Data Mesh Belgium meetup #3: key takeaways
4th of June 2024 - We recently hosted the third successful Data Mesh Belgium meetup at the Google office in Brussels. Partnering with Google and co-host Peter Billen, the event brought together data enthusiasts and professionals to explore the latest advancements and insights in the field of data mesh.
Speakers of the third Data Mesh Belgium meetup
The event featured three expert speakers, each providing unique perspectives on data mesh implementation and experiences.
Steve Loh (Google) kicked-off the sessions with his talk "Implementing Data Mesh on Google Cloud: A Practical Guide." Steve delved into the principles of data mesh, and highlighted how Google Cloud services like BigQuery, Dataplex, and Looker can become building blocks when building a data mesh platform.
Tom De Wolf (ACA Group) shared interesting insights from the Flemish cultural sector. His talk, "Engineering a Data Mesh Platform for an Ecosystem Across Organisations," highlighted the challenges and successes of implementing a data mesh platform that supports multiple organizations. This real-world case study underscored the potential of data mesh in driving digital transformation within the cultural sector. The presentation took the audience on a journey through the need for data mesh, the data product developer and consumer experience, how platform engineering enabled it, and how the typical data mesh operating model is mapped across organisations.
Jean-Georges Perrin (AbeaData) concluded the expert talks. With his session, "We Built a Data Mesh at PayPal, Then Discovered That Data Contracts Were Essential," Jean-Georges shared valuable lessons from PayPal's data mesh journey, emphasizing the critical role of data contracts and the importance of standards like the Open Data Contract Standard (ODCS) from the Bitol project hosted by The Linux Foundation. Going from using data contracts, to defining data products, and meshing them up in a data mesh could be considered as an evolution path for your data management strategy. Having standard specifications for data contracts and data products in between the different tools enables better interoperability and composability of data mesh platforms.
Successful third Data Mesh Belgium meetup
The meetup was once again a great success, strengthening the awesome community of data professionals eager to share knowledge and collaborate on the future of data mesh. We look forward to seeing you at the next Data Mesh Belgium meetup!
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