Conferences

Below is a collection of conferences where I’ve presented, along with talk titles.

Recent Presentations Link to heading

1. DevTalks Romania 2024 Link to heading

Talk: Balancing Innovation with Regulation: How EU Policies Are Shaping Better Technologists

Abstract:
The advent of the European Union’s new regulations, including the Data Act and the AI Act, ushers software and data architects into a new era of data management, demanding not just compliance but a fundamental shift towards advanced data architecture, governance, and ethical data handling.

Crucially, the forthcoming EU AI Act highlights the importance of transparency and safety in AI development, reinforcing the need for robust AI governance. These regulations collectively push the industry towards prioritizing interoperability, ethics, and safety—key components of sound data architecture and governance.

This talk explores how these EU directives represent not mere legal hurdles but valuable opportunities for technologists to lead in responsible, innovative technology development, emphasizing the pivotal role of data architecture and governance in this new landscape.

2. Big Data Europe 2023 Link to heading

Talk: 3-Step Path for Fixing Data Discoverability

Abstract:
Data-driven organizations rely on data catalogs to maintain an inventory of their data assets. Imagine you want to reduce customer churn and need data to analyze customer behavior. You might search for “customer behavior” or “customer churn” in the catalog and find 10 different datasets. You might ask, what’s next?

This is a common problem with catalogs—often data platform teams set one up without considering the whole user journey. Users end up wasting time that could be spent on value-added work.

A valuable catalog can’t be a place where users passively explore data. Data engineers, data scientists, and data analysts need to explore quality metrics, SLOs, and semantic metadata—such as column meaning and connections to other assets. To make a catalog truly valuable, it should also enable data access requests and data exploration.

Search, request access, and explore—that’s the three-step process Arne outlines in this talk, based on real-world experience, to help organizations get closer to trustworthy data.

3. Software Architecture Summit at Bucharest Tech Week Link to heading

Talk: Behind the Curtain: The Magic of a Data Platform
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Abstract:
Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais advocate that platforms should be a designed and curated experience for engineers. Using them should feel like magic—everything should just work, and engineers should feel more productive.

Yet, building platforms can be messy. Having been part of multiple data platform implementations, I’ve seen many anti-patterns: teams focusing on individual services and forgetting the big picture, or creating unnecessary dependencies between teams.

This talk explains how organizations fail when building data platforms, and how to overcome these challenges by architecting with a product mindset.

4. XConf Europe 2022 Link to heading

Talk: Managing Cognitive Load in Data-Intensive Projects
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5. Swiss Testing Day 2022 Link to heading

Talk: What Can Go Wrong With Testing an ETL Pipeline?

Abstract:
As businesses strive to make data-driven decisions, software engineers are building increasingly complex data-intensive applications. Many are transitioning from traditional software development into data engineering.

But when it comes to testing, the lessons learned from decades of software development are often forgotten. Engineers might worry about generating synthetic data for testing, while the real concern should be building high-quality systems that meet user needs.

This talk explores how a testing strategy evolved in one analytics project I worked on—and how we learned many lessons the hard way.

6. DevDays Europe 2022 Link to heading

Talk: What Can Go Wrong With Testing an ETL Pipeline?
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7. XConf Europe 2021 Link to heading

Talk: Building Reliable Data Pipelines Without Access to Real Data
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