WI Databricks User Group

Wisconsin Databricks User Group: Win Governance and Sharing with Unity Catalog and Mosaic AI
2025-10-21 17:30 - 19:30 (America/Chicago) | MSOE Dwight and Dian Diercks Computational Science Hall Building, 1025 N Milwaukee Street, Room DH445, Milwaukee, WI, 53202, United States
Virtual Option
Can’t attend in person? No problem, we’ll also be streaming an online webinar from the event. Click below to register:

Virtual Event
Overview

Featured Speakers
Kiran Bandreddi
Databricks – Solution Architect
Unlocking Secure Collaboration with Unity Catalog
Governance is no longer just about locking things down – it’s about enabling secure, governed access and collaboration at scale. In this session, we’ll dive into Unity Catalog and how it powers open and secure data + AI governance across cloud platforms.
Oleg Drobek
Xorbix Software Engineer
Mosaic AI Gateway
This presentation will introduce Databricks’ Mosaic AI Gateway as a unified solution for governing and building with diverse AI models and providers. We will explore how the gateway streamlines development, improves security, and provides comprehensive observability. A practical demonstration will then illustrate the power of the Mosaic AI Gateway in a simulated real-world use case.
Agenda:
5:30PM to 6:30PM – Presentations
6:30PM to 7:30PM – Social Hour

Wisconsin Databricks User Group: LakeBase: Operational OLTP Database
2025-09-16 17:00 - 19:00 UTC | Wantable Cafe, 123 East Walker Street, Milwaukee, 53204, United States
Virtual Option
Can’t attend in person? No problem, we’ll also be streaming an online webinar from the event. Click below to register:

Virtual Registration

Overview

Featured Speakers
Tyler Faulkner
Xorbix – Software and Data Engineer II
Topics: LakeBase: Operational OLTP Database
Getting LakeBase Up and Running: Walk through spinning up a fully managed Postgres instance on Databricks—show the one-click setup, workspace integration, and how you can jump straight into Databricks SQL (and pgAdmin) for instant queries.
Unity Catalog ↔ LakeBase Sync: Demonstrate two-way synchronization—pull Delta Lake tables into Postgres with optional indexes, then push updated feature or model data back into Unity Catalog for consistent, governed analytics.
Deep Integration with Databricks Apps: Highlight how LakeBase plugs directly into Databricks Apps to power fast, secure operational applications—feature serving, state management, and real-time insights all under one roof.
Upcoming Features & Q&A: Discuss upcoming features such as database branching for safe schema experiments, and autoscaling compute. Then, open the floor for questions on operationalizing LakeBase in your stack.
Use Case Presentation:
Fred Heller
Hitachi Solutions America – Senior Director Data Science & AI
Data to Decisions – Business value through Databricks Data Intelligence
Transform data into outcomes with the power of unified analytics and AI in today’s data-rich and insight-poor environment, organizations struggle to turn fragmented data into actionable business outcomes. This talk explores how Databricks empowers enterprises to solve domain-specific problems by unifying data engineering, analytics, and AI on a single platform. We will highlight real-world use cases across industries.
Agenda:
5:30PM to 5:35PM – Introduction
5:35PM to 6:00PM – Use Case Presentation and Q/A
6:00PM to 6:30PM – LakeBase Presentation
6:30PM to 7:00PM – Questions Networking
In-person and Virtual attendance options

Wantable Cafe
123 East Walker Street,
Milwaukee, WI 53204

Wisconsin Databricks User Group: Serverless for Notebooks, Jobs, and DLT
2025-08-19 17:30 - 19:30 UTC
Overview

Featured Speakers
Ryan Shiva
Xorbix Software and Data Engineer II and Databricks MVP
Use Case Presentation: More information to follow
Topics:

Databricks Serverless
– Ryan Shiva will present recent enhancements to Serverless on Databricks, including new performance optimizations and the introduction of Standard mode for cost-conscious workloads. Learn how serverless automatically manages infrastructure while continuously improving performance and efficiency.
– Explore the expanded cost management capabilities for Serverless, including improved cost visibility, budget controls, and upcoming features for managing user access and spending limits.
– Q&A and Discussion: Open forum for questions about serverless computing and best practices for your organization.

Agenda:
5:30PM to 6:00PM – Networking
6:00PM to 6:20PM – Use Case Presentation
6:20PM to 7:20PM – Databricks Serverless Presentation
7:20PM to 7:30PM – Questions and wrap up

Wisconsin Databricks User Group
2025-07-24 17:00 - 19:00 UTC | Wantable Cafe, 123 East Walker Street, Milwaukee, 53204, United States
Overview

Featured Speakers
Ben Schmirler
Xorbix Director Data and AI
Phil Salm
Databricks Senior Solutions Architect

Topics:
Databricks: Data + AI Summit Insights
Hot off the presses Announcements from Databricks.

Agenda:
5:00PM to 5:30PM – Networking
5:30PM to 6:00PM – Product Updates
6:00PM to 6:30PM – Databricks Apps Overview
6:30PM to 7:00PM – Apps Demo

Wantable Cafe
123 East Walker Street,
Milwaukee, WI 53204

Summerfest Tech 2025
2025-06-24 09:00 - 11:00 UTC
Summerfest Tech 2025

Xorbix Technologies Inc is collaborating with Databricks for a Tech Ed Course – AI in Supply Chain Hands-on Workshop

Summerfest Tech Website registration: https://store.summerfest.com/2025-summerfest-tech-ed-courses
Led by Uttaran Banerjee, Sr. Solutions Architect at Databricks and Gaurav Sharma, Solutions Architect at Databricks
The delivery of goods across a global distribution network is highly costly and logistically complex. Manufacturers can use data and AI to address these operational challenges to maintain competitiveness and profitability in the marketplace. With the Databricks Lakehouse for Manufacturing, organizations can:

Use linear programming (LP) to optimize product distribution at scale
Train models to predict supply and demand of products
Leverage Apache SparkTM to easily speed up model training on Pandas DataFrames

Workshops Tuesday, June 24th, 2025, 9AM – 11AM and 2PM – 4PM
Meet our team to discuss the future of AI!

Accelerating ML Workflows with Databricks
2025-05-20 17:30 - 19:30 UTC | MSOE Dwight and Dian Diercks Computational Science Hall Building, 1025 N Milwaukee Street, Room DH445, Milwaukee, WI, 53202, United States
Overview

Featured Speaker
Tyler Faulkner
Certified Databricks Professional

Accelerating ML Workflows with Databricks

Tyler’s presentation will take you on a journey through cutting-edge innovations in machine learning workflows and model management. Whether you’re an experienced data scientist, an ML engineer, or just diving into the world of AI, this session will equip you with the tools and techniques to streamline processes, enhance productivity, and maintain robust model performance. Prepare to uncover actionable insights and best practices that will simplify even the most complex challenges in the field.

End-to-End Experiment Tracking: Gain insights into logging runs, parameters, metrics, and artifacts with MLflow. Learn how this comprehensive system ensures reproducible comparisons across experiments, fostering transparency and collaboration in machine learning workflows.
Unified Feature Store & Serving: Discover how to streamline model development by building scikit-learn pipelines, registering models, and deploying them effortlessly as REST or SQL endpoints. Say goodbye to managing complex infrastructure with this out-of-the-box solution designed for scalability and ease of use.
Proactive Drift Monitoring: Explore cutting-edge techniques for maintaining model performance. Learn how to automatically profile inference data, detect distribution shifts, and trigger timely alerts using Lakehouse Monitoring. Empower your team to stay ahead of challenges with early detection and adaptive responses.

Q&A and Discussion
Ask questions about Accelerating ML Workflows or anything else covered in today’s meeting.

5:30PM – 6:30PM – Tyler Faulkner’s presentation
6:30PM – 7:30PM – Networking

AI Agents in Databricks
2025-04-22 17:30 - 19:30 UTC | MSOE Dwight and Dian Diercks Computational Science Hall Building, 1025 N Milwaukee Street, Room DH445, Milwaukee, WI, 53202, United States
Overview

Featured Speaker
Ryan Shiva
Certified Databricks Professional
Databricks MVP

AI Agents in Databricks Presentation and Live Demo
Ryan Shiva will demonstrate how Databricks is revolutionizing the development and deployment
of AI Agents:

Compound AI Systems: Learn what makes these systems different from traditional AI models and how they work together

Mosaic AI Agent Framework: See how this framework makes it easier to build and manage AI agents

Tools & Integration: Learn how to use Unity Catalog functions as tools for AI agents – making them easy to find, manage, and share

Live Demo: Set up an AI agent to analyze data and make decisions using natural language

Q&A and Discussion
Ask questions about AI agents or anything else covered in today’s meeting.

5:30PM – 6:30PM – Ryan Shiva’s presentation
6:30PM – 7:30PM – Networking
This User Group is sponsored by Xorbix Technologies and Databricks.

Generative AI
2024-12-05 17:30 - 19:30 UTC | Suite 108, 1225 Discovery Pkwy, Wauwatosa, WI, 53226, United States
Online Webinar

Can’t attend in person? No problem, we’ll also be streaming an online webinar from the event. Click below to register:

Virtual Event

Overview
Nikhil Gupta: Databricks Solutions Architect is our Featured Speaker. In his session, we will dive deep into the Generative AI capabilities offered by the Databricks Mosaic AI Platform. The session will focus on empowering practitioners to design and develop robust Gen AI applications by leveraging a range of powerful tools and techniques, including Prompt Engineering, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Fine-tuning techniques and Pre-Training.

Prompt Engineering
Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
Fine Tuning Techniques
Pre-Training

Tyler Faulkner: Xorbix Technologies Certified Databricks Professional is our Keynote Speaker. He will give a presentation on the capabilities and applications of Generative AI within Databricks. The session will cover the range of pre-built models available, steps for deploying them, and an explanation of token-based billing for cost management. It will also explore techniques for fine-tuning models, using vector stores to implement Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and discuss the differences between proprietary models like OpenAI’s and open-source alternatives such as LLAMA. Additionally, the presentation will highlight real-life and industry use cases of GenAI applications, offering a practical perspective on leveraging these technologies effectively.

Prebuilt models, deployment, token-based billing:
RAG
Proprietary Models – OpenAI
Open-Source – LLAMA
Real Life and Industry Use Cases

This meetup is designed for data professionals, analysts, and anyone interested in learning more about Databricks and its GenAI. Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your knowledge and network with fellow data enthusiasts!
This User Group is sponsored by Xorbix Technologies and Databricks.

Exploring Databricks Unity Catalog
2024-10-17 17:30 - 19:30 UTC | Suite 108, 1225 Discovery Pkwy, Wauwatosa, WI, 53226, United States
Overview

Welcome to our Wisconsin Databricks User Group, Unity Catalog, meetup! In this session, we’ll dive deep into the cutting-edge developments within the Unity Catalog ecosystem. Xorbix’s own Databricks Professional: Ryan Shiva, will guide us through a series of groundbreaking advancements that are reshaping the landscape of data governance and analytics. From the open-sourcing of Unity Catalog to the introduction of AI-powered features like AI/BI Genie, we’ll explore how these innovations are enhancing data management across clouds, formats, and platforms. We’ll also examine the new Lakehouse Federation capability and other recent Unity Catalog features that are set to revolutionize how organizations handle their data assets. Join us for an informative journey where Ryan will explore the latest advancements in Unity Catalog and its ecosystem.

Agenda:

Open-source Unity Catalog: Understand the implications of Databricks open-sourcing their unified governance solution for data and AI across clouds, data formats, and platforms.
AI/BI Genie: Discover how this conversational AI feature enables business users to interact with their data using natural language, enhancing self-service analytics while maintaining governance.
Lakehouse Federation: Learn about this powerful capability that allows users to discover, query, and govern data across multiple platforms within the Databricks environment.
New Unity Catalog Features: Ryan will showcase additional recent enhancements to Unity Catalog, demonstrating how they improve data governance, accessibility, and management.
Q&A and Discussion: Open forum for attendees to ask questions about Unity Catalog and other Databricks features discussed during the meeting.

This meetup is designed for data professionals, analysts, and anyone interested in learning more about Databricks and its Unity Catalog feature. Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your knowledge and network with fellow data enthusiasts!
This User Group is sponsored by Xorbix Technologies and Databricks.

Exploring Data Warehousing
2024-09-12 17:30 - 19:30 UTC | Suite 108, 1225 Discovery Pkwy, Wauwatosa, WI, 53226, United States
NO COST MEETING EVENT
Food and refreshments will be provided
Featured Speakers:
Asif Bakar – Founder CEO of Xorbix Technologies
Tyler Faulkner – Software Developer
Andrew McQueen – Data Scientist
Wisconsin Databricks User Group Meetup: Data Warehousing
Join the Wisconsin Databricks User Group on September 12th for in-depth overview of the many different data warehousing features available on Databricks. Andrew McQueen, Data Scientist at Xorbix, and Tyler Faulkner, Software Developer at Xorbix, will guide you through the Databricks SQL, Dashboards, and more.
Highlights include:

Data Processing and Analytics: Learn how Databricks facilitates robust data processing workflows. We’ll explore the platform’s analytics and dashboarding capabilities, enabling you to visualize data and derive meaningful insights.
Genie Introduction: We’ll introduce Databricks Genie, a new and innovative AI assistant within the Databricks ecosystem and discuss its role in quickly providing new insights and democratizing data.
Using Databricks with External BI Tools: See how Databricks seamlessly integrates with external applications, allowing for more flexible and powerful data workflows.

This meetup is designed for data professionals, analysts, and anyone interested in leveraging Databricks for data warehousing and analytics. Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your knowledge and network with fellow data enthusiasts!
This User Group is sponsored by Xorbix Technologies and Databricks.
Location: 1225 Discovery Pkwy, Suite 108, Wauwatosa, WI 53226

Databricks Data + AI Summit 2024 Insights
2024-08-01 17:30 - 19:30 UTC | Suite 108, 1225 Discovery Pkwy, Wauwatosa, WI, 53226, United States
NO COST MEETING EVENT
Food and refreshments will be provided
Featured Speakers:
Asif Bakar – Founder CEO of Xorbix Technologies
Ryan Shiva – Software Engineer
#Wisconsin Databricks User Group Meetup: Databricks Data+AI Summit 2024 Insights
Join the Wisconsin Databricks User Group on August 1st for a recap of the recent Data+AI Summit 2024 in San Francisco. Asif Bakar, CEO of Xorbix Technologies, and Ryan Shiva, software developer at Xorbix, will share their firsthand experiences and insights from this groundbreaking event.
Highlights include:

Keynote Overview: Asif will discuss high-level announcements, including the Databricks-NVIDIA partnership and the Tabular acquisition. Learn about how Databricks’ new partnerships and collaborations aim to accelerate enterprise data for the era of generative AI and optimize data and AI workloads using NVIDIA’s GPU acceleration.

Deep Dive Sessions: Ryan will explore cutting-edge technologies and features:

LlamaParse: Revolutionizing document parsing for advanced RAG. Discover how this GenAI-native platform can enhance your LLM application performance by ensuring high-quality data input.

RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation): Enhancing LLM capabilities by combining generative power with external knowledge retrieval for more accurate and contextually aware responses.

GenAI Hackathon: Ryan will discuss his experience competing in the GenAI Hackathon at Data+AI Summit. Learn how innovative applications and solutions can be built using Databricks and the latest GenAI models.

Unity Catalog: Open-sourcing data and AI governance. Explore the industry’s first unified solution for governance across clouds, data formats, and platforms, emphasizing flexibility and control without vendor lock-in.

This meetup is perfect for Databricks professionals and enthusiasts looking to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving world of data and AI. Gain insights into how these advancements can be applied to your own projects and workflows.
Don’t miss this opportunity to connect, collaborate, and gain valuable insights into Databricks’ latest innovations. Whether you’re a data scientist, engineer, or business professional, this event promises to provide actionable knowledge to enhance your data and AI strategies.
Agenda Items​

5:30PM – 5:40PM

Welcome, Introductions, Databricks event Overview – Dinner – Keynote Overview

Asif Bakar

5:45PM – 6:00PM

Llama Parse

Ryan Silva

6:05PM – 6:20PM

Rag

Ryan Silva

6:25PM – 6:45PM

Hackathon

Ryan Silva

6:50PM – 7:10PM

Unity Catalog Improvements

Ryan Silva

7:15PM – 7:30PM

Questions and Closing Comments

Asif

This User Group is sponsored by Xorbix Technologies and Databricks

Databricks Data + AI User Group Meeting
2024-06-06 17:30 - 19:30 UTC | Suite 108, 1225 Discovery Pkwy, Wauwatosa, WI, 53226, United States
NO COST MEETING EVENT
Food and refreshments will be provided
Featured Speakers:
Asif Bakar – Founder CEO of Xorbix Technologies
Ryan Shiva – Software Engineer
Tyler Faulkner – Software Engineer
This workshop is designed to collaborate, educate, and connect with Databricks professionals and enthusiasts. Join local leading Databricks experts and explore how data intelligence enables every organization to harness the power of Gen AI on their own data.
During this session, we will explore the key features of the Databricks free trial, including Unity Catalog, ETL, training ML models, Experiments and MLflow. We will ingest and refine data, organizing our ETL pipeline with multi-hop architecture to derive business-level aggregates. We’ll also touch upon the core functionalities for developing machine learning applications, such as MLflow.
Agenda Items​

5:30PM – 5:35PM
Welcome, Introductions, Databricks event Overview
Asif Bakar

5:35PM – 6:00PM
Dinner and Workspace set up
Ryan Shiva

6:00PM – 6:25PM
Unified Governance with Unity Catalog
Ryan Shiva and Tyler Faulkner

6:25PM – 6:55PM
ETL Medallion Architecture
Ryan Shiva and Tyler Faulkner

6:55PM – 7:25PM
Training and Logging a Machine Learning Model with MLflow
Ryan Shiva and Tyler Faulkner

7:25PM – 7:30PM
Closing Comments
Asif  Bakar

This User Group is sponsored by Xorbix Technologies and Databricks
