Apache Spark Belgium Meetup - January 2026

🔥 Apache Spark Belgium Meetup - January 2026 Edition

📅 Thursday, January 22, 2026
📍 Dataminded HQ, Vismarkt 17, Leuven
🕠 17:30 – 20:00 CET

Join us for the first Apache Spark Belgium Meetup of 2026!

This edition focuses on practical challenges and optimizations in Spark — from understanding distributed execution to reducing your compute bill.

Whether you're a data engineer, platform architect, or someone wrangling costs and performance in large-scale data pipelines — this one’s for you.

🎤 Talks & Speakers

1. Distributed Computing Unpacked
🗣️ Meni Shmueli — Co-founder & CEO at DataFlint
Distributed computing — especially with Apache Spark — can feel unnecessarily complex, but under the hood it's a beautiful system of trade-offs. In this talk, Meni walks through how distributed engines optimize for speed, fault tolerance, and scalability — and how understanding these mechanics can help you fix real-world performance issues in your Spark jobs.

2. A Practical Guide to Tame Your Spark Costs
🗣️ Niels Claeys — Lead Data Engineer & Partner at Dataminded
Running Spark jobs at scale? You’ve probably seen the bills. In this session, Niels shares practical techniques for diagnosing costly jobs, reducing waste, and designing Spark pipelines that stay efficient under pressure — without sacrificing performance.

🗓️ Agenda

17:30 – 18:00 | Welcome, 🍕 pizza & drinks
18:00 – 18:05 | Introduction
18:05 – 18:40 | Talk 1 + Q&A: Distributed Computing Unpacked
18:40 – 19:10 | Talk 2 + Q&A: Taming Your Spark Costs
19:10 – 20:00 | Networking & hallway chats