Prior to this years event, we catch-up with Sam Basak, who led the Data track content review team, for a preview of what to expect.
Tell us a little about the Data track and how it fits into Devoxx UK.
The Data track at Devoxx UK spans everything from the systems and techniques used to collect, process, and store data, through to how organisations are using that data to enhance and evolve their products. Most of us hear the term “data-driven” in our day-to-day work, but when curating this track, we wanted to show what that really looks like end-to-end in practice.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Data track without addressing AI. While AI is a theme across the entire conference, here we’ve focused specifically on the practicalities – how to tune, evaluate, and measure models effectively in real-world systems.
Ultimately, the goal of the track is to give people a clearer picture of how modern data systems fit together, and the confidence to apply those ideas in their own work.
Data and AI are everywhere right now. What themes stood out most when reviewing submissions for this track?
Unsurprisingly, AI featured heavily across the submissions. What stood out, though, was a shift away from simply using models toward really understanding them. A lot of talks focused on going back to basics – explaining how models work, and then building on that to show how to tune and apply them effectively in real systems.
There was also some attention on how we evaluate and measure these systems in practice. While it’s easy to build something that looks impressive, there’s growing awareness that understanding how well it actually performs is an important part of being genuinely data-driven.
Beyond AI, it was great to see continued interest in the foundations, particularly databases. Vector databases in particular have been a popular topic over the past couple of years, and it’s clear they’re now moving beyond the hype and into more mature, production-ready use cases.
How are data systems evolving as AI becomes central to many applications?
AI is reshaping data systems in a few key ways. We’re seeing the rise of vector and embedding-based models alongside traditional databases, making similarity search and new indexing approaches increasingly important.
Retrieval is also becoming part of the application itself, with systems pulling in contextual data at runtime rather than relying on static datasets. At the same time, there’s a continued shift toward real-time and streaming architectures to support more responsive, AI-driven experiences.
What are the challenges in the data field at the minute?
One of the biggest challenges in the data field right now is balancing innovation with engineering practices. There’s a huge push around AI, but teams still need to build systems that are reliable and maintainable. Along with that, the scale and complexity of data is growing at an incredible rate. That brings challenges around performance and cost. With so many new opportunities, it can be difficult for teams to know what to adopt and when to adopt it.
What makes Devoxx UK so great in your opinion?
As someone with a background in education and industry, I know that sometimes work feels like hard work and I also have seen that this isn’t the best environment for learning and innovating. Devoxx UK doesn’t take itself too seriously, that combined with seriously brilliant speakers makes for a great environment for learning.
It also has the best corridor track of any conference I’ve been to, that combined with some great evening entertainment like the Devroxx Party and the Pub Quiz make it a really easy place to do some networking without it feeling like networking.
CHECK OUT ALL OF THIS YEAR’S DATA SESSIONS HERE
