Presenting online is a completely different experience than presenting in-person. When you present online you lose the interaction with the audience, you are unable to read body language or facial expressions to see if they are interested or bored out of their minds, and you get absolutely no feedback on whether or not they understand what you are trying to explain. You have to trust yourself, talk to a screen for an hour, and hope that the technology does not suddenly decide to throw a tantrum and stop working for no reason.

I recently presented a webinar for the first time. It went quite well, but there are many things I want to do better next time. Writing down what I learned will help me improve my own presentation skills and slide decks, but I also hope it can help other new speakers prepare for their first webinar.

SQLBits XIV Superhero Edition was my first SQLBits experience, and it was a truly amazing week! I want to start with a massive thank you to the organizers: Darren Green, Simon Sabin, James Rowland-Jones, Chris Testa-O’Neill, Allan Mitchell, Jonathan Allen and Annette Allen. You did one heck of a job to make this the best conference in the universe! 👏🏻 I also want to say thank you to all the sponsors, volunteers and speakers who made this a great event. And to all the attendees, I hope you had a blast and that I’ll see you again next year!

I spent the past couple of days in Darmstadt, Germany for SQLKonferenz 2015 (Deutsche SQL Server Konferenz 2015). This was the first time I spoke at a conference (not a SQLSaturday), and it was an absolutely amazing experience. I want to thank PASS Deutschland for doing a fantastic job to make this a great event!

The one thing I would like to have changed is that I should have learned German before going to Darmstadt 😅 The quality of speakers, sessions and topics covered was very impressive, and there were many sessions in German that I wanted to see. But I can’t complain at all, I got to see some great sessions and have learned new things that I look forward to trying.

I won! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

And huge congratulations to Andy, Ginger, Oz and Luan for being nominated, you all deserved it! 🤗

Winning the 2014 Tribal Award for Best New Community Voice means more to me than I can explain. 2014 was a difficult year for me personally, but it was also an amazing year where I discovered how much I love being involved in the SQL community. We organized the first SQLSaturday in Oslo, restarted SQL Server User Group Norway, I started volunteering and speaking at events, and I received the PASS Outstanding Volunteer Award.

2014 ended on a high when I found out I was nominated for a Tribal Award, and actually winning… Well, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to start 2015! 🤩 I’m so happy, so honored, so proud, and so thankful. I went “SQUEEEEE!” and then I cried a bit. Now I have a huge smile on my face and I’m even more motivated than ever to do what I can for the SQL community in 2015. Let’s do this! 2015 is going to be a fantastic year 🥳

Back in June I did a #SQLHangout with Boris (@brshristov) about Biml that I called “Blabbering about Biml”. (Boris is much nicer, he called it “Biml. An Introduction.”)

Yesterday we did another episode called SQLHangout #26 - Biml in the Real World. This time we were joined by João Lopes (@SQLSniper), Rasmus Reinholdt (@RasmusReinholdt) and Régis Baccaro (@regbac) - great guys that I admire. It was interesting to hear how we use Biml in different ways and what we would like to see happen in 2015. I look forward to seeing all of them again and learn from their experiences!

Five people from Bulgaria, Denmark, Portugal and Norway talking about Biml - isn’t that awesome? 🤓