Category Archives: Conferences

Remote sessions at Data Céilí

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At Data Céilí 2020 we want to be as green as possible and one idea we’ve had is to run a Green Track that will host remote sessions from speakers around the world.

This track will allow speakers to present without clocking up the associated air miles. It will also allow for speakers who can’t make the trip to Ireland to present their sessions from the comfort of their own home.

If you’d like to submit a session for our Green Track, the call for speakers is open until the 31st of January. Select the Green Session option from the drop down: –

The Green Track sessions are completely separate from the other on-site sessions, so if you’ve submitted a regular session it won’t be considered for the Green Track.

We think this will be a great way of expanding the range of speakers that we can host at our first event and should be good fun!

Data Céilí is brought to you by the team behind SQL Saturday Dublin and Cork, the event will run be held at Trinity College in the centre of Dublin, with pre-cons on the 9th of July 2020 and the main event on the 10th.

Hope to see you there!

Data Relay 2019

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My favourite UK Data Platform event is back for 2019 and has just opened for registration!

If you haven’t heard of Data Relay before, it’s pretty unique. It’s a 5 day conference but each of those 5 days is in a different city. Typically cities that don’t host their own data event.

This means that after each day, the event packs up and moves on. As you can imagine this poses quite a few challenges but it’s extremely satisfying to see it all come together.

The reason I like Data Relay so much is that it really fosters a sense of camaraderie between everyone involved. We’re all in it together to get each event up and running every day.

That’s how I got involved in the first place. I got selected to speak at each event in 2017 and ended up helping out with packing swag bags, moving boxes, and generally doing anything else that needed to be done. Have to admit, it was exhausting but really really good fun.

So if you’d like to come to one of the best community events on the calendar, this year’s schedule is: –

  • Newcastle – October 7th – Register here
  • Leeds – October 8th – Register here
  • Nottingham – October 9th – Register here
  • Birmingham – October 10th – Register here
  • Bristol – October 11th – Register here

Thanks for reading and hope to see you at Data Relay 2019!

Downtime

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I was speaking at a conference recently and when I bumped into a friend, the first thing she said to me was “have you burnt out yet?”

Now this was a joke but it did get me thinking. I’ve been speaking at quite a few events this year and tbh I’ve loved it. However I am well aware that it has been taking up a significant part of my time and I never want to get to a point where I get fed up with going to events to speak.

Getting into technical presenting has been one of the best things that I’ve ever done.

So how do I prevent myself from becoming burnt out? I have a really busy schedule over the next few months so I can’t really go on any holidays.

The best way I’ve found is to take one day a week where I don’t touch a computer. Obviously on a weekend 🙂

It may not sound like much but I’ve been working my day job, blogging during the evenings, and practicing sessions/researching topics on the weekends. It’s been pretty full on so taking one day to chill out and relax really has helped. (the world cup being on has made this a lot easier as well).

Taking one day out of a week has also allowed me to come back to issues that I’ve been faced with anew, and allowed me to resolve them.

So if you’re working all hours under the sun, I ask you to stop. Take a day for yourself. It may be hard at first but it will benefit you in the long run.

Thursday Reading 2017-04-13

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Morning all, it’s been a busy week so I haven’t had a chance to write a post. Instead I’ve seen some great posts written about SQLBits 2017 so I thought I’d link to three of my favourites:-

Why Volunteer at SQLBits ?
Rob talks about his experiences volunteering at SQLBits and how you can get involved. The photos are hilarious!

Attending SQLBits for the first time
Great video by Adam Sexton of pretty much everything that went on at SQLBits!

State of the SQL Nation and the Microsoft Engineering Model
Victoria Holt talks about the points mentioned at the 15 mins Q & A session with Conor Cunningham and Simon Sabin at SQLBits this year

Have a good weekend!

Pass 2015 – Overall Thoughts

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I know I only posted one other blog about Pass but I’ve been way too busy over the last couple of weeks to write any more. So here’s my thoughts on what was my first (and hopefully not last) Pass Summit (would have posted this earlier but I’ve been enjoying a bit of jet lag).

Firstly, I had a whale of a time. I met a whole bunch of people, including guys from UK & Dublin chapters and the Midnight DBAs; went to some great sessions and picked up some free stuff from a load of vendors. Secondly, how cool were the evening events? The welcome reception was very slick and the party at EMP Museum (what a place) was brilliant. They could probably tone down the karaoke a tad mind, did it really need to start so early?

The only grumble I have is that I didn’t really enjoy the first timers “speed networking” session. For those who don’t know, you’re lined up in rows facing each other and are given three minutes each way to introduce yourself and talk about a certain subject (biggest challenge at work, programs that you use most frequently etc.). At the end of the six minutes you move down one seat to your left and the process kicks off again. For me, this went on a little bit too long…after about the third round I was starting to get a little weary. The room was very loud so you practically had to shout for three minutes. I left with a bit of parched throat but thankfully a beer was waiting for me at the welcome reception.

The keynotes. I enjoyed them although I have to admit, when I saw the length of them I was a bit put off. However both were delivered excellently. The first keynote by Joseph Sirosh & Shawn Bice going through the new features of SQL Server 2016 was very interesting. I’d seen most of what they talked about before but I hadn’t heard about native support for R within SQL Server – that’s going to be huge!

The second keynote by David DeWitt & Rimma Nehme talking about the progression of IoT was less my cup of tea (I’m more of a demo guy) but they still talked about a lot of interesting concepts. One of which was fog computing (google it) which led to the expression, “What the fog?”. Ha ha.

Now, the sessions. I attended more of the “out there” sessions if I’m honest. I’ve been to a few conferences at this point in my career so didn’t what to go and see the same old subjects (e.g. – basic stuff on the SQL database engine; indexes, partitioning, query tuning etc.), I wanted to see something new. Highlights included a session on Hadoop, a really cool workshop on u-sql and a session on technical writing.

The best session that I attended though was the Speaker Idol final at 4pm on the last day. 4 great speakers all competing for a grand prize of a full 75 minute session at Pass Summit 2016 hosted by the indefatigable Denny Cherry (b|t). All week everyone I talked to mentioned the sense of community at Pass and in my opinion, the Speaker Idol final was where it was most prevalent. Each of the speakers performed brilliantly and congratulations to David Maxwell who won (see his blog post on the Summit here.

Now to see how to get to the Summit 2016…