Databricks Belfast Meetup!

Read time:
3 minutes

Meabh McMahon

On April 10th, we hosted our first Databricks Community Meetup in Belfast, and it couldn’t have gone better. A big thank you to everyone who came along and helped kick-start what we hope will grow into a regular and thriving space for sharing ideas, solving problems, and building connections around the Databricks community in Belfast. We had a great evening of drinks, talks and some insightful talks!

We’re creating a dedicated space in Belfast for data professionals, engineers, and analysts to connect, collaborate, and explore the full potential of Databricks. As the platform behind the Lakehouse architecture, Databricks is reshaping how modern organisations manage data—bringing together data lakes, warehousing, governance, advanced analytics, machine learning, and AI in one unified environment. Whether you’re just getting started or already deep into Databricks, our community is here to share real-world insights, best practices, and drive innovation together.

Overview of Databricks

Dan Williams opened the evening with an overview of the platform, breaking down why Databricks matters more than ever. He talked about how the platform helps companies cut through the mess of disconnected tools—warehouses, ETL pipelines, streaming systems, BI dashboards, ML platforms—and replaces them with one unified Data & AI platform. Dan also pointed out how Databricks is helping clients tackle three key challenges: siloed data, the pressure of new governance demands (especially with generative AI), and the shortage of specialised talent in the data space. With features like Delta Lake for ACID reliability and Unity Catalog for consistent governance, Databricks is shaping up to be a go-to solution for businesses trying to scale their data capabilities while keeping costs and risks down.

Delta Lake and AI

Next up, Ciarán Ó Donnaile got a bit more technical, walking us through a live example using real GB electricity demand data from to show how Delta Lake works in action. He demonstrated how Delta provides centralised, versioned storage with strong data guarantees—something that’s often missing from traditional data lake setups. From creating and updating Delta tables to enabling efficient queries and using advanced features like Liquid Clustering, Ciarán highlighted how this tech is already helping our clients build more consistent, reliable, and reproducible data pipelines.

We wrapped things up with Gary Davies, who gave a great insight into how we’re applying AI internally at Data Intellect—from improving internal workflows to exploring opportunities with generative AI. It was a reminder that AI isn’t just something that happens in research labs; it’s something we can apply right now to solve real business problems.

We had a lot of great conversations, some excellent questions, and valuable feedback that we’re already using to plan the next meetup.

More meetups coming soon—watch this space!