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	<title>Unbound DNA &#187; Snowflake</title>
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		<title>Brisbane Snowflake User Group – August 2026</title>
		<link>https://craigsmith.id.au/2026/08/26/brisbane-snowflake-user-group-august-2026/</link>
		<comments>https://craigsmith.id.au/2026/08/26/brisbane-snowflake-user-group-august-2026/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Aug 2026 06:30:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Craig Smith]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Agentic AI]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[AI]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[AI Agents]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Apache Iceberg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CoCo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CoWork]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Data Literacy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Domino's]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mantel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Power BI]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Semantic Layer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Snowflake]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Snowflake User Group]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vivanti]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://craigsmith.id.au/?p=4327</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I attended the Brisbane Snowflake User Group meetup, hosted by Mantel on 26 August 2026 with some of my colleagues. The evening opened with a fireside chat (moderated by Snowflake&#8217;s Raj Sharma) on building a data literacy culture at Domino&#8217;s and rolling out Snowflake CoWork (Daria) to non-technical staff. Brad de Bruyns of Vivanti then &#8230; <a href="https://craigsmith.id.au/2026/08/26/brisbane-snowflake-user-group-august-2026/">Continue reading <span>Brisbane Snowflake User Group &#8211; August&#160;2026</span></a>]]></description>
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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I attended the <a href="https://usergroups.snowflake.com/brisbane/">Brisbane Snowflake User Group meetup</a>, hosted by <a href="https://mantelgroup.com.au/">Mantel</a> on 26 August 2026 with some of my colleagues. The evening opened with a fireside chat (moderated by Snowflake&#8217;s Raj Sharma) on building a data literacy culture at Domino&#8217;s and rolling out Snowflake CoWork (Daria) to non-technical staff. Brad de Bruyns of Vivanti then demonstrated a code-first approach to Power BI development using Snowflake CoCo, showing how the shift to PBIP-format reports, Snowflake Semantic Views, and CoCo &#8220;Skills&#8221; enables version-controlled, AI-assisted report building governed by an OpenSpec change process and CI/CD pipeline. Snowflake&#8217;s Majid Miri and Yuqi Zheng closed out the evening with a broader rundown of Summit 2026&#8217;s announcements including the CoWork/CoCo rebrand, Horizon Context and Cortex Sense, AI Agent Identity, Apache Iceberg v3 reaching GA, and new ingestion tooling in OpenFlow and Datastream, framing them as the building blocks of a governed, agentic enterprise platform.</p>
</div><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><a href="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/stug-bne-aug26.webp"><img width="1000" height="1000" data-attachment-id="4329" data-permalink="https://craigsmith.id.au/2026/08/26/brisbane-snowflake-user-group-august-2026/stug-bne-aug26/" data-orig-file="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/stug-bne-aug26.webp" data-orig-size="1000,1000" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;}" data-image-title="stug-bne-aug26" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-large-file="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/stug-bne-aug26.webp?w=676" src="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/stug-bne-aug26.webp?w=1000" alt="" class="wp-image-4329 size-full" srcset="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/stug-bne-aug26.webp 1000w, https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/stug-bne-aug26.webp?w=150 150w, https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/stug-bne-aug26.webp?w=300 300w, https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/stug-bne-aug26.webp?w=768 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></a></figure></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Innovations at Domino&#8217;s with Snowflake &#8211; Bianca Gilchrist &#8211; Domino&#8217;s</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/biancagilchrist/">Bianca Gilchrist</a>, Domino&#8217;s Data Literacy &amp; Visualisation Lead and Snowflake Data Hero of the Year, spoke about building a data literacy culture at <a href="https://www.dominos.com.au/">Domino&#8217;s</a> and driving the rollout of <a href="https://www.snowflake.com/en/product/snowflake-cowork/">Snowflake CoWork</a>, branded internally as Daria, to non-technical staff.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><a href="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-1.jpg"><img data-attachment-id="4426" data-permalink="https://craigsmith.id.au/2026/08/26/brisbane-snowflake-user-group-august-2026/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-1/" data-orig-file="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-1.jpg" data-orig-size="2420,1815" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;}" data-image-title="2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-1" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-large-file="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-1.jpg?w=676" src="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-4426" /></a></figure>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>&#8220;E<em>very story, every report that we put out has to have a story behind it&#8221;</em> &#8211; reports should read like an analyst&#8217;s narrative, not a grid of numbers</li>



<li>Run weekly &#8220;15-minute bites&#8221; sessions where staff watch live Q&amp;A with Daria on calls &#8211; showing how easy it is to ask a question and get an answer, which then prompts a flow of similar questions from the team over following days</li>



<li>Wrote two data literacy books for children: <em>&#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Learn-Data-Australian-Bianca-Gilly/dp/1763838811">the A to Z of data</a>&#8220;</em> and <em>&#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Learn-Data-Australian-Bianca-Gilly/dp/1763838811/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=JRxvE&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.4b42061c-c034-4ca8-95e5-47847c646c4e&amp;pf_rd_p=4b42061c-c034-4ca8-95e5-47847c646c4e&amp;pf_rd_r=356-7718395-6664734&amp;pd_rd_wg=ov1Za&amp;pd_rd_r=e670332c-2098-4609-9b73-be01a5028e09">The Australian Data Story</a>&#8220;</em>, and is developing a schools program with Snowflake to bring young kids into the data field</li>



<li>Three pillars of data literacy: <strong>accessibility</strong> (can people find the data), <strong>usability</strong> (what can they do with it), and <strong>storytelling</strong></li>



<li>Marketing data internally &#8211; relentless, visible promotion (Viva posts, being put in front of every group) is essential to getting data trusted and used</li>



<li>One of the biggest recurring business questions the agent gets used for: when a limited-time offer or new product launches, is it cannibalising sales from other products &#8211; this previously took a Business Analyst half a day to a week to answer in Power BI, now answered by Daria in minutes</li>



<li>You need to show a working model quickly, since people can&#8217;t visualise an idea from a description alone</li>



<li>Had to explicitly instruct Daria to be more pessimistic — it was originally overly optimistic (e.g. overstating cost savings), so instructions were added to correct this and avoid dollar-figure recommendations, and to only make recommendations in the voucher area, not financial matters</li>



<li>Staff are given daily prompt limits partly to control cost, but also to keep people using the core &#8220;gold standard&#8221; Power BI reports for standard metrics, ensuring the numbers people see match what the CEO sees</li>



<li>Cost and usage limits are a live tension, staff loved unlimited prompts for two months and pushed back hard on new daily caps</li>



<li>Future focus is to get the AI agent to redirect simple, reportable questions back to the core Power BI reports, and expanding into specialised sub-agents</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Power BI Report development with Snowflake CoCo &#8211; <strong>Brad de Bruyns &#8211; Vivanti</strong></h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-de-bruyns-70111891/">Brad de Bruyns</a>, Senior Consultant at <a href="https://www.vivanti.com/">Vivanti</a> (and a former Domino&#8217;s colleague of Bianca&#8217;s), demonstrated a code-first approach to <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/power-platform/products/power-bi">Power BI</a> development using <a href="https://www.snowflake.com/en/product/snowflake-coco/">Snowflake CoCo</a>, showing how AI can turn report-building into a version-controlled, code-based workflow rather than manual clicking in binary files.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><a href="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-2.jpg"><img data-attachment-id="4430" data-permalink="https://craigsmith.id.au/2026/08/26/brisbane-snowflake-user-group-august-2026/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-2/" data-orig-file="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-2.jpg" data-orig-size="2420,1815" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;}" data-image-title="2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-2" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-large-file="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-2.jpg?w=676" src="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-2.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-4430" /></a></figure>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>The traditional Power BI PBIX format is opaque and can&#8217;t be diffed, whereas the newer PBIP format exposes reports as text so it is version-controllable, diffable, and peer-reviewable in Git</li>



<li><a href="https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/views-semantic/overview">Snowflake Semantic Views</a> were used as the single source of truth for metrics, shared across both CoWork (formerly Snowflake Intelligence) and Power BI</li>



<li>Demonstrated CoCo &#8220;Skills&#8221; baked directly into the repository &#8211; encoding branding, DAX standards, layouts, and complex JSON so AI-generated reports and measures come out brand-compliant and consistent every time</li>



<li>Walked through a live OpenSpec demo: a plain-English request (&#8220;add a detailed credit consumption by type page&#8221;) was turned into a structured Propose &gt; Explore &gt; Apply process, generating a proposal, design doc, and task list before any changes were made</li>



<li>Deployment ran through a disciplined Azure DevOps CI/CD pipeline, validating and deploying automatically across Dev, Test and Production</li>



<li>Underlying agent is CoCo, essentially Claude-like &#8211; any Claude-style skills apply the same way</li>



<li>The Power BI semantic model and the Snowflake semantic view are currently separate but kept in sync via the same underlying spec with a further skill able to uplift a Power BI model into a semantic view</li>



<li>Manage multiple reports / workspaces in one repo (config-driven via subfolders and deployment targets)</li>



<li>Started from screenshots / Figma mockups instead of specs and outputs remain fully manually editable afterwards, since it&#8217;s still a standard Power BI file underneath</li>



<li>Less time memorising palettes and file structures, more time on the data modelling and insights that actually matter</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Highlights &amp; Key Takeaways from Snowflake Summit 2026 &#8211; <strong>Majid Miri &amp; Yuqi Zheng &#8211; Snowflake</strong></h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/majid-miri/">Majid Miri</a> (Senior Solution Engineer) and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuqi-zheng/">Yuqi Zheng</a> (Associate Solution Engineer) closed the evening with a rundown of <a href="https://www.snowflake.com/en/summit/">Snowflake Summit 26</a> announcements, framed around the theme of the &#8220;agentic enterprise&#8221; and what&#8217;s needed to scale AI safely across an organisation.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><a href="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-3.jpg"><img data-attachment-id="4432" data-permalink="https://craigsmith.id.au/2026/08/26/brisbane-snowflake-user-group-august-2026/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-3/" data-orig-file="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-3.jpg" data-orig-size="2420,1815" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;}" data-image-title="2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-3" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-large-file="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-3.jpg?w=676" src="https://craigsmith.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-08-snowflake-user-group-brisbane-3.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-4432" /></a></figure>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>CoWork and CoCo rebrands: Snowflake Intelligence is now CoWork, the agent for business users; Cortex Code is now CoCo, the builder&#8217;s agent — both reaching a wider surface (desktop, mobile, Slack) since launch</li>



<li><a href="https://www.snowflake.com/en/product/features/horizon-context/">Horizon Context</a> and <a href="https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/enterprise-ai-agents-grounded-context/">Cortex Sense</a>: supply governed business context and definitions to agents, aiming to eliminate the cold start problem of enterprise AI needing weeks of manual semantic modelling</li>



<li>AI Agent Identity: gives every agent a verifiable, cryptographic identity and a complete audit trail, distinguishing agent-driven queries from human ones for access control purposes</li>



<li><a href="https://iceberg.apache.org/spec/">Apache Iceberg v3</a>: reached general availability, with broad support for new data types, cross-system change tracking, and high performance on semi-structured data paired with Snowflake-managed Iceberg storage to cut operational overhead</li>



<li><a href="https://www.snowflake.com/en/product/features/openflow/">OpenFlow</a> and <a href="https://www.snowflake.com/en/product/features/datastream/">Datastream</a>: managed data ingestion, OpenFlow for extract/load workflows with new connectors, Datastream as a new Kafka-compatible managed streaming service with separated storage/compute scaling</li>



<li>Control plane for a governed agentic enterprise &#8211; the connective layer of data, context, identity, and governance needed to run AI safely at scale</li>



<li>Gartner predicts that by 2028 the average Fortune 500 company will have over 150,000 agents, underscoring the need for centralised governance and observability</li>



<li>Deepened partnership with <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/">Anthropic</a>, with Claude positioned as the default reasoning layer underneath both CoWork and CoCo</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"></p>
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