We often think of large-scale data analytics as something that needs complex infrastructure, big clusters, and lots of cloud spend. But what if you could do serious analytics—on millions or even billions of rows—right from your laptop?
In this talk, we’ll explore how DuckDB, an open-source analytical database, is flipping the script. It brings the power of modern columnar analytics engines to your local machine—no setup headaches, no servers to manage. Just open your laptop and go.
We'll look at how DuckDB works, what makes it different, and how it's being used for everything from quick prototyping to full-scale production use-cases.
Whether you're a data engineer, analyst, or just someone curious about open data tooling, this session will show you how to unlock serious analytical power—without needing serious infrastructure.
5 Key takeaways from this talk are :
Big Data, Small Machine : Analyze millions to billions of rows right from your laptop—no cloud or cluster needed.
Built for Open Standards : DuckDB works natively with Parquet, Arrow, and CSV—no data loading required.
Zero Setup, Instant Value : Runs in-process, integrates easily with Python/R, and works great in notebooks.
From Prototype to Production : Used for everything from quick data exploration to serious analytical workflows.
Open-Source Power, Democratized : Modern analytics is now accessible to anyone with a laptop—thanks to DuckDB and the FOSS ecosystem.
I want to make space for this, but I'm not sure if we can find a full-slot. Perhaps this might work better as a workshop, or a 10 minute awareness demo of doing something cool with duckdb locally. With a workshop - you can go deep or with a short talk you get just enough time to awe the audience into using it.
IndiaFOSS last year had a OpenRefine workshop so we have some precedence there.