On the Ground at Snowflake Summit 2023!

Welcome to your one-stop-shop for all things Snowflake Summit 2023! Read on for our daily log from the ground at the event – including highlights, news, and our biggest takeaways from Las Vegas.

Wednesday 28th June, 2023

Day Three at Summit was another incredible day full of inspiring sessions, interesting conversations, and fun events!

The day kicked off with a keynote from Benoit Dageville – Snowflake Co-founder and President of Product – where the theme was “GO BUILD!” This keynote was product-driven and focused exclusively on Snowflake’s new app marketplace.

During the session, various members of team Snowflake took to the stage as actors to demonstrate how an app built in Snowflake could be easily created, shared, and even monetised. The ‘play’ told the story of a scaling business looking to automate more of its workflows and maximize its profit – this format was a really engaging way to see the power of the Marketplace and the speed and ease with which these apps can be built and deployed.

A few key takeaways from the keynote included:

• When a speaker from EDF joined the stage to chat about using Snowflake and Snowpark to break down data silos and improve scalability so that they went from delivering 3 products per year, to delivering 12 products per year!
• How easy it is for users of any kind to interact with apps built in Snowflake: data scientists build it using Python, and team members interact with it using basic Sql
• A preview of Machine Learning-powered functions!

Following the impressive keynote, Team Astrato returned to the exhibition floor where conversations continued at the booth. The entire floor was buzzing, and the booth was jam-packed all day!

At 1:30, our very own Founder & CEO, Martin Mahler, took to the stage for a presentation on use cases for data apps in Snowflake. Over 100 people attended his presentation, which was the highest attendance for a breakout session in West Theatre on the day. 

Happy Hour followed shortly after, and then it was over to Top Golf, where we co-hosted an amazing event with our friends at Calibo. Food, drinks, and fun was had by all, and the event was a great way to cap off our last full day at Summit.

Overall, the conference has surpassed even our wildest expectations! From epic keynotes, to great conversations, to learning more about what’s next from Snowflake, we’re as excited as ever to be the team behind the best data apps that you can build with your data in Snowflake, and we can’t wait to get home and put everything we’ve learned into our product.

See you next year!

Tuesday 27th June, 2023 

Welcome to everything you need to know about day two at Snowflake Summit 2023!

The event is in full swing – between this morning’s keynote, breakout sessions throughout the day, and a reception to close things off, there’s definitely a buzz setting in. Here’s what the Astrato Team got into today, plus the key takeaways and hottest takes from day two’s events, news, and announcements.

The Keynote

Here’s what we took away from this morning’s epic keynote presentation:

Introduction with CEO Frank Slootman

Main takeaway: There’s no limit to what’s possible with the Snowflake Data Cloud.

Snowflake CEO and Chairman, Frank Slootman, took to the stage to kick things off this morning. His keynote message was “NO LIMITS.” For Snowflake, according to Slootman, that means pushing the limits of data apps, pushing the limits on how we can make more use of our data, and pushing the limits of what Snowflake offers to its customers and partners. To put it simply, Slootman believes that the Cloud has no limits, and we tend to agree! 

Generative AI discussion with Snowflake Founder & President of Product, Benoit Dageville; Snowflake SVP Sridhar Ramaswamy, and Snowflake Dir. of AI/ML Mona Attariyan 

Main takeaway: With AI, business users will level up their approach to working with data.

These three Snowflake execs took to the stage following the CEO’s introduction to speak about how generative AI will democratize data like never before. The discussion touched on how natural language models will give any user the power to communicate directly with their data without the need for a single line of code.

The trio also briefly covered how users will run their AI workload on their own data in the Cloud, without any compliance or security trade offs.

What’s new in Snowflake with SVP of Product, Christian Kleinerman

Main Takeaway: Privacy, predictability, and control are key to giving customers even more from their investment in Snowflake.

Christian spoke throughout the keynote, delivering announcements and updates and plenty of demos. A few highlights for our team were the unified iceberg tables (creating a single platform to interact with data that’s stored externally), query constraints and data clean room improvements, increased visibility into how resources are being consumed – including a brand new warehouse utilization metric, and custom billing events that will allow customers to bill in whatever units work for them. 

Plus, customers will now be able to draw from their capacity commitment to Snowflake in order to buy from the newly launched Snowflake Native App Marketplace, which is a place to publish, monetise, and interact with data products being built and shared in Snowflake.

More on the Snowflake Native App Marketplace

Third parties can package their LLMs (Large Language Models) into Snowflake Native Apps. Users can fine tune or “train” models with their own data in Snowflake! Everything – all processing and analysis – happens inside your Snowflake account, meaning everything stays safe and secure.

 

A private preview of Document AI with a Snowflake Principal Software Engineer

Main takeaway: Document AI is a game changer, and it should be here soon!

This demo got everyone’s attention. Basically, Snowflake’s LLM (Large Language Model) reviews PDF documents prepared and uploaded by people (these can be text heavy and can include handwritten text), and analyzes them in response to questions asked by users in natural language.

Then, it accepts feedback from the user on the results of its analysis to fine tune or “train” the model and make it better. The improved model is then able to run independently to produce reliable, accurate analysis and insights from other documents in the future.

Advancing Snowflake’s Core Engine with VP Engineering, Allison Lee

Main takeaway: Snowflake’s core engine is getting faster.

Improvements to Snowflake’s core engine include expanded support for geospatial data, Machine Learning-powered functions, and performance enhancements that have already seen a 15% improvement in query duration.

Improvements to the developer experience with Christain Kleinerman, SVP Product

Christian got back on stage to announce a slew of updates and improvements to the developer experience in Snowflake, including:

• Native python and rest API
• Snowflake CLI
• Logging and tracing, and
• Automatic synchronization with Git repositories

Next, he spoke about enhancements to Snowpark, including:

• Python runtime
• External network access (Team Astrato definitely took notice of this one!), and
• Local testing

…just to name a few!

Other notable announcements from the keynote session:

• Snowpark containers – these are currently in private preview and offer improvements to instance flexibility, specifically support for NVIDIA’s AI GPUs
• Streamlit is getting a chat function!

Following the keynote, the team returned to stand 2241 to chat with customers, partners, and attendees about all things Astrato before attending a few other breakout sessions, including a special session on Snowpark use cases, where our very own Snowflake Data Superhero, Piers Batchelor, spoke on an expert panel.

The breakout sessions were interesting and inspiring, and kept the team talking through the entire end-of-day reception.

Tomorrow, we’re looking forward to seeing our very own Founder & CEO on stage for his breakout session.

We’ll be back with more key takeaways and updates from day three, tomorrow!

 

Monday 26th June, 2023 

Snowflake Summit is finally here, and the Astrato team has landed in Las Vegas, where we’re reporting live from this epic event!

Day One is all about hitting the ground running: we’re getting settled in at our stand (#2241 in Basecamp East for those of you in attendance!), attending a few key sessions (more on that in a moment), and co-hosting an event with our partners at sqlDBM after the day’s events wrap up.

But before we get into the details of today’s amazing events, let’s have a look at Snowflake Summit 2023, by the numbers.

This incredibly impressive event will include over:

10,000 attendees
200 partners
300 exhibitors, and
400 sessions

… and our team is going to soak up every second of it!

Day One Highlights

First up today, we attended a series of partner sessions. As a Snowflake Technology Select Partner and Green Circle Sponsor at the event, we’ve got exclusive access to a range of partner-only events. We’ll be attending several more over the next few days.

Next, our crew headed to Ceasar’s Palace for a fireside chat featuring NVIDIA’s CEO, Jensen Huang. This session was an absolutely can’t-miss event! Jensen and others took to the stage to chat through trends in generative AI and accelerated computing, the pace of disruption in tech, and the impact on every industry and business model of this increased speed in innovation.

Following the fireside chat, it was time for the official welcome reception! The team spent a few hours at the reception, catching up with colleagues and connections from throughout the BI industry. Drinks, food, and great chats capped off an amazing first day at the conference center.

Next up, it was time to head to the Wheel House venue just off the Las Vegas Strip for our after-party, which we co-hosted with our partners at sqlDBM. This invite-only event drew a crowd, and conversations continued well into the night!

Tomorrow, we’re looking forward to the first full day of being on the exhibition floor. In particular, we’ll be in attendance at the opening Keynote and a later session on navigating the future of AI technology, hosted by Mona Chadha, the Director of Category Management at AWS. 

We’ll be back tomorrow with more updates from the team on the ground!