data into something new he calls “Infinite Data”, where thinking machines consider trillions of data points to generate their own content, value, and perspectives without programmed code or human intervention

A fresh and innovative presentation, rich with case stories, on how the most critical technologies of this new phase in the digital age are combining to drive business transformation. 

Tiankai Feng

People are emotional, irrational and unpredictable – and yet they are the most important aspect of any data strategy. Tiankai introduces his framework of the 5 Cs – competence, collaboration, communication, creativity and conscience – with actionable examples to help you put the human being really at the center of your data efforts, and to turn your team members and employees into active advocates for your data strategy.

Hear from GDS Founders Hans Hultgren and John Carpenter as they recap the final day of the Summit.

Enjoy light snacks and drinks while connecting with fellow attendees.

Pósthússtræti 5 101, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland