“We saw that data management systems are far too hard to use and that most real-world data sets are actually quite small. Because they are so small, they can be processed and analyzed on a single computer, for example a laptop”, Mühleisen explained to the audience. He also described the basic design and feature set of DuckDB and gave some usage examples that showcase its uniqueness.
The development of the database led to spin-off company DuckDB Labs, founded by Mühleisen and Raasveldt.
The summit
The Data + AI summit is a premier event for the global data community, organized by Databricks, a cloud-service that specialises in data and AI workloads, created by the original creators of the Spark system and one of the main players in data systems. Databricks has a large R&D centre in Amsterdam thanks to a collaboration - previous to DuckDB - with CWI.
Just like last year the 2023 edition of the summit was completely sold out with over 10,000 attendees in person and about 4 times as many online. Other keynote speakers included Satya Nadella (chairman and CEO of Microsoft), Eric Schmidt (former CEO and chairman at Google), Ali Ghodsi (CEO and co-founder of Databricks) and Marc Andreesen (co-founder at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz).
“Fun fact”, says Mühleisen, “the Moscone Center is the place where Apple used to hold its big events too. So I was on the very stage that Steve Jobs was on.”
