An info-dense week! And 15-20,000+ steps each day! The announcements at the summit left no doubt that Databricks is not only a visionary in data + AI but is executing rapidly to deliver on that vision while evolving it. Their commitment to open source is remarkable.
Having said that a couple of things I wish they will pay attention to in future summits. In a number of sessions, the introductions repeated a lot of the announcements... UniForm, Liquid Clustering, Unity Catalog going opensource, etc. Initially, the reinforcement seemed okay but by the third day it felt overkill and detracting from the focus of the sessions. Second, the DAIS mobile app UI and functionality should be improved. I wish that the materials shared on the screen were readily available on the app to follow along and refer back to. Many attendees were taking photos of the slides detracting from focus on the materials presented. (I recognize that materials are often finalized late, but this is a data company which should be able to make the materials accessible right before a session starts.) My experience from breakout sessions I attended is that sessions led by Databricks staff were far more worthwhile than partner or client presentations.
There were 134 vendor booths at the Expo. I wonder how many of them recognize that Databricks will eat their lunch ... not a matter of if, only when. At the stalls I stopped by, I asked the question "If I have adopted Databricks why would I use your product?" Some of the vendor staff had no response or admitted that they didn't know. Others said that we help get data into Databricks ... which may not be help needed for long. One data transformation vendor admitted that they will have to study the announcements at the summit more carefully to understand whether their product has value-add to offer in the Databricks ecosystem.
