I spent the day at Big Data LDN at Olympia London on 23 September, and this year one thing was clear from the first session to the last. The conversation has moved on from “should we use AI?” to “how do we govern it and make it work at scale?”
On the stages
The speaker line-up was packed with leaders from Databricks, Boots UK, Compare the Market and Arm, and the same themes kept coming back: AI agents, data fabric and unified governance. Nobody was selling the idea of AI any more. The questions were about ownership, control and what it takes to run these systems properly once they are in production.
On the exhibition floor
I spent a good chunk of time in the Grand Hall and visited quite a few stands. Snowflake was busy all day with demos on data sharing, multi-cloud warehousing and data clean rooms. Google Cloud showed off BigQuery updates, serverless processing and their generative AI workspaces. Amazon Web Services focused on scalable storage, real-time analytics and ML infrastructure. MongoDB had plenty of developers gathered round their tools for building intelligent apps.
The people
The best part, as always, was the people. I had some great conversations with people shaping the future of AI and data, and a special shout out to Spencer Waller for a chat that was as insightful as any session on the agenda. Those are the moments that make these events worth it.
I left with new ideas, new connections and a long list of things to explore. Already looking forward to next year. If we met at Big Data LDN, let’s stay connected.
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