Inaugural BAD meetup

Join us for the inaugural edition of the Barcelona AI & Data Systems (BAD) Meetup kindly hosted by Microsoft. BAD is a community-driven forum for deep technical conversations at the intersection of AI and data systems.
Barcelona is rapidly emerging as a hub for cutting-edge work across academia, startups, and large-scale enterprises. This meetup brings these worlds together to foster collaboration, learning, and real-world impact.
Agenda:
11:00am-11:10am - Welcome/Intro
11:10am-11:40am - Flavio Junqueira, CTO, Qbeast
11:40am-12:10pm - Carlo Curino, Research Director (Microsoft)
12:10am-12:40pm - Ernest Teniente, Director inLab FIB (UPC)
12:40pm-13:00pm - Feedback/thoughts
13:00pm-14:30pm - Lunch/Social Hour (food provided)
This meetup focuses on the architecture, operation, and evolution of AI-native large-scale cloud data systems—systems where intelligence is embedded not only in models, but in the platforms and operations that build, run, monitor, and continuously improve data-intensive services. Key topics include:
·       Distributed data processing and large-scale analytics platforms
·       Cloud data infrastructure and warehouses
·       Database engines and open data ecosystems
·       Graph and large-scale analytics systems
·       AI-ready data platforms and real-time pipelines
·       End-to-end lifecycle of intelligent systems in production environments