Tech Events by Data Bristol

with Elena Hensinger Schien (Speaker, Data Bristol)

Data Bristol and Girl Geek Dinners run a joint evening at Runway East, with talks, pizza and a pub afterwards. Dr Elena Hensinger Schien speaks on data governance in practice inside an SME: the version of governance that has to work without a dedicated team behind it. A second talk at 19:45 was still to be confirmed at the time of listing, as were full speaker bios. Meet and greet from 18:00, first talk from 18:25, pizza and networking at 19:15, social from 20:30. Free. Sponsors include Snap Analytics, Advancing Analytics, Amdaris and iO Associates. The organisers ask attendees not to photograph each other. Why go: governance talks are usually given by people at organisations big enough to have a policy for it, and hearing it from the SME end is more use to most of Bristol. Best for data engineers, analysts and anyone who has been handed data governance as a side task.

Data Bristol's annual Christmas social: no talks and no sponsor pitch, just the city's data crowd in one pub for an evening before the holidays. The group normally runs evening talks on Microsoft Fabric, SQL Server and Databricks at iO Associates. This one is at Left Handed Giant brewpub in Finzels Reach, 7pm to 10pm, hosted by Dom W. with James C Yarrow and Anna-Maria Wykes. The pub doesn't take reservations, so look for the Data Bristol sign on the tables; if it's full they'll move somewhere nearby. Pizza is usually on and you buy your own drinks, with non-alcoholic options available. Free to register. Why go: the easiest way into Bristol's data and analytics community, and the right one if you meant to come to a talk night this year and never did. Best for data engineers, analysts and BI people.

Two talks on modern BI practice. Microsoft MVP Prathy Kamasani (Data Nova) shows an AI agent building a real Power BI semantic model and report in Microsoft Fabric from a written spec, including a mistake it made, and explains how to brief an agent, set a quality bar and review its output before trusting it. Johnny Winter (Greyskull Analytics) then covers designing star schemas collaboratively with business users so models are fit for self-service. Meet and greet from 18:00, talks at 18:30 and 19:45 with pizza and networking in between, then the pub from 20:30. Hosted and sponsored by recruiter iO Associates at St Bartholomew's House. Free. No photos of attendees. Why go: an honest look at where agentic BI still needs a human, from someone who runs the London Fabric user group. Best for Power BI developers, analytics engineers and data leads.

Data Bristol's September evening at iO Associates on St Bartholomew's House, sponsored and hosted by the tech recruitment specialists. Two sessions: an introduction to fabric-toolbox and why it matters if you work in the Microsoft Fabric ecosystem, and a walkthrough of Data API Builder for standing up database APIs quickly. Doors and networking from 18:00, talks from 18:30. Aimed at data engineers, analytics engineers and BI developers. Free.

Bristol's flagship data community meetup — 2,700+ members, monthly fixture. Speakers TBC at time of curation. Hosted at iO Associates on Lewins Mead. Friendly mix of data engineers, analysts, data scientists and data-curious developers. Data Bristol consistently attracts strong speaker quality and is one of the best places to stay current in data practice.