Yesterday evening, we helped relaunch the Databricks User Group in Lisbon, bringing together practitioners, partners, customers and community members for a packed in-person session at Avila Spaces.
And when we say packed, we mean packed.
An incredible 85 people joined us on the night, completely filling the room and then some. It was a brilliant reminder that the data and AI community in Lisbon is not just growing. It is already full of curious, ambitious and genuinely practical people who want to learn from each other, share what they are building, and get beyond the usual slideware.
Which, as you can imagine, is very much our sort of crowd.
The evening focused on what teams need to know in Databricks right now, especially as more organisations look at how AI can move from interesting experiments into useful, reliable work.
The agenda included sessions from the Databricks team, a customer story from Databricks customer EDP, and a technical deep dive from our CTO and Databricks MVP, Simon Whiteley.
Across the evening, the talks covered:
More importantly, the conversations around the sessions were practical. People were asking the right questions: how this works in real organisations, how teams can scale it sensibly, and how to make AI useful without making everything feel wildly overcomplicated.
Exactly the kind of discussion a good user group should create.
A huge thank you to the team at Databricks for their collaboration in bringing the Lisbon User Group back to life.
Community events only work when people lean in properly, and this one came together because of the shared effort between Databricks, Advancing Analytics, the speakers, the organisers and everyone who showed up ready to contribute.
We are especially grateful to the speakers for sharing their time and experience, and to everyone who joined us for questions, discussion, food, drinks and plenty of hallway chat afterwards.
That last bit matters. The best ideas rarely happen when everyone is politely staring at a screen. They tend to happen when people are stood around afterwards saying, “we’ve got a similar problem”, “how did you solve that?”, or “can I pinch that idea?”. Professionally, of course.
This event also means a lot to us because Lisbon is becoming an important part of the next chapter for Advancing Analytics.
We are building our presence in Portugal, launching in Lisbon and opening an office soon. For us, that is not just about putting a pin on a map. It is about becoming part of the local data and AI community, supporting the people already doing great work here, and creating opportunities for consultants who want to build serious platforms, solve real client problems and keep learning alongside others.
Lisbon has a strong technical community, a growing Databricks ecosystem and a real appetite for practical data and AI delivery. That combination is exactly why we are investing here.
We want to help build something useful, open and long-lasting, not just turn up once, eat the pastries and leave. Tempting though the pastries are.
This is just the start.
Our plan is to keep supporting the Lisbon Databricks User Group and make it a regular place for practitioners to meet, learn and share what is actually happening on the ground.
The next Lisbon meetup will take place after Data + AI Summit, giving us a chance to bring back the most useful updates, announcements and ideas from the Databricks community and turn them into practical discussion for teams working in Portugal.
As always, we want these meetups to be welcoming, useful and grounded in real experience. No theatre. No buzzword bingo. Just good people sharing what they know and helping each other get better.
Join our User Group community to be the first to know about the next event.
As part of our growth in Portugal, we are also hiring for roles in Lisbon across Data Engineering and AI.
We are looking for people who enjoy building proper solutions for real customers, working with modern platforms like Databricks, and sharing what they learn with the wider community.
Current Lisbon opportunities include:
If you are based in Lisbon, or planning to be, and you want to work with a team that cares about delivery, learning and community, we would love to hear from you. All of our roles are hybrid.
To everyone who joined us for the relaunch, thank you.
Filling the room with 85 people was a brilliant start, but the best part was the energy in the conversations. Lisbon clearly has a strong Databricks community already, and we are excited to play our part in helping it grow.
See you at the next one after Data + AI Summit.