Announcing The Practical Data Summit 2027

“Robert Redford gathers a group of colleagues and friends at Sundance, Utah, to examine if an institute could be created that reasserts the importance of craft, story, and the human being in the art and business of making movies.” Let’s build the same thing for data and AI.

Most conferences have turned into glorified trade shows with a bored audience. You know the drill: aggressive badge scans, vendor demos disguised as technical talks, and swag lines longer than the Q&A.

We’re not doing that.

The Practical Data Summit 2027 is built around one principle- Signal over noise. Implementation over inspiration.

Heavy-hitting keynotes: Keynotes from the heavy-hitters who are building things, and the future of our industry, not just generically pontificating about it.

Hands-on build tracks: Full-day, deep-dive technical sessions where you actually build solutions and solve production bottlenecks alongside the engineers building the tools. Zero pitch decks allowed. All substance encouraged.

Closed-door leader roundtables: Candid, Chatham House-style working sessions for Heads, Directors, and VPs navigating real architectural debt, budget trade-offs, and team topology—not sitting through high-level platitudes.

No expo floor: No booths, no hawking.

What’s the catch?: To keep the event hyper-focused, attendance is capped and strictly by application or invitation. We aren’t trying to fill a convention center. Frankly, it’s a very small event in a very lovely place. Instead, we’re curating a room where every single conversation is worth your time. Plus, you can ski/snowboard the “Greatest Snow on Earth” in Utah after the event is finished.

When: End of January 2027. We start with workshops on the 27th, the event on the 28th and 29th, and the weekend to enjoy skiing or snowboarding.

Where: Salt Lake City, Utah USA

If you spend your days building platforms, wrestling with analytics/data/AI engineering, deploying models that actually need to work in production, or leading the teams doing the heavy lifting…

More details soon...

Pre-register here

Thanks,

Joe Reis

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.