Data + AI World Tour Toronto

Thank you for a great Data + AI World Tour - we look forward to seeing you next year! If you missed the event, you can attend our virtual event on January 21, 2026.

Why attend Data + AI World Tour

Join the data and AI community in your city and see why industry leaders choose Databricks to unify and simplify their data, analytics and AI architectures.

Learn
Hear from thought-provoking speakers and technical experts on how to advance your data and AI strategies
Network
Build valuable connections, exchange ideas and share experiences with like-minded professionals, subject matter experts and thought leaders
Engage
Participate in hands-on sessions and interactive demos to deepen your skills and explore real applications of data and AI

Agenda

8:00 AM - 5:00 PM	Registration
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM 10:30 AM - 6:00 PM	Expo
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM	Keynote
11:00 AM - 5:00 PM	Breakouts
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM	Lunch & Networking
12:00 PM - 3:00 PM	Lightning Talks
1:00 PM - 4:00 PM	Training
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM	Industry Breakouts
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM	Networking Reception

Speakers

Vice President and General Manager, Canada
Databricks

SVP, Product
Databricks

VP Data AI Analytics
McCain Foods

Director, Data Platform Engineering
Manulife

VP, Data and AI
Intact Financial Corporation

AVP, Applied AI and Automation
Canadian Tire Corporation

Manager, Advanced Analytics and Artificial Intelligence
NAV CANADA

Partner Engineer
Coalesce

Chief Data & Analytics Officer, Personal & Business Banking
CIBC

Senior Solutions Engineer
Confluent

Sr. Director, Financial Services
Databricks

Sr Solution Architect
Databricks

Resident Solutions Architect
Databricks

Solutions Architect
Databricks

Managing Director
Deloitte

Product Marketing Director
Databricks

Specialist Solutions Architect
Databricks

Principal Product Marketing Manager
Databricks

Solutions Architect
Databricks

Staff Technical Instructor
Databricks

AVP, Industry Solutions
Databricks

Sr. Director, Marketing Modernization
Senior Director, Marketing Modernization, CIBC

Solutions Architect
Databricks

Master Principal Solution Architect
Qlik

Solution Architect
Databricks

Sr Dir Marketing Data and Advanced Analytics
Senior Director, Marketing Data and Advanced Analytics, CIBC

Lead Solutions Architect
Databricks

Product Marketing
Databricks

Regional Vice President, Canada
Databricks

Managing Partner
Compass Data + AI

Specialist Solutions Architect - Data Science & Machine Learning
Databricks

Solutions Architect
Databricks

Delivery Solutions Architect
Databricks

Director, Strategic Ecosystem Alliances
Informatica

Sr. Resident Solution Architect
Databricks

Director, Financial Services
Databricks

Senior Director, Data & Analytics
Apotex

Head of Analytics and Data Enablement
Senior Director, Data and Analytics Enablement, CIBC

Featured sessions

From Raw Data to Real-Time Retention: Powering Customer Health Scores with Databricks + Coalesce

Understanding customer engagement and retention is mission-critical—but building trusted health scores at scale is easier said than done. In this lightning talk, see how Coalesce and Databricks work together to operationalize customer health scoring with speed, scale, and confidence. We’ll walk through how to turn raw behavioral and product usage data into governed, explainable scores that drive real business action. Learn how Coalesce’s metadata-driven platform pairs with Databricks' lakehouse architecture to streamline development, enforce governance, and quickly deliver actionable insights. What you'll see: How to build repeatable, enterprise-grade scoring pipelines in minutes—not weeks How to automate documentation, lineage, and quality checks with built-in metadata intelligence How to support cross-functional stakeholders with transparent, trustworthy data products

A Practical Roadmap to AI Readiness: Apotex's Story of Transformation

For many organizations, the word data still sparks more stress than excitement. It’s often associated with messy manual work, endless firefighting, and disconnected systems. Yet when CEOs talk about the future, it’s all about data and AI. So why does the reality so often fall short of the rhetoric? In this session, we’ll share the story of how Apotex transformed a chaotic data environments into the backbone of smarter, faster, and more confident decision-making tools like Databricks Lakeflow. You’ll hear the highs and lows, the wins as well as the missteps, and the pivotal moments that reshaped how teams think and work through data. Compass will also share their latest insights how clients are developing Databricks GenAI applications (yes a few architecture diagrams!), and what it truly takes for organizations to be ready for them.

Build an Enterprise-scale Data Foundation for AI and Analytics for Databricks with Informatica

In this session, discover how Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) empowers Databricks enterprise customers to break down data silos and build a unified, enterprise-wide data foundation that streamlines compliance and optimizes decision-making. Learn how IDMC serves as the metadata system of record and seamlessly integrates with and extends Databricks Unity Catalog to deliver holistic governance and security across the enterprise data estate. By providing curated, high-quality, and trusted data, IDMC accelerates data modernization efforts and unlocks the full potential of analytics and AI initiatives on the Databricks platform, delivering true data intelligence at enterprise scale.

Building A Trusted Data Foundation for AI At Mercedes-Benz with Qlik and Databricks

Discover how industry leaders like Mercedes-Benz are transforming their operations with the combined power of Qlik and Databricks. This session will highlight the cutting-edge solutions for universal, real-time data ingestion, automated transformation, and enterprise-grade data quality. Learn how Mercedes-Benz uses Qlik and Databricks to eliminate manual bottlenecks, activate AI-driven insights, and boost production efficiency by 20%, all while maintaining secure, governed data across cloud and hybrid environments. Explore practical use cases, proven ROI, and the collaborative innovation behind Qlik for Databricks — and how you can accelerate your own journey to trusted, AI-ready data.

Building Production-Ready AI and Multi-Agent Systems With Agent Bricks

More than 80% of AI projects fail. The reason? Customers are not ready to put AI in production in areas where the Agent can cause reputational or financial harm. Introducing Agent Bricks, a new approach to deploying production-ready AI Agents. Agent Bricks uses novel research techniques to automatically generate domain-specific synthetic data and task-aware benchmarks. Based on these benchmarks, it automatically optimizes for cost and quality, saving enterprises from the tedious trial-and-error of current approaches. Now, teams can achieve production-level accuracy and cost efficiency right from the start.
This session will show you how to build and scale real-world AI systems using Agent Bricks. We’ll cover how to design multi-agent systems that combine retrieval, reasoning, and generation to answer complex questions grounded in your enterprise data. Along the way, you’ll see how to track experiments, fine-tune performance, and build workflows that are reliable, governed, and built for scale.

Collaborating Without Boundaries: What’s New With Delta Sharing, Clean Rooms, Marketplace and More

Databricks is changing how organizations work together by making data sharing more open, secure, and flexible. With new capabilities like Clean Rooms for multi-party collaboration, cross-platform view sharing, Sharing for Lakehouse Federation, and Databricks Apps in the Marketplace, teams can now share and access data more easily, whether or not they are on Databricks.

This session includes live demos of the tools driving this shift. We’ll show Delta Sharing, the open protocol for seamless cross-platform data sharing. We’ll walk through the Databricks Marketplace, a central hub for discovering and monetizing data and AI assets. And we’ll dive into Clean Rooms, which enable secure collaboration without exposing raw data. You’ll leave with a clear view of how to use these tools to drive faster insights and better partnerships across your ecosystem.

Databricks SQL: Getting Started and What’s New with Live Demos

New to Databricks SQL or just trying to keep up with everything that’s been added? This session gives you both. We’ll start with a fast-paced introduction to Databricks SQL, including how to set up a warehouse, load data, run queries, and build dashboards in just a few minutes. You’ll get a clear view of how the platform supports analysts, developers, admins, and business users with a simple and intuitive interface.

From there, we’ll dive into the latest features, with live demos and real-world use cases. We’ll cover the new SQL editor, coding enhancements, streaming tables, materialized views, BI integrations, system tables, observability, and cost management tools. We’ll also show how AI is being used under the hood to optimize performance and help you get the most out of your workloads. Whether you're just starting out or looking to stay current, this session will get you up to speed.

Discover the latest Innovations in AI/BI Dashboards and Genie

Discover how the latest innovations in Databricks AI/BI Dashboards and Genie are transforming self-service analytics. This session offers a high-level tour of new capabilities that empower business users to ask questions in natural language, generate insights faster and make smarter decisions. Whether you're a long-time Databricks user or just exploring what's possible with AI/BI, you'll walk away with a clear understanding of how these tools are evolving — and how to leverage them for greater business impact

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Financial Services Industry forum

Join the Financial Services Industry Forum to explore how data and AI transform finance. Featuring keynotes from top innovators in banking, capital markets, and insurance and exciting announcements from Databricks, this event offers invaluable insights.

What to expect:

- Business imperatives: Learn how institutions drive growth, reduce risk, and boost efficiency with data intelligence
- Transformative vision: See how Databricks enhances fraud prevention, automates processes and personalizes experiences
- Cutting-edge insights: Discover the latest trends in data-driven finance
- Customer success stories: Hear how global leaders leverage data and AI for a competitive edge

Connect with C-suite executives and industry pioneers shaping financial services. Leave with actionable strategies to drive growth, ensure compliance and transform your organization through intelligence-driven decisions!

Introducing Lakeflow: The Future of Data Engineering on Databricks

Data engineering doesn’t have to be a patchwork of tools and handoffs. In this session, we’ll introduce you to Lakeflow, Databricks’ unified solution for building reliable, scalable data pipelines with less friction and more control. Whether you’re just getting started or managing complex workflows, Lakeflow brings together ingestion, transformation, and orchestration into one cohesive experience.

We’ll walk through the key components, including Lakeflow Connect, Declarative Pipelines, Jobs, and the new Lakeflow Designer—a visual interface that makes it even easier to build and manage pipelines with minimal code. You’ll see live demos of no-code ingestion, code-optional transformation, and unified orchestration across your data estate.

We’ll also share what’s coming next, including support for open source tooling and expanded no-code capabilities. You’ll leave with a clear understanding of how Lakeflow simplifies your stack, increases productivity, and provides a strong foundation for building high-performance, governed data pipelines at scale.

Lakebase: Fully Managed Postgres for the Lakehouse

Lakebase is a new Postgres-compatible OLTP database designed to support intelligent applications. Lakebase eliminates custom ETL pipelines with built-in lakehouse table synchronization, supports sub-10ms latency for high-throughput workloads, and offers full Postgres compatibility, so you can build applications more quickly.In this session, you’ll learn how Lakebase enables faster development, production-level concurrency, and simpler operations for data engineers and application developers building modern, data-driven applications. We'll walk through key capabilities, example use cases, and how Lakebase simplifies infrastructure while unlocking new possibilities for AI and analytics.

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Personalization in Retail Banking

A panel discussion focused on delivering personalization in retail banking through analytics, AI, and automation to enhance the client experience. The panelists will provide insights on leveraging AI & data to better understand client behaviour, improve acquisition strategies, deploy AI personalization models, and streamline operations through automation.

Streaming Meets Governance: Building AI-Ready Tables with Confluent Tableflow and Unity Catalog

Learn how Confluent and Databricks are simplifying the path from real-time data streams to governed, analytics- and AI-ready tables. This session will explore how Confluent Tableflow automatically materializes Kafka topics into Delta tables and registers them with Unity Catalog—eliminating brittle batch jobs and custom pipelines. You’ll see how Confluent’s fully managed data streaming platform—with unified Apache Kafka® and Apache Flink®—connects data from across your entire business to deliver trusted, real-time data products everywhere they’re needed, all while reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) for data streaming by up to 60%.

Training: Get Started with AI Agents

This course is an introduction to AI agents, their role in modern AI applications, and how to build AI agent applications on the Databricks Platform. You'll learn about the principles of AI agents, how they differ from traditional AI systems, and explore their key components. Through interactive demos and hands-on labs, you'll see how to build, deploy, and evaluate AI agents on Databricks using Mosaic AI and Agent Bricks. By the end of this course, you'll understand how to create and deploy AI agents using the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform.

This course will help you:
- Understand how AI agents differ from traditional AI systems and learn real world use-cases across various industries.
- Differentiate between agentic and non-agentic AI approaches, and explore the roles of LLMs, tools, memory, and workflows in building AI agents.
- Learn the various ways to build and manage AI agents on Databricks, including how to use Mosaic AI to build, deploy, and monitor AI agents.
- Understand how you can use Agent Bricks to create enterprise-grade agents with no code and minimal setup.

Unity Catalog: From Foundations to Best Practices

Whether you are just getting started with data governance or working to scale it across the enterprise, this session will walk you through how Unity Catalog helps simplify secure access, discovery, and collaboration for data and AI.

We will start with the fundamentals of Unity Catalog, explain how it works, and why it plays a central role in governing data and AI across clouds, teams, and workloads. Then we will dive into the latest product updates, including live demos that show new capabilities in access control, lineage, discovery, and monitoring. You will also get a first look at upcoming features and hear insights from customers already running Unity Catalog in production.

The session wraps with clear guidance on how to design and roll out Unity Catalog effectively. We will cover how to structure catalogs, manage permissions, and build for multi-cloud and multi-region environments. If you want a practical understanding of Unity Catalog and how to apply it in your organization, this session is for you.

Event details and FAQExpand allCollapse all

How much does it cost to attend the Data + AI World Tour?	All Data + AI World Tour stops are free to attend.
I am having difficulties registering. How can I get help?	Please email world-tour-support-amer@databricks.com.
How do I register for training?	Scheduling for training will launch closer to the event. An email will be sent notifying you when scheduling is open in the session catalog.
Will you be providing meals with dietary restrictions in mind?	We will provide meals that are vegetarian and vegan. If you have other dietary restrictions, please email world-tour-support-amer@databricks.com and we will do our best to accommodate.
Where is the event located?	The event is held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, 255 Front St W, Toronto, ON M5V 2W6, Canada
Are there other Data + AI World Tour locations I can attend?	Visit our Data + AI World Tour page to see all our tour stops. Check out our events page for upcoming Databricks events.
Where can I find parking for this event?	Onsite parking will be limited. Please note that parking validation will not be provided. Onsite Parking (at the venue): MTCC - North Building, 255 Front St W., Toronto, Ontario M5V 2W6, 416-585-8000 MTCC - South Building, 222 Bremner Blvd., Toronto, Ontario M5V 3L9, 416-585-8000 Parking Rates Below Rates include 13% Tax Day Maximum (over 2.5 hrs): $32.00 Day Maximum + 1/2 hr: $37.00 Public Transportation Options: UP Express From the Union Station UP platform, exit and proceed west through the SkyWalk corridor Take the elevator or staircase to Lower Simcoe Street (street level) Proceed west on Front Street, where you will arrive at the MTCC North Building main entrance Visit UP Express for ticket and schedule information GO Transit Exit Union Station, proceed west on Front Street to the North Building The South Building can be accessed via the SkyWalk Alternatively, you can exit at Union Station and follow the SkyWalk to either the North or South Building