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CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:meetup-514c15876d@palaner.app
DTSTAMP:20260802T142403Z
DTSTART:20260811T050000Z
DTEND:20260811T063000Z
SUMMARY:Auckland Data Eng meetup\, August 2026
DESCRIPTION:Saved in Palaner as: saved\n\nPalaner match: 36% · why: lots of
  people going\n\nHey all\, please join us for our August Auckland Data Eng
  meetup. Join us for an engaging session filled with exciting discussions 
 and networking opportunities.\n\nDon't miss out—RSVP to secure your spot. 
 Venue and catering details coming soon — we'll update this page as soon as
  they're confirmed! 🎉\n\n🏠 Location: TBC\n🍕 Catering: TBC\n💬 Join our Slac
 k Group here: Data Engineers Slack Channel\nSchedule:\n\n5.00pm: Doors Ope
 n\n5.20pm: Announcements and Welcome\n5.30pm: 1st Talk (25 mins + 5 min Q/
 A)\n6.00pm: 2nd Talk (25 mins + 5 min Q/A)\n6.30pm: 3rd Talk (25 mins + 5 
 min Q/A)\n7.00pm: Networking\n8.00pm: Doors Close\n\nSpeakers:\n🎤 Emily Me
 lhuish\, Data Engineer\, Independent\nTalk Title: Fire and Ice: Building a
  data platform to power solar operations\nTalk Summary: Solar farms are pa
 rt of the answer to a renewable energy future. These massive solar arrays 
 take power from the sun and safely deliver it to the grid to then be used 
 by us\, the consumer. Efficiency gains of even 1% can make a big differenc
 e in the feasibility of solar\, so having rock solid analytics at scale is
  a necessity. More and more farms are being built and therefore the cost t
 o get said analytics is also important.\nJoin Emily as she walks through t
 he constraints of the solar industry and how she built a data platform for
  solar farms on a budget using almost entirely open-source tools. In some 
 parts real-time matters\, in others\, a one hour lag is acceptable - how c
 an we use the best of both batch and streaming worlds to keep pipelines pe
 rformant but also cheap? She'll focus on Apache Iceberg\, an open table fo
 rmat\, as well as touch on Victoria Metrics and DuckDB.\nSpeaker Bio: Emil
 y loves to be involved in a range of things from blowing up circuits to ri
 ding horses to rockets. She's an Electrical Engineer by trade but has foun
 d herself working in the realms of software and data science. With a passi
 on for both hardware and software\, she hopes to combine the two to make t
 echnology smarter and more sustainable. Currently\, she is helping various
  kiwi startups build beautiful yet affordable data platforms.\n\n🎤 Chuan-Z
 heng Lee\, Technical Data Consultant\, Kami\nTalk Title: Are these the sam
 e customer? I gave up and built an AI agent instead\nTalk Summary: For yea
 rs\, we struggled to populate a new source of truth for customer identity 
 while maintaining data quality. Decisions about entity resolution required
  judgement that was too fuzzy to automate\, yet too tedious to throw human
 s at tens of thousands of cases — including schools and school districts f
 rom all over the United States. The advent of agentic AI promised a new ap
 proach. This talk will explore our journey and lessons learnt in building 
 an AI agent to tackle the surprisingly hairy problem of organisational ide
 ntity. We'll cover early naive approaches\, hallucinations of federal reco
 rds\, agents not obeying instructions\, security guardrails\, human-in-the
 -loop features\, and how the 7\,000-word prompt helped document tacit inst
 itutional knowledge. The agent reduced processing time from around 10–30 m
 inutes per case to about 1–3 minutes\, showing how elements of agentic AI 
 can help solve previously intractable problems.\nSpeaker Bio: After three 
 years as Kami's first Head of Data\, leading a team of data engineers\, da
 ta analysts and internal tools engineers\, Chuan-Zheng has stepped back an
 d is now completing this final project there. Prior to joining Kami\, he c
 ompleted his PhD in electrical engineering at Stanford\, studying informat
 ion theory and machine learning.\n\n🎤 Steven MacLeod\, Founder\, Occam Sof
 tware Ltd\nTalk Title: Entering the new world of data\nTalk Summary: This 
 talk will be a demonstration of the Occam Data Platform. We are starting t
 o talk to companies in the US and Europe. The reason for the talk is for t
 he audience to play a critical role of assessing the platform\, and asking
  the hard questions. We want to stress test the demo. The benefit for the 
 audience is that they will see one future direction of data in the emergin
 g world of AI\, and have the opportunity to critique the direction as well
  as relate it to the work they may be doing.\nSpeaker Bio: Steven has spen
 t 25 years researching why information systems fail\, including time delay
 s and cost overruns. The Occam data platform is the outcome of that resear
 ch.\n\nIf you'd like to present at future meetups\, please submit your tal
 k here!\n\nRemember to bring along some great questions! See you all there
 ...
URL:https://www.meetup.com/auckland-data-engineering-meetup/events/31589890
 3/
CATEGORIES:palaner,saved
STATUS:TENTATIVE
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