Come for the title, stay for the salacious questions like “how do elderly people have sex” (the answer given in the article is “with great difficulty and by taking risks").

Great article by Stavros Korokithakis

What does it mean to be a trend setter?

Come to GoDataFest next week in Amsterdam, where we got Fivetran and dbt Labs hand-in-hand, all planned before the merger announced this week!

https://godatafest.com

We’re so proud to partner with MotherDuck on their launch of a new EU region 🎉🎉🎉

MotherDuck delivers sub-second queries on your analytical data—and through it, you can rethink your whole data warehousing!

https://xebia.com/blog/motherduck-serverless-analytics-without-overhead/

Why does Microsoft let you turn off AI just 3 times a year?

If it’s that good, let users turn it off as much as they want. They will miss it, and turn it back on (only if it’s good, though)!

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/10/11/0238213/microsofts-onedrive-begins-testing-face-recognizing-ai-for-photos-for-some-preview-users

Rogier is a boss. Be there

If, like me, you weren’t familiar with DSPy, this was a great talk given at the Databricks Data & AI summit to walk you through why you should care.

If you’re writing prompts by hand in your apps, stop now and read this article by Drew Breunig

https://www.dbreunig.com/2025/06/10/let-the-model-write-the-prompt.html

Data Lakehouse seems to be a new buzzword; everyone wants it, but do you really need it?

We’ve organized a webinar series to help you choose, and next week Marek Wiewiórka and Radosław Szmit will host the third episode to talk about data catalogs.

Among other things, they’ll cover:

• Understanding key features of data catalogs
• Exploring popular open-source solutions
• How to improve data management through a well-set-up data catalog

Link below!

Why do AI initiatives fail to deliver the value they promise?

Sandra Olsthoorn from the Dutch Financial Times (Het Financieele Dagblad) asked me this question and just published an article about it.

Organizations often skip the most important step when starting their AI journey: a solid AI strategy. Many know the adage, but few apply it: sharpen the axe before felling the tree.

What happens when you skip strategy? The data we collected for our Data & AI Monitor is clear:

• Half of the respondents lacks a reliable and well-governed data foundation, leadership buy-in, and change management.
• A third is unable to access data, lacks budget and technical know-how, and is unable to identify valuable use cases

The last point, identifying valuable use cases, is also a central piece of the article: often, organizations are looking for a big-bang use case in areas that are more directly linked to revenue (sales and marketing) and overlook the back office—where small improvements can have a tremendous effect on the bottom line!

The results? Only 24% of the organizations we surveyed believe they’re delivering real value!

Links in the comments!

Steven Nooijen Anand Sahay Mayank Verma Klaudia Wachnio (Zdunczyk) Xebia

📄 View document

I basically never hear the fan of my Macbook Pro, but if I do, I know whose fault it is

My favorite shirt has a great quote on it: “Without Data, you’re just a person with an opinion.”

If I look around, I see a lot of people with opinions, especially here.

So, it’s actually refreshing that someone rolled up their sleeves to change that and ask leaders and practitioners what’s hype and what’s real when it comes to Data & AI, and what their challenges and priorities are.

We collected, analyzed, and distilled these data in the Data & AI monitor.

I think it turned out great.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

https://pages.xebia.com/artificial-intelligence/data-ai-monitor-report-2025-2026