What a great way to kick things off, connecting with the community in Austin for our first stop on the road to Airflow Summit 2026.
Austin was the perfect place to host our first meetup, bringing the community together in a city known for its energy, incredible BBQ, and as the future home of Airflow Summit 2026. The room quickly filled with conversation, familiar faces reconnecting, new ones meeting, and a shared excitement building around what’s ahead.
A big thank you to Astronomer for sponsoring the event and making it all possible. We’re also grateful to Dataflint and Qualcomm for contributing such engaging speakers who brought valuable insights to the community, Meni Shmueli, Co-Founder and CEO, and Dheeraj Turaga, Principal Engineer.
The sessions delivered a strong mix of practical insights and real-world use cases. Meni Shmueli explored how to orchestrate Apache Spark with Apache Airflow, focusing on key tradeoffs around performance, cost, and reliability, along with the importance of observability and smarter pipeline design.
On the other hand, Dheeraj Turaga shared how Qualcomm uses Apache Airflow to manage complex semiconductor workflows at scale, highlighting strategies like workflow standardization, dynamic scaling, and hybrid execution across data centers.
Together, the talks showcased how teams are pushing Airflow to handle increasingly complex, large-scale systems. Beyond the sessions, the meetup created space for sharing challenges, ideas, and lessons learned across different industries. It’s this sense of community that makes these events more than just talks.
Stay tuned for upcoming meetups as we continue building momentum toward the Summit this upcoming August 31st to September 2nd.
