DATA festival
Program Details
- Jump to:
- data.stage
- festival.stage
data.stage
June 16th 2026, 10:00 – 10:30 am
Opening Keynote - Shaping the future together
Join our annual Keynote of the DATA festival Founders Alexander Thamm and Carsten Bange deliver their annual reality check on Europe’s data and AI landscape. From data strategy to data culture – what separates pilots from production?
This talk cuts through GenAI hype to spotlight what truly drives value: modernized data platforms, trusted data governance, and teams empowered to act on insights. Alex and Carsten reveal where data initiatives succeed, where they fail, and what leaders must prioritize NOW to turn data into competitive advantage.
June 16th 2026, 10:45 – 11:15 am
What happens AROUND the tech stack? Tech is Easy. Change is Not.
This session aims to provide a comprehensive overview of Generative AI’s journey so far, offering valuable insights and lessons learned. Whether you’re a business leader, technologist, or AI enthusiast, this presentation will equip you with the knowledge to navigate and leverage the evolving world of Generative AI effectively.
Nina Indina, Program Director Digital Twin | ETH Zurich
June 16th 2026, 11:15 – 11:45 am
From slides to systems: Lessons learned from implementing AI governance in a decentral global organisation
Alexandra Wander, Program Manager Responsible AI | Zeiss Group
Alexandra Wander is Responsible AI Program Manager at ZEISS. She leads the company’s global AI governance strategy with the ZEISS Responsible AI Office, bridging compliance, technology and culture to ensure trustworthy AI at scale. An aerospace engineer by training, she previously worked on autonomous systems in space, on the street and on rails before turning her focus to governing AI on Earth. Passionate about responsible innovation, she advocates for AI that advances both technology and trust.
June 16th 2026, 11:45 am – 12:15 pm
The AI Act Reference Architecture: A Practical Blueprint - from Law to System Design
The EU AI Act is about to reshape how we design and operate intelligent systems — and software architecture sits right at the center of this shift. This talk explores how to build AI solutions that are compliant by design, using architectural patterns that enforce transparency, traceability, and governance without slowing teams down. We’ll look at how to structure domains, data flows, and decision points so that risk classification, documentation, and monitoring become natural outputs of the system, not last-minute compliance work. You’ll also see how Domain-Driven Design and event-driven architectures help organizations embed safety, explainability, and accountability into their AI products. Whether you’re an architect, product owner, or engineering leader, this session will show you how to turn regulation into an accelerator — not an obstacle. Join to learn how future-proof architecture can make the EU AI Act a strategic advantage.
Dr. Nikita Golovko, Portfolio Architect (Industrial AI) | Siemens
Dr. Nikita Golovko is a Solution Architect with 16+ years designing scalable, secure, cost-effective architectures for industrial and mission-critical systems. With an academic ML background, he bridges cutting-edge AI with shop-floor reality, translating business needs into robust designs and aligning cross-functional teams. He focuses on AI, IoT, and edge to drive sustainable improvement and is writing a book on managing technical debt through culture and decision frameworks.
June 16th 2026, 12:15 – 12:45 pm
A PPT on AI
This talk is a slightly humorous take on our journey of enabling AI adoption within a large, decentralized organization, detailing the kinds of challenges we faced and how we tried to overcome it in creative ways!
ome aspects that I hope to cover are as follows:
- Winning over the legal/compliance team to be on your side
- Helping business users understand what the hell “Thinking” mode and when they should be using ChatGPT Canvas!
- Effectively collaborating with the “AI consultants” that an executive decides to hire
- Adjusting expectations by answering the question, “Why can’t your fancy AI not do this!!!”
Sidharth Ramachandran, Senior Director | RTL
I’m passionate about leveraging AI and machine learning to solve real-world challenges. As a tech leader, author, and educator, I strive to make complex concepts accessible and actionable.
June 16th 2026, 02:15 – 02:45 pm
Building AI Agents on Solid Ground - Context Engineering Explained By a Hands-on Use Case
Jacqueline Bloemen, Senior Analyst Data & Analytics | BARC
June 16th 2026, 02:45 – 03:15 pm
The Future is Conversational: Bosch's Integrated Data Product Ecosystem with Generative AI
Explore Bosch’s journey integrating Generative AI into a holistic data product ecosystem. Discover how we’re building conversational interfaces and democratizing data access to unlock new possibilities for innovation and efficiency.
Wolfgang Klein, Director Data-as-a-Service | Robert Bosch Group
Simeon Rilling, Chief Product Owner for the Data Mesh Ecosystem | Robert Bosch Group
June 16th 2026, 03:15 – 03:45 pm
From Solo Agents to Agentic Ecosystems: Enabling Production-Ready AI for the Energy Transition
The rise of Agentic AI marks a shift from single-task copilots to multi-agent ecosystems that can collaborate, reason, and act within enterprise environments. In the energy sector, this evolution is critical: agents need not only intelligence but also interoperability with trusted data foundations and enterprise systems to become production-ready. In this talk, we’ll explore how to move beyond isolated experiments with single agents toward scalable, multi-agent architectures that can optimize grid operations, accelerate decarbonization, and empower customers. We’ll highlight the role of data governance, orchestration, and integration in making agentic AI safe, reliable, and impactful for the energy transition.
Kapil Gupta, Chief Data Technologist | E.ON
June 16th 2026, 03:45 – 04:45 pm
Panel discussion
Building AI on Solid Ground: Shared Vision, Strong Foundation, and Evolving Roles in the Enterprise
This panel explores how enterprises can build AI on solid ground by aligning a shared vision, strengthening data and platform foundations, and developing the engineering teams necessary for sustainable impact. Industry leaders and top analysts in Data & AI will join to share lessons from large-scale transformations across complex organizations and platforms.
The discussion will center on three pillars: how a unifying vision for Data & AI fosters collaboration across domains; why semantic consistency, data product architecture, and interoperable platforms are essential to integrating heterogeneous landscapes into an enterprise-ready data mesh; and which inhouse engineering skills, evolving roles, and team capabilities are required to move from maintaining isolated systems to building future-ready, responsible, and high-performing data and AI organizations.
Moderator: Katrin Botzen, Henkel AG & Co. KGaA
june 16th 2026, from 06:45 pm
Food, Drinks & Aperitif Muffathalle & Beergarden
The evening event kicks off at 6:45 PM, offering the perfect chance for all attendees, discussion partners, sponsors and experts to come together, enjoy delicious food and refreshing drinks, and groove to the tunes in a clubbing atmosphere. It’s going to be an amazing night! This is set to be a chill evening, dedicated to sparking conversations, connecting with others and sharing ideas in a welcoming atmosphere that encourages networking and building new relationships! Join us for a night filled with unforgettable interactions and meaningful exchanges – and dancing is allowed, so get ready to let loose! We’re so excited to welcome you!
DAY 2
June 17th 2026, 09:05 – 09:30 am
We make AI take off – on the Rails
How can an infrastructure that is up to 150 years old be combined with artificial intelligence?
In their presentation, Dr. Nina Stumme, Head of Data Management, Analytics and AI at DB InfraGO, and Florian Dohmann, Founder & CEO of the AI agency Birds on Mars, will show how the digital representation – the “Google Maps” of DB’s rail infrastructure – is already creating measurable value across various departments.
Examples include workforce planning, asset and maintenance management, condition monitoring, and investment planning. The digital twin integrates data from a wide range of sources, from IT systems to drones and sensors, as well as IoT and BIM data, linking them to geographic maps for 2D and 3D visualization. This creates a unique, intelligent, data-driven representation.
The presentation provides concrete insights into how AI delivers practical benefits – even in a complex, historically evolved infrastructure like the rail network – and offers inspiration for how technical transformation can succeed in other organizations as well.
Dr. Nina Stumme, Head of Data Management, Analytics and AI | DB InfraGO AG
June 17th 2026, 09:45 – 10:15 am
Turning Data Strategy into Reality through strategic data enablement
A data strategy looks great on paper, but bringing it to life for real business impact? That’s where the real challenge begins. This presentation details our company’s practical journey in tackling that challenge, establishing and operationalizing our data strategy with real-world experiences, including early failures and key learnings.
We will explore the core components of our approach, focusing on strategic orchestration via program and change management, building a robust data enablement framework, and implementing clear metrics to measure success. You’ll learn how we created structures to empower teams alongside central units, hear about our significant wins, gain practical tips for operationalizing data strategy, and get a glimpse into our future plans.
Saru Malhotra, Team Lead Data & Analytics Strategy | Mobile.de
Saru is a seasoned business intelligence and data leader, dedicated to driving initiatives that empower organizations through data and insights. With extensive experience in bridging the gaps between business, product, and technology (data) through strong cross-functional collaboration.
As an experienced leader of data teams, Saru focuses on enablement and strategy, ensuring that data initiatives align with business goals and drive meaningful results. Saru has a proven track record in various functional domains, including healthcare, sales, finance, operations, e-commerce, and retail.
A strong believer in ‘getting things done,’ [Your Name] consistently delivers impactful solutions and drives progress through effective data leadership.
June 17th 2026, 10:15 – 10:45 am
Agentic and AI Delivery - setup for success
Frank Fischer, Head of Analytics Engineering CoE | ING Group
Eddie Kayiira, CPO Fastdata Analytics / Project Lead Predictive Monitoring | DB InfraGO AG
June 17th 2026, 11:15 – 11:45 am
All Aboard the AI Omnibus: Mind the Act While Accelerating Innovation
Julia Sterling | Commerzbank
June 17th 2026, 11:45 am – 12:15 pm
Driving Data + AI Literacy
Growing future-ready data communities of practice at scale with the new Henkel Data Clubhouse, an outcome-based operating model for Communities of Practice in the AI age. I would share what we have observed running 30+ disjoint data communities and what we are learning as we are setting up a governing and enabling body for these communities, the Henkel Data Clubhouse. Here, I would include an honest assessment of measures and strategies.
Florian Roscheck, Senior Data Scientist – Data & Analytics Strategy | Henkel
Florian Roscheck is a Senior Data Scientist in Henkel’s Data & Analytics Strategy team, where he focuses on the human side of enterprise AI: how a global organization of 47,000 can build habits, skills, and shared standards beyond single use cases. Partnering with teams across functions, he co-founded the Henkel Data Club (1,000+ members), a grassroots community of practice, and the Henkel Data & Analytics Blog. Florian’s work translates what teams discover in practice into shareable frameworks, so AI adoption becomes a strategic capability.
June 17th 2026, 01:45 pm – 02:15 pm
How the agents have colonized Carrefour
The agents have started to conquer the world in 2025. Carrefour has been invaded too! And it changes the way of working, interacting and our velocity on different topics.
Come to discover how it started, the different iteration and team impacted, and the plans for the future.
Learn the different steps, our pain points and the quick wins. And get back to work to start the agentic conquest in your team!
Guillaume Blaquiere, Group Data Architect | Carrefour
Guillaume is a Google Developer Expert on Cloud Platform since 2019 and works at Carrefour as Group Data Architect.
Java developer for more than 15 years, and despite positions of responsibilities, he has always kept his wish to create, develop, discover and test new solutions, especially in the Cloud, the machine learning or Python and Go language.
Innovation addict and Google Cloud 3x certified, writer and speaker in his free time, he’s fascinated by the serverless solution and all the “”usual”” problems that it solves.
June 17th 2026, 02:15 – 02:45 pm
From Silos to Synergies: The Journey to AI-Ready Reporting & Analytics
Boyana Torovado | BSH Hausgeräte GmbH
June 17th 2026, 03:15 pm – 03:45 pm
Beyond the Hype Curve: How to Survive the AI Bubble – Economic Reality meets Generative Infrastructure
In 2026, the AI bubble has transitioned from speculative euphoria to a “utility-first” economy. This session explores why the initial wave of massive, general-purpose LLMs hit an economic and technical ceiling in the “Data, Analytics, and CPM” market. We present the strategic pivot toward Generative Infrastructure and Solution Engineering: a landscape where Multi-Agent Systems spawn “just-in-time” environments, aiming to render traditional software layers obsolete for many use cases. However, survival in this new era requires a clear-eyed reality check. We analyze where AI still fails – specifically in complex, deterministic business logic and high-scale transactional systems – and why Context-Engineering remains the only way to bridge the gap between AI agility and enterprise-grade resilience and auditability.
Thomas Zeutschler, Senior Analyst Data & AI | BARC
Thomas is a BARC Fellow and Senior Analyst at BARC in the area of data & analytics. His focus is on modern data strategy, data lake(house)-based data management concepts, API-based process integration and in particular the definition, implementation and operationalization of data-driven business processes and business models.
festival.stage
festival.stage
The festival.stage highlights cutting-edge data and AI technologies from our sponsors, featuring practical success examples. Sponsors bring their customers to demonstrate how these innovations optimize daily operations and drive profitability. It’s a dynamic platform for exploring the latest advancements, networking, and discovering impactful solutions in data and AI.
More Information on this Agenda coming soon! – Stay tuned
Any questions? Contact us!
